Get Growing this Easter

I realised recently that I have been growing plants for 30 years now. Having said that, some of you may now imagine me to be a woman in her "mature" years but in fact I started seriously growing plants at the age of 12. I can't really remember what started it - maybe a friend giving me a "baby" from her spider plant - but with the aid of a good book on house plants, my bedroom very quickly started to resemble a jungle. It was a rewarding hobby, perhaps a substitute for not being allowed a pet, and something I was able to get on with without adult assistance and within the realms of my pocket money.

These days I don't deliberately grow houseplants. Not that you would be able to tell if you came to my house as every available windowsill has plants on it and I recently went out to buy vertical shelving units to make use of the big window space offered by my patio doors. All the plants, however, are edible and are either destined for the garden when the weather warms up or the result of me looking at a kitchen ingredient and wondering: what would happen if I planted that? So currently I have a turmeric plant, a lemongrass plant, root ginger, a sweet potato and a variety of citrus plant that grew from a pip my daughter stuck in a pot about eight years ago.

When growing my spider plants, propagating my begonias and sowing new seedlings I never imagined that it would led to a life-long love of growing and to me growing vast quantities of fruit and vegetables. But once you have success at growing plants it is hard to not continue with it. Even back then when edibles were not my thing, I used to enjoy making mini dessert islands by placing a carrot top on a saucer and watching the top regrow. My friend and I successfully grew avocado plants from stones given to us by her grandma and I even managed to regrow a pineapple top into a healthy houseplant, although it never did bare the mini fruit shown in my handbook.

My own children have grown up with their parents growing the household fruit and vegetables so in some ways they take it for granted and think it normal. They don't really realise that their classmates at school probably couldn't identify vegetable plants from just their leaves and whilst girls are getting hysterical about a wasp my two will calmly know it is only a hoverfly. There is, however, a wonder to teaching children how to grow plants and it is easy to get started. Try the carrot top - that really is simplicity on a plate. Potatoes that have already sprouted are good to throw into a bag of compost too. A clove of garlic will regrow happily into a whole new bulb. More challenging are the likes of pineapple tops, root ginger, monkey nuts, citrus pips and avocado but they are all possible and there is nothing to lose by giving them a go.

Kids do get some opportunities to grow a few things at school and most will experience seeing the germination of a runner bean pressed against the inside of a jam jar with a wad of damp cotton wool. They will also, undoubtedly, grow cress and experience the taste of egg and cress sandwiches. Cress is particularly easy because it is only grown to the seedling stage and then harvested so it only takes a few days and doesn't require potting on.

So with growing cress in mind, here is a lovely activity to do during the Easter holidays that will give your kids a taste of growing. Personally I think growing is fun in itself but the creation of an egg character adds to the enjoyment.

Making a Cress Egg Head

You will need

An empty and clean egg shell (plus spares!)

A toilet roll

Cotton wool

Cress seeds

Felt tipped pens

Googly eyes

Foam/paper hands and feet

Double-sided sticky tape or sticky dots or glue

1) Cut the toilet roll to make a ring shape about 3 cm tall and colour it in to make a body.

2) Stick on the foam or paper hands and feet with double-sided tape, dots or glue.

3) Gently stick the googly eyes carefully onto the eggshell (or draw them on) and draw on the rest of the face. Place the egg head onto its body (note: if your egg slips through the ring place a piece of scrunched up tissue paper in the ring for the egg to rest on).

4) Moisten the cotton wool and place it inside the egg shell then sprinkle on cress seeds.

5) Place on the windowsill and water every day until the cress is ready to eat then give your egg character a hair cut and enjoy your cress in a sandwich or salad.

Teeny tiny cheesecakes

So when is is acceptable to eat four cheesecakes for dessert?

When they are the size of an ice-cube.

There I was absently scrolling through my Instagram feed this morning when I came across the idea for mini cheesecakes made in ice-cube trays. It was one of those moment when I just knew I had to give them ago and, luckily, I happened to have all the required ingredients to hand so by dinner time we were tucking in to the daintiest little desserts you could imagine. Your life is not complete unless you try these!

Mini Cheesecakes (makes 1 tray's worth)

Ice-cube trays vary in size considerably so the size and quantity of your cheesecakes will be dependent on your tray. I would recommend the biggest you have so they are less fiddly to make.

Jam - flavour of your choosing
100g mascarpone cheese
140g cream cheese
70g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
40g melted butter
50g granola
50g digestive biscuits

Cover the bottom of each ice-cube hole with a little jam then place in the freezer whilst you prepare the filling. Mix together the mascarpone, cream cheese, sugar and vanilla. Spoon this mixture into a sandwich bag and cut off the corner so you can use it like an piping bag. Pipe the filling into each cube hole until it is three quarters full. Smooth out with a teaspoon or a wet finger. Place in the freezer for half an hour. In the meantime, blitz the biscuits and granola in a food processor until crumbed then mix with the melted butter. Remove the ice cube tray from the freezer and spread the biscuit mixture over it and lightly press into each hole. Return to the freezer for at least an hour. Remove from the freezer and carefully pop each cheesecake out of the tray. I found that a plastic knife gently pushed down the edge of each cube helped to extract them. Stand each cake on its biscuit base and put in the fridge to thaw out until required.

For the Love of Lemon Curd

As a maker of jam and marmalade, it seems only logical that I should also make fruit curds. And I do, occasionally. But only occasionally. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, curds usually involve citrus fruit and these are not something I grow. Secondly, because they contain butter and eggs, they ideally need to be kept refrigerated and consumed within a few weeks so they are not something I make on a whim but instead only when I have an order for them or an event coming up. And finally, they are a bit of a pain to make, requiring slow but frequent stirring and then a kind of magically guesswork to figure out if they have set. Usually I start to lose patience with the whole thing and will it to be set before it properly is, resulting in an unsatisfactorily thin curd.

When made well, home made lemon curd is a beautiful thing. Custard yellow and as thick as trifle, it has a zingy citrus bite that makes my mouth water just thinking about it. It goes beautifully into a lemon layer cake and can be stirred into yoghurt, rice pudding or porridge to transform them into tasty desserts (or breakfasts, or elevenses even).

Recently I discovered that it is possible to make lemon curd in a pressure cooker. It is such a simple thing, requiring the measuring and mixing of ingredients, set up of the pressure cooker and then just the release from the cooker and a good stir at the end. How wonderful it is to able to let it get on with it and not be tied to the endless stirring and wondering if it is done yet. Since discovering this I have had a constant supply of lemon curd in the fridge and it hasn't once failed to turn out beautifully.

So, having turned curd making into an easy and successful process, I now feel confident to offer it as one of my preserves for sale. But with locally sourced ingredients being essential to my products, it didn't seem right to offer a basic lemon curd. I have in the past dabbled with curds that use locally grown ingredients and there is no doubt that Roasted Rhubarb Curd, or Strawberry & Orange Curd, or even Rhubarb & Lemon Curd are tasty but there are, nonetheless, not Lemon Curd - plain and simple. As such, I turned to the other ingredients and decided that if I could source local eggs then we were back in business.

It was my friend Emma who suggested I pop along to Two Mile Ash Farm for my eggs. They don't have a farm shop as such, instead they have a vending machine in their driveway stocked with apple juice, honey and eggs. An odd, yet workable solution. Having put my coins into the slot I was able to open a sliding door to a compartment to take out a box of eggs. With local eggs sourced, it was time to put Lemon Curd onto my list if preserves for sale.

Having announced this, Buskers were keen to order a large jar with their usual jam order and the delivery of the curd was met with an excited shout of, "Get some toast on, the lemon curd has arrived!" I presume there was enough in the jar that there was some left for the customers once the staff had had their fill. Keep an eye out for it there and also at my events in the future. Now that it is back on the menu, you'll not want to miss out and if you don't want to just spoon it out of the jar and into your mouth, here's my lemon layer cake recipe.

Lemon Layer Cake

For the cake:
225g (8 oz) margarine
225g (8 oz) caster sugar
4 medium eggs
1 lemon
225g (8 oz) self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Lemon curd

For the icing:
1 lemon
125g (5 oz) icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas mark 4 and grease and line 2 circular sandwich cake tins. In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar then stir in the eggs one at a time. Add the juice and zest from the lemon then stir in the flour and baking powder. Spoon the batter fairly between the two cake tins and level out. Bake for 20 minutes then turn out the cakes onto a rack to cool. Once cool you can decide whether to just have lemon curd between the two cakes or if you feel brave enough to attempt to cut the cakes in half to make 4 cake layers. Assemble the cake by putting a layer of lemon curd between each cake layer. To finish, make up the icing by mixing the icing sugar with the zest and juice of another lemon then pour the icing over the cake.

In support of British Sugar

The whole point of Jam Moo Kow is to make jam and chutney from locally grown ingredients. Generally this involves me and my family growing the main ingredients - i.e. the fruit or the vegetables. Indeed, it is the availability of ingredients that determines what is made. Obviously, it is also necessary for me to barter or buy other ingredients. I like to source the beer, cider, cider vinegar, brandy and whisky used in my products from Concrete Cow Brewery and Virtual Orchard. Carol supplies the honey used in my Honey & Lemon Marmalade, and I use local eggs in my curds. But on top of that I need to buy in things such as spices, citrus fruit and, of course, sugar.

As you might imagine, I get through a heck of a lot of sugar so it is important to me to source that as locally as possible. To be honest, this has never been an issue as Silver Spoon make this easy. They grow sugar beet in East Anglia (really not many food miles way) and turn that into granulated sugar that is conveniently sold in all the major supermarkets... Well, actually that is not true. I have always turned my nose up at the huge 20kg bags of granulated sugar that Costco sell as these are Tate & Lyle. Despite Silver Spoon being supported by Waitrose and their products available to buy in store, it is only possible to buy Tate & Lyle sugar when ordering from Ocado. And now, it seems Tesco has turned its back on the brand.

It was the middle of January when I first noticed Tate & Lyle sugar taking the space that Silver Spoon sugar had always occupied in my local Tesco store. I hoped it was merely a supply issue but this week news broke that Tesco have ditched Silver Spoon as a supplier in preference for Tate and Lyle. Their reason for this - to provide their customers with the cheapest products.

So let's take a look at Silver Spoon for a moment. In fact, have a look at their 4 minute explanatory video. Here they describe how sugar beet is grown by East Anglian farmers and processed in a factory in Bury St Edmonds into granulated sugar. The waste from the sugar beet is turned into animal feed and the waste energy is used to grow tomatoes.

For comparison: Tate & Lyle has a long history, going back to 1878 when Tate started processing sugar in London. The company grew and expanded to become Tate & Lyle during the Victorian era. However, in 1981 European restriction on sugar cane led to the closure of one of the London refineries and now forces the company to only run their remaining plant 5 days a week, which unfortunately means it is less energy efficient because of the stop/start. Processing for Tate and Lyle also takes place in other European countries such as Portugal, Germany and Italy. In October 2010 the whole company was taken over and is now owned by American Sugar Holdings. Tate & Lyle sugar uses sugar cane as its crop and this can only be grown in tropical countries. Most of the sugar cane comes from developing countries such as Belize and they do work within Fair Trade rules. Once harvested, the cane is processed locally into raw sugar and then transported by sea to the refineries in London and Europe for further processing and bagging.

As is so often the case, on the face of it, the imported product should work out more expensive but it is in fact cheaper. Tate & Lyle sugar has always been cheaper but now, in the face of a weak pound (which you think would make it more expensive!) and prices across the store going up, Tesco have taken the decision on behalf of its customers to go with the cheaper product to keep prices down.

With so many products available and only a certain amount of store space, I understand that all supermarkets have to make decisions about which products and brands to stock but it does aggravate me that they have decided that price is the most important consideration for shoppers and to take away their choice to support a British industry and limit food mileage.  With wonky veg and overly cheap milk, supermarkets are not looking at all supportive of British farming right now.

Anyway, at least now Tesco have made their sugar choice public and I can vote with my feet. Yesterday I popped along to my local Asda store to stock up on Silver Spoon sugar and I can only hope that they continue to support this British brand. Whatever the supermarkets might think about being the need to be cheapest, sometimes there are things more important to consumers than a few saved pence.

MK50 Anniversary Exhibition

Being someone who loves Milton Keynes, I was eager to get down to the MK50 Anniversary Exhibition in Middleton Hall this week to see what I could learn. It is easy to think that you know a place when you live in it but there is so much more to find out. There is history that out-dates even the oldest of residents and plans that never became reality. So even if you think you know everything there is to know about Milton Keynes, think again.

My 12 year old daughter and I carefully went from exhibit to exhibit, making sure we didn’t miss anything. She particularly liked the 3D models in display cases that showed various parts of Milton Keynes. Their toy-like quality and the creation of a 3D space you can view for all angles is probably what appealed to her. After scratching our heads trying to work out which way round the model of The Kingston Centre was, we realised that these models were made during the planning process and not all of them worked out how they were expected. This to me is fascinating and leads on to my favourite part of the exhibition which is the “What Might Have Been” display that talks about things that were planned but never built.  I can’t help thinking that tourists would be flooding to Bletchley to enjoy the Cowcommon Canyon. I would have liked further text to explain why some of these amazing ideas never become reality.

We also enjoyed the maps and boards that went back to the days before Milton Keynes was even conceived and then through the gradual building process. On one aerial photograph we could pick out the field in which our house is now built and we tried to imagine what it was like back then. Throughout the exhibition there was a real mix of the familiar with “oh I had forgotten that,” and “I never knew that.”

As someone who was interested in the first place, this exhibition was a great opportunity to slowly digest and ponder the various forms of information on a variety of different aspects of Milton Keynes life. My daughter was also suitably entertained by it but I can see that not every child would be quite so patient. The organisers have made an effort to make the exhibition accessible for all and to have a variety of different ways of conveying the information to appeal to different ages and types. If reading information boards is not your thing then the models in cases are interesting, as are large objects such as the driverless car or the Triceratops . Alternatively, you can sit and watch an old TV advert or similar at one of the TV screens. There are also a few hands on play areas for younger kids that include building things out of blocks that look like giant Lego or playing a large board game. Give yourself 10 minutes to half an hour to get round it depending on your level of interest and whether you are being nagged but do make the effort to go – after all there’s not going to be another 50^th birthday.

The exhibition is in Middleton Hall in the Centre:MK, is free and can be accessed during normal opening hours between now and 23^rd January.

Chocolate Orange Cheesecake

It's about this time of year that I start planning the menu for Christmas. We have Christmas Day at home and it's my job to create a tasty Christmas dinner for 6, one being a vegan and another a vegetarian. Then on Boxing Day we have dinner with my parents - my mum cooking the main meal but me providing the dessert.

Last weekend I tried out a recipe for a nut roast as the possible vegetarian/vegan option on the big day. Glad I did as it didn't go down well and it would have been a shame if that had happened on Christmas Day. This week I have started trialing ideas for the Boxing Day dessert. There are definitely less complaints about this type of practicing. My chocolate orange cheesecake went down particularly well and is a possible contender so I thought I would share it.

Chocolate Orange Cheesecake (makes 12 slim portions)

For the base
150g plain digestive biscuits
1 tablespoon good quality cocoa powder
75g butter, melted

For the cake
200g dark chocolate
Zest and juice of 1 orange
30g butter
250g cream cheese
90ml whipping cream
25g icing sugar

For the drizzle
Juice of 1 orange
1 tablespoon icing sugar
1 heaped teaspoon cornflour

Plus 13 Terry's Chocolate Orange Minis pieces

Grease a 20 cm circular tin or dish. Blitz the biscuits in a food processor until reduced to crumbs. Stir in the cocoa and melted butter then press the mixture firmly into the bottom of the tin. Put in the fridge to chill. Next, melt the dark chocolate and butter in a small bowl over a pan of hot water. Stir in the orange zest and juice then set aside to cool a little. In a large bowl, mix together the cream cheese, whipping cream and icing sugar until completely smooth. Add the chocolate mixture and stir thoroughly until well mixed. Dollop this mixture on top of the biscuit base and even out to fill the dish. Place in the fridge to chill. Put the orange juice, icing sugar and cornflour into a small saucepan and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Heat gently, stirring all the time until it begins to bubble. It should now thicken and turn translucent. Remove from the heat. Whilst still warm, drizzle the orange mixture over the top of the cheesecake in whatever pattern you like. Return to the fridge to chill for a few hours to set. When ready to serve, mark out the 12 portions and place a Chocolate Orange Mini on each portion.

Vegetarian alternative to Pulled Pork

In the continuing adventures of feeding my emerging vegetarian vegetable dishes that she wants to eat, I decided to buy some taco shells. This was a half thought out plan, knowing that she enjoyed a taco meal a few months back but not really knowing what vegetarian alternative she might like to fill her taco with these days. Not that vegetarian tacos haven't been invented, of course! The problems are 1) we don't particularly like spicy Mexican food, and 2) she doesn't like any form of beans. So definitely not time for a chilli bean filling.

Realising I had a problem and no obvious solution, I turned to my vegetarian friends on Facebook for suggestions. Roasted vegetables and cheese both sounded like good ideas. Then Aida from The Good Times Cafe sent me a link to a recipe that was both Mexican spicy and contained beans. She did suggest I could leave out the beans so I went and had a look and was inspired. Carrots, sweet potato and potatoes are things my daughter will eat and I could see a dish emerging in my head.  The last time we had tacos we enjoyed them with pulled pork and salad and this recipe looked like it could be made into a vegetarian pulled pork substitute. What's more, my friend Turan from Coldsmoking Cookery School had given me a pack of "Pulled Pork Seasoning" a few weeks ago so I merely had to sprinkle this on for authentic flavours.

There isn't a precise recipe for this as I was making it up as I went along and didn't weigh anything but it went something like this: a small carrot grated, a small potato grated, a chunk of sweet potato grated, one spring onion, chopped into fine lengths. Fry the grated vegetables in a little oil for 15 or so minutes until it is golden, adding the spring onion about 5 minutes before the end so not to overcook it. Season with salt and pepper and a good sprinkling of Pulled Pork Seasoning (or it's component spices). Serve as is or mix in some hoi sin sauce too for a sticky texture.

I have found over the years that fussy eaters eat more when the food is presented buffet style with lots of different dishes on the table they can help themselves too. There is something about choosing to put something onto your plate that makes you much more likely to eat it than having a complete plate of food put in front of you. As such, this meal consisted of bowls of salad vegetables, grilled halloumi cheese, a dish of roasted vegetables, a mushroom/onion combo, pulled pork made from actual pork (leftovers courtesy of my mate Mr Fitz) and veggie pulled pork. I dished the potato wedges straight onto the plate to stop them going soggy and to prevent arguments about who had most.

Eventually my daughter stopped eating, declaring herself full, having eaten 3 tacos loaded with her veggie pulled pork, halloumi and salad as well as some of her wedges. Chalking up another small victory, I was happy enough to eat up the few leftovers for my lunch the next day. It was an odd combination of wedges, pulled pork and the veggie pulled pork, which made a tasty accompaniment in my view and altogether a very tasty lunch, and side by side the two types of "pulled pork" looked fairly convincing.