Welcome to my monthly newsletter: your seat at my kitchen table in a monthly collection of tales, news, recipe inspo, goings on in the patch. I’m so pleased you’re here.

There’s plenty of room at the table so if you’d like full experience, a paid subscription acts like your all-you-can eat pass to my kitchen and garden - cooking along live in my greenhouse kitchen, following the seasons together and joining my mission to get closer to nature through food. Here’s what’s included.

Subscribe now

Hello you lovely lot

Strap in. There’s change coming. I have lots to tell you about my new plot in the wilds of Wales. And some new recipes to stop you getting hungry on the journey. Plus the usual seasonal round-up.

Grab a cuppa, if you can find a mug amongst the packing, and let’s dig in…

(TECHNICAL NOTE: There are a LOT of recipes here and they might not all fit in your email. If so, just hit VIEW ENTIRE MESSAGE at the end of the email, or head to the app or online version.)

All Change

It’s finally happening! We are moving to Wales. Just north of Abergavenny in Monmouthshire. Any tips?

I have outlandish schemes to cultivate a wild and rustic veg garden and to create a cooking space where we can all get together to cook and eat.

Thank you to everyone who came to chat about it in the greenhouse last week. I was so grateful for your enthusiasm about my Grand Plan for the railway carriage and for all the tips on setting up a new garden (polytunnel incoming, thank you Jayne and Anna!)

If you missed our soiree in the greenhouse, fret not. You can catch up here:

Business as usual (ish)

All this excitement comes with a caveat: please forgive me in advance if things get a little haphazard here for a couple of months. I have plans in place to keep the newsletter posting as usual, but I might be less verbose than normal (possibly a blessing - just skip to the recipe, Slack!).

Here’s the plan:

Dig In is back! During June and July (and possibly August) I will be revisiting the Dig In series of last summer where I share quick, easy and flexible recipes that make the most of the season.

Life is going to be especially hectic during the move, so rather than fret about not showing up here enough, I’m leaning into the chaos. Because I figure you’ve probably got a busy summer too, right?

But chaos is no reason to resort to fish fingers. I refuse to believe that eating beautiful, veg-forward food should be a faff. And this summer, I intend to prove that. I’d love you to come along for the ride to discover new ways to eat well and joyfully, without it taking all day. More time in the sunshine for you; more time unpacking boxes for me.

Here’s a taste of what we made last time:

First up this week, pudding:

New Peak Season suppers series - Nowness, on your plate.

Sometimes I am so overjoyed by the abundance of the garden that I just want to sink my teeth into it. There are times when I feel like I want everything NOW. All the season. All the harvests. All at once. In one enormous mouthful.

So, for our free monthly recipes from now on, I will take fruit and veg that is at its tip top, gluttingly abundant peak that month and find a way to put as much of it as I can into one dish – a celebration of Now.

I’ll start each edition with a quick list of what’s at its peak this month and then cram as many of them as I can into one dish.

Let’s see how we go. Ready? Here’s June’s:

What to cook now

In the meantime, a few ideas for June cooking. If your kitchen isn’t in boxes that is…

Know someone who might enjoy this free newsletter? Spread the word:

Share Tales from the Veg Patch by Kathy Slack

Do you want the summer on a plate in seconds?

You do? That’s lucky.

Welcome back to Dig In: Quick, mostly-veggie recipes that are highly flexible and get the abundance of the summer garden on your plate with minimal effort so everyone can just dig in.

It’s got its own logo and everything:

Embracing hectic

During June and July (and possibly some of August depending on the move to Wales) I will be revisiting the Dig In series of last summer where I share quick, easy and flexible recipes that make the most of the season.

Life is going to be especially hectic during the move and so I thought, rather than fret about not showing up here enough or having time to cook nice recipes for you, I would lean into the chaos and make a virtue of it. Because I figure you’ve probably got a busy summer too, right?

But chaos is no reason to resort to fish fingers, now, is it?

And anyway, I refuse to believe that eating beautiful, veg-forward food should be a faff. Life isn’t MasterChef is it? (Mercifully.) Good food doesn’t require a day dicing vegetables and a minor meltdown over roux, does it? It does not.

So, this summer I intend to prove that.

I hope you’ll come along for the ride with me, and we can discover new ways to eat well and joyfully without it taking all day.

All of which leaves more time in the sunshine for you; more time unpacking boxes for me.

So, stay tuned for fruity brioche toasties, upside down courgette tarts, bean-filled broths, stuffed flatbreads and blousy salads.

Here’s a taste of what we made last time:

But, first up this time: pudding.

Apricot & elderflower nests

The point here is the intoxicating fragrance of apricot and elderflower together. The fancy vermicelli-like nests are just a way to add crunch in contrast to the soft cream and yielding flesh of the fruit. If you can’t kadayif or the will to shred filo, any pastry or biscuit base will suffice – puff pastry circles; shop bought pastry case; yes, even, in extremis, shortbread fingers.

Serves 4

• 80g fresh kadayif pastry (or very finely shredded filo)

• 40g melted butter, slightly cooled

• 1 tbsp caster sugar

• 6-8 apricots

Read more

Welcome to Hero Harvest. Are you ready to geek out? This month’s peak season superstar is….. strawberries.

So grab a fork (garden and eating) and join us as we explore how to grow it, classic flavour pairings, endless recipe ideas & new ways to put it centre stage.

As usual, we’ve divided our geekery into two instalments:

Part 1 - eating: a proper love-in glossy magazine feature (which is no less than these veg deserve) of recipes and beautiful images that give each harvest its moment in the spotlight. Got a glut? Need inspiration? This one’s for you.

Part 2 - creating: Pull up a chair for lunch and join us behind the scenes for a video conversation in which we share tips on how we created, cooked and captured the star veg. If you’re into the creative process (of recipe development and photography), we’ve got lots to show you.

Recipes are all created by Kathy Slack with pics by Kirstie Young.

We hope you’re hungry.

Love,

The Hero Harvest basket is groaning

Asparagus, kalettes, purple sprouting broccoli – it’s all a bit green and savoury though, isn’t it? This month, redress in the form of strawberries.

The accidental strawberry patch

The little veg patch we shoot Hero Harvest in does not have space for strawberries. But the offer of free, excess plants from a friend was irresistible and so a corner was found and a dozen plants were packed in to the edge of one raised bed in the shade of a magnolia tree. Sub-optimal conditions, to say the least.

But they have thrived

Miraculously, they begin their second summer robust, rambunctious and weighed down with green strawberries. With such productivity comes special treatment – a bed of straw to prevent the strawberries rotting, and a net to deter raiders (mice, birds, spaniels). We watch and wait for them to ripen. Updates as we get them.

In the meantime, this month’s feast supplies us with new and classic ways to enjoy the coming crop.

Ways with strawberries

Macerating, which involves nothing more than tossing in a spoonful of sugar and setting aside to rest for a couple of hours, draws the juices out of strawberries, creating a syrupy sauce with zero effort.

Roasting might seem certain to result in a mushy pulp, but in fact, does not. Whereas macerating keeps the strawberries firm but juiced, roasting makes them soft, but still whole and juicy – like a tinned strawberry. A wonderful warm, sweet topping for cold ice-cream.

Herbs and spices. Chefs can get a bit smug about adding “unexpected” flavours to strawberries. A whisper of basil in an Eton mess makes a chef feel clever and ‘inventive’. But they, the strawberries not the chefs, do enjoy a herbaceous hum or a sharp, spicy kick so some smugness is allowed.

Basil and black pepper are the most common, but I also like the floral notes (floral notes? See, I warned you this made chefs go all flouncy) of thyme and rosemary. So too, tarragon’s aniseed tang, which seems unlikely to work, but does. Chop any of these into a bowl of halved strawberries and give it 5 minutes.

More traditionally, rose and vanilla are common sweet pairings, but go gently with them: they are heady, soporific flavours that can dominate and make a dessert taste more like soap than strawberries.

Acid. Adding lemon to strawberry jam is a must, not just for the pectin (of which strawberries have none), but as a seasoning to bring out the flavour. Sumac, with its citrus hum, does the same in a strawberry salad. And balsamic vinegar has become a paradoxically classic novel pairing. It must be balsamic though, not any old vinegar, the sweetness is key to bridge the gap between acid and strawberry.

Here are some recipes to get you going:

There’s also strawberry and rose no churn ice cream and a happy 2-for-1 recipe that makes a cocktail and pud:

Further afield, try ’s Strawberry and fennel conserve for rice pudding. Along similar lines, has a strawberry fennel shrub recipe you will love. makes great use of strawberries and sumac. But leave room for classic strawberry shortcakes.

On the menu

This month’s feast begins with a simple cocktail. Showier mixologists would make a tarragon syrup and properly juice their strawberries. But that requires patience and where there’s gin involved, I’ve none of that.

The seed crispbreads, which are useful far beyond this recipe and will keep in a tuppaware for a week, form a crunchy foil for a creamy topping that contrasts with the sweet but sharp strawberries. Timiz pepper, an Ethiopian long pepper, is worth hunting down because it is sweeter and less hot than its peppercorn cousin, making it ideal for strawberries.

For pudding, we bring together strawberries great loves, acid and herbs in the form lemon verbena which manages to be both citric and herbaceous at once. The ghost of sherbet lemons is clear in this easy cake recipe, but experiment as you wish, swapping the verbena for thyme or rosemary as you wish.

We’d love to hear your strawberry ideas

Have you discovered other interesting pairings for strawberries? Cucumber? Avocado (very 80s)? Let us know and we’ll build a library.

Leave a comment

Balsamic and Timiz pepper strawberries with goat’s cheese and black pepper crispbreads

Serves 4 as nibbles

• 200g strawberries

• 1 tbsp caster sugar

• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

• ½ tsp Timiz pepper, crushed (or cracked black peppercorns)

Read more

Nowness, on your plate

Sometimes I am so overjoyed by the abundance of the garden that I just want to sink my teeth into it. Yes, I love writing recipes focusing on one superstar crop, as we do in Hero Harvests. And tinkering with a few of the season’s characters in weekly recipes is a joy too.

But there are times when I feel like I want everything NOW. All the season. All the harvests. All at once. In one enormous mouthful.

An experiment

So that’s my plan for our free monthly recipes from now on. I will take fruit and veg that is at its tip top, gluttingly abundant peak that month and find a way to put as much of it as I can into one dish – a celebration of Now.

I’ll start each edition with a quick list of what’s at its peak this month and then cram as many of them as I can into one dish.

What do you think?

Leave a comment

Ready? Right. Here we go…

Radishes. They’re so NOW, darling…

Regulars will know that I have a limited harvest at the moment because we are moving (got time for a quick video tour of the new place?), but I do still have radishes. I have drafted in some other seasonal veg to fill our trug for June. In peak season, in the UK, now:

Fruit

• Gooseberry

• Rhubarb (maincrop)

• Strawberry

Vegetables

• Asparagus

• Broad bean

• Cabbage (green pointed types)

• Chard

• Globe artichoke

• Lettuce

• Mangetout

• Peas

• Potatoes (new)

• Radishes

• Spinach

• Spinach (perpetual)

• Spring onions

• Watercress

What did I miss?

Roast radish & halloumi traybake

Roasting radishes transforms them from crunchy, peppery golf balls into baby pink sweeties, the caramelised sugars pairing beautifully with salty halloumi. Do be sure to include them. Adapt the other veg as your harvests allow. Mangetout or sugarsnaps, for example, would be fine in place of asparagus. But make sure everything is roughly the same size and will cook in the same time as the radishes (so no halved beetroot).

Serves 2

• 150g radishes

• 4 spring onions

• 200g asparagus

• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 200g broad beans, podded weight

• 200g halloumi

• 250g cooked puy lentils

For the dressing:

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• Handful leafy herbs (mint, basil, oregano etc)

• ½ lemon, juiced

• ½ tsp honey

• 1 tbsp apple juice

• Pre-heat the oven to 210C.

Toss the radishes, halving any whoppers, into a roasting tray with the spring onions and asparagus, which you have chopped into 5cm batons. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pop in the oven for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the dressing. This is simply a matter of whizzing everything up in a herb chopper with a pinch of salt. Check the balance of flavours – you’re looking for sweet and tart in equal measure.

After 10 minutes, add the broad beans to the roasting tray and crumble the halloumi in rough chunks over the top. Return to the oven for a further 10 minutes.

Once the halloumi is golden, remove the tray from the oven, tip the lentils and dressing into the tray and give it a toss. Pile onto plates and serve.

Roast Radish Halloumi Traybake - Kathy Slack

967KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Look. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.

It’s not all sweetpeas and lettuce here. I wouldn’t like you to imagine that I wander out into a well-stocked and weeded garden of a sunny Tuesday evening, G&T in hand, to ponder supper, gathering a trug of perfectly un-nibbled veg to cook leisurely for an al fresco supper. A herb infusion here, a slow-ferment sourdough slice there.

For sure, a childfree freelance life is, for me, a lucky one. I undoubtedly have more time for wafting around indulgently than most. But life’s not Instagram, is it? I do not flounce around the garden with a basket every day.

Some days, heck most days, I just need a quick, not-bad-for-me meal.

And currently, those days are frequent. We’re moving house. Perhaps I mentioned? (House on the market. Want it?) And it is just as stressful and hectic as everyone says.

Because of the move I have, as you know, not much growing in the patch. Which is sad but largely fine since I’ve no time to cook it anyway.

(For the record, this is not me fetishising busyness. I can’t abide that, can you? When you ask how someone is and the response comes, “soooo busy. Frantic, actually.” Really, it’s just code for, “I am needed by other people and therefore important and therefore worthwhile.” This is not that. This is just me flapping.)

Anyway. A state of flapping is when the lure of ready meals and shortcuts is strongest. The siren call of a quick takeaway is loud because who has bandwidth for more at the moment?

But, no! I will resist.

And this week’s recipe is my act of resistance. Quick, easy, healthy. Yes, and green. I know. I promised no more green LINK, but sometimes you just need a big plate of green to give you a boost. Don’t you agree?

Veg Patch LIVE – Friday 5^th June 6pm UK time

I can’t wait to tell you more about this magical little valley we will soon be calling home. (SPOILER: It’s in Wales.)

If you’re free on Friday evening at 6pm uk time, come for a drink in the (current) greenhouse and I’ll tell you all about it. I’ve got big plans for the veg patch and a grand scheme for it to become a cooking and growing space that we can all get together in.

I hope you can join me for the first leg of that adventure.

Join me live in the greenhouse

Pea hummus pasta & pangrattato

Comforting, healthy food in minutes. Just what a frazzled mind needs. The sauce will keep in the fridge for a few days and is great as a dip or in a wrap too. The pangrattato will also keep in a tub, but not in the fridge, for a couple of days and can transform everything from pasta to fried eggs to an underwhelming bowl of soup.

Serves 4

• 1 x 570g jar Bold Bean Co chickpeas

• 300g frozen peas, defrosted

• 50g baby spinach leaves

• 3 tbsp tahini

Read more

The reasons are twofold and neither very professional. Soz. First, I’m in a greenhouse. It’s already 30 degrees. Last time it was this hot my phone shut down mid-LIVE and we all lost connection. Second, the washing machine engineer (don’t let anyone tell you freelance writing life isn’t glamorous) has announced they “will be arriving between 12 and 3pm and has 3 stop(s) before your appointment”. Sods Law decrees that they would arrive just as we’re getting started.

So, a pre-record. But filmed live and full of the usual sticky fingers and deliciousness.

Thank you for bearing with me and sorry for the faff.

And if couldn’t join me when I was actually LIVE last week, do catch up here:

Frying pan pizza salad

A master recipe that you can adapt as your harvests allow. And also really three recipes in one – sauce, salad, fried bread. I must credit Claire Thomson for initially putting the idea in my head thanks to a tomato frying pan pizza recipe in her book, Tomato.

• 250g bunch asparagus, trimmed

• 80g mangetouts

• 80g peas

• 4-5 radishes, sliced

• 4-5 strawberries, halved

Read more

Welcome to Hero Harvest. Are you ready to geek out? This month’s peak season superstar is….. asparagus.

So grab a fork (garden and eating) and join us as we explore how to grow it, classic flavour pairings, endless recipe ideas & new ways to put it centre stage.

As usual, we’ve divided our geekery into two instalments:

Part 1 - eating: a proper love-in glo…

Read more

The green theme continues

After last week’s spinach, pea and thyme cake and the kale and roast onion hummus salad the week before, you’d be forgiven for assuming that I’d finally said all that could reasonably be said about green. Reader, I have not.

There is one green crop we haven’t properly discussed yet.

Perpetual spinach. Not this year, anyway. I grow it every year because it’s such a reliable doer. And every year, I try to find new ways to use it:

Not forgetting the Spring panzanella I created for Delicious (RIP).

Given this back catalogue, I’m as astonished as you are to find that I have never made a perpetual spinach version of the classic Persian borani Esfanaj dish, a version of borani made with spinach, rather than the aubergine alternative.

And since we’re on the subject of green…

Thank you for joining me Live at RHS Chelsea, the epicentre of green, yesterday. If you missed it, catch up here (in two parts because we got cut off):

And don’t forget that on Saturday 23^rd, I’ll be live from the GREEN room at Hay Festival. Hope you can come for a backstage tour. Time tbc depending on where I can find a corner, but probably lunchtime.

Then, I promise, we’ll be done with the green.

Perpetual spinach and wild garlic borani

Inspired by borani Esfanaj, a traditional Persian spinach and yogurt mezze dip, this perpetual spinach version is bigger boned, thicker set and can therefore be used as dip, spread or sauce. Serve it simply with bread or flatbreads for scooping up. Or as a dip with stocky crudites (it’s too thick for lettuce spoons). Or, as a saucy side for buttery, roast chicken. If you don’t have perpetual spinach, chard is such a close cousin as to make a fine substitute.

• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 1 onion, finely chopped

• 2 garlic cloves, crushed

• ½ tsp ras-el-hanout

Read more

Welcome to my monthly newsletter: your seat at my kitchen table in a monthly collection of tales, news, recipe inspo, goings on in the patch. I’m so pleased you’re here.

There’s plenty of room at the table so if you’d like full experience, a paid subscription acts like your all-you-can eat pass to my kitchen and garden - cooking along live in my greenhouse kitchen, following the seasons together and joining my mission to get closer to nature through food. Here’s what’s included.

Subscribe now

Hello you lovely lot

I’ve made a huge mistake. Because we are (hopefully) moving soon (BTW – wanna buy a house?), I decided not to plant much (any) veg this spring. I explained my logic here, but basically I thought it would be harder to leave harvests mid-growth than not have any at all.

How wrong I was. I’m bereft without my radishes. Lonesome with no broad beans. Pining for my pumpkin seedlings.

So, a request: if you have harvests, would you send me pictures?

That way I can grow vicariously through you. It will give me more inspiration for what to cook in my weekly recipe post. It could become a sort of surgery: “Look, I’ve got this glut. What should I cook?”

What do you think? I’d love to know what you’re growing:

Leave a comment

(TECHNICAL NOTE: There are a LOT of recipes here and they might not all fit in your email. If so, just hit VIEW ENTIRE MESSAGE at the end of the email, or head to the app or online version.)

Ways we can get together for a chat this summer

As you know, I do like a chat. Especially about vegetables. Preferably with food too. And I know you do too. So I’d love it if you could join me in the next couple of months:

18^th & 19^th May: RHS Chelsea – where I’ll be cooking a recipe from my book, Rough Patch, on a Big Green Egg barbecue which is part of the Tales from the River Bank balcony garden. If you’re visiting the show, do come and say hello.

And if you can’t, I will be doing a Substack LIVE on Tuesday 19^th May from the show. The RHS are very particular about what video we’re allowed to share online, so I might be hiding behind a hedge and I’m not sure of the time yet. But stay tuned!

23^rd May: Hay Festival – where Claire Thomson and I will be discussing her upcoming memoir, Dear Grace, and cooking dishes from her recent recipe books. (It’s sold out, but there are sometimes returns and it’s a cracking day out so if you’re there on 23^rd drop me a line and we can say hello.)

And again, if you can’t come, I’ll be LIVE from Hay on Saturday 23^rd May (and not just because it rhymes) here on Substack. More of that next week.

4^th June: Peterley Manor Farm supper club – I’m back at this beautiful farmshop to host another feast. Last time was a really special evening - my biggest and most magical supper club yet - and I can’t wait to do it again. This time, the menu is inspired by recipes from Rough Patch and made with produce from Peterley. We’ll serve up big sharing platters outside by the fire and I’ll talk about the food, how it’s made and grown. See you there!

6^th June: A Celebration of Nature Writing at Nicholsons - where garden and cookery writers and fiction authors discuss why the natural world is so important to their work and celebrate the range and wealth of nature writing.

7^th June: Illminster Literary Festival – a chat and a Q&A about Rough Patch.

5^th July: F&M Seasonal Sundays – for my regular seasonal cookery class with lunch at Fortnum & Mason, this time to celebrate high summer. Expect strawberries, peas and lots of tennis references. Here’s a debrief from last time:

17^th -19^th July: The Good Life Society Summer Camp – I adore this festival. I’m absolutely thrilled to be part of the line up.

Let me know if you can come to any of that. And if not, don’t worry, there’s more to come in September…

Things to cook now

Here’s what I’m cooking in May. Basically, as long as it’s green, I'‘m in:

On the asparagus theme, how did you get on with the asparagus deep dive recipes from our latest edition of Hero Harvest?

Happy Birthday Humf

Humf turns three this month. He wanted me to issue an official birthday portrait. But wasn’t prepared to sit still for long enough.

Coming up in the next month

• Substack LIVE chats from RHS Chelsea and Hay Festival

• Hero Harvest #5 which will be….. (drumroll)…. strawberries

• A chard, raisin and pine nut dip you will be eating with a spoon

• A new peak season supper recipe that combines in all the best bits of late spring

If you’d like to join us for all this, a paid subscription gives you a season ticket to every meal. And there’s plenty of room at the table.

Know someone who might enjoy this free newsletter? Spread the word:

Share Tales from the Veg Patch by Kathy Slack

I know what you’re thinking.

She’s finally gone loopy.

I don’t blame you. Spinach? Peas? In a cake?

Stay with me. I promise it works.

I’m not the first to venture here. There’s a precedent set by far more skilled bakers than me. Samuel Smith has several excellent pea dessert recipes in his book The Frozen Peas Cookbook (and I must credit him for the egg/flour/pea ratios in the recipe below). And in last week’s , Helen Goh shared her implausibly handsome spinach cake. So if you won’t take my word for it, take theirs.

But it makes sense.

Just as carrots, courgettes and beetroot are used to add sweetness and moisture to cakes, peas bring similar sweetness. The spinach I’ll admit is a bit more of a stretch, but, as you’ll recall from last time when I showed you all the greens I am picking, I’ve got green galore and they need eating up.

And gluts are the mother of invention. Don’t you think?

Pea, spinach & thyme cake

Whilst fresh peas add to the seasonal romance of this recipe, frozen will bring more sweetness. And avoid hulking great spinach leaves, they’re too fibrous and the stalks get in the way. And of course, you can use regular thyme if that’s all you have. The lemon variety adds a subtle brightness, but it’s not a dealbreaker. This cake keeps, un-iced, for 3-4 days in a sealed container.

• 80g peas, shelled weight (or frozen)

• 120g baby spinach

• 200g full fat plain yogurt

Read more

Welcome to Hero Harvest. Are you ready to geek out? This month’s peak season superstar is….. asparagus.

So grab a fork (garden and eating) and join us as we explore how to grow it, classic flavour pairings, endless recipe ideas & new ways to put it centre stage.

As usual, we’ve divided our geekery into two instalments:

Part 1 - eating: a proper love-in glossy magazine feature (which is no less than these veg deserve) of recipes and beautiful images that give each harvest its moment in the spotlight. Got a glut? Need inspiration? This one’s for you.

Part 2 - creating: Pull up a chair for lunch and join us behind the scenes for a video conversation in which we share tips on how we created, cooked and captured the star veg. If you’re into the creative process (of recipe development and photography), we’ve got lots to show you.

Recipes are all created by Kathy Slack with pics by Kirstie Young.

We hope you’re hungry.

Love,

A diva at home in the spotlight

So far in Hero Harvests, we’ve focused on plants that don’t often get much opportunity to bask in the spotlight - PSB, rhubarb, kalettes. Perhaps rhubarb gets a brief moment of fame, especially the forced type, but it’s not as if the nation is awaiting it’s next outing with all the anticipation of a new Taylor Swift album.

Unlike asparagus. We all know when it’s asparagus season. You can’t miss it. It’s piled high in the supermarkets.

(As I’ve said before though, do be cautious if buying from the supermarket. Asparagus is often displayed proudly at the store entrance under a daffodil-clad banner announcing it to be ‘Seasonal’. Which it is, but not this lot because, when you check the maddeningly plastic packaging, you see it’s come from Peru.)

Worth the price tag

The first bunches can be upwards of £8, coming down to around a fiver by now. Which seems a lot. Until you try your hand at growing it.

Asparagus requires time, effort and space. It’s a proper diva.

It stays in the ground all year. You need, in my view, a minimum of 4m² in which to grow it otherwise your crop will amount to barely a single bunch.

The ground must be free draining. But never dry. So you’re going to have to water. It can’t get thirsty.

It will tolerate absolutely no competition. So weeding is essential. But it’s a thin little whip of a plant so the ground it grows in is often bare, making it a haven for weeds.

But you can’t hoe the weeds because asparagus roots are shallow and run horizontally so hoeing would break them. You must hand weed. Constantly.

And don’t imagine you can harvest it when you like either. Once you plant the dormant crowns it grows from, you have to wait three years for the plant can establish itself before you can pick it.

See. Serious diva energy.

If you manage to grow it, do let us know. We’ll send you a medal.

Leave a comment

Ways with asparagus

Rule one of asparagus cooking:

Never, ever, boil asparagus

Which, incidentally, is the same as the first rule of cooking with purple sprouting broccoli, as you’ll recall from last time. Instead:

Steam: for 2-3 minutes max. In a single layer so it cook evenly until hot but still crunchy. Serve immediately or plunge into cold water to prevent it overcooking. From here, butter as below, use to dip into a boiled egg, or add to salads like the asparagus, Jersey Royals and broad bean salad I made at Fortnum’s last year.

Char: either on a bbq or griddle, or in the oven. Take the charring to new heights by adding salty flavours like in these asparagus bundles wrapped in parma ham and rolled in asparagus.

Raw: only for the freshest, sweetest, least woody of pickings. shave into ribbons using a potato peeler then make my raw asparagus, lemon and pine nut salad from the Borough Market archives.

Still hungry? Try these:

An asparagus feast

Call us gluttons (fair), but we think all three of these dishes would be glorious served together for an Asparagus day celebration. Outside. With rosé. Weather permitting.

On the menu:

The salad has all the best bits of a Caesar - crunchy croutons, creamy dressing, salty anchovies - mixed with all the best bits of a Waldorf - sweet pops of sultanas and apples, tannin-heavy walnuts, crisp peppery celery. All of them in support of the asparagus.

Once you’ve tried grilled asparagus you’ll be addicted. Charred hot and fast it caramelised on the outside, but retains its crunch in the middle. Perfect with salty feta spread over charred toast, but equally good piled into flatbread.

And finally, simple asparagus with butter, toasted until it becomes magically nutty. This dish (and images) has St JOHN energy - purist, unadulterated, confident, quite messy. It’s a real class act. And dribble down your chin delicious.

We’d love to hear which recipes you try.

Or if you have other favourite ways with asparagus, leave us a comment and we’ll make an asparagus recipe catalogue.

An asparalogue, if you will…

Leave a comment

Asparagus Caesar X Waldorf salad

Serves 2

• 250g asparagus, trimmed

• 1 tin anchovies

• 20g parmesan, shaved

Read more

Double-whammy

You’ll know from last time, that we’re in the thick of the Hungry Gap here in my little Cotswold veg patch. Which means ‘traditional’ harvests are lean.

I’ve not helped matters.

Since we will soon be moving, I decided that there was no point sowing any veg because leaving baby veg would be a horror only marginally worse than not having any to harvest at all.

Was this a mistake? What do you think?

I’m already starting to regret it. Because the result is that the usual Hungry Gap scarcity is exacerbated by having none of the quick little pickings I’d usually rely on at this time of year: radishes, peashoots, lettuce. Nadda.

I think it was a mistake.

But I have guests coming

And it’s warm enough to eat outside. Be a shame not to feed them with at least something from the veg patch, wouldn’t it? Plus, I do feel a small, friendly, expectation that I will pull out all the vegetable stops when people come for lunch and feed guests something other than marmite sandwiches and Wagon Wheels (though this is still my dream lunch).

Humf & I go hunting

And are surprised to find…. plenty. Look!

Using the Hungry Gap harvest

Some of it ended up going towards last week’s Hungry Gap Feast cookalong.

(How, by the way, did you get on with those recipes? made a cracking version of the tart and I’m planning to try ’s gorgeous suggestion for fig leaf rice pudding.)

An accidentally vegan lunch

The rest, I take back to the kitchen to make this warm and hearty green salad. I realise, only as I’m washing up after a successful al fresco lunch with friends, that the recipe is, accidentally, vegan.

But I think all the best vegan recipes are incidentally so. No substitutes. No “meat-like reference in inverted commas”. No clunky portmanteau or dubious spellings of dairy products. Just excellent plants, celebrated.

Do you agree?

Hungry Gap salad with roast allium hummus

Mix and match this recipe as you see fit. The green is a handy salad on its own with some leftover roast chicken mixed in. And the hummus makes a useful dip, wrap base or mash alternative. And yes, you will feel like a wellness influencer as you massage the kale, but trust me, it’s worth it.

• 2 onions, halved

• 5 fat garlic cloves, unpeeled

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 120g purple sprouting broccoli

• 100g baby kale leaves

• 1 apple, sliced

• 1 tbsp mixed seeds

• 1 tbsp chopped mint

• 1 tbsp chopped parsley

• 1 x 570g jar Bold Bean chickpeas

For the dressing:

• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 1 tbsp apple juice

• ½ lemon, juice and zest

Preheat the oven to 200C.

In a large baking tray, toss the onions and garlic cloves (unpeeled) in one tablespoon of oil and a pinch of salt. Spread them out in the tray and roast for 30 minutes.

Now turn the onions over and nudge the alliums up into one half of the tray to make room for the purple sprouting broccoli, which you can lay in the tray now and drizzle with the remaining oil and a pinch more salt. Return to the oven for 10 minutes more.

Meanwhile, whisk the dressing ingredients together in a large bowl with a big pinch of salt. Add the kale and massage the dressing into the leaves for a minute or two. You will feel odd, but it will make the leaves much softer and more delicious to eat. Add the apple, seeds and herbs and gently toss everything together.

Once the roasted veg is ready, remove from the oven and pop the garlic cloves out of their skins and into a food processor. Add the chickpeas (with their juices) and whizz to a rough puree. Tip in the onions and give it the mixture one brief pulse to incorporate (but not puree) the onions, then spoon the hummus onto a serving platter.

Fold the charred purple sprouting broccoli into the kale salad then pile it all on top of the hummus. Serve with chunky bread for scooping.

Hungry Gap Salad With Roast Allium Hummus - Kathy Slack

954KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Thank you for joining me in the sunny greenhouse for a Hungry Gap feast. I sat at the table in the garden afterwards and scoffed the lot!

Thanks too for your Hungry Gap questions and ideas for what to grow and cook (sorrel G&T - yes please!). Once we’d filled our basket with a surprisingly abundant bounty, here’s what we made:

• Asparagus and herb puff tart

• Caramelised radishes with weed* salsa verde

• PSB charred with sorrel sauce

*Not that sort. Naughty.

Which will you cook first? I’d love to know how you get on or if you switch up the recipes with other veg.

Leave a comment

You’ll find all the recipes below. As ever with these live class recipes, consider them more a set of guidelines and principles than precise measurements.

Until next month. (By the way, what would you like me to cover next time?Send me your requests.)

Asparagus and herb puff tart

• ½ sheet ready rolled all butter puff pastry

• 4 tbsp full fat cream cheese

Read more

Welcome to Hero Harvest. Each month we take one vegetable, or fruit, in peak season and geek out - exploring how to grow it, classic flavour pairings, endless recipe ideas & new ways to put it centre stage.

Part 1 - eating: The first instalment will feel like a proper glossy magazine feature (which is no less than these veg deserve) of recipes and beauti…

Read more

I’m doing the culinary equivalent of the splits.

And it’s just as uncomfortable. One toe in winter as I harvest the last of the kale, PSB and endless chard. The other in spring: picking a tentative radish, pea shoots, verdant and bouncy herbs in abundance. It can make cooking quite confusing, this time of transition.

Subscribe now

I turn to stew.

A light one. Not rib-sticking winter thick, but still hearty enough to protect me from an overnight frost (which is more than can be said for the magnolia).

I flavour the stew’s white bean base with handfuls of chopped herbs. The mainstream parsley and mint feature, yes, but also the homegrown treats like oregano, tarragon and some early fronds of fennel. There are oddities too: hyssop adding savoury fragrance, chervil for aniseed tang. Picking these from the garden, I form a bouquet of green froth, more pleasing to me than any posy of flowers. And full of potential.

A stew that ticks all the boxes.

Into this herby base, now adorned with artichokes and peas for bulk and interest, I nestle some herby chicken meatballs. The result is a one-pot, batch-cook, make-ahead, fibre-filled workhorse of a supper. Short of cooking it in an air-fryer, there’s no hyphenated buzz word box this dish can’t tick. It makes a homely weeknight meal, but can be dressed up and served, I think, confidently to guests with nothing more than a good crusty loaf on the side for mopping up.

But before we eat…

LIVE CLASS: Hungry Gap feasting

• WHEN: Wednesday 29th April at 1pm UK time

• WHERE: Live from my greenhouse here on Substack

• WHAT: how to make a seasonal feast during the Hungry Gap. We’ll cover:

  • What the hungry gap is and what’s in season

  • I’ll show you how to cook a defiantly abundant Hungry Gap lunch of

    Rough asparagus tart, PSB and sorrel sauce, caramelised roast radishes with weed salsa verde

This live is for paid subscribers. If you’d like to, you can upgrade for 77p/wk:

It works like Instagram Live (ie: you can see me, I can’t see you, and there’s a live text chat for you to ask questions.) You join via the Substack app or desktop. Just click here at 1pm on Wednesday (or click now to add it to your calendar. Fancy.):

Join the live class

REPLAYS: You can rewatch previous classes and chats anytime, including this one which I’ll post afterwards for anyone who missed it. Here’s an example of what we get up to:

Herby, artichoke bean stew with chicken meatballs

This stew lives and dies on the quality of the beans – jarred not tinned - and the freshness of the chicken stock – homemade, ideally. Feel free to swap the greens for whatever you have – spinach, chard etc. Just be sure to go heavy on the herbs which are, after all, the hero of this dish. For a simple supper you can, of course, make this without the meatballs.

Serves 6

• 570g jar of white beans (I like Bold Bean Co)

• 550g chicken stock

• 1 x 240g tin artichokes in water, drained

• 100g kale, shredded

Read more

Welcome to my monthly newsletter - a round-up of news, recipes and life in the veg patch - which is free to all subscribers. If you’ve made it here without subscribing, that’s easily rectified:

Subscribe now

Before we tuck in, a thank you: none of this newsletter would be feasible without the support of paid subscribers. You are magnificent and I am enormously grateful for your support.

If you’d like to support my work in this direct way, you can do so for just 76p/week; for which you’ll receive a weekly recipe (like this) every Wednesday, and, on Fridays, either a LIVE cookery class (like these) or a menu to celebrate a Hero Harvest (like this). Plus, access to the archive of 200 recipes (here). Full rundown of subscriber benefits here.

Subscribe now

Whichever subscription you pick, I’m just grateful you’re here. Otherwise it’d just be me and the slugs. So thank you.

Hello you lovely lot

I saw a swallow yesterday. Or perhaps it was a house martin. Or a swift? It was moving very fast. I couldn’t tell. Anyway, it was something in that vein. Which means… SPRING. But also… HUNGRY GAP. The time of year when the winter crops are over - my last squash is about to turn mouldy on the shelf and the kale is starting to flower - but the spring harvests are yet to arrive (especially in my case since I’m not gardening at the moment. More on why below.)

But fear not. We won’t starve. I’ve collated lots of Hungry Gap-friendly recipes below, including the latest Hero Harvest feature from me and which is a celebration of purple sprouting broccoli (blue cheese and bean PSB gratin, anyone?). And I’ve news of a few upcoming events where I’ll be cooking for you (free for a lunch of roast Jersey Royals and caviar - really - on 10th May?), so you won’t go hungry.

As ever, shout with any questions or ponderings, especially for the next live cookery class on Wed 29th April at 1pm - I’ll be vegetable’s answer to a cheap disco DJ and answer your requests.

(TECHNICAL NOTE: There are a LOT of recipes here and they might not all fit in your email. If so, just hit VIEW ENTIRE MESSAGE at the end of the email, or head to the app or online version.)

Recipes for the Hungry Gap

We’re in the thick of it now. But there’s always something to eat. Here are some of my most seasonal recipes to get your through:

Come for a chat. I’ll cook.

I’ve a few events coming up. Here’s the schedule:

Sunday 10th May 11:30am-2pm - Fortnum & Mason Seasonal Sundays

I hope you enjoyed the recipes I shared from the most recent Seasonal Sunday’s class at Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly, London:

The next Seasonal Sunday class will feature, amongst other things:

• A potato deep dive (varieties, ways to cook, which goes best with caviar - yes, really)

• Pork tenderloin with rhubarb sauce

• Elderflower and rhubarb 2 ways (one’s a sorbet cocktail)

• Ways to love watercress

The session runs 11:30-2. If you’ve not been before, here’s how it goes. We welcome you (with a cocktail) to the event space on the 3rd floor, where I have collected a ‘capsule wardrobe’ of the season - veg, meat, cheese and jars from the F&M pantry - and designed a 4 course lunch menu. I demonstrate how to cook the dishes, chat about the ingredients, then serve it up for lunch, so you go home well fed and a better cook too. They’re always a jolly and convivial chat and I’d love it if you could come:

Book for 10th May at F&M

(For regulars: this is back to the usual format!)

Saturday 17th May - St Ives Food Festival

I’m back on the beach cooking veg over fire at the festival where the sun always shines. It’s a joy every year. And free! Hope you can come.

18th and 19th May - RHS Chelsea

If you’re coming to Chelsea Flower Show this year, stay tuned. I’ll be there. Cooking. More on that soon…

Jobs for April

I’m moving. (Did I mention? Would you like to buy our house?)

Which means I’m not doing much gardening. I’m really missing it, and have certainly noticed an increase in my grumpiness. But I don’t think I could cope with abandoning a season’s worth of baby vegetables, so not growing them at all is lesser of two evils. Just.

The only thing I’ve planted in basil. More for philosophical reasons than culinary. Here’s why:

But here on Substack, there are plenty of wonderful growers and many of them have some terrific seasonal advice and jobs. These particularly caught my eye:

Wise advice about composting from :

Auntie Bulgaria's Kitchen

Not fast, not furious

Once upon a time, two young gardeners set out to follow the ‘fast’ or ‘hot’ composting method – you know, where you turn your compost regularly to aerate it and speed up decomposition. If you’ve ever seen Monty Don flinging his compost around on Gardeners’ World, chucking it from one bay to another like he’s auditioning for a strange Poldark reboot, tha…

Read more

2 months ago · 41 likes · 38 comments · Claire Ruston

Garden guru has a comprehensive list of what to do (And, usefully, not to do) in the garden in April:

The Gardening Mind by Jo Thompson

How to garden in April

It’s nearly April… and time to think ahead…

Read more

3 months ago · 104 likes · 63 comments · Jo Thompson

Helpful fleecing and seed sowing tips from No Dig expert :

Charles Dowding

Time Your Sowings for Top Results

New plantings…

Read more

2 months ago · 27 likes · 1 comment · Charles Dowding

And finally, not a job as such, but a thing to cook that will fill you with the joys of springtime even when you can’t find it in your own garden. Using vegetables grown at The Mothership (’s Daylesford and my old boss):

A Seasonal Note by Carole Bamford

A recipe for Spring | Asparagus & white bean salad with wild garlic pesto

‘Nothing is so beautiful as Spring’, wrote the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins - and after the past few glorious weekends in the Cotswolds, I can’t help but agree…

Read more

3 months ago · 27 likes · 5 comments · Carole Bamford

Know someone who might enjoy this free newsletter? Spread the word:

Share Tales from the Veg Patch by Kathy Slack