CSA Challenge: Kohlrabi Who Knew You Were So Tasty

Not the typical veggie salad

I managed to finish using all the veggies from the CSA box. There were a few salads made, so nothing interesting to report. By Sunday I had left the challenging kohlrabi, fennel, and beets. I roasted the beets. Super easy, just long cooking time and used a trick I had learned somewhere to get the skins off easily. Trick: Once the beets come out of the oven throw them in a bowl and cover it. Let the steam do the rest. After a few minutes take them out of the bowl and use a paper towel to remove the skin - it slides right off. I had thought about sauteing the fennel and serving it over pork chops. Unfortunately, the pork chops turned out to be not so fresh - suffering from some horrible freezer burn. What to do?

Well, I had the beets roasted, fennel shredded, and a still unused kohlrabi. Our friends who gave us their share of the box said the kohlrabi tastes good raw, just use a mandolin to slice it. Mandolin's scare the buh-gee-bus out of me. So many horror stories of people accidentally slicing the top of a finger off while using one. That's not for me. A broken foot last year was plenty. Turns out my food processor has a mandolin setting. I give it a try and out comes super thin ribbon-like slices of kohlrabi. Fantastic!

At that point, with the pork chop lost I had to go to plan B: Puttanesca pasta (I fondly refer to it as slutty pasta) and cool refreshing veggie salad. I layered the plates with kohlrabi and fennel, topped it off with beets and a sprinkle of the fronds from the fennel, drizzled it with olive oil and sprinkled a little salt and pepper. Presto change-o the ingredients from the CSA box were gone. Oh, and the salad turned out to be quite delicious - a mix of radish and black licorice complimenting the beets.

The moral of the story: Challenge yourself - you never know what you might learn and create. I never heard of kohlrabi before the CSA box and now I know I like it. Better yet, we'll be sharing a CSA box in fall with some friends. Can't wait to see what I learn then.

Oh, and of course, special thanks to our friends that gave us their share of a CSA box while they were away.