Recipes From the Root Cellar_ 270 Fresh Ways to Enjoy Winter Vegetables - Andrea Chesman [4]
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An Introduction to Winter Vegetables
I love winter! The garden has been put to bed, and there are few outdoor chores that demand my attention. There is time for quilting and skiing. And plenty of time for cooking and having fun in the kitchen. What could be better?
The fresh vegetables that are available for cooking at this time of the year are the hearty greens, the members of the onion family, white potatoes and sweet potatoes, root vegetables, and winter squashes. Dried beans are also readily available. With the exception of beans, all of these vegetables can be stored in a root cellar with no time-consuming processing. Many are vegetables that have been neglected in winters of recent years in favor of frozen or imported summer vegetables. If you need information on how to choose, store, or prepare these vegetables, read on.
A QUICK GUIDE TO THE
VEGETABLES
I’ve organized the vegetables by family—all the greens together, all the root vegetables together, and so on. Here’s an alphabetical listing of the vegetables to help you find specific ones along with the page number.
Beans (dried)
Beets
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Carrots
Celery root
Collard greens
Garlic
Jerusalem artichokes
Kale
Leeks
Mustard greens
Onions
Parsnips
Potatoes
Rutabagas
Salsify
Shallots
Sweet potatoes
Turnips
Winter squashes
Hearty Greens and Cabbages
HEARTY GREENS, as opposed to salad greens, stand up to cooking, though cabbage is delicious raw in a well-dressed salad. Hearty greens include Brussels sprouts, cabbage, collard greens, kale, and mustard greens. (Spinach, Swiss chard, turnip greens, and beet greens are tender greens that are mostly unavailable in the winter.) Most of the hearty greens belong to the Cabbage family, all descendants of the wild cabbage, Brassica oleracea var. oleracea.
These vegetables stand up to some pretty cold growing conditions in the garden and can be counted on to store reasonably well in a refrigerator or root cellar. Best of all, they are all very nutritious, ranking high as sources of vitamins A, C, and E and calcium and well regarded for their sulfur-containing phytochemicals, which are thought to provide significant protection against several different types of cancer. One of the best things you can do for the long-term health of your eyes is to enjoy a serving of greens a few times a week.
You could also call these greens strongly flavored or assertive greens, because their flavors are strong—even bitter sometimes. There are plenty of people who think they don’t like the hearty greens. Usually these are people who are particularly sensitive to the bitterness of certain strongly flavored greens, such as mustard greens. You can tame the bitterness by blanching the vegetables for 5 to 7 minutes in plenty of boiling salted water, which will leach out some of the flavor compounds and give the greens a silken texture. Then prepare the recipe, sautéing or braising as the recipe directs. In my family, we love the bitterness, so I don’t usually bother blanching.
When preparing leafy greens, you’ll want to wash the leaves carefully; the more crinkled the leaves, the more likely they harbor grit or insects. The tough stems should be removed before cooking: Working one stem at a time, hold the stem in one hand and use the thumb and index finger of your other hand to strip the leaf off the stem. Discard the stem. Stack the leaves together, roll them into a cigarlike shape as best as you can, and chop into ribbons. Especially tough greens, such as collards, will cook more quickly if the ribbons are thinly cut.
It is challenging to measure greens accurately. If the greens are fresh out of the garden, the leaves stripped off the stems will be resistant to being packed in a cup, producing more volume. A wilted bunch,