Salad of Grilled Kohlrabi and Smoked Trout

Be sure to include a trip to the Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market in your holiday weekend plans. This Sunday you can look forward to the following offerings from Sweetwater Farm and Fair Valley Farm:

fennel and kohlrabi (try grilled with smoked trout)

squash blossoms, baby squash, zucchini, and a few tomatoes (nice shredded)

cauliflower, broccoli, and nappa cabbage (try some dumplings) 

fresh herbs and Italian parsley (make some parsley pesto)

fava beans and sugar snap peas (add some crunch to your salad)

cucumbers and carrots (make some pickles)

spring onions, fresh spring garlic, and lemon drop hot peppers

spinach, kale, chard, collards, braising greens mix, lettuce, and salad mix

dried beans and grains from Camus Country Mill

jams, salsa, and pickles from Sweet Creek Foods

pastured chickens (try chicken and saffron rice)

Last Sunday evening we had a Fairmount Farmers Market grilled feast: Fair Valley Farm chicken; kohlrabi slices with lemon; summer squash, garlic scape and spring onion skewers; and Israeli couscous with parsley pesto.

But the best part might have been a salad I whipped up Monday morning with the leftover kohlrabi and a tin of smoked trout (available at Trader Joe's). The smokey flavors of the kohlrabi and fish melded together, the kohlrabi gave the salad crunch, and the parsley and lemon made it all fresh and bright. Definitely a good reason for slapping on some kohlrabi rounds when you next fire up your grill. 

Salad of Grilled Kohlrabi and Smoked Trout

1 medium kohlrabi
~1 Tbsp olive oil
1 large lemon
1 tin smoked trout in oil (110 g)
1/2 cup flat parsley leaves, chopped
salt to taste

1. Peel the kohlrabi generously with a pairing knife to remove all of the woody exterior and slice into 1/4 inch thick rounds. Rub with a little olive oil and salt generously. Slice the lemon and stack the kohlrabi and lemon slices on top of each other.

2. Heat a grill or a grill pan. Grill the kohlrabi and lemon slices until the kohlrabi is lightly chard and partially cooked, but still retains some crunch, and the lemon slices are lightly chard and soft. (These lemony kohlrabi slices make a nice vegetable side, so make some extras if you like, but 1 kohlrabi is the right amount for 1 tin of smoked trout).

3. Slice the kohlrabi into 1/4 inch strips and place in a serving bowl. Squeeze the grilled lemon on top of the kohlrabi and toss with the parsley leaves. Add the smoked trout and oil from the tin, break the trout into bite sized pieces with a fork, and toss again. Taste and add more salt if desire. Enjoy.

Kohlrabi Poriyal

Kohlrabi are not a common sighting at our markers or dinner tables, especially ones with full leafy plumage like these fine specimens from Sweet Water Farm, available for a couple of weeks through Eugene Local Foods. However, during childhood visits to my grandmother's home in Germany as a child, we often ate tender cubes of a root vegetable in cream sauce, a dish simply called "gemüse" (vegetable), that only years later I realized was kohlrabi. Today its distinctive taste still has a Proustian effect on me. 

Recently, a friend shared his favorite childhood recipe for kohlrabi, prepared in the style of a South Indian dry curry, or poriyal. Recreating it required a trip to Vishnu Indian Imports for urad dal (small lentils that are fried in hot oil with mustard seeds at the beginning) and vangibath powder (a spice mix with ground lentils and chilies that coats the cubed vegetables at the end). The final dish was delicious. And for a nose to tail approach to these unshorn kohlrabi, I cooked the leaves like cabbage in this Madhur Jaffrey recipe with fennel seeds, along with masooar dal and kale with paneer. Even in its South Indian guise, the kohlrabi tasted a little bit like childhood summers. 

Kohlrabi Poriyal

3-4 smallish kohlrabi (or use turnips, parsnips, potatoes or other hard vegetables)
2 Tbsp neutral oil (such as canola)
1 tsp urad dal
1 tsp black mustard seeds
pinch of asafoetida (optional)
1 1/2 tsp vangibath (vangi bhath) powder, MTR brand recommended 
1/2 tsp turmeric
salt to taste

1. Peel the kohlrabi generously with a paring knife to remove any woody bits, leaving just the smooth white interior. Cut into 3/8 inch cubes.

2. Heat a large, shallow frying pan over medium heat. Add the oil and when it is hot, add the urad dal. Cook the dal, stirring, until it is a toasted brown. Add the black mustard seeds and a pinch of asafoetida, if using, and cook for a few seconds until the seeds start to pop. Add the kohlrabi pieces and season with salt.

3. Saute the kohlrabi, stirring occasionally, until it is almost tender. When the kohlrabi is close to done, stir in the vangibath powder and turmeric. Cook for a couple more minutes until the kohlrabi is tender. Enjoy. 

Brown Butter Baby Turnips

If you are looking for a charming dinner companion, you need look no farther than these baby turnips from Sweetwater Farm that I procured through Eugene Local Foods. Turnips, like their cousin the rutabaga, do not have the biggest fan base. They can be bitter tasting and surly looking and give the impression of requiring a major investment of work. But I’m here to tell you that these babies were a breeze to prepare. I simply trimmed off the tops and tips, quartered or halved them, and then sautéed them with a pad of butter and a pinch of salt. I left them on low heat while I attended to the rest of the meal – finishing off a barley risotto, cooking chicken breasts with a lemon, mustard, and caper sauce, and preparing a green salad. Within about ten minutes the turnips had transformed themselves into tender, caramelized gems of flavor that quietly stole the show at the dinner table.

Brown Butter Baby Turnips

I bunch of baby turnips

1 Tbsp butter

pinch of salt

1. Trim the tops and tails from the baby turnips (if they are in good shape, reserve the greens for a stir fry or gomae). Rinse the turnips, quarter the bigger ones and halve the small ones, so that you have about a cup of equally sized pieces.

2. Heat a small skillet and melt the butter. Add the turnips and a pinch of salt and cook them over medium low heat, stirring occasionally, for about ten minutes until they are very nicely browned all over and the butter has browned to a nutty flavor. Serve warm.

Salsify Sachets

Thanks to our Open Oak Farm CSA, I've been introduced to a vegetable I'd never heard of before: salsify. According to Amanda Hesser's Essential New York Times Cookbook, salsify was last popular in the 1880s, and indeed one of the first items recovered from a search for salsify recipes is a listing of vintage recipes, including instructions for scalloping, stewing, and sauteing. It occurred to me that these gnarly root vegetables might do well baked in foil packets like this. And because they are supposed to have a mild oyster flavor (they are also called oyster plants), I thought they would taste nice with shallots and a lemony dressing, paired with fish.

Like awkward adolescents, salsify roots are gangly and hairy, and they start to blush brown as soon as you try to open them up. But a toss in lemony vinaigrette halted the discoloration. And after 30 minutes of roasting and steaming, they emerged from their foil packets mature and refined, with a delicate flavor more like artichoke hearts than oysters. I'm convinced that this charming vegetable is due for a comeback.

Salsify Sachets

serves two

2-3 salsify roots
1 lemon
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1 Tbsp white vermouth
salt and pepper
2 shallots, peeled and sliced


1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.


2. Prepare the vinaigrette. In a medium bowl, mix together zest from the lemon (a microplane grater works well for zesting), juice from 1/2 lemon, mustard, olive oil, white vermouth, and salt and pepper.


3. Peel the salsify with a vegetable peeler, cut the thicker parts into matchsticks the width of the thinner parts, and quickly toss the pieces into the vinaigrette as you go to slow the browning.


4. On a baking sheet, spread out two sheets of aluminum foil, about 10 inches long. Divide the salsify and vinaigrette between the two foils and sprinkle over the chopped shallots. For each foil sheet, fold one half over the other and then crimp the edges to make a packet. Place the foil packets on the baking sheet into the oven and bake for about 30-40 minutes until the contents are soft and have started to caramelize. Serve warm, pouring all of the accumulated juices over the vegetables. 


Note: If you can't find salsify, this recipe would also work nicely with other root vegetables like parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, or fennel bulbs.

Pan Fried Cod with Capers

serves two

2 cod fillets

wondra or flour
salt and pepper
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp capers
juice from 1/2 lemon
splash of white vermouth


1. Start heating a skillet over medium high heat. Season the cod fillets with salt and pepper and sprinkle over some wondra flour, shaking off the excess. When the pan is hot, melt the butter. Then add the fillets, press down with a spatula, and let them cook until nicely browned, about 4 minutes. Flip them and cook on the second side until browned and cooked through, about 3 minutes. Remove the filets to warm plates.


2. Add the capers to the browned butter in the pan and saute for a minute. Then add the lemon juice and white vermouth. Let the caper sauce cook down for a minute and then pour over the fish fillets. Serve at once with roasted vegetables and couscous to soak up the sauces.