Artichoke Intensi-TEA

Last month, my veggie-loving friend in Rio, Celery Kabbage, brought me a sweet present of artichoke tea. I'd never had it before—neither had she—and we brewed a pot after dinner. As the artichoke leaves steeped, we imagined the gentle, pale green tones of artichoke distilled into pleasant tea form, perhaps a little on the weak side. I thought of the way that eating artichoke leaves a slightly sweet aftertaste to the water you drink with your meal. I took the improvised kettle off the stove-top and served us both. We blew delicately, then sipped...
 

... and nearly spit the evil witch's brew across the room. If Ms. Kabbage hadn't joined in the tasting, I might have thought she'd been trying to poison me. It reminded me of the bitter herbal infusion my dad's acupuncturist made him drink for his allergies or the taste of the betelnut I chewed to be social while sitting on the ground with old ladies in Vietnam. And yet somehow more foul than either, partly because I'd expected a more literally "artichokey" taste. [Please insert pun on arti-CHOKE here.]

Anyway, thistle is all to warn you: please to only drink the artichoke/alcachofra tea in case of interest in reputed medicinal qualities, such as stomach and liver relief and weight loss. I don't know how it's all supposed to work, but I can think of a whole bunch of smart alec responses about how this truly awful tasting tea can kill your appetite and make you forget your stomachache because of the bitter bitter flavor in your mouth that is disfiguring your facial expression. Or maybe I should focus on opening up my mind and all my vegetable chakras and try it again, only this time using 1 leaf per cup of boiling water...

Weird Vegetable Iron Chefs at the NY Food Book Fair

Wild tamarack, basswood leaves, garlic mustard, fiddlehead ferns,
and knotweed over Spanish mackerel. Source: NPR

While some of us gaze dreamily out at the rainy rainforest in Rio de Janeiro, others are busting their chops organizing book fairs and slapping together improvised gourmet dinners in the throbbing capital of, well, capital and haute cuisine: New York City. Congratulations to Elizabeth Thacker Jones for pulling off the first-ever New York Food Book Fair in high style at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn (and proving that grad students can actually meet deadlines and be "real people" too) and to WV friend Leafy Heirloom (aka Leif Hedendal) for whipping up what looks like a very tasty, very veggie-inspired meal to accompany the event—and for getting his leafy mug featured on the NY Times food blog.

The Garden Gather dinner was held in honor of John Cage, genius of music and mushrooms, and co-founder of the New York Mycological Society, but the wild mushrooms that were supposed to be the centerpiece of the meal suddenly got shy of all the attention, so Leif and his co-chef Mark Andrew Gravel improvised with a whole bunch of New England-foraged greens that they'd never heard of before. The NY Times blog and NPR both covered the event, making it sound like an unexpected Iron Chef competition starring weird vegetables. The featured weird vegetables included twelve pounds of dried heirloom red cowpeas that Gravel packed in his carry-on bag from South Carolina, ramps, basswood leaves, tamarack shoots, lily shoots, knotweed (eh?), ground ivy, toothwort root (what?), sweetflag (what??), and fiddlehead ferns (relatively normal in this esoteric company). The chefs used a combination of the Internet and their instincts about texture and flavor to make the knowns and the unknowns all work together. Another top-chef secret shared by Leif went beyond the forest and into the sea. He made up for the unexpected dearth of mushrooms "by getting a lot of seafood—that's my idea of improving something, is throwing a lot of seafood at it." Oysters, blue crab, and mackerel. Sounds fishy, but we trust his Leafy heart still blooms green.

Toothwort root and knotweed, though I'm not going to pretend I know
which is which,  (I'm assuming that NPR's caption puts them in l-r order...)

The NYT write-up gives a fuller view of the context of the book fair and the meal, while NPR's piece focuses more on foraged greens and the potential incongruity of a swanky $150 per person meal being concocted from what might be considered as weeds: "In a different era or a less rarefied location, such a plate might suggest poverty — someone forced to scrounge for scraps (whey) and weeds (cattails) because they couldn't afford anything else."

This redefinition of obscure and foraged vegetables as a product of specialized knowledge (both in the gathering and preparation) that carries with it a certain aura of exclusivity and gourmet cachet is a tendency that has marked the culinary Zeitgeist of the past few years. Of course exclusivity and gourmet cachet are nothing new in the world of fine dining, but the attention dining-obsessed eaters are suddenly granting to the endless variety of vegetables that chefs are seducing them into accepting (with lots of butter, high quality olive oil, and creative combinations) has been an interesting and complicated phenomenon to witness—though always pleasing to experience when I'm lucky enough to taste one of these expertly prepared meals.

But it sounds as though this Brooklyn-based weird vegetable sermon was served to the choir, since one of the guests was already rapturing to the NYT about the greens he spotted on the way to the dinner: "It's really hard not to pick the lamb's quarters and the shepherd's brush that is growing within a block of here."

We at Weird Vegetables (the royal "we" of Kale Daikon and sometimes Eggplant Kohlrabi) look forward to a Bay Area incarnation of the Food Book Fair with much watering of the mouths and minds.

Vegetable Dressing

"Tutti Fruity" from the New York Times

Look at the New York Times getting all heady with edible fashion and food puns in their spread "Salad Days" from a couple weeks ago... I don't know whether I want to graze from this dress or just throw it all in the compost. The Arcimboldo inspiration is pretty creative, but some of these spreads made me feel abject about the model who got duped into these scenarios (like the one where they stuffed a fish in her mopey mouth, as though reminding her that models are there to look pouty but never speak). I much prefer self-authored perversities, like Suzan Pitt's asparagus animation (see previous post!).

Psychedelic Asparagus

Please watch this amazingly INSANE animated journey by artist Suzan Pitt while you are eating asparagus and sitting on the TOILET. It is going to blow your mind. I really like the saturated colors and the rounded, chubby shapes. Makes me think of Brazilian Tropicália. Thanks to the talented Internet huntress Amaranth Gadberry for unearthing this wonder from the year 1978.

UPDATE 5/15: Uh oh, sorry. Looks like the link pulled one of those "flower that blooms for a night and then fades away" disappearing acts on us. No more crazy asparagus video. Maybe it'll crop up in a different Internet weedbed somewhere. Send any leads on where to find this movie to weirdvegetables AT gmail.com

Daikon Prince Charming

It's been over a month, and the Turnip Princess was starting to tap her rooty tendrils with impatience at all my delays. Luckily, the WV team is always turning up some good things in the soil of far-flung territories. It was all the way in Santa Fe that agent Celery Kabbage came across this adorable Daikon Prince Charming, perfect for our turnip lady! He speaks Japanese, she speaks Portuguese, but they communicate perfectly in the international language of spicy root vegetables, and the salad days of their green love are in full bloom!

The Turnip Princess

The Turnip Princess lies in wait for her Pumpkin Prince to appear one moonlit night and find her absolutely radishing. Her pale luminescence is crowned by her own greeny mantle and a chamommile diadem. In the midst of her reverie, she purses her spiced lips and sheds a single petal tear of unfulfilled joy.

The idea to create a Turnip Princess came to me from a German fairytale I read in The Guardian that is one of 500 forgotten stories recently unearthed from an archive in Regensburg, Germany. These folktales had been gathered in the Bavarian countryside by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, a 19th-century contemporary of the Brothers Grimm. Here is the article about the fairytales and the translation of "The Turnip Princess."

Why Use Pepper When You've Got Spicy Sprouts?

To the wealth of oft-repeated sayings, such as "The apple falls not far from the tree," or, "Like father, like son," allow me to emend the following adages:

"Like veggie, like sprout."

"The sprout sprouts close to the root."

Do you recognize the sprouts in this photo? Don't worry, I won't make you take another quiz so soon after the last one: arugula. I've had arugula sprouts in the past (I must have), but never have I been so struck by how strongly these babies taste like fully grown, spicy arugula leaves.

Though not adored by all, sprouts are often used to freshen up sandwiches or garnish salads with watery flair. However, they often make more of a complementary visual and textural impact than adding any remarkable taste element. If the usual alfalfa sprouts are like extras, then these arugula sprouts bear the distinctive flavor of character actors, the Kevin Spacey of vegetables (before he turned into a leading man).


I paid what seemed like a fairly expensive R$3.50 (about $2) for a box of these at the Leblon organic farmers' market in Rio. A bunch of fully grown arugula would probably have cost the same or been slightly cheaper. But a small handful of these heart-shaped babies contains a surprising amount of spicy crispness, and I found that the lot lasted me for a week and seemed well worth the price after all. I sprinkled them on salads, on soups, and most memorably, atop a bowl of bow-tie pasta tossed with fresh pesto, parmesan, garlic, and halved cherry tomatoes.

Just as spicy, though less delicate than the arugula kids, are radish sprouts.

Interestingly, but logically, I suppose, radish sprouts compare to arugula sprouts in similar ways that radishes are like and unlike arugula. Both are spicy vegetables, but radishes have a more pronounced bite and crunch. They don't take a back seat to other vegetables on the plate as willingly, and the same goes for their mini-me's. Radish sprouts are thicker and harder to chew than arugula sprouts, and bear the delicate yet pronounced signature hot pink tones of the radish. Still, I used radish sprouts in pretty much the same way as the arugula—sprinkling them on top of whatever dish could benefit from a spicy-fresh finish and sometimes just plopping them directly into my mouth.

While both kinds of sprouts germinate above-ground, it's funny to think how differently their adult versions develop. While the arugula spreads its leaves in the rays of the sun, the radish blooms its secret self underground like a pale, pink, or purple mole, as this pleasing time-lapse video reminds us: