January 19, 2012
Everyone will have:
* onions (Camel CSA)
* kale (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* turnips (Camel CSA)
* parsley (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)
* celeriac (St Kew Harvest)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
Standard boxes will have extra potatoes plus:
* leeks (Camel CSA)
* swede (Camel CSA)
cauliflower (Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
* = grown to organic principles
January 18, 2012
You might think that Camel CSA’s growing team have their feet up indoors at this time of year, browsing through seed catalogues, surrounded by chilli garlands and sustained by large vats of vegetable soup.
No such chance! It’s time to do all sorts of jobs on our community vegetable-growing plot.
Apart from harvesting the over-wintered stocks for the weekly veg boxes, we’re starting to get the site ready for next season’s crops.
On Sunday morning expert grower Jane helped Sophie and Freddie, two of our junior members, to sow the first crop of early carrots in our second polytunnel.
While they basked in the warmth, the rest of us braved the cold Cornish wind and carried on preparing and planting our new soft fruit area.
As the ground there is quite poor and stony, we’re using the lasagne gardening method. This was a great success in our tomato, pepper, aubergine and chilli polytunnel last summer where it helped retain moisture and improve the soil.
The rhubarb crowns are already safe in the ground. The rest of the fruit bushes – culinary and dessert gooseberries, red, white and blackcurrants, summer and autumn raspberries – have been heeled in. They’ll be planted next weekend.
We’ve gone through an enormous amount of cardboard – big thankyou to Laura and Joe at St Mabyn PO and Stores. But we’re fast running out again. If you have any old boxes, please leave them in the potting shed, which is between the tractor shelter and the polytunnels.
Many thanks to expert growers Jane and Mark N and the rest of Sunday’s volunteer growing team – Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Freddie (6), Gillian, Mark N, Mike and Sophie (9).
January 14, 2012
No apologies for another soup recipe – made with organically-grown carrots in Camel CSA’s veg boxes.
Potage Crecy is a classic French soup which, characteristically, is thickened with rice. I always use arborio (risotto) rice, as I think it enhances the texture. The thyme is most important to the flavour and it tastes even better if made with homemade chicken stock.
This recipe is adapted from two versions by Jane Grigson in her Good Food and her Vegetable Book.
Serves 4
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
60g butter
1 medium onion, chopped
500g carrots, sliced
1 heaped tablespoon rice
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
Sprig of fresh thyme
Salt, pepper, chopped parsley
Method
Soften the onion in the butter over a low heat so the onion doesn’t colour. Add the carrots, put a lid on the pan and let the contents sweat for 5 minutes or so. Stir in the rice and allow it to absorb the juices.
Pour in the stock, add the thyme and cook gently for about 20 minutes. Remove the thyme stalk and liquidise the soup. Check the seasoning and sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving.
More carrot recipes from Camel CSA
January 12, 2012
The last of our squash are in this week’s share of the harvest. There were just enough for a Crown Prince variety in each box, minus the one that had been nibbled by the resident mice in our potting shed.
Everyone will have:
* parsley (Camel CSA)
* onions (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* red cabbage (Camel CSA)
* squash (Camel CSA)
* parsnips (Camel CSA)
* swede (Camel CSA)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
Standard boxes will have extra potatoes plus:
* leeks (Camel CSA)
* turnip bunch (Camel CSA)
* purple sprouting broccoli (Camel CSA)
* = grown to organic principles
Try these recipe ideas from Camel CSA: –
Spicy roasted squash
Squash and apple curry
January 8, 2012
Ever since coming to live in Cornwall I’ve encountered few homegrown Cornish fish soup recipes.
This is disappointing, as my Scottish upbringing means I LOVE soup. I make vast quantities of it from the contents of my weekly veg box.
So this week’s local food recipe is a type of chowder named after the small town of Cullen on the Moray Firth in Scotland. My thoughts always stray towards this hearty soup-stew in the cold dark days between New Year and Burns Night on 25 January.
It’s traditionally made with Finnan haddie (unboned cold-smoked haddock from Findon near Aberdeen).
In the absence of Finnan haddie, make sure you buy pale straw-coloured undyed smoked haddock – not that nasty yellow stuff you get in supermarkets. And of course use the leeks, onions and potatoes from this week’s vegetable box.
This version of Cullen skink, from Felicity Cloake’s series How to cook perfect in the Guardian, is as near as you’ll get to the real thing. For the purists among you, leave out the leek.
Skink, by the way, is an old Scots term for soup or broth. It comes from a Scandinavian word meaning “essence” apparently.
Serves 6
Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking time: around 30 minutes
Ingredients
500g undyed smoked haddock, skin on
A bay leaf
Knob of butter
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 leek, washed and cut into chunks
2 medium potatoes, unpeeled, cut into chunks
500ml whole milk
Chives or parsley, chopped, to serve
Method
Put the fish into a pan large enough to hold it comfortably, and cover with about 300ml cold water. Add the bay leaf, and bring gently to the boil. By the time it comes to the boil, the fish should be just cooked – if it’s not, then give it another minute or so. Remove from the pan, and set aside to cool. Take the pan off the heat.
Melt the butter in another pan on a medium-low heat, and add the onion and the leek. Cover and allow to sweat, without colouring, for about 10 minutes until softened. Season with black pepper.
Add the potato and stir to coat with butter. Pour in the haddock cooking liquor and bay leaf, and bring to a simmer. Cook until the potato is tender.
Meanwhile, remove the skin, and any bones from the haddock, and break into flakes.
Lift out a generous slotted spoonful of potatoes and leeks, and set aside. Discard the bay leaf. Add the milk, and half the haddock to the pan, and either mash roughly or blend until smoothish.
Season to taste, and serve with a generous spoonful of the potato, leek and haddock mixture in each bowl, and a sprinkling of parsley or chives.
January 6, 2012
Happy new year to all you grow-your-own enthusiasts from Camel CSA’s picking and packing team! Our vegetable boxes this week are full of homegrown produce after our two-week festive break.
We’ve nearly reached the end of our leeks and squash but still have plenty of onions, garlic, parsnips, beetroot, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes, red and green cabbage, chard, swedes, turnips, kale and parsley plus purple sprouting broccoli.
This week’s small boxes have:
1.5kg potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* onions (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* leeks (Camel CSA)
* Jerusalem artichokes (Camel CSA)
* savoy cabbage (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)
Standard boxes have all the above plus:
extra potatoes
* parsnips (Camel CSA)
* purple sprouting broccoli (Camel CSA)
* squash (Camel CSA)
* = grown to organic principles
December 22, 2011
This warming, spicy soup is a great antidote to rich, Christmas food. It’s an adaptation of a couple of classic recipes, using the squash or pumpkin as well as chillies, carrots, onions, garlic and parsley from this week’s Christmas vegetable boxes.
Serves: 4
Preparation: 20 mins
Cooking time: 35 mins
Ingredients
750g squash or pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and diced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 fresh red or green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
2 onions, peeled and chopped
2 carrots peeled and chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped
1.25 litres vegetable or chicken stock
Lemon juice
Flat-leaf parsley or chopped chives
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°c/gas 4.
Peel the squash or pumpkin, remove the stringy bits and seeds and discard them. Chop it into cubes and put in a roasting tray mixed with 1 tbsp of the olive oil, the garlic and the spices. Cook in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until soft and brown at the edges.
Place a pan on a medium heat with the remaining olive oil. Add the carrot, onion, celery and chilli and sweat until softened but not coloured. Then mix in the roasted squash or pumpkin and the stock.
Bring to the boil, then simmer for about 10 minutes until all the vegetables are soft and cooked through.
Blitz with a hand blender or in a food processor until smooth. Taste and season with salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice, then sprinkle with some chopped parsley or chives.
Serve with a swirl of creme fraiche and a scattering of toasted pumpkin seeds or crispy bacon pieces.
December 21, 2011
Our double-value Christmas boxes will all have:
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* onions (Camel CSA)
* garlic (Camel CSA)
sprout stalk (Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
* salad bag (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* parsnips (Camel CSA)
* squash (Camel CSA)
* savoy cabbage (Camel CSA)
* swede (Camel CSA)
* chilli string (Camel CSA)
green tomato and apple chutney (Camel CSA)
tomato marmalade (Camel CSA)
* parsley (Camel CSA)
Standard boxes will have additional potatoes plus
* leeks (Camel CSA)
* red cabbage (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)
jar of St Mabyn honey
NB next veg box day is Friday 6 January 2012
* = grown to organic principles
December 19, 2011
Camel CSA members got together as planned to create around 40 decorative chilli strings for our Christmas vegetable boxes.
At a ready guess we used up more than 4,000 surplus chillies harvested from the magnificent crop in our second polytunnel.
The garlands make beautiful swags for the mantelpiece, table centrepieces or runners, or Christmas tree decorations.
And, of course, they can be eaten!
Festive greetings to the chilli stringing team – Anne, Caroline, Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Evie, Jenny, Kitty, Mark, Penny, Robert, Tess and Trish F.
December 15, 2011
Everyone will be having:
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* onions (Camel CSA)
* celeriac (Camel CSA)
* parsnips (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* savoy cabbage (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)
* turnip (Camel CSA)
Standard boxes will have extra potatoes plus:
* leeks (Camel CSA)
* squash (Camel CSA)
* = grown to organic principles
