I won a sort of raffle prize, for tweeting about A Taste of Spain, and today the Delicatessen Box of goodies arrived by courier!

So I’ve made one of those traditional “unboxing” videos, just because I was a bit excited really, and wanted to record the contents before they get put away into different cupboards until it’s time to get them out to make lovely tapas.

Here’s the unboxing home video:

The Torre Real Delicatessen Selection food and wine box comprised of:

• Fillets of Bonito del Norte Tuna
• Arbequina select Olives
• Artichokes
• Whole White Aparagus
• Sweet Chestnuts from Galicia in Brandy
• Silencio Extra Virgin Arbequina Olive Oil
• Oscuridad special parellada white wine vinegar
• Torres VinaSol white wine

The promotion was by A Taste of Spain – thankyou.

The delicatessen box of Torre Real supplied by Idelica

Bean and Fennel Bake

You will need:

• About a cup of cooked beans. I like Aduki beans for this. Please don’t use tinned beans they go to mush too quickly and don’t give the right texture.
• About 2 cups of fairly finely chopped selection of organic veggies from your box. Ideally about 1/4 inch dice. I’ve used onion, leek, celery and carrot today. Other possibles include swede ( better known as turnip if you’re Scots like me!)
• 1 large fennel bulb chopped a little larger.
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Herbs to taste – today it’s thyme and parsley. Rosemary would also work and some people (not me!) like sage. Marjoram might work better if you are swapping the shoyu gravy for tomato sauce (homemade of course!)
• 1 cup of shoyu gravy (2 tablespoons of shoyu or good soy sauce added to a white sauce made with  boiling water not milk. See below)
• About 4 or 5 good sized potatoes mashed with a tablespoon of olive oil
• Optional – cheese about a tablespoon of parmesan or gruyere added to the mash.

Method

1. Heat a little olive oil over a low heat in a skillet, deep frying pan or similar. Add the veggies, fennel and garlic and cook gently with a lid on. Sometimes described as ‘sweating’ the vegetables. Cook till the juices start to run and the veggies soften. Not something you can wander off and leave! Keep cooking, checking and stirring occasionally for about 15 mins till the veggies are all nice and soft but still have some crunch. You might need to taste them, just to make sure of course! Remove from the heat.
2. Make a shoyu gravy. In a small sauce pan heat 3 teaspoons of olive oil. Add 1 tablespoon of flour (organic white or gram are both good). Cook gently stirring all the time until it makes a solidish mass & comes away from the sides of the pan. Add 2 tablespoons of Shoyu and stir well. I like to use one of those wooden spoons with a pointy edge and a hole in them, a balloon whisk is good too. Gradually add about 1/2 a pint of boiling water. You can use vegetable stock or water left over from cooking other veg instead, if you have it. Stir it all the time over a gentle heat till it thickens & will coat the back of a spoon.
3. Add the sauce to your cooked vegetables. Mix really well so that everything is coated. Resist the temptation to eat it now! Or is that just me…….
4. Top with your mashed potatoes. Roughen the top with a fork and add extra cheese or butter if you are feeling indulgent.

At this point it will keep for later or even tomorrow, if you pop it in the fridge. You could even freeze it! Just move it to the fridge the day before you want to eat it.  Make sure you get it out of the fridge a good hour before you want to cook it.

5. Pop it in a medium oven for around 40 minutes till heated through and the topping has gently coloured, golden brown is ideal. Watch it for the last 10 minutes or so as it’s a short step from golden brown to cinders!

Enjoy!

I tend to serve it with some sort of greens, the first of the sprouts are in boxes now and they are perfect with this!

Jamie Oliver has had some success transforming the way UK schools feed our children and now he wants to show the US how to feed their children. Jamie’s got his bad points but he’s pretty much a hero in my opinion. OK, so we might see him as being in the pocket of the big supermarkets but his heart is undoubtedly in the right place. If Jamie can persuade people that children can and do like vegetables then he will have done well.

I’m not at all sure how we reached this place where it’s just assumed that children don’t like veg. It seems quite strange to me, I always had more trouble getting them to eat meat! I suppose I was dealing with children who had mostly started off as vegetarian and been weaned onto vegetable solids. My bible was Rose Elliot’s Vegetarian Mother and Baby, I’d read Let’s Have Healthy Children (out of print and not that accurate) and I had a few tricks up my sleeve. Veggies make great weaning finger foods (carrots are obvious but try sticks of celariac or fennel!), mashed avacado is just about a perfect weaning food, and once they are a little bit older salad or pizza faces that they decorate themselves will usually be demolished in double quick time.

Vegetable box

Anyway, listen to what Jamie has to say and then take another look at what came in this week’s vegetable box and see what you can do to make it attractive to your kids. If you are stuck for ideas just leave a comment and I’ll try to come up with something.

The controversy has been raised: is it better to keep the bunched carrots with the green feathery top foliage intact or cut them off?

I think the greens help to transpose moisture away from the carrot roots so they dry out more quickly but Linda thinks keeping the greens on will mean they last longer. Probably we’ll eat them with a couple of days anyway but it’s important to know what is really the best way to keep these special vegetables in tip top condition for even a short time.

What do you think is best and what do you do with bunched carrots from your organic vegetable boxes?

The opposite happened to me though. I thought I’d been efficient and cancelled my regular vegetable box for the week I was away recently, and when I got back the next week’s box of vegetables arrived exactly when it was suppose to, but the week after that I was left without. So make sure you understand the difference between a future order and a recurring order before you cancel organic boxes.

Supermarkets now sell more than 70 per cent of organic produce in the UK — but, having done well in the organic boom, they are now bearing the brunt of the decline. According to Soil Association surveys, it is “barcode” sales of organic that are falling. Farmers’ markets, farm shops and box schemes are still all doing OK.

* Green chillies : Don’t put the raw green chillies straight in the fridge. To keep them fresh for a long time remove the stems and put them in a ziplock bag or in some storage box.
* Carrots: Cover the carrots with a damp cloth and put them in fridge. They can keep for a whole week like that instead of going soft and limp in a few days.
* Herbs: Bunches of coriander have to be one of the common one to go bad before you get to use it all. To keep them fresh I store them in a salad container so the leaves don’t touch the icy wall at the back and get frostbite. You can use the same tip for greens too.
* Brocoli: When you store brocoli look for dark green buds with no yellowish color. And store them in a airtight container or in a sealed bag and it will last up to a week. Don’t store more than a week.
* cucumbers: Pick the ones that have no soft spots or visible bruises. It should be dark green and firm, So it will last longer in the fridge when you store it in the air tight bag. It will stay fresh up to 5 days, but really it’s probably better to take it out of the plastic wrap and use it sooner rather than later.

When you are stocking organic vegetables in your refrigerator, make a list of them and stick it in your fridge door. That way when you are trying to make up your mind on what to cook you can quickly decide on what to use first and avoid wasting vegetables that go bad faster. I hope these tips are useful for making the best use of your precious vegetables from the organic vegetable boxes.