Allotment Cooking

So you've been following the fantastic advice on this website on how to grow garden vegetables and have started producing boxes full of tasty fruit and vegetables from your allotment however now comes the next question what to do with all this fresh food.

This allotment cooking section of this website is designed to help you with this problem and be a resource for fantastic vegetable recipes so from now on you make the most of the produce your hard work produces. Below you can see our recipe of the week followed by the links to all our other recipes.

Weekly Recipe

So its asparagus season one of the best times of the year but what to do with those tender juicy spears of asparagus. With such a delicacy as asparagus I advise against messing with it too much. After all you spent 2 years establishing your asparagus beds so let the asparagus speak for itself.

Tender Asparagus spears with hollandaise sauce

(serves 2 people as a snack)

12 asparagus spears

1 egg yolk

100g unsalted butter

juice of half a lemon

Break off the woody base of the asparagus. I recommend snapping it as the asparagus should naturally snap at the right place. If the asparagus is a little older you may want to peel the bottom third aswell. Brush the asparagus with olive oil and set aside.

In the meantime cut the butter into chunks and put it with the egg yolk into a bowl over a pan of water and place over a low heat. It is important that the water isn't in contact with the bowl.

*top tip: when making a hollandaise if your not sure its always best to go for lower heat. Impatience here will end up with scrambled eggs instead of creamy holandaise

When the butter startgs to melt put a griddle pan onto high heat and start to whisk the egg/butter mixture. From now on try to always whisk this mixture to avoid it turing into scrambled egg. When all of the butter as mixed with the egg yolk and you have a creamy yellow sauce season with salt and pepper and the lemon juice to taste and remove from the heat. The sauce should be ok for 10 minutes if needed but the faster you can serve it the better

Once the griddle pan is hot throw in the asparagus and griddle it on a high heat for a couple of minutes on each side. It should still have a crunch to it. put the asparagus on some crunchy toast and drizzle the hollandaise over it for a delightful spring snack.