Your own garden feast (+recipes)

Season well and add a handful of breadcrumbs to absorb some of the juices. Photo / Peter Cassidy

It's one thing to produce tomatoes and pumpkins - or any other fruit or vegetable for the table but it becomes another when you realise that most crops arrive in bulk.

Grow Your Own Eat your Own: Making the most of your garden produce by Bob Flowerdew, with photography by Peter Cassidy.

Grow Your Own Eat Your Own

shows you how to make the best of your crops, avoid waste, and enjoy healthy homegrown, homecooked meals.

The book begins in the garden showing how to achieve a more continuous crop as well as how to extend your harvest. Then it's into the kitchen with recipes for preserves, bottling, jams and eat-now dishes. If you have a garden this book will be invaluable to you.

• Extracted with permission from Grow Your Own Eat your Own: Making the most of your garden produce by Bob Flowerdew, with photography by Peter Cassidy. Published by Kyle Books and distributed in New Zealand by New Holland, $39.99.

Extract: Grow Your Own Eat Your Own

Cinnamon baked pears

Bake in a hot oven, 200C, until softened and caramelised on top. Photo / Peter Cassidy

If the pears are large, prepare them as for baked apples, but if they are small, peel, halve and core them. Mix together five parts caster sugar, two parts powdered cinnamon (for example, if you have about six large pears use 60g sugar with a tablespoon cinnamon), a pinch of allspice, a hint of freshly grated nutmeg and ground ginger, and a tad of salt. Place the pears into an ovenproof dish; rub them all over with softened butter and the spiced sugar. Bake in a hot oven, 200C, until softened and caramelised on top.

The same spices go well with stewed pears, and peppercorns or cloves can add extra warmth.

Plum juice and sugar makes a good syrup for pouring over ice cream. Photo / Peter Cassidy

Plum sorbet

Take ripe plums, clean and cut into pieces and stew with enough water to cover them until soft. Cool and sieve to remove stones and skins. Mix with an equal volume of concentrated apple juice or sugar syrup. Cool slightly then pour into an icecream maker and churn until frozen. Alternatively, if you don't have a machine place into a metal tub and part freeze. Whisk the mix every 1 & 1/2 hours or so to aerate and prevent ice crystals forming until you have a soft sorbet. Return to the freezer until ready to eat. If not used within weeks, the sorbet will slowly turn hard and white - this is a crystallisation and the icy mixture formed is another frozen delight.

Plum juice and sugar makes a good syrup for pouring over ice cream.

Stuffed courgette flowers

Pick just newly opened flowers. Remove the inner stamen, being very careful not to damage the petals. Make a savoury filling by frying a small chopped onion, with 350g minced pork, a slosh of white wine, a tablespoon tomato puree, a grated apple, a little chopped sage and some stock, just to cover. Cook for about half an hour until reduced and tasty, cool slightly and add a handful of breadcrumbs. Carefully stuff the flowers with the mix and place into a baking dish. Prepare a tomato sauce by simmering peeled, de-seeded ripe tomatoes with a small chopped onion, lightly fried with a clove of garlic in olive oil, until thick and glossy. Add some oregano, seasoning and a pinch of sugar. Spoon this sauce around and over the flowers and bake in a medium oven for half an hour. Courgette flowers are so easy to fill - they can be used in place of vine leaves or nori seaweed for wrapping fillings or rice

Season well and add a handful of breadcrumbs to absorb some of the juices. Photo / Peter Cassidy

Baked pumpkin or squash

To prepare the pumpkin, remove the lids and scrape out the seeds. Place into a baking dish, season and drizzle with olive oil. Roast for 20 minutes or so in a medium oven, whilst you prepare the filling.

Make a forcemeat with minced meat or good sausage meat, about 450g - or you could use cheese. Add a chopped onion, some thyme or sage and fry all together in olive oil until lightly browned. Add a slug of wine if you like. Season well and add a handful of breadcrumbs to absorb some of the juices. Spoon the mix into the cavity of the pumpkins, replace the lids and return to the oven for another 20 - 30 minutes until the squashes are soft and browning around the edges.

The small winter-storing squashes are much tastier to use here than the larger Halloween varieties which tend to be rather watery and lacking in flavour.