CSA and Kale

[ashnistrike]

Last week was our first full week with a farm share.  We are splitting with our next door neighbors, but I was still a bit worried about my ability to iron chef a random assortment of vegetables every week.  I am therefore pleased to report that we managed to cook and eat everything in exactly seven days, and that it was all tasty. 

One item made me about as smug as I've ever been in the kitchen: the kale/chard mix of cooking greens.  I've never cooked greens before in my life--I generally like my leaves raw, and S considers the usual run of cooked spinach and so forth horribly revolting.  But you can't really leave kale uncooked.  I had this sample of quick-sauteed cooking greens at Whole Foods two years ago... and I managed to reconstruct it: just enough peanut oil to coat the leaves, a couple splashes of soy sauce, sesame seeds, ground garlic powder, chili powder, and powdered ginger.  (I know, but the point is to get as much spice stuck to the leaves as possible, and fresh won't have the same effect.)  Leaves stir-fried just long enough to be moist and barely wilted.  Delicious and crunchy and gingery, and S loved it.  I win at cooking.

This week, I need 101 things to do with leeks, and I only have 50.  Suggestions welcome!  Also instructive anecdotes about kohlrabi.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

But ginger is a vegetable! Matchstick it and put it in with the onions and/or garlic.

Leeks: Don't forget to wash them after you cut them into rings or half-rings--they get as sandy as spinach.

This website http://www.supercook.com/ is really nifty. If you sign up you can tell it what ingredients you have, and then it'll tell you what you can make.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

I don't actually like ginger that much. S would love it.

These leeks are actually amazingly unsandy. No idea how they did that.

Cool-looking website--thank you.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

My favorite thing to do with leeks is waterzooi, for which there are about seventy-five canonical recipes floating around, all good. Agreed with txanne about the sandiness issues. I cannot help you with the kohlrabi, but would be interested to hear what you do with it.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Sauteed the leaves, and have probably given up on the hard-as-a-rock sputnik ball.

[b1bl10v0re]

You kale recipe sounds good. I'll have to try it sometime :) Most of the Kale I eat is raw, sometimes I'll juice it or cook it. I tend to use it in salads or wraps.

If you need suggestions, my CSA has a list of veggies and member submitted recipes. Our Kohlrabi tends to be in season in the fall/winter, so I usually just peel it and toss it in vegetable soups. I like the flavor and it can usually be described as a mild broccoli/cabbage taste. Leeks are another thing that we get in the fall/winter here and as with the korhlrabi, it usually ends up in some sort of soup form, mostly leek&potato and veggie and then frozen for future meals, so this probably doesn't help much.

*hugs*

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the best things I know how to do with leeks are winter foods.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

That looks pretty tasty--and I have fresh stock in the house on a regular basis.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Of course I have 101 things to do with leeks. I'm Welsh.

They go very well in quiche, they go very well in shepherd's pie and meatloaf and cannelloni, they're delicious with mushrooms in a cheese sauce with pasta, you can cook them exactly the same way as my Michael Sullivan cabbage, making them Michael Sullivan leeks -- S would like that, and it's really good.

The thing with leeks is that they are an allium, like garlic and onions, and they will flavour things. So you can put one leek into almost anything you'd put an onion in, and people won't necessarily tell there is a leek there -- if you don't cut it into circles but lengthways and then into strips -- but they will taste the richness of it. This is my "not cooking on an empty page" thing -- if I have a bunch of leeks there will be bits of leek in everything rather than having a day when I am Iron Chef Leek.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

That all sounds pretty tasty, although some of it sounds a bit wintery. That's part of my problem, I think, is that in my head leeks are winter food.

I will bear in mind the "not cooking on an empty page" principle--there were at least two nights this week where I could have thrown in leeks and oregano, and didn't think of it in time.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Make potatoes au gratin with lots of gruyere and leeks. it's divine.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Mmm!