A Vegetable That Tastes Like Unripe Fruit; Of Course!

Sorrel, which appears at least once a season in a CSA share, is strange. I’m pretty sure the tea is made from the flower, but when you get the sorrel in the share it’s a bunch of leaves that look sort of like spinach but taste like unripe raspberries. I hope it’s at least healthy.

I’m pretty sure I just sauteed it last year, which is something you can do except that it turns a supremely unappetizing brown color. So I dug around and looked for other things to do. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot. Or at least nothing obvious. There’s this Old Tymey-Tyme Amanda Hesser article from the days of cooking for Theodore or whatever. I just googled her and didn’t really realize what she’s been doing. I certainly remember how odd those Magazine articles read. None of that negates the good advice on what the fuck to do with sorrel, however.

I hid half the bunch in a salad last night. Not sure you could even perceive it, to be honest. Goober and Cake thought it tasted like unripe strawberries raw. Tonight I sauteed it with fava beans, basil and a restaurant-sized portion of butter. The taste was pretty good, overall, though I think I put too much salt in the whole thing.

Incidentally, if you google “fava beans” — which you invariably will because you will never remember that you have to shell them, then blanch them for three minutes, then remove the safety covering before cooking them for real — you will see that no one can resist bringing up that line from Silence of the Lambs. Googling “fava bean wine pairing” does not bring up “Chianti,” however — mostly whites. Something tells me that liver might demand something more tannic, but really what do I know? Also, I’ve never seen the film.