Veg, glorious veg

26th May 2020 0 By Allergendad

We’re a few weeks into our weekly vegetable delivery boxes from Riverford now and I’m loving them. We’ve increased our order every week and I don’t think we’ve let a single item go to waste yet. Furthermore; we’re definitely spending less at our weekly supermarket shop. It hasn’t been long enough to work out whether the net total is more or less, it’ll take a while to know how things balance out. My suspicion is that the meat we’ve bought through the deliveries is more expensive; while the veg seems cheaper, although we’re now eating more of it as a result.

One of the huge benefits is that Piglet is super excited to see the deliveries every week, vowing to try each and every different type of vegetable that he’s either never seen, or flat-out refused to try, before. Granted, by the time each meal comes around, he’s somehow lost a bit of the enthusiasm he had as he’s unpacking the delivery each week. That said, he’s had a go at some wilted spinach, a bite of ‘baby mushroom’ and a found a re-invigorated enthusiasm for carrots!

Some of the veg is self-explanatory in how to cook and prepare but we’ve been finding some nice ways to prepare bits and bobs we wouldn’t usually have. We’ve started eating a fair bit of spinach: garlic fried off in a bit of olive oil and then mixed with freshly washed spinach until it’ll all wilted down together. A bit of black pepper and some chilli flakes and it goes down a treat as a side to virtually any dish. This evening we had the chard from the latest box fried off with ginger, garlic, green chilli and a bit of liquid seasoning (our substitute for soy-free soya sauce). It was exceptional, even if Piglet couldn’t be tempted. Granted we ate it with the fairly bonkers combination of turkey-mince chilli, spaghetti, courgetti and steamed vegetables. I think there must be something fundamentally off with my palette in that I love spicy asian spices with Italian dishes. For years we’ve been eating lasagna with Jamie Oliver’s asian greens recipe.

(Mind you, today I got rebuked for putting peanut butter in a beef burger which is obviously genius; so some people just aren’t given the pioneering credit they deserve!)

A “four-seasons” burger, without bun and dressed, sophistically, with a generous dollop of peanut butter.

One of the less traditional recipes we’ve come up with recently was carrot top pesto, using the long leafy parts of the carrot bunches. It’s basically a dairy-free pesto with a few of the other traditional ingredients substituted. I pan roasted some Brazil nuts, lightly sauted some garlic in olive oil and blended it all together with a pack of coriander leaves and the feathery leaves of a bunch of carrots. I should be open here, the recipe to use the carrot tops actually came from Riverford with their leaflet which they drop in to every delivery. I’d never had it before but it works really well. If I’m honest, the consistency was a little dry so I’d consider adding more oil (and even a dash of water) next time. Also we’ve used nutritional yeast in previous pestos to give a cheesy taste which I’d consider trying with this recipe.