There may be a little less in our boxes this week as the “hungry gap” starts to make itself felt.
Everyone will have:
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* onions (Camel CSA)
* swiss chard (Camel CSA)
* salad bag – mixed lettuce, leaf beet, mibuna, baby chard,  endive, chives (Camel CSA)
* leeks (St Kew Harvest)
* swede (Mark Norman)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)

Standard boxes will have extra potatoes plus:
* radish bunch (Camel CSA)
* parsnips (Camel CSA)
cauliflower (Camel CSA/Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)

* = grown to organic principles

Camel CSA’s hard-working secretary Mike Sadler loves fennel, so we’re sowing a whole 120-module tray of it especially for him. The seedlings will be planted outdoors later on our plot.

Other jobs for the growing team this Sunday morning include sowing more cabbage, chard and perpetual spinach (leaf beet) into modules. We’ll also be planting rocket in the polytunnel to add variety to our salad bags.

There’s parsnip seeds to sow straight into the ground as well as more onion beds to prepare and onion sets to plant.

See you there!

This tasty vegetarian dish is recommended by VegBox Recipes. They say: “This is an amazingly delicious recipe for Swiss chard or spinach lasagne. We kept going back for more.”

Serves 4

Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes

Ingredients
1 packet of no-cook lasagne sheets
500g Swiss chard (or spinach)
2 medium onions
4 cloves garlic
200g tub of half-fat creme fraiche (or Greek yoghurt)
75g pine nuts
200g blue cheese, such as Dolcelatte or Gorgonzola
200g mozzarella cheese
½ teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 tablespoon olive oil

750ml milk
1 oz butter
2 heaped tablespoons cornflour
1 bay leaf
75g parmesan cheese (or Cheddar)

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180C (gas mark 4, 350F) . Heat a large pan (dry) and add the pine nuts. Cook, stirring often, for 2-3 minutes, until they start to brown. Put them in a bowl, to stop them burning.

Peel the onion and chop finely. Peel and crush the garlic. Wash the chard or spinach leaves and dry thoroughly (a salad spinner is ideal). Chop roughly.

Gently heat the olive oil in a large pan. Add the onion and garlic and saute for 5 minutes, until the onion is starting to go translucent. Add the chard or spinach and the nutmeg and stir well. Cover and cook for 3 minutes, until the chard or spinach has wilted.

Mix in the creme fraiche. Crumble the blue cheese and add to the chard or spinach mixture. Grate the mozarella and add. Stir well. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

To make the sauce, put the milk in a pan, add the bay leaf and bring to a gently boil. Simmer for 5 minutes on the lowest heat setting. Remove the bay leaf. Turn off the heat.

Mix the cornflour with 1 tablespoon milk or water, to form a thick paste. Pour into the milk, whisking constantly. Heat gently until the sauce thickens. Simmer gently for 3 minutes. Add more milk (a little at a time) if the sauce is too thick. Then add half ofthe cheese and stir well, to melt it. Season with salt & pepper to taste.

Put ¼ of the cheese sauce into the bottom of a lasagne dish (about 9 or 10 inches in length). Cover this with ½ of the chard or spinach mixture. Top with lasagne sheets. Repeat. Top the lasagne with the remaining cheese sauce. Sprinkle the top with the remaining cheese.

Bake for about 45 minutes until the lasagne is bubbling and the top is golden brown. Top tip: this is easier to serve if you let it stand for 10 minutes after baking.

We’ve another excellent selection of veg in this week’s boxes, including leeks from Jeremy Brown at St Kew Harvest Farm Shop and first of the rhubarb from our expert grower Mark Norman’s plot in Bodmin.

All small and standard veg boxes have: –
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* leeks (St Kew Harvest)
* onions (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* parsnips (Camel CSA)
* Swiss chard (Camel CSA)
* parsley (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes also have: –
extra potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* rhubarb (Mark Norman, Bodmin)
* radishes (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)

* = grown to organic principles

We’ve been enjoying some ideal growing weather in Cornwall. We had south-west gales and torrential rain on Easter Monday (which sent the tourists scurrying home early) followed by several days of spring showers and warm sunshine.

So we’ve been hard at work planting hundreds more onion sets and sowing radishes.

We’ve also planted out bunched spring onions and shallots, spring cabbage and some colourful ruby red and canary yellow leaf beet (perpetual spinach).

A quick and easy dish that can be made totally with the contents of Camel CSA’s veg boxes over the past fortnight – bar the spices, of course.

This version’s from Riverford Organic Veg but originally came from the Schumacher College at Dartington. They say: “Nice with rice, yoghurt raita and Indian pickles as a vegetarian meal or as part of a bigger Indian meal.”

If anything, the stronger-tasting Swiss chard is better than spinach on this occasion.

Serves: 4
Preparation and cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
1 large onion chopped
2 large potatoes cut into 1/2 inch cubes or smaller
400g spinach or chard, stalks removed, coarsely chopped
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
1/2 tsp clove garlic coarsely chopped
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp garam masala
olive oil and butter

Method
Fry the cumin seeds in a heavy bottomed pan in the oil and butter until just starting to brown. Add the onion and fry until starting to brown. Add the potato, garlic, turmeric, ginger and garam masala, then fry until starting to soften. Add the chard or spinach and cook until it collapses over the potato. Salt to taste.

All the boxes have some fresh bean sprouts – grown in expert grower Mark Norman’s linen cupboard! Everyone will also have:
* spring onions (Camel CSA)
 *onions (Camel CSA)
* swiss chard (Camel CSA)
* salad leaves (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)

Standard boxes will have extra potatoes and onions plus:
* red cabbage (Camel CSA)
* radishes (Camel CSA)
* parsnips (Camel CSA)

* = grown to organic principles

We’ve been busy sowing, growing and hoeing on our community veg patch over the past week.

We’ve weeded the polytunnels, planted out mixed lettuce to replace the pak choi, and sown an indoor crop of French beans.

More mange tout and carrot seeds have been put in to mitigate the mouse damage. Fortunately the field mice left the indoor broad beans alone for some reason, but the recent warm, dry spell in Cornwall has delayed germination of the outdoor crop.

The fine, sunny weather has enabled us to get more growing beds ready with our Big Lottery-funded  tractor and to plant hundreds more onion sets.

It’ll soon be time to plant out the spring onions, cabbages, sweet peas, shallots and leaf beet sown earlier in modules. We’ve also sowed more cabbage, calabrese, spring onions, rocket and kohl rabi.

Thanks to expert growers Bridget, Jane, Mark N and to Bob, Cath, Charlotte, Mark M, Mike and Tom.

This week’s recipe is in honour of the Pastygate scandal that rocked Westminster this week. (The humble swede is a vital ingredient in a traditional Cornish pasty).

It’s another Nigel Slater special from his book Tender. Also a good way to use some of the Camel CSA garlic in our standard veg boxes this week.

He says: “The swede’s ability to sponge up liquid is shown to good effect when it is baked with butter and vegetable stock. When it is teamed up with potato and seasoned with garlic and a spot of mustard, it is as near to a main course as I feel you can safely get with this particular root.”

Serves: four

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: One hour 30 minutes

potatoes – 500g
swede – 500g
garlic – 4 cloves
butter – 85g
Dijon mustard – 2 heaped teaspoons
thyme leaves – a level teaspoon
vegetable stock – 55ml

Peel the potatoes, then cut them into very fine slices. A sharp knife is fine,but if you have a mandoline (the vegetable slicer, that is, not the lute-like stringed instrument), use that. Whatever, your slices should be almost thin enough to see through. Do the same with the swede, keeping the slices in cold water to prevent them browning.

Set the oven to 190°C/Gas 5. Peel and thinly slice the garlic. Over a moderate heat, melt the butter in a flameproof dish or sauté pan about 25cm in diameter. When it starts to bubble, turn down the heat and add the garlic. It needs to soften slightly without colouring – a matter of five minutes or so. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the mustard. Tip about two-thirds of the mustard and butter out of the pan and into a jug.

Drain the potato and swede slices and pat them dry with kitchen paper or a clean tea towel. Put a third of the vegetables into the pan, layering them neatly or just chucking them in as the mood takes you, then drizzle them with some of the mustard butter in the jug. Season with the thyme leaves, pepper and salt. Be quite generous with the salt. Repeat this twice, so that all the slices of vegetable are layered with the thyme and the mustard and garlic butter. Now pour the stock over the top.

Cover with a circle of greaseproof paper or kitchen foil, pressing it down well on top of the cake. Bake for about an hour and ten minutes, until tender to the point of a knife. Remove the foil, turn the heat up to 220°C/Gas 7 and bake for a further ten minutes until the top has coloured and crisped a little.

Everyone will have:
* onions (Camel CSA)
* swiss chard (Camel CSA)
* salad leaves (Camel CSA)
* swede (Camel CSA)
* kale (Camel CSA)
* leeks (St Kew Harvest)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)

Standard boxes will have extra potatoes and onions plus:
* red cabbage (Camel CSA)
* garlic (Camel CSA)
sprouting broccoli (Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)

* = grown to organic principles

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