CHOW: Chocolate & Zucchini

Secret Squirrel sent me a story from the Washington Post about all these food blogs and I just about had an accident. Some were crazy, some were wonderfully useful, and some, like this one, were just plain brilliant.

Clotilde has been getting a whole pile of press lately, and deservedly so - she writes about eating and living in Paris and the stories she posts serve both and each other well - her discoveries (recipes and restaurants among them) are so free of the usual bite and snark of less genteel, more self-serving blogs that you get drawn in to her work, her life - cast about in simple yet sophisticated prose that belies her 25 years:

Le chou-rave -- in English kohlrabi or cabbage turnip -- is definitely my greatest vegetable discovery for this winter. Although its name would indicate that it is a root vegetable ("rave" means "root", as in betterave [beetroot] or celeri-rave [celeryroot]) it is in fact a surface vegetable and belongs to the cabbage family. It is also exceptionally rich in vitamins and nutrients.

I first spotted it in the display of my favorite produce stall at the market, and was initially drawn to it because of its interesting look -- a plump pastel green body with graceful little arms growing up from all sides and twirling around, ending in large green leaves. I asked the stall-keeper about them, the one who's so pretty and has a smile so fresh you would swear she just hopped right out of the salad crates, the one who's always glad to advise about cooking methods and recipes (I usually pretend I'm not quite ready until she's available to take my order).

She explained that the greens are edible and can be used like parsley, while the best use for the body is to peel it, slice it thinly, and eat the slices raw with a little fleur de sel sprinkled on top. This came as something of a surprise, it sounded like such a summery use for what I had imagined was a root vegetable, destined for boiling and stewing and roasting (all methods you could also apply to our friend the chou-rave).

I promptly tried this at home, and from then on became a die-hard fan of raw chou-rave. The flesh is crunchy like a radichio but it has none of the radichio's peppery bite, and its flavor is sweet and subtly nutty. The slices are moist enough that you can press them gently onto a little pile of salt so a few flakes will stick on, a beautifully complement in terms of taste and texture.

But my personal preference, for a tasty and healthy appetizer, is to match it with spirulina gomasio -- my greatest condiment discovery for this winter!

She eats and cooks in a life that would be a sweet (and chunk-bottomizing) dream to most of us - and this isn't even her day job - she's just chosen to open her eyes and her mouth to the world - and, thankfully, found a way to tell us about it all.