Veg Box

This weekend, we mostly cooked using Hannah's organic veg box. Ingredients from the box are marked with an asterisk (*).

Friday - Chicken Casserole
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
3 medium carrots*
350g chicken breast fillet, cubed
500g mushrooms, chopped*
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp oregano
2 medium leeks, sliced*
1/2 glass white wine
2 chicken stock pots
1 red pepper, sliced*
1/2 cup rice

Heat the oil in a large stockpot over a medium-high heat.

Add the onion, garlic and carrot. Stir well, cover and sweat until the onion begins to soften.

Add the chicken and mushrooms and the paprika and oregano. Keep turning until the meat is sealed on all sides and beginning to brown.

Add the leeks, stir, then add the wine and one of the stock pots, stirring until it melts. Melt the other stock pot in 500ml of boiling water.

Add the stock, stir and cover. Bring to an easy boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the peppers and the rice and simmer until the rice has absorbed enough liquid to be al dente.

Saturday - Lamb Tagine
This is the same recipe as my last entry, but with lamb shoulder from the local butcher. Being mostly fruit, we didn't use the box veg.

Sunday - Chicken Soup
1/2 tsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 medium carrots, chopped*
1 leek, sliced*
200g chicken breast fillet, cubed
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
500ml chicken stock
2 nests rice noodles

Heat the oil in a saucepan.

Sweat the onion, garlic and carrots for a few minutes, then add the chicken and leek. I was using the chicken from frozen, so I actually sweated the vegetables in a separate pan until the meat was defrosted and sealed.

Add the herbs and stock. Simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the carrots are almost cooked through.

Add the noodles and cook for 5 minutes.

Sunday - Sausages and new potatoes with cabbage and bacon

1 tbsp olive oil

6 sausages (I used Fen Farm venison and pork, which at 100% meat are also entirely gluten free)

6 medium new potatoes, roughly chopped*

2 small carrots, roughly chopped*

1 tsp rosemary

1/2 tsp black pepper

2 cloves garlic, halved

1/2 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

3 rashers unsmoked bacon, chopped

1 medium cabbage, shredded*

Coat the base of a large roasting dish in oil. Arrange the sausages, potatoes and carrots in the dish and season with the garlic, rosemary and pepper.

Place in a preheated oven at 180C, turning the food in the dish every 10-15 minutes for 30-40 minutes.

After 30 minutes, heat the oil in a saute pan. 

Sweat the onion, garlic and bacon until softening, then add the cabbage a few handfuls at a time, stirring and adding more as it reduces in size.

Cook the last of the cabbage for about 5 minutes and then remove from the heat. Cover the pan while cooking if you want to soften the crunch.

Serve the sausage and potatoes on a bed of cabbage. The carrots in this recipe were the last in the box, included mostly for show (and because we know that our baby daughter will eat them), but they could be scaled up easily.

The veg was excellent quality. The carrots and cabbage were notable for their flavour, and the richness of the mushrooms created a much darker and earthier casserole than I had been expecting.