This week, my box contained:
a gorgeous head of red butter (?) lettuce
a bag of mixed baby greens
a bunch of little white turnips
three fabulous purple kohlrabi
two baskets of strawberries
two red onions
and a bag of blue cornmeal
I had feared that this time would come: kohlrabi in my CSA. Though I'd read about it through other food blogs, I'd never actually come across it myself. However, I showed no fear, perhaps because I discovered that kohlrabi was a staple amongst my ancestors in Eastern Europe. :)
After doing a little research into what could be done with kohlrabi, I decided to take the path of least resistance and just straight up eat it. I trimmed the leaves from a bulb, cut it in half, pared away the outside, then sliced it up and ate it raw with dinner. It's very crisp, very fresh, and, to me, is like a cross between broccoli stems and jicama. Like many raw vegetables, nutritionally it's a cell wall holding Vitamin C and small amounts of other vitamins and minerals. Low in calories, and most of those are fiber.
I'm very keen on eating the kohlrabi greens, along with some beet greens I also have in my fridge, and possibly even the turnip greens. I might be accustomed to the taste of greens, or I might be lacking certain taste buds, because they never seem bitter to me. Could be that I just acclimated my palate to sauteed kale back in my 20s and that was that. I'm thinking it would be tasty to do the greens in an asian style: steamed and mixed with sesame oil, sesame seeds, tamari and crushed red pepper.
The red onions, on the other hand, are going to be a problem. While I'm fine with white and yellow, I'm afraid that red onions have never treated me kindly. Possibly it's because they are most often served to me raw, and I just don't appreciate raw onions. However, this may be an excellent opportunity to make a real onion soup, with a mushroom broth base and perhaps a nice sprinkling of gruyere cheese.
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