The box arrived. Now what.
Tick what is actually in it and we will tell you what that makes — worst-keeping ingredient first, because that is the only ordering that stops a vegetable box becoming a compost delivery.
Tick what turned up.
Untick what you have run out of. Meals disappear when they no longer have everything they need — nothing here asks you to buy three more things.
What is in the box
Ordered by what goes off first. Leaf before root, always.
What that makes
- Cavolo nero, bacon and potato hash 25 minutes · Cavolo nero, Potatoes, Bacon The leaf goes first because it goes first. Fry the bacon, add the potato, wilt the cavolo through at the end so it keeps its bite.
- Roast beetroot with honey and oil 1 hour, mostly waiting · Beetroot, Honey, Rapeseed oil Whole, in foil, at 200. Peel them after — the skins come off in your hands and you keep the colour instead of leaving it on the board.
- Leek and potato soup 35 minutes · Leeks, Potatoes, Onions Three ingredients and one of them is optional. Do not add stock cubes; the leeks are doing the work.
- A proper omelette 6 minutes · Eggs, Rapeseed oil Three eggs, a hot pan, and off the heat before you think it is done. The residual heat finishes it while you find a plate.
- Cottage pie 1 hour 20 · Mince, Onions, Carrots, Potatoes Brown the mince properly — in batches, in a hot pan, without stirring it about. That is the whole recipe and everybody skips it.
- Flatbreads 20 minutes · Flour, Rapeseed oil Flour, water, oil, salt. No yeast, no rising, straight into a dry frying pan. Better than anything you can buy and cheaper than the flour it came from.
- Honey-glazed carrots 30 minutes · Carrots, Honey, Rapeseed oil Halved lengthways, roasted hard, honey on for the last five minutes only or it burns.
- Bubble and squeak 25 minutes · Potatoes, Cavolo nero, Onions Yesterday's potatoes are better than today's. Press it flat and leave it alone until it has a crust.
Fallowing. Tick something and we will find you a dinner.
The rules we cook by.
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Leaf before root, always.
Cavolo nero has five days in it. A potato has six weeks. Cook in that order and you throw almost nothing away; cook in the other order and you throw away the expensive half.
Every list on this page is ordered by what dies first, not by what sounds nicest.
A vegetable box is a queue, not a menu.
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Three ingredients is usually enough.
Most of these are three things and a pan. That is not minimalism, it is what happens when the ingredients are good enough not to need rescuing.
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Nothing here needs a shopping trip.
If a recipe asks for something that was not in the box, it is not on this page. Salt, pepper, butter and flour are assumed; anything else is cheating.
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The worst week is a soup.
In the third week of March, when the box is roots and brassica and not much else, the answer is soup and we are not going to dress it up.
Every kitchen needs one recipe that absorbs whatever is left. This is ours.
What this is actually for.
This is not a nutrition service.
It tells you what to cook, not what to eat. There is no calorie count, no macro split and no health claim anywhere on this page, because a farm shop is not qualified to make one and the ones that do are usually selling something.
What people ask.
Untick everything else and see what survives. If nothing does, it is a soup — that is not a joke, it is the answer.
Not in this build. Nothing here is stored and nothing leaves your browser.
The cookbook has proper recipes, with weights. This page is for the Tuesday when you have opened the box and the leaves look tired.
Because the box tells you what it has. Untick the mince and the meat dishes vanish on their own.
Elsewhere on the estate.
/shopping/drops/
/chapters/books/the-farmers-dog-cookbook/
/plotting/boxing/
First sight of every drop
The things that sell out do it in minutes. This is the only warning anyone gets.
