Category: Vegetables

How to Make Greens Taste Grand

Posted by foodess on Sun 12th of Apr, 2009 09:15:25 PM

I was literally this close to having a Cadbury Creme Egg for supper. It’s Easter, after all, which I think is a perfectly legitimate reason to do such a thing. There is something about that tooth-achingly sweet fondant filling that drips down your chin and stickifies your fingers (and keyboard, as it turns out) that I find positively irresistible.

But, I reasoned with myself - it is exam period, and I will probably have a perfectly legitimate excuse not to cook on any given day over the next two weeks. And I have a crisper drawer in my fridge groaning under the weight of luscious, fresh vegetation. So, I reluctantly re-stuck the partially unwrapped foil on my delectable creme filled chocolate treat, and whipped out my apron along with some leafy greens. And I decided I should tell you about how to make greens taste grand. Yes, grand. Not just edible, but delicious.

I really love any edible leaf, but I didn’t always. Nothing is worse than a plate full of soggy, bitter, marsh-hued greens. The first time I had kale that I liked, it was a revelation. This was me: Whaaaaaaaaa….?! That can taste like this?? And now I fill my basket (and meals) with some variation of arugula, spinach, kale, chard, curly endive, beet greens, gai lan, rapini, etc. every week.

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Wilted Endive Lettuce with Orange, Dates, and Almonds

Posted by foodess on Wed 4th of Feb, 2009 11:47:25 PM

This Sunday I started with a typical trip to the market: a well-planned grocery list riding happily in my purse, reusable bag clutched under my arm, and a twenty tucked in my pocket. The list looked something like this:

• garlic
• apples
• sweet potatos
• red onion
• bananas

I had good intentions, really. Under normal circumstances I’m sensibly faithful to my purchase plan. But in an inexplicable, rapid-onset frenzy of produce gluttony, the noble list was ditched and the respectable basket of apples and garlic was suddenly bulging under the weight of things whose names had never graced the list at all - persimmons, rapini, spaghetti squash, meyer lemons, blood oranges and fresh dates, to name a few. Though the vegetable-fever lasted only minutes, it was long enough for greens to fly and for impulse decisions to be made. The reusable bag was soon outnumbered by plastic counterparts, and the twenty was ousted for the Mastercard.

Among my grocery-basket captives was a curious head of lettuce, one that I’d never used before. They called it Endive Lettuce, but I was suspicious. It looked an awful lot like escarole which I knew was related to the endive. And since these veggie-mongers were also touting Meyer lemons under the pseudonym “Sweet Lemons”, I knew the nomenclature here was not to be trusted.
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Fried Plantains

Posted by foodess on Fri 30th of Jan, 2009 05:36:59 PM

Plantains may look like bananas, but don’t be fooled. They are deceptively un-sweet, much firmer, and are used for cooking. They are never to be consumed atop cheerios, or smothered in peanut butter between slices of bread, and they most definitely do not belong in a chocolate-studded muffin (not that that ever happened to me or anything…). Not to mention, you would probably throw away a banana that looked like a perfectly ripe plantain - they are ready to use when the skin is black!

I fried some plantains to serve with jamaican jerk-seasoned pork chops. Hot, salted, and with a wedge of lime, they were a perfect complement to a Caribbean-spiced main dish. The flavour is starchy and only slightly sweeter than a potato - really not at all what you would expect from something that looks like it donned a Chiquita sticker in its lifetime.

The trickiest part of using plantains (besides mustering up the patience for them to turn black) is peeling them. It’s easiest to cut them into thirds, make a slit the length of the skin, and unwrap it with the aid of a paring knife. Cut it up into quarter-inch rounds, on a bias if you wish, or into lenthwise strips instead. Watch them carefully when frying - they go from perfectly golden to burned in no time.
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