Produce of the Week - Rapini
sponsored by Coleman Farms

This week's vegetable is a somewhat confusing member of the Brassica family, Rapini, which is also known as Broccoli Rabe (or Raab), Broccoletti, Cime di Rapa, Broccoli Rapa, among other things. This list of aliases is bad enough, but the unclarity is multiplied since this set of names is used to refer to a number of more or less closely related but distinguishable plants. How can this happen? Popular plant names are often by way of being nicknames, and that's the case here: "broccoli" means "sprouts" and "cime" are "tips", appropriately to any vegetable plant sprouts or tips which are commonly eaten, so Rapini ("baby turnip") hasn't got any semantic lock on these words. We've already mentioned the tendency of the Brassicas to spawn new varieties any time your back is turned, and this accounts for the group of similar but not identical plants the names are used to refer to.

As an illustration of the resulting confusion, see the Wikipedia article, which claims "Rapini" was developed in China or the Mediterranean (or both) "however, the Chinese cultivar is of a lighter green colour, not at all bitter or pungent, and more tender". So is it the same vegetable, or not? Because of the difference in taste and probabilistic considerations, we suggest "not", and for our purposes will resolve the confusion by discussing specifically Rapini which are the greens of oilseed rape, which is used in Italy to produce "Rapini" as well as oileed. The cooking properties of the "other Rapini" are similar, but the flavors will range from the frankly broccoliesque of "chinese Rapini" to strongly mustard.

What we eat are the "shoots" which the plant puts out preparatory to blooming. The shoot ends in the major floret, about the size of a thimble; there will usually be smaller florets branching out farther down the stalk, along with with vaguely diamond shaped leaves a couple of inches across. The effect is something like mustard greens with small florets which look a bit like sprouting broccoli, with the bright yellow-green tender foliage predominating.

Ideally, the entire thing can be cooked and eaten, since, being a shoot, it should be young, tender growth. You may find short rapini, which can be washed and cooked without further preparation, but often the shoots will be longer, so you'll have to cut or chop them, and may have to leave out some of the stalk, if it's notably tougher than the rest. The prepared greens can be treated like kale or sprouting broccoli, but will require much less cooking. The flavor and texture can to some extent be controlled by cooking time - less cooking means crisper texture and somewhat sharper flavor. They can be steamed, blanched and stirr-fried, served as a side(in Italian), added as a finish to soups or used in frittate. A popular dish consists of a delicate pasta like capellini topped with lots of lightly cooked Rapini, with oil, red or black pepper, and whatever else, to taste.

And how does it eat? The Rapini I cooked recently had a taste that was strongly reminiscent of asparagus - rich, somewhat nutty, earthy - without the allusions to swamp and drains that I often find in asparagus. The Rapini was, let's say, a chestnut brown (ie. maroon) flavor, while asparagus is an algal green. The Rapini, which was rather well-done, was neither sharp nor bitter, unlike mustard, nor was it sulpherous, as broccoli sometimes is. It had a straightforward, non-stringy, non-slippery or slimy texture. It was recognizeably a Brassica, but recognizeably an individual.

Rapini, like the rest of the Brassica greens, is nutritious, being high in iron and calcium, having a reasonable amount of other minerals, a good amount of vitamin C and beta-carotene and an assortment of other antioxidants. It seems to be particularly high in vitamin K, a nutrient essential for the formation of blood clotting agents.

Rapini favors cooler weather and has a short season: look for it in early Spring and late Autumn.

Rapeseed, or colza - Canola® is a variety of this - is a major source of edible oil, being third in world production after soy and palm oils, with some thirteen million tons global annual production (as compared with thirty one million tons for soy). This oil is a popular feedstock for making 'virgin' biodiesel, and can be used as is as a fuel for heating and generating electric power. As a follow on to our recent sustainability article, it may be worth putting this source of fuel into perspective: the total global annual production of rapeseed oil would replace about a week's US imports of petroleum, while the total UK annual production could, if used as fuel, generate two percent of that country's annual electricity. If the oil were used in this way, a lot of people would have to do without such things as margarine and french fries. If rapeseed production were to be increased, the already heavy impact of the pesticides it uses would further increase.

This week's photo courtesy of the back yard