Roots before shoots…
The frondles of autumn have begun to creep in and all too soon we will be immersed in orange tones, a little shocked at how sneakily summer has pottered off without so much as a goodbye. It was the last week in August when I invited Esme to join me at the back door to sniff the morning air. Can you smell the change? I asked her. I love these sensuous tells of time passing. They mark moments in life through a grounded haze that feels somehow transient and forever. We react to these seasonal signs in a visceral way, not because we have been told with words but we have been shown and our bodies respond accordingly. The damp webs crisscrossing the garden path pulling thick against my hair on the school run, the sun setting before Esme’s bedtime and the deep purple rouge of the road side, studded with haws, hips and pendulous elderberries. We are moving on and it will serve us well to stand a moment in this beauty, come rain or shine, to smell and listen.
I’ve been entirely crap with my allotment this year and I can’t just blame the weather, slugs and pigeons. Although someone ate 30 quids worth of globe artichoke plants I put in last month and I’m pretty narked at nature for that one. I’m pinky promising myself that this autumn I will plant some pretty groovy seeds of intention alongside the hardy annuals and that I will tend, net and feed them, clearing bind weed and nurturing the hopeful shoots through winter to fill 2025 with colour, sustenance and love. Until then though, I’m going to share with you a couple of recipes I think you will like, the first of which isn’t really mine to share but was made for me by my lovely chap Paul. I blooming love other people cooking for me. I really don’t mind what it is - past favourites have included a veggie sausage sandwich (onions cooked soft and sloppy hotdog style) and a plate of smily faces served with offensive amounts of salt and ketchup to soak up the booze of a student night out many moons ago. Paul’s simple creation using our homegrown potatoes was enjoyed on the sofa on a rainy evening, watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, a joyful and nonsensical movie from childhood that is just as enjoyable as a ‘grown up’ - be excellent to each other…
The dish took a leisurely hour to make whilst he pottered in the kitchen listening to disco and steaming up the windows with starchy potato mist. It could have served 4 with a side of simple steamed greens but we accidentally ate the whole tray in instalments throughout the evening and got 4am bum pops.
Paul fried off 6 small onions with a goodly slug of oil until soft then added 2 chopped peppers, a whole punnet of mushrooms sliced, a vigorous lot of cayenne (perhaps 1/2 tsp. would have done) and about the same of Italian dried herbs. After a few minutes of frying and browning, he threw in a tin of chopped toms that had added garlic but you can always add your own separately, about 1/3 a tube of tomato puree and salt to taste. Whilst that puttered away, he peeled roughly 500g potatoes, cut them all to the same size and boiled them for about 15 minutes. Once drained, he added them back to the pan with two fingers of butter, salt and peppers and, as someone who doesn’t own a masher, used a small sharp knife to break them down in to more of a potato hash - we don’t mind it lumpy. The tomatoey stew had been on low all this time with occasional stirring and now he turned the heat off and added a large bag of sad looking spinach leaves, half a jar of antipasti that included feta, capers and olives, reserving the oily liquid for cooking later, and finished it off with a splodge of black garlic ketchup from The Isle of Wight Garlic Farm. As an aside, we highly recommend you get your mitts on a bottle or 10 of this stuff and indeed it is worth travelling to the island just for that. Failing having this though you can just use regular ketchup and a goodly pinch of brown sugar. In to a roasting dish roughly 8x8” went the stew then topped with the potato and baked until bubbling and brown in a medium oven.
Anything topped with potato is the ultimate autumn win but this was so tasty, I think it should make it on to your dinner plate one day next week. And next year, try growing your own potatoes too. That will make the whole thing taste even better.
Find out the basics on growing your own pots here…
A long overdue recipe share…
I forget to write recipes down a lot. This is something I’m having to change now that I’m writing a cook book. Back in the summer I prepared these stuffed breads for our Wild Times Solstice Retreat Feast and promised to share the recipe with many eager guests. I can only apologise that it has taken so long but the time has passed in a blink…
"I was taught to make these by a woman called Khadija in her kitchen in Essaouira, Morocco. With no shared language but plenty of smiles and interest, she showed me how to roll and fold, her hands nimble with the stretchy dough rolled paper thin, stuffed with zesty carrot and browned vigorously on both sides in the hot pan. It’s a marvel to watch this dextrous muscle memory repeat without thought or attention, just a calmness that experience and tradition bring, while I tried to keep up, all fingers, thumbs and polite apologies for my bumbling nature.
"My menus are mostly created from necessity, abundance and nostalgia so it made sense to bring these delicious morsels to the table for a special Solstice Supper at Campwell Woods with Jen at The Wild Times. They are a little more fiddly than basic flatbreads but without raising agents and rolling the dough very thin, they don’t take long and cook perfectly over an open fire or your kitchen hob. Always make more than you think you need because those eager greasy fingers always creep back for more."
I’ve tested, developed and written this recipe for my favourite food producer, Hodmedod’s. Whilst you are taking in the recipe, check out all the awesome products this company help to get from British producers to your kitchen cupboards.
Moroccan Msemmen with Spiced Carrot
In Other News:
I wrote a very exciting article for Gardens Illustrated Magazine all about this magical time of year and simple recipes you can conjure up from foraged goodies.
You can see my words and recipe for raspberry, lemon balm & bay vodka online here and you can also buy the magazine in shops all over the place for the next week or so. In the shiny mag I also share recipes for elder, blackberry & apple jam, pink pickled turnip with apple & cardamom my favourite immune boosting witches brew.
A handful of feral raspberry canes inhabit a shady corner of my garden and bring me a fleeting shock of raspberries twice a year. If I can get to them before the bolshie pigeons and rampaging woodlice, I have about the right amount for this recipe with a few extra for my daughter Esme to keep her sweet.
The Almanac 2025 featuring my Cake of the Month is out now!
Another year and another dreamy collection of folklore, recipes, gardening tips, moon cycles and monoliths. Lia Leendertz’s The Almanac has become a welcome guest on many of our book shelves and 2025 is a beauty just like all the rest, the front cover designed by Sarah Abrehart in a silvery mist of turquoise blues and green. It’s got some proper delicious recipes such as Greek honey cake with thyme and apricot, Portuguese All Saint’s Day buns and my favourite to consume, malt loaf with walnut butter. This last one I hold accountable for at least a small portion of my gently expanding belly! Join me and my soft bits, buy the book now!
New Year’s Retreat in Cornwall with The Wild Times
29th December - 1st January - 3 nights/4 days
I’m not a huge fan of new year, always tending to look back with misty-eyed longing and loss rather than forwards to adventure and living. So this year we thought we would do something different for all those who feel the same. For those who are tired of crying at Big Ben’s bongs and waking the next day fuzzy and flat. We will have time to rest and explore this riddle of tree-lined estuaries and inlets on the border of Devon and Cornwall. There will be yoga with Jen, magical sound bath, writing workshops to help with our journaling and manifesting, open fires, plenty of food and feasting with me and a dip in the sea for those that way inclined. I have an inkling that this would suit couples looking for something completely different to experience together, friends who’d prefer to enjoy their fizz in front of a fire in their slippers and those solo travellers looking to see in the new year with new friends.
Have a look see at the venue here. I’ve wanted to work here for a long time so this retreat is going to make me very happy. And hopefully you can join, perhaps start a new trend to treat your nervous system to what it needs to start 2025 fresh.
Jen and her Wild Times Retreats were treated to a dedicated piece in The Times last weekend, written by Lizzie Frainier who joined us at Campwell Woods a few months ago. Check it out here to get a sense of what you are getting yourself in to when you book one of these retreats.
I do so love that we both managed to use the word pendulous in our concurrent posts. Lovely post. I’m travelling back late from London and thinking of post-midnight Marmite toast and so anticipating 4am bum pops too. x