One of the drawbacks of growing your own fruit and vegetables is the almost inevitable glut and the problem of just what to do with a dozen courgettes. It’s so easy to fall into a recipe rut, churning out the same dishes from sheer lack of inspiration. The Creative Kitchen by Stephanie Hafferty offers some novel and interesting alternatives.
From soups and salads to main meals and beauty products, it’s a comprehensive guide to what can be produced with a handful of vegetables.
The recipes
Some of the recipes are familiar, such as Herby Potato Salad. Others use vegetables in unusual ways; I had never thought of roasting radish (Roasted Radish and Kale Salad), nor of eating parsnip raw (North African Parsnip Salad).
Many of the ideas are quick and easy to prepare, including Candy Pink Salad using the striped Chioggia beetroot. A few take far longer: three hours for Homegrown Baked Beans moves it firmly out of the fast food category.
So comprehensive is the scope of The Creative Kitchen, it includes instructions on making your own vinegar – using the tail ends of bottles of wine – ideas for herb and flower-infused spirits, such as Rhubarb and Sweet Cicely Gin, and dried herb and spice mixes for the store cupboard.
The crafts section has everything from homemade toothpowder and a way of making lip gloss from beetroot to hairbrush powder and herbal fizzy toilet bombs. These are particularly topical given the drive to reduce plastic use.
Do they work?
We tested the Warming Winter Roasted Celeriac and Parsnip Soup recipe, which proved easy to follow and straightforward to make. The resulting soup had a great depth of flavour but proved more of a potage than a soup. Simply adding more liquid solved that.
I’m planning to try the Simple Lemon and Salt Scrub for cleaning up the kitchen wooden chopping boards and have made a mental note to use the soak for getting insects from berries on next year’s raspberry harvest.
Who’s it aimed at?
The Creative Kitchen isn’t the usual glossy cookbook but has more of a retro feel with pottery bowls and dishes that have obviously been just cooked rather than ‘staged’ for the camera. What does shine through is the vibrancy of the ingredients, bright plates of colour that would enliven any meal.
And although the award-winning author is almost self-sufficient, growing fruit and veg at her home and allotment in Somerset, she’s realistic about how much her readers are likely to produce.
“This book is for everyone, whether you have a productive allotment, a few pots of herbs on the windowsill or buy most of your food ingredients,” she says.
As such, the quantities of cooked pulses and tomatoes in recipes equate to a 14oz can, and many of the recipes include instructions for using shop-bought ingredients: “Store bought sun-dried tomatoes will be lovely too . . . . The salad is delicious with canned beans too,” she says of Home Preserved Bean and Tomato Salad.
Encouraging people to cook creatively with vegetables appears the main purpose. Getting them to grow their own would be a bonus.
Discount offer
• The Creative Kitchen by Stephanie Hafferty is published by Permanent Publications, priced at £19.95. Readers of this blog can buy it for £16 by putting it in their basket and then adding the discount code CHATTY in the ‘apply discount code’ section on the Permaculture website.
Review copy was supplied free by the publishers in return for a fair review.
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