16 October 2008

Arugula, Carrots, Garlic, Kohlrabi, Lemon grass, Lettuce, Onions, Peppers, Anaheim peppers, Potatoes, Radishes (red) or turnips (white), Shallots, Winter squash

I thought I would write about presidential debates, about how with their array of highly stylized tradition costumes, scripts, gestures and intonations they remind me not so much of keen intellectual combat as of Javanese shadow puppet theater.  Except that we sit and listen raptly to these often tedious political theatrics, while the Javanese understand that such shows only require intermittent and often half-hearted attention because surely they will occur again in much the same form the next time you go to pick up some fish.   

            But then I got a cold and my brain turned to mush, precluding any possibility of extended, grumpy comparative ethnographic commentary.  Though come to think of it the mushy brain syndrome could have set in when in a moment of weakness I turned on the debate and caught a couple of minutes of the two candidates arguing over which one of them is less faithful to his party’s principles, such unpredictability apparently being considered an asset.  I should have stuck to baseball.

            Whatever the cause, at present my brain can barely distinguish between a radish and a turnip.  Those of you better equipped to do so my be interested to note that to some extent it does not matter if you mix them since you can eat both raw or cooked and both have edible greens.  Madhur Jaffrey has a recipe from Uttar Pradesh for radishes cooked with their leaves in A Taste of India (and I would guess you could substitute turnips for radishes and end up with much the same dish).

            You may be thinking, depending on what is in your bag, that I have had similar trouble telling the difference between a winter squash and a pumpkin.  In fact, however, there is not really any difference.  The various sorts of winter squash and pumpkins all belong to a small number of Cucurbita species.  As it happens, pie pumpkins and Acorn squash are both Cucurbita Pepos and thus more closely related to one another then they are to, say, a Butternut (cucurbita moschata).  In any event, you cook them in exactly the same ways, my preferred method being to place the whole squash in the oven and bake it until it goes soft, then scoop out the flesh and puree it with a little cream and butter, a bit of nutmeg, a dash of paprika and perhaps a little sherry.  You can use the puree to make soup, eat it just like that, or mix in an egg and bake it until it sets slightly.

            Many of you, finding a couple of grassy stalks in the bag, may have come to the reasonable conclusion that I have also failed to tell the difference between weeds and edible crops.  As it happens, those are grassy stalks, they are not edible and we put them in your bag on purpose.  No, we are not getting a little punchy at the end of the season.  While you would not want to eat lemon grass, you would want to use it in soup for its excellent flavor (one of the basic flavors of Thai cooking).  Snip it into smaller pieces and throw it in some stock with a fair amount of garlic, simmer for a while, add onion, carrots, pepper (sweet and of Anaheim), perhaps some potato cubes, maybe even a couple of radishes or turnips.  When the vegetables have cooked, add thinly sliced beef, fried shallots, some lime juice, fish sauce and perhaps some arugula and serve.