Where growing, making & good living come together

Using up the glut: Marrow cake recipe

Posted by on Monday 19 July 2010 in cooking, growing, recipes | 25 comments

In my previous post about saving marrow/courgette seeds, I mentioned that the marrow I had was just going from ripe to overripe. I had no particular plans to eat the marrow – we like courgettes a lot but thought, since the variety was billed as a courgette, it would be tasteless as a marrow. I was happy just using it as a seed nursery – but when I’d stripped out the seeds, it seemed a waste to throw it in the compost. If the chickens liked courgettes/marrows, I’d have given it to them but they’re strangely fussy birds so I was left with pounds and pounds of edible flesh.

I test fried a slice and judged it to be alright – not as flavourful as its younger siblings but certainly not bad. Tough skin though – edible but tough, so that had to go. I used half of it to make a cheesy-bacony comfort food bake thing (a variation on this recipe from the Indy but with mixed cheese – parmesan and jarlsberg – because that’s all we had in and also goats cheese makes me gip) – I had some on its own last night and we’ll have the rest tonight with pork chops in a tomatoey sauce. The other half, I used to make a marrow/courgette cake.




Marrow cake/courgette cake recipe

Ingredients
1 large egg (I used 2 medium ones since our girls aren’t laying truly large yet)
200g of caster sugar
100g of melted butter
1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
300g of courgette/marrow, coarse grated

300g of self-raising flour
75g of finely chopped nuts
1tsp of cinnamon
1tsp of baking powder

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Saving seeds from courgettes/marrows

Posted by on Monday 19 July 2010 in growing | 1 comment

As I mentioned in passing in my last post, we’re in the middle of a courgette-glut. Unfortunately the glut started in the second busiest week of my year (the summer showcase at drama – meaning I work about 60hrs instead of the usual 35hrs) so the courgettes didn’t get picked on time – and they stayed on the vine growing into marrows. I’d intended to let some of the fruits grow to marrow size anyway to collect seeds for next year so it wasn’t the end of the world.

I harvested one of the marrows yesterday – it weighed in at 1.8kg (just under 4lbs). I managed to slice a good number of the seeds in half while cutting it open (doh!) but still got 30 or 40 good size seeds from it. I’ve not saved the seeds from marrows before so I’m not sure whether or not it’ll be a success – the ones I’ve kept look fully formed and are the roughly the same size as the ones I bought this year (there were a lot of smaller ones which I discarded), but only time will tell if they’ll germinate.

When saving seeds, you’re supposed to leave the fruit on the plant for as long as possible to allow the seed to fully develop. Over ripe but not rotten is the usual guideline. This marrow was probably just edging toward over-ripe from ripe – still edible but the skin was tough (it’s over-ripe if you can’t push your thumbnail easily into the skin).

Anyway, I’ll see how these seeds dry and will try growing them next year – it feels like there is little to lose. I’ll let another couple of fruits stay on the plant longer to see what the difference is.

(Surprisingly/frustratingly, the chickens don’t seem to like courgette/marrow – a shame because there is a lot of it to go around!)

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John’s Grandma’s marrow flower fritters recipe

Posted by on Wednesday 7 July 2010 in cooking, growing, recipes | 0 comments

I remember eating some of John’s Grandma’s marrow flower fritters at the very start of our relationship and so they always remind me of that exciting trying-new-things-with-a-new-person stage. I’d been thinking about making some with the courgette flowers we’ve had popping up over the last few weeks – when John’s mum arrived with a bag full of them last week.

While I encouraged our niece Mia to play ukelele and take photos of strange things, John and his mum whipped up a batch of fritters for lunch. Here’s the recipe – but unfortunately it’s a bit vague as it’s not been written down in their family for decades (if ever!) <- suggestions for revisions gratefully received!


Marrow Flower Fritters Recipe

Ingredients (to make roughly 6 palm-size fritters)
Self Raising Flour about 2oz/50g per egg
The aforementioned egg or eggs
About 6 marrow flowers per egg
Some courgette/zucchini (optional but makes it more of a meal)
Pinch of salt
A little black pepper
A little water
Oil for frying

Method
Tear up the marrow flowers into pieces – size is up to you – anything from confetti size to about half the original petal size. If your plants are already fruiting, you can add a thinly sliced courgette (zucchini) to the mix too.

Mix the flour, egg, salt and water together to achieve the consistency of American pancake/drop scone batter – slightly thicker than usual British pancake batter.

Mix the flowers (and courgette, if you’re using that) into the batter.

Heat up some oil in a frying pan for shallow frying. (John & his mum used less oil when they made them and they stuck & burnt a bit.)

Drop a dollop of the batter-with-flowers into the hot oil and fry until golden brown. Flip over to cook the other side and serve immediately. John & his mum ground some more salt onto the top of the cooked fritters but that made them too salty for me – I’d have much preferred more pepper on top instead.

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