Recipe No 34 – Red onion marmalade

From Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook – ‘the perfect thing to eat for lunch with bread and cheese … and it’s delicious with sausages and mash’, she says. It keeps well in the fridge for about a month.

Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking: about an hour

Ingredients (for 3-4 jars)
2 garlic cloves
sea salt and black pepper
4 tbsp olive oil
450g red onions, sliced
4 tbsp red wine
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
few sprigs of thyme

Method
Crush the garlic with some sea salt and heat the olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan. Add the onions and garlic, and sweat gently, without allowing them to brown, for 20 minutes. Cook until they are translucent and soft.

Add the red wine, balsamic vinegar and brown sugar, and simmer gently until most of the liquid has evaporated, which will take about 15-20 minutes.

Add the thyme, season with salt and pepper and cook for a further 5 minutes. Put into warm sterilised jars and cover while still hot.

Tasty spring greens in the veg boxes

All the boxes this week will have:

potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
carrots (Rest Harrow Farm)
* parsnips (Jeremy Brown)
* jerusalem artichokes (Camel CSA)
savoy cabbage (Rest Harrow Farm)
spring greens (Rest Harrow Farm)

Standard boxes will have larger quantities of some of these plus:
* pak choi (Jeremy)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)
cauliflower (Rest Harrow Farm)

Large boxes will also have:
* coriander (Jeremy)
swede (Rest Harrow Farm)
red cabbage (Rest Harrow Farm)

Read a Guardian article about jerusalem artichokes – including a few recipe suggestions.

Recipe No 32 – Carrot and ginger soup

A warming soup with a bit of a kick that makes use of the seasonal carrots in our veg boxes – from the Riverford website.

Preparation: 15 Mins
Cooking: 50 Mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients
1 tsp olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 level tsp mustard powder
2.5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
freshly ground black pepper
pinch of salt
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock
6 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
2 tbsp parsley, roughly chopped
natural yoghurt to serve

Method
Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and soften the onion and garlic with the mustard powder, ginger, pepper and salt, adding 2 or 3 tbsp stock after a minute or so. After another 2 -3 minutes, add the carrots, stirring well. Pour in the rest of the stock, bring to the boil, then cover and leave to simmer for 40 minutes. When it is ready, whiz the soup until smooth in a blender, or using a hand-held stick blender in the pan. Stir in the chopped parsley, saving a little for garnish and reheat the soup gently if you need to. When serving, swirl a spoonful of yoghurt through each portion. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

Freshly-dug parsnips in the veg boxes

All the boxes this week will contain:

potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
savoy cabbage (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)
carrots (Rest Harrow Farm)
* parsnips (Camel CSA)

The standard boxes will have larger quantities of some of the above plus:
* jerusalem artichokes (Camel CSA)
* braising greens (Jeremy Brown)
small cauliflower (Rest Harrow Farm)

* = grown to organic principles

Curly kale in the veg boxes

… and it’s a record number to be filled this Friday: a total of 30 boxes.

All boxes will have:
curly kale (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
sprout stalks (Rest Harrow Farm)
carrots (Rest Harrow Farm)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm)
swede (Rest Harrow Farm)

Standard boxes will also have:
extra potatoes (Burlerrow Farm)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)
sprouting broccoli (Rest Harrow Farm)
* salad bags (Jeremy Brown)

* = grown to organic principles

Recipe No 29 – Shallot tatin

We’re nearing the end of the Camel CSA harvest of shallots, so this would be a good recipe to try while you still have some. It’s from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook. If you haven’t got enough shallots, make up the quantity with onions.

Serves 6

Preparation time: about 20 minutes
Cooking time: about 45 minutes

Ingredients
450g shallots
175g any leftover soft cheese, such as Brie or Camembert
40g unsalted butter
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
500g puff pastry
salt and black pepper

Method
Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6. Peel the shallots, leaving them whole and cut the cheese into thickish slices. Bring a pan of water to the boil, add the shallots and cook for 5-7 minutes if small, 10 if larger. Drain and put to one side.

Heat the butter and oil in an ovenproof pan or a frying pan with a detachable handle. When the butter has melted, sprinkle in the sugar and allow it to dissolve gently before adding the shallots. Season well and allow them to cook until a rich golden caramel. Remove from the heat.

Roll out the pastry to a circle a bit bigger than the pan. Spread the slices of cheese over the shallots and lay the pastry over the top, pressing it down slightly all around the edge. Bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes, or until risen and golden.

Allow to cool a little and then put a large serving plate over the pan and invert it quickly so that the shallots are on the top with the pastry underneath. Serve warm with a crisp green salad.

Recipe No 28 – Fried cabbage with juniper

“A wonderfully healthy and delicious lunch. Have the cabbage on its own, or on top of a bowl of rice,” says Sarah Raven in whose Garden Cookbook this recipe appears.

Serves 4-6

Preparation time 5 minutes
Cooking time 15 minutes

Ingredients
1 small savoy cabbage
1 tbsp dry-fried sesame seeds (you can mix in sunflower seeds too)
1 tbsp juniper berries, crushed
2 garlic cloves, chopped
sea salt
2 tbsp ground nut oil
1 red chilli, deseeded and thinly sliced (green would do but red better for colour)
2 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh root ginger
1 tbsp runny honey
splash of Japanese soy sauce
freshly ground black pepper
bunch of coriander, coarsely chopped (optional)

Method
Cut the cabbage into four and discard the hard white centre and leaf midribs before shredding finely. Dry-fry the sesame seeds on a gentle heat until they’re golden brown. This will take about 5 minutes, but don’t let them burn. Then put them to one side. Crush the juniper berries and garlic with the sea salt, using a pestle and mortar.

Heat a tablespoon of the groundnut oil in a wok or large frying pan. Add the chilli and cook for 1 minute on medium heat. Scoop the chilli out of the oil, leaving the spicy oil in the pan and add the sesame seeds. Add the rest of the groundnut oil and the sesame oil to the same pan and then the cabbage, salt, juniper berries and garlic. Turn up the heat. Stir every minute or so for 5 minutes and then add all the other ingredients except the coriander. Stir for another couple of minutes and remove from the heat. The cabbage should still be crunchy. This tastes lovely with coriander leaves – add some chopped over the top.

This week’s veg boxes

This week’s boxes will be made up of the following:

potatoes ( Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* onions (Camel CSA)
* parsnip (Camel CSA)
curly kale (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
* winter salad bag (Jeremy Brown)
* Jerusalem artichokes (Camel CSA) 
(Sorry – cauliflowers not available because of the recent bad weather)

The medium boxes will also have:
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)
carrots (Rest Harrow Farm)
sprouts (wholesale)

* = grown to organic principles

It’s (s)no(w) problem!

Congratulations to our intrepid picking and packing team who braved the wintry conditions to prepare Camel CSA’s first vegetable boxes of 2010.

Only the onions in the boxes came from Camel CSA’s own share of the harvest.  Our dwindling crops of parsnips, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes and last of the beetroot are well and truly frozen into the ground.

We’re grateful to local supplier Richard Hore of Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick for providing such a variety of green vegetables – leeks, curly kale and savoy cabbage as well as carrots.  And to our expert grower Jeremy Brown who collected the potatoes from Burlerrow Farm in icebound St Mabyn.

We put together a total of 23 boxes for our members to pick up. Fortunately our site is next to the A39 “Atlantic Highway” which has been kept relatively clear from ice and snow.

Local food

The fact that we could provide fresh vegetables this week goes to show how important it is to be able to source food locally. 

Supply chains across the country may be interrupted by the big freeze, but we’ve been able to keep our veg box scheme going – with just a little help from our friends in north Cornwall.

As Making Local Food Work said this week in its response to the Government’s widely-reported new national food strategy: “Communities must be engaged in the future of food.”

Many thanks to picking & packing supremo Trish, who fetched the veg from Trebetherick, and to the team – Cathy, Charlotte, Mike H, Mike S, Penny and Robert.

And enjoy our heartwarming seasonal soup! Recipe No 26 – Leek soup with parmesan

Fixing the food chain

Members of Camel Community Supported Agriculture will be working with Camel Area Friends of the Earth this Saturday 29 November as they promote thriving, planet-friendly farming.

We’ll be in Molesworth Street, Wadebridge outside Barclays from 9am to 12 noon.  If you’re out and about in the town, please come and speak to us.  You’ll be able to have a look at one of our weekly seasonal veg boxes. 

At the same time we can tell you more about our pioneering community vegetable growing project at St Kew Highway.  This involves building strong, mutual relationships with small-scale farmers and growers in north Cornwall with the aim of reducing supply chains and making local food work.

Friends of the Earth’s Food Chain Campaign aims to change the way factory farm animals are fed.  Factory farming demands massive amounts of soy - a key ingredient in animal feed.  Most of this comes from huge soya bean plantations in Latin America. 

Vast areas of land have to be cleared to grow the soy.  This causes deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and the loss of valuable wildlife habitat.

Watch FoE’s video -