Ingredients (for 6 people)

• 50ml olive oil
• 100g Spanish onion, chopped
• 100g fennel bulbs, chopped
• 500g cooked diced potato
• 20g red chilli, finely chopped
• 15g fennel seeds, ground
• 20g garlic, crushed
• 15g sweet paprika powder
• 10g fresh thyme leaves
• 10g  turmeric
• 3 fresh bay leaves
• 200g plum tomatoes
• 100ml/3½ fl oz fish stock or water
• 100ml/5 fl oz white wine
• 500g/firm white fish
• 100g/3½ oz toasted almonds, ground
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges (to serve)

Preparation method

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pan and sauté the onions, fennel, chilli, ground fennel seeds and garlic for a few minutes.

2. Add the paprika, thyme, turmeric, bay leaves and tomatoes and cook until reduced to a thickish sauce.

3. Add the fish stock and white wine and bring to a simmer.

4. Add the diced potatoes, simmer for 5 minutes.

5. Put the fish pieces into the stew and stir in the almonds.

6. Heat for a minute or two and serve with wedges of lemon.

If you’ve visited our Mediterranean Biome recently, you may well have tried some of the fantastic food being cooked in our outdoor ovens.  Well, now, you can buy these original outdoor ovens from our webshop and to celebrate we’ve asked our chef, Tony Trenerry, to share his popular recipe, for pizza twists.

Pizza twists from the Eden Project
Ingredients (serves 6)
• 7g sachet dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups plain flour
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

How to cook:
1. Combine 3/4 of a cup of warm water with the yeast, sugar and salt in a jug. Whisk with a fork to dissolve. Cover with plastic wrap. Set aside in a warm place for 5 minutes or until bubbles appear on the surface.
2. Sift flour into a bowl. Add yeast mixture and olive oil. Mix to form a soft dough. Turn onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 10 minutes or until elastic. Place in a lightly greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Stand in a warm place for 25 to 30 minutes or until dough has doubled in size.
3. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth
4. Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a large baking tray.
5. Cut dough into 4 portions. Cut each portion into 6 pieces. Roll 1 piece into a 10cm-long sausage shape. Cut sausage shape in half lengthways. Twist strips together, pressing ends to secure. Place on prepared tray. Repeat with remaining dough.
6. Brush each pizza twist with oil. Sprinkle with sea salt. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until crisp and golden. Serve warm with a dip of your choice.

Other outdoor cooking products

We’ve also added lots more outdoor cooking products to our webshop including the bright and cheerful bucket barbecue, the handy fold-up barbecue and the all-time classic frontier stove.

Today’s freaky specimen: Stone Pine
(Pinus pinea)

Found growing in the Mediterranean regions of the world, the Stone Pine has an explosive surprise hiding inside its male cones: a sharp tap on one will release a huge cloud of pollen. In nature, this job is carried out by the wind, which disperses pollen from the tree and goes on to land on the female cones. Three years after pollination the pine produces seeds (the longest maturation period of any pine). The life cycle of this plant continues as the seed germinates and grows into a large tree that produces pollen.

The Stone Pine is probably better known for its edible seeds, or ‘pine nuts’, which are used widely in Mediterranean cooking.You can find the Stone Pine growing in the Mediterranean Biome at Eden.

You can find the Stone Pine growing in the Mediterranean Biome at Eden.

Here are some of the many plant highlights this month as spring really gets going at Eden.

Outdoor Biome

Daffodil
Narcissus
Eden’s bursting with life at the moment, with buds and blossom appearing all over the outdoor gardens. Our bright yellow daffodils are a sure sign spring has sprung.

Rainforest Biome

Pineapple
Ananas comosus ‘Queen’
The pineapples will be looking pretty good in March, make sure you get there before the gardeners eat them all!

Dutchman’s Pipe
Aristolochia cathcartii
Our plants don’t get much more interesting than this. It bizarrely produces cream, pipe-like structures, veined with purple and fuzzy rims for its flowers!

Mediterranean Biome

Peach
Prunus persica
It’s hard to miss these trees when they’re completely covered in blossom. They look beautiful now and will go on the produce fruit after being pollinated by bees or our paintbrushes.

Ingredients (for 8 people):

• 15ml olive oil
• 125g white onions, diced
• 10g garlic, chopped
• 125g courgette, diced
• 50g celery, diced (1/2 cooked)
• 375g potato, diced (cooked)
• 125g swede, diced (cooked)
• 50g celeriac, diced (1/2 cooked)
• 25g spinach, roughly chopped
• 50g red pepper, diced
• 375g canned chick peas
• 250g canned chopped tomatoes
• 250g canned tomato sauce (passata style)
• 375ml vegetable stock
• 50ml white wine
• 15g chopped parsley
• 10g chopped oregano
• 5g dried red chilli flakes
• 5g cinnamon
• Pinch salt
• Pinch milled black pepper
• 80g parmesan cheese, grated to serve on top

Method:

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pan, sauté the onions and garlic until they soften.
2. Add all the (non-canned) vegetables and cook for a further five minutes.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Add seasoning to taste.
5. To serve, sprinkle grated parmesan on the top.

Here’s our Mediterranean Biome Supervisor, Catherine Cutler, with the tallest of them all (right). The magnificent Aloe ferox bears many of the same properties as the Aloe vera plant, as it is used to treat cuts, wounds, burns and indigestion.

Just around the corner are the saucer-shaped flower heads of the pink and yellow King Protea (left – Protea cynaroides), the national flower of South Africa, where it is commonly known as the King Sugar Bush.

Nearby, are the elegant blooms of the Arum Lillies (below – Zantedeschia aethiopica), which grow to more than six feet tall in the Biome.

Mediterranean Biome Supervisor Catherine Cutler said: “This has been the longest, hardest, coldest winter any of us can remember and it is an incredible tonic to see all this colour and life coming back to the garden, both inside the Biome and across the whole site.”

Designed by the engineering company behind the velodrome for the 2012 Olympics, the shelter is being put together by a world-class team of experts – along with local volunteers and businesses – to raise money and awareness for Cornwall-based humanitarian charity ShelterBox.

Its paying guests will be delegates to the forthcoming creative business summit held at Eden, Intersections 2011, who will enjoy a unique night ‘under the stars’ inside our Mediterranean Biome.

While the temperature is likely to drop below 10°C during the night, the team will create sumptuous surroundings with reclaimed fabrics, using the likes of sheepskin off-cuts and ribbons. Guests will also be treated to live music, a hamper of ethically sourced goodies and a breakfast cooked by a top chef.

The idea behind the hotel is not only to create an unforgettable experience but to remind people that, while these guests are only staying for one night, in Haiti and Indonesia families have been living in temporary ShelterBox tents for over a year. The project also aims to demonstrate just what can be done with the large amounts of usable scrap that is sent to landfill each year.

The ShelterBox hotel and design conference (http://intersections2011.com) are part of Cornwall’s wider design season (www.cornwalldesignseason.co.uk) throughout February, March and April, which will see events and installations at 15 locations across the county, including Eden, Tate St Ives and Falmouth Art Gallery. We’ll bring you news of what’s happening at Eden over the coming weeks…

If you’d like to get involved in helping to build the hotel on 2 March, or dismantle it on 3 March, please contact clare@dottcornwall.com

If you’d like to try this at home, here’s the recipe. 

Pork belly and chorizo stew
This is a simple recipe. Once you’ve prepared the ingredients, the mixture only needs about 15 minutes on the stove before you pop it in the oven for several hours. Serves six.

Ingredients:

• 400g pork belly, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 80g smoked streaky bacon, roughly sliced
• 80g chorizo sausage, roughly diced
• 80g red onion, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
• 20g smoked paprika
• 400g tinned chopped tomatoes
• 60ml red wine
• 400g canned cannellini beans
• 150ml water
• 15ml olive oil
• 500g potatoes, diced

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C / 325 °F
2. Heat the olive oil in a heavy-based, oven-proof pot that’s large enough to hold all the ingredients.
3. When the oil is heated, brown the pork belly pieces in batches and remove from the pan.
4. Add the bacon and sauté for a couple of minutes, then add the onions and garlic and continue cooking until the onions have softened.
5. Add the paprika and chorizo and cook for a further two minutes.
6. Return the pork belly to the pot along with the tomatoes, red wine and water.
7. Place into the preheated oven and cook for 1.5 hours.
8. Remove the pan, stir in the diced potatoes and cannellini beans and return to the oven for a further 30 minutes.

Serve with crusty bread.

These freaky fruit might look like they’re from the Land of the Giants, but we actually grow them in the Mediterranean Biome at Eden! Although they are genuinely large, they are not genuine lemons: they are citrons (Citrus medica) and we’ve had an excellent crop this year.

If you’re thinking ‘mmmmm, giant lemonade’, you’ll be disappointed as the citron contains little or no juice and is made up mostly of a thick white rind. It is usually grown to make candied peel but is also added to pickles and preserves in South India, Iranian jam as well as fragrant South Korean tea.

The citron can be found in the Mediterranean Biome’s Citrus Grove along with other curious fruits such as the Buddha’s Hand (Citrus medica digitata) – a relative of the citron with long finger-like sections – and the Limequat (X Citrofortunella floridana) – a cross between the key lime and the kumquat.

You can catch live peformances from the choir, singing a variety of arrangements, on Friday and Saturday evenings throughout our winter season of events.