Stuck for food inspiration with fresh, seasonal produce? This is where you can find some. See how our gardeners create simple delicious meals with what we’ve grown together.
Autumnal inspiration
Ruth’s coconut rice with garden pumpkin, green beans, chilli, & kale. Great to warm you up on an Autumnal evening.Nohelia’s pumpkin gnocchi with rosemary. Roast some pumpkin or squash in the oven first, add any spices you may wish to add for a bit more flavour, and then mash together with potatoes and flower to make your gnocchi paste. You can then add a tomato sauce or just butter and rosemary heated together in a pan. Tip: just like beans and other veg, you can also freeze gnocchi if you make a big batch that you can’t eat in one sitting.Minestrone soup – such a good go to to use up all the veg you have harvested or available in the fridge, and feels a bit more filling than a blitzed soup. This has tomatoes, green and purple beans, courgette, and peppers all from the garden. You can also add small pasta or breadcrumbs to add some texture and extra goodness in there, as well as grated cheese if you wish. Served with a side of garlic bread with tomatoes and herbs – garlic, herbs, and tomatoes all from the garden too of course!Check out Farz’s Iranian stew using tomatoes, marrow and beans from the garden. Wow!Steff & Farz’s salad using rocket, mustard leaves, chard, apples, tomatoes, and round cucumbers all from the garden. Lots of tangy freshness in there but also a bit of sweetness too – yum!So many salad variations you could try out to keep things interesting. This one has the last of the cucumbers from Jacky & Becca. Add some roasted veg like they’ve done for that hearty Autumnal hit.This one is an easy and tasty meal prep for lots of people or to set you up for a couple of days’ worth of meals such as lunches. Just chop all of the butternut squash, pumpkin, or any similar veg you may have and season to taste. You can also add sweetcorn and any other veg you may have available in the garden or in the fridge.Once the veg is roasted and cooked you can then add salad leaves from the garden and other toppings and put into a wrap or add to some rice.
Winter winners
Have you tried making your own veg stock from veg peelings? Save up all of your peels, ends and bits you’re not eating into a bag and freeze them. The bag could be a plastic bag from frozen chips or peas or suchlike. Once the bag is full, you’re ready to make your stock! Just boil all of the veg together with some water in a pan, and add spices and salt and pepper to your taste. Here there are bay leaves from the garden, and some crushed and whole cumin seeds.You can then keep this stock to use for soups and to add flavour to dishes just as you would with a stock cube, only cheaper and less wasteful!Spring onions last well into late autumn or well into Winter depending on weather. They super tasty and versatile so you can pretty much add them to any dish to cook along with any onion or other veg, or add raw as a topping at the end to noodles or rice dishes.Another gem from Peter! This is his Jerusalem artichoke and parsnip soup with some lemony chard and walnuts on top. Lush stuff! Tip: add syrup or something sweet to the soup to reduce the bitterness.
Seasonal in Spring
Poached egg flower salad with small radish, lettuce, and tomato. The poached egg plant (normally flowering in mid-late May) works super well in lots of different salads and looks beautiful too!
Summer sensations
Our favourite communal salad combination includes: peas, chives, marigold petals, nasturtium flowers, borridge flowers, and lettuce leaves all from the garden. Super colourful & tastes just as good as it looks! The peppery flowers, with the sweetness and crisp from the peas and leaves really creates a lovely fresh side for a meal.Check out Will’s pea risotto featuring our mangetout peas! Lavender to set the lovely dinner scene also from our herb garden.Lemon & lavender lemon drizzle cake. For this one you can add some lavender buds (not flowered) to the icing sugar in a jar so that it takes on some of the flavour, and mix into the batter along with the lemon zest so that it features in the sponge itself too if you would like it to add more of its flavour into the cake. Lavender is very subtle in taste and aroma, so it likely wouldn’t taste like much by itself.We have a couple of rhubarb suggestions… here is the first one from Varpu. Raparperikiisseli is a Finnish delicacy that turns the rhubarb in the garden into a fruit custard. Similar to making a jam, you add sugar and bring it to the boil, but you can also add cornstarch so that it thickens. You can also add cream to this if desired.Yoghurt with rhubarb and shortbread made by Peter. You can also make a compote similar to Peter’s and add to yoghurt and granola, adding apple or mango or strawberries to make it thick and have a depth of flavour that’s not just tangy but can also be sweet.
Green with envy and want your bit of fame too? If you want to see your recipes or creations featured here, please pop us an email eastoncommunitygarden@gmail.com and we’ll get you featured on this page.
