In praise of Swiss chard

The gleaming red stems of chard in the vegetable garden look wonderful at this time of the year. But, of course, they are not just grown for their beauty – but for their wonderful, slightly peppery, flavour.

Here is one of my favourite recipes using chard, and as it happens perfect if you are entertaining vegetarians. I cook on an Aga so you may need to adjust the cooking time if you cook on gas or electricity.

You will need:

2 red peppers
1 pack of feta cheese
20 small or 10 large leaves of fresh chard
1 packet of filo pastry
About 4ozs butter to melt
Black pepper

Halve and de-seed the two red peppers and roast in the oven to char the skins. Remove the skins and cut into strips.

Wash the chard and remove any really fibrous stems, tearing the large leaves (don't cut) into loose pieces.

Cut the feta into cubes.

Brush a shallow heatproof dish with melted butter and lay the layers of filo, leaving large flaps over the edges (which you can eventually fold over the top), and brushing each layer of filo with butter as you go.

When all the sheets are used up, evenly fill the middle with the red pepper, chard and feta.Add freshly ground pepper. Close the flaps over the top and brush with melted butter.

Put into a pre-warmed oven at about 200 Centigrade (bottom shelf of hot oven for Aga-owners) for about 20 minutes, or until the pastry is a golden brown and crispy.

Serve warm with just a mixed salad or some new potatoes.

A glut of butterflies

As per the post below, our garden is filled with butterflies this summer. This beautiful peacock spreads its wings in a rare moment when the sun managed to creep through the interminable rain.

What a wet summer does to the best-laid plans

Apologies for being so out of communication, but work and life have been hectic with several new developments (about which there will be news later on), and trying to work around our weather.  Well, English weather has always been a topic of conversation, but this time round it has even made the news.  Trying to plan what we do is becoming impossible.  It does not matter where you go for information it is contradictory.  In the end, we just take the best guess scenario, and keep our clients informed.  And of course, it can go wrong!  It would not be English weather if it didn’t throw the occasional cog into the works.

As a result we are now experiencing the type of growth that we normally see in May, not the end of July.  Phenomenal weed production, lush, heavy growth on hedges and perennials. And of course mildew in epidemic proportions on the roses.  So planning as usual, goes out of the window and we have to amend our work accordingly.

However, one of the great joys this year has been the explosion in the number of butterflies.  Although it has been overcast the last few days with the ubiquitous heavy rainfall, as soon as the sun peeps out our buddlejia are simply covered in butterflies.  The Peacocks are now making an appearance in their droves with the odd Red Admiral, Brimstone and Tortoiseshell. And there are bees and hoverflies everywhere.  I don’t use sprays in our garden, except soap and water, particularly on the roses.  My Mdme Alfred Carriere suffers a bit, but I simply pick off the black spot leaves, cut back and feed heavily.  My other rose, Penny Lane seems to suffer from virtually no disease at all, and Poetry in Motion just gets well fed on a regular basis.

The vegetable garden too is looking like a jungle.  Because we are comparatively high up, germination was a real problem in June, which meant watering.  However, now the opposite is true and it is hard to get into the veg patch.  The Cabbage Whites are making hay whilst the sun shines and I expect that the various small birds will be feasting on a glut of caterpillars.  Meanwhile I have finally seen my first runner bean; it is unlikely to survive the transition from plant to pot!  I am going to try and put in some late seed in the hope that we may have an Indian summer!  However the evenings up here are increasing cooling off with the resultant cooler soil – not good for germination.  However it does mean that a late sowing of rocket may not be munched by the wretched flea beetles.  The last lot disappeared before it was less than .5cm high!  And of course the lettuces and chard is bolting faster than we can eat it.  However one of the added perks of growing chard particularly, the red variety is the stunning colour you get when the sun strikes the stems.  Absolutely beautiful.