What the Mizuna is that?!

Thanks to some free seeds in a garden magazine, this year we tried several varieties of Asian greens that I'm ashamed to admit I had never heard of. One of these is "Mizuna", a peppery member of the brassica family that grew like the blazes, and surprised us both with its versatility and beauty.

Also called Japanese Mustard Greens, the plants germinated readily and then proceeded to grow very attractive, finely cut leaves with no real after care required. The plants grew rapidly and responded well to having the external leaves removed (leaving the inner rosette intact to regrow) for continuous harvests. The plants were bushy enough to suppress weeds, and looked very attractive on the plot. The slugs did not seem to bother them (although they might just have been so busy gobbling the lettuce beside it that they never got around to the more exotic fare), and neither did the pigeons. In face no pest seemed to trouble this star grower at all.

Despite only having half a dozen plants, by the time they were fully grown we still had far more than we could use. We washed, chopped, and blanched the glut and froze it for handy use in stir fry and soup. I found it particularly good as an addition to miso soup and ramen soups, with a flavour somewhere between rocket and bok choy.

BRIAN SNEAKING A QUICK NIBBLE OF MIZUNA AS WE WEIGH AND PHOTOGRAPH OUR HARVEST

In it's native Japan, the young leaves of Mizuna are also used as a salad vegetable, and the younger leaves were tender and pleasingly peppery, but still a bit more fibrous than we would like for a salad. We may try it as a windowsill salad crop next winter, as I'm sure younger shoots would be lovely and tender, but the real joy of it was cooked as a pleasing compliment to any Asian dish.

Itadakimasu!