Return of the roots

This past week I welcomed my ugly old friend the rutabaga back to my kitchen, accompanied by rosy red beets, hairy carrots, and the overly large sweet potato (which, by the way, is actually more closely related to morning glories than to those big white tubers we Americans love so much). These changes of seasons are the highlights of eating local- it's like opening up the backroom closet and pulling out the warm and fuzzy sweaters I haven't seen since March (or since June, if you are reading this in Vermont). Oh, the joy!

I'll admit that I am still a bit intimidated by those beets- the way they stain everything they come into contact with, my inexperience in cooking them having grown up eating the canned version. Can I ever coax beets into the starring role of a borscht as delicious as the vegetarian recipe my friend Gigi received from her grandmother (Ukrainian if I recall correctly)? I should have watched carefully while I chopped up beets, carrots, and potatoes for her brew, but was fairly distracted that the recipient of this feast was Jane Goodall. It is testament to Gigi's cooking that I remember the soup as much as I remember the company. I am determined to learn how to cook a good borscht recipe this fall!

In the meantime, I'm kicking off the root vegetable season as I typically do- tossing them with olive oil and garlic and roasting them, boiling them and mashing them with garlic, and simmering them with onions, garlic and water and pureeing them into a hearty soup (do you get the common thread here?). As much I enjoyed the rutabaga-sweet potato soup this week, next time I think the onions will get sauteed in local, happy-pig bacon. (Happy= room to roam and snuffle in the mud with your family unit. Unhappy= raised snout to tail in multiple factory farms)

This is also the season where fresh kale and potatoes are both in season. Last week I tried an interesting recipe I found in one of Dr. Andrew Weil's books, simply called Kale with potatoes. While potatoes are boiling, chopped kale is sauteed in olive oil with garlic until bright green and slightly tender. Then the potatoes, cubed or sliced, are put into the pan (pushing the kale aside at first and with my own additions- a little butter to help brown the taters, some red pepper flakes for heat). To round out the meal I fried up a free-range egg and served it on the side, though the true star of this meal was the kale and potatoes dish. It is truly amazing how something so simple and nutritious can taste so good! A shout out of thanks to my little vegan brother Josh, who commented while here last spring that he and his girlfriend love kale- until then I had lumped it with collards as a green I didn't think I would ever want to mess with.

I'm still waiting to see the light on collards, though. Until then I'll keep experimenting with those hearty root veggies.