From Nigel Slater’s Tender cookbook. “Good with lamb,” he says.

Enough for 6

Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 50 minutes

Ingredients
5 medium potatoes (floury are best)
90g butter
leaves from 4 sprigs of thyme

Method
Set the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly. They should be so thin that you are almost able to see through them. If you tend to work slowly, put the sliced potatoes into a bowl of cold water to prevent them browning.

Melt the butter, then brush some of it on to the bottom and sides of a loaf tin (or use a round, solid-based tin). Cover with a piece of greaseproof paper, leaving a little extra overlapping the sides to get hold of when you come to turn out the cake. Cover the bottom of the tin with slices of potato, brush with more butter and season with salt, pepper, and a light sprinkling of thyme leaves. Continue layering the potatoes, adding the butter and seasonings every two or three layers, until you have used them all up. Pour any remaining butter over the top. Bake for 40-50 minutes, till the top is golden and a skewer can be inserted effortlessly into the layers of tender potato.

To serve, lift the potato cake out by holding both long sides of the greaseproof paper and pulling upwards. Cut into six pieces. If it falls apart, and well it might, just push the slices back together.

White sprouting broccoli is just one of the seasonal brassicas in our boxes this week.

Everyone will have:
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
carrots (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm)
white sprouting broccoli (Rest Harrow Farm)
spring greens (Rest Harrow Farm)
parsnip (Rest Harrow Farm)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)

Standard boxes will have larger quantities of some of the above, plus:
savoy cabbage (Rest Harrow Farm)
swede (Rest Harrow Farm)
kale (Rest Harrow Farm)

And large boxes will also have:
white cabbage (Rest Harrow Farm)
* pak choi (Jeremy Brown)

* = grown to organic principles

Now the moment everyone’s been waiting for.  We can finally reveal what’s going to be in Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s vegetable boxes from June onwards. 

There’s a fantastic selection to look forward to.  Our own volunteer growing team will be cultivating a variety of root crops, salad leaves and herbs on our plot behind St Kew Harvest Farm Shop at St Kew Highway.  

Our own share of the harvest will include early carrots, broad beans, parsnips, beetroot, radish, celeriac, Jerusalem artichokes, self-blanching celery, bulb fennel, sweetcorn, salad leaves, Swiss chard, perpetual spinach, parsley and coriander. 

Our team of three expert growers will be providing the bulk of the other vegetables, apart from winter brassicas and main crop potatoes.  Between them, they’re growing a tremendous variety.

Organic

Jane Mellowship, who gave birth to Daisy in February, is concentrating solely on growing in her polytunnel on the coast at New Polzeath.  She’s supplying early spring onions, French beans and chilli peppers.

Mark Norman has a permanent bed system and a polytunnel on his sloping, south-facing plot on the eastern outskirts of Bodmin.  He’s planning to supply quantities of runner beans, main crop carrots, courgettes, garlic, kohl rabi, leeks, onions, spring onions, early potatoes, squash, pumpkin, swede, peppers and blackcurrants. 

Jeremy Brown grows vegetables for his business at St Kew Harvest Farm Shop on land and in polytunnels adjoining the shop.  This year he’s also cultivating some autumn raspberries and strawberries.

He’ll provide the veg boxes with main crop French beans, purple sprouting broccoli, main crop carrots, courgettes, leeks, onions, spring onions, peas, early potatoes, squash, pumpkins, turnip, cucumber, tomatoes and basil. 

All the crops listed above will be grown to organic principles.

CSA members will also be harvesting dessert and culinary apples from the orchard we’ve adopted at West End, St Mabyn.  These will be used for juicing as well as eating.

Local

Once again, we hope to buy in autumn and winter brassicas from Richard Hore, who cultivates a range of all-season crops for his own veg stall at Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick.

He’ll be supplying us with Brussels sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli, calabrese, summer and winter cabbage, cauliflower and kale from his fields close to the Camel estuary.

Next winter we aim to get main crop potatoes from Johnny Brown (Jeremy’s Dad) at Benbole Farm, St Kew Highway and from Colin and James Mutton at Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn.

If we fall short of filling the boxes with a good variety or if the box numbers rise significantly, it’s possible we might need to buy in extra quantities from other small-scale local suppliers.

This very simple recipe is from the River Café Cook Book Easy. Something with which to remember Rose Gray, co-founder along with Ruth Rogers of the iconic River Café and one of Britain’s most influential modern chefs and cookery writers, who died on 28 February 2010.

Serves 4

Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking: 12 minutes

Ingredients
320g egg tagliatelle
250ml crème fraîche
2 lemons
150g rocket leaves
150g parmesan

Method
Finely grate the lemon peel and squeeze the juice. Roughly chop the rocket. Grate the parmesan.

Put the crème fraîche in a bowl, stir in the lemon juice and zest, and season.

Cook the tagliatelle in boiling salted water until al dente, drain and return to the pan. Pour over the sauce, add the rocket and half the parmesan. Toss to combine.

Serve with the remaining parmesan.

This week everyone will have:
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
carrots (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)
* rocket (Jeremy Brown)
kale (Rest Harrow Farm)
swede (Rest Harrow Farm)

Medium boxes will get larger quantities of some of the above plus:
* coriander (Jeremy)
savoy cabbage (Rest Harrow Farm)
white sprouting broccoli (Rest Harrow Farm)

And large boxes will also have:
* pak choi (Jeremy)
spring greens (Rest Harrow Farm)

* = grown to organic principles

You’re all invited to join our first vegetable growing session of the year this Sunday 14 March.  It’s exactly a year to the day since our volunteer team started preparing the ground and planting the first seeds.

We’ll be out in force from 10am onwards on Camel CSA’s site behind St Kew Harvest Farm Shop, just outside St Kew Highway.  There’s plenty of parking.

Please turn up any time between 10am and 12 noon.  We’re a friendly and energetic bunch and you’ll be made to feel very welcome.  We represent all ages, shapes and sizes. 

Be prepared to get your hands dirty.  Wear old clothes, boots and a hat and bring gardening gloves. 

If it’s threatening rain you’ll need a waterproof jacket and some waterproof trousers, as there’s limited shelter from the elements.  If you can, please bring tools – forks for tackling the dockleaves, plus hoes and hand tools for weeding the broad beans and garlic.  We’ll be planting some celeriac and parsley seeds into modules as well.

We always stop for a refreshment break – tea, coffee and water are provided.  You may want to bring a snack to boost your energy levels as it can be hard work!  If you’d like to know more about these Sunday growing sessions, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Other jobs

If you’d rather help with preparing vegetables and packing veg boxes, you can join our volunteer picking and packing team on a Friday morning between 10am and 12 noon.  

This enthusiastic and sociable group has been turning out every week since our first harvest last July.

A few of the regulars normally have a cup of coffee or tea (cakes optional!) in the shop afterwards.  Please contact us if you’d like to join the Friday picking and packing rota.

Lastly, if admin’s more your thing we can always use your skills.  Please get in touch with a member of the core group to find out what needs doing.  There’s always something on the to-do list.

The local food movement is too fragmented and can only work if the government puts its full weight behind it.  So Professor Kevin Morgan of Cardiff University, told guests at the Growing Collaboration event at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

The “quiet revolution” against our industrialised food system is helping more people to understand where their food comes from and how it’s produced.  

But action is needed at the centre to counteract the hidden health, environmental and economic costs of our cheap food culture, said Professor Morgan, a member of the Food Ethics Council: 

“Nothing helps people to reconnect more than food.  Locally, sustainably-produced food is absolutely essential.  

The biggest weakness of our local food movement is fragmentation and localisation.  It can’t do anything until central government acts in a more strategic way.  The government has to get its act together to be more supportive.”

The Growing Collaboration conference was organised by Eatsome, an NHS-funded project which aims to improve healthy eating in Cornwall.  The event enabled people who grow, prepare and eat food in a sustainable way to get together, share their experience and strengthen contact.

The fragmented nature of Cornwall’s own local food projects became evident during the three-minute “soap box” slot at the conference, when we all had a chance to explain what we’re doing. 

Here’s a selection: – 

• Camel Community Supported Agriculture – that’s us, of course
• Bugle Greenspace  –  its Growing Together project aims to link owners of unused gardens and greenhouses with other local people who would like to grow their own but don’t have a growing space
• Trevalon Organic Vegetables – established organic veg box scheme and online shop near Liskeard supplying local businesses.  In the process of setting up a Community Supported Agriculture Scheme
• Chyan Community Field – volunteers around Penryn are developing allotments, pond, strawbale tea-shed and toolstore, sensory garden, composting area, covered cob seat, playground and community orchard
• Seeds, Soup and Sarnies – providing families in St Blazey and Treverbyn parishes and parts of St Austell with the chance to share gardening skills and favourite recipes
• Cornish Guild of Smallholders – Lostwithiel Local Produce Market, Taste Cornwall community shop in Liskeard, annual show
• Transition Cornwall Network – supporting Transition groups throughout Cornwall move towards a positive, resilient, low carbon future
• Soil Association – helping to develop community supported agriculture projects in partnership with Making Local Food Work
• Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change (CN4C) – its Growing Food at Home programme aims to make home-grown food more accessible.  Works with Cornwall Waste Action‘s compost project
• Healthy Early Years (HEY) – “nipper nutrition” project aimed at nurseries
• The Big Lunch – annual Eden Project initiative to get people out on their street, raise a glass and share food with their neighbours
• Penair School chef – unorthodox and award-winning approach to school dinners in Cornwall
• Cornwall Food Programme – addressing the local food supply needs of the NHS in Cornwall
• Cornwall Healthier Eating and Food Safety Awards (CHEFS) – award scheme for restaurants and cafes 
• Cornwall Agri-food Council – aims to “transform Cornwall into the UK’s exemplar agri-food centre of excellence”
• Somerset Land & Food – developing a digital tool to map food projects in the south west

It should now be clear why we all need to be working together in a much more organised way!

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.

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.

The days of food rationing may be long over but the need to alter our eating habits is as important as ever.  This became clear on my recent visit to – of all places – the Imperial War Museum in London. 

Its Ministry of Food exhibition reveals some fascinating parallels between the dig for victory campaign in the Second World War and the enthusiasm that we all now share for growing our own food.

It shows that eating seasonal fruit and vegetables, healthy nutrition, recycling and reducing imports were just as important in 1940 as they are today.

But for very different reasons 70 years ago, of course. 

Back then as now, people queued up for allotments and pledged to grow fruit and vegetables at work and in their gardens.  They learned all about crop rotation, the value of nutritious green manure and how to create rich, sweet-smelling compost.  They clubbed together to raise pigs, poultry and rabbits.

By 1943, more than six million British families were growing their own veg.  The number of allotments had doubled to 1.75 million compared to 850,000 in 1939.  Potatoes – led by cheery icon Potato Pete – replaced imported wheat as a staple of the wartime diet because they were full of vitamin C, easy to grow, cheap, filling and energy-rich.

A vegetable list to provide “winter meals from a well-planned plot” itemised potatoes, cabbage, sprouting broccoli, carrots, onions, shallots, beetroot, swede, brussels sprouts, parsnips, leeks, kale, savoy cabbage, spinach beet and turnip.

Unsurprisingly, it mirrors the contents of Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s own seasonal weekly veg boxes being handed out to our members during the winter months.

The only difference is, thanks largely to multicultural influences, that our seasonal recipes are much more tasty and adventurous! 

The Ministry of Food exhibition runs at the Imperial War Museum in London until 3 January 2011.  It’s sponsored by Company of Cooks.

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