mmmm, do you wonder about greens?

In order to make this a pleasurable, useful experience for you as well as me, I'd love to read any questions or thoughts that you have about green leafy vegetables. Send your questions, your ponders, your inspiring words or recipes. We'd all benefit!

I Dream of Endive

An unseasonably warm Springish gust has blown across my home this week in mid-February. This combined with the incredibly bright full moon has been inspiring some great creative projects. Nothing like a taste of Spring to motivate experimentation. 

So walking into the coop on Monday, I was struck by a beautiful big bunch of a  curly, curly light green vegetable and recognizing it as curly endive, I decided that this week would be the week of endive play. 

Up until this week, I have had little experience with this green. My only memorable experience of eating this vegetable was as slimy green strands in a salty chicken soup. Not a grand memory. Endive is a leafy green that belongs to the daisy family. It's soft like lettuce but unlike lettuce, it is often cooked. It is also called frisee and is often used in French, Italian, and Bavarian cooking. 

Europeans often eat curly endive as a raw salad so that's where I began my experimentation. Actually, I ran into a lovely friend at the coop and she and I began the raw endive experimentation by chomping down a big leaf like little hungry bunnies. As a raw salad green, endive is bitter which makes it an excellent spring cleansing plant but not the most enjoyable eating experience unless you are particularly partial to bitter tastes. To counteract the bitter, you could also add sweet elements to your salad such as roasted beets, walnuts, and sliced pear. If you're a cheese fan, goat cheese would be nice.

The next morning, I decided to toss some curly endive into a little omelette. That proved to be a delicious way to enjoy curly endive. Just like spinach, rip of a few leaves of curly endive and add them to your eggs for just two-three minutes until they're wilted, but not slimy. 

Traditionally, endive is often added to bean soups as a final step in the preparation of the soup. Because it was so warm this week, I did not venture into the soup realms, but I did discover a delicious way to enjoy endive.

Here goes:

Pesto Tempeh with Sauteed Frisee'

(Quick and easy!)

Serves 2-3:

Ingredients:

Bunch of Curly Endive or Frisee

1 large onion

1 package of tempeh

2 tbs olive oil

2 carrots

3 tbs pesto

Begin by chopping your onion, carrot, and tempeh into bite size pieces. 

Wash and chop or rip curly endive into bite size pieces. 

Heat 1-2 tbs olive oil in a large skillet on the stove.  Add onions to the skillet and sauté on medium until they begin to turn translucent 2-5 minutes. Add carrots and then add tempeh and continue to saute. Add pesto and toss to evenly coat and lastly, add frisee and saute for a final 2-5 minutes until the frisee is bright green and wilted but not limp and slimy. 

Serve over your favorite grain...quinoa, millet, couscous or try eating it over spaghetti squash for an added veggie kick. 

To Those Songs of Intermingling Greens

To those songs of mixed, up, chopped up, intermingling fermented vegetables. Sauerkraut, kimchee, cabapplefennelwonder. Of krauts, we sing today. 

St. John of the Cross wrote of the power of mixing body and spirit:

Your body is a divine stream,

as is your spirit

When your two great rivers merge, one voice is found

and the earth applauds in excitement

Shrines are erected to those songs 

and the hand and heart have sung 

as they served

the world

with a love, a love

we cherish

Stretching the mystic stream a bit, I'd like to introduce you to the simple process of mixing greens (cabbage in particular) with time and and a good dash of quality sea salt, resulting in such unique, surprising, intriguing melodies that you just might have to start writing ecstatic poetry. 

Fermentation practices can be found in cultures around the world. Not only does fermentation preserve food, but in many cases it introduces incredibly healthy bacteria into your system like lactobacillus, it makes food more digestible, and it's tasty! In fact, almost all of our delicacy foods have been fermented: coffee, chocolate, tea, cheeses, bread, wine. Fermentation is a grand, expansive world. If this whets your curiosity, check out a totally informative, fun, and practical book on the subject: Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz.  Your kitchen will be full of bubbling jars in no time. 

But for now, here's a little lesson on fermenting a satisfying, hearty green: cabbage.

Sauerkrauts are palates for great creativity. Pretty much any fruit or vegetable can be added to a vegetable ferment. 

For the most basic sauerkraut recipe, here's how you do it.

Sauerkraut: Fuschia style

Ingredients:

1 head green cabbage

1 head purple cabbage

Salt: big kosher salt is nice as is sea salt

Shred or chop up your cabbage in to fine pieces. Put in a large mixing bowl. Shake a good tablespoon salt on top of the cabbage each time you empty your cutting board into the bowl...say three times...three tablespoons of salt total...it's not a hard science, play about, it'll turn out well.

Then use a hard object like the base of a mason jar or a potato smasher, to hammer the cabbage in the bowl. This breaks down the cell walls of the cabbage, allowing the juices to flow forth. Keep beating for a few minutes.

Then, pack all of the cabbage into a big, gallon-size widemouthed jar or a ceramic crock and pack it in there as tight as possible. Pack it and press it. Pack it and press it down. 

Then you have a choice, you can either find a lid that fits inside the jar's mouth and place a heavy object like a rock or large can of artichokes on top of the lid/plate that's resting on top of the cabbage inside of the jar and this lid will keep pressing the cabbage down, inviting it to release it's juices and become a healthy bacterial garden or.... you can add a little bit of salty water to the kraut so that it just covers the top of the cabbage and swear each day to walk over to your kraut and press  the cabbage down underneath the water level..making sure it remains tamped down. 

In both cases the crock should be covered with cheesecloth and a rubberband or a towel and rubberband to keep little unwanted crawling things out.

Let it sit on top of the fridge for a few days to a few weeks...taste every so often . If it develops mold on top, just scoop out all the mold. The layers below should be fine. As soon as it ferments to a level that you enjoy, place the jar in the fridge to slow down the fermentation process and enjoy.

Again, pretty much anything can be added to a vegetable ferment: in classical kimchee, chiles, napa cabbage, shredded carrots, and ginger spice up the jar. Radishes, broccoli, and bok choy are nice. 

My favorite variation so far has been newly named the 

Cabapplefennel WonderSwirl

Try it out!

1 head purple cabbage

2 stalks of fennel

2 green apples

1 cup carrots cut into matchsticks

Caraway seeds (1-2tbs)

salt

Chop up all the veggies fine. Use the soft, whispy leaves of the fennel stalks. Mix it all up and put it all into a bowl. Add a few tablespoons of sea salt. Pound the veggies to encourage co-mingling and then pack it all in a jar. Choose either to add a little salt water or place a plate and rock on top of the mixture. Check it each day to make sure that the cabbage is underwater. 

Enjoy in 3-12 days or more! Put in the fridge when it tastes good to you!

Let your imagination soar for as Rumi says," What will our children do in the morning if they do not see us fly?" 

New Year Bok Choy

Happy Chinese New Year 2009, the Year of the Ox has arrived. The moon has retreated inward, a breath of savory introspection. 

In honor of this beautiful transition into a new year, I thought we could celebrate a beautiful chinese green.

Bok Choy is also a member of the cabbage family like kale and collards. However, as you can see, it's appearance is quite distinct and lovely. Both the bright green leaves and the white stalk are edible. The leaves are mild and can be eaten raw or cooked, and the stalk is a delightfully watery and refreshing. It's reminiscent of celery minus the stringiness. It too can be eaten raw or cooked. 

There are actually over 20 varieties of Bok Choy and smaller varieties are especially valued for their tenderness. Bok Choy is delicious chopped up in a miso soup or stir fry or finely sliced to add crunchiness to your fresh rolls and kimchee. 

I just finished spending a lovely weekend cooking for a group of spiritual activists and my fellow chef and I used Bok Choy in a recipe for a delicious Oriental Soba Noodle Salad which follows here. Prepare it for lunches this week!

Oriental Soba Noodle Salad

Inspired by the Esalen Cookbook

Noodles:

Prepare buckwheat soba noodles according to their instructions. Soba noodles take about 8 minutes to cook. Drain, rinse, and set aside.

Vegetables:

Lightly saute in 2tbs. olive oil 

1 tbs minced garlic

2 tbs. minced fresh ginger

1/2 cup diced red pepper

1 carrot, cut into matchsticks

1 cup chopped button mushrooms

1 cup snow peas, chopped in half

2 cups bok choy, sliced into thin ribbons

Dressing:

Toast 4 tbs. sesame seeds on the stove in a dry pan....just a few minutes of toasting on medium heat until they turn brown and smell deliciously nutty

Place sesame seeds in small mixing bowl and add

1/2 cup sesame oil

1/2 cup olive oil

5 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice- 1 fresh squeezed orange

1/4 cup maple syrup

5 tbs. tamari

Whisk it all together

Toss soba noodles, vegetables, and dressing in a pleasing bowl and enjoy!

Happy Year of the Ox.

The State of Greens...Collards in Particular

Much of my motivation in penning this blog is a desire to help restore the knowledge and usage of green leafies in this world. On most restaurant menus, one is lucky if they can find romaine lettuce, spinach, and the occasional sprig of kale for garnish. Frustrating for the greens enthusiast.

However, I had an awakening journey last week in which I realized in some parts of the United States, the culture of greens eating is still very much alive. 

So last week, I had the incredible privilege to ride around Alabama and Georgia in a bus of students, teachers, and professors dedicated to learning the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement, preserving the stories, and applying the principles of Nonviolence. In the spirit of this journey, we of course consumed a lot of soul food. 

I was delighted to discover the propensity of greens on the soul food restaurants' menus. Collards were the most popular with few showings of mustard and beet greens. 

Collard greens belong to the brassica family and are a large, strong leafy green. They grow with great fervor all over the Southern United States as well as in Spain, Africa, Brazil, Portugal, and Kashmir. Although they will grow for much of the year, folk wisdom says they taste best when the sparkles of frost have graced their dark leaves. They're of course, incredibly nutritious, and have long been a staple of southern cuisine. 

During slavery, slaves were often forced to feed themselves from the scraps of their white masters. These scraps included pig's feet, ham hocks, hog moss (pig's bladder) and so these were tossed in with a pot of collards to create a nutritious, tasty stew. The mineral rich juice is called pot-likk0r and makes an excellent tonic. The collards that we met on our tour were similarly cooked with hunks of meat...pork fat back mostly. I didn't see any pig feet or bladder although that would have been interesting. Sometimes collards are also prepared with a bit of brown sugar or vinegar. If you come upon a co-op down South, your collards might be prepared with shoyu, tamari, or maybe a bit of miso.

In ethiopian cuisine, collards are sliced thin, steamed, and then scooped up with a bit of fermented flatbread called injera. This is my favorite way to eat collards. 

So next time you're at the store, look for a bunch of large, flat dark colored leaves. Take them home, wash them thoroughly. Then roll them up, and slice them into strips...fine strips or thick strips. Toss them in a steamer basket, steam for 5-7 minutes. Sprinkle on a bit of sea salt, squeeze half an orange and see how you like collards plain and simple.  

Mmm, hooray. The culture of collards is alive and well.