Seasonal local food recipe No.315 – Leek, butter bean and parsley soup

I made this tasty soup recently, the recipe is from a Guardian feature where you cook a large quantity of a particular ingredient, in this case butter beans, and use it for four different meals.  You could easily use tinned butter beans if you prefer.

Serves 4

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes

Ingredients
1 Tbsp olive oil
500 g leeks, trimmed and sliced
500 g cooked butter beans
1.5 litres water
2 Tbsp Marigold bouillon powder
A small handful fresh parsley, roughly chopped

Method
Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, add the leeks, stir, then cover and cook gently for 5-10 minutes.  Add the beans and the water, then bring to the boil.  Sprinkle the bouillon powder over the surface, stirring to disperse it, then leave to simmer for about 20 minutes, until the leeks are tender.  Add the fresh parsley, and blend the soup lightly with a hand blender to just thicken it slightly, but leave some visible pieces of bean and chunks of leek.  Check the seasoning and serve.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/butter-beans-recipe-curry-soup-salad-pate

Seasonal local food recipe No.312 – Nigel’s sausage meatballs with leek tagliatelle

This recipe is taken from The Guardian in Nigel Slater’s midweek dinner series.  I changed the quantities slightly as I find Nigel often uses too much cream for my tastes, missed out the dill as I didn’t have any and cut down on the amount of sausage.  Still tasted good though!

Serves 2

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients
6 butchers sausages
1-2 tsp dried chilli flakes
2 heaped tsp chopped fresh dill
1-2 leeks, sliced into 1 cm discs
2 Tbsp olive oil
150 g tagliatelle
100 ml double cream
salt and pepper
a handful of chopped fresh parsley

Method
Remove the sausage meat from the skins, place in a mixing bowl and mix with the chilli flakes and dill.  Divide the mixture into small balls (I aim to get 4 balls from each sausage) and flatten slightly.  Warm the olive oil in a shallow pan.  Brown the balls on both sides then leave over a low heat, covered, until cooked right through – about 4-5 minutes.

Remove the balls from the pan, then add the leeks and let them cook in the pan juices for 7-8 minutes until soft and tender.  Meanwhile, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, cook the tagliatelle until tender, then drain.

Stir the cream into the leeks, season with salt, pepper and parsley then add the drained pasta to the leeks.  Return the sausage balls to the pan and let everything bubble for a minute or so, then serve.

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.

Red and yellow tomatoes in our veg boxes

Standard box members also have the first of this season’s aubergines and green peppers.

In all our boxes this week:-
*tomatoes
*broad beans
*parsley
*cucumber
*new potatoes
*courgettes (Mark Norman, Bodmin)
*French beans (yellow or purple) OR peas OR mangetout
rosemary sprig (Janet Hulme, Wadebridge)

Standard boxes also have: –
extra new potatoes
*green pepper
*aubergine
*spinach OR calabrese

* = grown to organic principles

All produce grown by Camel CSA unless otherwise indicated.  Please wash all vegetables and fruit.

Try these delicious side dishes on our recipe page –
Lemon cashew parsley dip
Cucumber raita

Seasonal local food recipe No.280 – Jamie’s Couscous with grilled summer vegetables and loadsa herbs

This is from Jamie Oliver’s second book, the Return of the Naked Chef.

Serves 4

Preparation and cooking time: 30-40 minutes

Ingredients
255 g couscous
285 ml cold water
3 red peppers
1 handful asparagus, trimmed and peeled if need be
2 or 3 small firm courgettes, sliced
1 bunch spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced
2-4 fresh chillies, deseeded and finely sliced
3 good handfuls mixed fresh herbs (basil, coriander, mint, flat leaf parsley)
4 Tbs lemon juice
10 Tbs olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
red wine vinegar

Method
Place the couscous in a bowl with the cold water.  This will start to soften the couscous and you will see the water disappear as it soaks in.  While the couscous is softening, blacken the peppers.  Either place the peppers directly on to the naked flame of a gas hob or blacken under the grill.  Both ways you need to blacken the peppers on all sides, so turn when need be.  When fully blackened cover in a bowl for 5 minutes until cool.  This will steam the skins and make peeling and deseeding easier.  Remove the skins and seeds and roughly chop.  On a very hot ridged grill pan, lightly char the asparagus and courgettes on both sides then toss them into the bowl with the couscous with the peppers, spring onions, chillies and ripped up herbs.  Mix well.  Make a dressing with the olive oil and lemon juice, add and toss well.  Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper and a couple of dribbles of red wine vinegar for a slight twang.

What we’re getting in our vegetable boxes

We can expect to find some tomatoes and a cauliflower among the contents of this week’s veg boxes.

These vegetables come from Richard Hore, our new supplier at Rest Harrow, Trebetherick (between Daymer Bay and Rock).  They’re not grown to organic principles, but are freshly picked and have clocked up few food miles – barely five in fact.

The potatoes and onions are our own contribution to the harvest.  They’ve been grown by our volunteers on Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s two-acre plot at St Kew Highway. 

Our expert growers are providing the rest of the box contents.  Salad bags – Jane Mellowship, cucumber and curly parsley – Jeremy Brown, celery – Mark Norman. 

See this week’s Recipe No 8 – Braised celery

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!

Seasonal recipe No 6 – Tabbouleh (bulgar wheat salad)

Bulgar wheat salad has an earthy taste and uses an abundance of parsley, which features in Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s veg boxes this week.  This well-tried version of tabbouleh comes from Claudia Roden’s classic A Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Soaking time: 30 minutes
Preparation time: about 15 minutes

Serves 6

Ingredients
250g fine bulgar wheat
3 tablespoons finely chopped spring onions
Salt and black pepper
About one and a half teacups finely chopped flat-leaved parsley
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons lemon juice
Cooked vine leaves, raw lettuce or tender cabbage leaves (to serve)

Method
Soak the bulgar wheat in water for about half an hour before preparing the salad.  It will expand enormously.  Drain and squeeze out as much moisture as possible with your hands.  Spread out to dry further on a cloth.

Mix the bulgar wheat with the chopped onions, squeezing with your hands to crush the onions so that their juices penetrate the wheat.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Add the parsley, mint, olive oil and lemon juice, and mix well.  Taste to see if more salt, pepper or lemon are required.  The salad should be distinctly lemony.

Tabbouleh is traditionally served in individual plates lined with boiled vine leaves, or raw lettuce or cabbage leaves.  People scoop the salad up with more leaves, served in a separate bowl beside it.

Notes
Claudia Roden adds: “As with most dishes, the preparation is highly individual.  Quantities of ingredients vary with every family, but parsley is always used abundantly.  This is a great Lebanese favourite.”  More about Claudia Roden.

Compare her relaxed approach to Yotam Ottolenghi, chef/patron at Ottolenghi in London.  He insists there’s a right way and a wrong way to make this refreshing summer salad.  Click here to find out what he claims is the right way to do it.

Click here to see all the recipes that Camel CSA members have recommended so far.

Seasonal recipe No 5 – Courgette frittata

A quick and easy recipe from Patience Gray’s Honey from a Weed. Tasty too!

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: about 20 minutes

Serves 2

Ingredients
3 or 4 courgettes
1 small onion
olive oil
4 eggs
parsley
1 dessertspoon pane grattugiato (crushed crumbs from oven-dried bread)
1 dessertspoon grated parmesan
salt, pepper

Method
Wash, dry and dice the courgettes and chop the onion. Pour a little olive oil into an omelette pan, and fry the courgettes and onion on a quick fire until they brown, tossing them often, adding a minimum of salt.

Beat the eggs in a bowl with a little salt, pepper, some finely chopped parsley, and add the pane grattugiato and the grated parmesan. Pour the egg mixture over the browned contents of the pan and reduce the heat.

When the frittata is almost set, take a large plate, lid or board, cover the pan with it and reverse the frittata on to it. Then slide it back into the pan. Both sides should be brown. Serve at once, or let it cool and eat it on a picnic.

Notes
You can make a quantity of pane grattugiato (a good way of using up odd bits of bread) and it will keep well in a jam jar.

Have a look at these recipe suggestions on the eat the seasons website.

If you’ve got a favourite courgette recipe you’d like to share with the rest of us, please insert it as a comment on this post.

Click here to see all the recipes that Camel CSA members have recommended so far.

This week’s share of the harvest