To Kohlrabi with love

Life in London has taken a turn for the worse this week - I've been sick for 5 days now with an evil version of tonsillitis. I can't say I've witnessed any great sign of improvement despite the cache of drugs I now have or the brief trip to one of London's busiest hospitals only to be handed a free asprin (inspiring stuff). I've been pondering whether penicillin could be considered a unique or strange vegetable that could be transformed into a gourmet delight once mixed with a few fresh herbs and spices and I've also been pondering whether I should just skip the blog for this week but then I remembered something about 'turning up at the page' - a little Artist Way reference which can be translated as 'get your sorry backside out of bed!'

I'm under strict instructions not to leave the house (boyfriend rules - non negotiable it seems) and so I have made the heroic step of at least moving to the living room to sit by the window and watch the grey clouds settle. I love this blog. Once again it has delivered me a little slice of sanity. I started by looking up one of my new favourite websites; BBC recipes, searched by vegetable recipes and one of the first ones to appear was 'smothered leeks and kohlrabi' with a photo of that vegetable - apparently a kohlrabi - that I have dismissed at farmers markets before, primarily because I had no idea what it was.

I am not alone. I googled Kohlrabi and apparently its become a bit of a regular in people's home delivered vegetable boxes so the web is filled with questions and cries for help from people trying to first of all decipher what this unattractive thing is and secondly what to do with it. My favourite find was a post by a Guardian reader, Sean Ingle, who I have to quote;

After all, you rarely find kohlrabi in British supermarkets. Or restaurants. Or cookery books. It's big in Germany, apparently, but then so is David Hasselhoff.

I'm quite fond of kohlrabi's unusual appearance - how could anyone not have a soft spot for a vegetable that looks like something an eccentric scientist would send to Mars? Most foodies, however, seem to think it should stay there. The reaction of Nigel Slater is typical. "Having tried out a number of ideas for this sputnik-shaped root, I have concluded that I really don't ever want to see one again," he wrote last year. "Perhaps the fact that slugs and bugs avoid it like the plague (which is why it turns up with grim regularity in many organic boxes) should give a clue as to why most people give it the cold shoulder."

This vegetable seems to be so controversial that I now see it as a personal challenge to cook it so that it feels a little more love from the world. This then led me to the on-line supermarket shopping websites to see whether I could order it (and the rest of the week's supplies) from my lounge room. Turns out the big supermarkets don't love Kohlrabis either however what I did discover is just how much stuff I could buy from the on-line supermarket - sofas, electrical appliances, storage solutions - a very wide selection for a girl who has just moved into her boyfriends bachelor pad and is already eyeing off a few decor changes. I may be housebound but that doesn't mean I can't carry out a little retail therapy :) Kohlrabi may have to wait just a little longer for some love.