A Return to the River Cottage…

So we are back in school, which means we are back in The River Cottage Family Cookbook… yes the book we started last year and that we were going to whip through in a month we are now venturing forth into the second year!!! The last post we posted was the the Fruit Chapter and before we head into the Chapter on Vegetables there are a few fruits that look like vegetables or vegetables that look like fruit or however you look at it… we are warming up!!! A couple of recipes straight from the garden were the order of the day.

"The River Cottage Family Cookbook" (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Fizz Carr)

Tomatoes and Avocados are found in the vegetable section of the store and most cookbooks, but actually they contain seeds in the case of tomatoes and a huge pip for the avocado, which means they are indeed fruit. So before we begin our journey into the vegetable chapter we did a quick explore of these two foods. Now our neighbor has an avocado tree and we grew a heap of tomatoes this summer… so we spread our wings and tested the recipes that we could grow from our garden. Our Keyhole Garden has been going for a year or two and is seriously a source of all summer salads and vegetables…

Let’s begin with a quick Tomato salad, with fresh tomatoes from the garden…

Quick tomato salad: All you need is a couple of tomatoes, a red onion, fresh basil, balsamic vinegar, salt and ground pepper.

And every time we make this salad, I really battle to get it to the table because it gets eaten out of the bowl before it ever gets to be served.

Guacamole: Another vegetable that isn’t!!! The River cottage added tomatoes, lime juice, a chili, as well as fresh coriander and salt and pepper…

Oh Yum…crying out for corn chips.

A Simple Green Salad: Trust me we ate this all summer… Dash out to the garden just before dinner grabbed some leaves from a couple of lettuces. Rocket and baby spinach leaves are great to add in, so are coriander leaves. Trim them and spin them… Pat them dry and pop them in a bowl.

The trick is in the dressing… Lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Four Herb Pasta: Another recipe straight from the garden… Rosemary, Parsley, Basil, Thyme…strip the stalks and chop the herbs. Heat a nob of butter to barely sizzling and pop your herbs into it to hot butter and stir around gently. As soon as the pasta of your choice is cooked and drained, toss the herb butter through it and top with some freshly grated parmesan and salt and pepper.

And the lesson I have learnt from eating from the garden is… While kids will try something they have cooked themselves they will simply devour something they have planted, watered, harvested and then prepared… I tell you this because I have one child that will not let lettuce pass his lips and even less a tomato… but when it comes from the garden that whole idea goes out the door!!! He has a point, things taste so much better when you have nurtured them and they are freshly harvested!!! These recipes are now part of my weekly recipes… so quick, so easy and so tasty!!!