Rocket Pesto

Last year, in an attempt to battle our inability to get to the allotment, we transformed our meagre front garden into a little veg patch.  We grew a hand full of onions, had three courgette plants and trailed runner beans up the fence.  The majority of the space was reserved for lettuces.  We eat lot of salad so growing our own is a really good way to save cash.

Along with a couple of red lettuces* we grew a small amount of rocket.  We didn't buy a single bag of rocket last summer, it kept growing just as fast as we could eat it.  It grew so well that it was only in the depths of winter that it finally died down.  As the snow fell we forgot that it had ever been there.  A year on and we are now getting to the end of salad season again, only this year we didn't sew any.  The rocket returned from it's wintry grave and, where we had had six varieties of salad leaf, it has taken over.

With so much rocket we are widening our horizons away from salads and will be having a pop at rocket soup over the weekend.  Before that though, I have made the slightest dent in the rocket patch to make some fresh pesto.

Rocket, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and cheese are combined to make a delicious peppery sauce that we had over pasta.  Parmesan is the traditional cheese for pesto but, for tonight's version, I added a good hand full of the Ribblesdale unpasteurised goats cheese that I bought for Thursday's Yorkshire Cheese night.  There will be more rocket inspired dishes soon, all ideas are welcome.

*it is a scientifically unproven fact that slugs and aphids do not attack red lettuce.  We have never had so much of a nibble on any or our reds, whereas standard green varieties get munched all the time.

Pasta with Rocket and Wild Garlic Pesto

After a week of late nights it was nice to be home with the sun still in the sky.  It was also nice to be able to relax with the family.  I know I like to relax and wind down by cooking, but I also love quality time with Z and R.  This means that I have relegated the planned meal to tomorrow night in favour of a fast and tasty supper.

We made our own pesto yesterday with pine nuts, rocket from the front garden, wild garlic from Wilton Park, parmesan and plenty of olive oil.  This was simply added to cooked pasta and served with a rocket and parmesan salad.  And relax.

Pork and Nettle Sausages with Wild Rocket Lentils

Last year, on Father's Day, Z and R clubbed together and bought me the River Cottage Baby and Toddler Cookbook.  This was meant to not only inspire us but to also guide us through the potential trauma of weaning.  It started off well, we thumbed through the pages, realised that what we were doing wasn't that bad and moved on.  The book, as with most of our cookbooks, hit the shelves after a couple of weeks.

To give it its due, it is a well written book.  It's full of useful tips and moves through the seasons.  It also moves through the stages of a child's development into cooking for the family.  I suppose it was only a matter of time, as with all of the cookery books that we own, that we would open its pages again and this is precisely what Z did earlier this week.

What she found was a recipe for lentils with watercress and onions.  We currently have an over abundance of wild rocket so a substitution was instantly on the cards.  The lentils were cooked in pork stock, with a crushed clove of garlic mixed through it, until the stock had been absorbed into the lentils.  They were then finished off with fried onions and fresh chopped rocket from the garden.

R had a portion of the lentils for his tea* and we had the rest of them for our evening meal.  We had bought some pork and nettle sausages from Swillington Farm at the last Kirkstall Deli market out of curiosity.  We simply grilled these and served them alongside the lentils.  I don't know what I was expecting from sausages with nettles in.  Perhaps a little more bite but you could tell they were made from fantastic pork.  The one thing we will be taking from tonight's meal is, we will be cooking lentils much more often.

*well it is a baby and toddler cookbook recipe.

Rocket Gnocchi in Tomato Sauce

Today it rained.  It seamed to rain from the moment we woke up until long after I finished writing this post.  I know that we need the rain and that parts of the country are still technically in drought but surely enough is enough.  I normally don't mind the rain.  I quite like walking in the rain.  I used to love playing rugby in the rain.  But having to entertain the boy all day because we couldn't go outside has been tough.

I decided that there was no time like the present to start his food journey, so this afternoon we made gnocchi.  To R, this was nothing more than playdough and flour play, but his joy at putting boiled potatoes into the ricer and watching the wriggly worms of potato come out of the bottom was lovely.

 

To the pile of potato we added flour, an egg and a big handful of finely chopped rocket.  The dough was then rolled into a big snake and cut into what I thought would be perfect gnocchi size dumplings.  They were then put in the fridge until we needed them, apart from the one that R decided was his and needed hitting with a big spoon.

When needed the gnocchi were plunged into boiling water and cooked until they floated.  If I'm honest they were a little on the large size but they still tasted better than any you can buy in the shop.  I served them with a tomato sauce and more rocket.  I doubt R will remember the first time that he made gnocchi from scratch, but I hope that he'll eventually remember that he likes them so much that they become a family favourite.

Linguine with Rocket Pesto

A few years ago Z and I took on half a plot at our local allotments.  This was way back before it was the trendy thing to do.  We had been down to the allotment because it was their yearly show and we are, essentially, nosey.  Having looked around we decided to take the plunge and with a few friends signed up for our plot.

I could see the pit-falls and future arguments of communal allotmenteering a mile off.  Firstly what do we grow?  Even the most dedicated fan of food* has pet hates and most of them are veg related.  I have a friend who loves gooseberries, you will not find me voluntarily within a mile of these spiky, sour little faux-fruits.  Likewise I know plenty of people who can't stand broad beans, but my plot isn't complete without them. 

With all of this in mind Z and I suggested to "the collective" that we would look after one half of one of the two plots that we had taken on and they could do whatever they wanted with the rest.  Then disaster struck, we got pregnant.  I know that the arrival of our son (18 months ago) has been scary, exciting, joyous and given us a new outlook on life but his arrival almost cost us the plot.

Luckily, a couple of Z's colleagues have stepped up to the mark and are now ploughing our furrow for us.  We still pop down on occasion and this summer R should be at a stage where he can muck about in the weeds whilst we get on with some serious vegetable husbandry.

This is all very well and good, but what about tonight's menu?  As a lottie substitute, last summer we dug over our front garden.  It's small but it kept us in salad last summer and we even managed a glut of runner beans.  For some reason the wild rocket that we planted just kept growing, right into November, so we never got around to digging it up.  Imagine our surprise when, in all of the great spring weather we've just had**, it sprang back into action.  We now have our first glut of  2012 and we haven't even sown anything yet.

In order to manage the sudden mass of rocket I have made a rocket pesto to dress linguine for tonight's meal.  Because rocket is so much more peppery than basil I have added almonds to the sauce instead of pine nuts.  If I had any I would have used pecorino instead of parmesan cheese but beggars can't be choosers.

*not foodie.
**until this week, seriously! I was eating ice creams on a beach in Edinburgh this time last week and now it's snowing. What's going on?