Bean sprouts and spring onions in Cornish veg boxes

It’s exceptionally muddy on our site after Storm Imogen brought torrential rain and high winds to Cornwall.

In our weekly veg boxes today: –
*spring onions
*sprouted mung beans (Mark Norman, Bodmin)
*curly kale
celeriac (Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
cauliflower (Restharrow)
carrots (Restharrow)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)

Standard boxes also have:-
extra potatoes
*Swiss chard or purple sprouting broccoli
*parsnips
red cabbage (Restharrow)

* = grown to organic principles
Please wash all vegetables and fruit. All produce grown by Camel CSA unless otherwise indicated.

Try celeriac in these roots dishes on Camel CSA’s recipes page:-
Three-root mash
Three-root boulangère

Sweet celeriac in Camel CSA’s veg boxes

Celeriac’s knobbly and whiskery appearance may be a bit off-putting, but this winter root has a surprisingly subtle taste. It’s delicious boiled and mashed with potato or cut into matchsticks in a salad.

In all this week’s veg boxes: –
*celeriac
*carrots
*kale – curly or ‘red Russian’
*onions
red cabbage (Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
leeks (Restharrow)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)

Standard boxes also have:-
extra potatoes
*pak choi
*sprouting broccoli
*parsnips

* = grown to organic principles
Please wash all vegetables and fruit. All produce grown by Camel CSA unless otherwise indicated.

Try these celeriac dishes on Camel CSA’s recipe page: –
Three-root boulangère
Remoulade of celeriac and smoked bacon

Seasonal local food recipe No.301 – Hugh’s celeriac with apple, raisin and parsley

This is from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall‘s book River Cottage Veg Every Day.  He recommends using a good, fresh, firm celeriac, ideally an early-season one.

Serves 4

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
200g celeriac (peeled weight)
1 eating apple
50g raisins
a good handful of flat-leaf parsley

For the dressing
1 tsp English mustard
1 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp cider vinegar
2 Tbsp sunflower or rapeseed oil
2 Tbsp olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method
For the dressing, shake all the ingredients together in a screw-topped jar to emulsify.  Tip into a bowl.

Cut the celeriac into matchstick-sized pieces.  The easiest way to do this is to use a mandolin, but you can use a large, sharp knife.  Transfer directly to the bowl of dressing and toss them in, so they don’t get a chance to brown.  Peel, quarter and thinly slice the apple and add to the salad with the raisins.  Taste and adjust the seasoning if you need to.

Serve straight away, or leave for an hour or so, which will allow the celeriac to soften slightly.  Toss in the roughly torn parsley leaves just before serving.

Knobbly celeriac in Camel CSA’s veg boxes

We love our veg and don’t discriminate against wonky-looking ones! So we’re following Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s new War on Waste campaign with keen interest. When it comes to growing vegetables, we place more value on freshness, taste and texture than uniform good looks.

In all our boxes:-
*red onions
*kale – red Russian
*carrots
*parsley
celeriac (Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
cauliflower (Restharrow)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)

Standard boxes also have:-
extra potatoes
*mixed salad leaves
*spinach OR Swiss chard
*sprouting broccoli OR French beans

* = grown to organic principles
All produce grown by Camel CSA unless otherwise indicated. Please wash all vegetables and fruit.

Try these delicious celeriac dishes on Camel CSA’s recipe page: –
Celeriac and Lancashire cheese bread
Nigel’s celeriac and potato cake

Celeriac and spring onions in our vegetable boxes

Seasonal local food recipe No.255 – Nigel’s celeriac and potato cake

This side dish from Nigel Slater’s classic Real Good Food. It’s delicious served with roast meat but can also be served as a main course on its own.

Serves: 4 as a side dish

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

Ingredients
500g waxy potatoes, peeled
a medium-sized celeriac, peeled
90 g butter
4 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
2 heaped tablespoons Dijon mustard
a level teaspoon of thyme leaves
60ml vegetable stock
a handful of dill leaves

Method
Slice the potato and celeriac so thinly you can see through them.  Mix them together and soak in cold water. Melt the butter in a metal-handled, deep frying pan (one that can go in the oven) and when it starts to bubble add the garlic and cook slowly for five minutes, till it is soft and has perfumed the butter.  Take off the heat and stir in the mustard, thyme leaves and a grinding of salt and pepper.

Drain the potatoes and celeriac and dry them on kitchen paper.  Toss them in the mustard butter so that they are wet all over, then loosely flatten them and pour in the stock.

Cover with a circle of greaseproof paper, then bake in an oven preheated to 190°C/Gas mark 5 for an hour and ten minutes, until tender to the point of a knife.  Remove the greaseproof, turn up the heat to 220°C/Gas mark 7 and bake for a further ten minutes, until coloured and lightly crisp on top.  Tear the dill up a bit and scatter it over the top and into the juices.

Celeriac in Camel CSA’s veg boxes

All this week’s boxes have: –
*celeriac (Mark Norman, Bodmin)

CSAs benefit from short food supply chain in big freeze

Our picking and packing team harvested the remainder of the celeriac this week. In spite of the freezing conditions in Cornwall – so unusual for this part of the UK – we managed to dig it up.

The celeriac came up with great chunks of frozen earth attached to it. Once the heavy clods were removed, the roots had to be trimmed. Not a pleasant job in a cold Cornish nor’easter.

We’re fortunate we can source so much local food, including what we grow ourselves. Nearly every week we’re able to fill the weekly veg boxes from within an eight-mile radius.

It means our food miles are low and our supply chain is short. And, unlike the big supermarkets, we’re less likely to get caught out by a shortage of fresh, seasonal produce when the weather turns against us.

Seasonal local food recipe No 69: A remoulade of celeriac and smoked bacon

Nigel Slater describes celeriac in his Tender cookbook: ‘Knobbly, whiskery and impenetrable, its roots curled round its feet like a viper’s nest, it poses something of a problem for the newcomer’. Thankfully he also gives this good recipe for a variation on the classic French remoulade. First off, though, you’ll have to ‘Brush off the encrusted soil, hack away at the thick, warty skin …’

Radish sprouts are sprouted seeds with a spicy heat. If you can’t get hold of them, you could sprout your own in a salad sprouter. Equally, you could use any sprouted seed.

Preparation/cooking: half an hour
Serves 2 as a light main course

Ingredients
for the dressing:
250ml crème fraîche
juice of half a lemon
2 tbsp grain mustard

for the salad:
large handful parsley leaves
about 500g celeriac
8 rashers smoked bacon
50g radish sprouts or mung bean sprouts

Method
Mix the crème fraîche, lemon juice and mustard together and stir in a little salt and black pepper.

Roughly chop the parsley. Peel the celeriac and shred it coarsely. This is probably easiest with a food processor and coarse grater attachment. Grill the bacon until it is starting to crisp and the fat has turned gold, then cut it into pieces the size of a postage stamp. Stir the celeriac, radish sprouts, parsley, bacon and dressing together. Serve while the bacon is still hot.

This week’s boxes

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!