When we moved to this new house last year, we were pleased to have a bigger garden so we could grow stuff. The garden has a mix of flowers, vegetables and succelents. We’re not great gardeners, it has to be said and our hit rate is pretty up and down. But we have had a lot of success with courgettes, aka zucchini.
Some of them have got pretty big, to the extent that they probably count as marrows. On Thursday we decided that we needed to pick them before the hot weather came (it’s going to get up to 38 today…), leading to 5 kilos of marrows in the kitchen.
This meant it was time to get cooking. I found a useful article on BBC Good Food, which gave me some inspiration for what to do.
In the end, I’ve done 4 things with them.
Yesterday I made marrow and ginger jam, using the BBC recipe. I went slightly off piste by adding in a pinch each of ground cardamom, ginger and cinnamon, just to amp up the flavour a bit. If the test plate and pan are anything to go by, this is going to be like a spiced lemon marmalade. The recipe suggests leaving it a few weeks to let the flavours develop, so I’ll update when I get round to having some.
The next thing was to do something with them for lunch today. So I turned to another BBC recipe and made cheese and courgette muffins. I used mature Gouda instead of cheddar, and we didn’t have cherry tomatoes, but they were definitely very yummy. I realised that there are two varieties in the pile, and the lighter yellow ones have much thinner skin, so I used one of those in this recipe and didn’t bother to peel it.
We’re having a Moroccan lamb dish tonight, so I did a marrow curry as a side dish – there are so many overlapping flavours between Indian and Moroccan I don’t think it will clash. I used garam masala instead of the ground spices.
Last but not least, I made a cake, based on this courgette cake recipe. Again, I used the thin-skinned variety so it would grate better. I free-styled a bit, adding in shredded coconut and a handful of dried fruit, and leaving out the nuts. And I made the icing with cream cheese rather than mascarpone. I do love a vegetable cake, somehow it is much moister than a traditional cake. I had a couple of slices with a cup of tea and I have to say it was bang on.
I love cooking, but I haven’t had much luck at the WI/CWA end of the spectrum. So it was great to put on the apron and do something a bit “country kitchen”. Hopefully you’ll find some inspiration for your own marrow/courgette/zucchini glut.