On my weekly grocery shopping trip a few weeks ago, I came across an alien-looking piece of produce that I’d recently seen mentioned on a blog somewhere: kohlrabi. Determined to find something to do with this mystery plant, I did a quick search on Gojee and found this recipe for Roast Kohlrabi with Romesco Sauce.
The first order of business was to cut up those things. According to Wikipedia (obviously, the source of all correct information) kohlrabi is a German turnip. This was very apparent to me as soon as I started trying to cut the skin away from it — these things are rock solid and very, very difficult to cut. After a bit of careful cutting (seriously, don’t get too overambitious with this step — you’ll probably cut a finger off), my little bulbs were ready to be sliced up and roasted!
Meanwhile, I also tried to whip up the romesco sauce. This looked like a really great idea to me at the beginning — almonds have a great ability to give texture to a sauce and to also give it a little oomph when there is no meat in the sauce. Unfortunately I think that the recipe I used may have omitted a pretty important ingredient — tomatoes. Maybe my bell pepper just wasn’t big enough, but this recipe left me with more of a nut paste than a sauce, and the picture with the original recipe looks pretty saucy to me. My version also came out quite brown in color, which was less than appetizing. Perhaps next time I will just add two fresh tomatoes into the skillet with my red pepper to balance out the almonds.
When everything was all assembled, I have to say that it was pretty good despite the nut paste thing. The roasted kohlrabi was really fantastic — it has a very turnip-like texture, but it takes on a nice caramelized flavor when it has been roasted. Apparently you can eat it raw as well, so maybe that’s an experiment for next time!
City Coeur 