The moral of the compost bin story...

Well some of my planning from last week paid off as we did set about emptying our compost bins.

However my plan to disappear didn't quite work out, although I did manage to persuade MOH to do most of the shovelling!  Well he was keen to... and I did throw in the occasional spade or two...

We have two compost bins -  both of the black "dalek" variety - they're not attractive, but hey it's a compost bin and most of the time we don't see them.

I had to smile when we removed the bin's dalek-like shell (that's the Royal "we" there) to reveal our compost with box clipping "hair!"

I'd seriously under-estimated how much compost one dalek bin could hold.  So much so, that now I have to work out when to empty the second compost bin.  The immediate answer is "not now" as there's nowhere to store it...  Soon maybe.

We filled an old green plastic dustbin, three trugs and two large plant pots.  I'll use some of this in my new patio pots and I'm sure I'll find plenty of other uses around the garden.  I'm not tempted to shovel it into plastic sacks though as that just sounds a faff too far.

I think the moral of the compost bin story is to empty it more regularly! 

We worked out that it was probably four years ago when we tried emptying this one through that silly little hole at the bottom.  It's a much better idea to just go for it and pull the top off! 

And I'm not sure we've emptied the second bin at all, so hopefully the compost in there will be at least just as good, if not better (or more composted).

We were very popular with the local Robins, this one was happy to pose for a few photos...

It's great to have the company of a Robin or two while you work.

So back to it...

In the greenhouse, the three cucumbers which appeared when we went away for the weekend continue to grow. This one's almost ready for picking, there's a second that's not too far behind it and the third appears to be growing in an L-shape, so it could literally have Youngest Niece's name all over it!

There's a few smaller cukes on the way too, so let's hope the tomatoes catch up so we can have that salad.  

The tomatoes growing in pots just outside the greenhouse - which is a good thing as they'd be swamped by my two triffid cucumbers! At the moment I have precisely three tomatoes that are doing anything remotely close to ripening. 

Hopefully the rest will get the idea and follow suit.  There's a while yet before I start digging out green tomato chutney and ketchup recipes!

What's growing in your garden?

52 Cookbooks #30: Pineapple Chicken Skewers

Well this is a book made for summer and BBQs, and it helps if you have a kitchen! Luckily this summer we do - this time last summer we had our kitchen replaced - see I'm not sure I was ready for this - and while we were living on BBQed food, it wasn't anything fancy as we had nowhere to prepare food.

52 Cookbooks: the challenge is to cook a 

new recipe from one of my (many) 

cookbooks each week for a year...

But now we do. And we have summer for two years running!

So I'd better make use of this rather fancy Barbecue book by Stéphane Reynaud. I say it's fancy but not all of the recipes are and anyway it's nice to push the BBQ boundaries every once in a while. 

I quite fancied these Pineapple Chicken Skewers but MOH was less sure, I mean sweet and savoury... Yes, almost like a Hawaiian pizza dear...

But without the pizza, and with chicken instead of ham... So anyway we had Pineapple Chicken Skewers.

The cubed chicken breast needed to marinate in coconut cream, lime juice, lime zest and chilli powder. The recipe said 24 hours, but in the end I managed 8 hours or so. 

Now creamed coconut is an odd thing. I had some in sachets which needed to be immersed in hot water for it to soften. It was still quite hard and mixing it with the other marinade ingredients wasn't easy and this was another candidate for scrunching it all together. Anyway, with that done I left the meat in the fridge. 

Several hours later when I took it out of the fridge it has fused into a large coconut ball. Not sure if it was supposed to do that as the recipe was quite brief. I wondered if I should have put it into the fridge (remembering I'd needed hot water earlier to soften it).

But reasoned I should, as BBQs tend to take place when it's warmer and there's no way anyone would leave chicken out for 24 hours to marinade, would they?

I've since learnt that creamed coconut and coconut cream are not the same thing, who knew? Oh well,  it was too late for this dish...

So I broke it up and skewered the chicken along with fresh pineapple pieces, here it is ready to go onto the BBQ. 

It cooked for 15 minutes over a relatively low heat before being served alongside potatoes, salad, some hot tomato chilli sauce I'd made last October (from a glut of tomatoes) and some lime on the side for an extra squeeze. 

The verdict:

• Good - the pineapple was great BBQed and gave some zing to the chicken. 
• They did blacken (and smoke) quite quickly so keep an eye on them. 
• MOH liked them and seemed to clear his plate in double quick time and was looking (unsuccessfully) for seconds. 
• I'd add pineapple to other kebabs too, it made a nice change. 
• I'd cook them again but would just use cream of coconut (like the recipe says!) and perhaps more chilli. 

52 Cookbooks #29: Botham Burgers

This week it's a vintage Jamie recipe - look how young he looks - from his second book The Return of the Naked Chef.  They're called Botham burgers as they used to be on the menu in the pub Jamie grew up in, whose name was The Cricketers.  Jamie suggests shaping them round like a cricket ball too.  Howzat!

52 Cookbooks: the challenge is to cook a 

new recipe from one of my (many) 

cookbooks each week for a year...

With the weather staying warm we've been making the most of our BBQ and the plan was to use it for these burgers.  As luck would have it, the day we had these it was raining by the evening.  Although that was probably a good thing as they were huuge!

I halved the recipe as there are just two of us, so that was 1/2kg of mince, 1 red onion, 1 egg, breadcrumbs, Dijon mustard, crushed coriander and cumin seeds and seasoning.

I started by trying to mix this with a silicone spoon, but quickly realised this wasn't very effective or the Jamie-way!  So there was nothing else for it but to use my hands to "mix it and scrunch it all together".  Jamie would have been proud of me.

He might've been less proud though, when I made this into four burgers instead of two - even to carnivore-me this seemed a lot of meat (and unnecessarily so) for one meal. The result was still a satisfying meal and two more burgers ready to freeze. Bonus. 

Look at the size of [half of] them!

I cooked these in the oven for 25 minutes, they probably could have done with slightly less for a pinker middle. I served these with a roasted vegetable couscous salad, some cherry tomatoes and marinated BBQ-favoured aubergine slices as well as the usual burger accompaniments of burger rolls, American mustard, ketchup and gherkins. 

The verdict

• These were easy to make, and weren't that messy despite the squishing-togetherness needed
• They stuck together well, so probably would be ok to cook on a BBQ 
• On taking his first bite MOH said "These are good.  Perfect" - that's high praise indeed especially when there was very little greenery on the plate...
• They were huuge, even with half of them - but on the other hand I do have another two ready-made!
• These were probably the best burgers we've had for a while, that and the fact I have another ready to go makes me happy, so I'm linking this post to the Good Things Linky over at Margot & Barbara.