Rabe (raab) // the local food report

According to my friend Lucas, rabe is the new arugula. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it is delicious, and it's new to me. 

My mom called about a month ago to tell me that she'd made the discovery. "I just bought the best thing at the winter market!" she gushed. "Kale rabe!"

"What's kale rabe?" I asked. She explained that it's the little florets that pop up when kale overwinters and bolts, or goes to seed. It's kind of like broccoli rabe, except a little more sweet. "Great!" I told her. "I just cleaned out my greenhouse and filled up my compost with kale plants growing that exact same thing!"

Oh well. As my mom says, there's always next spring.

In the meantime I've found it at the markets here too. Four or five vendors had it at the first Orleans Farmers' Market of the season last Saturday, and a few had it this week in Wellfleet. And not just kale: turnips and collards too.

Rabe can be loosely defined as the flower bud of anything in the brassica family. This includes turnips, kale, cabbage, Asian greens, mustard greens, collards, and a handful of other veggies. They're biennial, which means they flower in the second year of their lifecycle. So when you overwinter these veggies—which many people do, since they're cold-hardy—you get flower buds the following spring. I've got turnip rabe outside as we speak. According to Ben Chung, a grower from East Orleans, the way to harvest it is to snap up the stalk until you get to the first spot where it's tender. That's the part you want, just like asparagus.

There are all kinds of delicious ways to eat it. Anna Henning of Redberry Farm in Eastham juices it with beets, limes, cucumbers, and carrots. My mom subs it for mizuna and bok choy in this tofu stir-fry recipe. Lucas grills it with olive oil and salt, and Ben Chung steams it and serves it with a little oyster sauce in the traditional Chinese way. I've got my eye on this kale rabe panini, and the other night I sautéed a whole bunch of collard rabe in some leftover bourbon sauce— amazing ! I think it would also be great in omelettes and really in any old recipe where you normally use asparagus or broccoli. 

What do you think? Have you tried it?

RHUBARB CHUTNEY // liz

Spring is finally on our doorstep here in Brunswick. Our forsythia and quince bushes are at their peak, the garden is full of ground phlox and forget-me-not, and the phoebes are making a racket as they set up shop in the girls’ old playhouse. And that sea of green and red you see here? That’s our rhubarb patch! It’s a killer. A friend gave us four transplants from her patch back in 1980, and life has never been the same. Spring at our house means rhubarb.

“What do you do with all of it?” someone asked a few days ago. Plenty, I told her. I make rhubarb compote and rhubarb crisp, and two kinds of pies: the traditional kind, and a custard pie that has a meringue topping. I make rhubarb streusel muffins, rhubarb cake, rhubarb fool, rhubarb jam, and of course strawberry-rhubarb jam. Like her mama when she was little, Sally even likes to eat it raw. We aren’t lacking for ideas about how to eat rhubarb around here.

I found the newest idea just a few years ago: rhubarb chutney. It’s in Brooke Dojny’s excellent book Dishing Up Maine. It’s a great accompaniment to a roast chicken or ham, but what I especially like it with is Indian food. My husband is the Indian cook at our house, and he’s set himself the life task of working his way through this: 660 Indian Curries. He only has about 600 left to go—which means we need a steady supply of chutney.

The recipe below makes about 2 cups. It will keep in the fridge for 1–2 weeks, and it freezes beautifully. I like to freeze it in 4-ounce Mason jars, which for two people makes the perfect accompaniment for one Indian dinner.

RHUBARB CHUTNEY

Because rhubarb is so acidic, be sure to cook this in a nonreactive pan (which means no aluminum or copper). I use a large stainless steel or well-seasoned cast-iron skillet.

4 cups diced, fresh rhubarb

1 small onion, diced

1 ½ cups sugar

½ cup water

1/3 cup white or cider vinegar

1 tablespoon peeled and minced fresh ginger

2 whole cloves

1 small dried red hot chile, crumbled into tiny bits, or ½ teaspoon dried red pepper flakes

½ teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a wide, deep, nonreactive skillet and turn the heat to high. Bring the ingredients to a boil, stirring frequently to avoid scorching.

Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, until you have a syrupy sauce that is close to the consistency you want. This will probably take about 30 minutes. Remember that the chutney will be a little firmer once it cools. Keep an eye on your skillet, and stir regularly.

Remove the cloves, and let the chutney cool to room temperature.

WATERCRESS // the local food report

Jesse Rose's family has lived on the same property for over a century. His great-grandfather bought the house in 1903, and his grandfather was born there in 1908. The watercress has been there at least that long, probably much longer.

It grows in a tributary of the Herring River, just below a fresh water spring. Jesse says the tributary is the only creek he knows of in the river with a hard bottom, and he jumps down into it in his muck boots to show me he doesn't sink. "Anywhere else," he says, "you'd be down in the mud."

Jesse knows a lot of other cool stuff about the river. When his great-grandfather first moved here, before the river was diked in 1907, the salt water came all the way in to the Wellfleet ponds. Outside the house, which is in between Coles Neck and Pamet Point, the river was deep-water, 100 yards across, and running strong. There were oysters and striped bass on the bank where we stand. 

Today you can still see the shape of the river bed. Jesse's grandfather and great-grandfather cleared most of it for farmland, but there are also plenty of briars and trees. The patch where we're standing is about 20 yards from the main river, and the creek is only a yard across, maybe two. Twice a year it fills up with watercress, those floating green leaves you see up there.

Technically watercress is an aquatic perennial in the brassica or mustard family. It grows wild in Europe and Asia and was introduced to North America long ago by European immigrants hungry for a taste of home. It needs fresh running water and especially alkaline water, so springs and fast streams are good places to look. Jesse says there are a few other spots where it grows in the Herring River, and that every spring and fall the growth chokes up the creek. 

He learned to harvest it as a kid. You need a good pair of scissors and a pair of rubber boots, and then all you do is hop in and cut above the roots, at the stem. You can eat both the stems and the leaves, but you want to leave the roots because that's where the plant will come back from the following spring. Jesse likes watercress mostly in salads, and he says he has a few friends who are wild for the flavor.

He calls it a zippy cilantro; I think it tastes more like horseradish. Either way it's good, and definitely spicy—not spicy hot, but zesty. You don't want a pure watercress salad—you want to cut it with something: mache, arugula, butter lettuce. 

The recipe I like comes from Darina Allen. It's on page 28 of Forgotten Skills of Cooking, right next to a watercress soup and a wild garlic pesto. It calls for watercress, wild garlic leaves, and lamb's lettuce (mache) for the greens, and these get topped with hard-boiled duck eggs and black olives. The whole thing is dressed with olive oil, balsamic, garlic, and sea salt, and Darina calls it a "lovely little clean, fresh-tasting salad."

I can't say I replicated it exactly. I didn't have wild garlic or lamb's lettuce, but I did have arugula. I used the watercress from Jesse's stream, and it was peppery and delicious. We live just across the river, but the spring's on his side. This weekend I'm headed down the road to find out if there's a patch on our side I can visit.

For more on identifying watercress, check out this guide in Mother Earth. And watch out for Fool's Cress! It looks similar and often grows nearby.

WATERCRESS SALAD WITH HARD-BOILED EGGS & OLIVES

I've adapted this somewhat from Darina's original based on availability. I think it still retains the flavor profile, though: lovely, fresh, and clean.

4 duck or chicken eggs

12 large black or green olives

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 clove garlic, minced

sea salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste

2 cups watercress
2 cups arugula or butter lettuce

Hard boil the eggs and immediately move to a bowl of ice water. Wait a few minutes before peeling. Chop and set aside. Pit the olives and chop finely.

Make the dressing by mixing the oil, vinegar, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. 

Toss the greens, eggs, and olives with the dressing in a bowl. Serve at once.  

TURNIP GREENS // elspeth

Today there is only one thing ready for harvest in the garden. It's a patch of turnip greens. I got a packet of Eastham seed last year when I was researching this story for Cape Cod Life magazine, down at the barber shop in Eastham from "Jolly" Roger Taggert. He reached under the counter, poured them into a manilla packet, and pressed it into the palm of my hand. "Plant these July 4th," he said. "Then let them overwinter, and the next year, they'll go to seed." That would give me more seed, he said, enough to start saving my own.

We're still waiting. The turnips are big and cream-colored, and the tops have popped up over the ground. The greens wilted and went dormant all winter in and out of the snow, and now they're growing again, furiously. Sometime around the end of June, I imagine, we'll start to see bolting and flower heads and then tiny black seeds.

In the meantime, we'll be eating the greens. I love wilted greens (Mom! are you reading? :), though I don't always follow a recipe. 

I didn't this time either. I gathered up a big armful this weekend, washed them, and cut them into thin ribbons. Then I warmed up a spoonful of bacon fat in the cast iron skillet and turned up the heat. When the greens started to wilt I added a splash of red wine, some minced garlic, and a pinch of salt. I spooned everything into a bowl, topped it with a few cooked pinto beans, croutons, and Parmesan ribbons, and that was lunch.

It was delicious and incredibly easy. And best of all, it made use of what we have today.

TURNIP GREENS & BEANS

I'm not sure this is so much a recipe as a recommendation. You could sub all sorts of things: black beans or garbanzos for the pinto beans, spinach or Swiss chard or kale for the turnip greens, duck fat or butter for bacon fat, you name it. But the idea's here, and it's one of my favorites. You wilt some greens, add in some flavor and protein, and have a warm garden salad for lunch.

2 tablespoons bacon fat
1 large bunch turnip greens
3 gloves garlic, minced
a splash of red wine (about 1/4-1/3 cup)
sea salt and pepper to taste
a handful of cooked pinto beans
Parmesan, for grating
1 piece whole wheat toast, cut into squares, or a handful of croutons

Warm up the bacon fat in a large cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the greens and cook, stirring occasionally. When they start to wilt pour in the wine and cook another few minutes until it's reduced by half. Add the garlic, season with salt and pepper to taste, and turn off the heat. Scoop the greens into a bowl and top with beans, Parmesan ribbons, and croutons. Eat warm. 

WILTED GREENS // liz

Here we have Exhibit A in the “Recipes That Taste Much Better Than Their Name Implies” category. I found it in the wonderful Vegetarian Family Cookbook by Nava Atlas about a year ago and immediately emailed Elspeth and Anna. “So good! So simple!” I crowed. “Go make this now.” I’ve been making it regularly ever since.

Atlas calls it “Wilted Sesame Spinach or Swiss Chard.” That might sound a tad more exciting, but it doesn’t tell you that you can use lots of other greens too. I’ve made it with spinach, chard, kale, turnip greens, bok choy, and broccoli rabe, and it’s always delicious. It’s not just a dinner dish, either; it’s excellent with eggs at breakfast or brunch.

It took my girls a while to get onboard with the recipe. I kept hitting the send button: “Yo, chickadees! Have you made the wilted greens?” I’m not sure what the problem was. Maybe it just sounded too dull, although I kept telling them it wasn’t. I finally just drove down to Anna’s apartment and made it for her. “This is delicious!” she said. Kids….

Speaking of kids—the little ones like this too. Nineteen-month-old Sally gobbles it up. I recently shared the recipe with a friend who’s been trying desperately to get her 6- and 8-year-olds to like kale. Bingo! Kim is now buying kale by the bagsful.

Give it a whirl. I think you’ll like it too.

WILTED GREENS

If you’re a greens lover, this recipe will probably serve only two, but it’s a snap to double.

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

12–16 ounces fresh spinach, chard, kale, or other green (washed, if necessary)

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Put the sesame seeds in a small, dry frying pan and lightly toast them. This will take only a few minutes. Keep an eye on them, as they can quickly go from perfectly toasted to toss-in-the-compost black. Set aside.

Place greens in a large frying pan or wok. For spinach, cover and steam—using just the water that’s clinging to the leaves—until lightly wilted, about 2–3 minutes. For chard or kale, add about ½ cup water to the bottom of the pan and steam until the greens are just tender, which might take 4–5 minutes. Drain well in a colander.

Heat the soy sauce and sesame oil in your frying pan or wok. Add the greens and stir fry until they’re heated through, about 1–2 minutes. Season with fresh pepper and toss with sesame seeds. Serve at once, while still piping hot.

STINGING NETTLES // the local food report

After Sally was born, people brought food. I remember a lasagna, a batch of chocolate chip cookies. And in particular, I remember my friend Ish's nettle soup. 

It was not the first thing to disappear, I will admit. Stinging nettles? That was a plant I had learned to identify on a Canadian island as a kid, walking through along the meadow path with my hands held high over my head. We learned to spot them quickly; one brush with a leaf and you'd have a red, burning, nettle-stung hand. 

I knew they were edible, though I'd never tried them. But Ish said her mom cooked with them all the time, and that this was her version of her mother's stinging nettle soup. 

It was delicious. I'm still not sure what was in there, but it was rich and creamy, flecked with green and spotted with kernels of sweet late summer corn. We devoured it after the first bite, and Ish told me later she thought of it because nettles are especially good for mother's milk. I loved it. And then I forgot about nettles until I met Fiamma Straneo the other day.

A friend introduced us. Fiamma lives in Falmouth, but she grew up in Italy—in the northern part, in Milan. Growing up she ate nettles all the time—her mother made frittatas and folded them into gnocchi and tortellini and ravioli. She found them when she moved to Seattle in the early 90s, and again when she came to work in Woods Hole. The specimens you see up there are from a patch downtown, on the outskirts of a sunny garden. Fiamma took me foraging, and they were just poking up after all the cold and rain. For the next month or so, she says, they'll be perfect. (Once they've gone to flower you don't want to eat them, and then you can pick fresh shoots again in the fall.) Fiamma will be making the same frittatas and pastas her mother did, and a nettle soup with Parmesan and bread. 

You do have to take some precautions to avoid a sting. Fiamma says you want to wear gloves to pick nettles and while you're washing them. But once they're cooked—and she thinks even once they're washed—the little stingers dissolve and the greens taste like a richer, more pungent spinach. They're full of iron and sulphur and vitamins A, B and C, and people say a good dose cures everything from arthritis to hay fever. 

Fiamma makes her recipes by memory. But her friend Jess published a wonderful story about eating nettles with her and a recipe for Bucatini with Nettle-Pecan Pesto, which sounds delicious. And I've had and loved Alice Water's Wild Nettle Frittata. From Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall comes a Ricotta and Nettle Gnocchi that sounds just like Fiamma's. And finally, from edible Madison, a creamy nettle soup that with a handful of corn sounds just like the version Ish made. 

I haven't found any wild nettles in Wellfleet. Ish foraged hers from her mother's house, out in the Berkshires, and Fiamma's patch is in Woods Hole. But now that Fiamma's reminded me how delicious these stinging leaves are, I've got my eyes peeled. You?

SPRING! // elspeth

MAKING UP RECIPES // elspeth

I have always baked for comfort. I remember making up recipes with my sister: brownies with butterscotch chips,  rocky road cookies, peanut-butter banana bread. Half of the time they were disasters, but sometimes we found a hit. My mother tolerated it well, and when I bake with Sally I try to remember this. 

I do almost all my baking with Sally these days. She likes to eat the dry mix, which is a little weird since it's usually some combination of plain whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and yeast. The other day when we were making lunch, she drank a combination of milk and drained tuna juice. But she's a good little helper, particularly when you need someone to clean out a yogurt container or use a whisk. 

Still, it's nice sometimes to be in the kitchen without her. The other night Alex had a meeting and Sally went to bed early, and I found myself with an unexpected moment. I was tidying up, and I found a book Sally had pulled off the shelf: The Country Art of Blueberry Cookery by "The Blueberry Lady," Mrs. Clifford David Morrison. I paged through it and got excited about a recipe for Nona's Blueberry Muffins, and then realized Sally had eaten the last frozen berries for breakfast. Still, we had cranberries. And flour and eggs and milk. I turned on the oven and pulled out a muffin pan. 

The version I made was probably not much like Nona's. She called for all-purpose flour and I used whole wheat, and the cranberries made the muffins more sweet-tart than sweet. They are nothing like the treats Anna and I made as kids. But to my grown-up self, they are much better. They tucked me into bed that night with butter and a glass of milk, and I had no qualms the next morning about packing two in Alex's lunch and letting Sally devour another for breakfast. 

ELSPETH'S CRANBERRY MUFFINS

You could add any berry to these muffins and get a keeper—I'd especially like to try a blackberry version. The recipe comes originally from Nancy Nona Phillips in Greenfield, MA, and makes enough batter to fill a standard 12-cup muffin tin.

2 cups whole wheat flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons sugar (brown or white are both fine)

1 egg

1 cup milk

1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil

1 cup cranberries

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, beat together the egg, milk, and oil. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones, then fold them together with about 12 stirs. Add the berries, stir once more, and pour the batter into a greased muffin tin. Each cup should be level full. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown. Carefully remove the muffins from the tin and place them on a rack so that the steam can escape. 

COMFORT FOOD // liz

As you might guess, our family has been sorely in need of comfort food recently. We’ve needed dishes that are easy and quick to make—dishes that can nourish us both in body and spirit. When I was a little girl growing up in Ohio, my mother had just the thing. Whether you had a strep throat (I had lots), a busted knee (my brother), or what we used to call “the mulligrumps,” it wouldn’t be long before Mom was sitting on your bed with a cup of baked custard. She didn’t just make it when we were sick, but it always tasted especially good then. It slips right down, even when you think you aren’t hungry. And with the milk and eggs, it’s an excellent way of getting some nutritious food into you. Did I mention that it’s also delicious? I think Sally’s going to love it!

The recipe couldn’t be simpler or easier to make. It’s the one my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother all made when they were raising their families. OK, confession: my great-grandmother, Gransy, didn’t actually make it; her maid did. But I'm told that Gransy loved eating it. I used to make it too, when Elspeth and Anna were younger, but not as often as I should have. That’s going to change—the batch you see here has totally revived my love of this childhood favorite.

MAW-MAW’S BAKED CUSTARD

Here it is—a recipe that with little Sally now links six generations of mothers and daughters. In our family, there’s comfort in that alone.

2 cups whole milk

1/2 cup sugar

dash salt

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

nutmeg to sprinkle on top 

Combine the milk, sugar, and salt in a sauce pan.  Turn the heat to medium-high, and stir well until milk begins to scald but not boil.  When milk is steaming, turn off heat and set aside.  

Beat eggs in a large bowl.  Gradually pour the hot milk into the beaten eggs, whisking as you go.  Stir in the vanilla.

Place custard cups in a larger pan filled with half an inch of water.  Pour the milk and egg mixture into the custard cups.  Sprinkle each cup with a dash of nutmeg (my mom says it doesn't matter if you do this before or after baking.  "Just don't put too much on," she says).  

Bake at 345 degrees for about 45 minutes, until the tops are nicely browned.  

WE WERE EXPECTING // elspeth

I like to keep this a happy place. I try not to talk about the dark stuff here, because I think there's enough of it in the world already. But three weeks ago, I told you we were expecting a baby, and today I need to tell you that we are not. 

The baby I was carrying had a rare chromosome abnormality called triploidy. You can read more about it over here, but what it means is that she had 69 chromosomes instead of the usual 46. It is a deviation considered incompatible with life, and most triploidy babies are lost in early miscarriages in the first trimester. Ours was stillborn at 21 weeks. 

It is hard to talk about, but even harder not to talk about. The past two weeks have been full of tears and uncertainty, and a nagging feeling of emptiness. We are still sad, and I have a feeling we'll be overcome with waves of grief for weeks to come. But we're also ready to start the work of moving on. We feel incredibly lucky to have such wonderful, kind, supportive doctors, families, and friends, and to have arrived home from the hospital to find not one but three beautiful trees in our yard, a jar of asparagus soup on our stoop, and a roasted chicken in our fridge. 

This has been a terrible week for so many people in Massachusetts. When we were in the worst of it, my sister sent this link from the Onion, and it was a good reminder of how important it is to be able to laugh. So we're here, picking ourselves up. We're counting our blessings—our health, our home, our community, our families—and most of all our sweet little Sal. She is, without a doubt, the person getting us through this. 

Thank you for listening, and for being here. It means a lot. Anna will be around later this week—thank you so much for her warm reception!—and I'll be back soon.