Largely from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook but with a few tweaks from Camel CSA member Henrietta Danvers. It’s great with cold meats, smoked fish, cheeses, almost anything. You need to make it at least the day before you need it so that the flavours of the spices really come through. It will keep in a screw-topped jar in the fridge for two to three weeks.

Serves 6-8

Preparation: 15 minutes plus at least 24 hours in fridge

Ingredients
½ white cabbage
100ml cider vinegar
100g soft brown sugar
large bunch of dill/parsley/mint/coriander
3 tbsp sunflower oil
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 tsp dill or fennel or caraway seeds
2 tsp mustard seeds
salt and black pepper

Method
Cut the cabbage into quarters and remove the hard core, then slice very thinly. Don’t use the stem.
Heat the vinegar in a small pan over a low heat and then stir in the sugar until it has dissolved. Leave to cool.

Finely chop the herbs. Mix the oil, garlic, seeds, salt and pepper. Add both herbs and oil mix to the sweet vinegar. Dress the cabbage with this marinade. Put in a jar or container and leave for at least 24 hours in the fridge.

As predicted, this week’s veg boxes are a little bit more restricted but it’s a tasty selection nevertheless. All boxes will get:

potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)
spring greens (Rest Harrow Farm)
white cabbage (Rest Harrow Farm)
spinach (Rest Harrow Farm)

Standard boxes will get larger quantities of some of the above.

Our pioneering work as a community supported agriculture project in north Cornwall makes a feature in the Western Morning News today.

There haven’t been many opportunities to post to the blog recently.  Events in Iceland meant my visit to southern Spain was longer than planned.

Bliss – lots of fresh local vegetables on the stalls in Cadiz market and not much sign of a hungry gap!

We’re now entering the traditional “hungry gap”, which means that the normally wide variety of local, home-grown veg is becoming increasingly hard to come by in the UK.

It’s the time of year when the root crops and brassicas of winter and early spring either run out or start to bolt in the increasingly warm weather. 

At the same time, we’re waiting for the late spring and summer crops to grow.

So what can we do to fill the weekly vegetable boxes short-term?

Rather than go beyond Cornwall or even outside the UK, we’ll probably start to fill the boxes with more “high-value” vegetables such as Cornish mushrooms from Tregonning Farm, Stithians. 

When the asparagus season begins, you may find that it’s one of only a few vegetables in the boxes.  But well worth it!  And extremely local – from Cornish Asparagus at Lower Croan, Sladesbridge.

We’ll also have some vegetables cultivated in polytunnels by our own expert growers – salad leaves, radishes, spring onions, spinach and coriander.

Growing fast

The growing team have been busy preparing seed beds and sowing all kinds of veg – Swiss chard, rainbow chard, perpetual spinach, beetroot and carrot seeds. 

They’ve planted out the first of the lettuces brought on in the polytunnel, and pricked out celery and celeriac seedlings.

Over the last two Sundays our volunteers have also been erecting a much-needed fence to keep out the rabbits, which seem to be multiplying by the minute.

Thanks to expert growers Jeremy and Mark N and to volunteers Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Fiona, Fred, Jerry, Kitty, Mark M, Mike S and Theresa.  And to our younger helpers Finn and Keira.

This recipe from Nigel Slater’s Tender makes a beautifully creamy risotto. And it’s dead easy too – no celery or onion to chop, just the leeks to slice. A good farewell to one of our winter stalwarts which won’t be around much longer.

Enough for 2

Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking: about half an hour

Ingredients
2 medium leeks
about 50g butter, plus a walnut-sized lump to finish
300g arborio rice
a glass of Noilly Prat (or white wine)
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
6 thin rashers of pancetta (or streaky bacon)
3 tbsp grated parmesan plus more to finish

Method
Wash the leeks thoroughly, splitting them down their length and rinsing under a cold running tap, then slice them finely. Melt the butter in a wide, high-sided pan over a low heat and add the leeks. Let them soften without colouring, stirring from time to time. [A lid can help prevent burning or a piece of greaseproof paper on top – just don’t let them brown.]

Stir in the rice, then pour in the Noilly Prat or wine. Let the mixture boil until the alcohol has evaporated, then tip in the first ladleful of hot stock. Continue stirring, adding stock as and when the rice has absorbed almost all of the previous ladleful, till the rice is plump, tender and yet has a little bite left in it – a process that will take about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, grill the pancetta or bacon, or cook in a non-stick frying pan, until truly crisp. Cut into pieces the size of a large postage stamp, leaving a couple of rashers whole. Fold the cut pieces into the risotto.

Stir in the walnut-sized lump of butter, adding the 3 tbsp of parmesan as you go. Divide between warm dishes and finish with a piece of pancetta/bacon and more grated parmesan.

But a bit of a warning too: box contents are smaller this week as available produce begins to run low. We’re entering the “hungry gap” – we may be enjoying the warmer, longer days but unfortunately they mean that the winter brassicas are beginning to bolt and the new sowings such as broad beans are not yet ready to harvest. Still, this week we should be getting (although we’re not 100 per cent sure until tomorrow):

Small boxes:
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
* spinach (Jeremy Brown)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)
* salad leaves (Jeremy)

Medium boxes will have more of some of the above plus:
mushrooms (Tregonning Farm, Stithians)
sprouting broccoli (Cornish wholesaler)

* = grown to organic principles

A recipe from Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat. She claims it’s one of her ‘regular fast hot lunches’. Quantities are for one, so double, treble or quadruple etc as necessary.

Serves 1

Preparation 15 minutes
Cooking 15 minutes

Ingredients
175g kale
approx. 100g chorizo (the fresh or semi-dried sausages – rather than the salami type – half of one of the horseshoe-shaped linked sausage loops is about right)
1 egg
1 tbsp ordinary oil

Method
Remove the curly leaves of kale from the stems and tear the leaves into smallish pieces. Cut the chorizo into slices about 5mm to 1cm thick and then cut them into quarters. Bring a pan of water to the boil and add salt. Put the kale in the boiling water and cook till tenderish (about 5-7 minutes).

Put 1 tbsp oil into a heavy-bottomed, deepish frying pan and cook the chorizo pieces for a few minutes, stirring and pressing with a wooden sppon – 3 or so minutes should be fine. While this is happening, as well as keeping an eye on the kale, put a pan of water on to poach the egg. Drain the kale well when cooked and then stir into the chorizo. Put the egg in to poach and when it’s ready, turn the orange-spliced kale on to a plate and put the poached egg on top.

This week’s small veg boxes will have:
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
carrots (Rest Harrow Farm)
kale (Rest Harrow Farm)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)
* salad leaves (Jeremy Brown)

Standard boxes will have more of some of the above plus:
cauliflower (Rest Harrow Farm)
* coriander (Jeremy)
* radishes (Jeremy)

* = grown to organic principles

Make the most of this lovely spring weather.  Come and share in the push to get our vegetables in the ground.  There’s lots to do.

We need plenty of people at our volunteer growing session this Sunday 11 April to prepare some more beds and spread compost.  There’s also celery and broad beans to plant out as well as beetroot and parsnip seeds to sow.

Please join us between 10am and 1pm on Sunday.  You’ll find us on the plot behind St Kew Harvest Farm Shop.  If you can, bring tools – hoes, spades, forks, trowels, rakes, wheelbarrows. 

Help us to get veg growing again

It’s time to get growing again

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