A Quintessential British Summer

Tennis, Strawberries & Cream and Lemon Barley Water

Wimbledon started this week. 

Founded in 1877 it is the oldest tennis tournament around and inevitably some traditions have grown up around the event, such as the spectators eating British strawberries and cream. A perhaps lesser known one is that of lemon barley water.  After all ‘anything else just isn’t tennis’ *

Eric Smedley Hodgson apparently invented the drink in 1934 and it was served to the tennis players in the changing rooms to refresh them. This was the start of an 81 year old relationship between Robinson’s Barley Water and Wimbledon, and since 1935 bottles of the soft drink have been placed under the umpire’s chair.

Wimbledon reminds me of the warm, heady, pollen scented days of summer. It’s late afternoon.  Outside the stillness echoes the hush of the crowd on centre court, followed by the rich “thwak”of the opening serve.

Summer also means ice cream.

The strawberry patch was full of ripe fruit. The aromatic scent of Basil Genovese filled the hydro-tunnel and I had a bottle of organic Sicilian lemon juice in the fridge. So I made a batch of Strawberry & Basil Ice Cream. I first came across this recipe last year when I had a glut of basil leaves. The original recipe used ricotta cheese, but I couldn’t remember using that last time. I just wanted to keep it simple. So I searched for a few other recipes and merged a couple of them together. I also reduced the amount of sugar used by half.

Strawberry & Basil Ice Cream

455 grams Strawberries (washed and roughly cut up)
6 cups of Basil Leaves
1/2 cup Sugar
450ml Double Cream
250ml Gold Top Jersey Milk (full cream milk)
1/2 teaspoon Sicilian Lemon Juice.

Soak the cut strawberries in the sugar and lemon juice for about an hour
Blend the cream, milk, basil and strawberries together until mixed to your liking
Chill overnight
Churn the ingredients in an ice cream maker following the manufacturer’s instructions.

*Source 1988 Robinson’s Barley Water Advertising Campaign

A Bitter & Sweet Symphony in Orange

The Nagami Kumquat 

We don’t grow everything hydroponically. The small holding is a mixture of conventional soil based gardening and hydroponics. I don’t think it’s possible to grow everything hydroponically although I might be wrong. I still have a lot to learn. At the moment the main goal is to keep our hydroponic experiment as simple as possible.

As well as the kitchen garden, the hydroponic and the conventional polytunnel we have two greenhouses. One is dedicated to fruit growing. It’s currently home to a few dwarf trees – nectarine, apricot & cherry, and two grape vines whose root stock have been planted outside the greenhouse whilst the vine grows inside.

My pet project in this greenhouse is growing citrus trees. And it all started a few Christmases ago before we moved into our small holding.

Although I don’t have a very sweet tooth I do own one desert cookbook –  Ready for Desert (My Best Recipes) by David Lebovitz. That particular Christmas I was looking for something I could serve on Christmas Eve and I came across his Champagne Gelee with Kumquats, Grapefruits & Blood Oranges recipe. Convinced I had seen kumquats in one of my local supermarkets I was determined to make this desert. But could I find them? Not a chance. I ended up substituting mandarin orange segments instead. 

Moving to our small holding we made a list of criteria for deciding what to grow.
We like to eat it
It’s relatively expensive to buy
It’s difficult to buy

Hence the citrus tree project.

The Nagami kumquat is an unusual little citrus plant. It produces an abundance of small oval, orange fruits late in the season, that are eaten whole. The rind is sweet whilst the flesh bitter. A native to South Asia, the small evergreen bush needs hot summers, but is hardy enough to withstand temperatures as low as -10 degree centigrade. Although the people I buy my citrus trees from recommend keeping the temperature no lower than 3 degrees.

With one of my bushes full of fruit, I searched online for ideas as to what to do with them and came across a kumquat marmalade recipe, by who other than David Lebovitz!

Here’s his recipe.
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2014/02/kumquat-marmalade-recipe/