I got sent one of these

in this week’s Riverford box. After ignoring the old ‘Google is your friend’ thing, I posted a photo of it on Facebook and asked what it was. I got the following answers:

‘No idea – I’d probably draw it!’
‘Put batteries in it and sit on it…. ?’
‘Whatever it is I think u will be parping for a few days after u eat it!!’
‘Take acid, wait a bit, stare at it and if it gets scary … eat it.’
‘Put a pair of sunglasses on it first’

None of which, although amusing, were particularly helpful. But on investigating the Riverford website, it said I’d been sent a romanesco cauliflower and so I googled it and lo! lots of pretty pictures of bright green trippy alien optical illusion Christmas tree type vegetables appeared.

I also googled what the hell to do with it and found out – quite disappointingly really – that you treat it like a normal cauliflower.

So I made cauliflower cheese. Albeit a posh cauliflower cheese with spinach and pasta.

Here it is.

I used this cauliflower cheese and spinach pasta bake recipe from the BBC Good Food website and very nice it was too.

Next week in my Riverford box, I’m not getting an alien cauliflower, I’m getting brussel sprouts.

Bah.

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I recently reinstated my veg box delivery but opting for Abel & Cole for a change, instead of Riverford. Not that I had any problems with Riverford; I thought they were great, but the fact that you can skip any fruit or veg you don’t want appealed to me, as I used to end up with hundreds of mud-covered carrots which, not owning a rabbit or a carrot-eating cat, usually ended up in the bin.

The problem with skipping something in your delivery is that you don’t know what it’ll be replaced with and when I skipped potatoes one week, I received beetroot instead. What the hell was I supposed to do with that? (Well, actually I grated it and had it in a salad and it was fine with the added bonus of turning the feta cheese a nice pink colour.)

But wanting to avoid any more ‘what the hell do I do with that?’ vegetables, although I’ve had a delivery of courgettes for two weeks running, I decide to keep the courgettes and find a nice recipe for them. Having eggs to use up in the fridge, a frittata seemed to be the obvious choice. Although, having an oven with a grill that doesn’t work, it had to be an oven-baked frittata and the last time I made a frittata and put it in the oven instead of under the grill, it turned out to be a soggy mess.

Still, Google came to my rescue and I found an oven-baked frittata recipe which I can’t link to, as I just scribbled down some notes into my notebook and can’t remember where I found it.

I also used the cherry tomatoes that came in the box and it turned out perfectly, which is more than can be said for the home-grown potatoes that I overcooked into near-disintegration.

Oven-baked frittata (serves 2)

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 courgette, diced
75ml milk
1 tbsp cornflour
3 eggs
70ml single cream
25g cheese
70g cherry tomatoes, quartered

Method

1. Fry the courgette for 5 minutes
2. Blend a little milk with the flour, add eggs, cream and rest of the milk
3. Season with salt and pepper
4. Add the cheese
5. Pour mixture into an oven-proof dish
6. Add the courgettes and tomatoes
7. Cook for 25-30 minutes on 200c

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I get up this morning and have a look at the Riverford website to see what vegetables they’re going to deliver to me today, and it says aubergine. Hurrah. I like aubergines. I like them so much I even announce to all my Facebook friends that I was looking forward to getting an aubergine. Yes, I’m that sad. Although, to be honest, I wasn’t as unduly excited as I was when I was expecting a pineapple.

However, when I get home, I don’t find an aubergine in the box, I find asparagus. This doesn’t unduly concern me as I like asparagus. I think I like it as much as aubergine but I had already planned my Quorn recipe for the aubergine so now I’ve got to think again and I try not to think too much if I can help it.

And so, later on, I have another look at the Riverford website to see if it really did say aubergine and either they changed it when I wasn’t looking or it never said aubergine in the first place, as it says asparagus again now and after consulting the BBC website to see what’s in season at the mo, it would appear that I am stupid or blind or a combination of the two, as aubergine’s aren’t even in season until July.

Mushrooms... asparagus... oh yes, we are liking this box...

Contents of box
Calabrese
Swiss chard
Asparagus
Portobello mushrooms
Gala apples
Fairtrade bananas

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I arrived home last night to find a pineapple on my doorstep.  I’ve never had a pineapple on my doorstep before.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a real live pineapple before, only out of a tin.  So I’m very very excited by this.  Yes, I’m a saddo.

Also within the mini fruit & veg box are two portobello mushrooms (only 2?  Shame), 1 yellow pepper and 1 green pepper (bit stingy on the peppers this week too), a bag of shallots, some Swiss chard and 4 bananas.  And when I’ve emptied the box I find two free vanilla pods which are apparently a (very) belated Christmas present.  I like presents.  Thank you Riverford.

Riverford box delivery 26 February 2009

And during the week as I was telling Facebook how excited I was to be getting a pineapple in this week’s delivery, a friend warned me that when he and his wife get round to eating theirs, it’s usually gone off and so I heeded this warning (all warnings should be heeded, I reckon.   Is anything else heeded?) but I needn’t have bothered with the heedering as Riverford had very kindly added a note in the box suggesting I eat the pineapple within a couple of days of its delivery, so it’s pineapple smoothies for me this weekend.  Should power tomorrow’s 8 miler nicely.

Pineapple warning

(p.s. don’t forget there’s still time to enter the competition to win a copy of Simon Rimmer’s fantastic vegetarian cookbook – “The Seasoned Vegetarian”)

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I rescue my vegetable box from under the recycling bin (yay, they were emptied this week, unlike last week when those few flakes of snow scared off the council workers, probably due to some cr*ppy health & safety thing) and it’s full of pretty colours and I look at the list to see what’s there and apparently the stuff I don’t recognise is swiss chard and I think it looks more like pak choy to me but what do I know? but what I do know is that I’ll be having broccoli soup next week for lunch and tonight I mash up the left over robinta potatoes from last week with some of the swiss chard and I also have some of the broccoli and have that with a couple of Sainsburys meat free burgers and Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire puddings and Bisto onion gravy (yeah yeah, not exactly a cooked from scratch dinner but I can’t be a domestic goddess all the time) and while I’m making it I look in the cupboard and see the box of Paxo sage & onion stuffing and I think b*llocks, I should have made some stuffing but it takes 25 minutes and it’s too late now.  Damn.

Organic vegetable box 12 February 2009

This week’s box contents
(mini fruit & veg box)
Calabrese
Baby leeks
Swiss chard
Mixed peppers
Navel oranges
Bananas

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My favourite day of the week arrives and I’m at work with a hangover after celebrating Gary’s 40th last night with wine, lager, vodka and champagne and I’m wondering if my vegetables will get stolen as my recycling bin hasn’t been emptied and one of the spare recycling bins still has two pairs of trousers in it that the clothes thieves didn’t take when they took the other clothes that were in the bin and the other bin is full of snow but when I get home the organic vegetable delivery people have emptied the bin that was full of snow and now the bin is hiding my vegetables.

Organic vegetable box delivery 5 February 2009

And today I’ve got purple sprouting broccoli (took me a while to work out what it was before I saw the purple bits), robinta potatoes, leeks, carrots (yawn), cauliflower and parsnips (spicy parsnip soup for lunch next week then, hooray).

I love my vegetable box.

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Hurrah, yesterday was Thursday and Thursday means organic vegetable delivery day.  And I couldn’t blog yesterday because yesterday was also go to the pictures and see Slumdog Millionaire (how can they promote a film that is riddled with death, violence and heartbreak as a “feel good movie”?), then go to Prezzo with our cheapskate’s “two for one main meals” voucher and eat deep fried mozzarella, bruschetta and pizza and drink red wine day and I get home and my vegetable box from Riverford Organic Vegetables is waiting for me, hidden as usual (until the local E17 vegetable thieves read this) under my recycling box and this is what awaits me

Organic vegetable box delivery 29 January 2009

and there’s bananas (hooray) and apples (boo) and mushrooms (yay yay yay yay yay yay yay) and sweet potatoes (just about scraped into the plural there, what with there only being a not very generous two of them) and broccoli (that’s next week’s soup sorted then) and cabbage (oh fuck, not another “what am I supposed to do with this then?” week) and I go to work and think hmm, what shall I have for dinner tonight and I remember I bought some potatoes from the shop in the week and so I put mushrooms and potatoes into the wonderful BBC Recipe Finder and it gives me eight recipes to choose from and I opt for the Creamy Mushroom Ragout with Nutmeg Mash and go to Tesco on the way home and buy some double cream as it’s the only ingredient I’m missing apart from the sherry but I buy some red wine to use instead and I think shall I make the amount for 4 and freeze some or quarter it to make the amount needed for the sad-spinster-of-the-parish-who-lives-alone-with-her-cat  portion and I weigh the mushrooms on my shiny new scales and it says I only have 205g of mushrooms and the recipe calls for about 900g so I have to go for the lonely old woman portion and so I quarter everything else while I’m making it and so according to the recipe I need about 100g of cabbage but when I get to fry the cabbage, I decide there’s too much and only use about half of it and it all comes together nicely and it looks like this

Creamy Mushroom Ragout with Nutmeg Mash

and I sit down to eat it and oh my, it’s REALLY REALLY NICE.  Yum.

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This week’s soup of choice (is it really a choice when I use whatever comes in my weekly organic vegetable box delivery?) is Cauliflower and Red Pepper Soup.  Although, strictly speaking, it should be called Cauliflower and Half-Red/Half-Green Pepper Soup, but apart from that being a less catchy title, it’s also a bit pedantic.  And I’m not pedantic at all.  Oh no.  Not me.  Honest.

Instructions
Chop up three shallots
Chop up the cauliflower
Chop the half-red/half-green pepper
Cook the shallots in 500ml of stock
Add the cauliflower and half-red/half-green pepper
Add 1,500ml more stock
Add whatever seasonings you like; in my case chili powder, nutritional yeast, brown miso and black pepper
After about 20 minutes, whizz it up with a hand blender
The end.

Cauliflower and red pepper soup

Contents of this week’s box
(mini fruit & veg)
Shallots
Cauliflower
Portabello mushrooms
Red peppers
Avena mandarins
Bananas

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