Recipes for cooked greens

I had quiche with swiss chard at a neighborhood cafe a few weeks ago. It’s one of the reasons I decided to put swiss chard in. Greens like those— swiss chard, spinach, turnip or beet greens, etc.— can go into all kinds of baked dishes, I would think. Casseroles, lasagna, quiche, what else? I also throw them into stews to bulk them up if I’ve got them. Does anyone use carrot greens? Can you?

I put carrot greens in salads.

Annet, I’m honestly not sure. When I make salad, it tends to be a crazy assortment of many different greens. I just add a handful of carrot greens to it. On their own, they don’t have a lot of flavor, but at the moment I’m obsessed with eating a diverse number of greens, so into the salad they go!

This year was the first year we participated in our local CSA, and I knew going into it that I was going to have to get creative with the harvests to make sure none of it got wasted. That said, I have picky eaters in my house…so most vegetables have to be hidden in their favorite dishes.

Surprisingly, I’ve totally come to rely on swiss chard, kale, and spinach to deliver nutrients in my undercover hidden veggie missions. I remove the stalks, wash the leaves, steam them, and then puree them in a food processor. I keep the resulting green goop in the fridge and use it in tomato sauce, brown gravy, burgers, meatballs, and meatloaf: ) It gives all the ground meat meals a very rich, full flavor, and makes them juicer, too. My husband requests it in his burgers now: )

I am not a picky eater- just a vegetarian: )- and I like the greens I mentioned above sauteed with garlic, onions, peppers, and egg whites (I’m a vegetarian with high cholesterol: (), with a few pecans or pinenuts thrown in for texture, drizzled with melted lowfat cream cheese to even out any bitterness. Mozzarella does a good job, too, but I use less cream cheese, which means less calories and cholesterol, ect.: )

I also want to say Thanks for the Carrot greens comments! I was up to my armpits one day in CSA carrots and their greens, and asked a friend of a friend who happened to be in my kitchen when I was cooking, if I could use the greens for anything. She’s an organic foodie, so I trusted her when she said they are poisonous! How my heart aches at the thought of all the greens I wasted that day: ( After that, I stopped choosing carrots from my CSA choices, so I haven’t wasted any since!)

Upon reading your comment, Katxena, I was prompted to wiki (!I heart wikipedia!) the matter, and was ecstatic to find that carrot greens are considered leaf vegetables, like kale and spinach, ect. And I got really into the carrot data; I’m definitely going to try out some Nante carrots in my garden next season: )

I stir-fry greens Chinese style. I usually fry the minced garlic (sometimes ginger or minced chilli too) in some oil till fragrant, add mushrooms (usually shitake) or sliced meat (usually pork or chicken) or dried shrimp and fry a bit more, then add the leaves and mix them around till wilted. I then add light soy sauce (for the lighter greens like pak choy and pea sprouts) or dark soy sauce (for the darker greens like kang kong) and/or oyster sauce (which I think goes with everything). Sometimes I add Chinese rice wine if I have it. Finally I sprinkle sesame seed oil over the dish.

I don’t stir fry with recipes. A good rule of thumb is you can stir fry whatever seasoning combination you think would be interesting with whatever vegetable/protein combo you like. I usually put the spices in the oil a few minutes alone first to make them stronger. Then add whatever I want to flavor it with. My wok is small, so usually I do things one at a time and set them aside and mix them together at the end. If your seasonings don’t taste quite right, adding a tiny pinch of brown sugar will help them blend. That would be when I’d wilt in the greens or add something like egg to bind it together. For two people that’s too much for stir frying, but I can still add heat to the wok.

Wow, those pastes sound very interesting – I’m going to look for some around here.

Sweet potato leaves in sambal belacan is wicked too. :)

Also instead of light or dark soy sauce, you can use sesame seed oil or oyster sauce for flavoring.

Thanks for those suggestions. I can probably get those spice pastes at one of our Asian markets. They carry lots of Indonesian and Indonesian-Chinese products because of our post-colonial link to Indonesia, so plenty of different sambals there!
Stock also sounds very interesting, I’ve been making and freezing stock these last couple of months, so I can defintely use that for stir-fries!

Hey Kat, see this post! I used arugula (rocket) but you could use any pot greens I think.

You can either throw them in at the last minute or let them ook along with everything else, depending on what texture you want. I don’t really do recipes. But greens are nice in borscht (broth + beets + dill + greens + sour cream). They’re nice added to plain vanilla stew (broth + protein + chopped veggies + greens). You can add them to eggdrop soup (broth + egg stirred in, followed by wilted greens). Sometimes I cut them into ribbons and substitute them for seaweed in miso soup (broth + miso + green onion + tofu + greens). You could add them to a ramen style soup (noodle + broth + greens). I don’t know if that’s helpful for ideas or not…

Ooh, I just had a thought. You know how ridiculously delicious spinach dip is? Personally I don’t think it tastes all that spinachy (more like all the rest of the stuff in it). I bet you could use cooked (and cooled) greens of any kind to make variations on this delicious classic… My favorite uses yogurt, cream cheese, sour cream and feta, plus a fair amount of garlic and dill, for an unbeatable spread or dip for bread…

Here it is here. It’s a Cooking Light recipe, but I don’t use fat-free or low-fat anything (so sue me) and I double or triple the garlic.

Yum yum yum yum yum….

I actually use daun dewa leaves to mix with salsa. I think it is possible to use other greens too. That just gave me an idea: sweet potato leaves in a salsa or pesto.

Here’s another one, Katxena, if you’re willing to stretch a point and call parsley a green (although I think this would work with any green). Vegetarian Epicure site is great, if a little impenetrable, but follow your common sense and use the search options to come up with recipes.

Other stuff— I make what I call Greek hush puppies— potato balls mixed with feta and deep fried. You’d have to drain a lot of the moisture off, but it occurs to me that these would be fantasic with a strong-tasting sauteed green mixed in.

Update on the carrot-greens question— I tried some carrot greens in a tuna casserole earlier this week. Flavor great, texture not so much. I stripped the stems, then just boiled them and put them in the casserole as though it was spinach. I think it would be better to chop it quite fine and sautee it waaaaay down to really break down the texture. We had to pull them all out before we could eat it. However, the flavor is fantastic— they actually taste like carrots. I’ll try it again sometime, but I think the best use for these is broth.

Hmm…sounds good! When you say ‘steam them for 5-8 minutes’, do you actually transfer the sauteed greens + garlic to a steamer or do you just cover the pan and turn the heat down?

I usually prepare kale in a very simple way (with 2 variations):

Remove and discard kale stems/ribs, then tear leaves into pieces and rinse. Transfer the pile of wet kale leaf pieces to a pot and cook gently, while stirring, until wilted (a couple of minutes). Transfer the kale back to the colander. Chop several cloves of garlic – I’m a big fan of garlic! Saute the garlic in olive oil, return the kale to the pot, and stir just until coated and warm. This is my favorite method when the kale is very fresh and tasty (sometimes I’ll just munch on the wilted kale without anything else on it as finger food), and it also works great with fresh spinach or collards.

If I’ve bought a bunch of kale from a grocery store and it isn’t all that amazing (or if I’m cooking chard – which has a less appealing flavor to me than kale), I add a splash of sesame oil + some sesame seeds to the mix.

Very quick and simple, and one of my all-time favorite dishes… :)

Katxena – You’re welcome! :) I’ve tried starting with the olive oil and garlic and then adding the raw kale and letting it wilt in the oil/garlic, but the dish doesn’t turn out as well that way. I think that your second statement expresses the reason well: when the kale is cooked in water instead of being cooked in the oil/garlic it tastes lighter, fresher and more flavorful to me.

Cutting & pasting worked for me! Thanks V!

I’ve been cooking my silverbeet/chard this way recently, which I adapted from the filling of spanakopita (Greek spinach pie):

Brown pine nuts, pop them aside on a plate.
Sautee crushed garlic, add finely-sliced stems of chard, give the two of them a couple of minutes. Then add the rest of the finely-shredded chard leaves and let them wilt. Add about a tablespoon of finely shredded fresh MINT & DILL leaves right at the end when it’s about done, take off heat, stir through pine nuts. Serve with a little bit of feta cheese crumbled over the top.

I’ve been eating this on toast for breakfast and it’s fab- really fresh flavours.

If you make a bunch of it, and add a good whack of ricotta & feta cheese & mix it all together & bake it in filo pastry, you have Greek spinach pie.

Last night, I made a baked artichoke pasta. It’s basically artichoke dip with penne pasta tossed in, then baked for 30 minutes like mac & cheese. It was very good, but was too salty, I suspect due to all the canned artichoke hearts. I don’t see why one couldn’t do the same thing with spinach dip — mix up the dip (using, as Verthandei suggested above, any potherb), chuck in some penne, sprinkle panko on top, then bake. I’m going to try that next week (pasta night only comes once a week at my house). I’ll let you all know what happens.

That sounds awesome cmagnus!