Two Dishes at Home

Two dishes at home with recipes and my seed purchases

Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This week’s newsletter is about two dishes cooked at home and my seed purchases and plans.

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Two Dishes at Home

I am still organising my thoughts about the food I ate while I was in Arkansas and New York over the past two weeks, and there will be a bumper newsletter next week, possibly two letters on the subject. Over the weekend I have mostly been spring cleaning old clothing and donating books so there is space for new additions bought at the many excellent bookshops we visited in the US. At the beginning of the week I was home alone and feeling somewhat overwhelmed and unable to focus on much apart from these two meals which were very nice – recipes below. To jolly myself along I also watched and enjoyed the silly-and-fun Magpie Murders which is partly set in a town where I went to school and features the publishing industry, so generally relevant to my interests. Lesley Manville is great as a (to me) almost impossibly well-turned-out editor of commercial crime fiction.

Plants

my seed ‘haul’ from Franchi

I also arrived home to a package of seeds to plant for the allotment: much to do! My seed purchases FYI below – as you can see I am into tomatoes… I take after my dad in that respect. I was also given a packet of Cherokee tomato seeds by someone I met in the US, which I am excited about trying. I’ve had great results from agretti/monk’s beard several times and missed it last year, so looking forward to growing that again, and the Romanesco courgettes are superb in texture and flavour and produce really well. I will also order a few grafted aubergine plants as they fruit much better for me growing outside than from seed. There is also cicoria (can’t recommend this crop enough!) and chard ongoing on the plot, some massive artichoke plants that I grew from seed a couple of years ago, a well established rhubarb patch that predates my arrival, and fruit bushes of various kinds. I am not particularly organised or ‘on it’ this season, but will do my best to get most of these going in the next few weeks.

Tomato Pantano from Rome

Tomato Red Pear Franchi Of Bergamo

Tomato Cuor Di Bue / Coeur De Boeuf Of Liguria

Eden Project Tomato Red Cherry

Tomato San Marzano Nano

Climbing Roma Bean Supermarconi

Dwarf Yellow French Bean Berggold

Courgette Romanesco

Pumpkin Delica

Agretti Barba Di Frate

A bundle of Drought Tolerant Veg

Eden Project Beetroot Of Chioggia Of Venice

Mixed Chilli Pack

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Goat’s cheese, walnuts and soft herbs on toast and pan-roasted spring onions

goat’s cheese, walnuts and herbs on toast with cooked spring onions

Ingredients

toast, 1-2 pieces

soft chalky-type goat’s cheese – enough to spread over the toast

A handful of walnuts

2 tablespoons of roughly chopped soft herbs – I had parsley and mint

good-tasting olive oil for cooking and dressing

4-6 spring onions whole, washed trimmed of damaged parts

½ a lemon

How to make

Put one tablespoon of olive oil in a small frying pan with the spring onions. Turn on the heat and allow them to cook for 5-10 minutes, turning so they cook evenly. The green sections and parts may scorch/char a little. That will be nice for the flavour so long as they do not go too far. Cook until the thickest white parts are tender. In a corner of the same pan, toast the walnuts taking care they do not burn.

Make the toast. While it’s toasting, chop up the walnuts. Spread the toast generously with goat’s cheese. Cover with a layer of chopped walnuts and herbs. Then drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and black pepper. Serve with the spring onions seasoned with salt, pepper, and a small squeeze of lemon juice.

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Pumpkin (or butternut squash), sage, and anchovy and pasta

pasta with pumpkin, anchovy and sage, and cicoria in the background

Ingredients

150g pumpkin (or butternut squash), peeled and cut into rough 1inch x 1 inch cubes

6 large fresh sage leaves (or more smaller ones) rolled up and cut into strips

1 garlic clove, finely sliced

2 anchovies, roughly chopped

2 tablespoons of crème fraiche

1 small dried chilli

a splash of milk

50g finely grated parmesan + extra to serve

15 g unsalted butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

100g pasta

How to make:

Boil a large pan of water c. 1.5-2 litres. Add a teaspoon of salt. Add the pumpkin cubes and cook until just tender (around 8 minutes, depending on your pumpkin). Remove from the water with a spoon. Put the pasta in the same boiling water to cook.

In a frying pan that can accommodate the pasta too, add the butter and a tablespoon of olive oil so that they melt on a low-medium heat. Add the sliced garlic and anchovies and stir around in the oil until the anchovies are breaking up and the garlic is fragrant. Add half of the sage and the dried chilli  (or a pinch of chilli flakes) and turn around in the butter. Then add the cooked pumpkin and coat in the aromatics and cook for a minute or so. Turn the heat down to low, and add the crème fraiche and a splash of milk to loosen it and melt the crème fraiche. Shake the pan and stir the emerging sauce together and season with salt and black pepper. Turn the heat off and wait for the pasta to finish cooking.

When the pasta is cooked, take out a cup of cooking water then drain. Turn on the heat for the sauce, add the grated parmesan and stir, then add in the cooked pasta, and the rest of the sage and a few tablespoons of cooking water and toss the pasta in the sauce. If it needs more liquid, add more cooking water, and keep tossing until the pasta is coated and saucy. Serve immediately with extra parmesan to grate on top.

On the side

With the pasta, I ate bitter greens – cicoria that I grew from seed and then transplanted to pots in my yard. I cooked this in the style I have had in Rome – after cooking the pumpkin I boiled the greens in the same water until soft, lifted them out (leaving the water to cook the pasta)  and drained them well, then stirred them around in hot pan with a tablespoon of olive oil infused with a whole peeled garlic clove and a dried chilli. You could also do this with chard, spinach or cavolo nero.