That's so immature!

The weirdest thing happened in my mom's back yard this year. Garlic revenge. You see, two autumns ago, my mom planted a whack of garlic in a raised bed. When it came up in the spring, it looked pretty sickly and unhappy. Mom ripped it out and went on with other things, but she didn't get around to planting anything else in that bed. Fast forward to this spring, and guess what? The garlic came back! Multiplied by ten! Aaaaagh! Before the garlic attack, I had planned to use that bed for some other veggies (I've taken over the vegetable beds over there, and I'm calling it a yardshare, because that sounds a bit more sophisticated than "Mom's house"). Given the unexpected garlic population, I decided to shift things around and interplant the established garlic with carrots and beets. Carrots and alliums (that is, onion-family plants) are often planted together because they're supposed to deter one another's insect enemies, and the beets just seemed like they wanted to go along for the ride. So I pulled out the more spindly-looking of the garlic stems in order to make semi-straight rows, then put my seeds down in the new spaces.

What I was left with was a heap of skinny, delicious-smelling immature garlic. Was I about to chuck it in the compost heap? Heck no! I took it home, gave it a scrub, and ate it!

This handful went into some delicious risotto. I make risotto a lot to use up bits and pieces of local veggies, especially things from my garden that aren't quite plentiful enough to make a full side-dish. Jamie Oliver's basic recipe is a good place to start: you can just add in whatever vegetables you have on hand.

There are so many vegetables that can be enjoyed in their immature form. Pea shoots are delicious if you find you've placed your peas too close together in the garden and need to get rid of some. Beets, chard, and spinach generally need to be thinned once they sprout, and those thinnings are delicious in a salad or on a sandwich. Any member of the cabbage family - Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, broccoli, whatever - can be eaten at any stage. Brussels sprouts actually benefit from having their growing tips pinched out and lower leaves removed as the season progresses, and those are absolutely delicious steamed or stir-fried. Young radish and turnip leaves are delicious. Broad beans (fava beans) have tasty leaves at their growing tips that can be steamed and eaten like spinach; like Brussels sprouts, they benefit from having their growing tips removed when the plants are a few feet tall, so that the energy goes into producing more beans rather than growing into towering bean forests. And, of course, salad greens and herbs can be eaten as microgreens as soon as they emerge, if you like.

Since I tend to be pretty heavy-handed with my seed sowing (I just never believe that they're all going to come up, and then I freak out when they do), I eat a lot of baby greens. Thinning out your garden beds seems like much less of a hassle when you know consider it a mini-harvest.

(A note: While most vegetables have edible leaves, members of the nightshade family - potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, etc - should not be eaten in leaf form. They're a little bit toxic. They're not very tasty, either, so you're not missing much. I don't know if the leaves of cucurbits - squash, zucchini, melons, cucumbers - are toxic, but they're tough and generally hairy, so give them a miss, too.)

Cheese and eggs and greens, oh my!

Now is the time, my friends, when giant, balloon-sized bags of local greens appear in the grocery shops. I love them so much! They arrive in late spring, and they are just beautiful steamed and dripping with butter on the side of your plate. These greens are often labeled "fresh greens," or "field greens," but many people call them "turnip greens" or "turnip tops." They're inexpensive, and they're wonderfully nutritious. The only flaw with them is that the bags they come in are enormous, and the greens are tender enough that they don't last very long in the fridge, so you have to use them up quickly.

One recipe I came up with a few years ago to cope with the massive amounts of leafy greens is my turnip top pesto. I enjoy this stuff so much that I've written about it twice, first in The Scope, and then on my old blog. It's a very easy way to use up a few big handfuls of greens, and it's delicious on pasta, on pizza, in melts, and in risotto. It also freezes brilliantly; I pack it in half-cup canning jars and stash it in the deep freeze to pull out over the winter for a nice taste of spring.

This year, I thought I should come up with some new ways to incorporate the greens into my family's dinners. First I made a quiche. I had three motivations for this. I had just bought a gorgeous quiche pan at a garage sale for a dollar and I was desperate to use it, I had leftover ham in the fridge, and I wanted to taste-test some of the new locally-produced Central Dairies cheese. Quiche is dead easy to make, and it's a great way to eat local: eggs are one local food product that you can pretty much always get your hands on.

If quiche isn't part of your cooking repertoire, here are a couple good videos that can help you through the process. One is a quick and dirty intro to quiche-making, and the other is a leisurely, meditative approach to quiche. Quiche is more of a method than a recipe; you can use any vegetables or bits of cheese or leftover meats (generally bacon, ham, or sausage), you can use a shop-bought crust or a homemade one (or go crustless if you prefer), you can eat it hot or at room temperature, and it pretty much always works out beautifully. Mine was fantastic! I steamed the greens first, and used Central Dairies peppercorn edam (my new favourite) to complement the greens and the ham.

The next day, I decided to make something similar to a Greek spanakopita. If you've never had spanakopita, it's a delicious savoury pie, generally made with spinach, feta cheese, and eggs, and wrapped in flaky, golden phyllo. There are many different recipes available online and in cookbooks, and there is a great video here. I used Central Dairies feta, which is quite different from the feta I'm used to: it is firm, rather than crumbly. The taste is great, but in order to get the texture I wanted I had to stir in some ricotta. I steamed my greens to wilt them, and used chives from my garden, and green onions and basil from my windowsill. Traditional recipes usually call for dill, but I didn't have any on hand. Even without the dill, it was delicious. Oh, and I most certainly did not make my own phyllo pastry! Storebought phyllo (sometimes spelled "filo") is just fine, and you can get it in the freezer at most supermarkets.

Spanakopita freezes very well. You can prepare it up to the point when you would normally put it in the oven, then wrap it tightly and put it in the freezer. This is another great way to preserve your greens for the months ahead. Make sure you thaw your spanakopita (or "turnip-topita," as I have been calling this, with total disregard for linguistic accuracy) completely before putting it in the oven, and keep it covered while thawing, or else the phyllo will dry out. Brush it with a bit of olive oil before you bake it, and there you go: yumness.

Do you have a favourite way to prepare and eat turnip greens? Is there anything new you plan to try with them this year?