What I did yesterday

Yesterday, at Ham House, all the cool kids gathered for fun and drink and food so that we could show off the garden produce. The chef for the evening, Susie, basically did everything but I’m going to ride on her coattails and claim some of the amazingness that comes from being associated with it.

Unfortunately, I was busy faffing around with vegetables and presenting the dishes so I didn’t get photos of everything. I can talk you through it though.

It started with bubbly and the canapes – mini bruschetta topped with onion marmalade and goat’s cheese and also spinach blinis topped with beetroot chutney and sour cream.

Then the guests were taken on a garden tour in the beautiful fading light.

When they came back and were seated, we started with the kale and spinach soup.

The bits and peices on the top were fried onions, roast root veg and pitta bread croutons. It was accompanied by homemade rosemary foccaccia bread.

Next up was the gnocchi…

(I don’t have a photo of it before it went to the table, sorry!)

…accompanied by pretty garden leaf salad.

The gnocchi was a big hit with the guests.

Next up, the mains were a venison stew with redcurrants and red wine and some garden veg. I don’t have a photo but you must trust me that it was so so tasty! The gravy was amazing. I tried to stop dipping the foccaccia bread into it and eating it but I couldn’t!

Also up were green beans in tarragon butter, roasted root vegetables and apples, a pumpkin and marrow gratin, a beetroot, courgette and mozzarella salad and – the only one I photographed – a caramelized elephant garlic, pumpkin and goat’s cheese tart.

Loads of people raved about this and wanted some to take home with them.

Next, we gave them a few minutes to rest their stomachs before starting on dessert which was apple dumplings (these took me hours and hours to make!) baked in a caramel sauce. We served it with a fig and cinnamon swirl semifreddo, which was very well received.

After the overwhelming food onslaught, we were all made to come out of the kitchen and be applauded (like on Masterchef), the cafe manager did a little thank you, then a guest also said thank you from the guests and I stood patiently, wondering which of them was going to make the announcement that I was finally going to get my Michelin star….

I can only conclude that they didn’t want to do it in front of everyone else. Maybe it’s a more private affair, getting given your Michelin star. I’m sure they’ll be in touch.

Anyway, we retired back into the kitchen and sent out the little after-dinner nibbles, fresh raspberries and quince jellies.

Everything that was made yesterday (apart from the obvious stuff like the meat and cheese), came from the kitchen garden and had been picked that day. There really is nothing like working with garden fresh produce.

I think it’s safe to say that a good evening was had by all and it was a lovely thing to be part of. Keep your eyes peeled for the next Supper Club. And if you’re in/near London, totally come to the next one.

Musings on a fabulous day

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of the challenges from my save-the-world-in-a-day type books. Don’t worry, it’s not because I don’t want to be a world-saver anymore. It’s simply because some of the things I’ve been asked to do have spun off in different directions and I’ve gone with the flow and followed that new path, rather than leave things after a day and start a new thing.

I’ve started volunteering at a stately home on the river, which has been the best thing to come from following the book so far.

As Going Green by Simon Gear encourages people to avoid the air miles involved with supermarket shopping and grow your own etc, I decided to give this a proper go. So I got some thyme and some chives and decided I would start small and try turning my back garden into a mini farm. The continued cold weather hasn’t been a huge help, neither has the difficulty with finding a space in the garden where I can make a proper vegetable patch that will actually get the light. The best place for the patch only has sunlight for a short time and the other side, which gets more sunlight has tons of lavender plants, which we grow specifically to help the bees, as their numbers are declining.

I gave it some thought and remembered that when I was last at the farm, while I made sorrel soup, someone else was making nettle soup and Adrian, the chef, was talking about picking them and using them instead of the spinach as the cold weather meant the spinach hadn’t grown yet.

And so, thought I, I shall go and find some nettles! That is what they would do on the farm so that is what I shall do here. I will become… Madame Forager!

Off I went, with a bag and good intentions, to the river to pick nettles. I wrapped a tissue over my fingers to prevent stings, I looked for plants about two hands height and picked just the very top leaves, the younger, greener looking ones. And I felt like a real explorer, surviving off the plants in the jungle until I managed to find other human beings (in actual fact, I was surrounded by them, they were passing every minute and looking at me strangely, as I foraged away).

At some point, a man asked me what I was doing and we had a long chat about food and how to eat nettles like spinach. He was walking to Ham House so we walked and talked and I ended up going in and looking around the kitchen garden there and admiring their lovely huge asparagus.

With my nettles in a bag and a large amount of garden envy, I then headed to Twickenham to meet a friend for early dinner/late lunch. We didn’t really ever work out which is was so we plunged straight into panini time at an Italian deli before walking into Richmond to go to a little tea room near Richmond Green for a spot of cake and tea.

While walking to the bus stop afterwards, I saw a neighbour on her way home so went over for a cup of tea and some nettle-related chat. Equipped with her advice about whether to wash my nettles and whether to keep the stalks on, I ventured back home to my kitchen to cook my first ever meal with foraged ingredients!

I chopped a potato or two, a leek, an onion and a few leftover oyster mushrooms and fried them in a little bit of butter. Then I added stock and cooked til the potatoes were soft. Then I destalked my nettles and put them in, cooking for another three minutes until the nettles had wilted a little. Then I took my whizzer to it and whizzed like my life depended on it.

And it was lovely. It stayed a really vivid bottle green and had a light fresh taste that only needed a hint of seasoning to bring it alive.

The light isn’t too good on this picture so you can tell about the colour.

And that, my friends, was my first foraging experience. All in all, a success, I’d say. Anyone got any foraging experience and can advise me what to pick next? At the moment, I’m sticking to nettles because I don’t know sorrel well enough to identify it and I’m scared of the whole deadly mushrooms scene.

So I guess now you can just call me MADAME FORAGER! … if you want.