Showing posts with label Veg Box. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Veg Box. Show all posts

Tuesday, 26 August 2008

Pumpkin risotto and biscuits

After the pumpkin pasta, I was thinking of what else to make with it. So I decided to make a risotto. I roasted the pumpkin whilst I was making the risotto. The pumpkin was then stirred in at the end with the cheese and lemon. I saw a recipe for a risotto served with a pesto, I like the idea so I stole it! The basil plants are doing well enough that I can use them to make pesto. Still not bored of the pumpkin!

Pumpkin risotto

  • 1 Small onion, chopped
  • 200 g risotto rice
  • 1 Wine glass of vermouth
  • Vegetable stock (approx 500 ml)
  • 1 Lemon
  • Pecorino Cheese, 2tbsps
  • Enough pumpkin for 2, chopped
Roast the pumpkin @ 180 degrees C for 30 mins.

Meanwhile, soften the onion in a little olive oil in a saucepan. Add the rice and cook for a couple of mins. Then add the vermouth. Once this has been absorbed add the veg stock one ladle at a time. Once the stock has been absorbed, add another ladle until the rice is cooked. Stir in the lemon juice, cheese and pumpkin. Serve with the pesto.

Basil Pesto
  • 1 Large handful of basil
  • 1 Large handful of pinenuts
  • 2 Cloves of garlic
  • Lemon juice
  • Olive oil
Blitz in a food processor, using the olive oil and lemon juice to taste.

For a few weeks Andrew has been making gingerbread biscuits. So I decided to give Andrew a break and make some biscuits. I saw this recipe when I was having a read through some of Stonehead's older posts. These biscuits were dead easy to make and were very hard to resist when they came out the oven. This photo doesn't do them justice.

Thursday, 21 August 2008

A ray of sunshine

Andrew and I are deep into the thesis writing. This means I was in the flat for two and a half days before I ventured outside. Very depressing. The weather has been awful this week, which has made my time spent indoors more bearable. When my veg box arrived it had a suprise vegetable, a pumpkin.

I know that a lot people in the UK don't eat pumpkins, just carve them for halloween. But I love them. When it arrived, I knew what we were going to have for dinner, pasta with roasted pumpkin. We first had this dish when we were staying at Andrew's parents house in Ireland. Thankfully, this is our last year of our PhDs and we will definitely be make a trip there next year.

Pumpkin, caramelised onion and feta pasta:

  • 1 Onion, cut into thin wedges
  • Pumpkin, peeled and diced
  • Olives
  • Feta
  • Pasta
  • 1 Lemon, zested and halved
  • Olive oil
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Dried chilli flakes
Put the diced pumpkin into a roasting dish. Coat with olive oil, salt, pepper and some dried chilli flakes. Place the lemon in a corner of the dish and cook at 200 degrees C for 30 mins until soft.

Meanwhile cook the onion in saucepan with some oil, on a low heat until caramelised (about 30 mins)

Stir the pasta and lemon zest into the onions. Then add the pumpkin, olives and feta. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

I am entering this dish into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights which is hosted by Kitchenetta at Got No Milk. Make sure you have a look at this weeks roundup.

This week in the veg box we got:
  • Pumpkin
  • Courgettes
  • Beetroot
  • Kohl Rabi
  • Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • Onions
  • Potatoes

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

Mackerel and beetroot salad

This is my first post for a while. We are finally settled into the flat, though I keep opening the wrong cupboard for things! We have also been very busy in the kitchen, all will be explained in future posts.

Yesterday I was in the familiar situation of sitting in front of my laptop working on my thesis. Bored of MS Word, I was trying to work out what to have for dinner. I wanted to use up the beetroot we had. Then I remembered we had some smoked mackerel and dinner was sorted. I roasted the beetroot in a foil parcel with balsamic vinegar and olive oil until soft (about an hour). I dressed some lettuce, alfalfa sprouts and cucumber with some olive oil. I pre-boiled some new potatoes and sauteed them. I made a horseradish and yogurt dressing (1 tsp of horseradish sauce, 3 tbsp of yogurt). It was a good salad. It made me feel summery, even if the weather outside was anything but summery!


This week in the box we got:

  • Beetroots
  • Lettuce
  • Courgettes
  • Broad beans
  • Turnips
  • Cabbage
  • Potatoes
  • Onions
  • Carrots

Thursday, 7 August 2008

First pasta in the new flat

Most of the boxes are emptied, kitchen arrangment is almost sorted out. Living in a top floor flat is always an advantage but moving the heavy boxes up 3 flights of stairs is hard work. We realised how much stuff we have accummulated. The new flat is great, the kitchen is much bigger than the old one. Two days without the internet was a little annoying and my google reader was bursting once it had been connected. The flat has loads of window sills, I am already pondering what to grow. The Veg Box delivery guy found us OK on Wednesday. This week we had:

  • Broad beans
  • Kohl Rabi
  • Courgette
  • Tomatoes
  • Cabbage
  • Lettuce
  • Onion
  • Carrots
  • Potatoes
When Andrew and I were undergrads we used to make a sausage pasta dish. Being poor students this was literally pasta, tomato sauce and some grilled sausages stirred in. I remember seeing on Jamie @ Home a posh version of this. I substituted the peas for broad beans and courgettes.



Prepare a tomato pasta sauce.

Boil the beans for a couple of mins. Remove their skins and put to the side.

Add some olive oil into a frying pan and heat. Split the skins of the sausages. Squeeze the meat out into small meatballs directly into the fying pan. Fry until golden brown then add some sliced courgette to the pan and cook until soft.

Add the broad beans to the frying pan with the pasta and sauce. Toss to coat and serve.

It was lovely and the little meatballs were great. This dish was quick to make too.

I am entering this dish into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights. This week is hosted by Michelle at the Greedy Gourmet. Make sure you check out the round up.

Thursday, 31 July 2008

Green veg cannelloni


One of my favourite pasta dishes is spinach and ricotta cannelloni. On Monday we still had a lot of green vegetables leftover from our box. So I decided to substitute the spinach for the other veg we had. We used cannelloni tubes but these could easily be substituted with fresh lasagne sheets, which you could roll with the filling to make tubes.

Green veg cannelloni
(Serves 2 greedy people or four with some bread and salad)

  • Broad beans
  • 1 Courgette, grated
  • Broccoli
  • Ricotta cheese, 250g
  • Pecorino cheese, 3 tbsps
  • Cannelloni tubes
  • Tomato pasta sauce (we made our own, but you could use shop bought)
  • Cheddar cheese
For the filling: boil the broccoli for 5 mins and beans for about 3 mins. Remove the beans from their skins. In a boil mash up the broccoli. To the broccoli add the beans, courgette, ricotta, pecorino cheese, salt and pepper.

Fill the tubes with the mixture.

Put a tablespoon or so of the tomato sauce on the base of a oven proof dish, they place the tubes in the dish. Cover the tubes with the rest of the sauce. Top with the cheddar cheese.

Bake at gas mark 6 for 20-30 mins, until cheese is golden and tubes are soft.

This dish made a great alternative to the spinach and ricotta classic and helped us use up the green veg left. The change also meant that we packed roughly 4 portions of veg into one meal (counting the tomatoes in the sauce, which do count by the way).

I am entering this into this week Presto Pasta Nights which this week is held by Ruth at Once Upon a Feast, make sure you check out the round up.

Sunday, 27 July 2008

God bless Nigel!

We are not very religious people but we do worship somethings/people. For example we both worship Jonny Wilkinson, especially his right foot. I regularly give thanks for the existence of Le Creuset. Todays post is about someone that is also high revered, Nigel Slater. I love the way he writes about food. I am currently enjoying his Eating for England book. This Saturday we went to the Farmers Market and bought some lamb loin chops, with a recipe of Nigel's in mind. This recipe is from his Kitchen Diaries book. The orginial recipe contains aubergine but Nigel doesn't like people to follow his recipes to the letter. So we adapted it to the veg we had from our box.

  • 1 onion, sliced thickly
  • 4 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
  • 6 tomatoes, halved
  • 6 small potatoes, halved lengthwise
  • 1 turnip, chopped into large chunks
  • 1 courgette, chopped into large sticks
  • 4 lamb double loin chops
  • Olive oil
Into a large roasting tin put the onion, turnip, garlic cloves , tomatoes and potatoes. Add about a tablespoon or so of olive oil, toss the veg so they are covered and season. If we had some thyme or rosemary I would have put this in too. Put this into a oven gas mark 6 for 30 mins.

After 30 mins, add the courgette and then top with the lamb chops. Turn the oven up gas mark 7 and cook for another 30 mins.

We love this recipe, its a roast dinner without all the washing up. Thank you Nigel!

Thursday, 24 July 2008

Broccoli Pesto

I went to Paperinos for dinner last night with some work collegues. I had a bowl of pasta but it was awful, greasy and not at all nice. So tonight I thought I would have a decent bowl of pasta. After the success of the cabbage pesto, I thought that I would try another green veg based pesto. So when broccoli was in our veg box this week I thought I would give it ago.

The first thing I noticed was it wasn't as dark green as the cabbage pesto, a much lighter green. The pesto was very light almost like mousse. The best thing about making pesto that it is so quick. I have a little handblender which has a small processor attachment, which is great for making pastes. I think next time I would like try using almonds instead of pinenuts. I always see so many different pestos, some using rocket, others using lime.

Broccoli pesto:
Boil the broccoli for 4 mins, drain and rinse with cool water to stop it cooking any further. Into my blender, I put the broccoli and a couple of handfuls of toasted pinenuts, 1 tbsp grated pecorino, zest of 1 lemon, lemon juice (to taste) and olive oil. I then blitzed until it was smoothish! This was stirred into cooked pasta, with some chopped tomatoes and olives. It was topped with a few toasted pinenuts and more pecorino.


I'm entering this dish into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights which this week is being held by Katie @ Thyme for Cooking . Make sure you have a look at her blog on Friday when the roundup should be up!

This week in the box we got:

  • Broccoli
  • Cabbage
  • Broad beans
  • Courgettes
  • Lettuce
  • Turnips
  • Potatoes
  • Onions
  • Carrots

Friday, 18 July 2008

Like that but not that.

A lot of the food I cook comes from reading recipes on the web and changing them in some way. Even more after we got the veg box, as we don't always have what the recipe states. It reminds me of a Mitchell and Webb sketch:



This is something that Andrew and I quote a lot. When we get the veg box, we get a newsletter which comes with recipe. This week's recipe was a courgette and broad bean pasta dish. So on Wednesday I decided to make this dish using gnocchi. We have a lot of potatoes, so gnocchi is a good way to use them up. For the sauce I fried onion and garlic until soft. I then added a sliced courgette again cooked it until soft. Some chopped tomatoes, olives and cooked broad beans. I then stirred in the gnocchi and put it an ovenproof dish. This was topped with mozzarella and pecorino and grilled until browned.


Today whilst I was looking for something to do with marrow. I came across a forum when someone said that they used marrow instead of aubergine in moussaka. So I started to look around for vegetarian moussaka recipes. What I made wasn't an authentic moussaka, nothing like it but it tasted great.

I fried an finely diced onion and crushed garlic in some olive oil. Once they were soft I added some chopped garlic and carrot. After 5 mins I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tinful of water, a pinch of sugar, dried crush chillies. A few handfuls of red lentils were added and this was simmered for 20 mins, until the lentils were cooked. I then added a tin of green lentils. I put a layer of sliced marrow (which were steamed for a couple of mins) in a greased ovenproof dish. Then I put a half of the lentil mixture, then another layer of the marrow, then lentil again. This was topped with sliced potato (which was also cooked). The potato was covered with a white sauce. This was finished with mozzarella and cheddar. Not at all authentic, but it tasted really great.

This week in the box we got:

  • Marrow
  • Courgette
  • Broad beans
  • Tomatoes
  • Red Kale
  • Cabbage
  • Celery
  • Potatoes
  • Onion
  • Carrots

Tuesday, 15 July 2008

A quick update

In May, we started our little window garden. Unfortunately our theses have been slowly taking over our lives, so the plants have been a bit neglected. Our window box full of herbs have bitten the dust, as has our tigerella tomato plant (sorry Lynn!)

Our window box with the three tomato plants are doing OK. We did think that we had bought bush tomato plants, but they are not. They are huge! The other day as I was daydreaming whilst writing my thesis, I notice that we actually had some tomatoes on our plants!!! Very exciting. We are moving in a few weeks time, I am not sure how we are going to move them. It could be challenging.

The cut and come again salad box is doing really well too. Its right by the dining table so we just rip off a couple of leaves for dinner.

In the autumn I made some spicy apple and walnut chutney which is running out. So to keep us going I made some rhubarb and raisin chutney. I got the recipe from my Women's Institute preserves book.


And finally for this rapid roundup. In this weeks box:

  • Broccoli
  • Broad beans
  • Kohl rabi
  • Courgettes
  • Spinach
  • Cabbage
  • Onions
  • Carrots
  • Potatoes

Wednesday, 2 July 2008

Eating our greens


The veg box arrived this week bursting with greens, this week:

  • Courgettes
  • Broad beans
  • Broccoli
  • Spring cabbage
  • Kohl Rabi
  • Tomatoes
  • Onions
  • Potatoes
  • Carrots
I seem to cook pasta on the day of the box arrival. I am not sure why but again we had pasta today. Once I saw the courgettes, beans and broccoli. I wanted to make a creamy lemon pasta with these veg.

So I blanched the beans in boiling water for a few minutes, for the last minute I added the broccoli. I fried a sliced garlic clove on a medium heat for a few seconds before adding one sliced courgette. After a couple of mins I added the broccoli and cooked for a minute. I then added the beans, lemon zest and lemon juice. I added some of the pasta cooking water, creme fraiche and pecorino cheese. I then stirred in the pasta. This topped with a bit more pecorino and toasted pine nuts. The lemon worked really well with the green veg and the pine nuts added a nice crunch.

We are starting to get a lot of tomatoes in our box now. So I expect that next weeks pasta dish will have a tomato based sauce.

Again this will be entered into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights will be hosted by Ruth @ Once Upon A Feast. The round up will be posted on Ruth's blog on Thursday.

The Weekend

On Saturday I went to the Farmers Market. I bought some salmon with a specific dish in mind. With the pak choi in the veg box, I wanted to make a Bill Granger recipe. The recipe was taken from Simply Bill, its glazed salmon. Its a simple dish which is served with brown rice and steamed pak choi.

When I went to the Farmers Market I also bought some lamb neck fillet. I had intended to use this to make kebabs, but the weather on Sunday was a bit grim. So I fancied something warming. Andrew had wanted to have Lancashire hotpot for a while. So I decided to use the neck fillet in a hotpot. I have never been to Lancashire, so I have never taste the authentic dish. I am not sure how this measures against it.

I thinly sliced a kohl rabi (leftover from the veg box) and potatoes and covered the bottom of the casserole dish with it.

I then lightly fried an onion in vegetable oil. Once soft I put this on top of the potatoes.

The meat was cut into medium chunks and coated in seasoned flour. This was fried in oil and bit of butter until brown and then put into the casserole dish, I also tucked in some large chunks of carrots. I added some (about 1 tbsp) Worcestershire sauce.

This was then covered with more thinly sliced potato. Vegetable stock was poured over, just enough to cover the top of the potatoes. This was then covered and put in the oven for 20 mins at gas mark 6, then turn down the oven to gas mark 1 and cook for 1 hour. The lid was then removed and the oven was turned up to gas mark 6 and it was cooked for a final 20 mins to brown the top.

We had this with some pickled cabbage. This was bought from a deli and we both really liked this, So I will definitely make some.

This was delicious and I expect that we will make many more this winter.

Saturday, 28 June 2008

Pak Choi

My best and worst day of the week is Wednesday. Its a low because I will spend all day working on my evil thesis but equally I get my vegetable box. This Wednesday I spent a lot of the day on Excel, which is very tedious. But then my ray of light arrived. This week in the box we got:

  • Cabbage
  • Pak Choi
  • Courgettes
  • Kohl rabi
  • Tomatoes
  • Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • Onions
  • Potatoes
As soon as I saw the pak choi I wanted to make a stir-fry. The pak choi was huge, I have only ever seen the smaller ones before. So I got a veal steak to put on the top of a noodle based stir-fry. I know it seems extravagant to use a veal steak but we had some in the freezer from the Farmers Market. I remember that we had it because the day before the people who we buy the veal from appeared on the F Word.

Ingredients:
  • 1 Onion, chopped
  • 2 Garlic cloves, sliced
  • 1 Red chilli, finely chopped
  • Mushrooms, sliced
  • Pak choi, roughly chopped
  • Courgette, halved and sliced
  • Fine rice noodles
  • 1 Veal steak
  • 2 Tbsp Oyster sauce
  • 1 Tbsp Soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp Fish sauce
Cook the noodles as instructed on pack. Griddle steak as you like and leave to rest whilst you cook the stir-fry.

Fry the onion for a couple of minutes and then add the chilli and garlic for about half a minute. Then add the mushrooms and courgette and fry for a minute or two before adding the pak choi, oyster sauce, soy sauce and fish sauce, cook for 2 mins. Stir in the noodles, serve with steak on top.

Thursday, 26 June 2008

Cabbage Pesto

I have been wanting to make pesto for ages, but with amount of Basil needed for a traditional pesto made it quite pricey. The last time we were visiting Andrew's folks we were given 3 basil seedlings. As you can see for the photo they are doing well but not well enough to make pesto from.


I have seen loads of recipes for pesto made with rocket, spinach and watercress. So with spring cabbage in our box this week I decided to give a cabbage pesto a go.

I suppose pesto is a bit like Thai Green Curry paste everyone has there own recipe with different ratios of ingredients. SoI gave it a go. I used 2 tbsp of pecorino cheese, a handful of pine kernels, 1 garlic cloves, lemon zest, juice of half a lemon, cabbage leaves which had been cooked for 4 mins in boiling water and olive oil to loosen.

Andrew had gone climbing so I prepared everything beforehand. Its the scientist in me!


So when Andrew came back, I fried a courgette. I then added the tomatoes until they had soften slightly. The pesto was added, as was a pinch of chilli flakes. Finally cooked penne and a handful of black olives was added.

I didn't tell Andrew what the pesto was made with and he thought that it was made from parsley, so the cabbage taste obviously wasn't over-powering. I did put a lot of cheese in it though.

For the third week in row I will be entering this into this weeks Presto Pasta Night which this week is hosted by Hillary of Chew On That. Have a look at the round, which should on Hillary's site on Friday.

Thursday, 19 June 2008

Broad Beans


After the runner beans in last weeks box, this week we had broad beans. I wanted to put them with some pasta, so I started hunting around my book collection. I came across a recipe for broad bean and ricotta pasta in Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries. I only made a couple of changes.

I podded the beans and boiled them until they were cooked about 8 mins. I then skinned the beans. I then gently fried some sliced garlic cloves, without browning, in some olive oil. After a minute, I added the beans and a handful of spinach. Then I added 25o g of ricotta and the juice of a lemon. The cooked pasta was added to this mixture.


Then pasta was dished with a drizzle of olive oil and some grated pecorino.

I am entering this into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights, which this week is hosted by Ruth @ Once Up A Feast. Make sure you have a look at the round up.

With the decent weather we have been having the veg box is getting a bit more exciting:

  • Purple Kohl Rabi
  • Spring Cabbage
  • Spinach
  • Broad Beans
  • Lettuce
  • Tomatoes
  • Onions
  • Carrots
  • Potatoes

Thursday, 12 June 2008

The First Beans

We got some runner beans in the veg box this week. I instantly thought of a Jamie recipe with cod. So we had this on Wednesday for dinner. The runner beans were finely sliced and blanched for a couple of minutes. They were then placed on a tray tossed in olive oil and season. I then placed two cod fillets on top with pine nuts, a lemon sliced in half and 4 slices of pancetta. It was then covered with tin foil and put in an oven at gas mark 7. The foil was taken off after 5 mins and cooked for a further 10 mins. Delicious.


This week in the veg box we got:

  • Runner Beans
  • Lettuce
  • Spinach
  • Tomatoes
  • Cucumber
  • Beetroot
  • Potatoes
  • Carrots
  • Onions

Friday, 6 June 2008

Actually quite nice!


I remember the first time I had gnocchi, it was in Carluccio's Caffe at Bluewater Shopping Centre. I know that not everyone likes gnocchi. But I love it, light and fluffy potato dumplings. They are so simple to make too.

Potato Gnocchi (Serves 2)

  • 400g potatoes
  • 100g flour
  • 1 egg yolk
Boil the potatoes for 8-10 mins until soft. Drain and put them back in the pan on the heat to drive off as much water as possible. Mash the potatoes, then add the egg yolk and flour. Mix, until it comes together. Then knead on a well floured surface. Take a handful of the mix and roll into a sausage. Then cut into 2 inch pieces and place on a well floured tray. Repeat with the rest. Press a fork into the gnocchi. Bring a pan of water to the boil. Cook the gnocchi in batches, they are ready when the float to the surface. Drain onto kitchen roll.


This week in the box we got some spring greens. I thought about making a pesto with it but I chose to do this instead.

I chopped an onion and lightly fried it in olive oil. I then added the spring greens which were finely sliced, after a couple of minutes I added some vermouth and let it reduce a little. At this point I would have added some creme fraiche but I didn't have any, so I substitute it with some yoghurt. Then stirred in some pecorino.

I put the gnocchi in an ovenproof dish and put the spring green mixture over the top and finally some mozzarella. This was then grilled until golden.


Andrew was a bit worried cause there wasn't a sauce as such but apparently it was actually quite nice!

In the box this week:
  • Spring greens
  • Lettuce
  • Rocket
  • Celery
  • Tomatoes
  • Carrots
  • Onions
  • Potatoes
  • Rhubarb

Friday, 30 May 2008

Dhal Wars

This week in Veg Box we got:

  • Lettuce
  • Tomatoes
  • Celery
  • Spring greens
  • Spinach
  • Rhubarb
  • Carrots
  • Onion
  • Potatoes
Andrew suggested that we had lentil dhal. I prefer to make mine with red lentils whereas Andrew prefers to use brown lentils. So here is my recipe, I am sure that Andrew will put his recipe on later.
  • 200 g red lentils
  • 1 onion, finely sliced
  • 1 red chilli, finely sliced
  • 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, sliced
  • 1/2 tsp tumeric
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 tsp ground coriander
  • 2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
  • 1 handful of spinach
  • 1 lemon
Put lentils, onion, red chilli, ginger, spices and tomatoes into a saucepan. Top with water, bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 mins or until lentils are soft. Then add the spinach and lemon juice, stir. Make sure the spinach has wilted and serve.

Andrew prefers the brown lentils as they keep their shape better. My dhal has a much softer texture.

We had it topped with yoghurt, served with rice and Andrew's flatbread.

Thursday, 22 May 2008

Brain food pt 2 . . .

The thesis is slowing turning my brain to mush. So I am stepping up my campaign to save my brain. I have been having tinned tuna as part of my lunch this week. On Monday we had kedgeree. When I first knew Andrew, he told me that he didn't like fish. Well, he does now. He loves smoked fish the best, I use smoked haddock in my kedgree. I always put something green in my kedgree depending on what we have it can be kale, spinach or peas.

First of all you need to poach the haddock in water and milk, 300ml of each. Put the fish into a pan with the liquid bring to a simmer and then turn off and leave to cool. When the fish is cool enough to touch, flake it and put it aside. I then cooked an onion (sliced) in a pan with some oil until soft, then add the rice (175 g) for a couple mins. Then add 2 tsp of curry powder. Some peas were then added and 400 ml of the poaching liquid and cover. Let this cook on a low heat for 10-15 mins until the rice is cooked. I served the rice with the haddock on top, with a soft boiled egg and lemon.

The battle to save my brain against the evil thesis continues . . .

This week in the veg box (just a small one this week) we got:

  • Little gem lettuce
  • White cabbage
  • Rhubarb
  • Spinach
  • Potatoes
  • Carrots
  • Onions

Saturday, 17 May 2008

Frittata for the climbers

It's amazing how bored I get in front of laptop these days. This week I have doing data analysis, which is as boring as it sounds. On Wednesday I wanted something different for lunch so I made some different salads. I made Jamie's pasta salad, potato salad and a carrot salad. I had it with some tinned tuna and some bread. Of course making the salads did allow to spend sometime away from the laptop, which was a happy coincidence.


The Veg Box arrived this week:

  • Baby Cauliflowers
  • Spinach
  • Leeks
  • Lettuce
  • Parsely
  • Rhubarb
  • Carrots
  • Onions
  • Potatoes
The presence of spinach was a happy one, as I was going to Dumberton with Andrew and Stuart. I remembered a recent post from cottage smallholder for frittata. I thought it would be good crag food. We had a great evening in the sun and they actually managed to climb something too. The frittata was great way to finish the evening. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the frittata but this one of the boys enjoying the frittata will have to do.

Sunday, 11 May 2008

Pasta, rice or potatoes . . .

This is the usual thoughts that go through my mind when thinking about dinner. However, I had been browsing through one of my favourite vegetarian books, The Cranks Bible. There was a recipe that jumped out at me which was puy lentils with roasted veg. I always forget lentils! There are two versions of this recipe, a winter and summer one. On Wednesday, I made the winter one with swede, carrots and beetroot. The Puy lentils are cooked with lemon, onion and herbs, with spinach stirred in at the end to just wilt it. It was a great recipe. Easy and perfect for a summer day.

For dessert we had some rhubarb compote with yoghurt, yum.

I also made a potato and spinach frittata for lunch the next day which was also great.


The Veg Box arrived and this week we got:

  • Spinach
  • Spring cabbage
  • Beetroot
  • Cauliflower
  • Purple sprouting broccoli
  • Rhubarb
  • Carrots
  • Potatoes
  • Onions