These early season veggie shares tend to be heavy on the leafy greens. This week we have a smattering of different leaves for you to enjoy. It’s been a full-time job keeping everything watered in the heat and wind.
French Sorrel
With it’s lemony bright flavour, French sorrel is delicious in this cooked Creamy Sorrel Sauce (try it on potatoes or fish…yum!) This is one of several greens that turns magical when you cook it. Yes, you can also eat it raw, but I’d recommend shredding it and adding it to other greens in a salad or topping a sandwich with it. It’s pretty intense. Here’s a nice recipe to eat it raw, but temper some of the flavour with yogurt.
Arugula
Nutty and kind of zippy, this green really brightens up a salad. If arugula is a bit too strong for you, try making a pesto. Here’s a recipe although, I gotta admit I usually just wing it with pesto; throwing the ingredients into the blender without measuring until I like the taste. Make your pesto a little more intensely flavoured as blending it with pasta will flatten the flavour.
Lettuce
We have both green and red lettuce this week. I’m cutting it at the mini-lettuce stage so it’s nice and tender.
Purple Orach
Yes, it’s a terrible name, but it’s a very tasty plant that you can treat like spinach. Orach has a bit more of a salty, mineral taste than plain ole’ spinach. It is great shredded on sandwiches or into salads. One of our favourite way to eat orach is tossed in pasta with sautéed garlic, olive oil and onion. It will turn your pasta purple!
Kale
Here’s a yummy dressing recipe for kale salad. This is the dressing that got me onto eating kale raw. I prefer kale lightly cooked, often adding it to soups, stews and curries near the end of cooking. (I’ll toss greens into just about everything.) Most of this week’s kale is from plants that overwintered and are shooting fresh growth and flowers. The flowers are a pollinator magnet so we always like to let some bloom in the spring.
Mizuna
Some of you got to try mizuna in the stir-fry kit last week. Mizuna is another green that I’ve come to really love in the last couple years. Being very versatile, you can use mizuna as a salad green (pairing it with sesame oil and soy sauce) or as an addition to a stir fry. I have added it to my morning omelette, just barely steaming it before serving. Here is a recipe for a yummy sounding salad.
The Supporting Cast
The share will also include bunches of greens onions, green garlic, cilantro and dill leaf.