Baba Ganoush

No I didn't get aubergines in my veg bag. We we went to the Food Festival at Elm Farm a couple of weeks ago and went to a salting and smoking workshop. One of the things they showed us how to make was putting an aubergine directly on your barbecue or gas hob leaving it until the skin is completely charred and then using the flesh to make baba ganoush. It was delicious and we decided we couldn't wait for aubergines to come into season. My justification for blogging about it here is that the cherry tomatoes and courgettes we barbecued with it did come from the veg bag.   

Baba ganoush is one of those dishes that there are lots of different variations of. The one we were shown and tried to recreate was simply  mashed aubergine with garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper and Greek yoghurt.  Ours was a too garlicky for my taste, the recipe was one clove of garlic per aubergine but our aubergines were a bit small and our garlic cloves big!

One useful tip was when the aubergine is cooked put it in a plastic bag for a few minutes and it makes it easier to get the skin off.

I'm off to France for a couple of weeks enjoying lots of lovely fresh local French food. This is a difficult time for farmers supplying veg bags as people go on ho lidayand there is always the risk they might not re-start their order when they get back. I definitely will!

Local Lunch

I haven't blogged this week not because I haven't been using the produce in my veg bag but I haven't done anything new with it. 

I've also been busy with a new food project. I'm presenting  a show about local food on Reading's new community radio station Reading4U. It is called Local Lunch and goes out live on Thursdays 12.00 - 14.00 (UK time).   I play music and talk about what's in season, local food events and interview someone involved with local food around Reading. This week my guest was Sharon Fitton who is coordinator of a project called food4families, which helps people grow their own food.

The radio station is currently only available over the internet - we are hoping to get a broadcast licence soon. It does mean that you can listen to the show from wherever you are in the world just go here and then click on 'listen live now'.

My seasonal recipe on the show today was pancetta and broad bean risotto but I didn't want to post another broad bean risotto recipe here. If you are on facebook there is a fanpage Local Lunch.   The lovely carrots in the profile photo are from my veg bag! My guests get the added bonus of sharing my lunch so if you know anyone who would make a good guest of if you would like to come on yourself then let me know.

Helen's veg bag minestrone soup

The contents of my fridge suggested a minestrone soup  so I did a quick search for a recipe. There are thousands of variations on-line so I decided that my recipe was as valid as anyone else's. So here it is - one more to add to the thousands!

Serves 4 -5

1 onion

2 carrots

1 clove garlic

1 head of fennel

teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 tin tomatoes

handful of cherry tomatoes

750g broad beans (about 200g when podded)

75g wholewheat spaghetti

1 litre veg stock

Some tinned pitted black olives

fresh basil

(Broad beans, onion and carrots from the veg bag, fennel from The Kitchen Garden in Littlestoke via True Food Co-op))

- chop the onions and carrots in a food processor and fry gently in some olive oil

- Add crushed garlic, thinly sliced fennel  and oregano and continue cooking for a few minutes

- Add the tinned tomatoes, halved cherry tomatoes and stock.

- After about 1/2 an hour add the spaghetti

- 5 minutes later add the shelled broad beans and olives

- once the spaghetti and beans are cooked stir in some fresh basil and serve with Parmesan cheese.

Just a note on the broad beans, because I wanted to cook them in the soup I took off the inner skins before adding them. This was very time consuming!  What I normally do is cook the beans and then take off the skins which is much easier. I think if I made this again I would boil the beans separately, take off the skins and then add them to the soup. The photo shows a broad bean before and after taking off the inner skin. If you do want to do it when they are raw I found the best way was to hold it by the stalk bit (on the bottom of the bean in the photo) nick the other end with my thumb nail and then squeeze the bean out. 

 

Onions

I had a beautiful bunch of onions in my veg bag this week. I was listening to Gardeners Question time a couple of weeks ago and they were saying that onions this year have very thick necks. You can see from the photo that the ones  I've got do have thick necks almost like large spring onions.

That is one of the things I love about getting a veg bag - you get things as they come out of the ground they are not discarded because they don't meet the supermarkets idea of what consumers want.

Inspired by my bunch I searched for onion recipes and found a whole website dedicated to all things oniony run by the British Onion Producers' Association. Did you know that onions are supposed be an aphrodisiac? Egyptian Pharaohs' celibate priests were forbidden to eat onions because of the potential effects on their libido! I tried their recipe for falafel and while they were very tasty I had my usual problem with falafel that they don't hold together and I end up with a general mush. If anyone has had any success with making falafel then please let me in on your secret.

Carrots Galore

We had a bit of a carrot glut this week, not only did I have some old ones left over from previous weeks'  veg bags and some lovely new ones in this week's but my mother-in-law has gone on holiday and emptied her fridge into ours including ... more carrots.

The mission was to use carrots and we did well out of it. Saturday night we had different salads including a carrot one. This was grated carrots with an olive oil vinaigrette and the addition of sunflower seeds and roasted cumin seeds. We had the oven on for the quiche to go with the salads so popped the cumin seeds in for a couple of minutes - if the oven wasn't on I'd have done them in a dry pan or under the grill. 

I forgot to take a photo and as you can see there wasn't much left at the end!

The new carrots we roasted whole with a sprinkling of olive oil, some garlic cloves and more cumin seeds to go with our Sunday dinner roast shoulder of lamb.