Patience Gray

As we edge towards midsummer there is a general lightness, in all senses. Light mornings and light evenings. Lighter food. Light, frothy flowers in the back garden. A lightness of spirit (longer, warmer days translate to having more energy, for me anyway). It’s my absolute favourite time of the year, with days filled with discovery and adventure.

The border in our back garden is coming into fullness. This is only its second season – and it’s still rife with gaps and errors – but I love watching for daily micro changes as the roses bloom, delphinium hover on the edge of flowering and foxgloves provide food for hungry bees. The allotment, as usual, is a mixture of disaster and fecundity: the climbing beans have been all but destroyed by the birds, and the cut flower annuals are as tiny now as when they were planted a month ago. The perennials, on the other hand, are thriving, with Sweet William the latest arrival to the June cutting party.

Roses on the edge of bloom

All the flower annuals are now planted out, though most are stumpy and far from thriving

Sweet William now in flower

I added a few stems of wild, self-sown cow parsley and foxgloves to today’s cut flower harvest of allium, sweet rocket, persicaria, flowering sage and the Sweet William; I’m particularly pleased with this pink, purple and pale cream arrangement.

June pickings: allium, sweet william, sweet rocket, foxgloves, flowering sage and cow parsley

Same arrangement in the vase

When it comes to home-grown veg, it’s still a sparse time of year, and it will remain so for ages, given the stumpiness of my seedlings. And this is where the joy of GREENS comes in. I don’t mean the massive, leafy cabbages or lettuces that we’ll get in a few weeks time, but rather the small, palm-sized leaves that thrive in early summer. There is a tradition in parts of the Mediterranean to collect wild greens – called horta – which are then eaten raw, or very slightly cooked, to supplement the lean, home-grown diet. In warmer climates this can go on year round, but here in England we only really start to see lush green growth in late April. Patience Gray discussed horta in great detail in Honey from a Weed, and makes wild claims that a plateful of herbs has an ‘oiliness’ to it that can keep the eater going for hours. Whilst that may be disputable, there is an undeniable vigour to freshly picked young greens that can not be replicated by any supermarket packet.

I do not collect wild greens (though I could – the allotment is FULL of nettles, and they would be grand) but I do look forward to this time of year, when the fridge has a constantly re-filled bag of fresh greens in it. Currently on the go is cima di rapa, which I grew in the veg trug from a sowing about 6 weeks ago, rocket from the allotment, and young spinach, radish tops and beetroot tops that I thieved from mum’s vegetable garden (her pickings always come a month earlier than mine).

Cima di rapa

All these young, gentle greens need is a quick wash, then to be wilted in a hot pan with a lick of butter or olive oil, perhaps a few thin slivers of garlic or chili, and a bit of salt. They take mere seconds to cook. Have them as an accompaniment to something else or – my preference – turn them into the star of the show. Horta on toast with a poached egg is my June brunch of choice, and orecchiette with cima di rapa and fennel sausage is a classic for a reason.

Saute the greens and serve on toast with an egg

Horta need no recipe or any grand instruction. They are the essence of what it means to grow, and cook, your own food. In this age where we are so deeply indoctrinated into supermarket food culture, I find that a plateful of simple greens can root me back to the peasant tradition – born of necessity of course, but none the worse for that – of eating what nature provides, when she provides it.

Also this week:

Allotment and garden: Planted out chrysanthemums, marigolds, chard, spinach and bulls blood. Netted the blueberries. Grass is growing at a distressing rate. Annuals are not doing so well – it is so dry – and climbing beans have been eaten by the pigeon. Broad beans have set. Back garden nearing its peak, with roses, foxgloves and delphinium.

Harvesting: Sweet William, last Sweet Rocket, alliums, cow parsley, persicaria, flowering sage, foxgloves. Rocket, spinach, broad beans (from Mum’s garden), chives, oregano, mint.

Cooking & eating: Chicken in white wine with tarragon from garden; gateau with strawberries and raspberries; Lincolnshire plum bread from work visit to Grantham.

I’ve been wondering lately if we, the British, have an ignorant relationship with weeds. We swear at them, douse them with chemicals, pull them up, generally fret, and yet again and again they return, paying no attention to our foot-stamping.

Other countries do not behave this way. In Greece, people actively gather weeds to supplement the diet: dandelion, wild chicory, goosefoot, wild beets are cooked up with their roots in water, dressed with olive oil and vinegar and eaten for lunch. A useful (and tasty) restorative when times are hard.

My desert island book would be the extraordinary Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray, a woman who spent the 1950s living in isolated villages around the southern Med, in Italy, France, Spain and Greece, with her sculptor husband (they moved around to live near the marble quarries). Her record of the food lore and cooking cultures of these villages are a precious record of a now lost history. She gives alot of attention to the gathering of weeds, and her entry for fat hen (Chenipodio in Italian) caught my eye:

“Fat hen, the well known annual, has bluish green leaves with a silvery sheen… It can be used in salads or simply cooked in butter; they taste a little of broccoli.”

Note: Fat hen is endemic on our allotment. I swear at it and pull it up. More fool me.

The Greeks, of course, do a lot with greens in general, and so I turn to the classic spinach pastry spanakopita. These are usually made with spinach, but I prefer to use greens with a little more substance to them: this week I chose chard, Russian red kale, beetroot tops, sorrel and spinach beet, all harvested in armfuls from the allotment. I’ve used mustard greens before too. Maybe next time some of that fat hen will make it to the mix.

Greens, glorious greens

I never weigh the greens: suffice to say that a BIG colander-full should be enough. Give them a good wash and then slice into ribbons, keeping the stalks separate – they need a little more cooking.

Wash and slice the greens, keeping the stalks separate

Cook the greens in a little boiling water, starting with the stalks, then the kale, then the chard, then lastly the delicate sorrel. Wilt them down for a few minutes then drain.

Cook ’em down in a BIG pot

The next stage is really important. The greens need to be squeezed dry to within an inch of their lives. Some recipes say to press the leaves between two plates, but I just use my hands. LOADS of liquid will come out, which is good, because you really don’t want it in your pastry. When they’re all dry, give them a good chop.

Squeeze thoroughly until dry then chop

Next, make the filling. Soften a small onion in some olive oil along with a few spring onions, then add them to a bowl along with the greens, an egg, a good scraping of nutmeg and a little salt and pepper. You won’t need much salt because of the next addition: cheese!

I use feta, crumbled into large chunks, and also a little grated hard cheese. Usually it’s parmesan but the other day I came across Greek kefalotiri cheese. It’s one of those squeeky-polestyrene cheeses, like halloumi, but a bit more pungent. Last in the mix is a good handful of chopped mint.

Kefalotiri cheese

Now the fun bit! Get your filo sheets – buy them, obviously – and lay out on a tea towel. Slice the sheet in half vertically and lay one half on top of the other; this makes them easier to work and also stops the sheets drying out. Then get yourself some butter, melt it, and brush the top sheet with the golden goodness. Do not use margarine. The butter gives the spanakopita really good flavour!

Slice the filo in half, put the two halves together (so they don’t dry out) and brush the top sheet with butter

Then you get your filling, put a generous dollop on the top strip, and fold it up into a triangle.

Put a generous dessertspoon of mixture at the top of your strip

Fold up in triangles all the way to the bottom

I suppose you could make these into cigar shapes, or even into a whole pie. Either way, do not stint on the butter! More of it needs to go on top of your pastries before they bake: 180c for about 20-25 minutes until golden.

Brush with more lovely butter

Baked, buttery, delicious.

I know, a spinach pastry sounds a bit sandals-and-lentils. Do not be fooled, for these are amazingly delicious. I do think it’s worth finding (or growing) proper fresh greens for this recipe as supermarket spinach seems to disintegrate in seconds; a little texture and robustness is a good thing. Serve warm or at room temperature, plus they freeze well. An excellent way of eating your greens.

Spanakopita

Recipe adapted from Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes. Makes 12.

500g greens (spinach, chard, young kale, sorrel, mustard greens etc)

Olive oil

1/2 small onion or one shallot, diced

2 spring onions, finely sliced

100g feta cheese

1 egg

salt and pepper

1 tblsp grated kefalotiri or parmesan

grating of fresh nutmeg

handful chopped mint

packet of filo pastry (6 sheets)

100g butter (maybe more), melted

Prep your greens: wash them, shake dry. Slice the green part into ribbons and the stalks into small slices. Cook in boiling water in a large pan, starting with the stalks then adding the greens. Cook until just wilted then drain. Leave to cool then squeeze dry. Chop.

Heat the oil in a small pan, soften the onion then add the spring onion and cook for a minute or two, until just soft. Put into a bowl with the greens, egg, nutmeg, cheese and mint. Season to taste.

Preheat the oven to 180c. Melt your butter and grease a few baking sheets. Unroll the filo onto a tea towel. Slice the sheets in half vertically, then lay the two halves on top of each other. Brush the top sheet with butter. Lay a spoonful of the filling on the top of your strip then fold down to make a triangle. Move to the baking sheet and brush with butter. Repeat until you’ve used up all the pastry and filling.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes until golden and brown – keep an eye on them as they can burn easily. Eat warm or at room temperature.

Notes from the Veg Patch

In praise of horta

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Spanakopita

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