Wood-oven baked beetroots, with blackcurrant leaves

Some leaves are not just for the compost heap

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Putting my pungent blackcurrant leaves to good use this week, as the large bush that I dug out of my flower bed in west London (before I moved house), bringing it to our kitchen garden here on the farm has stubbornly refused to give even a solitary fruit this year, perhaps due to me pillaging its branches and green shoots earlier in spring to make my slow-infused blackcurrant wood oil.

Just picked

I suppose it’s entirely my fault, though now I have an abundance of leaves to put to good use. The little leaves, slightly scarred with rust-tinged edges are one of the only varieties of fruit where the foliage has the solid fruity aromas of its berry. When you rub the leaves, they give off a big hit of blackcurrant that sticks to your fingers.

I’ve previously used layers of larger leaves last year to wrap beetroots whole, bind them in twine and cook them slowly in the embers of a fire, letting the leaves do the work of protecting the beets from the coals, but scenting them with a slight fruity note. I used a dressing of blackcurrants, roasted and deglazed with fig vinegar, then spoonfuls of goat’s curd on the plate, hung for a morning and seasoned with fennel pollen and orange zest.