 There are two varieties of fennel, a Mediterranean parsley relative. Wild fennel has the small flat seeds, technically the fruits, which are used as a spice; the greens are used as an herb. Sweet, or Florence fennel, is used as a vegetable. This type has a large, bulblike base, hollow stalks, and threadlike leaves. Sweet fennel has a pleasing licorice flavor.
Health Benefits: Sweet and spicy with some bitter tones, fennel is a warming herb. Although the whole plant is used medicinally, the seeds are highest in volatile oil anetholem, which treats indigestion, gas, and spasms of the digestive tract and increases peristalsis. It helps expel phlegm from the lungs. It also contains the antioxidant flavanoid quercetin and is therefore anticarcinogenic and of special use for cancer patients following radiation or chemotherapy.
Use: Fennel seed is used throughout the northern hemisphere as an ingredient in curries, breads, crackers, pickles, vinegar, vegetable and grain dishes, sausages, liquor, and to season apple pie. In Indian restaurants, a saucer of fennel seeds is served after a meal as a digestive. Wild fennel leaves are also used as an herb in the Mediterranean. As a vegetable, fennel has been used mainly in the Mediterranean region and only as recently in the United States. You can use the whole vegetable--cooked or raw--in any recipe calling for celery. Its feathery leaves can serve both as a garnish and as a flavoring agent. Cooking softens licorice flavor.
 The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity.
Wild beets still grow along the Mediterranean coasts where they seem happiest just above the high tide mark--a land bound but sea-loving, vegetable. Beets are a member of the ubiquitous goosefoot family.
Health Benefits: As their color suggests, beets are a blood tonic and so are good for anemia, the heart, and circulation. A starchy vegetable, beet roots are high in natural sugar. The greens have notable amounts of calcium, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus; they also contain vitamins A, B-complex, and C.
Use: Like chard, beet greens are high in oxalic acid (and so are not to be eaten excessively), but when young and tender, they make for an excellent salad green. The greens may also be sautéed, steamed, or prepared like turnip greens. Beets are often pickled, boiled for use in salads, baked, or added to soups. A popular Russian soup, borscht, uses beets as a principal ingredient.
 Gold Beets have a deep gold color instead of the traditional red color of beets. They don't bleed like the red ones. Their flavor is a bit more mild as well.
 Asia developed a range of red, green and white radishes. What a range – from petite cherry radish that matures in a mere three weeks to a 40-pound daikon, which takes up to three months to mature. Larger radishes inspire culinary artists wielding a sharp knife to carve garnishes as fanciful as radish “butterflies”, with wings so delicate that they “flutter” as they are set upon the table. Radishes belong to the cabbage family.
Health Benefits: In the West, radishes are commonly used in a salad or as an hors d’oeuvres to stimulate the appetite; in Asia, they’re served at the end of the meal, especially a fatty meal. European folk medicine recommends eating radishes – several a day – on an empty stomach to help melt gallstones and kidney stones. Radishes contain vitamin C, potassium, and other trace materials.
Use: The pungent, peppery taste of radishes make them a popular salad ingredient and snack. Cooking transforms their tangy bite into a delicate sweet kiss.
Buying: Select firm, crisp radishes with bright, fresh-looking greens. Avoid limp or oversize radishes, which tend to be pithy and overly hot. Also avoid those that are split and have leaked their flavor.
 This is an extremely versatile vegetable that can be eaten raw in salads or cut into strips or chips for relish trays. It also can be stir-fried, grilled, baked, boiled or broiled. Use the daikon as you would a radish. It may be served raw in salads or grated for use as a condiment (if you don't have a Japanese-style grater, use a cheese grater and grate just before serving), pickled, or simmered in a soup. They are also preserved by salting as in making sauerkraut. Daikon also is used in soups and simmered dishes. To prepare, peel skin as you would a carrot and cut for whatever style your recipe idea calls for. Not only is the root eaten, but the leaves also are rich in vitamin C, beta carotene, calcium, and iron, so they are worth using instead of discarding.
 Large round root vegetable related to the turnip and horseradish family, with a crisp texture and a mild to sweet peppery flavor. Unlike many other radishes, the intensity of this radish decreases as the radish matures. Generally, the flesh of this radish is hotter toward the outside and sweeter toward the center. The Watermelon radish grows to approximately three inches in diameter, displaying a white outer skin at the top with green shoulders and a pink base that covers a bright red to magenta inner flesh. This radish can be cooked like a turnip, creamed and served as a side dish, sautéed and braised to be served as a vegetable dish, or added to stir-fry dishes. The skin can be removed prior to preparing. It can also be served raw to be used as hors d'oeuvres, as a complement to salads and sandwiches or diced for use in soups and stews. The color of the inner flesh makes it an attractive sliced radish for an appetizer tray or for sandwiches.
 The Easter Egg radish is a spring radish harvested early in the growing season resulting in a smaller radish. The Easter Egg radish varies in colors ranging from light shades of pink to dark crimson reds and provides a milder flavor. They are typically served as hors d'oeuvres, as complements to salad or sandwiches.
 Rhubarb is not ready to eat until its large reddish celerylike stalks are a food in length and its forest green leaves are the size of elephant ears. Rhubarb root is a prized medicinal herb, but it’s the tart, astringent stalk that we sweeten and use as a spring desert.
Health Benefits: Rhubarb leaves are poisonous. Eating them has caused deaths, probably because the leaves high oxalic acid content. Even the fleshy stalks are high in oxalic acid, and so it is a food that should always be eaten in moderation and is not recommended for people who form calcium oxalate kidney stones, or for those with inadequate calcium absorption. High in vitamins C and A, and in potassium, rhubarb also contains tannin, the astringent substance responsible for making your mouth pucker up.
Use: Trim off the dried stalk ends of the rhubarb, coarsely chop, sweeten to taste, and stew or boil until tender, 10 to 15 minutes. To be edible, this tart vegetable, which is unse3d like fruit, demands ample sweetener. Cook in a nonreactive (stainless steel or glass) pan. Rhubarb is eaten as a compote and is used in pies, dessert sauces, and jams.
Buying: Select crisp, plump, deeply colored stalks, preferably the smaller stalks, which are more tender. Refrigerate, tightly wrapped in plastic, and plan to use within a few days.
 The turnip has a rustic character, and – among those people who have not tasted it at its prime – a low reputation. This inexpensive white root grows in impoverished soils and keeps well-features that have endeared it to poor and given cause for the uninformed to scorn it. The turnip is similar in many respects to its near relative, the rutabaga, which has pale yellow flesh and yellow-and-purple skin and is white fleshed, shaped like a radish, and has a white skin with a purple collar.
Health Benefits: Raw grated turnip serves as a digestive aid, much the same as radish and daikon. Turnips contain vitamins B and C, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, and other trace nutrients. They have more naturally occurring sodium than do most vegetables.
Use: Use fresh young turnips in salads as you would a radish. Cooking further sweetens turnips and mellows their bite. When cooked with other foods, turnips had the remarkable ability to absorb other flavors, which allows them to become particularly succulent and rich. Their starchy properties are somewhat reminiscent of potatoes. Peel turnips only if they are overly large and less than fresh. Turnips can be used in soups and casseroles, steamed on their own, roasted, baked, and pureed.
Buying: A turnip past its prime is biter and pithy and has nothing to recommend it. A fresh, small turnip, no longer than three inches in diameter, grown in the spring or fall, is sweet with a mild bite like a radish when raw. Turnips grown in hot months, or without adequate water, are decidedly more pungent. Select turnips that have root ends and stem base intact. If these parts are trimmed away and yellowed at the incision, the turnip will lack flavor. Look for the smooth, firm roots, preferably small or medium small/ reject flaccid, discolored, or withered turnips.
 Rutabaga, a turnip-like vegetable, is probably a cross between a wild cabbage and a turnip. The skin is purple toward the top and golden yellow at the point. Its golden flesh is firmer and sweeter than a turnip, but unlike a turnip, it is not pungent.
Health Benefits: Their nutritional properties are comparable to turnips, but, unlike turnips, they do contain vitamin A.
Use: Rutabagas make a pleasant puree; they may be substituted for, or used alongside, carrots in any soup, or stir-fried, braised, or steamed dish. Rutabagas are always cooked before eating-trim as necessary.
Buying: Select rutabagas that are firm and fresh looking, with smooth, unblemished skin. Avoid those that are withered or light for their size. There are also white-fleshed rutabagas.
 Don’t be put off by the kohlrabi’s octopus like appearance. A key staple in eastern Europe until it was deposed by the potato, this delicious bulbous vegetable has a radish like bite, a crisp turnipy texture, and a sweet cucumber taste. Either pale green or bold purple, kohlrabi grow as a bulbous swelling (or corm) on the plant’s stem-one kohlrabi per stem. Kohl, which is German for cabbage, aptly indicates which family this vegetable belongs to.
Health Benefits: It is an excellent source of vitamin C and potassium. Kohlrabi is high in fiber and low in calories.
Use: Some people first cook kohlrabi and then remove its skin. Raw and sliced thin, kohlrabi is a delicious crudités served with a vegetable dip. Or grate it or cut it into matchsticks for salads. It can be steamed, stir-fried, baked, braised, added to soups and stews, or, as the Hungarians do it, stuffed. Kohlrabi, unlike cabbage, does not become sulfurous with long cooking. The leaves, when young, are similar in flavor to kale or collards.
Kohlrabi can grow up to 40 pounds; they’re sweetest when smaller, about the size of a tennis ball. Large kohlrabi tend to be pithy or woody. Kohlrabi should be firm, crisp bulbs with no sign of cracking, and fresh, green leaves.
from Rebecca Wood's The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia |
