English Peas, Spring Onions and Roasted Almonds

Just cooked English peas, sautéd spring onions and roasted, salted almonds are a delicious combination of tender sweet, sweet pungent, and crunchy just salty. You can set this side dish next to grilled fish or chicken or mashed potatoes and a roast. It's...

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Leaf Vegetables Category Archive

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Mizuna

Mix mizuna with other salad greens and mesclun or add shredded mizuna leaves to soups and stir fries at the end of cooking.

Mizuna has a mild and tangy flavor. Use mizuna as a bed or garnish for meat and fish, grilled seafood, poultry or barbequed pork. You will find the flavor of mizuna peppery-fresh but not overpowering.

Mizuna is a spring to early summer green from the mustard family. Its leaves are finely dissected and glossy green on long, slender stems. The leaves look something like a dandelion green. Mizuna grows in a rosette to about 9 inches (23 cm) tall and 16 inches (45 cm) wide.

You can toss young mizuna leaves—which are mild tasting--in a mixed salad. Larger leaves—which can have a mustardy or bitter-green tang--are best cooked briefly. Mizuna is sometimes called pot herb mustard.

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Bok Choy

Bok choy is sometimes called Chinese cabbage. You may also find it by its Cantonese variation, pak choy, and you may also find it by the names white cabbage and Chinese chard.

As if the names were not confusing enough, if you look for bok choy at the farm market you may find the same plant in one of its many incarnations: seedling or “baby”, mature, and flowering. Bok choy does not look the same in its differing stages of growth.

To this, you can add various varieties of bok choy: Canton or dwarf bok choy, Shanghai or green-stemmed bok choy, Taiwan or Fengshan bok choy and additional variations known as choy sum, tatsoi, and yau choy.

Bok choy originated in China. “Choy" or “choi” is the romanized word for the Chinese character that means “vegetable.” “Bok” or “pak” means white. Sometimes the word “sum” is added, which means “heart.”

The best way to navigate the world of bok choy is to talk to the growers at the farm market and to try bok choy in as many of its incarnations as you can.

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Russian Red Kale

Russian Red kale is thick, juicy and chewy. Match this kale with grilled sausages, pork or turkey. You can also match Russian Red with grains, roots, dried fruits and nuts.

Russian Red has silvery-green to blue-gray leaves that look like a cross between a turnip green and a highly lobed oak leaf. This kale doesn’t have the frills of the curly kales or the deep folded crinkles of Tuscan kale. Its flat and the lobes reach almost to the stem.

You’ll find Russian Red more magenta to ruby red about the veins, particularly in early spring. That’s what cold weather will do to this kale. When the weather moderates, you’ll find Russian Red more gray or green than red. Either way, after cooking this kale turns deep green.

Don’t expect Russian Red to be tender when harvested young like other kales. From the get-go Russian Red leaves are chewy. Don’t even think about sinking your teeth into the stems.

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Spring Kale Steamed

Kale is usually cooked and rarely eaten raw because of its strong pungent flavor. Small amounts of raw, young kale can be added to salads to bring a spicy note. Steam kale and serve with butter, lemon juice, and chopped bacon.

Kale has large cabbage-like curled leaves, usually soft green but also shades of blue-green and variegated shadings from red to white and yellow to white. Curly-leafed kales form compact clusters of tightly curled leaves.

Kale can be prepared just as you would spinach. It should not be overcooked otherwise it will lose its hearty flavor and texture. Cook kale until it is just tender, usually 5 minutes or less. To moderate the strong flavor and fibrous texture of some kale, you can blanch kale for 5 minutes before cooking depending upon the toughness of the green.

Steaming kale. Place 1 to 2 inches of water in the bottom of a pot and bring to a rapid boil. Place the kale in the steamer basket. Turn the heat under the boiling water to medium. Place the kale in the steamer basket in the pot and cover with a tight-fitting lid. Cook with the lid on for 2-5 minutes.

Italians steam kale until tender, then add olive oil, a little garlic, breadcrumbs, and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese in the last minute or two of cooking.

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Flowering Arugula

Arugula is pungently peppery and well matched to milder salad greens and endive. Certainly, you can serve juvenile arugula on its own.

Arugula flowers bring the same peppery dash to a salad and some wonderful color as well. Arugula flowers are white pinwheels with burgundy center stripes and veins.

You can use arugula flowers as a salad or soup garnish. You can even mix them half and half with spring mesclun for a zesty side salad.

Arugula is sometimes called rocket, maybe because it grows from seed to maturity so quickly. It’s a cool-weather green. You can sow it in late summer, cut several leaves in the fall, and let the plant sit through the winter—even under the snow. In the spring, the plant will take off and bolt—or set flowers.

The arugula flowers you see at the farm market this spring got their start last fall.

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Steamed Brussels Sprouts

You don’t have to get fancy to enjoy Brussels sprouts. Simply steam or sauté the sprouts and serve them with butter or lemon or sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, like you see here.

To steam Brussels sprouts, arrange the sprouts or pieces on a steamer rack. Bring 1 to 2 inches of water to a rapid boil. Place the rack in the pot and then turn the heat down to medium. Place the lid on tightly and steam until tender when pierced (5 minutes or more until tender crisp).

To butter sauté sprouts, cut the sprouts in half lengthwise. Pan fry using 2 tablespoons butter or margarine. Cook and stir for 1 minute. Add 3 to 5 tablespoons liquid; cover and cook until stem end is tender when pierced.

Steamed or butter sautéed, you can add the Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste and serve hot, or set aside in the refrigerator to reheat and serve later.

There are many ways to enjoy fresh spring Brussels sprouts:

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Spring Brussels Sprouts

Brussels sprouts are a biennial grown as a cool-season annual. They survive winter snows to push their final harvest of miniature cabbage-like sprouts in spring.

Brussels sprouts have a nutty, cabbage-like flavor that makes a delicious hot side dish dressed with butter or meat-roasting juices.

Lightly steamed Brussels sprouts are perfect with a lemon-butter sauce, or you can simmer them with chopped celery until tender and then fold them into a cheese sauce.

If all of this sounds too rich, cooked and cooled Brussels sprouts can be halved or quartered and simply added to a tossed green salad.

Brussels sprouts can be divided into early, midseason, and late varieties. Early varieties are harvested in mid-fall; midseason varieties are harvested from mid-fall through mid-winter; and late varieties are harvested from mid-winter to early spring. Late or spring varieties yield the largest number of sprouts.

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Spinach Planting

Spinach is well suited for the spring and autumn gardens. It is a cool-weather green that can get its start in soil as chilly as 35ºF (2ºC). Sow spinach in the garden 4 to 6 weeks before the last spring frost date. It’s a fast crop and can be harvested in 35 to 50 days, so is well-suited for planting and harvest in the cool weather of early fall as well.

Spinach can be eaten raw or cooked. The dark green leaves of fresh spinach will add color to a lettuce salad. Spinach can be pan-steamed in the water it is rinsed with.

Site. Spinach grows well in full sun in cool regions or partial shade in warm regions. Spinach is hardy and will withstand moderate frost.

Soil. Spinach prefers moist, humus-rich, fertile soil, thoroughly worked with plenty of organic matter added. Light sandy soils with good drainage are best in regions of high rainfall.

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How to Cook Mustard Greens

Mustard greens have a peppery-bitter flavor—like mustard. They have long been a favorite American soul food and are used often in Indian cookery.

Short cooking is the best way to preserve the flavor and texture of mustard greens. Overcooking will cause greens to become soft and mushy.

Match mustard greens with bacon, cheddar cheese, corn, cornbread, curry, garlic, ham, hot sauce, lemon, onion, salt pork, and smoked turkey.

Mustard Greens and Bacon. For a tasty match of mustard greens and bacon that you can serve next to mashed potatoes: Cook 4 slices diced bacon until brown. Drain off all but 2 tablespoons of the drippings; stir in 4 cups of chopped mustard greens and 2 tablespoons of beef broth. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. If you like, stir in 2 tablespoons shredded sharp Cheddar cheese and heat until melted. Serves 4.

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Mustard Greens

Mustard greens can be eaten raw or cooked--steamed, sautéed, or simmered. Prepare mustard greens like spinach, but expect a stronger flavor.

The strongest tasting of the so-called bitter greens—mustard has a sharp, biting peppery taste that can sting like a strong radish. Even cooked mustard greens will have a “bite”.

The best mustard leaves for eating raw or for cooking are harvested young and tender. Consider the mustard green a sparing add-on to a green salad or mesclun. Cooked combine mustard greens with mashed potatoes or puréed legumes.

There are western and oriental or Asian mustard greens. The western mustards includes curly-leaf or common mustard which has a frilled oval leaves and mustard spinach which has large smooth dark green leaves that resemble spinach.

The Asian mustards include mizuna, a Japanese green with bright green fernlike leaves, mibuna with narrow, strap-like leaves, and komatsuna with spinach-shaped leaves.

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