Tag Archives: kohlrabi

Kohlrabi, Potato & Apple Soup

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As should be evident from my sporadic posts, it’s been a hectic autumn. I’ve done my best to keep up with the onslaught of fresh CSA veggies by making simple and serviceable dinners for one. I also hauled a ridiculous quantity of carrots, turnips, lettuce and fresh herbs down to Baltimore for Thanksgiving. I slunk home guiltily on Sunday, afraid to face the cabbage, kohlrabi and apples that I had left behind.

The cabbage made for a fine lunch once I cut off the moldy bits and cooked it up with carrots and a little bacon. The key is a nice sharp Dijon mustard. I had a work event Monday night. By the time I got home around 10:00, it was all I could do to dice an apple and sprinkle some granola atop my bowl of yogurt. I’m sure I ate dinner on Tuesday night but, between a big fundraising push and the scramble to write my paper for Wednesday’s class, I’ll be damned if I can recall what I made. I’d be willing to bet it involved peanut butter.

By Wednesday, what I had been telling myself was allergies had settled into an undeniable cold. Mercifully, I scored a seat for the long subway ride from Harlem back to my corner of Brooklyn. I’m still not sure whether the train skipped my stop or I failed to notice it through my feverish haze, but the extra long walk through a cold and misty rain didn’t help the situation.

I arrived home exhausted and in need of comfort. Scanning the pantry, my eyes alit on the dregs of a box of Streit’s Matzo Meal left over from my Passover foray into Miso-Spinach Matzo Balls. This time I stuck to the directions on the box, which yielded lovely, classic matzo balls in just under an hour, most of which I spent selecting the perfect soundtrack for my melancholy.

 

A normal person would have served these in a chicken broth, but I had some Hawthorne Valley beet kvass that was approaching its expiration date, so I went with a sort of borscht-matzo ball hybrid. It was deeply satisfying, if slightly off-putting in color.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t feel much better today, so opted to work from home. Breakfast brought more yogurt with apple and granola. For lunch I simmered a few of the leftover matzo balls with a couple of cubes of frozen chicken stock. At the last minute, I added some sad spinach buried in the back of the crisper. (Forgive me, Farmed Ted.)

Now about that kohlrabi…

Kohlrabi, Potato & Apple Soup

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 large onion, diced
  • 2 large kohlrabi bulbs, peeled and chopped
  • 3 large potatoes, peeled and chopped
  • 3 small apples, peeled, cored and chopped
  • 1/2 tablespoon dried savory
  • 1 teaspoon dried sage
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon white pepper
  • salt and pepper
  1. Bring olive oil up to medium heat in a large Dutch oven or other heavy-bottom pot. Sauté the onion until soft, approximately five minutes. Add the kohlrabi and sauté for another five minutes.
  2. Add the potatoes apples, herbs, spices and a healthy pinch of salt. Top with just enough water to cover, bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook until the kohlrabi is tender, which should take somewhere around 45 minutes, adding more water if needed.
  3. Puree using an immersion blender or in batches in the food processor, thinning with water if needed. Run through a chinois (or a food mill if you’re lucky enough to have one), discarding any fibrous remains. Taste and adjust seasoning with additional salt, pepper or nutmeg.

I had originally thought I might augment the puree with a generous pour of the half and half left by a house guest. But the resulting soup was so smooth and creamy and satisfying all by its vegan self that I opted instead for a sprinkle of pan-toasted croutons and a little diced apple.

Kohlrabi Potato Apple Soup

Thai Beef Salad and Quick Pickled Kohlrabi

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On Tuesday I returned from a deliriously fun and much-needed vacation to Montreal. That evening, I worked my CSA shift in a steamy warehouse. It is a testament to both the friendliness of my neighbors and the agricultural skills of the good folks at Windflower Farms that I do not begrudge my mosquito-bitten legs. I headed home around 8:30–itchy, dripping in sweat, and laden with fresh vegetables.

The rest of the week is a bit of a blur. I did my best to catch up at work, coming home late in the evenings to assemble a quick salad. The heat finally broke on Friday and I seized the opportunity for some actual cooking as well a joyride from my office in the Village to my home in Brooklyn courtesy of Citibike.

I’d invited a friend for dinner, assuming I could piece something together from the odds and ends in my fridge. I had red leaf lettuce, scapes, green onions, basil, and kohlrabi. I also needed to get a move on the meat socked away in my modestly-sized freezer before this month’s share arrived. I threw a block of ground beef into warm water to defrost, poured a glass of Riesling, and got to work on the kohlrabi, which looks like a cross between an alien spaceship and a deepwater sea creature.

Kohlrabi

Quick Pickled Kohlrabi (or Carrots or Whatever)

  • 1 cup rice wine vinegar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 10 black peppercorns
  • 20 whole coriander seeds
  • 2 pinches red pepper flakes
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 kohlrabi bulbs (and/or carrots, turnips, etc.)

Combine all but the kohlrabi in a very small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. While you’re waiting, peel the kohlrabi and cut into matchsticks. Pour the hot brine over the kohlrabi and let stand for an hour or so, stirring occasionally. If you have the time, toss it in the fridge to chill.

Quick Pickled KohlrabiAt some point, I decided to make some rice. I brought 1/2 cup of brown Jasmine rice, just under a cup of water and a pinch of salt to a boil, tossed a lid on, turned the heat down, and let simmer until we were ready to eat. I also rinsed and dried a head of red leaf lettuce.

Justin arrived a little after 7:00, by which time I had polished off the wine. Justin busied himself making a batch of gin cocktails with sweet vermouth and the poaching liquid from my foray into homemade maraschino cherries. I got to work on my best approximation of Larb, a dish that I associate with Thai food, although the internet tells me that it is actually Laotian.

Thai Beef Salad

  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil (or some sort of vegetable oil)
  • 1 garlic scape (or a couple of cloves of garlic), thinly sliced
  • 1 onion (in this case a fresh green onion), cut into slivers
  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • juice of 1 lime
  • 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar (or another lime, but I could only unearth a single dessicated fruit)
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • 1 tablespoon Sriracha or other chili sauce 
  • 20 leaves fresh basil and an equal amount of fresh mint
  1. Bring the oil up to medium heat in a cast iron skillet and then add the garlic scape, onion, and beef. Stir frequently, taking care to break up the meat.
  2. Mix the remaining ingredients, save for the basil, in a small bowl.
  3. When the onions are wilted and the beef is cooked through, dump the mixture into a bowl along with the sauce from the smaller bowl. Thinly slice the herbs and toss everything together.

Thai Beef Salad

I had intended to serve the beef mixture in lettuce wraps, but the lettuce turned out to be more spikey than leafy, so we mounded it on our plates, adding the rice, beef, and additional Sriracha. This would have been even more delicious had I remembered the pickled kohlrabi (blame it on the gin), which ended up making a solo appearance as the second course.

Happy Justin

From there, we whipped up a couple of Gibsons with radishes that I pickled during last autumn’s bumper crop and headed up to the roof for some fresh air. Back downstairs and having polished off the vermouth, we moved on to rye mixed with Campari and bitters–or something like that.

A Salad for Sailing

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I spent the day on a 75-year-old wooden sailboat owned by dear friends that’s docked in Oyster Bay. My sister Eliana, who’s staying with me for a couple of weeks, is vegan, so I got up early to pull together a protein-packed salad that doesn’t require refrigeration.

A couple of months ago I stumbled across a new technique for preparing tofu. When you freeze tofu, it takes on a radically different texture. Ideally, you would press it to release as much liquid as possible and then wrap it in cheesecloth before freezing it, but I’ve gotten decent results by just tossing a drained block into the freezer in a plastic container. When you take it out, the tofu will have yellowed and developed air pockets where the water has been sucked out. If you then simmer it in liquid, the tofu holds together much better and also takes on the flavor of the liquid.

Kale and Quinoa Salad with Candied Five-Spice Tofu

  • 1/2 container firm tofu – frozen, defrosted and cubed
  • 1 red onion
  • 1 kohlrabi bulb, peeled and cubed
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp sesame oil
  • 1 tbsp fish sauce (can be omitted for vegans)
  • 1/2 tbsp Chinese five-spice powder (or some combination of cinnamon, star anise, anise seed, ginger, cloves and/or fennel)
  • 1 pinch cayenne pepper
  • 2 tbsp Mirin
  • 1 tbsp sugar (honey or agave would work here too, though honey’s not technically vegan)
  • black pepper

Bring above ingredients minus the kohlrabi to a boil, lower heat and let simmer for 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Add the kohlrabi about halfway through. If you need more liquid, add some water. When onions have wilted and tofu is a nice brown color, remove the solids and boil the liquid until it takes on a syrupy consistency.

  • 1/2 cup quinoa, prepared according to package
  • 1 head kale, thinly sliced
  • 2 apples, cubed
  • 1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced (white and light green portions only)
  • 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
  • 2 tbsp sesame seeds
  • 1/4 cup shelled sunflower seeds

Combine above ingredients with all of your cooked items, stirring gently to combine. Give it a taste and adjust the seasoning with soy sauce, black pepper, sesame oil and/or rice wine vinegar.

It was a glorious day on Oyster Bay–sunny and 85 degrees. Some ospreys had had their way with the boat, so we started our voyage by scrubbing fish guts and other icky stuff stuff off of the deck. Somehow, this did not diminish our appetites. We ate lunch on the mooring.

The wind picked up in the afternoon and we spent a few glorious hours touring Oyster Bay, catching up on our lives and reminiscing about the books we read in high school. (Eliana’s summer reading is The Great Gatsby, which just happens to be set near where we were sailing.) Shooting the breeze, indeed.