At the Farm Shop we don’t treat cooking as a precise science, nor are we trying to give a comprehensive list of recipes. These are some of our favourite dishes and we hope you’ll give some of them a try. They’ve worked for us on countless occasions but that doesn’t mean, with a bit of imagination and a few tweaks, they can’t be improved. Good luck.
Our seasonal hero this May is the humble broad bean. For the gardener, autumn sown broad beans should be just ready by the end of the month but Spanish and French will have been around for months. As with peas, you have to be pretty hard core to turn your nose up at frozen but freshly picked and podded, they’re in a league of their own. If you’re lucky enough to get a May harvest, you certainly won’t have to worry about double podding them.
For this simple Rowley recipe, a good quality olive oil and tuna, such as the Ortiz Bonito del Norte (white tuna) are essential. Serve al fresco and with a pale rose.
In its simplest form it’s just picked cooked mussels, pickled in a mix of white wine and vinegar but once you have the basic method sorted out you can tailor the flavourings to suit you and whatever else you might be eating. A few shavings of orange or lemon zest work well, as do garlic, rosemary, bay leaves, paprika etc – but probably not all at the same time. It’s not the norm in Spain (particularly Madrid) where mussel escabeche is virtually a national pastime (often served with potato crisps) but I like to sauté a little julienned onion and carrot as well.