Blog | Canalside Community Food - Part 8

My lovely sister in law Sue served this when we visited her this weekend, along with couscous and labneh (thickened yoghurt). It’s fresh, light and vibrant with the green chermoula, a flavoursome blend of fresh coriander, cumin, smoked paprika and lemon.

The recipe makes more chermoula than you’ll need for the recipe, but it’s very tasty and can be used on other vegetables; try it on boiled potatoes, or roasted carrots. It would probably also be delicious on a little escalope of grilled pork.

Courgettes, Sweetcorn and Green Chermoula
Serves 2-3 as a main

Ingredients
4 courgettes, topped and tailed
salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 ears of sweetcorn, outer leaves and ‘silk’ removed
squeeze of lemon juice
for the chermoula
10g garlic
15g red fresh chiles
1 preserved lemon
200g fresh coriander, roughly chopped
150ml rapeseed oil
10g ground cumin
4g smoked paprika
about 15ml lemon juice
salt to taste

Preparation
Slice the courgettes lengthwise and sprinkle with salt. Leave them 30 minutes in a colander to draw out the moisture. This will make the final dish more crunchy and fresh tasting.

While the courgettes are salting, make the chermoula: combine together the garlic, chile and preserved lemon in a blender or other blending device. Once it’s reduced to a paste add the coriander, oil and spices, and blend until smooth. Season to taste with the lemon juice and salt, and set aside.

When the courgettes have had their thirty minutes, brush off the salt and drizzle 1 tablespoon of the oil over the courgettes and sweetcorn.

Heat a griddle plan on high heat. When it’s hot grill the whole ears of corn, turning them regularly, until they are slightly charred on all sides. Remove and set aside.

Place as many courgettes as will fit without crowding in the pan, and cook for about 5 minutes, or until slightly charred on the bottom. Flip over, and cook for 2 minutes on the other side, or until cooked through but retaining some bite. Remove and set aside, and cook the other courgettes, if necessary.

Shave off the kernels off the now-slightly-cooled sweetcorn: hold each cob upright and use a sharp knife to slice down its length to remove the individual kernels. Place the kernels in a mixing bowl. Chop the courgettes into 2cm chunks and add them to the bowl. Toss with the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive and a squeeze of lemon juice.

To serve, place some of the sauce on the bottom of a serving plate and top with the courgettes and grilled corn.

Recipe adapted from the Observer Food Monthly, 25 July 2021.

This week’s recipe is a bit of a weird one. I haven’t tried it yet, but the celery gin cocktail that I shared last summer became a firm favourite in our house so hopefully this will be the same!

Courgette Martini

Ingredients
1 courgette , coarsely grated
juice 2 lemons
2 tbsp caster sugar
25ml vermouth
50ml gin
ice
mint leaf to garnish

Method
Mix the courgette with the lemon juice and sugar and leave to steep for 1 hr. In the meantime, place a martini glass in the fridge to chill.

Strain the courgette mixture through a sieve into a jug. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice then add 25ml of the courgette syrup followed by the vermouth and gin. Stir gently a few times then strain into your chilled glass. Garnish with a mint leaf and serve.

From BBC Good Food

‘A zucchini and a steak may not have much in common, but, like steak, zucchini takes incredibly well to the method of quickly searing in a smoking hot pan’. So states Lidey Heuck in the New York Times, and she’s right. In this easy recipe courgettes are cooked fast to develop an appetising char, and then basted with butter, garlic and rosemary. We ate these topped with ricotta, alongside a tomato salad and some good bread.

Pan-Seared Courgettes
Serves 2-3

Ingredients
3 small courgettes (6 to 8 inches each)
1 tablespoon grapeseed, safflower or other high-heat cooking oil
salt and pepper
1½ tablespoons unsalted butter, or more to taste
1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed
1-2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped
To garnish:
coarse sea salt
lemon zest
red-pepper flakes

Preparation
Trim the ends off the courgettes and cut them lengthwise into planks about ½-inch thick. Pat them dry, pressing gently but firmly on both sides to absorb any moisture.

Heat a large (12-inch) cast-iron or stainless-steel skillet over medium-high. If you have a ridged pan this is a good opportunity to use it. Add the oil and heat until it’s almost smoking.

Add the courgettes to the pan and press lightly with a spatula so that the planks make contact with the pan. Don’t crowd them—if you do they will steam rather than sear.

Sprinkle the tops with salt and pepper, and cook for about 3 minutes, until the courgettes are nicely charred on the bottom. Lower the heat to medium, flip over the courgettes, and season again with salt and pepper. Cook for 2 to 3 more minutes, until the bottoms are charred. 

Turn the heat to low and add the butter, garlic and rosemary. Carefully tilt the pan, letting the garlic and rosemary cook in the butter for 30-60 seconds, until the butter has begun to brown. Spoon the butter over the courgettes, and cook for another minute, flipping them a few times to coat both sides with the butter. 

Transfer the courgettes to a serving platter, along with the garlic and rosemary, and spoon any butter that’s left in the pan on top. Garnish with sea salt, lemon zest and red-pepper flakes, and serve hot.

Recipe adapted from New York Times Cooking

This week I made green fermented hot sauce so I thought I would share the recipe. It’s a bit of a slow burner (excuse the pun) in that it won’t be ready to eat until next summer, but it’s a fun little project so bear with me…

Green fermented hot sauce

Ingredients (scale to suit your harvest):
450g green chillies
4 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
3 tablespoons salt
4 cups warm water

Method:
To make chillies:
The first thing you need to do is reserve some seeds from the dried chillies in the share, and then sow them into modules or pots inside, early in 2022, repotting as they grow. I grew 9 plants in the end, which have happily produced all summer outside. I picked chillies green to stimulate more growth and froze them until I had enough for a batch of sauce. Approx 1 month of harvest gave me 225g of chillies which resulted in 1 jam jar of sauce. Beware it’ll be very hot – Frank’s hot sauce has nothing on the Canalside chillies!

To make sauce:
Remove tops of peppers and split in half lengthwise. You might want to wear gloves for this. Tightly pack a jar with peppers and garlic, leaving a little headspace

Mix salt and warm water to form a brine and pour this to completely cover the chillies

Fill a freezer bag (or alternative) with water and use this to weigh down the chillies, keeping them submerged

Cover with a kitchen towel and leave in a cool dark spot (such as a cupboard) for 3 or 4 days or until brine appears slightly cloudy and bubbly. The longer it sits, the funkier it will get. Don’t let it go past 7 days or it will be too funked (even for you). It’s worth opening the jar every day or so to release built up air pressure.

Strain the brine and reserve it. Transfer the chillies to a high-speed blender. Add 1 cup of the reserved brine, 1 cup of fresh coriander (omit if you don’t like the taste) and 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar to the blender, and process until very smooth. Strain the pulp through a fine-mesh sieve, and bottle.

Store in the refrigerator. The flavours will continue to develop and get more complex over time, and the heat will mellow. This will keep for at least 12 months in the fridge.

Adapted from: https://www.anarchyinajar.com/blog/2020/6/green-fermented-hot-sauce

Fresh tarragon is lovely with potatoes. You can augment this salad with hard-cooked eggs or olives, if you like. It’s good on its own, and also as part of a meze spread.

Warm Tarragon and Potato Salad
Serves 4 as a side dish

Ingredients
4 large waxy potatoes
1 medium red onion
zest and juice of 1 large lemon
4 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
several grinds of pepper
20g tarragon leaves, roughly chopped

Preparation
Put the potatoes in a pan with cold water. Bring slowly to the boil and then simmer gently over very low heat until tender. Depending on the size of your potatoes this could take between 30 and 45 minutes. Drain and set aside.

While the potatoes cook, peel the onion and slice it fine. Put the slices in a small bowl and toss with a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon juice. Let sit for 10-30 minutes; this will temper the onion and make it less pungent.

Now prepare the dressing: put the lemon zest, remaining lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper in a jar and shake vigorously to combine. Taste and add a bit more salt or lemon juice if it’s not to your taste.

Once the potatoes are cool enough to handle but still warm, peel them (if you don’t like the peel) and then cut them into 2cm cubes. Toss them with the dressing and tarragon, and stir in the tempered onion. Eat while warm.

Recipe adapted from Sally Butcher, Persepolis (2011).

The highlight of the week was being visited by artist Robin Wang who spent a day doing reportage illustration around the farm as part of her MA project. Check her out on Instagram to see her amazing work. It’s really special to have creative documentation of what we do on the farm and to know that as we were cultivating the food crops she was cultivating these drawings which she plans to use to spread the word about local sustainable food production.

Update 31st August: to view Robin’s finished ‘zine, click here.

This is a bit of a summer favourite for getting a quick hit of refreshing and flavorful nutrition alongside the rest of lunch. It’s easily adaptable to personal taste by adding things like feta cheese, so make it your own!

Ingredients
Cucumber
Red onion or shallots
Tomatoes
Black olives
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Salt

Method
Finely dice equal parts cucumber onion and tomato. Mix and add some diced olives, a splash of lemon juice a dash of salt and a good helping of olive oil.

Diana Henry includes this light and uplifting dish in a menu she calls ‘Too Hot to Cook’, which is exactly what it is right now. In truth the recipe involves a bit of cooking, since you have to sauté the carrots and beetroots, but only for about 2 minutes total, so it’s not too taxing. This is particularly good with the small, tender Canalside carrots we’re getting just now. She observes that ready-cooked beetroot is perfectly fine. (Just avoid the ones in vinegar.) Her version is a bit more elaborate insofar as it involves straining the yoghurt through a cloth for a few hours to make it a bit thicker before you mix it with the herbs and other seasonings. You can do that if you want.

In case you’re curious, the rest of her menu consists of roast tomatoes, fennel and chickpeas with preserved lemons and honey, and, for pudding, cherries in wine, with cardamom cream and rose pistachio shortbread. Yum!

Beetroots & Carrots with Cumin and Yoghurt
serves 4-6 as a starter

Ingredients
400g plain (full-fat) yoghurt
4 tablespoons olive oil
15g dill or coriander, roughly chopped
2 garlic gloves, peeled and crushed to a paste with a little salt in a mortar and pestle (optional)
¼ teaspoon Aleppo pepper (or to taste)—or use part of a chopped Canalside chile pepper
800g carrots
600g cooked beetroot
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
½ tablespoon white balsamic vinegar
½ lemon
25g walnuts, lightly toasted (optional)

Preparation
Mix the yoghurt with 2 tablespoons olive oil (i.e. not all of it!), most of the chopped herbs (keep a little back for a garnish), the crushed garlic and pepper. Swirl the yoghurt over the bottom of a serving plate and set aside.

Peel the carrots and cut them into thin matchsticks. Peel the beetroot and cut into slim wedges.

Heat 1 more tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. When it’s hot add 1 teaspoon of cumin seeds (i.e. not all of them!) and sizzle for about 30 seconds, then add the carrots. Stir-fry for about 1-2 minutes, or until they lose their rawness but still have some crispness to contrast with the soft beetroot. Add the white balsamic vinegar and a generous squeeze of lemon juice and season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl and return the pan to the heat.

Add the final tablespoon of olive oil and heat up as before. Add the remaining cumin seeds and again let sizzle before adding the beetroot. Cook for about 30 seconds, until they are heated through but not hot. Squeeze some more lemon juice over the top and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Array the beetroots over the yoghurt and then spoon on the carrots. Sprinkle the remaining herbs over the top and garnish with the walnuts (if you’re using them). Decorate with a final drizzle of olive oil and serve.

Recipe adapted from Diana Henry, How to Eat A Peach (2018).

This week we’ve been getting very sweaty on the farm – as well as staff and volunteers boiling, it’s even been to hot for our bountiful garlic crop which had been curing in a tunnel: in these high temperatures (been getting up to 40 degrees C) there’s a risk they start to turn translucent and cook as happened a few years back. So now they’re curing in the pole barn instead.

Thankfully, we’ve finished planting most of the next round of tunnel crops, with fennel, chillies, New Zealand spinach and basil taking over from potatoes, carrots and leeks.

We’re praying that the rain, which is due at the weekend, will be enough to saturate the fields as we are currently spending a lot of time irrigating the crops.

There’s a lot of salad in the share at the moment, so I thought I would share a tip I have recently adopted for bulking out salads with minimal effort – homemade breadcrumbs. Once baked they should store in an airtight container for 1 to 6 months, depending what source you believe. It’s a simple one, but very effective!

Ingredients:
Bread, ideally leftover to minimise waste (i’ve been using bread buns post BBQ)
Optional flavouring ideas (per cup of bread crumbs):
½ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon dried mixed herbs

Method:

1. Break bread up into a food processor and blend until desired crumb size is achieved.
2. Spread evenly on a baking sheet and bake at 150°C for 15 minutes, turning during cooking if necessary.
3. Cool on baking sheet out of oven.
4. Fill jar, minimising airspace and store in a cool dry place until needed (I use them most lunchtimes at the moment!)