Spring Vege Bag - Week 1
Click on any vegetable that has a link to see previous posts with recipes and cooking tips. You can also browse the filter the whole vege bag archive by vegetable here.
Kia ora to the first Kōanga/Spring Vege Vege Bag of 2025! We have our final onions from Warren this week.
This week we have:
Coriander (Ahoaho māra kai) or Parsley or Shungiku (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)
Spring Onions (Ahoaho māra kai)
Kale or Chard (Common Property)
Carrots (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)
Celery (Crooked Vege Ōtaki) or Onions (From Warren)
Pumpkins (Crooked Vege Ōtaki/Live2Give Organics)
(Crooked Vege)
Potatoes (Mingiroa Farm)
Vege highlights/suggested uses
Shungiku
We generally focus on staple crops with Ōtaki Vege Bags, but as small hyper-local farms, we like to share some stuff you won’t find in the supermarket. There are 10s of thousands of edible plants, and we see about 10-20 different vegetables in the supermarket. It’s a fine balance - we know everyone has different tastes, and different levels of confidence/time/resources to experiment too much in the kitchen, so we try to keep anything unusual (like Shungiku) as “occasional” options - and always try to offer them with a choice of something more familiar.
Shungiku is an edible chrysanthemum (if you don’t know it by name, you’ll recognise it as a flower). It’s popular in chinese and japanese cuisine. It has a unique fresh flavour and a bit of crunch in the stem (if you don’t overcook it). I normally throw it into a stirfry right for the last 1-2 minutes of cooking. It’s also nice simply steamed and wilted as a side dish - maybe with a bit of soy sauce and lemon. But my favourite way to use it came from a suggestion of a vege bag member: tempura.
There are a lot of different tempura batter recipes - (egg and wheat flour, rice flour with a pinch of corn flour) - the main thing seems to be to mix the batter with really cold water (or soda water). Here’s one recipe.
You want the texture to be quite thin, like a crepe batter. Simply dip the shungiku (and any other vege you want to try - we really like thinly slice pumpkin) and deep fry. Go wild with the sauces - the basic sauce we usually make is finely diced herbs, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil & rice vinegar (or lime/lemon juice). But a simple bottle of sweet chilli and/or soy sauce will do!
Ka kite ano,
Jon
