Kohlrabi Slaw, Pork Salami and Home-grown Cucumber Supper - Wednesday, 26th August 2015 - Fresh Gluten-free Eating

I first tasted kohlrabi when weekending with a  girlfriend and her parents in Kent ages ago and we ate steamed kohlrabi and.....well I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it.

We had always eaten good plain food at home with many vegetables but never this particular one and I would suggest my mother had never heard of it, let alone eaten it.  However, if we had, it would probably have been because my father was always keen for us to try something new.

Kohlrabi features in two cookery books I've got at home,  in Summer and Winter by Arabella Boxer and Tessa Traeger, ISBN 0 85533 2166. and in another book by Arabella Boxer - The Sunday Times Complete Cook Book -  ISBN 0 297 783211.

I've served up the vegetable in various over the years always liking its crunch and mild sweet flavour, and its odd-looking bulbous shape with green shoots sticking out, like waving arms.  Its a member of the cabbage family and comes in two colours, pale green and a purple variety, which I've never seen but goes well with the growing awareness of the purple veg. with the flavenoid content and appeal.  My family in Australia have eaten purple potatoes, which actually stay that colour even when cooked, unlike the purple dwarf beans I've grown this summer, which are green inside and turn green when cook.... you have to eat them raw, to eat purple beans!!!

I bought this Kohlrabi at Deddington Farmers' Market last weekend and found an Internet recipe for a slaw with carrot and mixed with mayonnaise, cider vinegar and raisins, and this is what we ate for supper last night, with sliced Pork Salami from Lidl and homegrown cucumber from the dear SO's greenhouse...

Kohlrabi from the Styan Family Produce stall at Deddington Farmers' Market. next to the aubergine

Kohlrabi & carrot slaw with Salami and cucumber from the garden

The recipe made enough for a party so I've frozen half for future eating with other meats and salad items.

Dulano Air Dried Air Salami from Lidl....

It was very quick and easy to make thank goodness as I had to get on with chutney making - marrow, plum and ginger - from the tonnage of marrow He bought home last weekend, well, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss!

I'd bought a small one from Deddington so we have plenty of marrow, hohoho...!

the small marrow will be perfect for supper...for stuffed marrow, steamed marrow, baked marrow and so on.  Well it is the season for marrow, hey?

Happy veggie eating...

Daisy xxx

Herb Butters and Ratatouille Summertime Harvest - Thursday, 20th August 2015 - Filling up the freezer !!!

Summer’s here and I’ve been harvesting herbs from the garden; parsley, coriander, basil, sage and fennel and now I have several fat rolls of herbed butter in the freezer all ready for slicing up.

We’ll use the butter for whizzing into hot mashed potato, on toast, to garnish and enrich soups, add as a garnish to pork and lamb chops, on your favourite steak dish and so on….

Then you can use your butter on hot scones or in your scone mixture, to add to your sauté pan with olive oil to cook an omelette or mushrooms or anything else you fancy, come to that!

One of my favourite books has been an inspiration – Eatability – by Jocasta Innes with Bronwen Cunningham – ISBN 0 – 356-14720-7 – which I’ve had for years but, of course, you’ll find recipes enough on the internet very easily.  Like…

Lavender butter, or lavender butter with other herbs, with honey – plus many ingenious uses for them.  I have to admit not having ever made lavender butter but I have popped a sprig of lavender under a cake mixture before making and the cooked flavour has been delicate and rather nice, especially if you then make lavender flavoured butter cream, having previously stored a few sprigs of the plant in your box of icing sugar, or by using lavender butter in the mixture.  I imagine you could also add lavender flavoured honey to the butter and icing sugar, plus a few chopped leaves to add colour and interest.

I decided to make use of a few leaves of sage too but, wary of its very strong flavour, mixed in half a red onion and two cloves of garlic with the herb and one packet of salted butter; I usually had two to three handfuls of herb  plus a few twists of freshly milled black pepper.  Him indoors would insist on white pepper but I can’t stand it so never use it.   The finished butter had a very nice red colour and I’m looking forward to using it…

Here it is in the mixing stage….I machine chop my herb and any additions then mix everything together by hand not by blender or food processor, because this way I don’t end up wasting any!

Putting my rolls of butter into the freezer I came upon the last three shapes of butter from last summer, which was most surprising since I thought all of this had gone earlier in the summer when, low on olive oil, I’d gone to my freezer for the last of last year’s butter for a sauté dish of something or other being cooked for supper.  So all was well for supper and it’s perfectly OK to keep any herbed butter in the freezer for up to a year before using....

So, after clearing up the kitchen I chopped up the ingredients for a ratatouille, warmed my slow cooker, sautéed the aubergine, peppers, onions, tomatoes, herbs, and seasoning for about ten minutes before tipping everything into the slow-cooker and leaving the mixture to cook overnight and well into the afternoon before tasting.  It was OK if needing a little tomato puree and salt and just another hour to finish cooking the runner beans which I’d added as an afterthought, having picked a good handful the day before and needing to use them.

ingredients ready ...and I'd skinned my aubergines ...I won't next time!!!

ten minutes saute time.....

and here's one I cooked and  enjoyed earlier!!!

I shall make more ratatouille and perhaps even lavender butter in the next few days, a pot or two of tomato sauce and who knows what else!  I mean you just have to, don't you, with your garden bursting with harvestable goodies and farmers' markets bringing together a wide variety of vegetables and fruit, herbs, glorious oils, cheeses, fish and meat.

I do hope my freezer has enough space for everything!

Daisy xxx