Fruit: Coxes apples, oranges, pomegranate, Packham pears, bananas
Veg: Mushrooms, parsnip, carrots, onions, Jerusalem artichokes, Nicola potatoes, fennel, leeks, kale
Hurrah for the pomegranate. It’s just what I fancy this week to offset the peppery salad. Some people think them a bit of a hassle, but I find the best way to deal with the blighters is to cut the fruit in half, tear the side a bit and then sort of crumble/rub off the seeds into a bowl, peeling the skin and membrane as you go. I can do the whole fruit in two minutes so it really isn’t a big job and if you have kids, they’ll happily do it for you. The fresher the fruit, the easier it is, so there is an incentive to use it this week! Once you’ve got it in the bowl it’s just a case of picking out any bits of white pith and giving the seeds a quick rinse if they are a bit sandy from the skin. Pomegranate seeds are great for colour and tang in fruit or rice salads and pilafs as well as breakfast cereals, rice pudding and even on pizzas! This one is going into my pomegranate, feta and rocket salad, which I will post later.
The Jerusalem artichokes will do a nice soup, teamed with a dash of lemon and some smokey pancetta, and I fancy some more fajitas with the fennel. The leeks will go into my favourite beef, leek and lentil soup which is one of those timeless accident classics that get made because you are using something up and then it remains on the menu as it was simply fantastic (that’s if you can remember how you threw it together in the first place!). We’ll do some gorgonzola and pear pitta pizzas, try the ‘kale on toast’ recipe from the growing communities flyer and I’m planning to do a lovely guinness and beef stew using the parsnips, mushrooms, potatoes and carrots. What a fantastic bag we have this week! And I also want to add a round of applause for the amazing apples from Stocks farm. Really delicious. Thank you. We shall be up to the market in Stokey to get some more.