Greens! What to do with them Julia Harrington Reddy, CSA@ Ansche Chesed Core Group Greens are plentiful at the beginning of the CSA season, because they like cool wet weather and grow fast. But when you get several different types of greens at once, it can be overwhelming. Most people whose pre-CSA experience has been chiefly with spinach try to simply sautée all greens, but disappointment follows when the greens are too tough, or too bitter, to eat. While you're waiting for inspiration, they are taking up half the fridge. How to cope? Here are some principles and ideas to make it easier. #1. Strategize. Decide what your objective is. Are you going to cook the greens immediately, or prep and store them for future cooking? Often, when I get back from the CSA (in the evening, after working hard all day), I don’t have the energy to cook a full meal. Indeed, with vegetables that take quite a bit of prep, I may never feel as if I have the time—when I do cook, it has to be relatively fast. Cooking with CSA produce also has the feature that one can’t plan in advance what to cook: one has to be creative with what’s available. The mental energy required may be greater than the physical energy! Which brings us to... #2. Be your own prep cook. Washing and chopping doesn’t take any mental energy, and simply knowing that things are already washed and chopped makes cooking later much more appealing. For these reasons, it makes sense to separate the prep from the cooking. On CSA night, the objective is to canvass everything and get in the fridge, under some kind of control. (When the crisper drawer is so full that one can’t see what’s in there, it’s a recipe for finding soft and moldy radishes and turnips weeks later. ) Also, if you’re about to go on vacation it’s satisfying to preserve the share for use in the future, and even more satisfying to discover later frozen vegetables that you’d forgotten about. A tidy little freezer bag of chopped greens isn't distressing like a big bushy mass going yellow in the fridge. Instead, it’s like going to store without spending any money. #3. Cut them down to size. Greens take up a lot of space because they aren’t very dense. Fitting greens in the fridge, much less consuming them, means coming to grips with all that volume. A key place to start with most green is to separate stems and leaves. Stems are usually much tougher than the leaves, and therefore need to be treated as a separate vegetable, with different properties. Stripping the leaves off the stems not only reduces the size of the greens but is a first step to conceptualizing what you’re going to cook, since you can think about the leaves and stems separately. Exceptions are tender lettuce and arugula, and baby beet, radish, and turnip tops. A rule of thumb is that if the leaves don’t strip off easily by hand, i.e if the stem comes with them, then the stem is leaf-like enough to be treated as a leaf. For kale, collards, and most chard: you can strip the leaves off the stems by hand. This is much faster than using a knife. For braising greens and broccoli rabe, you want to cut off the lower part of the stem that’s really tough. Distinguish between stems that are just hard, like broccoli, and those that are fibrous. Hard stems can be cooked soft and used all kinds of ways. Fibrous stems should be composted. The best way to tell is just by biting into a small piece of stem. The difference between crunchy and fibrous is obvious. #4 Blanching/parboiling Let's face it: if all greens were as tender as spinach, life would be easy. In his book on Mario Batali, Bill Buford quotes Batali as saying, in reference to some greens, "You've got to boil the hell out of them so that you can actually chew the fuckers” (see the Batali recipe involving cauliflower greens at the end of this handout). Notwithstanding the salty language, it's good to be reassured that celebrity chefs use tough greens; the problem with is not with the greens per se, but with how we cook them. Once you've separated the stems from the leaves, they should be cooked separately, unless you’re following a recipe that specifies otherwise. Even the toughest leaves don't require boiling for more than a few minutes (i.e. fewer than 10). If you're going to freeze the greens, two or three minutes in boiling water is enough—it’s ok for them to be not quite tender enough to eat after this initial blanching, because they will get cooked further at a later time. Do yourself a favor and chop the leaves after they've been boiled and cooled -- they'll be easier to chop after parboiling, and easier to fish out of the pot if they are whole. Officially, blanching includes plunging into icy water after removing from the hot, but in my experience there are no grave consequences if one skips this step. Yes, you do lose some water-soluble vitamins when you boil in water. The main loss is of vitamin C (see the table at http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-2e.shtml). If you’re really concerned about conserving vitamins, you can also steam them, or cook them in a very small amount of water in a pressure cooker. Or, use as little water as possible for the blanching, blanch multiple greens in the same water, and use the same water for boiling stems. When you’re done, you can either drink the water (seriously—tastier than wheatgrass juice), or use it for cooking rice, couscous, or another grain that will absorb all of it (you can get a lovely effect if you’ve cooked beets in the water: red or pink rice!) This is where we emphasize that just about every green is edible. If you get a bunch of beets, radishes, or turnips, twist off the stems and leaves and cook them first; they will go bad much sooner than the root vegetables they're attached to. This is an extension of the principle of treating different parts of a vegetable like different vegetables. If you’re going to freeze the greens, wait until they are cool (spread them out of a dishtowel and wait a few minutes), and squeeze as much water out of them as possible before freezing. Use (and re-use) real freezer bags; they protect the vegetables much better. Freezing doesn’t have to be for months, it can just be for a week or two, until another bunch of the same green turns up at the CSA, or until you are cooking something in which you can use what’s frozen. Freezers are a great resource for CSA members because often you don’t get everything you need for a meal from the CSA, or you get elements you can’t easily integrate in a single meal. Freezing gives you time to think and plan. Just be sure to label freezer bags clearly. #5 Boiling or Pressure Cooking for Stems Those who are really hard core (pun intended) can cook with the stems. The toughest stems –all but the really stringy—will succumb if you simmer them long enough. Once the stems and leaves are separated, chop the stems into short lengths or chunks. Then you can store them neatly in a bowl or plastic container until you’re ready to cook them. Blanching—the brief plunge in boiling water described above, is also good for stems before freezing, and if you blanch them they will last longer in the fridge. A pressure cooker is very handy here—in less than ten minutes, you can transform a hard stem into something soft enough to be delicious with a little salt, pepper, and butter or olive oil. Fish them out with a strainer with a handle. Chopped, cooked stems can also be incorporated into soups, casseroles, or curries.
RECIPIES CRISPS: this works for all greens, even, surprisingly, lettuce. Tear (or don’t tear) the leaves into pieces (not too small because they shrink a lot), lightly coat with oil and sprinkle with salt and/or pepper. Ten minutes in the oven at 350 turns them into a snack of ethereal crispiness. As with many greens recipes, though, it’s important to separate tough stems from the leaves. Limitations of this technique are that the chips are very delicate and they lose crispness if stored. Also, they much too fragile for dipping. Bitter greens are still bitter after crisping, although they are so thin that they aren’t unpleasant. PESTO: you can make pesto out of more than basil—arugula (rocket), for instance. Or you can use a combination of greens. Strong-tasting greens are preferable, although you can ramp up the taste with garlic (not too much, because the pesto doesn’t get cooked, just mixed with warm pasta). Also I wouldn’t recommend this with really fibrous greens. Once can compensate for fibrousness with extra time in the food processor, but the texture won’t be as smooth. Also, one may need to add water while processing, because a fibrous green has less moisture in it, in contrast to basil which buzzes down to green liquid quickly. (I never promised this would be easy J) SAAG dishes: most people know saag dishes from Indian restaurants, the most common being saag paneer (spinach with cubes of cheese). There are dozens of recipes on the internet. When these dishes are made with spinach or tender mustard greens, they don't need to be pureed. However, when using tougher greens, different greens in combination, or when incorporating stems, use of a food processor is essential. Saag dishes can be quite spicy, and some incorporate yogurt or cream, so it doesn't so much matter what greens you use because you can control the taste and texture. Experiment! Five ideas for leftover greens (from Deborah Madison, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) 1. Toss them with chickpeas, pasta, diced tomatoes, and freshly grated Parmesan 2. Toss with boiled diced potatoes and mix in a little grated Gruyere. Or stir them into mashed potatoes 3. Mix finely chopped cooked greens with cooked rice, barley, quinoa, or pasta 4. Add greens to potatoes, lentil, and bean soups at the end of cooking 5. Chop and combine greens with feta, ricotta salata, or Gruyere, black olives and capers and use them to fill empanadas or spread over toast
Barley and Kale Gratin (From Deborah Madison, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) 2/3 cup pearl barley, rinsed |