Few vegetables carry a name as delicious as kohlrabi. I’d never tried it before last summer, but when I spotted bunches of apple-green bulbs fairly glowing from the Scharf Farm stand at Soulard Farmers’ Market, I knew I had to have them – whatever they were. “What are these?” I asked farmer Allen Scharf. “Kohlrabi.” A revelation. They bore no resemblance to the scarred-to-dullness kohlrabi I’d seen in grocery stores. Two bunches settled in my bag.
Back home, I peeled one, sliced it thin, and tasted it. The texture was dense, crunchy and smooth, the taste clean and pungent – spicy at first, then mellowing to sweet. Cooked, this beauty handled like a creamy potato or celery root. Kohlrabi is a brassica, cousin to cabbages, but its flavor is strictly highbrow and trippingly good on the tongue. I bought it throughout the summer and experimented, to the delight of my friends, with it raw and cooked.
In the field, kohlrabi bulbs sit above ground. Arching stems sprout horizontally around each, erupting in ruffled blue-green leaves suggesting the ta-da! extravagance of a showgirl’s headress. Most kohlrabi is sold trimmed, then bunched by the stems, although the young leaves are edible. Scharf Farm will offer Grand Duke while Biver Farms has White Vienna, both green-skinned cultivars. Berger Bluff Farm will have the purple Kolibri. The flesh of both is almost white with little difference in taste, but Brett Palmier of Biver Farms is going strictly green this year.
“Educating the customer is the key to selling kohlrabi,” Palmier said. “We’re selling only green kohlrabi because it’s one less thing to explain.” In the case of Lee and Ingrid Abraham of Berger Bluff Farm, it was their neighbors who educated them, as young farmers, about kohlrabi. “We tried it early on, maybe 20 years ago. It wasn’t a great sell, but the last two or three years we’ve had more interest.”
I’m not surprised. Kohlrabi is so good that educating myself about it was hardly work. A small dice of raw kohlrabi added to apples in a Waldorf salad gave new shape to an old favorite. Creamed – well, anything creamed is good, but kohlrabi is spectacular. Sliced in thin half-rounds, the kohlrabi adds a nice touch to sandwiches, particularly ham and cheese and veggie pita pockets. In salads, I used kohlrabi to replace the bite of a radish and the cool of cucumber. It makes a great summer supper: served warm with sausage; baked au gratin; or stuffed with Arborio rice, shallots, peas and mushrooms. This summer, I’ll try roasted and grilled kohlrabi as well.
Scharf’s favorite way to eat kohlrabi is lightly steamed with butter and salt. “We’re just too busy that time of year to do much more,” she said. Nancy Scharf runs the Scharf Farm stand four miles north of Millstadt on Illinois Route 163; her husband Allen will sell at the Soulard stand every Friday and Saturday.
Lee and Ingrid Abraham think kohlrabi tastes best eaten raw, grated into slaw or sliced in salad. They’ll sell their Berger Bluff products at the Maplewood market on Wednesdays. You’ll find kohlrabi from Biver Farms at the Clayton, Tower Grove, Maplewood and Land of Goshen markets this summer. Try locally grown kohlrabi. It’s gorgeous, delicious and good for you.
This article appears in Jun 1-30, 2009.