'The End of the Bag', or, 'I Did it My Way'

I know that many of you will have been doing little else for the last few days than wondering what I did with half a beetroot, a carrot and a few mushrooms, and I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to let you off your tenterhooks. I'm even more sorry to say that my imagination fell short of a satisfying way to put them all on the same plate, as what I really wanted the other evening was a good nourishing roasted root soup, and what I really wanted the evening after was a mushroom and goats' cheese tart. So here you go: The End of the Bag Bonanza Special is here! Two recipes in one post, but only one piccy I'm afraid. No excuses; just sheer laziness. 

Roasted Root Soup

Serves 2 with enough for seconds

Half a massive beetroot

A carrot

Half a swede

Olive oil

An onion

As much finely chopped garlic as you feel necessary or desirable (four cloves for me. Big 'uns, too.)

An inch square piece of ginger, finely chopped

Half a teaspoon of cumin seeds

Half a teaspoon of smoked paprika (quite possibly optional)

Half a chicken stock cube (definitely optional)

Chopped fresh coriander

It was a few days ago but I think that's everything

Chop the veggies into chunks (except the onion) and throw into a baking tray with a glug of olive oil. Roast at gas 6 for 45 minutes or so until pretty much tender. Meanwhile, slice the onion and fry in olive slowly while the other veg is roasting. The secret of a good soup, as with a good curry, is to cook the onions long and slow until they go nice and brown and soft and sweet. I never trust any recipe that says 'saute the onion for two or three minutes until soft'. No! For the onion to weave its magic it needs much longer. 

Add the garlic and ginger to the onions and fry a bit more, then the cumin seeds, cook for a minute, then add the smoked paprika, which I used as I thought it would prevent the beetroot from turning the soup pink. I've got nothing against pink, but I don't necessarily want to eat a pink soup unless it's a Hungarian-style cold cherry soup.

Tip the roasted veggies in and pour in enough water to cover everything. I would recommend adding half a chicken stock cube, unless you're vegetarian. Simmer it for 20-30 minutes to encourage the flavours to develop.

Blend everything together with a hand blender or any other piece of industrial kitchen equipment that is likely to get the job done. It's unlikely you'll need to pass it through a sieve afterwards but you could if it made you feel better. Taste and then adjust the seasoning with some good salt and black pepper. Serve with a blob of sour cream and a sprinkling of chopped fresh coriander. Don't miss out the coriander, it goes really well with it. 

Mushroom & Goats' Cheese Tart

Serves one

A double handful of mushrooms, sliced

A knob of butter

A couple of garlic cloves

A sprinkling of fresh thyme leaves

A couple of tablespoons of double cream. Maybe a bit more. 

A square of shop-bought ready-rolled puff pastry big enough to accommodate the mushrooms with some spare around the side

As much goats' cheese as you want depending on how healthy you want to be

Fry the mushrooms with the garlic in the butter until nice and soft and tasty-looking. Add the thyme and cream and cook for a minute until the mixture is amalgamated and you just want to dive in straight away and eat it from the pan. Don't do that though. Spread the mushrooms out onto the pastry and score a little line in the pastry around the edge of the mushrooms. I really don't know if this is necessary but in my head it tells the pastry under the mushrooms to sit still and the pastry on the outside to get lovely and puffy. Top with an unhealthy amount of goats' cheese and bake for 20 minutes or so until the cheese has melted and the pastry is golden and crispy. Ok; now you can eat it.

And that's how I used the veg that turned up in my Local Greens bag. It's all gone. Luckily I picked up another one on Thursday which is full of delightful things like celeriac and sprouts.  

The important thing is (and I hope you'll forgive the capitals but I think it is really important): NOTHING WAS WASTED. Veg bags reduce food waste because the producers know how much to harvest because the bag people know how much to order, and the customers know what they're getting and can plan in advance. And the bags are good value, I think, when compared to other retailers, and the veg is of outstanding quality. So if you don't already subscribe to a weekly veg scheme, please do; and if you do, please get all your friends to do the same. Baby steps can change the world if everyone takes them. 

This blog is now sort of redundant as it has done what it set out to do - to chart a (bit more than) a week in the life of a Local Greens bag. But it's been fun, and I hope it will be useful if only to me to write my recipes down if I think I've made something nice, so I can refer to them in future. So this isn't necessarily the end. Just the end of this post. Maybe. In fact yes, this is definitely the end of this post. Now. 

Not offal but not brilliant either

Just a fairly quick post today - should have done it yesterday but lacked enthusiasm as my dinner didn't live up to expectations!

Got some beef marrow bones for a bargain price from a lovely butcher. Thought I'd have a go at deep frying the marrow in breadcrumbs, like I've seen someone do on t'telly. Got the marrow out (and made lovely stock with the bones - see beef wellington entry), then soaked in in salty water for about 48 hours, rinsing and changing the water regularly. Boiled them up briefly then popped them in the freezer to firm up. 

When ready to go, I did the usual flour, egg and breadcrumb coating, and deep fried them for about five minutes. I definitely didn't season them enough, which was the main problem, and a sprinkling of salt at the end didn't help. Perhaps the original brine should have been stronger. All in all it was a bit odd. 

No matter, the mashed potato was good, you can always rely on mashed potato. There was a little pile of spinach, also good. And I chopped a Local Greens carrot into long thin strips, just covered with water and boiled it up for a couple minutes, fried up a chopped clove of garlic and a few cumin seeds in olive oil and used that to dress the carrots, plus some capers and a bit of caper vinegar which was intended to cut through the richness of the offally nuggets. It did, just about. I poured the leftover gravy from the previous night onto the spuds. On the whole I think the dish looked better than it tasted. Although that's possibly harsh as everything apart from the bone marrow was lovely. 

I'm unlikely to cook tonight as I've got a meeting at 7.30 (engaging communities again) and will probably be home quite late so tomorrow night I'll be working out how to use up the last bits of the bag: I've got one carrot, half a beetroot and a few mushrooms left. All on the same plate? Maybe!

Beef Wellington

No I haven't gone up in the world, I haven't bought a massive lump of beef fillet and I haven't had a very posh dinner party. A few months ago I was in M&S and came across a pack of two 'flat iron steaks' which they were offering for a measly £4. "What are these?", I asked my phone's browser, and read that this was a 'new' cut of beef that had been 'discovered' by researchers at universities in Nebraska and Florida. General consensus on the web was that they're tender like fillet and tasty like rump. Obviously I bought a pack and tried them out. They were amazing! As good a steak as any I've had from the more traditional prime steak cuts. And you can still get two for £4! Sainsbury's have also just cottoned on, selling packs that work out at £9.99 a kilo. The Sainsbury's ones don't look quite as good as the M&S ones, lacking the distinctive marbling and clearly not aged for as long, but it was to Sainsbury's that I had to turn for my flat irons this weekend as there were none in M&S. If lots of people are catching on and buying these steaks it leads me to suspect they might not stay this cheap for long. But only time will tell.

The fairly uniform thickness and rectangular shape of these steaks got me thinking that they'd be good for making little individual beef wellingtons. I'd never even eaten a wellington before, let alone cooked one, so when I gave it a whirl on New Year's Day it was quite an occasion. It went so well that I thought you might enjoy having a go yourself, so I made them again yesterday for t'blog. Two beef wellingtons for less than a tenner, anyone?

Sorry I forgot to take a photo until I was some considerable way into it! 

Beef Wellington

Serves 2 (extremely generously)

2 flat iron steaks
1 or 2 dried morels, or a couple of tablespoons of dried porcini mushrooms
A shallot
A clove of garlic
4 or five white mushrooms from your Local Greens bag
Butter
A teaspoon of whole grain mustard
A dash of red wine
2-3 tablespoons of double cream
A little oil or lard
150g baby spinach
1x375g pack of ready rolled puff pastry
An egg

For the gravy:

Beef bones
An onion
Half a carrot
1-2 teaspoons of plain flour
A dash of red wine

Begin by getting those beef bones into the oven. You're going to make a stock, but you want to roast the bones first to get maximum flavour out of them. Roast for about 45 minutes at gas mark 6, turning once or twice. Then put them into a pan with the onion and carrot, just cover with water and put on to boil. Simmer for an hour or two (or longer if you've got the time), then remove the bones and veg and boil the stock hard for as long as it takes to reduce it down to about half a pint. Oh, and don't wash the roasting tin yet. 

In a bowl pour boiling water over the dried mushrooms (just enough to cover them, plus a touch more) and leave to hydrate for half an hour. When you remove the mushrooms, squeeze as much stock as you can out of them back into the bowl. Finely chop the shallot and cook gently in a little butter until softening and becoming golden. Finely chop both sets of mushrooms (and I mean really finely) and add to the shallot with the garlic, also finely chopped. Cook gently for as long as you like - you can't overcook a mushroom. Add the mushroom stock to the pan and turn the heat up to reduce it down until it's almost disappeared. Add a dash of red wine and allow that to reduce also. Add the cream and stir to combine and thicken. Finish by adding the mustard and seasoning well with salt and black pepper. You have just made a duxelles. 

Get a frying pan really hot with some oil or lard (not butter as it will burn) and sear the steaks until good and brown - just a minute each side. The pan needs to be extremely hot so that you can sear the outsides quickly without actually starting to cook them inside. Season a little and leave to cool. Don't wash the pan. 

Rinse the spinach and put in a covered pan with no more water than is sticking to the leaves. Bring to the boil to wilt it; then squeeze out as much water as possible. Put it back in the pan, add just a very small knob of butter and a bit of s & p, and separate the leaves from each other a little.

Spread the pastry out, leaving it on the grease-proof paper it comes with, and cut in half width-ways. Spread spinach over one half of each sheet, leaving a good gap at the edges; make a rectangle of spinach the same size as your steaks. Put the steaks on top of the spinach, then spread the duxelles over the steaks. Pile it on, don't be shy. Then fold the other half of the pastry over the steaks to make what is essentially a pasty. Trim off any excess pastry and then crimp the edges with the tines of a fork to seal. Brush all over with egg. Prick each one three times with the fork. I don't know if this is necessary but it feels right. Put on a baking sheet, still with the paper under, and put in a pre-heated oven at gas mark 6 for 20 minutes. By this time the pastry should be golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for five minutes. 

While that's going on you can make the gravy. Put the roasting tin on the hob and warm it up. There will probably not be much fat, so add a little knob of butter before adding the flour. Whisk to remove lumps. Meanwhile heat up the pan you fried the steaks in and deglaze with a splash of red wine. Pour this into the roasting and keep whisking. Then add the beef stock and whisk it in, then simmer for a few minutes. Taste and season.

I served it with a grated carrot and beetroot medley, dressed simply with olive oil and lightly seasoned, and a swede fondant which was completely unnecessary but very delicious. Really, all that's required by way of accompaniment is some green salad leaves and a belting red wine. 

If you were serving it as part of a three course menu you would only need to serve half a wellington per person. When you cut it in half, you'll see that the steak is still perfectly pink, and when you eat it you'll notice that it has a buttery texture and a deeply beefy flavour. The pastry on top will be crisp, underneath will be soft with spinach and beef juice, and the duxelles will add another layer of flavour. It tastes like the most ridiculous luxury, but at a fraction of the price you would expect to pay for such a dish. Can you tell I'm quite proud of it? You could call it my new signature dish! 

It's fairly complex I suppose, but you can break it up by making individual elements ahead of time. Then it's just a construction job at the end. 



Later today I'm going to tackle the marrow that came out those beef bones - a first attempt at cooking bone marrow. Wish me luck.

Sausage, Leek & Bean Stew

I'd spent a day standing outside in the cold trying to 'engage communities', an occupational hazard of working for an innovative and progressive local authority. A substantial dinner was required; summat to warm the cockles, but not summat that takes ages to cook. Sausage, leek and bean stew has never failed me yet, and there happened to be a couple of lovely leeks in this week's bag. It didn't take a massive leap of imagination. I'm a Lincolnshire lad, so it had to be Lincolnshire sausages, but it'd be just as good with Cumberland, or Toulouse if you're in an exotic mood. 

Sausage, Leek & Bean Stew

Serves 2, with enough left for lunch tomorrow

Six good sausages
1 onion (or three shallots)
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 lovely Local Greens leeks, sliced
1 tin of chopped tommies
2 tins of butter beans
A sprinkling of fennel seeds
A tablespoon of fresh thyme - oregano would also be good
The leftover water from boiling yesterday's romanesco for pureeing  (you did save it, didn't you?)

Might as well get the onion on first. No need to dice, just slice it and throw it into a pan of hot olive oil. Turn the heat down and cook it for a good 10 or 15 minutes at least, or until it's browning (but not burning) and becoming soft, sweet and interesting. Add the fennel seeds, garlic and leeks and cook for a further ten minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Meanwhile, get the skin off the sausages and cut each one into five or six pieces. Get a non-stick frying pan hot with some olive oil in, and fry the sausage pieces until browned all over. 

Add the tomatoes to the onions and leeks with the romanesco water (alright, plain water will also do), and then the beans. Then the sausages. Then the thyme. 

Everything is already pretty much cooked by this stage, because you've been 'canny' and used tinned tommies and beans. You just need to season it well - don't be scared of the salt and pepper, and then let it simmer slowly for a while to let all the flavours rub up against each other and mingle, like at a really good party. You know, the ones they had in the sixties.  

Serve it when you can resist it no longer. A pile of buttered spinach or steamed or stir-fried cabbage is optional but extremely desirable to serve with it. 

For lunch the next day I find it goes perfectly with a crispy potato rosti and a poached egg. So that's what I'll be having for lunch tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it already. 

Romanesco, Romanesco, Romanesco. And Gnocchi.

There's a thing I sometimes do with certain types of veg that really shows them off - I've done it in the past with cauliflower, broccoli and asparagus, and tonight I tried it with romanesco and it was a corker. 

 

It involves doing three different things with the veg in question: puree, stir fry, and raw. It's not as time consuming as it might sound - there's quite a lot going on but none of it takes long to do. You could do it with pasta instead of gnocchi. 

Romanesco with Gnocchi

Serves 2

1 head of romanesco

1 pack of gnocchi (or however much pasta you think you'll need)

2 cloves of garlic

Half a teaspoon of fresh red chilli

A sprinkling of pine nuts

A few capers

Half a chicken stock cube (optional)

A knob of butter

A few drops of toasted sesame oil (probably optional)

A quarter handful of grated Italian hard cheese such as parmesan

A glug of olive oil

Pull the leaves off the romanesco and chop off the stem just below where the florets start. Cut off each floret, trying to keep as many as possible looking pretty. When you get to the last few florets at the top, take some nice thin slices from the whole piece (see photograph for what I mean). You'll need three for each serving, and a good sharp knife is useful. Pick out the best florets until you've got about half of the really nice looking ones on one side, and the rougher ones on the other side. Cut the bigger of the pretty ones in half so that all the bits are of a roughly similar size. 

Chop the stem that you cut the florets from into bits and put them in a pan with the rougher half of the florets. Just cover with water and add the half chicken stock cube, if using. Bring to the boil and simmer until nice and tender. Pour off most of the liquid and puree with a hand blender, adding the liquid back a little at a time until it is of a pourable consistency but still holds its own. Season with salt and pepper, but taste first if you used the chicken stock so that you don't put in too much salt.

Meanwhile, put a big pan of water on to boil.

Chop your garlic and chilli, not too big and not too small. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the toasted sesame oil - just enough to add a little side note of smokiness.  Fry the romanesco with the garlic and chilli over a medium heat, and turn from time to time so that nothing burns. Throw in the capers towards the end.

When the big pan of water is boiling, put the gnocchi in.

Put a dry non-stick pan over a flame until it's good and hot and add the pine nuts to toast. Make sure they don't burn and take them off when they're going brown.  Add them to the stir-fry and take off the heat. 

Warm the puree through, ready to serve.

Drain the gnocchi once it's floated to the top, then put back in the pan and mix with the olive oil and parmesan. Add a good twist of black pepper. 

Plate up however you like, not necessarily as I did. It would also work with the puree folded through the gnocchi I reckon.

So I've already used up the salad leaves and the romanesco, and a bit of the beetroot. I need to keep some mushrooms for the wellingtons on Sunday, but apart from that the rest of the bag is my oyster. I have a feeling tomorrow will involve leeks, but I'm not yet sure how. 

Mackerel (two ways!), pink spuds, salad

Sometimes a fish looks quite small at the fishmonger's but when you get it into the more compact confines of the kitchen it takes on leviathan proportions. Such was the case today, but the fish was really fresh so I decided to cut some modestly-sized pieces from each fillet and dice the rest up to make a ceviche. Or a version of ceviche. I suspect there are as many ceviches as there are people that make them. It originated in South America and is essentially a sort of fish tartare, with raw fish and citrus juice, and usually some sort of onion and chilli. (The acid in the citrus sort of 'cooks' the fish.) The main portions of mackerel would get a hot fast fry with no more adornment than salt and pepper. So far so good.

I feel slightly ambivalent towards any main course that doesn't have some carbs, so combined some boiled anya potatoes with grated beetroot and creme fraiche to make a pink potato salad. Then for some reason I thought some clementine segments would look pretty mixed in with some green salad leaves. They certainly looked pretty, but didn't really add much to the eating, and I would leave them out if I did the dish again. 

The deeply green earthiness of the salad was a perfect foil for the gaudy vibrancy of the beetroot, and I feel privileged to have met Joel and Paola, who put their hearts and souls into growing it. I look forward to many more offerings from 'Calabaza' in my bags as their venture expands. Lovely lovely people. 

Got to say though, only my second ceviche and this time it was a revelation. I could have eaten a bucket of the stuff, and sort of wish I'd done the whole mackerel this way, even though the fried fillet was everything one would hope would be. But hindsight is a luxury the cook can ill afford until the sell-by date has already passed. Or something. 

Here's the recipe for anyone who still cares...

Mackerel two ways with pink potatoes and green salad

Serves 2

2 very fresh good-sized fillets of mackerel

Ceviche:
Somewhere in the region of 120g mackerel, trimmed from the above and diced
1 shallot, very finely chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic
Half teaspoon fresh red chilli, not too hot
Juice of 1 lime
Juice of half a clementine
A few capers, chopped
A teaspoon of vinegar from the capers jar
2 tablespoons of chopped coriander

Potatoes:
8 or so anya potatoes (any other waxy potato will do if you can't get to a Sainsbury's)
1 normal sized beetroot, or a quarter of a massive one, grated
Neighbourhood of 100g creme fraiche
Two tablespoons chopped dill

Green salad:
A selection of deeply earthy salad leaves, such as those offered by Calabaza in this week's bag
A good glug of extra virgin olive oil
Half a teaspoon of whole grain mustard
Two teaspoons of vinegar from the capers jar

Bung your potatoes on to boil, and keep a bit of an eye on them until they're nice and tender but please don't let them go too far. When they're done, replace the very hot water with very cold water and let them sit in there and cool right down. Drain them again and add them to the other ingredients. Season with Maldon sea salt (always Maldon sea salt - accept nothing else!) and a good grind of black pepper. 

The alliums in the ceviche are tradionally raw, but I'm a bit of a wuss when it comes to raw alliums so I cooked the shallot and garlic fairly gently for three minutes or so in the olive oil, to take the edge off. It's up to you if you want to do the same, but I do think the ceviche benefitted from it. Then it's really just a question of combining all the ingredients together in a bowl (apart from the coriander), remembering to season with salt and black pepper, and sticking it in the fridge for half an hour. 

Get an empty capers or mustard jar and shake the ingredients for the salad dressing in it to combine. Season with salt and pepper. 

Melt a knob of butter in a really hot frying pan and fry the mackerel in it skin side down for no longer than a couple of minutes. Turn it over, allow to fry for a few seconds then turn the heat off. Let the fish sit in the pan for another minute to finish cooking. 

Meanwhile, take the ceviche out of the fridge and mix in the coriander. 

Job done! Arrange everything on a plate in a manner that you find aesthetically appealing, or just pile it on however it lands and scoff it all down until the plate looks like this:

The chilli in the ceviche was just enough that it left a pleasant warmth in the back of the throat. I'll definitely be making it again. Lush. 

Papa's Got a Brand New Veg Bag

Here it is:

Well, some of it anyway. 

Having read today that up to half of the food produced in the world is wasted (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/10/half-world-food-waste - sorry, haven't worked out how to do hyperlinks yet) largely due to 'super'markets rejecting anything that isn't cosmetically 'perfect', it's lovely to see some proper green leeks and a lovely big beetroot in there. 

I mean, really. Can it be right that for every George Clooney of the parsnip world (for example) that ends up in the supermarket, a Timothy Spall gets thrown away? Someone should start a campaign to persuade the supermarkets that we need more Timothy Spalls! I've got nothing against Clooney by the way, I'm sure he's a top lad. But those funny-shaped parsnips taste just as good, and wasting perfectly good food is not much short of criminal. I could go on, but you're probably busy and I should get dinner going.

With the importance of avoiding food waste in mind it's important to rank the vegetables in probable order of perishment, as this will need to inform our menu choices over the course of the week. I'm thinking the salad probably ought to be used first so I'll be doing that tonight with a lovely fresh mackerel. It would be a shame to miss out on a classic combination so I'll probably chop a bit off that beetroot and incorporate that too somehow. 

So, simple things, hopefully done well! I'll let you know how it goes later. 

Introduction

Local Greens is a not for profit organisation that supplies discerning people in Herne Hill, Dulwich, Brixton and Camberwell with fresh, tasty organic or spray-free vegetables from farms as local to South East London as possible. Favourably priced compared with other less local schemes, they offer a choice of small or standard sized bags with or without potatoes, and because they are not for profit they are able to pay the farmers a proper price for all their dedication and hard work. Producers and consumers all get a good deal, and I suppose the four lovely people that run the thing (and the many volunteers that help) have to make do with the lovely, warm, fuzzy feeling they get deep inside by knowing they're doing some good for their fellow citizens. Everyone, then, is a winner. 

I joined up in May 2012 and have been impressed by both the standard and generosity of veg - my rucksack often groans under the weight as I cycle from the collection point near where I work in Brixton to my home in Croydon. And that's only a small bag.

The variety is also excellent. There are six or seven different veggies each week, and well as the regular staples such as onions, carrots and tommies (when in season!), there is usually something a bit different such as cavolo nero or red kuri squash. I have fond memories of some beautiful rainbow chard, and not so fond memories of my first attempt at cooking a globe artichoke, which I'm sure I didn't do justice to.

Over the next little while (and maybe longer if I have fun) I'm going to chart the life of a Local Greens bag. Starting on Tuesday when the email arrives reporting what will be in the bag, continuing through Thursday when I collect it, and on until I've used all of it up, I'll document my adventures with veg. The only thing I know in advance about the bag: there will be swede! (See: www.localgreens.org.uk/redeem-swede-contest-registration)

Some important points to get out of the way from the off:

• I used to be vegan but I rebounded really hard. I now eat lots of meat and fish, unapologetically;
• I am nowhere near professional standard but I do like to have a go and try new things; 
• I never know what I'm having for dinner until a couple of hours before. I don't do a week's or a month's worth of shopping in one go., I shop every evening on my way home from work and buy what I fancy at the time. The veg bag helps give a bit of focus; 
• I listen to Radio 4 while I'm cooking; whether or not this affects the flavour of the food is impossible to say. 
• I'm not much of a measurer, but when writing recipes I'll try and avoid such ambiguities as 'a bit of flour' or 'some lentils'. But I can't promise. 

I'll be back on Tuesday, after I've received the weekly email from Local Greens telling me what to expect. If by chance you happen to read this, happen to live or work in the middle bit of South London and aren't already a member, have a look at www.localgreens.org.uk and sign up for your weekly bag.