In the Veg Boxes This Week
Subject to last minute changes
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Munch of the Month
This gorgeous dish is Alison’s tofu gobi manchurian, an indo-chinese dish that uses loads of veg. Here, Alison has used spring onions, kale, garlic, aubergine, cauliflower, chillies, peppers alongside the tofu for a dish with varied textures and flavours. I’m hoping Alison will share her recipe with us, but in the meantime you can adapt this one, adding in all the veg you have to hand or receive in your next box.
If you’d like to enter September’s competition and be in with the chance of winning a hamper of Locavore shop goodies with your veg box delivery, just cook something with your veg box and post a photo on Instagram or in our Facebook group, tagging it with #LocavoreMM to make sure we see it.
The Nice Bit
Well, here are two things that are true:
It’s September, which means it is, aesthetically if not meteorologically, autumn. The air is a little cooler, some of us obsessives are starting to daydream about halloween costumes, and it’s a really good time to do some baking.
The fruit bags for next week are full of rhubarb.
I think the implications are very clear: it is so serendipitous that you are almost required to bake something rhubarby. Not really, of course- you must never let a veg box newsletter boss you around- but if you want to bake something rhubarby, then this is the time to do it.
The question is, what, as our choices are many.
By all means, make a rhubarb crumble, or a rhubarb and apple crumble, for afters on Sunday. Serve it with a jug of custard (homemade is best but packet isn’t bad) and everyone will be over the moon.
Or what about a pie? The pastry is extra work, of course, although if you have a food processor it’s a matter of blitzing (and I find I get the flakiest crusts this lazy way, too). And if you don’t, it’s meditative, the butter (or vegan butter) and flour combining between cool fingertips. The end product is a pie, a perfect thing even when it’s messy, even if the filling boils over and burns, even if your lattice gets tangled. A slice of hot homemade pie with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream is heavenly.
Something a little different, kind of old-fashioned but I think poised for a comeback is this batter pudding, with the evocative name “rhubarb stirabout”. I can’t imagine anything more comforting to tuck into on the sofa after a day looking for mushrooms in the woods.
But I think I will be baking a cake. Even here we have options upon options. I imagine all these recipes written out neatly on flour-specked index cards, my fingers running along the top of the box, plucking them out for consideration: rhubarb and gingernut cheesecake, rhubarb and custard cake, rhubarb and ginger upside-down cake, rhubarb and elderflower cake, easy almond and rhubarb cake, vegan cinnamon and rhubarb cake.