Kale Daikon on Hiatus; Exciting Winter Veg Discoveries

Dear vegetable loverz,

You may have noticed a very long, wintry pause in the vegetable rumblings of this site. This is just to say that Kale Daikon is still at large, indulging in and thinking about the wide world of weird vegetables. At the same time, she has been thrashing about in the undertow of various other pursuits for the past several months (teaching, writing, translating, bouncing between apartments in an increasingly crazy S.F. Bay Area housing market), so her blogging activities have come to a stand-still for the moment.

We look to her valiant sometime co-blogger Eggplant Kohlrabi to come to the rescue, with a new series of vegetable musings, beginning with a very exciting interview with one of the vegetable world's preeminent stars, coming soon.

In the meantime, I leave you with some beautiful root vegetables to salute the end of winter, in this rainy interim while we notice the wind-blown blossoms and inhale the bewitching scents of spring.

To the right, above, are butternut squash, green-tinged celeriac (celery root), normal onion and the flatter, slightly sweeter cippolini onion, a regal Scarlet Queen hot pink turnip, an orange-purple rutabaga, and special apples whose names I forgot (vegetable names make a deeper impression on this mind, it seems).

The Scarlet Queen turnip was one of my most exciting winter finds at the Tuesday afternoon Berkeley Farmers' market. It comes from Riverdog Farm, which quickly became my market favorite for tasty, reasonably priced root vegetables. Turnips aren't normally my, er, cup of tea, but these were so crispy and fresh, with a barely discernible sweetness, almost like jicama (which I just discovered is also known as Mexican turnip, whoa), that I found I was eating them immediately after slicing. I also put them in salads because it seemed a shame to cook out the freshness and flavor. I did cube them once for inclusion in a winter vegetable lasagna that was a highly pleasing root veg carnival.

But my absolute favorite new weird vegetable discovery of the season came from Full Belly, at whose stand I tend to be careful about what I pick up because they are very $$$, the Porsche of market produce, but I nearly fainted with delight after trying their Karinata Kale, an out-of-this world (for kale lovers) mix of Red Russian Kale (lacy, gray-green, purple-tinged leaves) and Red Mustard. I almost never eat kale raw, even though it is my favorite vegetable, mostly because I find its leaves too tough for chewing, but this kale is so tender, so flavorful and with a mild mustard-green kick, that I found myself tearing off huge pieces and stuffing them into my mouth like a feverish rabbit that had suddenly awoken to find it had opposable thumbs.

 Big-time yum. The only drawback is that this kale is very very hard to find and sells out in the first couple hours of the market, so you have to be semi-unemployed or have an unconventional work schedule to get them in that 2-4pm Tuesday market window. Here is a fuller description, plus pesto recipe from Full Belly.

So purple-green and delicate, it could almost pass for shiso!












May your winter-into-spring bring more exciting weird vegetable treasures. I will be on WV hiatus through May but until then, look out for some new posts by my partner in crime, Eggplant Kohlrabi, also known by her initials "eek."

Karinata Kale Kisses,

Kale Daikon

The Turnip Princess

The Turnip Princess lies in wait for her Pumpkin Prince to appear one moonlit night and find her absolutely radishing. Her pale luminescence is crowned by her own greeny mantle and a chamommile diadem. In the midst of her reverie, she purses her spiced lips and sheds a single petal tear of unfulfilled joy.

The idea to create a Turnip Princess came to me from a German fairytale I read in The Guardian that is one of 500 forgotten stories recently unearthed from an archive in Regensburg, Germany. These folktales had been gathered in the Bavarian countryside by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, a 19th-century contemporary of the Brothers Grimm. Here is the article about the fairytales and the translation of "The Turnip Princess."

The Pleasure of the Parsnip

We normally associate springtime with the reawakening of the land and the rousing of dormant desires. Yet it is in the frigid, cracked depths of winter that the parsnip swells to its peak of flavor and beckons to us with its strange, pale allure. It promises an elusive taste, an echo of its cousin the carrot, though both heavier and lighter--sweet in a less obvious way and at the same time more substantial in texture, usually too rough to eat raw.

These intertwined roots locked in a lovers' embrace, or a gesture of sibling comfort, like Hansel and Gretel after they've knocked that old candy witch into the oven and reunited, come from Chez Panisse's prized wood cutter Patricia Curtan (okay, she actually prints from linoleum cuts but wood cutter sounded better in the context), and are reproduced in Chez Panisse Vegetables.



Hello. Do not be alarmed. I am a real live parsnip. You can stare at me all you want because I cannot see you. These are raisins that are my eyes. I put them on so you would not be alarmed by my lack of features, but I suppose that eyes can be just as alarming as blindness. Do you like the way that my tiny root arms and legs curve out just so, as though I were swinging through the air or swimming at an upbeat pace? Well, don't look down there too long or you shall notice that I am naked, and then we will both blush, and I'll look like a carrot. Tee hee.


These are my friends, Parsnip Too, Watermelon Radish, and Tokyo Turnip. We hang out all the time like those animals in The Wind in the Willows. Just like Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger, we go boating, have wild rides, and embark on memorable adventures. One time a gang of small potatoes from the Wild Wood took over Radish Hall...

... but we found a secret entrance and drove those intruders all out again. Good times those were, yes. Radish sometimes gets feisty, but we parsnips calm him down with our mellowness. We parsnips used to be the cat's meow in Europe until the potato came from the New World and took our place next to the meat.

And that is all we have from the real live parsnip because shortly after giving this speech, he was scooped up and put into a gratin with the potatoes, turnips, and a smattering of radish slices.

Here is the recipe for this delicious PARSNIP POTATO TURNIP GRATIN, adapted from Chez Panisse Vegetables.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Begin with about 5-6 small potatoes, 2 parsnips, 3 turnips, and a watermelon radish if you just happen to have one lying around. Feel free to include rutabaga too. Peel anything whose skin will be distractingly tough to chew through once cooked. Grab a hefty handful of herbs from your herb garden or the supermarket herb shelf. I took parsley, thyme, oregano, and some sage. Wash them all in a bowl of cool water.


Drain then slice the roots into 1/8-inch thick rounds. Rub a gratin dish (I just used one of those gigantic ramekin-looking white ceramic dishes) with smashed peeled garlic and butter. Lay down your first layer of rounds. Season with salt, pepper, and some sprigs of the herbs. Keep going with different root vegetable layers until you reach the top.






After layering, add your choice of cream, cream and chicken stock, or milk until you just reach the top layer. I used a mixture of soy milk and salted water, which was a bit cavalier but the best I could do under the circumstances. It turned out fine, I was half surprised to find. Then sprinkle the top with grated cheese, either Parmesan or Gruyere, or a mix of both, plus some thin shavings of butter.


And if you find you have leftover root rounds, just toss them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and any remaining herbs and lay them out on a baking sheet to roast on the oven rack below the gratin. Bake the gratin (and the extra veggie rounds) for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until nicely browned like this!


More parsnip recipes are waiting for you at Mariquita Farm.

Oh my neep!

Could it really be? Is Weird Vegetables tapping into the frosty heart of this season's Geist? This just in from our Irish vegetable linguist, Conor Creaney (aka Cardoon O'Chicory): neep is the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the day for today, Sunday, January 25, 2009. Leave it to the OED to unearth yet another pseudonym for a member of clan turnip that I left unexamined in my turnip vs. rutabaga post (see the comments too). If you make it to the OED site today, 'tis here. If not, then I've diced up the entry and kept my favorite bite-sized pieces below. I am particularly taken with the turnip paraphernalia (turnip watches and neep lanterns) that round out the uses of turnips elaborated below. Ju Duoqui may want to take note for her next vegetable outfit.

neep, n.

Now regional (chiefly Sc.).
...

1. a. A turnip; (also, in later Sc. use) a swede. Also: a turnip plant or swede plant.
In Old English, perh. also applied to rape, Brassica napus.
The usual name in all Scottish dialects and current in Ulster and Northumberland, it is also recorded by Eng. Dial. Dict. (1903) in Cornwall, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Herefordshire, north Wales, and Leinster.

...
1826 J. WILSON Noctes Ambrosianae in Wks. (1855) I. 207 Juicy neeps that melt in the mooth o' their ain accord.
...
1972 P. O'BRIAN Post Captain (1990) v. 123 She will bash the boat like a bowl of neeps as she sounds.
...
1997 Shetland Times 21 Nov. 27/1 An enjoyable meal of haggis, neeps and tatties was served by Lexie Mann.

b. Sc. and Irish English (south.). A parsnip. Cf. MYPE n.

...1791 MRS. FRAZER Pract. of Cookery (1800) 121 To stew Parsnips..when the cream is warm, put in the nips.

2. More fully wild neep. Any of several wild plants used medicinally; spec. white bryony, Bryonia dioica. Obs.

...

3. Sc. A watch; spec. a watch in a case, a turnip watch.
Sc. National Dict. (1965) records the sense in general Scottish use in 1963.

1866 W. GREGOR Dial. Banffshire (Philol. Soc.), Neep, a watch. 1895 J. TWEEDDALE Moff 210 ‘It maun be shortly sin if he dis,’ said Wullie Cuddy, consulting his ‘neep’. 1923 R. L. CASSIE Heart
or Heid 18 That great neep o' a watch o' yours wunna keep time.

---

COMPOUNDS

neep brose n. Sc. and Irish English (north.) brose made with the liquid in which turnips or swedes have been boiled.

1887 A. G. WILKEN Peter Laing 50 A great notion for *neep brose. 1959 C. GIBSON Folk-lore Tayside 33 Almost on a par with kale-brose were neep-brose, beef-broseand just plain brose.

neep land n. Sc. (now Orkney and Shetland) ground prepared or used for growing turnips or swedes.

1861 in Sc. National Dict. (1965) s.v. Neep n.¹, I was at Newmill yesterday and got the Dung and new grass Valued and plowing of *neep land is setteled. 1956 C. M. COSTIE Benjie's Bodle 9 Mither's washan and Ded's i' the neep lan'.

neep lantern n. Sc. = turnip-lantern n. at TURNIP n. Compounds 2.

1871 C. GIBBON For Lack of Gold xviii, The laddies paraded the village with *neep-lanterns. 1937 St. Andrews Citizen 1 May 3 They then got a turnip, hollowed it out in the usual manner when making a ‘neep lantern’, and gave the turnip the form of a skull.

neep-seed n. (a) the seed of the neep; (b) Sc. (north-east.), the time for sowing neeps.

1916 G. ABEL Wylins 66 The neepseed deen, me an' my chums an' pals Wid shim a bit, or dander to the walls.

neep-shaw n. Sc. and Eng. regional (Northumberland) a turnip top.

Turnip or Rutabaga?

Pop quiz, veggie heads. Rutabaga or turnip? Which is which in the above photo?

tick tock

tick tock

ding!

Decided? The bigger one is a rutabaga (right) and the smaller guys are turnips (left). If you correctly identified these specimens, then advance to Veggie Challenge #2: the radicchio vs. escarole blind taste test. According to Mark Bittman in his encyclopedic How to Cook Everything, an incredibly useful recipe resource that will save you hours of Internet filtering: "If you can tell the difference with your eyes closed between radicchio (seven dollars per pound) and escarole (fifty-nine cents a pound), you deserve a Julia Child award for Most Sophisticated Palate."

Incidentally, Bittman has a new book out called Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, which picks up the gauntlet that Michael Pollan threw down with The Omnivore's Dilemma (changed my life) and In Defense of Food (preaching to the choir for me at this point but still good) by combining the discussion of our bloated food system with practical guidelines and recipes for how to eat more sustainably and healthfully without fetishizing your food objects and spending your whole paycheck on two ears of corn and a lamb sausage. This book review by Laura Miller at Salon.com is worth reading not only for its use of the bizarrely intriguing term "snow jobs" (applied to diet books) but also for the way it aptly characterizes Bittman as a kind of everyman's foodie, the Joe Sixpack love child of Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, one might say.


Returning to the veggies at hand, if you failed the quiz, get yourself to your next farmers' market or produce-heavy grocery store and examine the rutabagas side-by-side with the turnips. They aren't too different, but these root vegetables do belong to slightly different species, Brassica rapus (turnip) and Brassica napus (rutabaga). Turnips come in both Japanese and French varieties, the former round, white, and cute, the latter, purple-tinged and with a more tapered end (the ones pictured here) and are available pretty much all year. Rutabagas, on the other hand, hit their stride in the winter months, becoming sweeter in colder weather, and are generally deep purple and yellowish with rougher skin and tougher "meat" than the more delicate turnip. I'd put my money on the rutabaga in a street brawl.

Provenance gets a little more colorful with the rutabaga, which is thought to be a cabbage-turnip love child——there's a possible analogous loop back to Bittman somewhere in there but I'm in no mood to dig for it at the moment——originating in 17th-century Bohemia. After that, this starchy staple gets associated with Sweden, nicknamed "swede" in Commonwealth nations, while "rutabaga" derives from the Swedish "rotabagge," meaning "root ram." Yes, root ram. It did just get better. Lest I overwhelm you with excitement, rutabagas/swedes/root rams are also known as "snaggers" in northeast England. How did I get so knowledgeable? By surfing here and here.

If you're wondering how to cook these earthy creatures, let the potato be your guide. I would roast them sliced up, maybe peeled, tossed with salt and olive oil, at 375°F for about 30-40 min. until browned around the edges and soft in the middle, or I would simmer them in a soup. Below, I made a gratin with one layer each of turnips, potatoes, and rutabagas. I had the rutabaga layer on top, but next time I would make it the bottom because it's tougher than the other two and so less inviting as the first bite into your mouth.

Turnip, Rutabaga, Potato Gratin (inspired by the recipe from Chez Panisse Vegetables)

Preheat oven to 375°F. Get together a handful each of turnips, rutabagas, and potatoes, enough to make one or two layers each in a 9-in. round or 9x12-in. baking dish. Wash and peel if you don't like skins or they're too scaly. Then slice turnips, rutabagas, and potatoes into thin, 1/4-in. rounds, and layer them in the dish as below. Season each layer with salt and pepper.
Pour a mixture of half cream (or milk) and half chicken stock (about 2 cups, but varies depending on the size of your dish) to just cover the rounds. Bake uncovered for 40 minutes. If you have some parmesan or gruyere lying around, grate some over the top to bake for the last 5-7 minutes.


I must confess that my final product in this instance came out a little funky, since I ran out of milk and got all MacGyvered out by using sour cream swirled with salted water. I also ran out of patience and energy while slicing the larger rutabaga, which ended up in savagely chopped, irregular blob shapes. I trust that yours will be much more pleasing.

Note: This post was inspired by a debate I had with an always friendly and gracious cashier at Bi-Rite over whether my purchase was a rutabaga or turnip (I was right; it was a rutabaga, though I was helped by the signage when I picked it out). Bi-Rite Market is a neighborhood grocery store in San Francisco's Mission district that specializes in organic and local products and that I usually denounce for its high prices, though its local produce is actually surprisingly affordable. Also, they're always super nice when I ask really specific and probably annoying questions about cuts of pork or call up and have them check on exactly what kind of beets are in stock and at what price.

Winter vegetable lasagna

Wintry weather means comfort food, of which lasagna is the melty, noodly king. Stifle your yawn. I weirded-up the above version, beginning with a recipe in Everyday Greens. Warning: this is a labor-intensive dish. I made the sauce from almost-scratch (used canned tomatoes), and spread the work over two days. The recipe follows, after a layer-by-layer explication of the veg-related details.

- Sauce: for once, I bit the bullet and purchased a $6 one-ounce bag of dried porcini mushrooms. I usually only pay exorbitant prices for fresh and local earth-borne products, but these I rehydrated in near-boiling water, diced, and added to a bubbling pot of tomato, onion, and zinfandel. I even reserved the aromatic soaking liquid, strained it to get rid of the grit, and stirred that in as well. A minor element of the finished product, the woodsy/earthy/meaty contribution of the porcini didn't go unnoticed, at least by me.

- Unidentifiable layer of green: to infuse my lasagna with xmas cheer, I pureed ricotta with steamed, salted broccoli and nutmeg-seasoned spinach, wilted into submission. Voilà! Brilliant green cheese.

- Roasted orange melange: parsnips, turnips, and rutabagas (below), plus a delicata squash, sprinkled with a blend of grated parmesan and gruyere.

Turnips: purple-white and the bitterest of the three. Can be thinly sliced and added to salads when young and crisp. Pleasantly radish-y.

Parsnips: resemble chubby white carrots (and evoke the droopy-mustached Miyazaki character riding the elevator in Spirited Away). Slightly sweeter than turnips, but still earthy.

Rutabagas: their purple and orange skin, thicker than that of the other two, hides only orange flesh. Sweetest of the trio.

Note: all of these roots get rubbery as they grow larger and older or, ironically, as they sit in the crisper. This can be counteracted by oven-roasting or steaming and mashing them.

Winter Vegetable Lasagna – adapted from Everyday Greens

Tomato-Zinfandel sauce (recipe follows)
1 large yellow onion, diced, about 2 cups
1/2 pound parsnips, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes, about 1 1/2 cups
**I used parsnip, rutabaga, turnip, and delicata for a total of 5 1/2 cups veg. Please feel free to work with whatever your heart desires. The only important factor when choosing is that the ingredients roast at the same speed. You can chop the denser vegetables smaller, or roast on separate sheets if they're of vastly different texture - like zucchini and acorn squash.**
1 pound butternut squash, cut into 1/2 inch cubes, about 2 cups
1 pound celery root, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes, about 2 cups
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tablespoon minced garlic
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs: flat-leaf parsley, oregano, marjoram, thyme. (Use whichever herbs you have on hand. You can also use dried, but they should be added before the roasting of the veg rather than after.)
1 pound whole milk ricotta, about 2 cups
2 large eggs, beaten
5 oz parmesan, grated, about 1 1/2 cups
2 or 3 pinches of freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 lb gruyere, grated, about 1 cup
1 lb fresh pasta sheets (I used whole wheat lasagna in a box)

Make the Tomato Zinfandel sauce and set aside (see below)

Preheat oven to 400

Toss the vegetables into a large bowl with the olive oil, minced garlic, 1/2 tsp salt, and a pinch of pepper. Spread the vegetables on 2 baking sheets and roast for 10 minutes. Use a spatula to loosen and turn them, and cook until golden and tender, about 10 minutes more. Set aside to cool.

Lower the heat to 350, transfer the vegetables to a bowl and toss with herbs (if you use dried, toss them with the veg prior to roasting).

Blanch or wilt spinach or kale or any not-too peppery green and drain well, squeezing if necessary. If you wilt it in a pan, there will be less excess moisture and you'll (probably) retain more nutrients. Once they've cooked down, drain and combine with ricotta in a food processor. Blend until the cheese is bright green.

Whisk the ricotta mixture, eggs, 1/4 cup Parmigiano, nutmeg, 1/4 tsp salt and a pinch of pepper together in a medium-size bowl. Combine the remaining remaining parmesan with the gruyere, reserving a 1/4 of the mixture to sprinkle on top during baking.

Spread 1 1/2 cups of the sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Cover with a layer of pasta. Pour another cup of sauce over the pasta, followed by half of the roasted veg mixture. Sprinkle with half of the mixed cheeses and another layer of pasta. Spread the ricotta mixture over the pasta, and cover with another pasta sheet. Spread one cup of the sauce over, followed by the remaining vegetables and cheeses. Add the final layer of pasta. Top with 1 1/2 cups of sauce, cover and bake for 35 mins. Uncover, sprinkle with reserved cheese mix, bake uncovered until set 10 to 15 mins more.

Tomato Zinfandel Sauce - Makes about 1 1/2 quarts

1/2 oz dried porcini, soaked in 1/2 cup water for 10 minutes (these aren't vital, but add a woodsy element and deep flavor to the sauce)
1 1/2 Tbs olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped, about 2 cups
salt and pepper
1 Tbs minced garlic
1/3 cup zinfandel or dry red wine
2 28 oz cans whole tomatoes with juice, pureed (I use Muir Glen)
1 bay leaf
1 Tbs chopped fresh herbs: flat leaf parsley, thyme, oregano or marjoram.

Drain the porcini through a fine sieve and save the soaking liquid. Finely chop the porcini and set aside.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan (or stock pot) over medium heat and add the onions, 1/4 tsp salt, and a pinch of pepper. Cook until the onions begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook one minute more. Pour in the wine and simmer until the pan is nearly dry, about 3 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, the porcini and their soaking liquid, the bay leaf, 1/2 tsp salt, and a pinch of pepper. Simmer over medium-low heat for about 30 minutes. Remove the bay leaf, add the herbs, and season with salt and pepper to taste. If the sauce is acidic, add a pinch of sugar.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

When you're cooking for 30 relatives, half of them (my mom and her siblings) raised on corned beef hash and waffles and ice cream, and the other half (my cousins under the age of 14) on Gushers, cranberry juice cocktail and turqouise-flecked Doritos, all weird vegetables must be camouflaged.

For the salad in the photo, I sliced Amagaki persimmons into unidentifiable wedges and had my sister Megan crumble Humboldt Fog goat cheese beyond recognition, then throw in some toasted pecans. Other dishes included a gratin of parsnips, turnips and rutabagas with Vella Asiago cheese–produced in the town of Sonoma, where our dinner took place–and brussels sprouts with pancetta. Everyone ate the root vegetables (most people thought they were potatoes), and the bits of pancetta upped the appeal of the roasted sprouts.