Pontack part 2 and a lovely curry

First up, the second half of making the Pontack sauce...the elderberries and vinegar emerged after four hours in a very low oven. Out with the potato masher to ease the last bit of moisture from the sieved berries. The spice mixture is black pepper, mace, cloves, allspice and a knob of fresh ginger. Pam's recipe calls for shallots, but I substituted with a couple of sliced red onions.

Into the pan it all goes, for around half an hour's simmering. Then you strain again, return the clear liquid to the pot and boil hard for five minutes. Then leave to cool and bottle up the purple liquor. It tastes fruity and vinegary and not quite like anything else. I'll use it to pep up beef stews - Pam says it's also good with venison and liver.

I had planned a mushroom and stilton pie for supper, but as it actually felt like summer yesterday, I changed my mind and went for a favourite recipe adapted from a Vicky Bhogul special, from her book A Year of Cooking Like Mummyji. I love Vicky's writing and recipes. This one is based on her Green Masala Roast Chicken Breasts. The original is fab - but I fancied an egg and potato curry with allotment pots.

A mild summer egg and potato curry

2 green chillis (more if you're not into mild)

1 tsp ground turmeric

2 tbsp whole coriander seeds

2 tsp garam masala

4 cloves garlic

2 spring onions

a thumb sized knob of fresh ginger

3 tbsp yoghurt

2 tbsp oil - I use groundnut

1 tsp salt

Roughly chop your chillis, garlic and onions and bung these, plus all the other ingredients, into a food processor. Whiz. You end with a masala that looks like - yes! - wallpaper paste. But it smells fab.

Boil your potatoes - I used about six medium sized Shetland Black - they're a wonderful purple colour. You have to watch them carefully at the end of the cooking time as they are very floury and tend to break up if you're not quick to whip them off the heat. In another pan, hard boil three eggs. Then put the masala in a pan, add the halved eggs and the potatoes and heat through. Serve with freshly chopped coriander.

Pudding was part of my foraging haul - blackberry and apple crumble. I used to loathe crumble because we got it three times a week at school. And it was a very nasty crumble. But I'm slowly coming back to it after many years of avoiding it like the plague. I stewed the garden apples very gently with a bit of butter and some golden castor sugar. Once they were done, I just bunged the blackberries on top to soak up some of the heat from the apples.

My crumble mix is flour, butter, sugar and ground almonds. Into the oven at gas mark 4 for around 40 minutes. Serve with fresh cream. Yep, I really am coming round to crumble.

Saturday salad

A lovely sunny Saturday calls for a salad and one of my great stand-bys is a potato and coriander salad, based on a Sophie Grigson recipe from Sophie's Table. I must have read the recipe nearly 20 years ago, and I've been making it ever since. It's a lovely mix of soft buttery potatoes, lemon and coriander tang and mellow, grassy olive oil.

Boil your salad potatoes with a few stalks of coriander - when tender, drain, fish out the coriander and bin, cut the potatoes into chunks. Add some sliced spring or red onion, the juice of a lemon, a good slug of olive oil, and a handful of chopped coriander and mint. Stir well so that all the potato chunks are coated with the dressing. That's it. I normally leave it for a couple of hours so that the warm potato can drink in the lemony liquid. It keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days.

Also on the Tottenham salad table tonight: some smokey aubergine combined with pekmez, yoghurt and chopped mint, hard boiled egg with wild garlic mayonnaise, some Greek gigantic beans in dressing, serrano ham. And I must reread Sophie's Friends for more old favourites.

Potato day on the plot

The potatoes went in yesterday, under blue skies and strong spring sun. I didn't get the allotment until late April last year, so the potatoes went in very late and the harvest wasn't huge. But the Shetland Blacks and Edzell Blues were so tasty. They're more floury than modern varieties, so you have to watch them like a hawk while they boil or they turn into sludge.
This year I ordered the heritage pack from Thompson and Morgan which includes Highland Burgandy Red (in the pic), Shetland Black, Skerry Blue, Salad Blue and the wonderfully named Mr Little's Yeltholm Gypsy which is red, blue and white. Another variety I'd like to try next year is Sharpe's Express, mentioned in Forgotten Fruits - which is a wonderful book. The author says it has the best taste of all.
Heritage potatoes growers Carrolls won a big Observer Food prize last week: their range is superb and you can get your tatties from their online shop - either seed or for eating right now.