altes Gemüse: old world and new world

 This post could also be titled "super fun facts for food nerds", or, a clever title from an article I found, "back to our roots, vegetables from grandma's garden." Root vegetables! Eating like 19th-century peasants in Germany! :)

I eventually decided that the Gemüsekiste (veggie box) is probably not the best option...since after a week we still had a bag of potatoes, three beets, a spaghetti squash, and no onions...probably better to just buy what I need/want at the local organic market, which is literally around the corner from where we live, every Saturday. And to try to simulate the excitement of new vegetables, I decided to try to move out of my comfort zone when choosing veggies.

Last Saturday was the first time I found kale at the market. You can't buy it in normal grocery stores here. So I was really excited, and chatting with the farmer guy at the stand, telling him how kale is rather popular in the States right now (I think Duluth declared kale to be their "community vegetable of the year" or something). So he was like, "Oh, do you like altes Gemüse? You should try this..." I hadn't heard the expression "old vegetables" before, but gathered from the context he was referring to heirloom varieties and not to stale veggies. I was intrigued. I told him "Yes, do you have something I should try?" And he sold me this huge knobby thing (pictured above), which turned out to be a Steckrübe (rutabaga), and some black radishes (pictured above). Two new things to try (lots of vegetable googling). Also got some Rosenkohl (rose-cabbage = brussel sprouts) and some more of this winter lettuce, and apples. It was a nice assortment.

The radish tasted like a normal radish: peppery and crisp. I put it raw on a salad with some of the greens, and mango, avocado and red pepper. Very good. The brussel sprouts we sautéed with bacon and olive oil, and put pine nuts and parmesan on them. Also good. By the way, if you don't know what brussel sprouts look like when they grow out of the earth, click here. It will blow your mind. We used the rutabaga on Thanksgiving, when we made a root vegetable gratin with gruyère and layered sweet potatoes, potatoes, rutabaga and beets in thin slices. The beets made it look pretty (sorry, no picture. you must believe me.)

But back to this strange, knobby-looking thing, and altes Gemüse, what used to be good old peasant food. We have had a lot of (I know, nerdy) fun looking up these strange vegetables and where they come from. There is so much fascinating history of colonization, exploration, and the industrialization of farming in these vegetables (and their virtual disappearance). The invention of trains, refrigeration...this totally changed what people ate and when they could eat things. And can you believe that Europe didn't have POTATOES or TOMATOES until they "discovered" the Americas? Amazing! I think I never recovered from learning that fact. This is a good point to not get too nostalgic about veggies. Are we glad that everyone is "re-discovering" heirloom vegetables? Yes! Are we also glad that we can eat things like mangos and avocados? Yes!

So anyways, some fun facts about these crazy winter root vegetables:

Parsnips used to be a main source of nutrition in Germany, into the 18th century, but they have a growth period of 7 months, so they were replaced by potatoes.  

Some older people still connect some kinds of turnips and rutabagas with war time, and don't like to eat them because it reminds them of those times of hardship. 

In Germany in the supermarket you can buy a bundle of vegetables called "Suppengrün" to make vegetable stock. Often this includes celeriac, carrots, pieces of these larger roots.

On my list of things still to try: Topinambur (sunchoke or Jerusalem artichoke), Teltower Rüben, Schwarzwurzeln, or Winterspargel (scorzonera? "black roots"), Wirsingkohl (savoy cabbage).

More reading on this topic: "Altes Gemüse," Die Zeit
Altes Gemüse, neu entdeckt, Die Welt
Zurück zu den Wurzeln -  Gemüse aus Großmutters Garten
German recipes with root vegetables: fancy, from Essen und Trinken

Gemüsekiste: was wir kochen II

Sorry to disappoint if you were looking for some creative use of celery root. I looked online a bit, and it seems Germans either make soup stock with it (aromatic like celery) or, another popular item: "Sellerie-Schnitzel", where you cut it in disks, bread it and fry or bake it. Not really how I love to eat my veggies. So we went with soup.

Tonight's dinner used from the Gemüsekiste: the celery root, two beets, an apple, and some of the winter lettuce.

We made a pumpkin-celery root soup, spiced with Indian spices (leftovers from my cooking class: chili, fresh ginger and turmeric root, some other weird root-like thing, no idea what it was), and apple-beet salad. Tomorrow the week is up, and we still have the spaghetti squash, potatoes, two beets, a couple of apples and a bit of salad. It was good to try out...definitely a lot of veggies for two people!  You have to be strategic about what you use first!

Gemüsekiste: was wir kochen

This week has had its ups and downs, and we've been very busy: seeing modern stagings of classic plays--Kleist's Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea, running a 10 K Schmalzstollenlauf race in a beautiful German forest (with bread/lard as the prize), trekking out to a newspaper archive, spending lots of time in the library and attending some classes...Biggest downer: Yesterday when coming home I turned the key in the lock of the front door and it BROKE off. I was in a rush, so Michael dealt with the Schlosser, the locksmith who came, and after 30 mins and taking the lock apart finally got it out (60 EUR bill...). He said the lock was very old and Michael was fascinated with the mechanics of the ordeal. So today we got a new key made as well. Just another day in the life, which happened to be an expensive one... Anyways, between all that we've been making some really delicious meals out of our Gemüsekiste we got on Friday from this organic farm. Above: roasted chicken with root vegetables (carrots, parnsips, onions), chard (mangold) pizza with tomatoes, pine nuts, salami, parmesan (Michael claimed it was "the best pizza ever"), and cabbage and caramelized onion tart with gruyère (inspired by last week's episode of The Office and mention of Dwight's cabbage pie..."We should make cabbage pie!" "Seriously?" "Yes!"). sehr lecker.  Recipe for the cabbage tart here.