The growing season is here!

Those of you who are gardeners as well as cooks will share my frustration in the weather I'm sure! I've managed to get out and plant a few seeds in my poly tunnels and the veggie beds are starting to spring into life, but it's so chilly at the moment that the last place I want to be is outside! We are still harvesting vegetables from last year though, by some miracle my chard seems to have come through the winter and the purple sprouting broccoli has been saved again from the pigeons. I bought some patriotic bunting from our local Co-op which is now adorning the brasicca cage!!They're a bit clever our local pigeons, they'd worked out that when the netting was lower they could sit on it and happily tuck in to the delicious young broccoli. I wish my teenagers were quite so keen on it...

I'm also taking advantage of a delicious glut of rhubarb in my veggie plot, and i made a delicious (even though I do say so myself) rhubarb and ginger cheesecake - very simple but really yummy.

4oz ginger-nuts, crushed
4oz digestive biscuits, crushed
4oz melted butter

1lb stewed rhubarb (cooked and cooled in its own juices with a good helping of caster sugar)
250g creamed cheese
8fl oz double cream
2 tbsp sweet ginger sauce
3oz caster sugar

First of all, make the base by melting the butter and mixing in the crushed biscuit crumbs. Press down firmly in to a flan tin and pop in to the fridge to set.

Then whisk the double cream until soft peaks from and beat in the cream cheese (you can keep whisking if you want). Mix in the sugar, ginger sauce and the stewed rhubarb - I always mix in the rhubarb a couple of tablespoons at a time and taste as I go. You want to get a good hit of that rhubarb tanginess but with a hint of ginger and its heat coming through.

If you have any rhubarb left over you can always sieve it and make it into a sauce to serve with the cheesecake or just spoon it over as it is.

Hope you're all enjoying the spring weather and I'm sure like us you can't wait for the summer to arrive!

Happy cooking

The w4s team