Scoffers dinner

Look at this! When I planted these cauliflowers as seedlings in October, I heard some scoffing from the old guard on my allotment site but I didn’t pay any attention and let’s see who’s scoffing now!

This is the babiest of the six caulis I put in the ground – they had a little bit of fleece protection and it has been a very mild winter, so I could have got no curds on any of them, but as it is, all of them are heading up and two were just the right size to be harvested when we went to the plot on Sunday – they are fist-sized, which is just enough to make a little one-person cauliflower cheese, or even a cauliflower cheese pie in a biggish ramekin (dead easy – just steam the cauli, pop it in the ramekin whole, pour a good cheese sauce over it and then top with a round of puff pastry).

This one will be ready in another two or three weeks, I reckon and given the prices of cauliflowers in the shops, it was well worth us re-using a bit of empty ground with a gamble crop. I feel like Marie Antoinette, only I'm saying 'let them eat cauliflower ...'

The haul wasn’t bad this weekend, a few soup parsnips, a red cabbagette (they make great coleslaw and lunchtime salad leaves and you get three or four if you cut a red cabbage about two inches above the ground and let the stump produce more baby plants), a leek and the cauliflowers.