My Co-op Farm Visit and Courgette, Pea & Mint Soup

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting a lovely farm in Worcester called MWW as a guest of the Co-op.

Celebrating the best of British seasonal produce, they invited me on a behind-the-scenes farm tour. What a treat!

I grew up in south Shropshire in a tiny village. A rural and predominantly agricultural area. Lots of my friends grew up on small holdings or farms, so I feel at home in that environment.

MWW is a large but very attractive farm, with big and spacious fields in the beautiful Worcester countryside. It is based on the traditional mixed farm principles with vegetable cropping to provide a healthy nutrient rich rotation.

The farm grows a broad mix of vegetables such as peas, broad, runner, and dwarf beans, purple sprouting broccoli, pak choi, choi sum, onions, asparagus, butternut squash and more traditional cereals.

All aspects of production, from seed to Co-op shelves, are controlled at MWW. It was fascinating to see the crop rotation in practice, and the speed from pick, to pack, to the Co-op shelves. Which means super fresh veggies for you and me!

The team gave me a big box to take away, filled with courgettes, runner beans, tender stem broccoli, pak choi etc. This gorgeous box inspired me to make two delicious seasonal dishes.

My first; courgette, pea and mint soup with tenderstem broccoli and pak choi pesto on fresh bread. I don’t think it gets much better than that. Fresh greens bursting with flavour and goodness.

As you know, I am pretty obsessed with packing as many veg into my meals as possible, so I made tenderstem pesto to be dolloped onto sourdough toast.

I added lots of nutritional yeast for a cheesy flavour and B-vits. And as my box of goodies included some pak choi, I popped a handful into the mix as well. Delicious!

I hope you enjoy my fresh and delicious recipe! I will have another one for you soon.

Love, Niki xx