Socca, farinata and other things you can do with a bag of chick pea flour

A few months ago I bought a bag of chick pea flour from the local health food store. I didn't have any firm plans for it, but it was going cheap due to being near its best-before date, and I can never resist a bargain.

Since then the bag of flour has become unequivocally out of date, and I have wondered what to do with it. It still seems to taste fine. So I have used it as a thickener in some curries, which works quite well. It lends a flavour of its own as well as helping to make a thick sauce (which is happily low-fat too). But it was going to take a lot of curries to get through a 1 kg bag of the stuff. Then I made a simple soup with it, based on a recipe on the packet. It tasted fine, but I've made better soups.

And then I came across socca - or is it farinata? It's a dish found in southern France, Italy, and various other parts of the world. Depending on thickness, it can be a pancake or a flatbread. Either way, it's made from chick pea flour, water and olive oil.

The Edible Bus Stop and a harvest-time tart

One of my favourite London grassroots projects is the Edible Bus Stop, a project which grows food on patches of waste land by bus stops in south London. So I'm pleased to see they're expanding beyond the original two bus stops in Stockwell and West Norwood. Brixton, Clapham Common and Crystal Palace are next. They are starting with the 322 bus route, but other bits of the transport network are on the cards. This weekend they're holding a harvest celebration in Stockwell. There's plenty to celebrate.

It started off as a guerilla gardening project and has gone on to win recognition and awards. I love the idea that a group of volunteers have transformed some derelict land into something attractive and productive. The benefits are numerous - exercise, community spirit,  nicer-looking neighbourhoods, fresh fruit and veg... Three cheers, I say.

In celebration of this, here's an easy harvest recipe. It looks smart but doesn't take too long. If your own harvest includes tomatoes but not courgettes, or vice versa, you can just include one of them.

Racing pigs and London honey at the Lambeth Country Show

I hadn't long been in London when I visited last year's Lambeth Country Show in Brockwell Park. Now that I'm more of a city girl, the whole concept of having sheep, ducks, goats, owls and racing pigs in the middle of south London seems more bizarre than ever. Racing pigs? I hear you say - yes indeed.

But as this is a food blog, I suppose I'd better tell you about the edible aspects of it. There were the amazing fruit and vegetable sculptures once again, and a produce show displaying perfect plums, purple potatoes, tomatoes like jewels and lettuces as frilly and elaborate as any flower.

The fruit and vegetable carving competition (You can't see it so well here, but the carrot sculpture on the right is a version of Antony Gormley's Field for the British Isles artwork of 1993)

I tried some great cakes, including a Jamaican rum cake that was egg free and dairy-free and extremely tasty (made with wholegrain spelt flour, coconut oil and raw cane sugar by the Heavenly Cake Company).