Monthly Archives: July 2012

a summer salad

I don’t know about you, but I’m loving this glorious sunshine and – finally – the chance to enjoy some suitably summery salads, and the chance to make use of my veg patch crops, like this magnificent and intensely lemony red-veined sorrel.

I grow a number of varieties of salad greens, as well as some ‘usual’ summer vegetables (such as courgettes), as well as innumerable herbs. A few days ago, I put a few of these all on a plate, together with a hard-boiled egg, and some delicious lemon and garlic-marinated anchovies (kindly given to me by Lola Espana to try). While the anchovies are obviously not Kentish, I must admit that they combined beautifully with the rest of the salad, particularly the sorrel. You could easily use, say, mackerel, sardines, whitebait, or even sprats instead, if you want to use locally-caught fish.

So what went in the salad? Mizuna, wild rocket, courgette flowers, borage flowers, red-veined sorrel, egg, anchovies, croutons. And finished with a a generous drizzle of local rapeseed oil.

plums… and 3 days of sunshine

I know I haven’t blogged for a while, and for that, I apologise. I won’t bore you with the reasons, but will instead concentrate on trying to get some posts up on here again.

While I’ve been stuck at home for the past few weeks, the weather has been largely rather gloomy and wet. But now it seems that summer has finally arrived, and with it, our first plum crop.

We planted a tiny Opal plum tree last Spring, and it’s been exciting to see it flower this year, then set fruit, and finally – actually fruit! And what a difference a mere three days of sunshine makes…

Before:

And after: