What To Do With Monster.

I went on holiday for a month.  It was hot and sunny in the south of France, and damp and English in London.  My garden has become a jungle, and everything is a size bigger than it should be.

 
There are mushrooms three inches across under the birch trees and clearly the homes of gnomes, a bright yellow pumpkin as big as my head which looks like a roc's egg, runner beans 18 inches long and fat with big purple beans, where the snails haven't got them - and under the parasol leaves near the front of the vegetable patch I found Monster.

Monster is a courgette.  Monster weighs 1.5kg, or 3.5lb in old money.  Monster is practically as long as my arm.  My dad told me not to take him on a train because he might get classed as an offensive weapon.  Who could possibly be offended by Monster?!

His eating demanded ceremony and attention.  I didn't think he was going to get cooked at all, my week is so busy.  Today my curry date (third in a week, but all delicious) cancelled a little to my relief.  I will see the friend next week for idli and dosai, and we will be both be relaxed and ready.  All the way home on the bus I pondered.   I googled and thought and risked antagonising the motion sickness and the smelly man with ear hair who sat beside me for a while.

Monster: roasted with lemon and rosemary; stuffed with crispy sausagemeat, chilli and pear.

I knew there was going to be sausage, but it took a Nigel Slater recipe, obviously, to tell me that I wanted it to be *crispy*.  The rest is my idea...

Marrow with crispy sausage and pear
Serves 2 very hungry people, or 3 with a salad
1 large courgette, or several smaller ones, weighing about 1kg in total after trimming.
Rosemary sprigs (about six 2 inch ones)
1 lemon
olive oil
8 butcher's sausages, around 400g
1 hard conference pear
1 tbsp coarsely chopped parsley
1 small red chilli
3 cloves garlic
Sea salt and black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220℃.  Cut the courgette into 3 inch lengths, and then in half vertically.  With a spoon, scrape out the spongy inner flesh (and add to your compost to feed to next year's Monster).  In a large bowl, toss the pieces with a couple of spoonsful of oil, the zest of the lemon, plenty of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Place the pieces skin side up in a heavy roasting tin or casserole dish and tuck rosemary sprigs all around and inside.  Bake for 20 minutes, or until beginning to colour, then flip the pieces over.  It will probably take 40 minutes all told, it's done when a fork goes all the way through easily but don't overdo it.

Meanwhile, chop the chilli and garlic finely.  Strip the sausagemeat out of the skins.  Heat a spoonful of oil in a cast iron pan until shimmering and crumble the meat into it - you may need two pans, or to do this in batches.  If you crowd the pan the meat will steam and not go crispy.  Try not to disturb it too much until it has begun to caramelise.  Get it nice and brown, adding the garlic and chilli for the final 5 minutes.  As it fries, chop the pear into quarters, core and slice each quarter into pieces half a centimetre thick.  Remove the meat to a dish and keep warm.  In the same pan, fry the pear until it takes a little colour, then add the juice of half the lemon and let it evaporate.  Add plenty of salt and pepper, and return the sausage to the pan to combine.  Stir in the parsley.  Taste for seasoning.

When the marrow is cooked, discard the rosemary and serve with the meat.

Plant to Plate.

It's been too wet. Our grapes that grew so beautifully all split. It's a shame - I tried one or two that weren't split and they're really lovely. They're actually a purple variety and perfect for eating if a bit seedy - I assumed they'd be a sour wine-type. We had to cut them all down and bin them, but they did look pretty.

The tomatoes, though, have been a bit of a triumph so far - I'm really pleased. These are 'Gardener's Delight', with some unidentified cherries thrown in for good measure. My more interesting varieties so far haven't ripened very well, but we'll see. I have a couple of stripey ones that look like they will, and with any luck some of the big San Marzano plums I planted will do too. I don't mind too much if they don't, because there are fab things you can do with green tomatoes - I'm particularly keen to try the curry.

Our chillies are still purple, but they'll ripen in time - I've had those plants a couple of years now so I know how they'll behave. This year's chillies and the peppers are barely more than seedlings...I'm not sure what I do about those. I'm moving in two months (yes, really, again...) so we'll see how they look then. I might give them to my mum if she can find space for them. Hopefully we'll get a few green peppers in say November...! I should probably have planted them out earlier. Seeds can go into compost in February and no later next year, then hopefully they'll be big enough to plant out by the time it gets warm. The tomatillos are still growing...we'll see how that goes...

Blackberries have come and gone, too. Traci and I actually got around to picking some this year - we meant to last year but failed. I've never been a big jam person, but I did want to try cordial with them. I drink a fair amount of squash of one sort or another, and having something made of blackberries sounded great. I made the most enormous mess cooking them - I stained EVERYTHING a deep, dark purple. I have just ascertained though that with plenty of Vanish these stains seem to be happy to come out of even my pale grey tracksuit bottoms, though I have not yet succeeded in getting them out of the wooden chopping board...maybe I should try Vanish on that, too.
They SMELL incredible - of roses...which shouldn't be a huge surprise because the plants are related. And I didn't really mind the stains when this colour is so amazing. I'd have them cooking all the time if I could, I think.

I had a flick through some recipes on the net, but I didn't see any I was particularly keen on. I didn't want to adulterate the flavour of the fruit with spices as some recipes do - I've had spiced blackberry squash before and it's been a bit too cloying. This is a purer flavour. I suspect I added too much sugar (though hopefully this will mean it keeps better), and this somewhat overwhelms the flavour of the berries. The smell is still incredible, and it's not too cloying either as a drink when diluted with sparkling water. It's amazing, that black purple colour doesn't get any less when you water it down...it just stays black. It's less translucent than coke!

I didn't take proper measurements I'm afraid. I know I used around 2 1/2 litres of blackberries and probably around 400g of sugar maybe less. I was walking a line between trying not to make it too sweet and getting enough sugar into it that it would preserve it a bit.

I boiled the fruit in a large heavy bottomed pot - I didn't need any water as it was already pretty juicy in there. I let it boil until it seemed more liquid than solid, and then added the sugar and boiled for a bit longer to let it dissolve. I then strained it through a sieve and then muslin. This was the part where I made such a mess - my sieve kept slipping and the sheer quantity to be strained meant that it went everywhere. Persevering, I eventually ended up with a thick dark syrup which I bottled in this rather lovely old olive oil bottle that I'd sterilised with boiling water.

It's been in the fridge ever since, and I don't think I'd want to store it out of the fridge. I've been drinking it with my dinner, and we made a cocktail with it, tequila, the juice of a lime and some fizzy water that was pretty nice, too. And it's virtually free!