They’re determined to eat local at Shayne’s house

One of Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s veg box members is going all out to make local food work in north Cornwall.

Shayne House, co-founder of the Tea Appreciation Society, demonstrates in his blogpost Stuff the Supermarkets how to source food locally without going to a superstore. He says:

Everything in my stuffed marrow recipe excluding the balsamic vinegar was produced in Cornwall. If I ignore the salt, the rest of the food came from within a 15 mile radius of my home. My food miles were drastically reduced thanks to a number of fantastic local producers.

This is Shayne’s list of ingredients sourced locally in order to make stuffed marrow:

1 marrow – Camel Community Supported Agriculture vegetable box scheme, St Kew Highway
1 small onion finely chopped – Camel Community Supported Agriculture veg box 
scheme
500g lean minced beef – Button Meats, Michaelstow
30g fresh white breadcrumbs – Malcolm Barnecutt Bakery
1 tbsp chopped parsley – Camel Community Supported Agriculture veg box scheme
1 tbsp chopped chives - Shayne’s garden
1 tsp balsamic vinegar – fail
sea salt to taste – Cornish Sea Salt Co, Porthkerris
1 egg beaten – Killibury Nursery, Wadebridge
250ml cheese sauce – cheese from Davidstow Creamery; milk from Bradley’s Dairy, Delabole; flour from The Cornish Mill & Bakehouse, St Newlyn East

Seasonal recipe No 59: Great Ormond Street carrot cake

This makes an ideal children’s rainy day activity if the bank holiday weekend in the UK turns damp and miserable. (No… please no!) Otherwise it’s a delicious, moist and easy cake to enjoy any time.

It went down a treat with children and adults at one of Camel CSA’s volunteer growing sessions in May. We were sowing the carrots we’ve just harvested for this week’s veg boxes.

The recipe is aimed at 7-11 year olds and is on the Kids First for Health Great Ormond Street Hospital website.

It comes from Jeanette Orrey, the school dinner lady who revealed all to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver about the state of British school dinners. She told him about the terrible Turkey Twizzlers and showed him how she’d really improved the eating habits of the kids at her school.

She says: “I like carrot cake because it contains vegetables and fruit. If the grated carrot is soggy, pat it dry with kitchen paper before adding.”

Personally, I’d go easy on the icing. A light lemony or orangey glaze does the trick.

Serves: at least 8

Preparation / cooking: 60-70 minutes (depending on age of cook)

Ingredients
140g (5oz) butter or margarine
140g (5oz) soft brown sugar
2 large eggs
225g (8oz) self-raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 orange
175g (6oz) grated carrot
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
55g (2 oz) sultanas

Ten steps to scrumptious carrot cake
1. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5

2. Lightly grease a square tin (18cm/7in)

3. Line the base of the tin

4. In a bowl mix the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy

5. Beat in the eggs

6. Add and fold in the flour, baking powder, orange zest and juice, grated carrot, vanilla and sultanas

7. Scoop the carefully mixed mixture into the tin

8. Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes until deliciously golden brown

9. When it’s ready, remove from the oven and let the cake cool in the tin before you take it out

10. Carefully take it out of the tin and when it is cold add an orange icing

More carrot recipe ideas from Camel CSA members

Tasty tomatoes in this week’s veg boxes

The contents of this week’s veg boxes are produced by Jeremy Brown of St Kew Harvest, Benbole Farm and the Camel CSA’s own plot.

Small boxes have: 
1kg potatoes (Benbole Farm, St Kew)
* salad bags (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* leeks (Jeremy)
* savoy cabbage (Jeremy)
* tomatoes (Jeremy)

Standard boxes also have:
extra 500g of potatoes
* coriander (Camel CSA)
* swede (Jeremy)
* parsley (Jeremy)

* = grown to organic principles

Seasonal Recipe No 58: Runner bean chutney

This version of a traditional favourite comes from South Yeo Farm West in Devon. Rare breed farmers Debbie Kingsley and Andrew Hubbard have been making vats of it for their smallholder course lunches. They say:

Is there such a thing as a year without a runner bean glut? We’ve never known one. We adore this chutney with almost any kind of hard Devon cheese (Devon Oke, Curworthy) either in slabs or cheese on toast.

Obviously it goes just as well with Cornish cheese and Sue Pugh’s bread from St Kew Harvest Farm Shop!

Preparation/cooking: just over an hour

Makes 8 x 500ml jars

Ingredients
8 medium onions
500ml malt vinegar
2kg runner beans
2 heaped tbsp English mustard powder
2 heaped tbsp ground turmeric
50g cornflour
500ml white wine vinegar
500g granulated sugar
4 heaped tbsp wholegrain mustard
4 tsp flaked sea salt

Method
Dice the onion and put in pan with malt vinegar, simmer for 15 mins. Trim runner beans and slice thinly, put in a pan of boiling water and cook for 3 minutes, drain and refresh.

Mix the mustard powder, turmeric, cornflour, salt and wholegrain mustard with 4tbsp white wine vinegar.

Stir sugar and remaining white wine vinegar into onion/malt vinegar mix, boil and cook for 2 minutes. Add beans and cook gently for 10 mins, giving it a bit of a stir. Pour mustardy mix into the mixture stirring vigorously to avoid lumps.

Simmer for 20 mins, stirring regularly. Put into hot jars and seal. Store for at least a month before eating, but it’s better if left for 3 or 4 months, or 12!

Green leafy veg ‘may reduce diabetes risk’

The mounds of Swiss chard picked for our veg boxes this week could help prevent us developing type 2 diabetes, according to the British Medical Journal.

Researchers from Leicester University found that one and a half portions of green leafy vegetables every day could result in a significant 14 per cent risk reduction in getting the disease. You can see the BBC report on their findings here.

Green leafy veg include chard, spinach, cabbage, kale and lettuce – and are all found in abundance in Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s weekly veg boxes at different times of the year.

Sweet corn on the cob

The contents of our vegetable boxes this week come from Mark Norman, Jeremy Brown of St Kew Harvest, Benbole Farm and our own Camel CSA plot.

Small boxes will have:
* sweetcorn (Mark)
* runner beans (Mark)
potatoes (Benbole Farm)
* coriander (Camel CSA)
* swiss chard (Camel CSA)
* salad bags (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will have larger quantities of potatoes and runner beans plus:
* garlic (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* courgettes (Jeremy)

* = grown to organic principles

Forget the fuss over the Twix… try raw chocolate pie

We British are far too stuck on our sickly sweet chocolate bars, as the silly row about the new Twix Fino has shown. But how many of you have tried the real food of the gods – Cornish raw chocolate pie?

The raw chocolate revolution started in the US and has gradually spread across the Atlantic. It’s being promoted as a superfood that has serious nutritional properties while at the same time tasting amazing and moreish.  

One of raw chocolate’s practising aficionados is Debby Fowler of Living Food of St Ives in Cornwall, who says:

Our raw chocolate pie is just that: RAW, uncooked and therefore retaining all the nutrients traditionally associated with cacao. It’s dairy free, gluten free, sugar free and therefore guilt free! It is also delicious and suitable for vegetarians, vegans, diabetics and anyone with a wheat or dairy intolerance.

For me it was a case of once tasted, forever smitten. And as the flavour is so intense, a little goes a very, very long way.

Living Food make their raw chocolate pies in Cornwall from uncooked cacao beans mixed with coconut butter, agarve, carob, yacon and lucuma, plus nuts, berries and natural flavourings. But absolutely no vegetable fat, milk or sugar.

The pies come in several different flavours - even chilli. They’re available from Living Food’s own shops in St Ives and Truro as well as via mail order, and from selected local outlets including St Kew Harvest Farm Shop here in north Cornwall.

Tender leek and pancetta risotto

The tender baby leeks in this week’s standard veg boxes deserved special treatment.

What better than a risotto of leeks and pancetta from Nigel Slater’s latest book Tender?

The leeks and the mixed French beans that accompanied them were cultivated by one of Camel CSA’s expert growers, Jeremy Brown of St Kew Harvest.

The search is on for sustainable veg box containers

Ever since we began our weekly veg box scheme at Camel Community Supported Agriculture, we’ve taken a very relaxed attitude to the actual containers.

What we’ve done is to recycle assorted cardboard boxes and plastic crates that come our way - usually from farmers, wholesalers, market gardens, dairies… but often from the backs of shops, pubs and restaurants.

They’re nearly always the wrong size or shape and have a habit of getting squashed, broken or going walkabout. We’re constantly having to scrounge around for more.

So now we’ve decided to do something positive – but it will mean a bit more co-operation from our members.

We’re trialling some CarbonZero biodegradable jute containers from Cornish company GoJute, based at St Austell. We’re particularly interested in their jute hampers, which have bamboo handles.

If they turn out to be suitable for use as sustainable veg boxes the next step will be to work out how to allocate these to members, how to keep track of them, whether to charge a deposit and what to do if we don’t get them back.

We’re aware this approach could be fraught with difficulties. So suggestions welcome!

I should say that this knotty green problem is not unique.

Veg box giant Riverford Organic uses recyclable cardboard boxes which are always going AWOL. Earlier this year it offered a box amnesty to its customers. At the same time it failed to persuade them to overcome their resistance to reusable plastic crates, even though this would have led to a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions.

Seasonal recipe No 57: Red cabbage salad

This recipe is from Sybil Kapoor’s Simply British. “Surprisingly good,” she says, “and should be served with cold meat and jacket potatoes.” It’s a variation on one that appeared in the classic Food in England by Dorothy Hartley, and known as Yorkshire ploughboy.

Serves 4

Preparation: 10 minutes + 10 minutes resting time

Ingredients
½ large red cabbage, finely sliced
1 red onion, halved and finely sliced
3 tbsp dried sour cherries or cranberries
2 tbsp black treacle
4 tbsp white wine vinegar
salt and black pepper
pinch of cayenne pepper

Method
Place the cabbage, onion and dried fruit in a mixing bolw. Measure the treacle and vinegar into a small mixing bowl and stir until the treacle has dissolved. Pour over the salad, mix thoroughly and season to taste. Allow to sit for 10 minutes before serving.

Note: This can also be made into a warm red cabbage salad by lightly frying the cabbage with finely sliced spring onions, a little garlic and the dried fruit before tipping in the dressing.