My Dad Beets All the Rest

Firstly, sorry for being away for so long.  I realised I needed to catch up on my blog when even my Dad mentioned that I hadn't updated it for a while!  Work has been busy and my weekends have been taken up with a short photography course (the results may not be obvious for a while as I need to practice what I've learnt!).

This weekend has been lovely.  I took Friday off to make the Bank Holiday weekend a day longer and spent it with my sisters, Sarah and Claire, and my gorgeous nephew Ben in Tunbridge Wells. 

Today I started with a run, and finished with cooking from Nigel Slater's Tender.  In between, I managed to pick some delicious Victoria plums from a local fruit farm, buy some lovely produce from my favourite organic farm and also visit my parents where I had my pick of their home-grown produce.  They have been eagerly awaiting the first of the beetroot, and I was lucky enough to get the cream of the crop.  This beauty weighed in at 350g and I had to scour my recipe books to find a recipe to do it justice.

Nigel Slater's Tender Volume 1 is a beautiful book.  Think of a home-grown vegetable (in the UK) and there is a whole chapeter dedicated to it with notes on growing, harvesting, cooking and eating.  Here I found a lovely recipe for Chickpea Patties with Beetroot Tzatsiki.  The patties were made by blitzing chickpeas with ground cumin, coriander, paprika, garlic and an egg with some flat leaf parsley and fresh mint (also from Mum and Dad's garden) in the food processor, then shaping and frying in a little olive oil.  The tzatsiki from finely grating the beetroot and mixing with natural yoghurt and fresh mint.   Both served with a wedge of lemon.  Delicious.

My parents maintain that there is no favouritism in our family.  The order goes as follows:

Sarah - first born, so pretty special

Claire - third (and youngest) daughter, and mother of my parents' first grandchild, so also pretty special

Dominic - youngest child, only son, and soon to be father of my parents' second grandchild, so also pretty special

Me, I'm the second born... middle daughter... I regularly visit with my cakes and cookies...  BUT I was given the first beetroot, so I guess that makes me pretty special too.

My Dad x

Rhubarb and Blueberry Crumble

I finished off yesterday's soup tonight and the flavours were even more intense, especially the sweetness of the chestnuts.  (Mental note to get more chestnuts for the store cupboard...)  As I didn't need to cook, I had time to make a dessert instead and just had to decide what to do with the lonesome stick of rhubarb that was lurking in the fridge. 

I recently made a delicious rhubarb and blueberry compote from Nigel Slater's website and thought I would try this fruit combination again in a crumble.  The crumble topping I've been using recently is from Tessa Kiros's Apples for Jam as it's so quick and easy.  I'm not sure I'll ever make a crumble as good as my Mum's but this was pretty good for a Monday night!

Rhubarb and Blueberry Crumble for 2

100g rhubarb sliced
75g blueberries
A sprinkling of caster sugar
35g caster sugar
100g plain flour
25g soft brown sugar
75g butter, softened (strange but true)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

•  Heat oven to 190 C or gas mark5.
• Place the fruit in a small oven proof dish and sprinkle over the caster sugar.
• Mix together the caster sugar, flour and brown sugar in a bowl.
• Add the cubed butter and vanilla extract and rub with your fingertips until the mixture looks like "damp, clustery sand" (I love Tessa's descriptions).
• Sprinkle topping over the fruit and bake in the pre-heated oven for 35-40 minutes until golden brown on top and the fruit is starting to bubble around the edges.

Allow to cool a little, if you can, and serve with your choice of custard, ice cream or cream. Mmmm...

Nigel Slater's Rhubarb & Blueberry Compote