Sunflower Greens

I have a new favorite food—sunflower greens. They are exactly what they sound like, the green, first-growth of the sunflower plant. To be even more specific, these greens are grown by first soaking the unhulled sunflower seeds in water before planting them in soil. After about eight days, and before the second set of leaves emerge, they are tall enough to harvest. That's it. It sounds simple, but the results are remarkable.

At first glance, the sunflower greens reminded me a little of Miner's lettuce or purslane, as both bear a slight resemblance to succulent plants. Both have thick (edible) stems which are light green in color, and darker green leaves on the top. But the differences ended there. The sunflower greens actually tasted thick; in fact, I could have measured the thickness of the leaves had a ruler been handy. They were remarkably toothsome and substantial for just some measly greens. They almost reminded me of crisp peanuts when I was chewing them, oddly enough. And their flavor? Sunflower oil and spinach. I definitely felt like I was eating something green and good for me, but without the heavy roughage texture that some "health food" contains.

It turns out that in addition to tasting wonderful, sunflower greens are extremely good for you. That green "spinach" flavor I tasted? Chlorophyll, which apparently does good things for humans as well as plants. They are also loaded with vitamins such as A, B-complex, D, E, and a slew of minerals. But the biggest surprise for me was the amount of protein that these greens contain. Sunflower greens have just slightly less protein than an equivalent amount of chicken meat. Vegans take note—eat your sunflower greens!

Gingered Carrot Leek Soup

An oversized bag of carrots from Nash's Organic Produce and these beautiful mini leeks were the inspiration for last night's dinner, Gingered Carrot Leek Soup. I'd had the carrots for a few weeks now and well, they needed to go. The leeks looked just like green onions, but their taste and smell revealed that they truly were leeks. I made sure to gently saute them in a little bit of butter and olive oil to soften and sweeten them without cooking away their springy, fresh flavor.

I must admit that since the days at my grandma's table long ago, I have never been a fan of cooked carrots. Is it their mushy texture or the completely different "cooked" taste they take on that resembles nothing whatsoever the flavor of a fresh, raw carrot? Afraid of revisiting these food memories, I tried to spice the soup up with some ginger. I added "ginger juice" by squeezing the pulp of grated ginger to extract its very essence. Spicy? no. But it sure added a wonderful element of flavor to what turned out to be an absolutely delicious soup. No "cooked carrot-ness" at all.

Gingered Carrot Leek Soup
2 bunches mini leeks, sliced thinly
1 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 cup white wine
4 cups vegetable (or chicken) stock
About 1 1/2 pounds carrots
1 large piece (about 4 ounces) fresh ginger
1 cup low-fat milk
1/4 cup cream

2 Tbsp. plain yogurt
1 Tbsp. grated ginger
salt and pepper to taste

Heat large stock pan over medium-low heat. Add olive oil and butter. Add sliced leeks and cover pan cover with a lid. Gently saute for about 10-15 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so, until the leeks soften and the edges begin to brown. Increase the heat to medium high and de-glaze the pan with about 1/4 cup of the wine, scraping until all brown bits come up. Add remaining wine, stock, carrots, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until carrots are tender when poked with a fork, about 30-40 minutes.

For the ginger juice, peel the large piece of ginger and grate into a (double-thickness) piece of cheesecloth set over a small bowl. Gather all of the grated ginger together in the cheesecloth and squeeze until no liquid remains.

Remove pan from heat. Using a hand-blender, puree the carrots until smooth (alternatively, blend in batches in a blender). Return the pan to low heat and add the milk, cream, and ginger juice. Add more milk or water if too thick. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

For garnish, combine the yogurt, grated ginger, salt and pepper. Drape over the soup and serve!

River Valley Ranch Feta

This feta from River Valley Ranch Cheese was SO good, and so unlike the regular feta you get at the store. It actually tasted like it came from milk, with loads of flavor and lots of wonderful acidity and tang. I've bought their aged cheeses in the past, with their perfectly semi-soft interiors. But perhaps it was my desire for something young and fresh that drew me to the little tubs of fresh feta cheese. Well, that and I was looking for something to sprinkle on top of the freshly foraged Miner's lettuce from Foraged and Found Edibles! I was so excited to see this harbinger of spring and its tender green shoots. We've enjoyed its later season cousin purslane in summers past, but Miner's lettuce seems especially precious in this cold and nasty spring we are having so far. How anything can grow in this rain and snow, I don't know. But grow it does, with all of the vitamins and antioxidants that we are craving at this time of the year. And yes, the feta sprinkled on top was the icing on the cake.

So there are some signs of spring, from the sunny daffodils to the fresh feta and the green, green Miner's lettuce growing on forest floors. Cheers to that!

The Same Old Kale and Potatoes

I am so ready for spring and all of the color that has been lacking from the market for months now. Berries, lettuce, tomatoes, herbs — I could go on and on about the things that I am looking forward to. But instead it's March and there I was at the market last week with nothing but meat, cheese, and the same old kale and potatoes. The most exciting things I found were these Russian Banana fingerlings; exciting because of their name, but it turns out that they're not all that special after all. They are apparently easy to grow and quite prolific, making them a friend of the farmer. Their yellow skin and banana shape are undoubtedly where the "banana" part of their name comes from while the "Russian" connection is due to the fact that they originated in the Baltic area. They are said to be a waxy, moist potato, but we found them to be more on the starchy side. To prepare the Russian Banana fingerlings, I halved them lengthwise then browned them in duck fat on the stove top before roasting them in the oven. They were not as crispy as I had hoped, but still an excellent potato overall.

Winter sucks, but at least there's always kale and potatoes.

Geoduck

Without a doubt, the geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck) is the oddest looking creature I have ever eaten. It is essentially a giant clam, but its extremely long (and phallic) siphon makes it look more like something you would expect to see on B-rated horror movie than on your dinner plate. And the 2-pound specimen I bought from Taylor Shellfish Farms was not cheap either. At $12 a pound, you pay for its rarity. Taylor's Shellfish farms the geoduck, but according to him, most of his inventory is sold in Japan where it undoubtedly fetches an even higher price tag. I've seen the geoduck at his stand at the market a few times before, but I finally got up the nerve this weekend to tackle the task.

The most daunting part of eating a geoduck is preparing it. Following the directions of the expert I bought the geoduck from, here is what I did:


After blanching the entire clam in boiling water for about one minute, I ran it under cold water, then pulled off the outer membrane of the siphon.

The siphon was then ready to be cut off and sliced for sashimi.

To get to the meat inside of the clam, I first ran a small knife around the outside of the shell,

then pulled out the meat until the (quite obvious) innards came apart from the flesh.

To prepare the clam meat, I cut it into small hunks (after first making sure to rinse off any sand) and sauteed it quickly with green onions and oyster mushrooms. I was told not to overcook it, to be careful as you would with a scallop, so I put the geoduck in after the mushrooms were mostly done cooking and let it saute for only about 3 minutes or so. Not wanting to overwhelm its flavor in any way, I finished it off with a tablespoon of butter and a light sprinkling of salt and pepper. We served the geoduck, both cooked and sashimi, with some rice and baby bok choy from the market.

The concensus? Surprisingly good. Something about the exoticness of the geoduck made it seem like it was going to be difficult to stomach. I was just coming off of the flu when I prepared this, so granted, it probably wasn't the best timing to be trying something out of the ordinary. But, not only was it not scary to eat, it was actually quite delicious. My biggest complaint was with the sashimi-ed siphon, which I didn't cut nearly thin enough. In hindsight, I should have sliced it into paper-thin pieces instead of chunky rounds. Because of this, the sashimi was my least favorite part. It was very briny, like an overly briny oyster, and a bit too crunchy. A dip in soy sauce helped to mellow out the flavor, but unfortunately we were out of wasabi, which was sorely lacking. The cooked clam, on the other hand, was a delight. The meat was interesting, as some pieces were more like a chewy clam in texture and others were almost buttery-tender. Granted, my sickness-dulled taste buds couldn't detect much in the way of unique flavor, but it did almost seem to be a cross between chicken and clam. It was certainly more of a texture thing, with most of the flavor coming from the mushrooms and butter.

While I had success with the clam meat, I feel like I need to give the siphon another chance. That, and I'd like to have the benefit of all of my taste buds! So for those reasons, the geoduck is certainly something I will try again in the future.

Mangalitsa Fat

Remember last year when I paid a bunch of money to try the new and improved pork, mangalitsa? Well, knowing that the fat from the mangalitsa was the most prized part of this pig, I saved the copious amounts that cooked off of my roast by putting tablespoon-sized lumps of the chilled, solidified fat in the freezer. I've used the fat throughout the year, whenever I remember it mostly. But the other night my final tablespoon of mangalitsa fat transformed an ordinary chicken thigh into an extraordinary meal. I made sure that the chicken was very dry, then doused it liberally with salt and pepper. The fat was heated until it was almost smoking, then I browned the chicken on each side for about 5 minutes before tenting the pan with foil and putting it in the oven. I cooked it at 375° for about 15 minutes, flipping it once. I can't explain how the fat made the chicken taste so delicious, but it was just, well, extremely tasty. The fat had created a crispy and succulent crust on the outside (even despite the fact that it was skinless), while the meat inside was juicy, tender, and dripping with flavor. The chicken was just your average grocery store bird, so maybe all of their claims about this miraculous fat are right? Who would have thought that something we take for granted every day, simple fat, could be so significant and transformative. So save your fat!

Celeriac

While living in France as a sixteen year-old exchange student, I quickly grew to crave all of the fresh vegetables I had come to take for granted as a part of my California upbringing. Fresh leafy greens, silky avocados, the crunch of a raw carrot—these are good, fresh foods, right? France has good food of course, but where were the vegetables? The closest thing I ever got to a green vegetable on my plate was the knobby, ugly, celeriac. By the time it made it to the dinner table, the celeriac had been cooked to near oblivion, so that it in no way resembled a vegetable. It probably was boiled and then mashed before being served on my plate alongside the usual slab of beef. I have since come to appreciate celeriac and I was excited to try my hand at preparing it when I saw it at them market last week.

Celeriac is the gnarly base of a plant that is specifically cultivated for its root. Thus, try as they might, the green tops of the celeriac plant would never grow up to be the celery stalks we are used to. I’m not sure why, but this underground cousin of the traditional “American” celery has never caught on here. Once you trim off the tops and cut away its thick skin, the flesh is creamy white. Its flavor is less assertive than green celery stalks, with just a slight celery-parsley flavor.

Celeriac can be eaten raw or cooked. To eat it raw, the trimmed root should be grated or sliced thinly before being tossed in a salad, for example. Cooked, celeriac can be boiled, roasted, braised, sautéed, or puréed. I found a great recipe idea for roasting celeriac with apples to go alongside a roasted chicken in Aliza Green’s book Starting with Ingredients. The combination of the sweet apples and spicy celeriac, complimented by the delicious apple-cider reduction sauce, was fantastic. The following is an adaptation of her recipe.

Roasted Chicken, Celeriac and Apples with Apple Cider Glaze
Serves 6

2 cups apple cider
2 cups chicken stock
2 sprigs thyme
½ cup chopped onion
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. peppercorns
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. fennel seeds

Combine all ingredients in a small sauce-pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer gently for about 15 minutes, or until the liquid is slightly syrupy and reduced to about 2 cups. Strain and reserve.

1 large celeriac, trimmed, peeled and cut into wedges
2 large Fuji apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
juice of 1 lemon
2 small shallots, thinly sliced

Cook celery root for 2 minutes in boiling, salted water. Drain and reserve. Toss apple wedges with lemon juice then add the blanched celeriac and shallots.

Preheat oven to 425°. Rinse and pat dry a whole chicken. Cut in half and place in a large roasting dish. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and fresh, chopped rosemary. Top with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil then rub it into the chicken. Scatter the apple-celeriac mixture on top of the chicken and roast for about 45-60 minutes, turning once. Served on top of polenta/ potatoes/rice with the warmed sauce drizzled on top.