Kohlrabi, beetroot, potatoes- what on earth to do with them?

[JustPotteringAbout]

Some kohlrabi has matured and ready to harvest.

Any suggestions what to do with them?

Ditto beetroot
Ditto potatoes (Desiree, Anya)

Kohlrabi: not sure what to do with these at all
Beetroot: something other than borscht, salad. I don't like pickled stuff.
Potatoes:not sure what to do with these.

[rustylady]

Leave your beetroot and potatoes and lift them as you need them.

[chris]

Roast them. Roasted beetroot especially, is amazing when it starts to caramelise

[PyreneesPlot]

Beetroot curry, chocolate and beetroot cake, roast beets with thyme and/or a fruity vinegar, layered beetroot and potato (and maybe kohlrabi?!) cooked with cream and cheese in the oven - goes pink! Beetroot and orange juice sorbet.
I like beetroot

[veggiechicken]

Apologies JPA - but this makes me think of Bob Newhart - Walter Raleigh - YouTube

As for kohlrabi - I'm not a great fan of them but beetroot and potatoes - bring 'em on
I like beetroot, plain boiled and sliced into a brown bread and best butter sandwich with lots of black pepper. Or parboiled, cut into chunks and tossed in a mixture of oil, balsamic vinegar and honey - then roasted in the oven.
What to do with potatoes ........... you don't need ideas for those I'm sure

[roitelet]

Kohlrabi tastes like a cross between cabbage and turnip, or like broccoli stalks. Pick it when it about the size of a tennis ball and use it at once, it doesn't store.

If you Google Kohlrabi receipes there loads to choose from.

[Capsid]

My wife and I love a kohlrabi casserole. From memory the recipe is:

Saute 1 onion and 1 garlic clove, add 2 medium kohlrabi cut into small cubes, 2 sliced carrots, 2 sliced celery sticks, add chopped tomatoes and fresh basil. Season to taste and then sprinkle with cheese and bake for about 40 mins. Delicious!

Checked the recipe and it also has peas (~200g), the ones you grow are best of course.

[Martin H]

We had some kohl rabi for supper just now. It's a bit boring just boiled, so we tried this one: Sauteed Kohlrabi- Cooking Demo No.7- at the Santa Fe Farmers Market - YouTube

Nice it was. Didn't do the tops though.

It's better still when young, juicy and raw...

[JustPotteringAbout]

Thanks all.
Potatoes don't form part of my diet or cultural cuisine (apart from the heavier and stodgier imports from C & E Europe), so thought it might be worth asking on a gardening forum in the country which is the tenth largest consumer of potatoes per capita (FAO 2008).
I don't really get them (other than being easy to grow) , only have them two weeks in the year. A bit lpain and heavy.

I couldn't resist eating one of the beets as is (or was) .I grated another raw onto my chickpea salad (if only I could get a decent yield of chickpeas) I forgot my salad box today but had a taste and it was nice. to I really don't think they are going to make it as far as the broiler or oven. Seems a waste cooking it to bits.
The kitchen looked like a bloodbath.

I'll try the kohlrabi in my breakfast salad (onions, tomatoes, small cucumber all finely diced, za'atar ) with a bit of herring and a poached egg.

[JustPotteringAbout]

My wife and I love a kohlrabi casserole. From memory the recipe is:

Saute 1 onion and 1 garlic clove, add 2 medium kohlrabi cut into small cubes, 2 sliced carrots, 2 sliced celery sticks, add chopped tomatoes and fresh basil. Season to taste and then sprinkle with cheese and bake for about 40 mins. Delicious!

Guessing from your avatar pic (and name) you are a virologist?

[Vince G]

What's your "cultural cuisine" JPA and what's za'atar?

Am not a veggie, but eat a great deal of whatever veg is in season, especially from now to September when more interesting Mediterranean veg are about, and am always interested in all cultures' foods.

Good luck with the chick peas - I tried them again this year on the basis that they are meant to grow in hot dry conditions (which is what we had last year) but of course this year the great British summer threw up cold conditions well into June, so only got about a dozen survivors. Next year I am chucking the whole packet in and will see what I get!

[JustPotteringAbout]

What's your "cultural cuisine" JPA and what's za'atar?

Am not a veggie, but eat a great deal of whatever veg is in season, especially from now to September when more interesting Mediterranean veg are about, and am always interested in all cultures' foods.

Good luck with the chick peas - I tried them again this year on the basis that they are meant to grow in hot dry conditions (which is what we had last year) but of course this year the great British summer threw up cold conditions well into June, so only got about a dozen survivors. Next year I am chucking the whole packet in and will see what I get!

You're doing better than me then! The field mice got to the chick peas I planted but the rain hasn't helped. Cute wee things with big ears nesting under the blackberries. The climate which sometimes - in high summer - even gets as high room temperature, hasn't helped.

I didn't grow when I lived in Ipswich but it's more feasible there than here..

I could live on hummus (in the culinary sense, not nutritionally). Hummus I'm told by my Tunisian friend who gives me the spent coffee grounds is also the Arabic for chick pea.
Still, it's less than £1/kg for dried chick peas if one shops around, though I don't sit too comfortably with the food kilometres.
I over-soaked chickpeas last week for salad. They have all sprouted so I'll try planting some direct and raise some for a while iin the greenhouse before planting out. If they fail, they fail it'sll save me double handling the direct-sown ones via the composter.

I'm Ashkenaz but have grown up eating more Sephardic / Mizra(c)hi , which is Mediterranean . Go through tonnes of fish, chick peas, veg, fruit, and herbs typical foods are hummus, falafel (#1 snack), couscous, tabbuleh, shakshuka, bab ganush, salad for, or with breakfast lunch and dinner.

Potato does feature in Sephardic cuisine (more so at Passover and Channukah) but not as much as in Ashkenaz cuisine.

Ashkenazic (C/E Europe) Jewish cuisine OTOH is quite heavy, loaded with fat, potatoes and heavy grains (whatever the traditions of the host state in exile were) and just makes me extremely tired. One wouldn't want to go swimming within three days of ingesting it. Pickling is also quite heavily-used preservation technique due to the short growing season introducing an unacceptable (for me) gastric and oesophageal cancer risk. Diets high in smoked foods also may also increase risk of gastric cancers.

D'fina, hamin, like cholent (where the cuisines converge), is quite heavy though, but they are shabbat meals, the ingredients have to to be robust to stand up to many hours cooking, so are inevitably heavy. One is generally sat on one's armchair all Shabbat after lunch though.

I'm not used to cooking potato. It's a bit of hassle cleaning then cooking so for an accompaniment for a piece of fish or something it's an extra pan to heat and wash up (two if sauteing) , so it's far easier having couscous.

Za'atar is a Levantine spice/herb mix something like oregano and thyme but species in the mix vary.

Ooh, I just looked up 'Ottolenghi' as he presented a programme on Jerusalem cuisines on BBC "Jerusalem on a Plate", to find he did a series on Channel 4 "Ottolenghi's Mediterranean Feast". Morocco, Istanbul, Tunisia, Israel, It's on 4OD.

[zazen999]

If you don't like potatoes, why did you grow them?
If you don't like the North, why are you living there?
Why not live where you prefer and row what you want to eat? Sounds like you are just having a dig at the UK in every way.

[Capsid]

Guessing from your avatar pic (and name) you are a virologist?

Yes, you are correct!

[out in the cold]

You're doing better than me then! The field mice got to the chick peas I planted but the rain hasn't helped. Cute wee things with big ears nesting under the blackberries. The climate which sometimes - in high summer - even gets as high room temperature, hasn't helped.

I didn't grow when I lived in Ipswich but it's more feasible there than here..

I could live on hummus (in the culinary sense, not nutritionally). Hummus I'm told by my Tunisian friend who gives me the spent coffee grounds is also the Arabic for chick pea.
Still, it's less than £1/kg for dried chick peas if one shops around, though I don't sit too comfortably with the food kilometres.
I over-soaked chickpeas last week for salad. They have all sprouted so I'll try planting some direct and raise some for a while iin the greenhouse before planting out. If they fail, they fail it'sll save me double handling the direct-sown ones via the composter.

I'm Ashkenaz but have grown up eating more Sephardic / Mizra(c)hi , which is Mediterranean . Go through tonnes of fish, chick peas, veg, fruit, and herbs typical foods are hummus, falafel (#1 snack), couscous, tabbuleh, shakshuka, bab ganush, salad for, or with breakfast lunch and dinner.

Potato does feature in Sephardic cuisine (more so at Passover and Channukah) but not as much as in Ashkenaz cuisine.

Ashkenazic (C/E Europe) Jewish cuisine OTOH is quite heavy, loaded with fat, potatoes and heavy grains (whatever the traditions of the host state in exile were) and just makes me extremely tired. One wouldn't want to go swimming within three days of ingesting it. Pickling is also quite heavily-used preservation technique due to the short growing season introducing an unacceptable (for me) gastric and oesophageal cancer risk. Diets high in smoked foods also may also increase risk of gastric cancers.

D'fina, hamin, like cholent (where the cuisines converge), is quite heavy though, but they are shabbat meals, the ingredients have to to be robust to stand up to many hours cooking, so are inevitably heavy. One is generally sat on one's armchair all Shabbat after lunch though.

I'm not used to cooking potato. It's a bit of hassle cleaning then cooking so for an accompaniment for a piece of fish or something it's an extra pan to heat and wash up (two if sauteing) , so it's far easier having couscous.

Za'atar is a Levantine spice/herb mix something like oregano and thyme but species in the mix vary.

Ooh, I just looked up 'Ottolenghi' as he presented a programme on Jerusalem cuisines on BBC "Jerusalem on a Plate", to find he did a series on Channel 4 "Ottolenghi's Mediterranean Feast". Morocco, Istanbul, Tunisia, Israel, It's on 4OD.

I am always intrigued by the wide variety of Jewish cooking traditions, and the food which I have tried and / or made from recipes has always been very tasty.

I love Za'atar and have used this quite a lot this year with couscous and roasted vegetables. I also love things like taboulleh, lubiya, and falafel.

Would Kohlrabi work well in a Kugel, along with say courgette and carrot? I made this a few weeks ago using cabbage for the first time and loved it. IIRC, it also had some grated potatoes in too. It was the first time I have ever tasted it and it was very nice. (To my slightly uneducated palette, it kind of reminded me of a frittata that had been baked in the oven...)

I also have a recipe for Potato Kugels, which uses oil and will be pareve, so is pretty handy in that you can eat it alongside meat... Potato Latkes too

Kohl rabi makes excellent "Kohl Slaw" as we refer to it.

A quick swatch at my cookbook suggests a Beetroot and mint salad made with Sugar, Balsamic, EVO and Lemon juice dressing. (sounds tasty...)

Also a Tunisienne potato and olive salad, with vinegar, EVO, garlic, coriander and cumin.

I hope this helps a bit