Upon leaving the flat this morning, Rob was greeted by something we’d been looking forward to for the last week: an organic fruit and veg box sent to us to sample by Abel & Cole. We rushed to open it and were delighted to find apples, fairtrade bananas, broad beans, carrots, a cucumber, a green cabbage, a large green lettuce, Jersey Royals, a small melon and some spring onions. This box would usually set you back £15.95 with a 99p delivery charge – at a guess, I’d say you could match this at the supermarket (though most things wouldn’t be organic) for about £10. Obviously, the former will win in the ethics stake, but how about taste? Everything looked and smelt wonderful and fresh and I instantly started to think about what we could cook, but we had to get to work so each grabbed an apple to enjoy during the day.
Making a perfect first impression, the apples were delicious – sweet, juicy and crunchy, exactly how an apple should be (but often isn’t!).
The thing I really like about the whole idea of these veg box deliveries, is that it’s not unlikely that you’ll end up with something you haven’t cooked before. For us today this turned out to be broad beans, so I decided they would be the first thing we used!
I found a recipe for broad bean risotto on the very apt Veg Box Recipes. I followed the instructions for the broad beans down to removing the skin; unfortunately the 400g or so of broad beans we’d received only produced 100g of actual beans (and even less once the skins were removed). This was definitely disappointing as I would have liked the beans to be the focus of the risotto and was instead forced to pad it out with peas. Along with the broad beans and peas we added some chicken breast that had been diced, well-seasoned and fried.
Rob said the risotto was the best we’d ever made and the broad beans were a delicious addition. I couldn’t resist picking at them a little once I’d removed the skins – they tasted so fresh and would have worked just as well as the highlight of a simple salad as they did in the risotto.
First impressions of our fruit and veg box have been very good. Stay tuned over the next week or so to see how the rest fares!
[...] had a small melon still in the fridge from our Abel & Cole delivery that, over a week on, was starting to look a little sorry for itself. It stuck in the back of my [...]