Come to Camel CSA’s annual Apple Day on Sunday

The apples are harvested and the apple press is on its way.

We’re all looking forward to our third annual Cornish Apple Day on Sunday when we’ll be producing masses of delicious fresh apple juice to share.

Come and take part in the apple pressing on our community veg-growing plot between 10am and 1pm this Sunday 9 October. Find us here at St Kew Highway near Wadebridge in north Cornwall.

If you can bring any apples and a plastic juice container with you, all the better!

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Come to Camel CSA’s Apple Day

We’re all set for our annual apple juicing event. The apples are picked and the presses prepared.

It’s all happening tomorrow – Sunday 17 October - between 10am and 12.30pm. You’ll find us on Camel CSA’s vegetable plot behind St Kew Harvest Farm Shop at St Kew Highway in north Cornwall.

Our fest follows the success of last year’s event which involved lots of families. It’s just one of many Apple Day events taking place across the country.

Everyone will be able to join in washing, cutting up, crushing and pressing the apples. You’ll also have the opportunity to taste the different varieties.

In exchange for your efforts you’ll be rewarded with a fair share of the juice, either to drink on the spot or take away with you. Please bring a plastic container if you intend to take some home, as it freezes well. 

It promises to be another warm, sunny Cornish autumn day, so do call by.

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Seasonal local food recipe No 66: Westcountry apple cake

This is one of those Cornish cake recipes that I’ve been making for years but can’t remember where it came from.

I remember baking it for tea on my older daughter’s first birthday. She went off to university earlier this month and I’ve continued to serve this cake up regularly in the intervening years – including last Sunday at Camel CSA’s apple harvest.

Use cooking apples or dessert apples with attitude – like the Lord Hindlip variety in Camel CSA’s veg boxes.

Serves 8

Preparation and cooking: 1 hour 20 minutes

Ingredients
175g butter or margarine
175g soft brown sugar
3 large eggs
225g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 large cooking apples  
½ teaspoon vanilla essence or ground cinnamon
lemon juice 
Demerara sugar for sprinkling

Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4. Lightly grease a square or round 18cm tin and line the base with baking paper.

Peel, core and dice the apples into small pieces. Sprinkle them with a little lemon juice to prevent them discolouring.

Mix the butter and sugar together in a bowl until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs. Fold in the sieved flour, baking powder and vanilla or cinnamon. Then carefully stir in the diced apple.

Scoop the mixture into the tin and sprinkle the surface with a dessertspoon of demerara sugar. Bake in the oven for 55-60 minutes until golden brown on top. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning it out on to a rack.

It’s delicious served lukewarm – maybe with some Cornish clotted cream.

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Cornish apples in our weekly veg boxes

It’s apple harvesting time in north Cornwall! All the veg boxes contain a bag of delicious Lord Hindlip apples from our adopted orchard in St Mabyn.

This unusual old English dessert variety can be stored in the bag in a cool place for a couple of weeks or eaten straightaway.

We’re looking forward to this Sunday when the rest of our bumper apple harvest will be crushed and pressed at our annual apple juicing fest.

You’ll also find a large spaghetti squash in each of this week’s boxes. The name derives from the cooked flesh. This resembles spaghetti when you pull a fork lengthwise through it to separate the strands.

Spaghetti squash are a novelty as they’re quite difficult to get hold of in the UK. So be grateful that Jeremy Brown of St Kew Harvest Farm Shop has grown these to go in our boxes of locally-produced food.

This week’s small boxes have:
* apples – Lord Hindlip (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* spaghetti squash (St Kew Harvest)
* calabrese (St Kew Harvest)
* celeriac (St Kew Harvest)
potatoes (Benbole Farm)

Standard boxes have all the above as well as extra potatoes and:
* garlic (Camel CSA)
parsnips (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
cauliflower (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)

* = grown to organic principles

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Time to sow winter salad and harvest our English apples

Big excitement! The first of our three big new polytunnels is on order and should be on our site at St Kew Highway in a couple of weeks. It’ll arrive just in time to house all the winter salad crops we’ve been sowing.

It’s also time to pick our delicious Cornish apples. We’re harvesting them this coming Sunday from the old farm orchard we’ve adopted in the nearby village of St Mabyn.

The most delicious variety - Lord Hindlip - will go in Camel CSA’s veg boxes next week. The rest will be crushed and pressed into apple juice. This will happen on Sunday 17 October on our veg plot next to St Kew Harvest Farm Shop.

We do hope you’ll come and get stuck in at our annual juicing event. It’s an outdoor activity that’s suitable for all ages. And, as our hard-working press gang discovered at last year’s juicing fest, it’s really good fun!

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A is for apple… P is for pruning

Our volunteer growers will be pruning apple trees for a change this Sunday.

Landscape gardener Jeremy Simmons, a Camel Community Supported Agriculture member, will lead a training session on how to prune fruit trees in an old orchard at West End, St Mabyn.

The CSA has taken over the task of renovating a small farm orchard at this former smallholding.  In return, members will be able to enjoy all the fruits of their labours when the apples are harvested next year. 

The trees are a mixture of culinary and dessert types – including the familiar Bramley, as well as Lord Burghley(?), Gascoyne’s Scarlet, Tom Putt (cider), Emneth Early, Beauty of Bath and Lord Hindlip.  There are also unidentified trees, which may be cider varieties and are probably native to Cornwall.

If you would like to learn more about the finer art of apple tree pruning, please come along.  Sunday’s session lasts from 10am to 1pm.

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Seasonal recipe No 18 – Braised red cabbage with apples

A classic recipe for slow-cooked red cabbage and apple from Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course.

Serves: 4

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 2½-3 hours

900g red cabbage
450g onions, chopped small
450g cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped small
3 tbsp wine vinegar
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 clove garlic, chopped very small
¼ whole nutmeg, freshly grated
¼ level tsp ground cinnamon
¼ level tsp ground cloves
10g butter
salt, black pepper

Preheat oven to 150C/gas mark 2.

Discard any tough outer leaves of the cabbage, cut it into quarters and remove the hard stalk, then shred it finely.

In a fairly large casserole, arrange a layer of shredded cabbage seasoned with salt and pepper, then a layer of chopped onions and apples with a sprinkling of garlic, spices and sugar. Continue with these alternate layers until everything is in.

Now pour in the wine vinegar, add the butter, put a lid on the casserole and let it cook very slowly in the oven for about 2½-3 hours, stirring everything around once or twice during the cooking.

Once cooked, it will keep warm without coming to any harm. It will also reheat very successfully so it can be made in advance.

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Apple press gang gets on with the job

Young and old alike – great fun was had by all at Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s first apple juicing fest on Sunday.

We managed to produce more than 20 litres of delicious juice.  It was shared out among our volunteer team, who diligently washed, cut up, crushed and pressed a harvest of local apples.

Grateful thanks to Camel CSA members Peter and Jane, and to the National Trust, for loaning their traditional wooden Vigo apple crushers and presses. CSA core (!) group member Ian remarked later:

“It was a great morning and the fruits (or should that be juices?) of our labour have certainly gone down well with my family – so much so that our bottles are already nearly empty!” 

Antonina, Claire, Charlotte, Danny,     Ian,     Jane I,   Jane M, Jeremy B, Mark N, Mike H, Mike S, Paul 
& Peter
were the volunteers.  We were aided and abetted by our young press gang – Carla, Charlie, Clementine, Finn, Keira and Seth.

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Crunchy carrots

We can enjoy our very own carrots in Camel CSA’s veg boxes this week.  We also have the apples we picked last Sunday in St Mabyn.

All that tender loving care has paid off!  All those painstaking hours spent handweeding carrot beds suddenly seem worthwhile. 

We’ve already taken delivery of our share of the harvest.  So, as they say, this list is just for the record…

In the small boxes: -
*carrots (Camel CSA)
*onions (Camel CSA)
*leeks (Mark Norman)
*peppers (Jeremy Brown)
*salad bag (Jane Mellowship)
*apples – Lord Hindlip (Charlotte Barry)
potatoes (Burlerrow, St Mabyn)
kale (Rest Harrow, Trebetherick)

Medium boxes also have:
*parsnips (Camel CSA)
calabrese or tenderstem broccoli (Rest Harrow, Trebetherick)

* = grown to organic principles

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Enjoy these unusual Cornish apples

The dessert apples in Camel CSA’s vegetable boxes this week are a delicious old English variety called Lord Hindlip.  They were planted in our garden at St Mabyn some 40 or more years ago by Percy Dunstan, a smallholder.  His daughter, who still lives in the village, says they were his favourite.

Pomona Publications, which specialises in fine botanical art prints, describes this attractive-looking apple:

“A seedling from the Worcester estate of Lord Hindlip, introduced by the Watkins nurseries of Hereford in 1896. Lord Hindlip has beautifully coloured skin and a fine physique, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow base, with juicy flesh and a refreshing, tangy aromatic flavour.” 

Rosanne Sanders, in her classic book The English Apple, admires its particular taste:

“The fruit is a very late dessert type, with rich and distinctive vinous flavour.  Picking time is early to mid October and its season is December to March.”

Storage

Lord Hindlip is a late variety that benefits from being kept for a couple of weeks before eating.  (But I suggest you try one and decide for yourself.)

From my own experience, I recommend Rosanne Sanders’ method of storing apples in a clear plastic bag: 

“The material maintains high humidity and so prevents the fruits from shrivelling too quickly.  However, the apple must be allowed to breathe. 

The skin of the bag should be perforated with a hole the diameter of a pencil for every pound of fruit, and the top of the bag folded over rather than sealed.  Use clear polythene so that the apples can be seen and any rots removed if necessary.

The required conditions of coolness, darkness and ventilation still apply.”

We’ll be including the remainder of the Lord Hindlip harvest in the apple juice we’re going to produce on Camel CSA’s site at St Kew Highway on Sunday.  But we could do with some more.  So please –  if you know about any surplus apples going begging, do let us know.

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