Carlin Peas

When we discovered food writer Aine Carlin we couldn't resist sending her some of our carlin peas. She was delighted to find she shared her name with a pea (after all, her blog is called PeaSoup!) and quickly put our gift to good use.

Sue, who looks after our bookkeeping, is a great baker - in fact she teaches bread making all over Norfolk and Suffolk at her Bread Workshops. Naturally we were delighted when she brought in some of these delicious Carlin pea brownies!.

Carlin Peas (or black badgers, brown badgers, grey peas, maple peas, black peas...) make a great substitute for Puy lentils or chickpeas in salads, stews, curries and dips, but traditionally they're eaten 'parched' - particularly in the north of England and especially on Bonfire Night.

Lindsey Dickson's Black Badger bars are an energy and protein packed version of a brownie, but with the addition of ground almonds, dried apricots and Black Badger Carlin Peas.

Made with Hodmedod's Red Fox Carlin Peas, this moist, rich cake was served to great acclaim and devoured with much enthusiasm at our recent Open Day - another superb recipe from Lindsay Dickson of The Eating Tree.

Lizzy Hughes of the Our Lizzy vegetarian cookery school in Malvern, Worcestershire sent us this mouth-watering recipe for a spicy and colourful summer salad of our "Black Badger" Carlin Peas.