My favourite Winter 'green' vegetable has to be the wonderful Cavolo Nero; the Tuscan Black Cabbage.
The long wrinkly leaves have become a mainstay of my preferred meat-n-one-veg style of eating. They are tender, sweet, and very good for you. They are also very easy to grow.
At this time of year, growers are all too eager to pull them up to make way for new crops, but this is a big mistake.
It's now that they start to produce 'sproutings'. At the top of each plant, and all the way up the stems where the leaves were picked, small sprouts appear. These are delicious. In fact I would say that they are possibly more delicious, and even more tender, than the leaves for which they were originally grown.
So, if you have a few plants in the garden, wait a while before you pull them up; they have a treat in store for you!
23 comments:
You lucky so and so. I LOVE cavolo nero. Brings out in me not just Peter Rabbit, any rabbit, dozens of them.
Enjoy.
U
Me too. All meat and beg. Today a steak with fried cabbage. Yesterday chicken and sautéed mushrooms. I am not familiar with cavolo nero but it looks wonderful. How do you usually prepare it?
Just steam it for 5 mins with a knob of butter. Lovely.
I'm not sure how many plants there are, but enough to keep me going until April.
With you on that one...all the way! Our Black Tuscan hasn't started to sprout yet....but it will!! We also harvest our red cabbage by cutting high.... or leaving the grotty ones to grow on... that allows us plenty of "poor man's asparagus" to get us through the hungry gap. Brussel Sprout sprouts are very tasty, too... all those little tiddlers that were too small to pick ..... scrummy!
I have never seen this before. I wonder if it is available here. Do you grow it from seeds or small plants?
Any caterpillars? I think I see a raggedy leaf - on the left of picture.
One of my childhood tasks was to inspect the underside of every cabbage leaf and remove them.
I mean remove the caterpillars, not the leaves.
I googled cavalo nero because we don't have it here, reading some recipes i wish we do.
Never had this before, does it taste like ordinary cabbage? Meat and one veg? Haven't you heard the lastest, we're now supposed to be eating 10 portions of fruit and veg a day... at that rate I'd never get any protein at all!
I like the heading
I leave all my winter greens to sprout, but I think the Cavolo Nero is the best.
From seed; it's very easy to grow.
We've had very few bugs this year, but I always inspect the underside of the leaves; very carefully.
It's very versatile; but I mostly eat it just simply steamed.
I eat plenty of other fruit-n-veg; it's just that I don't particularly like lots of different vegs all on one plate.
I do try hard.
I must try growing some Cavolo Nero if they are easy to grow. My Vegetable Patch has been empty for months. I will have to find out how to grow them first. Did you grow them when you lived in the UK Cro ?
My favourite green. Our young plants were eaten down to the ground by rabbits last year so non for us I'm afraid. Soon be sowing again for an early crop.
Every year I say I'm going to put kale in and every year I don't find the space at the right time. This year I will though! I'm going to make sure of it. My wife loves kale and always moans that I never grow it anymore!
No. But I've lived over here for the past 44 years.
Luckily we have no rabbits around us; they can be a right pain!
I have both green and purple Kale. I prefer the standard green.
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