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Seasonal recipe No 7 – Cucumber raita
Posted on August 14th, 2009 1 comment
Serve this as a side dish with curries or simply as a dip. This recipe is from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook. Without the turmeric and with a bit more garlic and a tablespoon of olive oil, you’ll have Greek tzatziki. And the Turkish cucumber and yoghurt salad cacik is pretty much identical too.Draining time: 30 minutes
Preparation time: 5 minutesServes 4-6
Ingredients
½ cucumber
¼ teaspoon fine salt
200g mild natural yoghurt
small bunch of mint
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
small pinch of ground turmeric or paprikaMethod
Grate the cucumber – you don’t need to skin – and put it in a sieve over a bowl. Sprinkle it with the fine salt and leave it to drain for half an hour. Pat the cucumber dry with kitchen paper. Mix with the yoghurt, mint, garlic and just enough water to give you the consistency you want, usually in the region of 100ml. Add a pinch of turmeric for extra flavour and pale yellow colouring or sprinkle paprika over the top.Notes
I didn’t find it necessary to add water! There are many variations on this recipe: Delia Smith slices rather than grates the cucumber and adds a finely chopped spring onion, 2 pinches cayenne pepper and 1 pinch cumin seeds; Madhur Jaffrey doesn’t bother with draining the cucumber and uses 1 pinch roasted cumin seeds. But whichever way you make it, it’s a refreshing and cooling dish.Click here to see all the recipes that Camel CSA members have recommended so far.
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This week’s boxes
Posted on August 14th, 2009 No comments
We are enjoying some more of our recently-harvested onions in Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s veg boxes this week. The Swiss chard, beetroot and potatoes also come from our own plot at St Kew Highway.
Our expert growers have provided most of the rest of the vegetables. Jeremy Brown cultivated some of the cucumbers and the flat-leaved parsley. Jane Mellowship supplied the salad packs. Mark Norman grew the courgettes and the remaining cucumbers, which feature in our Recipe No 7 – Cucumber raita.
We have a new local supplier – Polmorla Market Garden, Wadebridge – which provided the freshly-picked runner beans. Unlike the rest of the box contents, these are not grown organically.
Oops!
The boxes also contain bunches of celeriac leaves, picked in ignorance as they were mistaken for mature flat-leaved parsley.
These could be used as a garnish on salads or soup. However they are rather coarse and have a distinctive, strong flavour.
It emerges that I may have caused irrevocable damage to our celeriac crop as a result of this inadvertent act of horticultural vandalism. This is one of the downsides of relying on enthusiastic amateurs like me.
S-o-o-o embarrassing! -
We’re getting to know our onions
Posted on August 11th, 2009 No comments
One vegetable that Camel Community Supported Agriculture members can rely on this season is the humble onion. There should be enough to fill the veg boxes until the New Year.The growing team got on their hands and knees on Sunday and pulled up hundreds of red and white onions and a row of shallots before the heavens opened and the rain poured down (yet again).
Our onion harvest is now in dry storage in shed space kindly provided by Camel CSA volunteer Mark Malcolmson.
The expert growers have been taking an audit of what’s going to be available from our site at St Kew Highway over the next few weeks, apart from onions. We can expect more chard, beetroot, carrots, potatoes and parsley in the short term.
In November we can look forward to cauliflower and two varieties of cabbage, followed by parsnips and kale. In December we should get some purple sprouting broccoli, with Jerusalem artichokes in January.
Pesky predators
Unfortunately the runner beans, the French beans, the courgettes and our third crop of peas are all looking very sorry for themselves.
We’ve been overrun by voracious rabbits. It’s been a bad year for them. They’ve even been taking chunks out of the onions! The newest predators on the block are a family of partridges, which seem to love the peas.Our financial wish-list includes predator-proof fencing and additional protective fleece, but we don’t have enough money at the moment to do anything more about this. Hence our bid for external funding.
Continuity of supply
In the meantime, we will continue to fill the gaps by buying in vegetables from our three expert growers. Mark Norman has plenty of courgettes, with leeks and swedes to come. He will also have celery and celeriac plus parsnips, potatoes and onions, if need be.
Jane Mellowship will continue to provide salad bags throughout the autumn and winter months. Jeremy Brown can supply salad leaves, tomatoes and cucumbers as well as peppers, chillies and pumpkins.
We are also busy looking locally for new partners who can supply us with potatoes, carrots and other mainstay items to help fill up our veg boxes during the autumn and winter.
Big effort
Volunteer growers, pickers and packers are making a fantastic effort at the moment on Friday and Sunday mornings. Apart from harvesting the onions, the growers have made a concerted attack on the weeds, as well as pruning and tying up the boysenberries. All under the guidance of expert growers Jane, Jeremy and Mark N, helped variously over the two days by Charlotte, Danny, Fiona, Kitty, Mark M, Mike H, Mike S, Penny and Trish.
Friday’s picking and packing team comprised Callum (10), Leonie, Mark M, Mike H, Robert, Tom (11) and Trish, who packed the boxes. They harvested, sorted, counted out and bunched up enough vegetables to fill 23 boxes for grateful members. But they still need more rubber bands!
Many thanks to Jeremy G, who took the pictures.
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Bring out your bungees!
Posted on August 10th, 2009 No comments
Postal workers have been under fire for littering the ground with unwanted red rubber bands. But at Camel CSA we’re looking for as many as we can get.Our picking and packing team urgently needs rubber bands for bunching up spring onions, chard, parsley and other such delicacies to go in our veg boxes.
So if you know of any postboxes where they get discarded, or have a small stash lying around at home or in the office, please drop them in for us at St Kew Harvest farm shop.
BBC News came up with 10 uses for a red rubber band but makes no mention of veg boxes. Pity.
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Seasonal recipe No 6 – Tabbouleh (bulgar wheat salad)
Posted on August 7th, 2009 1 commentBulgar wheat salad has an earthy taste and uses an abundance of parsley, which features in Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s veg boxes this week. This well-tried version of tabbouleh comes from Claudia Roden’s classic A Book of Middle Eastern Food.
Soaking time: 30 minutes
Preparation time: about 15 minutesServes 6
Ingredients
250g fine bulgar wheat
3 tablespoons finely chopped spring onions
Salt and black pepper
About one and a half teacups finely chopped flat-leaved parsley
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons lemon juice
Cooked vine leaves, raw lettuce or tender cabbage leaves (to serve)Method
Soak the bulgar wheat in water for about half an hour before preparing the salad. It will expand enormously. Drain and squeeze out as much moisture as possible with your hands. Spread out to dry further on a cloth.Mix the bulgar wheat with the chopped onions, squeezing with your hands to crush the onions so that their juices penetrate the wheat. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the parsley, mint, olive oil and lemon juice, and mix well. Taste to see if more salt, pepper or lemon are required. The salad should be distinctly lemony.
Tabbouleh is traditionally served in individual plates lined with boiled vine leaves, or raw lettuce or cabbage leaves. People scoop the salad up with more leaves, served in a separate bowl beside it.
Notes
Claudia Roden adds: “As with most dishes, the preparation is highly individual. Quantities of ingredients vary with every family, but parsley is always used abundantly. This is a great Lebanese favourite.” More about Claudia Roden.Compare her relaxed approach to Yotam Ottolenghi, chef/patron at Ottolenghi in London. He insists there’s a right way and a wrong way to make this refreshing summer salad. Click here to find out what he claims is the right way to do it.
Click here to see all the recipes that Camel CSA members have recommended so far.
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What’s in the boxes
Posted on August 7th, 2009 1 comment
You’ve guessed it! We can expect more chard in the boxes this week plus a selection from potatoes, onions, spinach, white cabbage, courgettes, cucumber, salad leaves, parsley and spring onions.The late start to Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s first planting season, the challenging growing conditions and the rising total of veg boxes are all taking their toll on the crops cultivated by our volunteers. We are gradually buying in more vegetables from our own expert growing team.
Mark Norman, one of our expert growers, reflects the observations of his vegetable growing colleagues:
“All vegetable growers have experienced three bad years in a row. The weather has been atrocious across Britain. All over the country, growers are complaining. For instance, the beans are not pollinating properly. The supermarkets are coping as they are importing from abroad.”
In spite of this, Camel CSA’s volunteers continue to turn out in all weathers. Thanks to last week’s picking team of Cath, Charlotte, Fiona, Mike H and Robert. Trish did the maths and masterminded the packing of the vegetable boxes.The growing team took advantage of a dry morning on Sunday to plant out the remaining 10 rows of brassicas and cover them with fleece. We put in more than 750 plants, including Savoy cabbage (Vertus variety), cauliflower (Thalassa), Brussels sprouts (Igor and Darkmar) and red cabbage (Red Rum).
Thank you to expert growers Jane and Jeremy and to Carolyn, Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Kayleigh, Kitty, Mike H, Mike S. and six-year-old Haydn.
Now the planting’s over, it’s time to start lifting and storing our bumper crop of onions. And we need to make a concerted attack on the even larger crop of annual and perennial weeds…
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We’re looking for partners
Posted on August 3rd, 2009 No comments
Camel Comunity Supported Agriculture is working on a bid to the Lottery’s Local Food programme.One of the headings to be completed is a list of our “partners”, both formal and informal.
The formal partners are people and organisations that are directly engaged with the project, who are helping us to make it happen. The informal partners are advising us, supporting us, or generally helping us along the way.
The point about partners is simple. It demonstrates to the Lottery how engaged we are with our local community. So, if you are reading this and think you can help us in any way, particularly if you represent a local organisation, please get in touch with us.
