Greens are at their peak right now. Laura Avery speaks with Paul Thurston of organic McGrath Family Farm in Camarillo. They've got seven different kinds of greens including Italian rapini, sweet red spinach, rainbow chard, red frills mustard, and pea tendrils (which are the tops of the pea plant before they form the pea.)
All greens can be prepared by removing the stems, chopping them coarsely and sautéeing them in a pot with olive oil, garlic and red pepper until wilted and soft. Add chicken broth to braise them if you like.
Host Evan Kleiman offers an idea for cooking rapini, which has a nutty broccoli, slightly bitter flavor. She sautes the greens in a pan with olive oil and garlic. Once wilted she adds sausage and cooks the meat until done. Then she adds this mixture with a good melting cheese to the top of Trader Joe's pizza dough and bakes the pizza. You can also add this cooked mixture to orecchiette pasta for a popular Italian dish. The sausage and greens mixture also makes a great panini sandwich.
Music break: Generique by Philippe Sarde