kohlrabi

A weird-looking vegetable. I usually peel the skin off the bulbous part, then slice up the rest and throw it into stir-fry. It ends up having the texture of apple slices.

A vegetable of the cabbage family. It consists of a solid green ball with stemmed leaves growing upward from its surface. It is the ball that is generally peeled and eaten, both raw and cooked. In India, the tenderer leaves are cooked as well.

The kolhrabi (Brassica oleracea) is a form of cabbage of European origin. First described in the 16th century. Popular in some areas in the US as a kitchen garden vegetable, but seldom grown for commercial purposes. Grown in Europe as a stock feed.

Easier to grow than broccoli, slightly harder than cabbage. To get tender, sweet kohlrabi, pick them when they are less than 2-2.5 inches in diameter. Fall grown kohlrabi may be kept until they reach a diameter of 4-5 inches.

Here we find a vegetable which is popular in some parts of Europe but has found little favour in Britain. This is surprising as kohl rabi is a root-forming brassica which does much better in hot and dry weather than the much more popular turnip.

The swollen edible part of kohl rabi is not relly aroot at all- it is the stem base ('globe') and so is able to succeed in shallow soils where turnips and swedes would fail. It reaches about 1 ft high, making it low growing. It also quickly matures, progressing from sowing to harvesting in a couple of months. Phrases used by textbooks to describe the taste are not much use- 'a cross beteen turnip and cabbage' for the boiled vegetable, 'nutty with a slight celery taste' for the grated raw globe. This can be both tasty and tender, but only if you grow it quickly and lift when the globes are undersized.