New Veggie

Bremen is not a big town - around 600,000 or so - but we spend most of our time in our part of town, Vegesack, which has maybe 35,000 inhabitants. So we're small, but incredibly diverse, with folks from at least 50 countries in our area.  

We do most of our shopping for fresh veggies at the outdoor market, but there are some "specialty" shops that cater to these diverse populations, too.  I'd say they mostly fall into either African, eastern Mediterranean or Arabic categories.  Nearby there's a shop run by a Lebanese family, and we go there pretty often.

So this week, there was Malve, mallow. What?  I know it as a garden flower (you know, Marsh Mallow!)

I often have it in our little space in the summer.  It's easy to grow, undemanding, makes lots of pretty flowers.  But eat it?

Well, you can, but the eating variety has more modest blossoms and a different leaf.

I knew none of this when I saw the bunches of mallow at the shop, so I asked the guy at the counter how to fix it up.  I was not at all surprised when he told me had absolutely no idea! He said they'd bought it for their Syrian customers who seemed to like it. Well, we know some Syrians (and then there is the interwebs), so I bought it.  For €1.50 it was a modest risk.

Our dear Eilaf said, We love it!  Sauté it, add some onion, salt and pepper, that's enough!  The interwebs had lots of other suggestions with either chicken or lamb, with lots of interesting spices - cinnamon, coriander, bay leaf, garlic - so we considered it all and modified.  We roasted our bit of chicken with all the spices, sautéed the greens with onion and a big bunch of cilantro (fresh coriander), The side was Lebanese rice (spaghetti or linguine cooked till brown in oil then boiled with the rice with a good teaspoon of ground coriander).

We eat like royalty, as Werner has often said. He's right. The greens were deeply green in color and taste, slightly bitter with a hint of sweet, somewhere between turnip greens and spinach and oh so tasty. Are we surprised that this veggie is packed with all kinds of wonderful vitamins and minerals? Not at all.

Next time I see malve at the shop, I'll buy it.