Odd and semi-exotic produce has begun to show up in my grocery bag. And it’s not that some mischievious person has been stuffing bunches of bags of purple potatoes and still-on-the stalk brussels sprouts into the cart.
You can track, almost to the moment, the time between when the first fat catalogs from places like land in the mailbox and the time I begin to eye purple artichokes and strange kales in the produce bins. There is something about thumbing through the pages that makes me I’m influenced by the exotics growing in other people’s gardens, too.
I am an adventuresome home cook with an army of food creatives just a tweet, text or a Facebook post away, so grocery-store investments in weird vegetables are relatively low-risk. But the payoff often is, well, ho-hum.
The gorgeous, fractalized heads of lime-green Romanesco really are just broccoli when they come out of the steamer. My friend Nancy, who owns a restaurant, says a bag of homely tubers languishing in my fridge could be a lovely side dish if I just peel, toss with salt, pepper and olive oil, and roast. But that seems a bland use of a purchase made while thinking of the glorious sprays of bright-yellow Jerusalem artichoke blossoms that leaned on a friend’s shed last summer.
I’m learning to manage expectations about where art and flavor collide. Maybe it’s OK to love the freckled look of Forellenschluss and accept that it’s just leaf lettuce in the bowl, to appreciate that flashy Borlotto bush beans are valued for producing dull legumes that acquire other flavors in the dish. So much garden beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Dana Coffield: dcoffield@denverpost.com, 303-954-1954 or twitter.com/denpostdana
