No, this isn’t the start to some kind of awful joke but a genuine pondering I had a while ago.
This year, having got our vegetable patch underway for the first time, we were fully prepared for the ups and downs and experimentation of what may or may not grow well. Our biggest failure of the year seems to have been the carrots. I can’t help thinking that it was perhaps the wonderful in many ways but exceedingly hard Suffolk soil, which when baked by the sun turns into solid clay, that may have been our downfall. I imagine that somewhere under their sprouting tops, they were secured more tightly than middle-class ladies at a health spa wrapped in mud and clingfilm and left in the dark to doze and snore to the questionably soothing sounds of some whales or a heaving rainforest. (Just why the sudden shrill call of some kind of anthropoid or feathered creature is supposed to be relaxing I am not sure.)
But one of the absolute rip-roaring successes has proved to be courgettes – in fact, almost too much so.
It got to the point where we were not only growing more than we could consume on a regular basis but that they were also rather oversized. This led to us greeting friends and family not with a hearty ‘hello’ and enquiries as to their health, but with, ‘do you like courgette?’ If the poor unsuspecting person answered yes, whether in truth or out of politeness, they were then proffered a ridiculously large green vegetable and we could sigh in relief that we had managed to reduce the stocks a little. Even our plumber did not escape and left, after sorting a leaky radiator, with one of our verdant monsters.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if courgettes happened to be our favourite vegetable but as it is, they feature among the bottom rungs of the veg league – if there were to be such a thing. MOTH (Man Of The House – the husband) particularly declared himself not a fan and so I set about finding ways in which to disguise this slightly insipid but amazingly fruitful food.
Garlic is a good one. Cook them in plenty of butter and garlic and all is well. Use them to bulk out vegetable dishes swathed in a tomato sauce and they disappear nicely into the background giving a good supporting role.
But after weeks of hiding them in various savoury ways I was getting a little bored so decided to try a different tack and go sweet. Using vegetables in baking is nothing new but I live with a man who is steadfastly traditional when it comes to cakes and so I knew it would be quite a challenge to make something he would try once, let alone eat a whole piece of.
And so a courgette cake I made – my own recipe – which I’ve included a link to below, and, well, I thought it was rather yummy. MOTH was brave and took a bite (admittedly before I told him what was in it) and, although not a particularly enthusiastic response, the comment ‘it’s alright,’ I took as pretty positive from someone who has quite an aversion to such things. (I did note however that it was just the one bite that was eaten – the rest I shared with my lovely singing group: The Kettle Girls.) I promised that the next cake would be more traditional, and it was: a classic sponge with jam and cream, followed not long after by a chocolate and choc-chip cake with chocolate frosting. (My teeth hurt just thinking about it.)
I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth myself and quite like the raw and earthy textures and flavours of more natural and less intensely sweetened things and I wonder if it could be traced back to The Brown Book.
When we were growing up, one of the cook books in our home was what we, the children, called The Brown Book. Everything about this book was brown from the recipes to the front cover, even the paper it was printed on seemed to have a light hue of brown. (I do believe it was from the 1970’s – which could explain a lot.) The titles of some of the recipes might give you an idea: Buckwheat Pancakes, Soya Burgers, Lentil Sprout Salad, Millet Cookies.
(At this point my conscience dictates I put a word in: the reason I can tell you these recipe titles is because I now have a copy of that book. Further confessions tell you that actually, I quite like the look of a lot of it now and it would be doing a huge disservice to my mum to let you think that the above was what we were served daily – it wasn’t – it was just the odd moment of Brown that appeared and made us kids roll our eyes. To this day I still can’t hear the word Carob without thinking of it’s treacherous lie that it is ‘like chocolate’ – it is not!)
Actually, our birthday cakes were really quite spectacular. They were always made into some fantastical shape or scene: butterflies, trains, dogs, someone fallen over skiing, a clog – you name it, we’ve had it. It was even only a couple of years ago, when one of my sisters was studying to be a vet, that a cake was made depicting a horse – mid operation – including red boot laces for innards.
Often, being the ones making the cake was as much fun as being the recipient of them. Holed up in the kitchen having shut out the birthday girl (who knew exactly what was going on but would pretend that they didn’t) a creative flurry of cake, icing and decorations would take place and usually so many of the sweets, chocolates and the such bought for decorating were eaten in the making of the cake, that by the time it was presented and the candles blown out no-one could face eating any more – for an hour or so anyway.
But, back to my original question – when is a courgette not a courgette? I was pondering this because ours grew so large it was often asked if they were now a marrow. Well, there is some debate online: some say a courgette left to get so big becomes a marrow, others say that there are still horticultural differences but that they are both a squash. So, when is a courgette not a courgette – when it is a marrow – or not – but definitely when it is a squash. Perhaps.
You can find my Courgette Batter Cake recipe by clicking here
