Sep 30 2010
The Now-Traditional ‘What I cooked with my Village Store haul’ post
As previously mentioned, D and I volunteer at The Village Store, a volunteer-manned food stall held at Out of the Blue with the aim of reducing Leithers’ carbon footprints by giving them the ability to buy yummy produce on their doorstep.
There are various things I love about being involved. I’ve met loads of new, like-minded people. I recognise more people around Leith now- customers of the stall. We’ve had a couple of great wee social events with the other volunteers. But one of the most fulfilling things for me is that every time I turn up to the stall, either as a shopper or a volunteer, I am made to think. What is there this week? How can I cook it? What will go with what else? It’s just so different to turning up to a supermarket knowing that red peppers and mangetout and sweetcorn and tomatoes and onions and broccoli and sweet potato and butternut squash will all always be available.
The stall’s produce is properly seasonal. There’s nothing flown in from Peru or Thailand- at a push stuff comes from that far-flung England place but generally everything comes from within an hour of Edinburgh. This means that, since June when we started, there have been shifts in what’s on the stall. At the beginning there were Kentish cherries- and fantastic wonderful Scottish Raspberries. I brought home broad beans and peas to pod. For the first time in my life I cooked with gooseberries!
Now, though, the summer fruits have gone and we’ve moved into the wonderful colours of Victoria Plums, of pumpkins and squashes and even, yes, local long red peppers.
We pretty much always have mushrooms and so D and take some every week. The last time we volunteered there were little bags of Sage for sale. Since an inconsiderate neighbour/neighbour’s builder killed out sage bush in the garden I was happy to buy some. (I’d planned to do pork chops à la this or this but have yet to make it to the butcher’s). That night before going to a party we had a speedy tea of pasta with the mushrooms, fried up in olive oil (in which I’d crisped then removed a few sage leaves) with garlic and pancetta, with cream and loads of fresh snipped up sage added right at the end of cooking. Not so healthy, it’s true, but awfy good!
I also picked up some long red peppers. They looked like what I’d call Romano peppers although weren’t sold as such. They got roasted in the oven with a filling of puy lentils (cooked and then frizzed up with a bit of garlic) lemon juice and mozzarella. Inspired by a Waitrose recipe I’ve followed properly in the past. I flung some cherry tomatoes in the roasting pan alongside them and used the soft tomatoes and a tiny drop of cream left from the day before to make an unctuous sauce for some pasta on the side. Gorgeous and scrummy!
This seems a better way of cooking. More real, more in touch with where I live and what’s going on around me. If you are in Leith and haven’t made it to the Village Store yet I genuinely encourage you to come along. As well as the fruit & veg & ecover stall I help with there is Greener Monday (think eco deli- chutneys and marinades and honey and chocolate. Plus some beauty/homewares made with wax from the Bee People) and Jo Jo’s Danish Bakery and often the Cheese Man (whose name I do not know) and the incredible Tinker Tailor Mending & Learning Service. 10-2, every Saturday. It’s simple but lovely. What’s your excuse?
My excuse is I’m a lazy mare! Ciara and I were JUST saying that it’s a crime we haven’t got down there yet, and will definitely be there this Saturday. That peppers thing looks AMAAAZING. I am so hungry; Ferd’s roasting a butternut squash for a risotto. I am SO HUNGRY!
I think its a wonderful venture. I visited it in July whilst visiting Edinburgh for the day. Its such a shame there is nothing similar happening in Glasgow, as it would have been my preferred place to shop. Its a lovely welcoming building too.
http://allotment2kitchen.blogspot.com/2010/07/looking-for-sunshine-on-leith.html
Kind wishes
Cheers Mangocheeks! By the looks of your lovely blogpost, you visited the store on our second ever Saturday. So it is true, we did have quite a small selection of fruit and veg- we’ve grown quite substantially since then! It is *also* likely that you were served, at the Village Store, by either me or my boyfriend Dougal as we were volunteering that day. Which is nice- that we ‘met’ and then you found my blog.
You sound like you had quite the adventure in Leith. Where on earth did you get doughnut peaches from? I’ve never seen the like here! It’s true that we do actually have pretty good fruit and veg availability; I tend to be quite cynical about it because the stretch of Leith Walk that we live on is a bit of fruit and veg desert between the ‘Fruit Heaven’ down on Junction Street at the foot of the walk, and the asian grocers and Tatty Shaw’s up/south, across the border, in the Edinburgh part of Leith Walk. But actually we aren’t all that far.
I think that Anderston in Glasgow is quite like Leith; I know what you mean about some of the West End fruit & veg being a wee bit life-styley but I think if you *just* but veg and not fancy chocolate/organic yog/alfafafafafa then they are useful.
adventures in cooking looks tasty too