How I love winter vegetables. Come to think of it, I love all vegetables!!!
These are some of the seasonal vegetables I bought last week from the Queen Victoria Market and I always make the most of them.
Although the seasons have become blurred and are becoming even more so (changes in climate, new strains of seeds, faster and better refrigerated transport) I still look forward to seasonal vegetables and tend not to buy them out of season.
What I did with the above vegetables and the recipes (click on the links)
I stuffed the Artichokes with ricotta, almond meal and pistachio.
The Cime di rape were cooked with orecchiette.
The KALE was braised with garlic and eaten as a side vegetable. The left over cooked kale went into LENTIL SALAD
The CAVOLO NERO went into a soup.
The Frisée went into a mixture of leaves for salad.
I used half of the Celeriac raw with some rocket (dressed with homemade mayonnaise) and the rest I cooked and made a mash with cooked potatoes (Ratio: more potato than celeriac- I used 3 medium cooked potatoes and ½ cooked celeriac, butter and milk or cream, salt and pepper).
With the left over potato and celeriac mash, I added garlic, extra virgin olive oil and a little warm vegetable stock and made a Skordalia with a difference. There is no celeriac in skordalia and I am probably offending many fine makers of skordalia (those from a Greek culture), but it tasted great. The pink peppercorns I grounded on top also made a difference. I presented it with Sardinian carta di musica (music sheet)- a yeast-free, paper-thin bread. It is called pane carasau in Sardinian.
The red radicchio was made into a salad with canned tuna, cooked borlotti and red onion (Recipe from my book: Small Fishy Bites).
The fennel was braised and topped with TAPENADE
SEE: RADICCHIO, TUNA AND BORLOTTI SALAD and BRAISED FENNEL WITH TAPENADE
You will find other recipes for some of these vegetables on my blog: key into the search button the name of the vegetable you are looking for, and different recipes should come up.
In this photo there are artichokes, fennel, celeriac, kale, cavolo nero, red radicchio and a baby endive (which is sometimes called curly lettuce or frisée).
QUEEN VICTORIA MARKET (Carmel and Gus’s stall in B Shed, Stall 61- 63)