A foodie friday reviewing Sarah Raven's recipes on a Saturday

September and October mean apples, and I've been picking them at the allotment for weeks now. I have three apple trees, two are cookers and the other is a variety with the warmest, rosiest glow.

There's been quite a number of them, and I've been using them every which way I can.

So on my day off, it was time to hunt through my recipe books to make something different. I've already stewed pounds of apples ready for crumbles this winter and made a few apple cakes. But I wanted to make something different.


And I struck gold with this book from Sarah Raven, which was published back in 2007 I think....and I'm pretty sure I bought my copy about five years ago.

Now this what I call a generous cook book. And by that I mean, this is one of those labour of love books where the author has given we readers  her life time's experience of growing and cooking fruit and vegetables. This is not one of those  a hundred recipes a book if you're lucky type of thing ..one on a double page spread type of book. Oh no. It's not a fancy pants type of cookery book either, with long, infinitely long winded and show off recipes either.

It literally is full to brim of tasty, workaday recipes to make the most of the produce from your garden and allotment. And as I've begun to grow more vegetables and now have fruit trees, I'm discovering different sections of the book.


The first new recipe to try was celeriac and apple soup...another way to use up  apples. This is a pale, silky textured and comforting soup. The sweetness of the celeriac married with the sharp freshness of the apples worked really well for me. Unfortunately my other half wasn't so keen.

But he did like the next new recipe very much... ...a Kentish apple cake. Now, I've made a Dorset Apple cake before but never one from Kent, and it's quite different in method and texture.

Here's the recipe....

Ingredients
225g unsalted butter plus a little extra for the tin
350g self raising flour
1 tspn ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
110g of sultanas or raisins soaked for an hour in water
175g castor sugar
75g toasted hazelnuts , chopped
450g cooking apples such as Bramleys
grated zest of 1 lemon
3 large eggs
plenty of Demerara sugar for dusting

How to make

1.Preheat  oven at 180 degs /gas mark 4 and grease and line the bottom of a 20cm loose bottomed cake tin

2.Pulse the sifted flour, cinnamon, salt and butter in a food processor until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Put the mixture in a bowl and stir in the sultanas, sugar and toasted nuts

3.Peel, core and chop the apples and add to the other ingredients with the lemon zest. Lightly beat the eggs and put them in.

4.Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake in the oven for one to one and a quarter hours or until firm to the touch. You may need to cover the cake with foil to prevent it from becoming too brown on top.

5.While it's still hot, sift over plenty of Demerara sugar, and let it cool in the tin or a wire rack.

As Sarah Raven says, it's a good cake for tea or you can serve it warm as a pudding with lots of thick cream. I've now tried both ways of serving...and both are equally as good!

The more I use this book , the greater is my admiration for the sheer breadth of recipes..and there are some lovely photographs by Jonathan Buckley.

Incidentally, you can still obtain personally signed copies of this book - Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook published by Bloomsbury  from Sarah's own website.

A day of cooking from the Riverford Farm Cookbook

I usually have Fridays off. Phew...I love the anticipation of a day when I perhaps meet up with my writer friends for a lunch where we all bring a dish, have a feast, and talk about books and our writing. If not, I'm probably at the allotment or in the kitchen cooking , or at this time of year, making jam.

Now, this is an old favourite cook book of mine, published back in 2008 by 4th Estate...which I found out about when I met the team from Riverford at a local food fair shortly afterwards..

That's what the cover used to look like - it has now been "customised" by my terrier Eric...who decided to rip the front cover off and chew some of the pages.





But as the saying goes, you should never judge a book by its cover, and this old battered copy is a trusted and tried favourite. Written by Guy Watson, an organic farmer who's been growing vegetables for years and years, and Jane Baxter , who seems to have worked everywhere, including the River Café, this is an immensely practical book with pages and pages of quick and easy, but above all  tasty and seasonal recipes to make the most of your vegetables.

I've made so many of these recipes time and time again...especially the delicious sweetcorn fritters on page 370 and the braised red cabbage on page 83 which is made every autumn and winter. But the whole point of these foodie Friday posts is to try new recipes from my ever growing collection of cookery books.

And so, I delved into the previously untried pages of beetroot recipes. You see, I've always hated beetroot. I can remember the yucky taste of beetroot in vinegar as a child, and I vowed with hand on heart, that when I was a grown up, and I could choose what I wanted to eat, I would never, ever eat beetroot again.

And it's a vow I've stuck to for years, until my friend Debbie made a gorgeous Ottoleghi beetroot and walnut salad. I was intrigued, this was really nice! So this year, for the first time, I grew beetroot, only three rows though...just in case, that recipe was a one off and I found out I still didn't really like it.





And as soon as they were big enough, I opened the Riverford Farm cookbook to try some new ways of cooking them.

And here is the recipe that I have tried first....and I fear this may become an addiction.

Beetroot Gratin

Ingredients

1kg of beetroot, peeled
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
100ml double cream
2 sprigs of summer savoury, chopped or rosemary or thyme (I prefer thyme)
sea salt and black pepper

How to make

1.Thinly slice the beetroot..it should be 2-3mm thick

2.Mix the garlic and cream in a small pan and bring to the boil.Remove from the heat and leave to infuse for 10 minutes. Mix well and season with salt and pepper.

3.Put the sliced beetroot in a bowl and add some seasoning. Add the cream mixture and herbs and mix thoroughly so the beetroot is coated with cream. ( I must confess I added some extra)

4. Arrange in a 30cm gratin dish, ciover with foil and bake in a  preheated oven at 160 degs/gas mark 3 for 40 minutes.

5.Remove the foil and bake for a further 10 minutes or until the beetroot is tender.

And that's it. So easy and full of garlicky goodness which marries so well with the sweet softness beetroot. You will love it! Now I know you may think that's a rather sweeping statement. OK, I suppose it is, but so many beetroot haters I know simply adore this recipe.My son for one, and his girlfriend Ellie .She had joined us for supper last Sunday night for a roast. She was starving, but when she saw the deep pink creamy dish, she said an unequivical No!

"Try a teaspoonful "we all urged. She eventually did, with the greatest reluctance I might add, and before I knew it, she was piling her plate high. And she ate every mouthful.

I'm now making my way through the other beetroot recipes in this book. Chocolate beetroot brownies anyone?

But the Riverford Farm Cook Book isn't just a collection of tasty recipes. We learn how the vegetables are grown, there's tips on storage and preparation from years of experience from an organic grower, and the connection between growing organically and we are what we eat.

Meanwhile, I 've already decided that I'm definitely growing far more beetroot next year at the allotment!