Do you know anyone who can supply Camel CSA with freshly-picked carrots?

We need carrots! Unfortunately we haven’t got any carrots in this week’s veg boxes as we’ve used up all the indoor-grown crop.

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Seasonal local food recipe No.155: Courgette summer salad

I found this refreshing, summery dish while browsing through my Co-operative Food magazine (I like our friendly Wadebridge Co-op).

You can include the courgettes and the spring onions in Camel CSA’s veg boxes, but this week I’m afraid you’ll have to get the carrots elsewhere.

This recipe can be adapted in a number of ways. As I hadn’t got any sesame seeds, I sprinkled sunflower seeds on top. I also used juice from a whole lemon and omitted the honey. You could replace the spring onions with chives for a milder flavour.  

Serve: 4
Preparation time: 15 minutes

Ingredients
2 medium courgettes
3 medium carrots, scrubbed
1 large eating apple
Juice of half a lemon
2 spring onions, trimmed and finely chopped
2 handfuls (about 70g) of nuts and dried fruit (optional)
For the dressing
1 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tbsp natural yoghurt
A little runny honey
2 tbsp sesame seeds to sprinkle on top

Method
Grate the courgettes, carrot and apple into a bowl. Add the spring onions and nuts and fruit, if using, and stir together.

Mix together the mayonnaise, yoghurt and honey. Add to the bowl and stir. Sprinkle the seeds over the top before serving.

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Cornish calabrese in Camel CSA’s weekly veg boxes

What a difference ten days of sustained warmth and sunshine can make! Just two weeks ago, our growing team were in despair. Torrential rain, leaden skies, mud, mildew, slugs, snails…

Now, in the space of a week, we have some spectacular heads of calabrese and some enormous cabbages on our plot.

In the polytunnel the French beans are cropping prolifically and the cucumbers are doing well. The indoor tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and chillies are coming along nicely.

The field-grown peas and beans are a bit of a mess and we have few outdoor carrots. But we have plenty of Tuscan and red Russian kale and purple-sprouting broccoli in modules ready to be planted out.

All the boxes this week will have: -
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* Swiss chard (Camel CSA)
* spring onions (Camel CSA)
* calabrese (Camel CSA)
* French beans (Camel CSA)
* courgettes (Mark Norman, Bodmin)
* garlic (Camel CSA)
* cabbage (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will also have: -
extra potatoes (Growfair
* mixed salad bag (Camel CSA)
* turnip or beetroot (Camel CSA)
* cucumber (Camel CSA / Mark Norman)

 * = grown to organic principles

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Check out our summer holiday workshops for children

Camel CSA is offering fun and learning opportunities for children during the summer holidays.

We’re running three different workshops in August for under-12s. Each workshop will run from 11am – 2pm (including break) on our vegetable-growing site at St Kew Highway.  The cost for each child is £4, which includes art materials, squash/water and fruit/snacks.

Check these workshops out: -

  • Wednesday 15 August – COOL AS A CUCUMBER 
Tickle your taste buds! The children will be challenged to try a variety of vegetables while blindfolded. More hands-on fun activities will take them around the site as they explore the local environment and discover their senses.

 • Thursday 23 August - WHAT’S ROTTING?
 Compost, marvellous compost! Explore it very closely and learn why it is so important. Discover that it is full of life and meet our specialists – the earthworms. Find out how long it take for different things to decompose and what’s happening in this process. We will also look into the growth cycle of plants.

 • Friday 24 August – READY, STEADY, GROW
Children will touch, feel and smell plants in a range of hands-on fun activities around the site. They will learn how to take care of plants to make them grow strong and tall. At the end they will take their own planted seed home to look after and practise their newly-learned skills.

Please note: parents and guardians must remain on site. Tea, coffee and other refreshments will be available for sale next door at St Kew Harvest farm shop.

Each activity will be led by our workshop leader (and Camel CSA treasurer!) Danny Barry. She’ll be aided by Camel CSA volunteers, all CRB checked.

Booking for the workshops is essential, please e-mail: info@camel-csa.org.uk. If you have any queries, please e-mail dbarry2904@gmail.com or phone Danny on 01208 895083

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Seasonal local food recipe No.154: Fennel and potato bake

This simple and satisfying dish comes from Veg Box Recipes. They say: “It’s a comforting dish for rainy weather and the combination of flavours helps make the fennel’s aniseed more subtle.”

Serves 2 (as a main dish)

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients
4 large potatoes (or 6 small), scrubbed
1 bulb fennel
2 gloves garlic, crushed or minced
300ml semi-skimmed milk, or 300ml single cream, or 150ml of each
1 free range egg
butter, for greasing
salt and freshly ground pepper, nutmeg to taste
(optional) tomato slices to garnish

Method

Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5 / 190C.

Slice the potatoes and fennel very thinly – ideally using a mandolin. Grease a large baking dish with the butter and arrange the potato and fennel slices in alternative layers with garlic and lots of seasoning in between each layer.

Mix together the cream and / or milk, egg and nutmeg with lots more seasoning. Pour the mixture over the vegetables already in the baking dish, cover and bake for about 1 ½ hours, removing the cover for the last 30 minutes until the top has browned nicely.

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Cornish fennel in Camel CSA’s weekly boxes

The picking and packing team are looking forward to working in the sunshine for once this Friday. Last week we all got soaked in the constant heavy downpour. The veg have suffered in the rain too, but the Florence fennel is doing rather well. 

All the boxes this week will have: -
potatoes (Growfair)
* chard (Camel CSA)
* green onions (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* fennel (Camel CSA)
* courgettes (Mark Norman, Bodmin)
* wet garlic (Camel CSA)
* blackcurrants (Mark Norman)

Standard boxes will also have: -
extra potatoes (Growfair
* mixed salad bag (Camel CSA)
* French beans or beetroot and basil (Camel CSA)
* cucumber (Camel CSA / Mark Norman)

 * = grown to organic principles

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Seasonal local food recipe No.153: Irish champ

Potatoes and spring onions are the principal ingredients of this traditional Northern Ireland dish. This version comes from Irish cook Ita on allrecipes.co.uk. She says: “Great on its own, served steaming hot with extra butter which will melt through it. But it’s also the perfect side dish for good quality sausages.”

Serves 4

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients
1kg (2 1/4 lb) potatoes, peeled and halved
250ml (8 fl oz) milk
1 bunch spring onions, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
50g (2 oz) butter
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method
Place potatoes into large pot and fill with enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and cook until tender, about 20 minutes.

Drain well. Return to very low heat and allow the potatoes to dry out for a few minutes. (It helps if you place a clean tea towel over the potatoes to absorb any remaining moisture.) Meanwhile, heat the milk and spring onions gently in a saucepan until warm.

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Cornish cucumbers in our veg boxes this week

It may be raining cats and dogs outside (again) but the cucumbers are starting to come on in the warmth of the polytunnel, along with the carrots, French beans, spring onions and mixed salad leaves. However to get them cropping well we need more SUN!

All the boxes will have: -
potatoes (Growfair)
* cucumber (Camel CSA / Mark Norman, Bodmin)
* spring onions (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* spinach (Camel CSA)
* courgettes (Mark Norman)
* mixed salad bag (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will also have: -
extra potatoes (Growfair
* calabrese / cabbage (Camel CSA)
* French beans (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)

 * = grown to organic principles

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Seasonal local food recipe No.152: Wet garlic salad

A simple way of using the wet garlic in Camel CSA’s boxes this week comes from Riverford Organic Farms in neighbouring Devon.

“Wet” or green garlic is freshly-harvested garlic that hasn’t been hung up to dry. It’s sweeter, milder and less pungent at this stage. You simply slice it up – bulb, stalk, leaves and all – into salads, stir fries or risotto. Or you can roast it whole.

Usefully, this is a salad recipe for one! It’s also good made with broad beans and rocket.

Serves: 1
Preparation / cooking time: 12 minutes

Ingredients
40g cooked pasta, preferably orecchiette or another small pasta
40g cooked white beans, eg cannellini or haricot (drained, tinned beans are fine to use)
a little oil for frying
small handful finely sliced wet garlic
large handful salad leaves or watercress
juice ½ lemon
approx 2 tbsp feta cheese, crumbled
freshly ground pepper to season

Method

In a small frying pan, heat the oil and fry the wet garlic for a couple of mins, until just softened slightly.

Remove and drain on kitchen paper, and leave to cool. Place in a bowl and toss with the pasta, beans, lemon juice, lettuce and just enough extra virgin olive oil to coat the salad.

Season with pepper and transfer to a serving bowl. Crumble over the feta cheese to serve.

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Wet garlic in our Cornish veg boxes this week

It’s a gourmet’s delight – straight from our plot! During the continuing downpour, we’ve rather appropriately got homegrown “wet” garlic in Camel CSA’s weekly veg boxes. Green garlic, as it’s also known, is bulbs of fresh garlic that are harvested young and eaten whole.

All the boxes will have: -
potatoes (Growfair)
* wet garlic (Camel CSA)
* green onions (Camel CSA)
* baby carrots (Camel CSA)
* spinach (Camel CSA)
* turnips (Camel CSA)
* lettuce or mixed salad bag (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will also have: -
extra potatoes (Growfair
* calabrese (Camel CSA)
* courgettes (Mark Norman, Bodmin)
* homemade runner bean or green tomato chutney (Camel CSA)

* = grown to organic principles

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