Charles Ashworth
A kitchen garden is not a recipe book. It is a timetable you cannot argue with. The rhubarb is ready whether or not you fancy it, the broad beans arrive all at once and turn starchy if you dawdle, and the pumpkins sit on the path in October waiting to be brought in before the first hard frost. Cook with that rhythm and the cooking becomes simpler, cheaper and far better than anything you could plan in advance.
A Garden That Sets the Menu
The trick is to build meals around two or three things that are at their peak, rather than shopping for a list. A handful of store-cupboard standbys carry you through the year: good olive oil, butter, sea salt, black pepper, lemons, a bag of plain flour, caster sugar and a few herbs on the windowsill or in a pot by the back door. Beyond that, the garden decides.
Three crops mark the British growing year more clearly than any other: rhubarb in spring, broad beans in early summer and pumpkins in autumn. Each one is generous, each one is forgiving of rough treatment, and each one tastes of a particular week of the year.
Spring: Rhubarb, Straight from the Crown
Forced rhubarb, lifted under a bucket or an upturned pot in January and February, is tender, pink and almost sweet enough to eat raw. Rhubarb left to grow outdoors is coarser by late April, with thicker skins and a sharper edge, and it wants sugar. Cut stems low with a twist rather than a tug, never take more than a third of the plant in one season, and never eat the leaves.
Roasted rhubarb. Cut 700g of stems into 4cm lengths, spread in a single layer in a roasting tin, scatter over 100g caster sugar, the zest and juice of an orange and a thumb of grated ginger. Roast at 180°C (160°C fan, Gas 4) for 20–25 minutes until the stems hold their shape but give to a spoon. Eat warm with yoghurt or cold cream.
Rhubarb fool. Fold cooled, drained rhubarb through 300ml of lightly whipped double cream. Serve in small glasses with a shortbread finger.
Rhubarb crumble. Rub 50g cold butter into 100g plain flour, then stir in 50g porridge oats and 50g demerara sugar. Scatter over fruit and bake at 180°C for 35 minutes until the top is properly golden.
- Freeze raw chunks in bags with a spoonful of sugar; they roast straight from frozen.
- Simmer trimmings with sugar and water for a cordial that lasts a fortnight in the fridge.
- Swap orange for vanilla or a splash of elderflower if that is what is open in the garden.
Early Summer: Broad Beans and the First Pods
Pick pods while they are 15–20cm long and the beans inside are still small and bright green. Pinch out the growing tips once the plants flower — they are the best thing on the plant, and taking them off discourages blackfly, which gathers there first. Small beans need only four or five minutes in boiling water; salt the water after they go in, not before, or the skins toughen.
Beans with mint and butter. Pod 500g of beans, boil briefly, drain and toss with a knob of butter and a handful of chopped mint. Double-podding — slipping the bright inner beans out of their pale skins after a two-minute blanch — is worth the fiddling for larger, later pods. It turns a floury bean into a sweet one.
- Crush double-podded beans with garlic, lemon and olive oil and pile onto toasted sourdough.
- Dress cold beans with lemon, olive oil and shaved hard cheese for a lunch that keeps.
- Blanch for two minutes, cool in iced water, dry and freeze for winter stews.
Overwintered varieties such as Aquadulce Claudia give you a crop weeks before spring sowings, which is the closest thing to cheating that a vegetable grower gets.
High Summer: The Glut Months
July and August are not about single dishes but about keeping up. Courgettes want picking every day at 15cm, runner beans every other day while they are young and stringless, and salad leaves before they bolt. Cook them plainly: courgettes sliced and fried hard in olive oil with garlic and a squeeze of lemon, runner beans steamed and tossed with softened shallots and a splash of vinegar. Whatever you cannot eat or give away goes into chutney, which is simply a glut with vinegar and sugar added and an afternoon of simmering.
Autumn: Pumpkins and the Long Store
Leave pumpkins on the vine until the skin has hardened and the stalk has begun to cork, then cut with 5cm of stalk attached, never carrying them by it. Cure them in a sunny, airy spot for ten days to two weeks, then store on slatted shelves in a dark, dry room at about 10–15°C, where they will keep until January. Crown Prince and Uchiki Kuri are the reliable choices for a short season.
Pumpkin soup. Halve and roast one pumpkin, cut side up, at 200°C (180°C fan, Gas 6) for 40–50 minutes. Meanwhile soften two onions and a good handful of sage in butter. Scoop out the flesh, add it to the pan with a litre of stock, simmer for twenty minutes and blitz until smooth.
- Rinse the seeds, dry them, toss with oil and salt and roast at 160°C for ten minutes.
- Roast wedges with chilli and honey as a side for sausages or a roast.
- Turn the last of the flesh into chutney with apples, onions, vinegar and brown sugar.
Cooking by the Calendar, Not the Clock
Keep a notebook. Write down the date you cut the first rhubarb, when the beans came ready and how long the pumpkins lasted. Those notes are worth more than any recipe, because they belong to your soil, your wall and your particular corner of the country. After a few years you stop asking what to cook and start asking what is ready — and the answer is almost always the best meal you could make that day.
