The not-so-expendable tops

My husband Jim and I decided a few nights ago to make a meal out of roasted root vegetables. He lit the grill, and I headed for the garden, where carrots, turnips, radishes, and beets were all bulging their way out of the soil, waiting to be picked.

We are extremely pleased with the success we have had this year with these vegetables. Learning from past mistakes, we planted the vegetables early and often in successive sowings. While we did some early pickings in the spring and early summer to supplement meals, we mostly let the root vegetables grow down deep into the soil, feeling that the longer they remained in the ground, the bigger and richer they would become. Our efforts paid off, and sometime in the next week or two, we will be doing a mass picking and figuring out how to create a makeshift root cellar so we can enjoy these vegetables throughout the winter.

Tonight, however, I am puzzling over a slightly different matter: how to make use of all of the "expendables": specifically, the root veggie tops. For our meal, I picked two large healthy beets, two large radishes, and about five carrots and a half-dozen turnips. I left the harvest on our deck table at sunset and went for a run. When I returned, I discovered that Jim had chopped the tops off the vegetables, washed the roots well, and was in the process of cooking them slowly in foil over the grill. I knew our dinner would be colorful and delicious, with the red sweetness of the beets complementing the creaminess of the turnips, and the tart taste of the radishes. The orange carrots would integrate these different flavors with their sweet, juicy blend. But equally attractive was the residue lying on the table: the feathery fern-like carrot tops, the rich green and red-stemmed beet greens, the bright green and slightly prickly turnip and radish greens. I gathered the greens up in a large massive bouquet and put them in my refrigerator's vegetable crisper. They filled the crisper to the brim.

The tops of root vegetables rarely get much attention. Grocery stores usually sell the veggies with the tops clipped, and even local farmers will ask me at the market if I want them to remove the tops when I make purchases. I usually agreed until there was a brief period when we had a pet rabbit whom I discovered loved carrots, not for the orange roots but for the tops above them. Even after the rabbit passed away, I began keeping the tops, figuring that I could add them to broths or at least make them into topsoil via the compost pile.

Now that we grow most of our own vegetables, my attitude toward tops has changed. Like the roots below them, they are loaded with nutrients and often with flavor. The challenge is to eat them before they wilt into oblivion.

We ate the beet greens last night. The sweet red stems complemented in color and flavor a hearty lasagna made of butternut squash, roasted garlic, quark, and mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. I might still dry roast the turnip greens, chopping them into small pieces that I will cook in an un-oiled skillet with mustard, cumin, and fenugreek seeds.

The remainder -- a blend of carrot, radish, and a few lingering beet and turnip greens -- will go into chicken soup. Two days ago, at the farmers market, Jim and I bought another "expendable" item: a soup chicken, which is essentially a hen who had aged to the point of no longer laying eggs. Hens made into soup chickens generally are two or three years old, and consequently, their meat is considerably tougher and more stringy than the younger "meat hens" that farmers typically market. The meat isn't considered good for eating in anything other than soups or pot pies, but when cooked slowly at a low simmer in plenty of water, they do produce a flavorful broth.

Arnold Grant of the M&A Farm sold us the soup chicken. He also gave us his "secret formula" for making chicken soup. The formula is fairly basic: two cups of everything: chicken, potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion, along with a quarter-cup of barley. (I'm going to substitute wheat berries because I happen to have some on hand.) The secret behind the basics, he said, is to cook the chicken first, with a few vegetables to get the broth flavors going. After cooking the chicken, remove it and the cooked out vegetables from the broth.

Arnold cuts up the chicken into small cubes to add to the soup at the end. He also adds fresh vegetables and his barley.

The idea of two batches of vegetables in one soup doesn't sit well with me, however, especially with one batch ending up in the compost bin without ever having been eaten. So I decided that instead of the "starter vegetables" I could use their tops. That would add plenty of flavor and nutrition to the broth without letting the vegetables we have so lovingly grown go to waste.

In investigating the uses of root veggie tops further, I started doing some searches. It turns out that carrot tops, which I had read once were potentially toxic to humans, are not so at all, and can be used in a variety of ways ranging from bitter greens additions to salads to pastas, juices, and teas. Recipes posted to a U.K. web site called The World Carrot Museum open up a stream of possibilities, and I am now contemplating ways of merging the sweet redness of the beet stems with chocolate.