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

[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.