Cooking up a stir fry at the Harvest Celebration!

Our Harvest Celebration on Saturday saw lots of people visiting the farm and some fantastic music and cooking demonstrations along with children's activities, farm tours and some lovely food!

Jo Ingleby from the Vegetarian Cookery School in Bath stir-fried kale and has shared a couple of recipes with us, below.

More photos to follow, but here are a few to be going on with!

Thanks to everyone who helped to organise it, offered prizes for our tombola and their time for free.

Turkish Green Beans, Tomatoes and Cumin
This recipe is perfect for using English Runner Beans when they are plentiful in the autumn. You can also use French Beans or Green Beans and it is a good way of using frozen produce if you have a glut! In Turkey this dish is cooked for about an hour-until the beans are very soft and light green in colour. I prefer beans with a bit of crunch but you can choose-if you want to cook the beans for a longer time you may need to add a little more water or stock. This dish is traditionally served cold with crusty bread.

Serves 4-6
Dietary: vegan, wheat free
Ingredients
2 medium onions

3 cloves garlic

3 tbsp rapeseed oil (or sunflower/vegetable)

500g Runner Beans

4 ripe tomatoes (or a tin of chopped tomatoes)

100ml stock or water

1 tbsp cumin seeds

1 tsp sumac (or paprika if you don’t have sumac)

The juice of a lemon

Salt and pepper

Method
First prepare the runner beans by slicing along their length with a sharp peeler to remove the strings. Slice the beans into slices about 2cm in length.

Heat the oil in a large pan (one with a lid) and dry fry the cumin seeds for a few minutes-they are ready when they smell fragrant, the colour darkens slightly and they make a ticking noise. Transfer the seeds to a pestle and mortar and lightly grind so that some of the seeds become powder but some remain whole. Set aside.

Reheat the pan and add the rapeseed oil, warm the oil for a minute and then add the onions. Cook the onions until they are really soft and caramelised-you can do this quickly (5-10 minutes) over a high heat with constant stirring or over a low heat for a longer time. Placing the lid on the pan during cooking helps the onions to soften. Remove half of the onions and set aside on kitchen paper to use to garnish the dish.

Add the garlic and half of the cumin to the remaining onions and fry for 2 minutes or until the garlic is golden. Add the chopped tomatoes, the juice of half the lemon and sugar and simmer well for 5 minutes or until the tomatoes have broken down and become soft. Add the runner beans and stock and stir well.

Place the lid on the pan and raise the temperature. Simmer the dish for anything from 10 minutes (for crunchy beans) to 40 minutes (for really soft beans). Taste the beans and add lemon juice, salt and pepper to your taste. If you have sumac you can add it at this point-it has a salty lemony taste so you will need to use less lemon and salt.

Serve hot, warm or cold garnished with chopped parsley, lemon wedges and the rest of the caramelised onions and cumin. If you like you can also add crumbled feta cheese or thick Greek yoghurt.

Sumac is the dried red berries of a Middle Eastern Bush 'rhus coriaria’, has a sour flavour and is a flavour enhancer. It can be used as a substitute for lemon or salt and can be bought from Middle Eastern or Indian Stores or online from thespicery.com

Stir Fried Kale with Sesame, Chilli and Ginger
This is a really quick and tasty way of cooking kale-you can use any type and it is easy to prepare-just hold the base of a leaf and pull the stalk between your fingers-the leaves should come away from the stalk. You can do this to a whole bunch of kale or just take a few leaves off a growing plant.

To make more of a meal serve this with rice or noodles and add some toasted cashew nuts or fried tofu.

Serves 4
Dietary: vegan, wheat free
Ingredients
500g Kale (or Cavolo Nero, pak choi, spring greens) washed, destalked and roughly chopped

4 spring onions, sliced

2 garlic cloves, sliced

1” thumb of ginger, peeled and sliced into matchsticks

1 chilli chopped (depending on your taste!)

1 tbsp sesame seeds

1 tsp brown sugar or palm sugar

Tamari or Soy sauce/shoyu

Lemon juice

A splash of rice wine or sherry

A splash of water or stock

Salt and pepper

Method
Heat a large sauce pan or wok and add a splash of sesame oil. Add the garlic and ginger and stir fry for a few minutes, until the garlic is golden (not burnt!) add the chilli, spring onions and sesame and stir fry before adding the kale, the rice wine, sugar and a splash of water of stock.

You can put a lid on at this point if you have one to help the kale to steam, if you don’t have one you will need to keep stirring the kale so that it cooks evenly.

Taste and add tamari, lemon, sugar, salt and pepper to taste.

Serve straight away.