So, our farm share has helped me incorporate a few new vegetables into my cooking. Previous to the farmshare, I was in a vegetable rut. I admit it, I was serial buyer of broccoli, spinach, and salad. My farmshare has expanded my horizons a little bit. I do not know how I lived a full vegetable experience before beets, and beet greens, chard, and kale.
Now, of course, the crucifer family includes a whole gamut of vegetable yumminess – broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, collards, turnips, rutabaga, and Brussels sprouts. Now, I love Brussels sprouts, but if I could only have one, it’d be kale. Broccoli is now way down the list. But, if you roast it, I’ll be first in line. I like my broccoli with char (extra carcinogens) please.
I realized this after the farm share ended, and I was hungering for greens, not salad or spinach, but real greens, like I’d come to rely on during the fall. So, I did something I don’t normally do but should do more often – I went to the fabulous food bar at the People’s Food Co-Op for lunch. I knew they’d have kale. Mmmmmm. I realized I needed to eat there more – local, organic, yummy….
Maybe I’ve just started noticing, but Kale seems to have gone mainstream. I mean, it was just featured in Bon Appetit magazine. I’ve been loving their quick recipe “for supper” – blanch kale for 1 minute, then saute with garlic, onions, garbanzo beans, a little bit of stock, and then top with a fried egg. It’s what I eat when I’m just cooking for me. Yum.
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I would encourage you to also try to get in on some Leeks – very good stuff.
Les Halles cookbook has some great soups where Leeks place a central role
Hey thanks.
Yeah, I love leeks too 
. They came in the farmshare, and again it is a vegetable I’d rarely used before and now needs a bigger place in the repertoire. Thanks for the cookbook recommendation.
D.
Dunrie -
There’s an Ann Arbor food blogger with a new blog “365 days of kale”
http://365daysofkale.blogspot.com/
which is pretty much just what it says it is. We did “kale chips” the other day from her
http://dianadyer.blogspot.com/2008/08/recipe-kale-chips.html
which were easy and delicious.
Comment by Edward Vielmetti — March 6, 2009 @ 11:43 pm
Hey Ed,
Thanks!
I did try this recipe for Kale Chips from Bon Appetit and I did like it. The one you pointed out looks even more flavorful (spices!) and I can’t wait to try it.
-D.
For the longest time, kale made me think of Grandpa Heinrich. He brought us kale from his garden & boiled the same bunch every night until we ate it all. Remember? We made a pact to choke it all down so it wouldn’t be served again the next night! He was so excited we liked it!
Comment by Chris — June 2, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
Posted by: Dunrie
On: February 18, 2009
Category: Life
not particularly objective musings on odds and ends – Dunrie Greiling, Ann Arbor, MI 48105