Thai Green Curry Paste

Makes a small jar of paste, enough for a curry for 4. Super Chillies seemed to work well with this.

• 4 lemongrass stalks, tough outer leaves discarded, finely sliced
• 6 medium-hot green chillies, seeded & chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled & crushed
• 2" piece of ginger, peeled & chopped
• 2 shallots, peeled & finely chopped
• 4 tbsp chopped fresh coriander
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp chopped lime zest
• 1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
• half tsp ground black peppercorns

Whizz ingredients together in a food processor to make a thick paste. To turn it into a curry, the following are needed.

• 750g chicken (or other meat or vegetables) cut into finger-thick pieces
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 200g mushrooms or other vegetables
• 400ml can coconut milk
• 400ml stock
• 8 kaffir lime leaves
• 1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
• leaves from bunch of basil, shredded
  
• leaves & stalks from bunch of coriander, finely chopped
• juice of 1 lime

1. Brown the chicken in the oil, then remove from pan and set aside. Brown mushrooms (or other vegetables) adding more oil if necessary.
   
2. Pour in coconut milk, stock, lime leaves, 4 heaped tbsp of the curry paste, fish sauce, half of the chopped herbs. Bring to the boil then simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Return chicken to the pan, add another heaped tbsp curry paste, and simmer 5-6 minutes until the meat is cooked through.
4. Stir in the remaining chopped herbs and lime juice and serve with sticky Thai rice.

Return from Holidays

Got back from a week away last night, and next door very kindly agreed to water the chillies. Blimey what a difference a week makes! The greenhouse is a bit cramped now that the plants have grown so much, and with the huge number of exotic spiders in there, it's a bit like a tropical rain forest. Things have finally started to ripen too. Lots of the Cheyennes are now orange, a couple of Fresnos are red (are almost), several tiny Habaneros (and one or two tiny Scotch Bonnets) are orange, one Super Chilli and an Apache are almost red. I was able to pick a colourful selection to try out, shown below (3 x Cheyenne, 2 x Fresno, 3 x Habanero, 1 x Pasila, 1 x Wenks).

Things were not so good for the tomatoes, and as I had expected, every one of the plants was brown and slimy with rotten fruit, from blight. Again. For the third year running. A nice big crop of green tomatoes that were just starting to ripen, instead have mostly gone brown and rotten. Definitely not worth wasting compost on them again, it's easier to use the money to buy tomatoes at tesco instead.

Chilli Update

Despite so much rain and grey skies lately, the chillies seem to have been doing very well. Most of the plants are producing fruit, some at full size already - particularly Pasilo Bajio, Yellow Mushroom/Squash, Cheyenne, Hot Lemon, Wenks Yellow Hot (in photo above) and Super Fresno. The only ones showing signs of ripening though, are the Cheyenne, which currently have 2 pods orange and 1 half orange.

The slower plants have started to catch up, and all are showing flowers or at least buds. These include Orozco (beautiful purple flowers), Aji Brazilian Bonanza, Fatalii, Zimbabwe Bird, Friar's Hat, Nepalese Bell, Yellow Bumpy, Numex Suave, Monkey Face and Peach Habanero.

The plants growing outside are also producing flowers and fruits, but with a bit of a delay compared to the greenhouse versions, and some of the plants are much smaller outside too, particularly the Super Chilli and Ring of Fire.

No sign of aphids now, and no big problems with munched leaves. However, it feels like the greenhouse is being taken over by garden spiders.

Bloody Blight is Back!

Spent the afternoon and evening on the allotment. After last week finding everything growing really well, including the potatoes in flower, we arrived to find the potato flowers gone and lots of black patches on the unhappy looking leaves. Yes, definitely blight again. Several other plotholders have already cut off their potato plants hoping to prevent blight spreading to the tubers. We did the same, but also decided to dig up some spuds to take home. As they weren't fully developed yet, we didn't get a huge crop, and the tubers were small. 2 rows of Edzel Blue and a row of Charlotte gave us a small bucketful, though they did look quite nice.


The other good thing from this, it meant we had a big raised bed clear and ready for planting. So the long-overdue sweetcorn, 8 more cos lettuces and a butternut squash plant went in, leaving half a bed free for brassicas, if we want.

Elsewhere on the plot we cleared the weeds on the fruit bed, and picked as much fruit as we could. Some big juicy green gooseberries, loads of blackcurrants, a few whitecurrants, red gooseberries and redcurrants. We pulled up lots of raspberry suckers too, which were trying to take over the whole area.


Runner beans, climbing beans and (especially) pumpkins are all still growing at a surprising rate. We extended the 'cottage garden' bed by about a metre along one side, and put a few more pumpkins in (mammouth, red etapes, winter festival, sunshine) with a couple of arch frames pushed in, to train the winter festival and sunshine squashes over. We removed the mangetout peas (which had produced 4 pods in total) and their supports, and replaced with another arch frame to train one of the enormous pumpkin plants over.

Chilli Update

Been feeding the chilli plants 'Chilli Focus' for the past few weeks (now that I've found somewhere in Cardiff that can supply it) and it seems to be working. Most of the plants appear to be doing very well. Just wish the sunshine would come back now that we've had a week of grey skies and rain. Aphids have almost completely vanished (apart from on the Monkey Face plant) and although the hoverfly larvae are still around, there are much fewer of them.


Here is a breakdown of the plants in the greenhouse and their current state.

• Wenks Yellow Hot: flowering.
• Orozco: very short & slow to grow, finally has a couple of tiny flower buds.
• Eve's Apple: even shorter & slower to grow, 1 flower and a few buds.
• Habanero/Scotch Bonnet: I love these plants! Bushy with masses of flowers, but only found 1 baby fruit so far.
• Aji Brazilian Bonanza: tall, big leaves, no flowers or buds.
• Hot Lemon: lots of flowers, tiny fruit starting to appear.
• Super Fresno: flowers, a few fruit (almost full size).
• Cheyenne: amazing plants! Short but very bushy, flowers, lots of fruit, many full size.
• Fatalii: late growth spurt, sturdy looking but less than 1ft tall, 1 or 2 tiny flower buds finally appearing.
• Zimbabwe Bird: bushy, attractive plant with small leaves, lots of tiny flower buds.
• Friar's Hat: tall, big leaves, no sign of any flower buds.
• Nepalese Bell: tall, big leaves, 3 tiny flower buds.
• Yellow Bumpy: tall, big leaves, 1 or 2 tiny flower buds.
• Yellow Mushroom/Squash: tall, flowers, 3 fruits.
• Numex Suave: slow growing, still less than 1ft tall, big leaves, no sign of any flower buds.
• Monkey Face: less than 1ft tall, particularly bad infestation of aphids (still there), 1 or 2 tiny flower buds.
• Pasilo Bajio: flowers, 3 full size (quite large) dark green fruit.
• Jalapeno: tall, flowers.
• Super Chilli: tall than expected, flowers, some tiny fruit.
• Peach Habanero: tiny flower buds.
• Ring of Fire: flower buds, a few flowers.
• Demon Red: tiny flower buds, 1 or 2 flowers.
• Apache: flower buds, flowers.

Outside are a mixture of Jalapeno, Super Chilli and Ring of Fire plants, which are less advanced than the greenhouse plants, but have a few flower buds. Something has been munching on their leaves, leaving lots of small holes.