Autumn Vege Bag - Week 10
We keep an archive of previous vege highlights, tips and recipes in the previous weeks blog posts.
Click on any vegetable that has a link to see posts with more detailed information about it.
Click here to go to the archive and use the “filter” to bring up previous posts we’ve highlighted a vegetable for more tips, recipes and background info.
Farewell summer crops.
This will most likely be the final week of zucchinis and next week will really be the dreggs of cucumbers and tomatoes - and only because because Crooked Vege is behind schedule with removing summer crops! Capsicums and chillies are late bloomers (the fruit we’re seeing in the vege bags now were started in August 2024!) and will carry on a little while longer.
Both farms have mostly turned our growing spaces over into winter crops, with Ahoaho focussing on salad, carrots and a little bit of rocket, kale and spinach. Crooked Vege has more space, sunlight and humans, so we’ll have a bit more diversity with beets, kohlrabi, fennel, radish, turnips, herbs, silverbeet, collards, cavolo nero (AKA Italian kale), celery, peas, broad beans and a few other odds and ends in the crop plan or already in the ground. Huge mihi to the big turnout Crooked Vege had at our working bees this week to help get things ready for winter!
This week we have
Carrots (from Ahoaho māra kai)
Potatoes (Ahoaho māra kai)
Onions (Ahoaho māra kai)
Pumpkin or squash piece (Crown, Rampicante, Butternut, Kamokamo, Burgess, Red Kuri) (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)
Capsiscum (x2) or Tomatoes (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)
2x of Cucumber, Zucchini and/or Shishito (Crooked Vege)
Peruvian Huacatay, basil or garlic chives
Coriander or Chillis (Cayenne or Habanero) (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)
Vege highlights, tips & recipes
Peruvian Huacatay
Quick warning - if you have sensitive skin, some people apparently find huacatay mildy itchy when handling it for prolonged periods. You might want to use gloves while preparing huacatay.
Background
This an unusual, but delicious aromatic herb from Peru is a kind of marigold. We grew it for 50-50 in Paraparaumu (thanks to our friend Sarah for sharing some seed she had - none of the seed catalogues carry it!), but it’s really taken off as the weather cools down, hence the huge bunches! Which I guess makes sense for a herb native to the Andes mountains.
It has tastes somewhere between spearmint, basil, tarrogon, lemon - but none of those really capture it.
Cooking
I’ve bunched these with the wood stems attached - you’ll want to just use the leaves!
We think it goes pretty great with potatoes, lamb, chicken or beef. I wrote a bit about the two typical sauces made from it a few weeks ago (and I’ve made sure the key ingredients for Aji Verde are available this week!), but the limited english language for this herb shouldn’t hold you back. It’s also used in soups, stews and salads. I’ll be replacing the parsely in this taboulleh recipe with huacatay and coriander over the weekend parsley with huacatay and coriander.
For the adventurous, it’s apparently often ground into a paste and used in ceviche and other fish dishes.
Tea
It makes a delicious tea! You could dry it for tea through the winter - huacatay tea is apparently traditionally used to help with colds.
—
Ka kite ano,
Jon
