This plant-based twist on the ’anyway you like it’ Japanese street food might be my new favourite way to eat cabbage! Instead of an egg and wheat batter (and several impossible-to-find specialist Japanese ingredients) I’ve used a simple chickpea flour batter. This simple dish doesn’t take long to put together and is perfect for any meal! Breakfast, brunch, lunch or even a quick dinner. Top with mayonnaise (I like a bit of sriracha too), kimchi (find my recipe here) and sesame seeds. Delicious!
Liz x
Ingredients (serves 2)
1 small mug of chickpea flour
1 tsp salt
1 small mug of water
1/4 of a cabbage, chopped
1 nori seaweed sheet, snipped into strips
vegetable oil for frying
kimchi, mayonnaise, sriracha and sesame seeds to serve
Method
Whisk the chickpea flour, salt and water together into a smooth batter.
Add the cabbage and nori and mix well to coat them in the batter.
Heat a frying pan over a medium heat and add a generous drizzle of vegetable oil.
Add half the mixture to the pan and spread out. When golden brown underneath, carefully loosen and flip the pancake over and cook on the other side until golden brown.
Cook the other half of the mixture in the same way then serve with toppings as you like.
We are very excited about the first harvest of radishes this year. Have you ever grown them yourselves? They’re what we recommend for beginners (or kids!) as they are so satisfying to grow and only take a few weeks to turn from tiny seed to plump, ruby bulbs. They are so refreshing and peppery, of course brilliant in a salad, but our favourite way to eat them is fermented in a kimchi along with their leaves. Zero waste! Kimchi is a really delicious fermented cabbage, Korean side/topping, like a spicy version of sauerkraut. If you’ve never tried it before, it’s like a pickle – tangy, salty and spicy. So good with rice or noodles, in sandwiches (you HAVE to try a kimcheese toastie!) …we love filling dumplings with tofu and kimchi and pilling it up on savoury cabbage pancakes. Here’s the very flexible recipe.
Liz x
Ingredients (these are suggestions and amounts can be flexible)
1 cabbage (Chinese Napa cabbages are traditional but you can use any loose, leafy cabbage – Savoy or January King work really well here)
4 carrots
2 bunches of radishes (including their leaves)
1 leek or a bundle of scallions
Optional extra veg like a kohlrabi or a turnip…
6 cloves garlic, 1 large thumb of ginger and 3 red chillies to make a paste
salt (2% of the weight of all the above)
Method
You will need clean equipment (large bowls, jars, chopping board, knife, blender, serving spoon and rolling pin) but it does not have to be sterilised. Apart from the superior taste and beneficial bacteria, fermenting rather than pickling is also easier in this way.
Rinse your vegetables and start chopping. Save a few outer leaves of the cabbage but cut the rest into bite sized pieces. Weigh it and add to a large bowl. Thinly slice the other vegetables, leave the radish leaves whole, weigh them and add to the bowl.
Weigh the garlic, ginger and chilli then blend into a paste. Add up the weights of all the different veg to find the total weight and work out what 2% is.
Measure the salt and mix it through the chopped vegetables. Give them a light massage to encourage brine to form. Then stir the spice paste through using a serving spoon.
Pack the mixture very tightly into jars. Use the spoon or a clean rolling pin to really pack the vegetables into the jar ensuring no air-pockets have formed. Leave a couple of inches of head room in the jar if you can. Then break a reserved cabbage leaf to size and press it down on top of the cut vegetables and tuck it in under the shoulders of the jar to keep the small bits of sliced vegetables submerged in brine. If they get exposed to air then they are likely to go mouldy. Your cabbage leaf may be enough to keep the kimchi submerged in brine, if not, use a weight. Something brine-proof like a glass, small jar or ramekin.
Place the lid on the jar loosely to allow gases to escape during fermentation (be aware your kitchen is going to smell a bit funky this week!) and put the jar on a plate in a room temperature place in your kitchen, not too exposed to light as the extreme changes in temperature are not ideal. Allow the kimchi to ferment at room temperature for one week then refrigerate.
TOP TIPS: – no double dipping! This could introduce new, unwanted bacteria from your mouth. – Remember the mantra, “Submerge in brine, all will be fine”. Check the jar every day whilst fermenting. Have the gases pushed the vegetables up above the brine? If so push them back under with a clean spoon.
How many more horticultural enterprises organic or otherwise need to go to the wall before we realise it is too late?
A very significant report has been commissioned by the IFA and published this week: the Jim Power Economics’ report states ‘Retail Price Compression Threatens the Viability of Irish Horticulture’. In other words loss leading and below cost selling of fresh produce is putting Irish farmers out of business.
The report’s findings are far from surprising and many primary producers up and down the country will tell you, the power that large retailers hold is enormous. They have hollowed out the horticulture industry here in Ireland and it is in real danger of closing it’s doors for good unless there is meaningful change.
It states that farmers are the weakest link in the supply chain, they have the least say in what they get for the food they grow.
Imagine the food we eat, put into our bodies, the very stuff that makes us tick and to a large extent will dictate how long we will live, our fresh food as far as supermarkets are concerned should cost as close to zero as possible. Are we all complicit in this race to the bottom though?
It is why in part that we ditched supply to the supermarkets all those years ago, in the famous words of Frank Sinatra we decided “to do it our own way”. It isn’t all roses either here as we are constantly competing with the very idea that food should be cheap, and we cannot compete with the supermarkets.
But it really is only through your support, by reading this, by supporting our business and farm week in week out that we are still here and have expanded our farm and continue to grow healthy happy food, whilst nurturing the land for 16 years.
“A cheap food policy is not a sensible food policy”
It singles out the discounters as the main driver that have severely undercut the price given to Irish farmers, and as a result all other major retailer have had to follow suit to stay competitive. The end result is less for the farmer. This year the second biggest Brussel sprout farmer in Ireland closed his doors for good as the price he was getting for his food meant his business was unsustainable.
I really wonder how many of those farmers that adorn the walls of the supermarket aisles have forced smiles on their faces for fear of losing their contracts?
As real costs increase and as the price the farmer gets paid for the produce decreases how does that equation end up? Yesterday we paid over €2000 for agri diesel for our tractors, last year it was less than half that. It clearly is not sustainable.
Where will all this end, I wonder? Well maybe, just maybe, it will end with change, and with more and more people making the choice to support local food where possible, even if it costs more (and yes in these times that is a big ask).
But the benefits are immense: Local food means better food, healthier food, local jobs, local enterprise in rural areas, higher nutritional content, better flavour. If it is organic too then the health benefits and the benefits to the planet are surely worth something too?
The word ‘sustainable’ doesn’t just refer to environmental issues, it can refer to anything and means ‘something that is able to be maintained at a certain level’, like matters of economy and food security. So when we say ‘supermarkets are unsustainable’ we are not just talking about their over-use of plastic or their mountains of food waste, we are also talking about the way they source their products and pay their suppliers.
It has recently come to light here in Ireland, (read this article for the facts and figures) that local vegetable growers are being squeezed from all sides, so much so that many vegetable farmers in Ireland are forced to quit. Supermarkets demand lower and lower prices and present vegetables as ‘low value’ with ridiculous discounted prices (which, understandably, customers then begin to see as the norm which perpetuates the problem), and yet farming costs go up and up. It is unsustainable. Where will this leave us in the long term? Will there be no more Irish vegetables soon?
You know something is not right when it is cheaper to put potatoes, cabbages, onions, tomatoes, lettuce etc, all things that grow very well here, on a ship or an aeroplane and bring it over to Ireland than to just grow it here and pay Irish farmers enough to cover their costs. Now, just 1% of all farms in Ireland grow vegetables.
This is not to say importing is wrong. We love to trade with the world, who doesn’t love exotic fruit, tea, coffee, chocolate, olive oil, wine…? In fact, even here in Galway, our small business imports plenty of products and fresh produce ourselves to fill the gaps in your boxes (by the way, we never use airfreight). But when there is an Irish, organic option, even if it is more expensive, we always choose that. We grow as much as we possibly can ourselves, then source from other Irish organic farms, then import the rest. We would love to see more organic vegetable growers here in Ireland.
So what’s the solution? Do we just give up trying to produce vegetables here in Ireland? Do we rely solely on imports? Well, with food security issues being what they are at the moment, we believe that would be a very unwise decision. Not to mention missing out on the many benefits of buying local. One way to help is to buy Irish as much as possible. If you must go to a supermarket, spend a few extra cents getting the Irish option, otherwise we urge you to skip unsustainable supermarkets altogether and buy directly from farmers, farmers markets and veg box delivery schemes like ours. The future of food here in Ireland depends on it.
Another recipe inspired by Ukrainian chef Olia Hercules, is this delicious, veg-forward breakfast. I LOVE having lots of vegetables for breakfast. Sautéed mushrooms, kale, and tomatoes on toast is probably my favourite. So when I re-visited ‘Summer Kitchens’, one of Olia’s brilliant books, and saw this puffed broccoli omelette I knew I had to make a plant based twist.
We have just added chickpea flour to our grocery section. It’s one of my favourite pantry ingredients, so useful for making fritters, socca bread, bhajis, vegan tortillas or quiches and egg free omelettes. To make it puffy, I just used bread soda activated with some apple cider vinegar. The results were delicious and I’ll be recreating this veggie breakfast over and over again using different seasonal vegetables. Of course it would be wonderful with our purple sprouting broccoli and I’m going to use leeks next time for sure! Don’t forget to tag us in your re-creations, we love to see the spin you put on our recipes.
Liz x
Ingredients (serves 2)
1/2 mug of gram flour
1/2 mug of water
1 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
black pepper to taste
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
sliced broccoli to cover frying pan
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Method
Start with the batter. The longer the chickpea flour has to re-hydrate, the better texture – you could even make the batter the night before and leave it covered overnight at room temperature to lightly ferment. Whisk together the flour, water, vinegar, salt and pepper. Wait to add the baking soda just before frying.
In a frying pan which has a lid, fry the broccoli with the olive oil, salt and pepper until just starting to take on some colour. Then spread the broccoli evenly over the base of the pan and turn the heat down to medium.
Add the baking soda to the chickpea flour batter and whisk it in – the batter should immediately start to fluff up. Quickly pour it over the broccoli and put the lid on the frying pan. This will ensure a crispy bottom and a fluffy, steamed top to your omelette.
After 3-5 minutes or so, the batter should be cooked through. You can test it by touching the top of the omelette, your finger should come off dry without batter.
Slice it into wedges and serve warm. It’s delicious with some juicy sliced tomatoes alongside too.
Wouldn’t this pretty pasta be perfect for Mother’s Day? It takes a little more effort than our usual recipes but the ingredients are few, simple and affordable (using our ingredients at the time of writing this blog, this cost €5.64 to make 30 pieces).
Liz x
Ingredients (makes around 30)
~ pasta • 300g fine flour • 1 tbsp olive oil • 1 tsp salt • 150ml water • parsley leaves
~ beetroot tofu-ricotta • 200g extra firm tofu • 1 small cooked beetroot • 1 clove of garlic • the juice of 1/2 a lemon • 1 tsp salt • 5 tbsp olive oil
~ 1/2 jar of pesto to serve
Method
Mix the pasta ingredients (except the parsley) into a shaggy, quite dry dough then knead it very well into a firm, smooth dough. This should take around 10 minutes of kneading. If your dough is too dry, wet your hands occasionally whilst kneading to incorporate just a little extra water. Rest the ball of dough in a bowl covered tightly with a damp tea towel.
Blend all the beetroot ricotta ingredients until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed with more salt or lemon.
Roll your pasta dough out on a lightly floured surface. Once you have a large oval/rectangle, arrange some parsley leaves on one half and fold the pasta over. Now roll again into a very long strip, just over double the width of the size you want your ravioli. Get it as thin as you can – you should be able to read a paper through it.
Space teaspoons of the pink ricotta along one side, wet the other side to help it stick, then carefully fold the pasta over the ricotta blobs and use your fingers to seal around each one. Use a knife or pasta wheel to cut the ravioli and save any off-cuts, they are just as delicious!
Drop the fresh ravioli and off-cuts into boiling water, cook until soft but still with bite (around 3 minutes or so – test an off-cut) then scoop out with a slotted spoon, dress with pesto and serve!
A sense of possibility and new beginnings is naturally in the air in Spring. On the farm, maybe it is the start of the new plant and seed arrivals that kindles this feeling, there is a sense that we can do things better this year, that we will try a little harder to get things right, that all will be well in the end.
Nature is waking up, the birds are singing, the daffodils are blooming, the new leaves are beginning to unfurl on the trees. The extra daylight means that life cycles are changing and growth increasing, it is a natural rhythm, and it resonates on a subconscious level if you let it.
Even our lovely new season salad is responding well to the extra light, and we will be harvesting our first crop of the new season next week.
The sun is higher in the sky and on clear days you can feel the first tendrils of warmth, there is more power too in its rays, the plants respond to it, we respond to it and the solar panels on our shed respond to it!
Frequently now we can see plants growing, hear the birds singing and the insects buzzing well before it is time. This can be symbolic of a world out of sync and it has ramifications for all living systems.
Planning a season of vegetable growing on the farm becomes more of a gamble as the natural order we rely on can change unpredictably and dramatically.
The change in our weather is a complex global problem, and the solutions too will necessitate change on a global level. But maybe the solutions are also simpler that we think, down at the level of you and I there is much that can be done.
Sometimes it seems to me that simple, traditional solutions can be overlooked. Planting trees is one of the simplest ways to help redress the balance, something we have done quite a bit of over the last number of years.
By supporting local food growers like us and the range of other growers we source from, you too are doing your bit to tackle the climate crisis.
The prediction of the weather for the year ahead was often associated with a saying closely tied to trees:
“Ash before oak you are in for a soak, oak before ash you are in for a splash”.
We are watching this closely, as yet there is no news… Nevertheless, if living and farming in the west of Ireland has taught me one thing it is that the weather is unpredictable it changes fast and sometimes when you least expect it, it surprises you.
Kenneth
PS Thanks, to your generosity over the last two weeks in donating to the Ukraine crisis. We will announce the final figure next week, but currently we have raised with your help just over €4500 for the Ukraine appeal. Thank you so much.
Mother’s Day is coming up and I’m very excited to receive my homemade cards, breakfast in bed and I’ve got my fingers crossed for some of these Booja Booja chocolates! Mother’s Day is all about saying ‘thank you’ to the people that nurture us and take care of us, be they our biological mothers or not. So the one mother we shouldn’t forget to show some love and appreciation to is, of course, Mother Earth. So here are some ways to honour our mothers and our incredible planet at the same time this year.
Plant Trees
Buy your mother some native trees or hedgerow to plant this year. If she doesn’t have her own garden why not donate to a native tree planting scheme in her name or get involved in a tree planting event? It is national tree week 20th-26th March and the Tree Council have organised a nationwide program of events here. Is there one near you? We plant native trees every year on our organic farm in Galway and are raising money to donate to tree planting charities too. Here is a list of Irish tree planting charities in Ireland:
Make a home-cooked meal to celebrate Mothers Day and Mother Earth. Include lots of locally grown, in-season vegetables and buy organic and plastic free. Our 100% Irish box ticks all the boxes. Click on the photo to see what is included this week. What could you make from all that Irish produce? We have lots of ideas here on the blog. Here’s a menu idea for you:
Don’t leave the cleaning to your mum! Get involved and think about Mother Earth at the same time. Use eco-cleaning products to clean up inside then how about a lovely walk in your local woodland or at the beach? Take a bag and some gloves and pick up litter as you go. Here are some of our favourite green cleaning products from our online shop. You can add them to your next fruit and veg order along with lots of other organic groceries.
This St Patrick’s Day favourite combines the two best vegetables of all time – potatoes and kale. Don’t let anyone tell you these humble vegetables are nothing less than extraordinary!
Potatoes (especially when you leave the skin on) are a delicious source of fibre, energy giving carbohydrates, antioxidants, potassium (more than a banana!) and magnesium. They also contain vitamin C, calcium, folate and vitamin B6.
Kale is well known for being a superfood. The humble kale, grown right here on our farm in Galway, is one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet and contains well over 100% of your daily needs for Vitamins A, C and K as well as a whole host of other vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fibre and even an omega 3 fatty acid!
So we say this dish is not just for St Patrick’s Day, make colcannon regularly as a side dish or as a topping for your pies.
Liz x
Ingredients (per person)
1 large or a couple of smaller potatoes, scrubbed and chopped into even chunks
3 kale leaves, rinsed, tough stems removed (save the stems, they are delicious finely chopped and added to stir fries, stews, soups etc)
1 scallion, sliced
1 tbsp butter
salt and pepper to taste
Method
Get your potatoes boiling in a large pot of water. Meanwhile tear up your kale leaves into small pieces and place them in a steaming basket or metal colander.
When the potatoes are nearly cooked through, place the steaming basket/colander of kale over the pot and put the lid on. Let the kale steam until wilted and soft – this only takes around 3 minutes so keep an eye on it.
Remove the kale and drain the soft potatoes, then tumble them back into the warm pot. Mash the potatoes with the butter and season with salt and pepper to your taste. Then stir through the wilted kale and chopped scallions.
Serve with an extra dollop of butter as a side dish. It’s also delicious as a shepherd’s pie topping, baked in the oven to crisp up – see pic below.
Soda bread is so easy to make and a delicious Irish classic. You’ve got to try a fresh, homemade loaf for St Patrick’s Day! Perfect for breakfast with sweet or savoury toppings or for lunch with a bowl of soup. We make versions of this loaf at least once a week, sometimes with a handful or two of dried fruit in the mix for a sweet version, and it’s the perfect loaf to make with kids as it’s so quick and simple.
Traditional Irish soda bread contains buttermilk so it’s easy to make a dairy free version with oat milk and a little apple cider vinegar to make it acidic. The baking soda needs something acidic to react with otherwise it will not rise, so don’t be tempted to skip the vinegar. I promise, you can’t taste it in the bread. We choose creamy, Irish oat milk and raw apple cider vinegar from Clashganny organic farm. Here’s our easy recipe.
Liz x
Ingredients
300ml oat milk
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
400g white flour
100g wholemeal flour
a handful of porridge oats (optional)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
a handful of optional seeds or dried fruit
Method
Turn your oven on to 200C and line a baking tray with baking parchment.
In a mixing jug, mix the milk, vinegar and oil and let it sit for a few minutes while you prepare the dry ingredients. This is your vegan buttermilk.
In a large mixing bowl, measure the flours, oats (if using), salt and baking soda and mix well with a wooden spoon. Make a well in the middle. You can also add dried fruit or seeds at this stage if you would like to.
Then pour the ‘buttermilk’ into the well and stir with the wooden spoon until the ingredients come together into a rough, sticky dough.
Now use one hand to turn and squash the dough together in the bowl. You may find it is too sticky to handle and needs an extra handful of flour. Careful not to add too much flour though, the dough should be slightly sticky otherwise the loaf will come out too dry and crumbly. Tip the dough out onto a floured surface and knead briefly, just for a minute or two at the most.
Shape the dough into a disc that is around 3 cm high and place it on the lined baking tray. Using a large knife or bread knife, cut a deep X into the top of the dough, around 1 cm deep. Dust with a little flour or an optional sprinkle of seeds or porridge oats.
Bake in the oven until risen and golden – around 30-40 minutes. The loaf should sound hollow when you tap it. Enjoy warm or cold slathered in butter (we stock a really good vegan butter here if you need).
