Hot topics | Canalside Community Food

We’re opening our gates again for our annual summer open day with Open Farm Sunday.

Come and join us at Canalside Community Food, Southam Road, CV31 1TY

Sunday 11^th June 2023, 11.30am to 3pm

• Tours start at 12 and 2pm – look round the fields and polytunnels
• Find out how our community supported agriculture scheme works and what vegetables and fruits we grow
• Bring a picnic to enjoy in our social area
• Children’s activities and play area

Buy your summer party tickets now! Click here to go straight through to online ticket sales.

Full details about the event here and on the poster below.

We’re coming into the time of year for the earliest crops and, especially where they are roots, the young tender leaves can be as much an ingredient as the root veg. This is why we include them in the weight of the share – you will take the roots with any attached leaves in the weight for your size of share and get 2 share items in one!

Here are some insights about what might be coming in the share and ideas for how to make the most of all the edible parts. As a general rule, they all work well added to/as a basis for pesto, and in hummus, as well as like other greens in soups, stir fries and smoothies.

Radish tops:
As appeared in the share this week
The slightly rough/prickly texture on the surface of the leaves is lost with cooking
Try:
Chopped and used in stir fries, soups etc, as for any other green
One of the 5 ways suggested here

Carrot tops:
Will be in the share on the first baby carrots
Try:
Carrot top pesto
Roasted baby carrot and grain salad with carrot top dressing
More ideas and recipes here

Beet tops:
Similar to chard
Come with the first baby / early season beetroots
Try:
Braised beet tops with lemon juice
A number of ideas from Oddbox

Fennel tops/fronds:
Basically dill, and always plentiful on our fennel bulbs!
Try:
One of the 10 ways suggested here including in a pesto and salads, as a herby flavouring, in juices and curries

Celery tops:
Full of flavour and a great ingredient for a variety of uses
Try:
One of the 5 ways suggested here including in soups, to flavour salt and in a pesto

Ideas from Ali
 

Spring greens are a member of the brassica (cabbage) family of vegetables and are essentially the first cabbages of the year. As such they form an essential part of the Canalside veg share during early spring – as you will have seen from having them in your veg share for the past few weeks. Their leaves don’t form hard hearts like other cabbages, instead growing as loose leaves that are plucked from the plant. This allows more leaves to grow, meaning leaves can be harvested from the same plant over a period of weeks.

As a leafy green vegetable, spring greens are rich in iron, as well as a great source of vitamins C, E and K, and calcium, potassium and fibre too! They are delicious steamed / cooked as you would cook Savoy/white cabbage, brussels sprouts etc. and served generously seasoned with salt and pepper and a dollop of butter. Don’t discard the stems – just slice them a little more thinly than the leaves. As with all brassicas, it’s best to avoid overcooking to enjoy the best flavour.

Why not try other ways of cooking them:
As the star attraction with extra nuggets of deliciousness:
– Fry pieces of bacon or pancetta until browned and then add sliced spring greens and continue cooking until tender
– Stir fry with chopped garlic cloves and fresh chilli then add a dash of soy sauce before serving

Added near the end of cooking to your favourite recipes, as an addition or in place of cabbage, spinach or chard:
– Stir fries
– Risotto
– Stews and casseroles
– Pasta dishes
– Juices

More culinary inspiration here:
BBC Good Food
Olive Magazine
BBC website food section

Ideas from Ali

Beetroot (both golden and purple/red) have been in a share regularly over recent weeks as we had a good harvest last year. They are a staple of our winter shares since we can store them well in damp sand ‘clamps’ through the winter and into the spring. Here are a few ideas for how to use them if you’re finding it difficult to get through the quantities in the share:

Beet kvass – fermented beets
Fermenting is a great way to increase the nutritional value of a food by introducing ‘friendly’ bacteria that help give a diverse microbiome in the gut when they are eaten. It also helps to extend the shelf life of food and spread useable period across a longer stretch of time, as you can be eating the food fresh while a batch is fermenting and then eat the fermented foods after that.

Here’s a link to the recipe I’ve been using for several years. It produces tangy cubes of beet and a thick liquid you can drink as a tonic or use in a number of other ways suggested in the recipe. If it develops a white scum on the surface, just mix it in. Use something to keep the beets below the surface, eg. a jam jar that fits exactly inside your fermenting container (a larger jar in my case), and this will prevent lumps of mould forming.

Beet soup aka borscht (this is an adaptation of the recipe in my old and well used copy of the Cranks recipe book)
Chop an onion and fry it until it’s beginning to soften. Add c. 450g beetroot cubed, a medium potato also cubed, a stock cube or a teaspoonful or so of yeast extract, a bay leaf and water to cover. You can also increase the nutritional value by adding red lentils, maybe 100-150g and increasing the water. When everything is cooked (though the beets might still be quite firm), remove the bay leaf and blend until smooth. Add some ground nutmeg (not too much as it’s strong), freshly ground black pepper and cider vinegar (or whatever vinegar you’ve got would probably be fine) – c. 1-2tbsp, to taste – it gives the soup a little bit of a sour edge. If you’ve got liquid from your beet kvass to use, you could add this once it’s off the heat – cooking it will kill all those lovely bacteria I mentioned above. Serve with a dollop of sour cream/crème fraiche/natural yoghurt and a sprinkle of parsley if you have some. According to the toddler in the house, the yoghurt is the main feature and she will devour quite a bit from eating the thin layer yoghurt that sits above it! (Sneaky mama trick!)

Other ideas:
Juiced – you could use a blender, some water and a piece of muslin if you don’t have a fancy juicer
Grated into a winter slaw
Roasted in chunks, with olive oil (add slivers of orange zest and a squeeze of fresh orange juice for extra zazoom)
Thinly sliced and crisped in the oven to make beetroot crisps
In brownies/cakes

Ideas from Ali and the grower team

This year’s summer party – the first since the pandemic – will take place on Saturday 16th June 2022 from 6pm. For full details, including ticket sales, click here!

Canalside community food, a pioneering CSA based outside of Leamington Spa is looking for a part-time grower. We are seeking a grower with experience to join our team producing organic veg and fruit all year round for our community of 170 households.

The successful candidate will work as part of a small growing team alongside the admin team and other volunteers and will be expected to play a key role in crop production and farm upkeep. We are establishing a collaborative approach; the role initially being under supervision with a view to developing skills and experience for all aspects of farm management at Canalside. The role is 2 days per week, annual salary: £9,360 with statutory holiday allowance and a pension offered.

More details and full job description here

Applications by CV and covering letter to mail@canalsidecommunityfood.org.uk: deadline – noon on Friday 21st January 2022

Selection will be based on an interview, to take place in the weeks following the application deadline.

This week we’ve been getting very sweaty on the farm – as well as staff and volunteers boiling, it’s even been to hot for our bountiful garlic crop which had been curing in a tunnel: in these high temperatures (been getting up to 40 degrees C) there’s a risk they start to turn translucent and cook as happened a few years back. So now they’re curing in the pole barn instead.

Thankfully, we’ve finished planting most of the next round of tunnel crops, with fennel, chillies, New Zealand spinach and basil taking over from potatoes, carrots and leeks.

We’re praying that the rain, which is due at the weekend, will be enough to saturate the fields as we are currently spending a lot of time irrigating the crops.

It’s been lovely to work in the sunshine this week and it has certainly given the crop growth a good surge. Here’s hoping for showers to balance it out and make our field irrigation easier.

As you’ll see when you collect your share, we have really entered the ‘harvesting gap’ (aka ‘hungry gap’) – our stored crops have done us well until now but potatoes, beets, celeriac and squash are all but over, as are our winter field crops like carrots, parsnips and leeks.

The new carrots and potatoes are looking great, but because of the unusually cold spring could be another month until harvest. In fact a lot of things on the farm are about a month delayed which is a very different story to last year when we had such a warm spring. Looking back at the last few years’ records, there is a huge disparity in the share right now: strawberries, courgettes and cucumbers were already being harvested this time last year, much to our chagrin.

This week the steering group finally got to meet for the first time since last June. We enjoyed a farm tour together led by Stephen before our monthly meeting to uphold the vision and development of Canalside – it was great to meet face to face outside after many months on zoom!

May is feeling more like April with sunshine and showers so we’ve been able to make some progress in the fields. And with the increase in warmth we’ve seen some real growth in the plants, especially in the tunnels – even the most raggedy looking tomatoes are now filling out.

But to be honest, the most exciting news of the week is the arrival of our new trolley – after years of keeping homemade equipment going we decided to make small investments around the farm that will make things run smoother. We can now easily transport plants and harvested crops around the site without the wheels falling off!

Eleanor, on behalf of the growing team

Photos: Tom Ingall