A great way of using the cucumbers that are growing so well in the CSA’s polytunnel. I halved the quantities of this recipe (from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook) for three of the cucumbers we had in this week’s boxes. It made three mustard-size jars. It should store for up to a year, but keep in the fridge once opened.
Ingredients for 5 small jars
3 large cucumbers
2 onions
50g salt
600ml white wine or distilled white vinegar
450g granulated sugar
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp celery seeds
5 cloves
½ tsp ground turmeric
Method
Peel the cucumbers and cut lengthways into thinnish sticks about 6-7cm long. Thinly slice the onions into half moons. Put the cucumber and onions and salt into a large mixing bowl and sprinkle with salt. Cover with a weighted plate and leave for 2-3 hours.
Rinse the cucumber and onion in cold water and then let stand to drain. While they are draining, put all the remaining ingredients into a pan and stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Add the cucumber and onion, bring to the boil and simmer for 1 minute.
Remove from the heat and lift the cucumber and onion out of the liquid. Put into warm sterilised jars. Return the liquid to the heat and boil rapidly for at least 10 minutes to reduce it. Pour the liquid over the cucumber in the jars and cover.
A Sarah Raven recipe – she uses tagliolini, but fine spaghetti or linguine would do just as well.
Preparation and cooking: about 20 minutes
Serves 4
Ingredients
250g broad beans, shelled weight
350g tagliolini or fine spaghetti
75g fried pancetta or prosciutto
2 tbsp finely chopped summer savory or thyme, to serve
grated parmesan, to serve
For the beurre blanc:
4 tbsp white wine
4 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 heaped tbsp finely chopped shallots
salt and black pepper
175g unsalted butter, cold and diced
Method
To make the beurre blanc, reduce the wine, vinegar, shallots, salt and pepper in a small saucepan until you have only a tablespoon of liquid left. Whisk in the butter bit by bit over a very low heat, until thick and creamy. Season. Keep it warm in a vacuum flask or bain-marie.
Bring a pan of water to the boil. Cook the beans in it for 4 minutes. Remove them, saving some of the cooking liquid, and cool them quickly in a sieve under cold running water. Pop some of the bright green beans out of their skin by pinching with thumb and forefinger – this adds a wonderful colour. Discard the skins and puree half the beans with a tablespoon of the cooking water.
Cook the pasta in salted boiling water until just al dente, leaving a tablespoon or two of the cooking liquid in the pan. Add the bean puree, pancetta or prosciutto and the beurre blanc and stir. Season carefully.
Lastly, throw in the remaining beans and stir. Serve with summer savory or thyme and grated parmesan.
This week’s offering from Angela Hartnett’s ‘Midweek Suppers’ in the Guardian is ‘the ideal quick meal’. The other main ingredient is calabrese/broccoli.
Serves 4
Preparation and cooking: 20 minutes
Ingredients
1 cucumber
25ml soy sauce
75ml sesame oil
10ml white wine vinegar
2 heads of broccoli cut into florets
2 tbsp olive oil
4 salmon fillets, skin removed, 120g each
½ bunch of dill, chopped
salt and pepper
horseradish cream, to serve
Method
Leaving the skin on, cut the cucumber into 8cm long strips, discarding any seeds. Place in a bowl and add the soy sauce, sesame oil and white wine vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper and allow to marinate.
Bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil, add the broccoli and cook for five minutes until just cooked. Drain and allow to cool.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and cook the salmon for two minutes on each side, depending on the thickness (up to a maximum of five minutes in total). Remove from the pan and allow to cool until it is cold enough to handle. Then break it into flakes.
In a large bowl, mix the salmon, broccoli and marinated cucumber, tipping in as much of the marinade as you like. Finish with the chopped dill, mix well and check the seasoning.
Serve on a large plate with spoons of horseradish cream or grated fresh horseradish. Serve immediately.
A green and herby treat from Yotam Ottolenghi to celebrate the first of the season’s swiss chard.
Serves 4 as a starter
Preparation and cooking About 20 minutes
Ingredients
400g swiss chard, leaves only (or 600g spinach)
30g fresh parsley
20g fresh coriander
20g fresh dill
1½ tsp grated nutmeg
½ tsp sugar
3 tbsp plain flour
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 free-range eggs
salt and freshly ground black pepper
80g feta, broken into small pieces
60ml olive oil
1 lemon, cut into 4 wedges
Method
Bring a pan of salted water to a boil, and simmer the chard for five minutes. Drain, squeeze dry, then whizz in a food processor with the herbs, nutmeg, sugar, flour, garlic, eggs, a third of a teaspoon of salt and some pepper. Fold in the feta by hand.
Pour a tablespoon of oil into a frying pan over medium-high heat and spoon in three heaped tablespoons of the mix, one per fritter. Press down gently to shape into 7cm wide, 1cm thick fritters, and cook for three to four minutes, turning once, until they take on some colour. Transfer to kitchen paper and repeat with the remaining fritter mix and oil. Serve hot with a wedge of lemon.
From Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook. It makes a good pudding, she says, served warm with cream, crème fraîche or Greek yoghurt. You can make it in advance and reheat it gently, covered with a piece of foil.
Preparation and cooking: about 45 minutes
Serves 6-8
Ingredients
200g butter, plus a little more for the flan tin
200g caster sugar
3 eggs
200g ground almonds
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g blackcurrants, topped and tailed
icing sugar
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Butter a 25cm loose-bottomed flan tin and line the base with a circle of baking parchment.
Cream the butter and sugar in a food processor or with a hand beater until the mixture is pale. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well and, after each addition, fold in some of the ground almonds and a few drops of vanilla extract. Put the mixture in the flan tin and scatter over the blackcurrants. Their flavour is intense, so don’t be tempted to use more fruit.
Cook for 30 minutes until golden and just firm and, before serving, sieve over some icing sugar.
This is a delicious alternative to the traditional gooseberry crumble and takes only a little longer to make. Try it with Mark Norman’s organically-grown gooseberries in this week’s veg boxes, also available for sale at St Kew Harvest Farm Shop.
The ground almonds make all the difference. And if you’ve got any elderflower cordial, add a few drops of that. As Nigel Slater says, it’s very much a “cut-and-come-again cake” so it’s popular with children and teenagers. My daughters love it.
Serves 8
Preparation and cooking: 75 – 90 minutes (mostly cooking time)
Ingredients
For the cake:
butter, softened 180g
golden caster sugar 90g
light muscovado sugar 90g
eggs 2
ground almonds 80g
self-raising flour 150g
vanilla extract 2–3 drops
gooseberries 350g
For the crumble:
plain flour 110g
butter 80g
caster sugar 2 tbsp
Method
Preheat the oven to 175C/gas mark 3. Line the base of a 20cm round tin with baking parchment. To make the crumble topping, blitz the flour and the butter to crumbs in a food processor. Add the caster sugar and mix lightly. Remove the mixer bowl from the stand and add a few drops of water. Shake the bowl a little so that some of the crumbs stick together like small pebbles.
To make the cake, beat the butter and sugars in a food mixer for 8-10 minutes until pale and fluffy. Beat the eggs gently then gradually introduce them to the mixture with the beater on slow.
Fold in the ground almonds and flour then add the drops of vanilla extract. Transfer the mixture to the tin and smooth it flat. Scatter the gooseberries on top, pressing them down a little. Then scatter the crumble mixture loosely over the gooseberries.
Bake for 60-75 minutes, checking for doneness with a skewer. The skewer should come out damp from the gooseberries but without any raw cake mixture attached. Leave to cool in the tin, then remove and set aside.
Two recipes for a sauce to accompany grilled mackerel or roast pork, both from Nigel Slater’s Tender Vol. II. The second one makes use of elderflower cordial and ginger – an idea taken from Yotam Ottolenghi.
1. A gooseberry sauce
Makes enough to accompany grills mackerel or roast pork for six.
Ingredients
500g gooseberries
50g sugar
3-4 tbsp water
Method
Top and tail the gooseberries, tip them into a stainless steel pan, then add the sugar and water. Bring to the boil, lower the heat and simmer for ten minutes. Use warm or at room temperature.
2. A hot gooseberry and ginger sauce
Enough for 6
Ingredients
400g gooseberries
100g caster sugar
4 tbsp elderflower cordial
large lump of fresh ginger, about the size of your thumb
Method
Top and tail the gooseberries and tip them into a pan with the sugar and cordial. Peel and coarsely grate the ginger and add to the pot. Bring to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer for ten minutes. Serve with pork or oily fish.
As we get our first taste of French beans from Camel CSA’s own polytunnel in this week’s veg boxes, this recipe from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook seems ideal. “The squeaky texture of fresh French beans combines beautifully with the softness of potatoes,” she says, “and there are many ways of using these two in a salad.”
You can toss them both in a little truffle oil and add a few rocket leaves, or serve them like this with nut oil, toasted almonds and lots of dill.’ Parsley or chives could be substituted for the dill.
Serves 6
Preparation and cooking: 25 minutes
Ingredients
450g new potatoes
450g French beans
1 tbs walnut or hazelnut oil
4 tbsp chopped dill (or parsley, or chives)
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
230ml sour cream
1 tsp caster sugar
salt and black pepper
2 tbsp flaked or halved almonds, toasted
Method
Cook the new potatoes in boiling salted water, then cut them in half and peel if you want to. Next, cook the beans for 4 minutes (they must be crisp).
Drain the beans and potatoes, plunge the beans into cold water and drain again. Pour the oil over both while they are still warm. Toss to coat.
Combine the chopped dill and garlic with the sour cream, sugar and seasoning, and carefully fold into the potatoes and beans. Scatter over the almonds.
Also try Sarah Raven’s Spaghetti with beans and tomatoes
From Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Every Day. He says: “‘Sweet, sticky, garlic-scented roast beetroot makes an ideal side dish for oily fish such as mackerel, or for barbecued chicken or pork. But let it go cold and you could add some soft goat’s cheese and salad leaves and eat it as a dish in its own right.”
Serves 4
Preparation and cooking: about 1 hour 15 minutes
Ingredients
about 1kg beetroot
1 large rosemary stem, broken into little sprigs
1 head of garlic, broken into cloves, skin left on, each lightly squashed
3 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Peel the beetroot, cut them into thick wedges and place in a roasting dish. Add the springs of rosemary and squashed garlic cloves, trickle on the oil and season generously. Toss everything together, cover the dish with foil and roast in an oven preheated to 190C/gas 5 for 40 minutes [maybe less for our small Camel CSA beets], or until the beetroot is almost tender.
Remove the foil, trickle over the vinegar, give everything a good stir and return to the oven. Cook uncovered, stirring again once, for another 30-40 minutes or until the beetroot is starting to caramelise. Serve straight away or leave to cool.
A good way to use this week’s spring onions and some spring greens – from Nigel Slater’s Tender (Vol. 1). As he says, ‘Of all the flavours that seem to bring out the best of the cabbage family’s earthy greenness, few work as effectively as those of Southeast Asia. Ginger, spring onion and garlic have a natural affinity with chlorophyll-rich vegetables of any sort …’
Serves 2 as a side dish
Preparation and cooking: about 15 minutes
Ingredients
about 12 stems or small leaves of chinese greens or small cabbage leaves
2 large cloves garlic
thumb-sized piece of ginger
6 spring onions (though maybe a few more of our CSA baby ones)
2 tbsp groundnut oil
1 tbsp nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
Method
Put a saucepan of deep water on to boil and salt it slightly. Wash the greens thoroughly. Peel the garlic and ginger, finely chop the garlic and shred the ginger into matchstick strips. Trim the spring onions and cut each into two or three.
Warm the oil in a shallow pan or wok. Toss the garlic, ginger and spring onions in the oil till deep gold, verging on being lightly browned and fragrant. Drop the greens, whole or shredded as you wish into the boiling water. Leave for only a minute or so before draining. Pour the fish sauce in with the garlic and ginger – it will spit and sizzle – then toss with the greens and eat.
