This vibrant noodle soup is packed with fresh, nutrient-rich, seasonal vegetables such as mushrooms, courgette, and purple sprouting broccoli, all simmered in a light, flavourful stock. Once all the vegetables are prepared, this dish comes together in minutes, making it the perfect meal for busy weeknights or cosy weekends.
Heat the oil in a large saucepan, over a medium heat. Add the mushrooms, onion and courgette. Add the chilli flakes and season with a little salt and pepper. Stir to combine and cook for 3-4 minutes, until the vegetables are beginning to soften.
Stir through the garlic. Add the stock, ketjap manis, noodles and broccoli. Cover with a lid and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
Take from the heat and stir through the scallions. Serve straight away, topped with fresh chilli, scallion, and some sesame seeds.
With the weather turning colder and the evenings drawing in, there’s nothing more comforting than a bowl of hot, homemade soup. I’m using freshly harvested parsnips from the farm which are sweet, earthy, and at their peak right now. Both parsnips and apples are in season here in Ireland, making this the perfect time to bring them together in a warming, autumnal dish. The gentle heat of curry spices pairs perfectly with the natural sweetness of the parsnips and apples, creating a soup that’s both nourishing and full of flavour.
Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a low heat. When it begins to foam add the parsnip, onion, apple, and garlic. Season with a little salt and a few grinds of pepper. Stir to combine with the butter.
Place a butter wrapper or a piece of greaseproof paper over the vegetables, to help them sweat. Cover with the lid of the saucepan. Sweat over a low heat for about 10 minutes, making sure the vegetables don’t stick to the bottom of the saucepan.
When the vegetables are soft but not coloured, stir through the curry powder, and add the stock. Turn up the heat a little and continue to cook for another 15 minutes or until the vegetables are soft.
Add the cream and using a hand blender or a food processor purée the soup until it is smooth. Taste and season, if necessary.
Pour the soup into serving bowls and garnish with a little drizzle of cream and some finely chopped chives.
At last week’s farm walk, I set-up a beautiful display in the middle of the farm shop, using the best of fresh produce. Tucked in-between the prepared fruit and vegetables, I included a tray of mini energy balls, and some scrumptious dips. This sun-dried tomato pesto was by far the most requested recipe, and for good reason. It’s rich and flavoursome, and makes for the perfect accompaniment to crudites, but it can also be served with pasta, roasted vegetables, or as a delicious sandwich filler.
To ensure this dish is as tasty as possible, use a good quality jar of sun-dried tomatoes. Some tend to be quite salty and will ruin the overall taste of the pesto. Also, organic garlic will always taste superior too, so seek it out when you can.
This Tomato Bruschetta makes for a delicious lunch or tea. It is packed with fresh flavours and plenty of nutrients too. Irish-grown tomatoes are now in-season and they really are a taste sensation. When making this dish, make sure to choose a really good quality bread. When it comes to the salad leaves, dress them lightly just before serving. This keeps the greens fresh and vibrant, preserving their texture and letting the pure flavours shine without turning limp or soggy. Enjoy the iconic taste of Ireland’s finest tomatoes in every bite!
Add the chopped tomatoes to a bowl with the basil. Drizzle over the olive oil and vinegar. Add a sprinkle of sea salt. Stir to combine and leave to one side.
Place a griddle pan over a high heat. Add a little drizzle of olive oil to both sides of the slices of bread. Add to the hot pan and toast until nicely browned. Take from the pan and rub each piece with the clove of garlic.
When ready to serve, add the lettuce leaves to a bowl, drizzle over the oil and honey, and add a squeeze of lemon. Toss to combine.
Place the bread on two plates and divide the tomato mixture, with the juices, to the top of each slice. Evenly top with the dressed salad leaves. Sprinkle over the fresh herbs and enjoy straightaway.
When new potatoes are in season, it’s time to let their natural sweetness and creamy texture shine. These Garlic & Herb Smashed Potatoes are golden, crispy, and full of flavour; finished with fragrant herbs and a sprinkle of cheese for that extra indulgence.
By choosing local, in-season produce, you’re not just tasting the best of summer, you’re supporting Irish farmers and making a more sustainable choice. Simple, delicious, and made to share, this is comfort food at its best.
Preheat the oven to 220°C/ fan 200°C / gas mark 7.
Remove the potatoes from the steamer and add to a colander. Allow to cool and dry for a few minutes.
Melt the butter in a saucepan with the garlic, thyme and chives. Once it starts to bubble remove from the heat and add a little salt and black pepper.
Place the potatoes in a large bowl, add the melted butter mixture and coat the potatoes evenly.
Tip the potatoes onto a parchment paper-lined baking tray. Smash them with a flat surface, such as the base of a glass. Drizzle over any remaining butter from the bowl. Place in the preheated oven for 25 minutes. Remove, grate over an even layer of cheese and return to the oven for another 5 minutes.
Now I am going to go out on a limb here, but if you have ever consumed alcohol, you may know that mixing your drinks does not produce a great feeling the next day, the hangover that can ensue can be quite horrendous, (so I have been told….). Truthfully, having experienced a few in my day, it has often been said if you forgot you were drinking the night before and work up feeling like you can feel after mixing your drinks, you might actually think you were dying!
So it is with chemicals, and this is something that cannot be measured and is not very well understood, but picture consuming small amounts of pesticides regularly in our food, nobody actually knows what impact this may have. Some research suggests overtime the results may be quite detrimental to our health.
Certainly, over the last 20 years, the application of chemicals on our food here in the EU has reduced, with many of the more toxic chemicals being banned. This is a great thing, and we can be thankful to the EU for this control, despite chemical company lobbyists issuing misleading information that we could not produce enough food without these chemicals.
The spraying of our food with synthetic chemicals is just not good for us. All the studies in the world, even if they demonstrate that the chemicals are safe, are not going to convince me that it is ok. Filling a giant tractor sprayer and going out into a field on a scale that has never been seen before and spraying everything in sight, is like taking a sledge hammer to put in a pin in a wall. This is what is happening, there is no selective application, it is blanket application of chemicals and everything gets a coating, plants and biodiversity alike.
Now maybe these chemicals are safe in certain doses under certain lab tests, and that may well be the case, and I am not disputing that, I have spent long enough working in a lab to understand that. I also know I wore gloves, and used extraction hoods, and took great care when handling any of these lab-based chemicals. But a field and our food is not a lab.
There have been some studies done on the cocktail effect of chemicals in our food. A 2012 EU-funded project called ACROPOLIS studied cumulative pesticide exposure and concluded that current risk assessment systems may underestimate real-life risks.
A 2021 review in Environmental Research noted that low-dose pesticide mixtures may contribute to hormonal disruption, cancer, and neurodevelopmental issues — particularly in children.
It is hard to know for sure, and probably close to impossible to prove, but if you wish to minimise your exposure the best way is to know your ingredients, to cook from scratch, know who produces your food and know that they are not using chemicals, organic produce is the best way to keep chemicals out of our food chain.
As always thank you for your support.
Kenneth
PS Your support over the summer has meant so much, we have so much great produce and your help makes all the difference to our farm, so if you can continue to support us, it makes a real difference, thank you.
We’ve asked by many for advice on what to do when you’re faced with an abundance of seasonal vegetables. Pickling is a great way to preserve a harvest, or you could turn a bounty into a stash of jams or chutneys. Cake or muffin recipes, using carrot, beetroot, or courgette, such as the recipe we shared last week, can be baked, cooled, and popped in the freezer to enjoy at a later stage. While a tray of roasted vegetables can be enjoyed fresh or added to stock to make a soup, which could then be cooled and refrigerated or saved in the freezer for another time.
This mixed vegetable stir-fry can be enjoyed with rice or pasta but is particularly tasty when served in a wrap with the addition of pesto and cheese. Either assemble on the cold pan, before turning on the heat under, or assemble on a plate and transfer to the hot pan. Serve alongside a green salad for a delicious seasonal lunch.
Start by preparing all the vegetables. Add the olive oil to a large frying pan or wok and stir fry the courgette, pepper, and onion for about 5-7 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Stir to combine and continue to cook for another few minutes, until the tomatoes have started to break down. Add the spinach and the roughly torn basil leaves. Stir through and after about a minute take from the heat.
To make the wrap, add a teaspoon of pesto evenly to a wrap, top with a layer of grated cheese and a good serving of the stir-fried vegetables. Fold in the side of the wrap over the filling and roll, tucking in the edges.
Add a little olive oil to a clean pan over a medium heat. Once hot, add the wrap and cook on each side for about 3 minutes. Serve warm and enjoy immediately.
Have you ever seen those lovely luscious green verges along the roadside, full of life and biodiversity and doing no harm to anyone? In fact, they are a link in the chain that keeps biodiversity alive, they also have the double function of hiding all the rubbish that people still throw out of their car windows.
Then you are happily driving, cycling, walking along and suddenly it all ends and is replaced by an area of devastation, yellow and dead. The good people of the world have been out spraying Roundup again.
So, I ask you this, why?
Why would you do that? It is public ground, it’s one thing if you wish to spray your own fields and your own garden with this probable carcinogen, but public property, surely not. That’s for all of us to decide, is it not?
The ‘Why’ I struggle with, because I just don’t understand it, even from an aesthetic point of view, surely it is better to be looking at a bright alive piece of ground rather than a dead piece of land, if nothing else, it is depressing.
Then there is the double negative, that in this case definitely do not make a positive. Once the vegetation is gone two things happen,
The rubbish that has been dumped there is clear to see.
The most noxious weeds make the first return and usually end up colonising the area. Then you must redo the whole thing again next year. Meanwhile Bayer are rubbing their greasy little hands together as they tot up another sale in their €10.3 billion dollar sales of Roundup business. So here we are today, out in the field with a tractor sprayer, why you may ask? I have to say I am always a little self-conscious when we bring this out, as it is associated with one thing, and one thing only and that is the application of pesticides and herbicides to food. The funny thing is, for us, it is an amazing tool that allows us to feed the crops with what essentially constitutes an herbal multivitamin feed. So, when we take our sprayer out it is to apply, seaweed, and magnesium, and boron, and herbal mixes that strengthen the plants and help them be so much more resilient. This reduces disease and the need to apply “Synthetic Chemicals”. Today though I found it thought provoking. When you actually see the spray hit the food and you imagine that this is not a tonic that is being applied but a toxic concoction of herbicides, or pesticides, or fungicides it really paints a different picture. You can actually visualise the chemical landing on your food.
So, in the end, I wonder which is worse then? The rubbish that is dumped on the side of the road or the spraying of this horrible chemical that kills everything in its wake?
What do you think?
As always thanks for your support.
Kenneth
PS We continue to struggle to keep the orders up so we can avoid wasting food we have spent 6 months growing, so if you can help us and place an order it makes a huge difference.
What a week, we went from having one of our lowest weeks in terms of customers to the highest ever, it was amazing, we couldn’t believe it, and to be completely honest it nearly broke us.
But the team that are working here pulled out all the stops, they were amazing, every single person.It is hard to know where to start to say thank you, for the kind wishes, and thoughts, the orders, the words and energy, every single one meant a great deal.
I can tell you honestly that unless you get big and specialise in one particular crop or two or are really small and it is just you (and neither of those scenarios when it comes to food production are easy either) then it is nigh impossible to make the farming of multiple crops on 20 acres work, and we are not new to this.
So, this year when all the stars aligned and the weather and the farm team and the fertility and the machines and everything worked as will happen every once in a rare while it is fantastic. But then to finally have the crops in the field and to not have a way to sell them it is demoralising. July and August are our toughest months to try and keep sales coming in to keep the farm and the business going.
Thank you for all the suggestions of what to do, we have tried most over the years and our experience with say supply to supermarkets has not been a positive one and I would prefer to close up shop that to go back to that. They do say “never say never” but for me it’s a no.
Ultimately if I have to blame somebody or something for why it is so difficult, it is the supermarkets (Now I know throwing blame around is never a very progressive or useful way to live, I also know we all need and use supermarkets), but our food has ultimately been devalued and fresh produce is classed as something that must be ultra cheap (and I get it that it is hard and the cost of living is real).
But here is the thing, we have the most amazing heads of broccoli grown organically and I am not 100% sure how much each head cost to grow but I do know with all our crops in fine fettle and with the farm in full flow, and with everything aligned and with us charging the prices we are, we find it very difficult to make the proverbial ends meet on the farm. But after the week we have just had and with the farm harvest at least for now looking so promising, I am cautiously hopefully that there is light at the end of the 20-year-old tunnel.
So if you can continue to help us, July and August are the months that we struggle for all the reasons I have said last week, they are the two key months for harvest and it is so important that we have homes for all the lovely veg we and the other Irish organic growers we buy from have in abundance at this time of the year.
So, thank you again, thank you from everybody here, you have made a massive difference, and as always, we would not be able to do what we do without your support.
This raspberry chia pudding feels like you’re having a dessert for breakfast, as it’s so deliciously creamy and luscious. However, this pudding is packed with nutrients. Raspberries are now in season and they’re a fantastic source of fibre and vitamin C, while being rich in antioxidants. Chia seeds are a powerful source of omega-3 fatty acids, which are especially beneficial for our heart health, making them a great addition to our daily diet. While yogurt and milk provide us with protein and bone-supporting calcium. For a little crunch, some granola or chopped nuts would also make for a delicious and nutritious topping.
To make the pudding, add the milk, raspberries, yogurt, and maple to a blender. Blitz until smooth and transfer to a large bowl. Stir though the chia seeds. Cover and refrigerate overnight or for at least 4 hours.
To make the pink yogurt layer, add the yogurt, raspberries, and maple to a blender and blitz until smooth.
To assemble, layer the pudding with the pink yogurt, and some plain yogurt and raspberries, between three bowls or containers. Top with another spoonful of yogurt and raspberries. Enjoy straightaway or cover and refrigerate to enjoy within 3 days.
