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Apart from an extensive nasturtium patch, the other thing we have a lot of at the moment is grapes. My partner’s parents gave us a seedless grapevine as a house-warming present when we moved here and it seems to like its home. The vine serves two purposes – to produce fruit, and to provide shade as it’s growing over a pergola on the patio which gets rather hot in summer. So of course it’s quite a big plant and that means rather a lot of grapes, in spite of extensive pruning. For at least a month now we’ve been giving bunches of grapes to every visitor, and of course eating plenty of them ourselves. But now the grapes are tending towards over-ripe and at the same time the weather has turned really wet, which means that the grapes are either going to fall off or go mouldy (or even both) very soon! So we had to gather all the remaining grapes as quickly as we could and now they are filling bowls and trays all around the kitchen! In the past we have tried various ways to use a glut of grapes. We have ruled out making wine, since my partner gave up alcohol about five years ago. We tried juicing them, but we don’t have a proper fruit press or the means to store the juice very successfully. I could borrow one, but it would only really be worth it if we made a really large quantity. One year I dried large trays full and made sultanas, which were very sticky but tasty! I’ve made grape jelly, and that was OK although not top of the list of family favourites. So this year I looked around for other ideas. The first thing I tried was roasted cauliflower with grapes. This was a recipe from the BBC Good Food site which is always reliable. Basically it involved tossing a cauliflower, broken up into florets, in a tablespoon of olive oil with cumin and caraway seeds, salt and pepper, and roasting for 20 minutes. Then mixing in 100 g of grapes and roasting for another 5 to 10 minutes. Chopped parsley, mint and toasted hazelnuts were then sprinkled over. The recipe included a dressing of lemon juice, buttermilk and tahini but as we were using this as a hot side dish I omitted that. The result went down extremely well, I would definitely do this again. A better result than the nasturtiums! Of course I've done the usual thing of forgetting to take a photo until it was half-eaten! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.