Eat Your Stems!

A simple lunch: leftover pork posole, lightly sautéed flowering choy, fresh red radishes, sharp cheddar, and a little lime juice.

This time of year on the farm, we're featuring a slew of beautiful greens. Some of my new favorite greens are ones in which the stems are the appealing part of the vegetable! Ever since Nat and I did a little bit of traveling on the Tibetan Plateau of China in September 2018, I've been more appreciative of stem vegetables and how to prepare them. We were introduced to types of greens and vegetables we'd never heard of, like wosun, called stem lettuce in English. Asian cultures really know how to cook their greens (and stems): the best way is to just barely do it, whether that's by sautéing or steaming. You can chop up a whole bunch and put the stems in first and add the greens later. Here are some of our favorite stem veggies that we're growing right now:

Swiss Chard: These stems are a bit tougher, but boy are they beautiful. I'm not as partial to the chard flavor as I am the brassicas, but as a farmer, I appreciate that this one will be available later in the summer than the others. I like to chop mine very fine and sauté them with their own greens.

Choy Sum (pictured top right): This stem is MADE for munching. It's great just raw out of the field. Very juicy and succulent. Just like asparagus, if not freshly harvested, you may need to nip off the very bottoms, but otherwise they are super tender and require little cooking.

Komatsuna/hon tsi tai/tatsoi: the stems on these greens are all fairly similar. We have these greens on a rotation in our fields and we're usually cutting at least one of them. I like to add these types of veggies to asian soups and eat out the stems one-at-a-time with chopsticks.

Bok Choy: most of this veggie IS a stem! Everyone knows about bok choy stir-fry, but did you know you can also make a coleslaw of sorts with the finely chopped stem?

Kohlrabi: The edible part of this veggie is the enlarged, bulb-y stem. Its name is German for cabbage-turnip, which is what the flavor is reminiscent of. This one is great in a stir-fry or raw with hummus.

Garlic Scapes (pictured top left): this crop is the flower stem of the garlic plant! It can be used just like you use garlic

Kale, collard, radish, and turnip stems: These stems aren't choice-quality for eating, but I utilize them in this way: I keep a plastic grocery bag in my freezer. Whenever I have food scraps like onion tops, chicken carcasses, or any of the above stems, I put them in the bag. Then when the bag is full, it's time to make a pot full of nutritious broth that I then use for easy dinners like ramen... eaten with more stem veggies!