Before we get on to news on the lovely produce in the boxes this week, do note that we will be labelling the boxes this week with your names so please do take the correct box!

From purple carrots to rainbow carrots (check out the photos on our Roasted and Ribbon Rainbow CaRRots blog post to see what we got up to with them) we move on from golden beetroot some weeks back to beetroot with pink and white candy cane stripes this week.

Is it artificially coloured? Maybe genetically modified? Or from an alien planet? No, it’s a chioggia beet (pronounced kee-OH-gee-uh) also known as the bullseye beetroot, and it’s an heirloom variety from Italy.

It hails from the Italian coastal town of Chioggia, near Venice and has been around since the early 19th-century. Tastes just like regular purple beets, maybe a little sweeter. When sliced open, beautiful pink and white stripes are revealed.

It can be prepared as you would other beetroot: steamed, sauteed, roasted, and pickled. But the beautiful stripes do fade and bleed the longer you cook them.

A splash of lemon juice or white vinegar may help to keep the colour from fading, but we opted to retain the stripes in all their glory so had them raw, thinly sliced with a mandolin and dressed with lemon juice and/or vinegar and chives. White wine vinegar works just as well as rice vinegar, or if you are very fancy and have raspberry vinegar handy it would add a lovely twist. And mint would work as well as chives.

And as promised this week this week’s standard boxes will be getting lettuces from Cranbrook Community Food Garden right off Roman Road. And rhubarb as the second item of fruit for all of you. Check out our photo gallery of this delightful community food garden. And you can even visit as part of the Edible Gardens Open Day (details below).

Cranbrook Community Food Garden

A delightful community food-growing space with a diverse range of crops in raised beds, involving people of different ethnic cultures.

Whats happening:

We will be opening our gates to celebrate our summer harvest, all are welcome to have a look around and sample some garden goodies.

When: 20/09/2014  Time: 11 – 3pm
Where: Cranbrook Estate London E2 0SQ
How to get there: Buses D6, 8, 309 / Tube: Bethnal Green

This Week’s Bounty

No-Potato Substitute
Spinach, Perry Court

Fruit Supplement
Spartan Apples, Kent
Rhubarb, Cranbrook Community Food Garden