Garden Tool Set

Inspired by the description of mouse melons in Tom Moggach's book, The Urban Kitchen Gardener, we set out in search of seeds for the Secret Garden earlier this year.

Mouse melons (Melothria scabra), also known here as cucamelons, or Mexican Sour Gherkins (which just makes them sound unpleasant) come from central America, where they are known  as sandita ('little watermelon') and used in salsas, salads, pickles and desserts.

They are ready to eat straight from the plant when they are just a bit larger than a grape and really do look like miniature, dolls-house sized watermelons. Firm-skinned, but juicy inside, the flavour is like an astringent cucumber - cucumber dressed with lime juice, say. Perfect for adding a zingy kick to salads, and salsas, or slicing into drinks, or, as we did at the Secret Garden Club, eating straight from the plant as a snack.

We found our seeds from James Wong's Homegrown Revolution range for Suttons. Mouse melons are deceptively easy to grow even in our relatively cool and damp climate. They are not frost-hardy, so sow them indoors to start off with, either in modules or small pots, and keep them there until the weather has warmed up properly. They can be transferred outdoors in late May or even June, or you can raise them in a greenhouse. Give them something to scramble up - the plants send out small green tendrils which will wind round a stake, trellis, or the nearest other plant.

Other than that they need very little fussing over. The tiny yellow flowers will appear in July, followed by the distinctive oval fruits. These start ripening round about now and should keep going until October.

We've grown ours in the open ground, but by all accounts they do well in pots as well.

Suppliers: James Wong's Homegrown Revolution range, Suttons Seeds, also Victoriana Nursery Gardens.

Mouse melons

Panzanella salad

I made this summer salad, the ultimate in cucina povera, last night using all home-grown ingredients from the gorgeous knobbly tomatoes, to the over-ripened padron pepper which had turned red and spicy, to the absurd dolls house 'mouse melons' which taste of sour cucumber. The latter are very popular in Mexican cuisine. We've grown them for the first time this summer, on recommendation from Tom Moggach, author of The Urban Kitchen Gardener, an unusual and cute addition to our repertoire. The garden is stunning right now. What a fantastic year, so needed after the depressing yield of last year.
I've had panzanella salads with flat bread and with pizza dough but proper sourdough is the right way to go, for both taste and texture.
We had most of it last night but I mopped up the rest this morning and it was even better.

150-170g of torn up sourdough bread
olive oil
1 clove of garlic, grated finely
10 tasty tomatoes
1 onion, sliced thinly
1 chilli pepper, deseeded, sliced thinly
Half a cucumber, peeled and julienned (if you don't have mouse melons)
A handful of basil leaves
Salt
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
Black pepper
A handful of mouse melons, some sliced, some whole


Put your torn up sourdough onto an oven proof dish and toss with olive oil. Grate a clove of garlic over it and toss again.
Place in a low oven until slightly crispy at the edges. About 15 minutes.
In the meantime, slice the tomatoes, I did some sliced and some quartered.
Toss the onion, chilli pepper and cucumber (optional) with salt.
Then toss all the ingredients together with the basil leaves, red wine vinegar, adding olive oil, salt and black pepper to taste, then mix together including the sourdough.
Add the mousemelons on top.

To accompany this I did a quick bean dish:
2 red peppers from Riverford organics
1 clove garlic, minced
1 box of cannelini beans (380g)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 swirl of truffle oil

We've grown chillis, aubergines, tomatoes, potatoes and possibly sweet potatoes but no red peppers this year. So I roasted two from Riverford until the skins were black. I then peeled the skins off and ripped the pepper into soft strips, removing the seeds.
Using an oven proof dish, douse the red pepper strips with olive oil, salt and grated garlic, mix with the box of cannelini beans and heat for 15-20 minutes in a hot oven. When you remove it from the oven, add a swirl of truffle oil and black pepper.
Serve warm.

Tomorrow we have the Secret Garden Club session on Italian vegetables: tickets £30 for workshop and supper