pease porridge

Braised Early Summer Vegetables

From my fridge, after dinner last night.  Yesterday, at the farm, friends of ours recommended keeping track of the produce using a white board, and I thought it was a good idea.

Speaking of dealing with excess produce, I've got a pile of books on canning on order from Amazon, for use later in the summer.  If you're interested in learning about preserving, watch this space; I will brave botulism and exploding mason jars for your benefit, dear reader.

Considering that the turnips and kohlrabi had been building up for a couple weeks, I ad-libbed a surprisingly yummy side dish:

My mom makes this 'peasant' pie for Thanksgiving that I love, and two of the main ingredients are turnips and dill.  I'm not too familiar with kohlrabi, but a quick trip around the web led me to several braising recipes,  so I sort of extrapolated for this family-style side dish.  The veggies end up tender and creamy, and the sauce is very flavorful.  The greens sort of wilted to almost-non-existance, which wasn't what I was expecting.  Maybe next time I'll toss them in later on in the braise, although, truth be told, it didn't bother me one bit that they were less assertive than their roots.

Collards

You may be thinking 'peaseblossom, when last we met, you were talking about how much you hated vegetables growing up.  What's up with the greens?'  Well, I'll tell you:

When my husband and I first met, and for the first several years we were together, he was a vegetarian.  Quite apart from my asparagus epiphany, I had to learn to love my veggies and fast if I was going to make our relationship work.  With the steadfast devotion of any convert, I tried any and all vegetables that came my way, and, (somewhat to my surprise) discovered that I actually liked a great many of them.

(My husband, in many ways my equal and opposite, was in a similar position when, several years later, he stopped being a vegetarian and soon thereafter found himself scarfing down everything from wild boar to raw fish.)

As it turns out, I love, love, love greens of all stripes.  I love cooking them, I love eating them, I love sharing them with the many deprived people who have never tried them.  This collard recipe (if you can call it that; I'm really only including it because one of the friends that recently ate these at my house said they were the best she's had) is the sort that'll probably get me in trouble with any readers I may have of the Southern persuasion; I like my greens not overcooked and mushy, thank you very much, and I like them simple and mostly unadorned.

Green Beans with Basil

I hated vegetables when I was growing up.  Hated. Them.  The only vegetables that I would eat between the ages of, say four and eighteen were: tomatoes, corn, peas, and iceburg lettuce.  I don't really know why I was so incredibly picky, although I have a few guesses.  Sometimes I blame the media, because kids aren't supposed to like vegetables, right?  Sometimes I blame my parents, who didn't actually cook a wide range of vegetables, and usually cooked them past the point of smooshy (and I can't stand smooshy vegetables, right up to today).  Sometimes I blame myself, for just being plain picky and stubborn and not wanting to try anything new.

I have a friend who related the first time he (who was also resistant to all things green) honestly tried broccoli: "I was like, how could I possibly not have liked this?  It tastes like butter."  For me, it was asparagus.  Sometime in my twenties, my then-boyfriend cooked asparagus for me, and I ate it because I felt I had to; I went from grudging to gorging in less than five seconds flat.  There were a lot of things wrong with that relationship, but that asparagus -- that slightly crisp, slightly melty, green and, yes, buttery taste of love -- I'll always remember it fondly.

This post isn't about asparagus, but it is about another vegetable that I just can't imagine anyone not loving.  Green beans can be just awful in the wrong hands, but cooked quickly and sauteéd with a little seasoning, they're always great.  This dish pairs them with basil, which I have to admit I hadn't thought to try before; I usually use thyme, or tarragon.  It's a great combination, and I have to think that it's going to be absolutely killer in summertime when I can get both in season, as opposed to the supermarket workhorse varieties.

Bay-Scented Potatoes

Apollo could never get a break with the ladies.  Even though he was the god of the sun, women were always fleeing from him.  Daphne, for example, disliked him so much, she preferred to spend eternity as a laurel tree rather than succumb to his advances.  You can't fault Apollo for his loyalty, though; the laurel tree was sacred to him from then on.

Bay leaves are not subtle, although their influence on cooking is.  Since you can't eat them, you usually only get a hint of them in your soup or maybe a fleeting taste in your sauce.  These potatoes are about as bay-y as you can legally get (the Oracle at Delphi may have burned or chewed bay leaves to inspire prophesy).  While they're cooking, your whole house will fill up with that wonderful bay aroma, and when they're done the potatoes will be infused with flavor, turning, as Patricia Wells describes it in The Provence Cookbook (from whence I got this recipe), "an already appealing vegetable into one that is irresistible".