It’s a puzzlement! Collectively speaking, we as a nation are without doubt more food-savvy than at any time in our history. But one food – a common vegetable that you can purchase each and every day at produce markets – never fails to fascinate me. It has a very special place in my heart. I refer to the noble, sorely neglected, kohlrabi (kôl-rä’-bç), a truly delicious vegetable that I grew up with, and even liked, as a kid.
The puzzlement? Almost no one knows what a kohlrabi is.
Students’ faces in the Product Identification class that I teach at the School of Culinary Arts at Kendall College invariably cloud over when I ask if they’ve ever tasted a kohlrabi. But this comes as no real surprise. Most culinary students are true novices – baby chefs – and are yet to have their eager, wide eyes opened to the cornucopia that awaits them along their culinary path. But what about our everyday “savvy” shopper at the supermarket?
For some obscure reason that has thus far eluded me, I never see anyone buying kohlrabi. And on the rare occasion when they do, I would venture a fair guess that a genuine look of puzzlement will also appear on the face of the checker when the bunch of kohlrabi is presented at the counter; this followed, I’m sure, by the inevitable shout to the neighboring cashier, “What’s this?”
Kohlrabi looks like, and is most often mistaken for, a round root vegetable, but it’s actually a stem vegetable of the cabbage family that grows above ground. Apicius, author in imperial Rome of the oldest known cookbook, praises kohlrabi as one of the favorites of Roman nobility, and it has been popular for centuries in Central and Eastern Europe. Indeed, kohlrabi is a mainstay of my Bohemian culinary heritage.
A cross between cabbage and turnip, there are light green, white, and purple varieties, all of which can be eaten raw or cooked. When eaten raw, the taste is refreshingly sweet and crisp, somewhat reminiscent of a radish, but very much more like that of a peeled, raw broccoli stem (And if you haven’t tried one of those, you’re in for a treat).
Kohlrabi under 3 inches in diameter are more tender than larger ones, which tend to have a woody texture. Steam or boil them whole, sliced or diced, and if they’re small, you don’t have to peel them. Serve them with melted butter and a drop of lemon juice.
As to the notion that a vegetable can occupy a special place in my heart, thoughts of summer and the vegetable garden we had when I was growing up bring about a fond recollection of my dear grandfather stopping by our place every afternoon after work to check the progress of the garden. Grandpa Chlumsky had a “green thumb,” and gardening was for him a labor of love. Impatiently waiting for him to arrive – and upon the first glimpse of his car coming up the drive – I would dash into the house for the salt shaker. It was always the same. Grandpa would take out his pocketknife, pick the nicest looking kohlrabi, deftly peel it, cut off a slice, and offer it to me with a sprinkling of salt. There isn’t a time when I eat kohlrabi, or broccoli stems for that matter, that I don’t envision those innocent, happy times.
Do yourself a favor, be adventuresome and try a kohlrabi. And help me end the puzzlement!