Turnip greens: not as boring as I thought

“For the love of God! No more greens!”

That was my first thought when I picked up our CSA box yesterday. This week brought us lettuce, arugula, stir-fry mix and chard, but we’re still wading through last week’s head of cabbage and an impulse bag of Brussels sprouts that I picked up to supplement our already-bursting vegetable drawer.

A generous bundle of Tokyo turnips, greens attached, lay heavily at the bottom of our vegetable menagerie. Typically I twist their tops off and into the compost they go …except that we don’t have compost anymore. And it makes me feel sad to put a huge pile of edible greens in the trash, when they came all the way from Dixon just for me. I decided to see what I could do with them.

I’ve been wary of cooking up just any old greens ever since I volunteered for an organic farmer a few summers ago in Illinois. At the farmer’s market one day, a couple holding a baby asked me whether carrot greens were edible. “I don’t see why not!” I said, and merrily sent them on their way. Later I found out that carrot tops are a controversial ingredient; some people eat them with reckless abandon, while others insist they’re toxic. Oh, my. I dearly hope they didn't grind up a bunch of toxic carrot tops for baby that night after I gave them the green light. So to speak.

I’d never cooked turnip greens before, so I had to do a little research first. The leaves are studded with tiny pricklies that seemed to require a bit more than a quick sauté. I ended up using this recipe, more or less, but I boiled the greens for about five minutes before proceeding through the other steps.

The results were great! Turnip greens have a natural spiciness to them but lack that stringiness you sometimes find in spinach and chard. Mine came out very tender, and the smokiness of the bacon and the creamy egg complemented them well; it brought to mind that great culinary classic, the spinach salad with warm bacon dressing.

With my foray into the land of turnip tops, I guess I just set us up with even MORE greens to eat each week. But that’s hardly a bad thing, especially when bacon is involved.

Magical Greens and Beans Soup

After enduring a long interlude on a waiting list, we finally got a call from Eatwell Farms telling us that we could begin picking up a CSA box from them each week at our neighborhood collection site.

Every morning until the pick-up day, I woke up thinking, "Four more days until our box arrives! Three more days until we get our box!" I felt like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning.

When Thursday came, I excitedly lugged home our order: one box of produce and half a dozen pastured eggs.

Now it's Tuesday. The death grip of speedily decaying greens has been gradually tightening around my neck with each passing day. What to DO with all of them? Bunches of chard...piles of stir-fry greens...a bag of assorted lettuces...Italian parsley...not to mention that bundle of wild arugula and dandelion greens and sage that I couldn't resist at the Ferry Terminal on Saturday...HELP!

I can only handle so many nights of robust, dark green leafy stir fries before I go cuckoo, so today I created my own version of that old favorite, escarole and white bean soup. I basically took everything in my vegetable drawer, deposited it in a pot and heated it. Ok, it was a bit more than that, but not much. It came out splendidly, which I found absolutely shocking given how little effort was required. That's why it gets the "magical" title.

Magical Greens and Beans Soup
Serves about four

2 T. olive oil
1/2 purple onion, chopped
1 bulb green garlic (including green top), chopped
3 carrots, sliced into rounds (peel if you care to!)
Full handful of Italian parsley leaves, lightly chopped
Half a handful of sage leaves, lightly chopped
An even smaller amount of fresh thyme and rosemary, lightly chopped
1 T. Better Than Bouillon chicken base*
5 cups boiling water (approx.)*
6 tiny potatoes, halved
Copious amounts of assorted greens that have been washed, destemmed, and roughly chopped
1/2 of a 15 oz. can of cannellini beans, drained
A bit of spicy Spanish chorizo, chopped into bite-sized chunks (optional; I used some leftovers from the Fatted Calf)
Salt and pepper
Grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

In medium-sized pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, green garlic and carrots, and saute for five minutes or until softened. Add parsley, sage, thyme, and rosemary and cook a few minutes more. Add Better Than Bouillon paste and stir to coat all ingredients. Add boiling water to pot and cover. Bring liquid to a boil. Add potatoes and greens, and reduce heat so that mixture lightly simmers for 15 minutes. Add cannellini beans and chorizo and simmer 5-10 minutes more. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and top each bowl with grated Parmesan before serving.

*Or you can just use chicken broth here instead... or veggie broth, of course...