First though, I wanted to evangelise about this week's bag. This week's (ahem!) standard-no-potatoes bag. Yeah, you heard me. I've upgraded! No more standard bag envy for me! No more little bag blues. I've disdainfully waved farewell to the proletariat and am now rubbing ermine-draped shoulders with the elitist bourgeoisie. Feel free to throw rotten vegetables at me if you wish, but you won't find any of those in your bags this week because everything is fresh, fresh, fresh!
To start with I've got more parsnips than I can shake a carrot at, and they're lovely-looking things, slender and pale like David Bowie in 1972. Or like David Bowie now, to be honest. They might become a zingy soup with apples or pears, or else they'll be grated and dressed with rapeseed oil, chopped capers and grainy mustard as a sort of multi-purpose raw side dish. The carrots and onions are reliably there, as always, ready to lend their sweet notes to a stock or casserole. I might do a curry, for which the onions will of course be invaluable. Haven't done a curry for a while. And it is curry weather.
There are lots of green leaves this week, which makes me very happy. The stir-fry bags from Calabaza have been a constant source of joy over the winter. Fried in oil of your choice with a bit of garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice at the end (and a good grind of black pepper), you can swizzle those mixed leaves around a bowl of pasta or gnocchi and you have a delicious, healthy midweek supper in no time at all. Add a few cubes of feta if you feel the need (but then your supper won't be that healthy anymore. Problem?). By replacing the pasta with noodles, the lemon juice with lime juice and adding a glug of fish sauce you could do the same with the pak choi.
And there's chard! Get in! Strip the green stuff from the stems, chop the stems and fry them up in butter with some garlic until soft, then chuck in the green stuff and move it around for a minute. Add salt and pepper. Done. Or do as Slater does, and make a gratin out of cream mixed with grain mustard and parmesan.
I don't know what I'm going to do with the leeks yet, but they're what I consider a 'utility vegetable' as they're so versatile. And I've got a turnip the size of Mansfield - I've never knowingly cooked or eaten a turnip before so that's going to be a voyage of discovery.
But you haven't come here for all that. You're here because in my last post I promised a sonnet on purple sprouting broccoli if it should appear in our bags again. And of course it did, just last week. So here, too late to be of any actual use to anyone, because you've already cooked and eaten your purple sprouting, is my poem. I don't consider myself to be any sort of poet, by the way. Neither will you in a minute.
The similarity to the Elizabeth Browning classic only lasts a couple of lines, but I've tried to retain the rhyme scheme. Obviously. So alright then: a sonnet. 14 lines, 10 syllables per line. Them's the rules. Go!
(Clears throat. Nonchalantly adjusts cravat.)
How do I eat thee? Let me count the ways.
I eat thee to the stem and leaf and tip.
Raw dipped in hummus, to prepare is brief,
But on palate thy flavour lasts for days.
I eat thee as thy sesame oil plays
with garlic and fish sauce on my lip,
And chili and ginger dance on tongue's tip.
Alas, your season ends in saddest Mays.
But what keeps me glad throughout the year?
It's not the thought of baking under cream.
However, clearly that would be a dream.
It's dipping you in box-baked Camembert!
Yes, I am sorry about rhyming 'year' with 'Camembert'. But Browning seems to have got away with rhyming 'faith' with 'breath'. Slapdash, if you ask me, but that's poets for you.
I leave you with a simple picture of some wonderfully leafy purple sprouting broccoli frying in my pan, just after the black pepper went in by the look of it. I can't tell you when my next post will arrive but I can guarantee one thing: There won't be another blummin' poem.
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