Recipe | Spring Slaw

This Spring Slaw of mange tout, fennel, radishes, seeds and apple is delicious with dark rye toast and also goes well with something fatty like duck legs for a crisp, tart contrast. Take your time cutting matchstick-thin batons while you listen to the radio.

Serves 4 as a starter or side

Ingredients

2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
2 tbsp hemp seeds
150g mange tout or sugar snaps
2 small green kohl rabi
1 small fennel bulb
1 apple
3 spring onions
¼ spring cabbage
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 lemon, juiced
1 tsp honey
Handful pea shoots, to serve

How to make

1 Put the seeds in a dry frying pan set over a medium heat and toast them for 3-4 mins, or until just golden. Set aside to cool.

2 Finely shred or mandoline all the fruit and veg and toss in a large bowl.

3 Whisk together the extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice and honey with a pinch of salt and pour over the raw veg, add the cooled seeds and mix thoroughly, but gently.

4 Pile onto plates and finish with a few fronds of pea shoots.

This slaw is just one of the recipes from our monthly feature ‘Veg Patch Pantry’, in which Kathy Slack show us how to enjoy the fruits (and veg) of your May garden plot, allotment or veg box.

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More from our May issue…

More ways with veg…

Harvest | Things to do with Weird Veg Box Vegetables

Getting a vegetable you’ve never heard of in your veg box is very exciting and also slightly bewildering. Here’s what to do with anything unrecognisable or unpronounceable in your veg box…

Kohlrabi

Once a thing of mystery, now a veg box staple, the best thing to do with this (faintly unattractive but nice and crunchy) vegetable is to julienne it for a kohlrabi slaw, along with carrot, cabbage, red onion and a nice zesty dressing. 

Celeriac

Tastes like a nutty turnip; looks like a brain, celeriac makes a lovely creamy soup or gratin, but we think it’s particularly good sliced into ribbons with a peeler as a replacement for pasta with a creamy, cheesy sauce, and a good sprinkling of Stilton and walnuts.

Brusselberry Sprouts

Like sprouts but red, these are too pretty just to accompany a roast. They’re lovely raw, shredded into a salad with nuts, dried fruit and other additions, but we like to show them off on long skewers, cooked on the barbecue or panfried, with chunks of bacon if you like, glazed with honey and lime juice, and then sprinkled with parmesan. 

Padron Peppers

Lots of fun. Padron peppers mostly taste just like green peppers, but one in every so many is surprisingly spicy! The classic and best way to serve these tiny green peppers is blistered in a pan with a glug of olive oil and plenty of good salt. Serve with beers for a cooling swig whenever you get a hot one. 

Oca 

Also known as Oxalis Tuber Rosa, these are a colourful, knobbly alternative to a potato. But they have one thing over the potato - they can be eaten raw as well as cooked. Thinly sliced, they have a pleasant lemony flavour and make a great salad. When cooked they taste nutty rather than lemony, and we love them roasted in oil with salt and dried chilli, as a pre-dinner nibble. 

In our September issue, Rachel de Thample has given us lots of advice on using up everything in your veg box , as well as recipes that are great for late-summer-early-autumn veg box contents. Find all her ideas from page 42 of our September issue. The feature includes recipes for sweetcorn polenta with runner bean ragu, apple soda bread, golden marrow marmalade, Moroccalilli and cauliflower dauphinoise. 

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Recipe | Fresh Ideas for BBQ Sides

We’ve decided we’re making sides the main event. Nobody puts coleslaw in the corner!

Now. There’s plenty good about a potato salad and a bowl of greenery. But it’s fun to ring the changes occasionally. Here are a couple of new twists on classic BBQ sides to fire up your patio this summer. They’re part of our ‘School’s Out’ feature in our August issue, a dinner-through-to-breakfast menu for a back garden camp out. 

This broad bean guacamole and kohlrabi slaw will go well with barbecued meats, fish or cheese and are full of fresh, summery flavours. And, frankly, they’re so good, we’d eat them on their own with a bit of good bread for a garden lunch, too.

Broad bean guacamole

Serves 4
240g podded broad beans
Glug of extra virgin olive oil
Handful of fresh coriander (both stalks and leaves), roughly chopped
Zest and juice of 1 unwaxed lime
Pinch of sea salt
½ tsp nigella seeds 

1 In a pan of boiling water, blanch the beans for 2-3 mins. Drain and refresh under cold water. 

2 Add the beans and the rest of the ingredients, apart from the nigella seeds, to a food processor (or large bowl if using a stick blender). Blitz together until smooth. Transfer the guacamole to a serving dish and sprinkle with nigella seeds.

Kohlrabi slaw

Serves 6 

1 kohlrabi, peeled and grated
½ white cabbage, shredded
2 carrots, peeled and finely julienned
Handful of radishes, thinly sliced
Handful of fresh coriander (both stalks and leaves), finely chopped
3 heaped tbsp mayonnaise
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tsp honey 

1 In a large bowl, toss together the kohlrabi, cabbage, carrot, radishes and most of the coriander. 

2 Combine the dressing ingredients and add to the veg. Toss thoroughly until fully coated, then garnish with the remaining coriander. 

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Recipe | Leek & Thyme Flatbreads

A new idea to help use your early spring veg box well

Traditionally known as the ‘hungry gap’, early spring is the time of year when home-grown seasonal veg is harder to come by as winter veg comes to the end of its run but many spring varieties are yet to arrive. This may mean your weekly veg box feels like it is lacking excitement, but with a few new recipes ,there’s always a way to liven up a leek!

You could easily transform this crispyon-the-bottom, fluffy on the top flatbread into a pizza but, equally, the dough with more modest toppings is more akin to an Indian naan bread or a Persian bread made for dunking into dips. Whichever way you go, it’s delicious and a brilliant staple.

Makes 6-8

7g dried yeast or 150g active sourdough starter
4 tbsp lukewarm water
500g strong white flour
Sea salt, plus extra for topping 225ml cool water
2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for kneading and glossing
2 leeks, thinly sliced
A handful of thyme, leaves only (you can infuse the stalks in vinegar with garlic skins for a fantastically tasty garlic and thyme vinegar)
A crumbling of goat’s cheese, blue cheese, mozzarella or grated cheddar (optional)

1 Tip the yeast into a large mixing bowl and whisk in the warm water until frothy; if using a sourdough starter, simply mix in the warm water. Add the flour, a pinch of salt and cool water. Leek and thyme flatbreads
2 Use your hands or a spoon to bring the dough together. Add the oil and knead the dough for 5-10 mins, or until smooth and stretchy. Add a little more oil as you knead to keep it moist and prevent it from sticking.
3 Put the dough in a clean bowl. Cover with a plate, a lid, or clingfilm and set in a warm place for about 30 mins, or until it has doubled in size. If you’ve used sourdough in place of yeast, it will need longer to rise – at least 2 hrs or overnight.
4 Once the dough has risen, heat your oven grill to high and warm a large frying pan over a high heat.
5 Roll out pinches of dough (roughly golf-ball size) on a floured surface. Roll them thin for crispy flatbreads or about 2cm thick for fluffier (more naan-style flatbreads). Thicker flatbreads keep better.
6 Put the dough on the hot, dry pan. Drizzle a little oil on top, then add the chopped leeks, thyme and cheese, if you’re using it. Add a finishing gloss of oil and season with salt and pepper.
7 Once the bottoms are firm and look like they’ve been in a tandoor oven, remove from the pan and put them under the grill. Cook until golden on top. Repeat with the remaining dough.

Cook’s note: The dough will keep in the fridge for a week. It also freezes beautifully if you want to make it ahead of time or have any left over.

This recipe is just one of the ideas from our Veg Box Suppers feature by Rachel de Thample with photography by Ali Allen, which also includes creamed kale, coconut, cardamon and beetroot soup, rhubarb frangipane tart and an array of veg box pickles.

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Make | parsnip panpipes (yes, really)

Looking for a new project this weekend? Each month, we publish a ‘veg box music’ idea, ingenious ways to make those edibles audible

Got some spare parsnips? Then you’re all set to try Blowin in the Roots. Don’t forget to send us photos of your band practice!

You will need:

4 or 5 parsnips (as many as you can hold in your hand comfortably)

Knife

Apple corer / drill

How to make:

1. Slice the skinny ends of the parsnips off at the point at which they are still of a good thickness – 1 or 2cm in diameter, let’s say.

2. Bore wide, cylindrical holes down into the parsnips using an apple corer or a drill. Make the deepest one as deep as the parsnip will allow without breaking through the other end, then repeat on the other parsnips, ensuring that each hole is progressively shallower than the last.

3. Finish them off by slicing across the top of the holes at an angle and hold them upright in a row, from deepest to shallowest, with the highest part of the parsnip closest to the face.

4. Blow diagonally across the parsnips down the same plane as they have been cut – the angle makes it easier to get a note.

Taken from Musical Experiments for After Dinner by Angus Hyland, Tom Parkinson, and illustrated by Dave Hopkins, is published by Laurence King. Available at.laurenceking.com.

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More miscellaneous fun…