Catching Up

With the main berry harvest concluded it time to spend a little more time in the gardens. The paths have gone a little wild and need a bit of tiding up. I’ve had to replace a couple of irrigation fittings that succumbed to the hot sun after 20 odd years of service. The beans are powering along & the bush beans are producing daily harvests along with a large array of greens, carrots including purple, red & yellow ones The cardoon is growing well.

. The selected leeks & Seymour carrots are developing a new supply of seeds.

The Tomatoes & cucumber are developing slowly although we have tasted a few ripe ones.
Yesterday I weeded the pumpkin patch, which is looking good although the expected crop butternuts seem to be some other unidentified variety.

Over the previous hot spell I got all the garlic braided & hung around the kitchen.

It was also a good time to make some sorbets & develop some ice-cream recipes. By far the best sorbets are the citrus mainly lemon, Seville orange & tangelo. The best ice-cream was the chestnut mascarpone.
Citrus Sorbet
125ml water
250g sugar
500ml freshly squeezed citrus juice.
Grated zest of 2 citrus
Bring sugar, zest & water to the boil. When cool add to juice & churn & freeze.
Use the hot sun to dry citrus peels for winter firelighters.
Chestnut Mascarpone Ice-Cream
2 egg yolks
50g icing sugar
225g chestnut puree
225g mascarpone
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
Wisk together egg yolks & icing sugar until thick. Beat in chestnut puree, mascarpone & vanilla until well blended. Churn & freeze.

The hot spell has also allowed time to sort out the harvested seeds .