Butter Tofu – Curry

by Liz Child

This is one of our favourite twists on an Indian takeaway. The traditional North Indian dish is ‘butter chicken’ and it’s all about that rich, creamy and buttery tomato gravy. It’s mildly spicy and savoury, popular with the whole family. This is the perfect store-cupboard supper too, just the thing for those days when you’re running low on fresh ingredients.

We have replaced the dairy in the traditional recipe with Naturli butter and creamy coconut milk. And in place of chicken, our extra firm blocks of organic tofu. We also love this recipe with cauliflower, chickpeas or chunks of aubergine or mushrooms in place of the tofu. Whatever you decide to cook and fold through this mouthwatering sauce, you are guaranteed to lick your plate clean. It’s that good!

Liz x

Ingredients (serves 4-6)

Sauce

Tofu

  • 6 heaped tbsp cornstarch
  • 1 tbsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 600g extra firm tofu, drained and cubed (or sub with cooked chickpeas, cauliflower florets or cubed aubergine or mushrooms)
  • 50g butter

Method

  1. Start with the sauce. Put the onion, garlic, spices and seasoning into a blender and blend into a thick paste. Fry the paste in a heavy bottomed, deep saucepan with the butter for 10 minutes or until dark brown and very fragrant.
  2. Empty the two tins of tomatoes into the blender and blend them until smooth too. Add to the curry paste and simmer and stir for a further 10 minutes until the sauce is rich and slightly reduced.
  3. Add the tin of coconut milk, stir and taste for seasoning. Keep the sauce warm while you cook the rice and tofu.
  4. Drain your blocks of extra firm tofu and cut into bite sized cubes. If you are subbing with vegetables, cut into bite sized pieces and dunk in milk. In a wide bowl, mix the cornstarch, turmeric, salt and pepper. Tumble the tofu into the bowl and use your hands to mix well and ensure each piece is coated in the seasoning. (If you are using vegetables, dunk the veg in the milk first then roll in the seasoned cornstarch).
  5. Heat up a large frying pan (or two) and add the butter. When it starts to melt, add the coated tofu (or vegetables) and cook on a medium-high heat until crispy and golden on the bottom. Then carefully turn the pieces to cook on the other side. Keep turning and cooking until the tofu (or vegetables) is golden brown, hot and crispy.
  6. Fold the cooked tofu (or vegetables) through the warm curry sauce and serve with basmati rice and chopped coriander.

Going Gluten Free?

by Liz Child

It is Gluten Free day on the 13th of January. Check out our gluten free section here.

Coeliac disease affects 1% of the population, however it is estimated that only around 30% of those people are diagnosed. There’s a big difference between people with coeliac disease and people who are gluten intolerant. When a person with coeliac disease ingests gluten, even just a small amount from accidental cross contamination, their immune system will attack its own body’s digestive tissue causing pain and serious problems including the inability to properly absorb nutrients. Whereas, if a person is gluten intolerant, the consumption of gluten will cause short-term bloating and belly pain. Unlike coeliac disease, gluten intolerance doesn’t usually cause long-term harm to the body. Either way, if you are avoiding gluten, perhaps just to try and improve your gut health, here’s a quick summary of what to look out for and some tips. All the images in this post are gluten free, organic products that we stock alongside our fresh produce to make your gluten free journey a little easier.

What is Gluten?

Gluten is a general name for the proteins found in wheat, rye and barley. It acts as a glue and helps foods hold their shape. It’s what makes bread and pasta dough stretchy and bouncy. Luckily there are other natural ingredients which can be used as binding agents in place of gluten. Of course it is not quite the same but yes, you can still eat biscuits, cakes, pasta and breads with a little know-how.

What to Avoid

If you are avoiding gluten, it should be clearly labelled on packaging. But you should know this list of gluten containing ingredients to make sure you know exactly what to avoid.

  • Wheat (including spelt, durum, semolina, emmer, farina, farro, graham, einkorn, wheatberries, KAMUT® khorasan wheat)
  • Rye
  • Barley
  • Triticale
  • Malt in various forms including: malted barley flour, malted milk or milkshakes, malt extract, malt syrup, malt flavoring, malt vinegar
  • Brewer’s Yeast
  • Regular Oats (although oats are technically gluten free, they are usually cross contaminated in fields and factories with wheat so look for gluten free oats!)

What To Eat

The good news is that if you are avoiding gluten there are loads of things you CAN eat! So let’s focus on those.

  • Fruits
  • Vegetables
  • Nuts and Seeds
  • Beans and Lentils
  • Certain Grains and Flours (including buckwheat and buckwheat flour, corn and it’s flours eg cornstarch and polenta, potato and it’s flour, rice and rice flour, amaranth, quinoa, millet, tapioca…oats, when labelled gluten free are fine too…)

You just need to avoid gluten which is found in certain grains and flours. Generic oats usually have been cross contaminated with wheat in the fields, whereas gluten free oats are grown carefully to avoid cross contamination and processed away from gluten containing products. This explains why gluten free oats are a little more expensive than regular oats.

Easy Alternatives

Ready made gluten free products are getting better and better. We stock a range of gluten free pastas, bread and even pizza dough in our shop. We also have gluten free oats available. Unfortunately a lot of ready made gluten free products contain lots of strange ingredients to help bind things together and imitate wheat gluten, so we recommend always reading the label, or looking into ways to make your own alternatives. We try to source the best, organic and natural products to make your choices easy. If you are avoiding eggs, be extra careful to read the labels as a lot of ready made gluten free products contain eggs to help things bind together.

Make your own

We stock many of the raw ingredients necessary to create your own gluten free alternatives. Research tried and tested gluten free recipes online and please do share your successes (and failures) with our supportive community facebook group here. There are loads of gluten free recipes, or recipes which can be tweaked to be made gluten free on our recipe blog here. In fact most of the recipes are naturally gluten free! Do you have any top tips on being gluten free? Do share them in the comments.

Happy New Year!

by Kenneth Keavey

I am not one for new year resolutions, it’s not that I am against them or for them I just don’t make them. But there certainly is something about the new year that seems to encourage change. Maybe it’s having passed the shortest day and being on the trajectory to better weather and longer days gives a feeling of hope. Maybe it’s the over indulgence and excess of the Christmas period. Maybe a little niggling feeling that’s been there all along just bubbles closer to the surface.

For the farm it marks at least on paper the start of a new season, the planning begins and the seeds must be selected and the rotation planned. I am always a little bemused at how long ago the start of the last growing season was and at the same time how fast time passes. It is one of those mysteries of getting older, I guess. It’s very difficult to make plans anymore. For the farm last year we were a little too ambitious with our planning, we planned and grew too many crops. This year we are taking a more sensible approach and scaling back a little of certain crops and a growing a little more of others. That being said, the winter has been benign, mild and not too wet and the crops remaining in the fields are in good order and we have plenty to harvest over the coming months.

Whilst there has been plenty of good hearty vegetables consumed here over Christmas we have also had our fair share of chocolate. I am guessing that there will have been few houses or few people in the country who did not encounter a box of ‘Milk Tray’ during this festive Season. Growing up they were the main stay of our family evening, and my mother for some reason never trusted me with them, I can still hear, “only one Kenneth” every time I see a box. That instruction was always reserved for me and never aimed at my siblings strangely enough. These sweets today seem to be a far cry from the sweets I remember as a child.

If you happen to have a box lying around take a look at the ingredients. I didn’t recognise most of them. Apart from sugar I couldn’t say yeah that’s in our cupboard. The result of course is not good, the food itself is now a synthetic engineered product from ultra-cheap and highly processed ingredients. Sugar is the first ingredient, followed by palm oil as the second, for those that don’t know, ingredients are listed in the order of quantity. Then there is the cheap waste by products from the milk industry and more. The intention it seems has been to make the product as cheap as possible and to sell as much as possible for maximum profit, with scant regard for taste or quality. This unfortunately is a common approach to many foods today.

Compromising on taste and quality never leads anywhere good. This race to the bottom can end up costing us our health and the planet too pays a high price for these unsustainable cheap ingredients. So, while I do not embrace the idea of new year resolutions, the one that I come back to every single year without fail is to “Eat more fresh fruit and veg”. I know too that I won’t have to worry about my mum’s mantra of “only take one”! as I reach for another apple.

Have a great new year, thank you for all you have done for us. We are back with our normal deliveries next week. Take care.

Kenneth

A Very Irish Christmas

by Kenneth Keavey

Against all my best inclinations I have decided I am not going to launch into a rant about the damage the supermarket food culture has wrought on our land. I have decided to instead embrace the positive this week, to celebrate the little wins and the amazing things our people, suppliers, and you our customers are doing.

We have the most amazing suppliers, the best in the world, and they are local, Irish and sustainable. Just today I met Titta from Lilly’s eco clean, she exudes positivity and is dedicated to the sustainable cause. Yesterday I had reason to speak to Franck, our local native Galwegian French man who supplies us with his amazing organic wine, he is always in good form.

We have had to give the harvest of our own leeks a little break until after Christmas and therefore I was on the phone to Roy Lyttle one of our amazing potato and leek suppliers. Cameron from Battlemount organic farm supplied us just a couple of weeks ago with his own freshly pressed organic apple juice from apples in his own orchard and the most amazing potatoes on this island.

Ralph Haslam and I go back along way and he supplies the gorgeous organic cheese, yogurt and if milk (I believe the best milk in Ireland) you may know his products better as “Mossfield Organic farm”. There is of course the cultured food company and Synerchi kombucha, and the Little Milk Company and Bunalun Organic, all great IRISH companies. Yorg from Solaris teas makes his tea right here in Galway and Blakes Organic roast their coffee in Leitrim, the fantastic McCabes coffee roast their organic coffee beans in county Wicklow.

Then there is all the other Irish organic growers that supply us at times during the year such as Audrey and Mick from Millhouse organic farm. Joe Kelly in Westport, Padraigh Fahy in Beechlawn organic farm. Philip Dreaper in Coolnagrower organic farm and many more.

But the best supplier of all is our own farm and the amazing hard-working team of individuals that work tirelessly on our farm. They grow the best tasting, healthiest food you can buy anywhere. Our farm is the centre of our business, it is the heart, it is our cornerstone, it keeps us grounded and it keeps us deeply connected with our food, it never lets us stray from the right path.

That is not to say that we do not have the most amazing teams of packers and drivers and customer service people because we do, the very, very best. So we really understand and appreciate the hardwork and effort of all our other suppliers, they are all amazing, struggling with the ups and downs of running and owning a small business and working extremely hard to produce great IRISH products and make their business work especially during the last two years.

This brings me to our last stars, the real hero’s of our story and I guess you may know who that is? That is, you. Your support, your purchases, your positive (and constructive negative feedback) keeps us going, it puts money in our bank account to pay for all of the above. But and this is the big one, it keeps a strong growing sustainable system of food production going. So aside from the very best healthy and (we have no shame in saying) the most amazing tasting produce you are supporting an idea for a better food future.

Thank you and have a very merry, Irish Christmas!

Kenneth

Potato Peel Crisps

by Liz Child

We very rarely peel our organic potatoes. It’s not just about being lazy, potato skins are delicious and very high in nutrients and fibre. Also, food waste is not just a waste of our hard earned money, it’s actually a huge emitter of green house gases. But sometimes, especially for Christmas dinner, we want ‘proper’ roast potatoes that are fluffy in the middle, golden and crispy on the outside. So we peel.

No need to waste the peels though! It makes no sense to throw out all that delicious, nutritious potato. I bet your granny had a good way of using potato skins up? This is my favourite way. What’s yours?

Liz x

Ingredients

  • Potato peels
  • Olive oil
  • Salt and pepper (or another seasoning you like eg: garlic granules, paprika, chilli, rosemary, lemon zest, nutritional yeast, onion powder…)

Method

  1. Pre-heat your oven to 200C. Scrub your potatoes and then peel them directly into a large roasting dish.
  2. Drizzle over some good olive oil, a little goes a long way here.
  3. Season with a little salt and whatever else you fancy. Be careful with the salt, a tiny pinch is usually enough, you can always add more salt after but you can’t take it away. Mix well to ensure each peel is coated in the oil and seasoning.
  4. Bake in the oven until the peels have turned into crisps. Usually around 15 minutes. Keep an eye on them and take them out to stir every 5 minutes or so to ensure they are not sticking and they are cooking evenly.
  5. Allow them to cool then enjoy!

A Plastic Free Christmas?

by Kenneth Keavey

Is it possible?

Here in Ireland we need to do much better on plastic, we are at the bottom of the European league tables when it comes to plastic waste per person. By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish by weight in the oceans.

On our farm and in our business, we have spent 3 years looking at our processes and removing plastic where we can. In contrast to the green washing of most of the larger retailers who have promised and yet have not delivered we are doing what we say.

We do not use plastic in any of our seasonal set boxes, we use paper, and we collect and reuse our boxes, this is a fundamental cornerstone of our business. We realise that paper too has its own carbon cost, and we are looking at ways of trying to reduce that further. It bothers me a bit though, when the idea of using a paper straw instead of a plastic one constitutes progress, it is a small step, but it diverts attention from the real issues, such as the large scale use of plastics in the food industry.

The strain that humankind’s excessive consumption is putting on our planet is eye watering and for the environment and biodiversity the price is too great. We all need to consume less, whether it be plastic or otherwise.

I recognise the irony of encouraging less consumption and at the same time trying to sell our organic veggies boxes. But I have no shame in this, we run a sustainable business, we employ a lot of people in a worthwhile industry we grow local organic food and support so many other small scale Irish organic producers too and in order to pay them we need to sell boxes.

Everybody needs to eat, and it is impossible to assess the environmental credentials of most food businesses. This Christmas and new year if you want to know your food has been sourced and grown sustainably then throwing your lot in with us for your food is the right thing to do.

Our Christmas boxes and many other lovely Christmassy things (gift vouchers, wine hampers, original art and many eco-hampers) are available on our website, and they will be delivered the week beginning the 20th of December. The boxes are brimming with organic local (where possible) freshly harvested sustainable food.

We can deliver by courier all over Ireland and if you can place your order by the 12th you will be entered into a draw for an amazing hamper, it also guarantees you a delivery slot on Christmas week and helps us out immeasurably with harvesting.

If you want the most amazing fresh ingredients and also keep Christmas plastic free, local and sustainable then get a delivery from us this year.

Thank you for your support.

Kenneth

Orange, Rosemary & Black Pepper Almonds

by Liz Child

This aromatic, sweet and salty snack is the perfect nibble alongside a glass of wine or whilst watching a Christmas film. We stock organic almonds in compostable bags if you’d like to make your own. It’s easy to do and the flavour combination is just perfect! You might want to double or triple the batch and give some jars away as festive gifts.

Liz x

Ingredients

  • 500g whole almonds
  • the zest of a large orange (or use a few clementines)
  • 4 tbsp rosemary leaves
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 4 tbsp maple syrup or honey

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 175C and line your largest roasting tray with baking parchment.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients. Taste an almond and add more of any ingredient if you like, perhaps you’d like it extra peppery?
  3. Spread the almonds onto the lined baking tray in a single layer. Bake for 15 minutes or so until the nuts are beautifully toasted. Remove the tray from the oven every 5 minutes to stir the nuts and ensure they are not burning. Keep a close eye on them, once they start to toast they go very quickly!
  4. Allow the nuts to cool completely on the tray before storing them in an airtight container. They should stay fresh for a couple of weeks. Enjoy with a glass of wine and other delicious nibbly bits or gift wrap and share with your loved ones.

It’s In Our Blood

by Kenneth Keavey

My dad (Michael) was an avid gardener. My grand dad (Martin) had a beautiful vegetable garden and he was also a mixed farmer, my great grand-dad Michael was the head gardener at Cregg Castle (1911) and my great great grandad John was also a gardener at Cregg castle in the 1850’s onwards.

That is 5 generations of vegetable growers in our family, not bad for the west of Ireland. Famous for its perceived poor soil as Oliver Cromwell’s famous quote “to hell or to Connaught” has incorrectly often been associated with. I believe there must be something in our blood that keeps us coming back to the land. Certainly, I believe it was this connection that brought be back from years of working in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry to reconnect with the land and build a sustainable farm.

Back in the early days I had more hair than today, the journey has not been without its hair raising moments! I wonder sometimes what my great, great grandad would have thought of what we are doing here today on this patch of ground in Galway. It was not that long ago when you think about it when my great-great grandad was gardening, the food they were growing back then would certainly have been free from chemicals (there were none; not till the strangely named ‘green revolution’ of the 1960’s did chemical usage become prevalent in agriculture) and would have been harvested fresh for the table.

Everyday, we demonstrate that it is possible to grow the very best of food without the use of toxic chemicals, they are not necessary in our organic food growing system. There was a certain strong seasonality about food back then, there was no other choice, there were no imports or fancy fruits like bananas. There was no plastic, imagine that, a world only maybe 50 years ago when there was little or no plastic! I think I would have struggled with the lack of choice, but how sweet the first season’s apples or how flavoursome the first new potatoes must have been. I think it must have been from here that our obsession with early potatoes came.

I think I would also have struggled with the lack of machinery. While it is enjoyable and hugely rewarding to work in a garden with a spade and your hands it is another matter entirely to be growing enough food to feed 1000+ families per week. That is what we do here on our patch of organic land in the west of Ireland.

I often wonder when I look back at how our recent ancestors farmed and lived how it is possible that we have, in the space of 100 years, done so much damage to our planet? How can we change to reverse the damage, is it possible? Absolutely. I don’t like the idea of new years resolutions and even if I did, it is a bit early to be thinking about them now. Our resolution if you like will not be any different to any other year, we will be redoubling our efforts to do as we have always done, which is to make growing and delivering food to your doors as sustainable and healthy as is possible.

Thank you as always for your support.

Kenneth

Our Broken Food System

by Kenneth Keavey

Do you like carrots? Have you ever caught the aroma of a fresh carrot as you wash the dirt from it’s skin? How about crunching into a fresh sweet carrot, the taste grabs you, it is enlivening. Our grandparents took the taste of food for granted, it was what they expected. Funny that the opposite is true today. 

Those carrots of our grandparent’s generation are a long way from the plastic clad, washed supermarket carrots imported from foreign lands. What do they taste of? Very little indeed.

Not only have carrots lost their taste, but they have lost their goodness. A carrot today will have 75% less copper and magnesium and nearly 50% less calcium and iron that’s its relative 50 years earlier. These are sad facts, published by the British Medical Research Council. Our food system now produces food that is depleted in vitamins and minerals, how can this be?

The answer it seems lies in how we treat one of our most precious resources, our soil. Our one-time rich soils have been depleted by the constant barrage of chemical fertilisers, and the life in them as been destroyed by the persistent use of a cocktail of chemicals. The result: food that is as lifeless as the soil it was grown in. If this is mankind’s ingenuity, I want no part of it.

Have we become too smart for our own good? We all want to believe that modern technology will lift us out of the hole we are in, a hole of our own making, but will it? Look at what we have done to our soil. We don’t need modern technology to fix our soil, we need a thoughtful skilful approach to growing our food. A balanced approach that does not extract every last drop of vitality the land has to offer but leaves something for other life to flourish. 

Mother nature doesn’t particularly care about our degree of cleverness, she is hurting, and the question is are we smart enough to recognise our own absurdity and to take action to rectify the damage we are doing? 

“It is the degree to which a species is suited to its environment, not its cleverness, that ensures it’s survival” Charles Darwin.

For many generations now we have lived more or less in harmony with nature but in the last 50 years the havoc we have wrought on our home has become more and more obvious, when will enough be enough?

I can only talk to what we are doing, I know we can grow food that tastes like food. There is magic in that taste. That taste tells you something very important, it tells you a story, a story of a soil that was cared for, it tells you that the birds and bees and all the other little fellas running around were respected, it tells you that what you are eating is real food with no free hidden chemical extras. 

That taste tells you; you are eating the very best food you can buy and you are taking one very important step to protecting our land and your health.   

That the taste reflects a deep respect for the land. 

As always thank you for your support

Kenneth

Celeriac Steaks

by Liz Child

We haven’t grown them for quite a few years so we are delighted to let you know that our celeriac are back! Have you tried one? They’re a gorgeous winter root vegetable. Big and bulbous and full of flavour. Think a hybrid between a potato and a parsnip with a delicate celery flavour. These beasts are stunning in soups and stews, but they also lend themselves nicely to coleslaw, in fact raw, grated celeriac is really gorgeous tossed with a mustardy mayonnaise. I’ll tell you about that another day. But today I am eating celeriac in thick slices, fried like a steak in lots of butter. I LOVE a vegetable steak (cauliflower, portobello, butternut…), it’s a great way to really highlight a vegetable and focus on the flavour. Serve with mashed beans and roasted garlic for lip-smackingly delicious, filling, protein, some wintery greens like kale or cabbage and a creamy wholegrain mustard sauce. Quite a special dish, fit for a date night, but really not very complex to make as you’ll see below. Enjoy!

Liz x

Ingredients (serves 2)

  • 1 celeriac – peel with a small, sharp knife, then cut 4 thick slices out of the middle and save the ends for a soup
  • 1 tin of butterbeans or cannellini beans, any white beans will work
  • 1 whole bulb of garlic
  • kale or cabbage, as much as you like
  • 1 heaped tbsp wholegrain mustard
  • 1 tbsp corn starch or plain flour
  • oat milk – enough to loosen the pan juices into a thick sauce
  • butter, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste

Method

  1. Pre-heat your oven to 200C. Pop a whole bulb of garlic (that’s right, the whole bulb, not just a clove) into a small, oven-proof dish with a drizzle of olive oil. Put it in the oven to bake until soft – around 15-20 minutes.
  2. Meanwhile prepare the celeriac as above, chop and rinse some greens (kale or cabbage go well here) and put them in a pot with a lid, some seasoning and some butter/oil on the hob. Drain some of the liquid from your tin of butterbeans and pop them into another small pan.
  3. Get your widest frying pan (or use two) on to a medium heat and melt a generous knob of butter with a couple of tbsp of olive oil. Add the celeriac steaks and season well with salt and pepper. Cook, turning occasionally until they are softening and turning a gorgeous caramel colour. They should smell amazing!
  4. When the celeriac are nearly cooked through, take the garlic out of the oven to cool slightly, turn the heat on under the pot of beans and the pot of greens. Cook both, stirring often, until piping hot. Then turn off the heat.
  5. Put the celeriac steaks in a small dish in the oven to keep warm (turn the oven down to 150C so they don’t burn) whilst you make the mash and the sauce.
  6. Pull apart the roasted garlic and squeeze the soft, fragrant flesh into the pan with the beans. Season well with salt and pepper, add a drizzle of olive oil or a knob of butter and mash the beans and garlic into a puree. Or use a stick blender if you’d like your mash extra smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.
  7. To the frying pan in which the celeriac steaks were cooked, add a tbsp of flour and a tbsp of wholegrain mustard. Whisk into the buttery, caramelised, celeriac juices that are left in the pan and add a splash of oat milk. Turn the heat up and keep whisking and adding milk until you have a silky, creamy sauce. Taste and season with salt and pepper and now you are ready to serve.
  8. Divide the greens and garlicky mash between two plates, add on the steaks then drizzle with the sauce. Have extra wholegrain mustard on the table and enjoy with a glass of wine or a cold beer.