Recipe 29: Braised Kohlrabi with fennel and leeks

Did I ever mention that I like some adventure with my cooking? I also like a little free with my cooking. Free is even better when the chef that created this cookbook has no concept of a food budget, as I've mentioned before. I'm really glad I didn't try to cook a different recipe every night;-). But back to my adventure...
I'm a part of the Mount Pleasant FreeCycle group on Yahoo!. Every once in a while, someone posts something I could use or even need. And it happened one day, that someone posted Kohlrabi for free, garden fresh, take it all if you want. I was a little surprised, and I wasn't due to make this recipe yet, but fennel and leeks were available, the leeks, barely, so I inquired. In actuality this home was about 20 minutes from where I work and I wasn't doing anything else that night, so I made the drive along all the country back roads to the north edge of St. Louis to find this trailer on a lot with a large pool and a huge garden space. I felt bad that I'd interrupted dinner, but I apologized, found a box in my truck of stuff I'd meant to pass along on freecycle, but the woman never came to pick it up. I took the clothing out, and proceeded to dig up some very large kohlrabi.
I came home with it, and described it to James as a green potato. He was at work by this time. After some research, because I only needed three and I picked about a dozen, we determined it was also referred to as a cabbage turnip. I only like cabbage in coleslaw and I've never had turnips either. But I did find a website with a few recipes, and James went to work on his share of the kohlrabi.

I saved out my three, and a couple extra just in case, cut them into wedges, and proceeded to follow the recipe. Olive oil, butter, kohlrabi, fennel, leek, dry white wine, chicken stock/broth*, thyme, salt, pepper and fennel fronds.

Note on the chicken broth/stock--I used what I had and what I borrowed from James. In the future, I will make sure to have vegetable stock/broth on hand as I think the chicken stock may have been a little powerful for this recipe.

It had a very mild flavor...I can hear James saying, 'Pass me the hot sauce and the cayenne pepper, will ya?' But its a good mild flavor, and certainly included a fun little adventure.

I expect I will make this recipe again, hopefully without the twenty minutes of driving. I will probably grow my own kohlrabi next year. This could get to be even more of an adventure;-).