From Our Community Farm to Two Delicious Vegan Recipes
This week, I cooked two delicious vegan meals using vegetables from the recent harvest of our community farm, Herenboeren de Groote Heide.
One of the things I really enjoy about being part of a community farm is that you don’t always know exactly what will be in your kitchen each week. You simply get a box full of fresh, locally grown vegetables and start thinking: What can I make with this?
And when the vegetables are this fresh, you don’t need much to make something delicious.
Our harvest over the past two weeks included white cabbage, broccoli, beets, leek, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic and onions, among many other vegetables. Everything is grown locally without pesticides, which makes the vegetables not only feel good to eat, but taste great too.
Here are two recipes I made this week.
Recipe 1: Cabbage & Green Bean Wok with Peanut Sauce
This is a quick and flavourful wok dish with a creamy peanut and coconut sauce and a little kick from sambal.
Ingredients
1 small white cabbage
2 onions
A few cloves of garlic
A piece of fresh ginger
Sambal — homemade if you have it!
Cooked green beans
Peanut butter
Coconut milk
Soy sauce
Rice
Method
Thinly slice the cabbage and blanch it briefly. Heat some oil in a wok and stir-fry the sliced onions. Add grated garlic and ginger, followed by some (homemade - for pepers form our farm) sambal. Add peanut butter, coconut milk and soy sauce. Stir everything together until you have a creamy sauce. Finally, add the blanched cabbage and green beans and stir-fry everything together for a few minutes. Serve with rice.
Simple, spicy, creamy and packed with fresh vegetables. 🌱
Recipe 2: Spicy Cabbage, Beet & Potato Bake
The second recipe turned the harvest into a hearty oven dish. The combination of beetroot, potato and broccoli makes a colourful mash, while the cabbage layer adds plenty of flavour and texture.
Ingredients
5 beets
8 small potatoes
A piece of broccoli
Vegetable stock
Vegan butter
½ white cabbage
1 onion
A few cloves of garlic
Sambal
Optional: vegan soy mince
Method
Boil the beets, potatoes and broccoli in vegetable stock until tender. Drain and mash them together with some vegan butter. Thinly slice the cabbage and blanch it. Meanwhile, stir-fry a chopped onion and a few cloves of garlic in a wok. Add some sambal and then mix in the blanched cabbage. If you like, add some vegan soy mince for extra texture and protein. Grease an oven dish with vegan butter. Add the cabbage mixture and spread the vegetable mash on top. Bake in the oven for around 30 minutes until the top is nicely cooked.
Fresh vegetables, simple cooking
Both recipes are a good example of how you can turn a box of seasonal vegetables into completely different meals. The ingredients don’t need to be complicated. Fresh vegetables, some basic ingredients and a little creativity can go a long way. And perhaps that’s one of the best things about growing food locally: you get to eat vegetables at their freshest, discover new combinations and enjoy the real taste of the harvest. So, next time you have a white cabbage sitting in your kitchen, don’t underestimate it. There is a lot you can do with it!
