Growing Black Chickpeas

I met a fascinating plant on the farm this week - the black chickpea.  I'm accustomed to seeing tan chickpeas in the grocery store, but it turns out that chickpea skins come in the same variety of colors as human skins - light tan through yellow to red, dark brown and black.  Maybe it's because I am reading the Hunger Games trilogy (probably shouldn't have admitted that), but these plants sound like something that would be found in the arena - useful and dangerous at the same time.  You'll have to see if you agree with me - check it out:

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) flower.

Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) have miniature pea flowers, with the typical pea's asymmetrical petals.  The flowers each contain a tiny, elongate ovary that will elongate into a pod with seeds once the flower is pollinated.  Each pod contains one to three seeds, many fewer than English peas.  Chickpeas, regular peas and beans are all in the same plant family - the fabulous Fabaceae, or legume family.

Green chickpea pods.

The leaves and youngest green pods of chickpeas can be eaten raw.  The enlarged but green pods can be cooked like regular peas.  The mature pods turn brown and contain dry seeds. These seeds are usually eaten cooked.  The black chick peas do not turn black until they are mature and dry, and they retain their black color even after they are cooked.  Regardless of skin color, all chick peas are the same on the inside - tan. 

Chickpea pods and leaves with acid secretion making the plant glisten.

The really strange thing about chickpeas is that their leaves and pods secrete a liquid that contains a dangerous soup of acids (Katniss would know that!).  When you brush against these plants, they feel moist.  If you have any scratches on your skin, you will notice that the secretion burns painfully.  If you go blackberry picking one day then chickpea harvesting the next, you will be uncomfortable!  I imagine if you picked them all day, you might have some skin erosion.  On large farms, chick peas are harvested by machine, so don't worry too much about fingerless chickpea harvesters.  The acid is very useful to the plant.  If you were a disease organism or an insect looking to eat a garbanzo bean plant, you would definitely change your mind when you were burned by the malic, oxalic and hydrochloric acids on the plant.

Besides deterring pests, the garbanzo bean secretion does another important job.  It works just like sweat and keeps the plant cool!  The plants secrete their sweat later in their lifespan when their seeds are mature, and presumably when the growing season is edging toward summer heat.  The sweat keeps their leaves and pods cooler than non-sweating leaves when the temperature is high.  As what happens when we sweat, the plants lose water.  They are at risk of dehydrating if there is not enough soil moisture for them to absorb.  Also, moist things tend to rot or become infected as a general rule, so the acid is necessary to protect the moist plants from rotting.

Nearly dry chickpea pod.

The acid secretion on chickpea plants is both useful and harmful to people.  It tastes good, since acids taste sour.  In fact, one of chickpea's acids is malic acid, which provides the tartness in apples.  The acid secretion can be collected by draping a thin cloth over the leaves, letting it sit all night until dew forms, then wringing out the cloth.  It can be used to make a unique lemonade-type drink.  The harmful part comes from oxalic acid.  Oxalic acid interferes with the absorption of calcium and some other minerals from food, and it can aggravate kidney stones.  Oxalic acid is also found in spinach, and that's why spinach and chickpea leaves should not be eaten every single day, though moderate consumption is harmless.. 

Black Kabuli chickpea.

Above is a black garbanzo bean (chickpea) freshly picked.

So what's the verdict?  Would chickpeas make a great Hunger Games plant?  Edible but covered in burning acid - perfect!

Turnips

Turnips are ridiculously under-appreciated.  They are the easiest vegetable to grow.  They are marvelously delicious.  They produce anti-cancer compounds and their nutritional profile is similar to broccoli even though they look more like potatoes.  Their greens are the richest-tasting greens of all cooking greens.  To top it all off, they are in my favorite vegetable genus, Brassica.

The picture below is of an enormous purple turnip at the Chicago Botanic Garden, a fabulous botanic garden with an extensive fall vegetable section.  This turnip is pure white on the inside (I assume - I didn't cut it open), and it should also be white below the soil.  Sunlight causes the root epidermal cells to become pigmented in this variety of turnip.  The pigment seen here is an anthocyanin, but some turnips have a green suntan from chlorophyll production. 

A gigantic turnip!

The turnip in the portrait above, since it's very large and pigmented, is likely to have some zip to its flavor, much like a radish.  The greens will be piquant as well, like mustard greens.  The root would be delicious cooked in a stew with other vegetables, and the greens could be tamed by throwing out the first round of steaming or boiling water if necessary. 

My favorite turnips are Hakurei turnips, which are pure white regardless of sun exposure, smaller, and not hot.  They are sweet and fruity and even the greens can be eaten raw.  You can find them at farmers' markets in the fall and spring.  Their texture is divine when cooked - smooth and silky, and I like them sauteed or cooked into soups.  It's absurd to think of eating turnips without the greens in my book, so I always get the roots cooking while I prep the greens.  Then I cook the greens with the roots for the last few minutes for a great combination of flavors and textures.  YUM.

Turnip and greens, Brassica rapa.

 To grow turnips, just sow a thick line of seeds and cover them with a little soil.  As the turnips grow, you can thin the young plants by collecting some greens before the roots start to fill out.  In just a few weeks the turnip roots will grow and you can harvest them as you need them for several weeks.

Turnips and butterhead lettuce.

Turnips are members of the genus Brassica, which is a group of unassuming weedy-looking plants with fast growth rates and fantastic variation in growth forms.  Each brassica species modifies a different plant part to store energy, usually in response to humans breeding the plants to make agricultural varieties.  Turnips store energy in their roots (as do rutabagas), and the rest of the plant looks pretty normal.  Other brassicas put lots of energy into leaves (cabbage and kale), leaf stems (bok choi, seen below), flower buds and stems (broccoli and cauliflower), leaf buds (Brussels sprouts, seen below), stems (kohlrabi), and seeds (canola, mustard).  It's fascinating to me that these plants are so closely related with such striking similarities in leaf and flower structures but with such vast differences in other plant parts.

Brussels sprouts, Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera.

Bok choi, Brassica chinensis.

Brassicas generally are quite nutritious and low in calories.  Consuming these vegetables regularly appears to have a protective effect against many cancers, though the mechanism is not well understood.  For optimal amounts of the cancer-fighting compounds, eat these vegetables raw or lightly steamed, not cooked into oblivion.  Some brassicas contain bitter compounds detectable by a subset of the human population.  These people can't enjoy the wonderful flavors of brassicas because they find them to be too bitter.  Also, children are better at tasting bitter compounds than adults, which explains why they more commonly dislike vegetables. 

Six Interesting Things About Garlic

I spent the better part of a day harvesting garlic yesterday.  It is a pleasing job made even better by the garlic aroma that ebbs and flows around your head while you work.  At one point, the farm owner was harvesting basil upwind, and I had a wonderful aromatic pesto experience.  I have always wanted to grow garlic in my home garden, and I learned enough yesterday to try it this year.

To grow garlic, you plant a clove in the late summer and let it grow.  It grows a stalk with leaves above ground and begins to build a large bulb underground.  When the above-ground leaves start to die off, you know the bulb is ready to be harvested.  To harvest, stick a pitchfork into the ground a few inches away from the bulb and pull up the bulb and soil.  Gently brush off much of the soil and pull a leaf or two off if they are mushy and dead.  The fresh garlic is fabulous - mild and slightly green tasting, but you can cure it and keep it to use throughout the year.  To cure the garlic, let the whole stalk and bulb dry outdoors for two weeks or so.  Then you can cut off the top of the stalk and roots and store the whole thing in a cool, dry location.

Here is a row of garlic and one fifth of my garlic harvest ready to go to the drying racks:

Garlic is an amazing and powerful plant.  In no particular order, here are some interesting things about garlic:

1. Eating two cloves of garlic a day reduces your risk of cancer.  (reference)  If you crush the cloves, let them sit for 15 minutes, then cook with them, they will cause your body to produce more of its own antioxidant, hydrogen sulfide.  Antioxidants reduce the risk of cancer. 

2. Garlic also helps maintain elasticity of the blood vessels, reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.  It also has many other health benefits that are less rigorously demonstrated.  Garlic is anti-viral, anti-parasitic, antibacterial and anti-fungal. 

3. Garlic makes any savory dish taste better.  It helps bring out the other flavors in food even as it adds its own richness.  It is good lightly sauteed (don't burn it), roasted whole, cooked in broth, or even crushed raw into hummus or pesto or salad dressing.  To avoid burning garlic when sauteeing, add it as you finish sauteeing the onions and 1-2 minutes before you add the major ingredients to the pan.

4. Garlic scapes are delicious and only available for a flash in the spring.  Garlic scapes are the flower stalks of the garlic plant.  They have a gentle garlic flavor.  They can be stir-fried or sauteed.  Another farm worker brought in pesto made from only garlic scapes, olive oil and pine nuts, and it was fantastic.

5. Garlic is in the onion family, which includes all types of onions, chives, leeks, ramps and shallots.  These plants grow all over the world and are used in almost all cultures' cuisines and medicines.

6. Garlic plants are mostly all clones of each other.  Garlic seeds are not usually planted, and seeds would be the offspring of two garlic plants.  Cloves are parts of one plant, so when they are separated off and planted, they are genetically identical to the plant they came from - clones.  Garlic is very easy to grow from cloves, and the results are predictable.  Seeds take much longer to grow, and each seed results in a plant that may be bigger, smaller, less pungent or otherwise different than the parent plants. 

I'll leave you with my foot - toes looking fabulous from a recent trip to New York and lots of mud from harvesting after a good rain.