Our first week we had Baby Red Russian Kale, golden beets, pea tendrils, lettuce, garlic scapes, sugar snap peas and summer squash. A few of these veggies were new to me: the Red Russian Kale, pea tendrils and garlic scapes.
One of the farmers said she enjoyed snacking on the baby kale while watching
TV. I wouldn't go quite that far, but found it tasty when incorporated with
other salad greens.
The pea tendrils I sauteed with olive oil and garlic. They tasted very like snow pea pods -- no surprise there, I guess!
I had long heard of garlic scapes via the blogosphere and was very intrigued but had never encountered them. I tried a little piece raw and wow -- instant heartburn! I found this great post on Serious Eats about the myriad things one can do with them and ended up grilling them with a little olive oil, sea salt and pepper. It was a little bit of a challenge because the leafy bits wanted to char. Grilling the scapes rendered them incredibly mild -- someone compared the flavor to asparagus and I have to agree. It was an incredible contrast to the hot, peppery-ness of the raw scapes.
One last comment: I LOVE beets, but I had never cooked them myself. I was a little nervous as I had heard that the process is quite messy. I found great stuff online about roasting unpeeled beets in the oven -- the peel slips right off the beets once roasted, but being June, I really didn't want to heat up my kitchen. Then I found this awesome post about roasting beets in a slow cooker. Voila! I rubbed the beets with a little canola oil, wrapped them in foil and tossed them into my crockpot, which I then plugged in on my screened-in porch, free to heat up the already overheated outdoors. A couple hours on high later and I had roasted beets. Once the beets were cool enough to handle, the peel slipped right off -- fabulous!
I also had a ton of gorgeous beet greens that topped the beets, and needed to attend to them immediately while they were still fresh but wasn't going to be able to eat them that day. I referred to this wonderfully informative post on A Veggie Venture for direction on how to prepare the greens for later use and also for the original inspiration for roasting my beets.
The pea tendrils I sauteed with olive oil and garlic. They tasted very like snow pea pods -- no surprise there, I guess!
I had long heard of garlic scapes via the blogosphere and was very intrigued but had never encountered them. I tried a little piece raw and wow -- instant heartburn! I found this great post on Serious Eats about the myriad things one can do with them and ended up grilling them with a little olive oil, sea salt and pepper. It was a little bit of a challenge because the leafy bits wanted to char. Grilling the scapes rendered them incredibly mild -- someone compared the flavor to asparagus and I have to agree. It was an incredible contrast to the hot, peppery-ness of the raw scapes.
One last comment: I LOVE beets, but I had never cooked them myself. I was a little nervous as I had heard that the process is quite messy. I found great stuff online about roasting unpeeled beets in the oven -- the peel slips right off the beets once roasted, but being June, I really didn't want to heat up my kitchen. Then I found this awesome post about roasting beets in a slow cooker. Voila! I rubbed the beets with a little canola oil, wrapped them in foil and tossed them into my crockpot, which I then plugged in on my screened-in porch, free to heat up the already overheated outdoors. A couple hours on high later and I had roasted beets. Once the beets were cool enough to handle, the peel slipped right off -- fabulous!
I also had a ton of gorgeous beet greens that topped the beets, and needed to attend to them immediately while they were still fresh but wasn't going to be able to eat them that day. I referred to this wonderfully informative post on A Veggie Venture for direction on how to prepare the greens for later use and also for the original inspiration for roasting my beets.
No comments:
Post a Comment