7 Peculiar vegetables You never heard about

-          Organic Rainbow Carrots

Are farmer’s markets carrots looking a little funky to you lately? Deep purple, dark red, white and bright yellow varieties may have you wondering what got into the fertilizer.

Carrots are one of the most basic and familiar of all the vegetables, but researchers have been changing up their colors and nutrient content to introduce entirely new varieties to U.S. consumers. Although geneticists have been creating these colorful carrots for many years now, they’re just starting to become popular among small-scale farmers, which means they are starting to earn shelf space at your local farmer’s market.

The food: People around the world have eaten carrots for thousands of years, and food historians estimate that we’ve been enjoying orange carrots since the 1500s. Orange appears to be passed in the carrot world, however, since scientists working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other institutions have been exploring more colorful versions — think bright yellow, purple and red — to market. These rainbow-hued carrots grow around the world in countries in Central Asia and in the Mediterranean, but are still a novelty in the United States.

Why the fuss? It’s not just about the color; researchers with the Agricultural Research Service at the Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wisconsin have been playing with carrot stocks to breed even more nutrients into the antioxidant-rich vegetable. The team is lead by plant geneticist Philipp Simon, who has been carrot-obsessed for 35 years. “At first we were looking at how to make a more uniformly orange carrot, since consumers are shown to prefer a solid color,” says Simon. “But in the 1980s there was a lot of information from nutritionists about the nutritional quality of pigment. So we are trying to develop carrots that are unusual, but still acceptable to consumers.”

Simon and his team not only want the carrots to be easy for American farmers to grow, but they want them to taste good and offer greater health benefits too. Thanks to Simon’s efforts, carrots today have about 75% more beta-carotene (a pigment used by the body to make vitamin A) than the carrots available 25 years ago. His team at the University of Wisconsin partners with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which supports scientists working on ways to improve Americans’ nutritional intake.

The taste: Rainbow colored carrots do taste different from Bugs’ favorite variety. I picked up a batch of purple and white ones from the farmer’s market, and thought the white variety tasted relatively mild, while the purple carrots were sweeter than the orange carrots I am used to. However, I’ve been warned that purple carrots can also have a peppery flavor, which could make it an interesting side dish for chicken dishes. The flavoring of colored carrots is still being finessed, however, and according to Simon, the best is yet to come. He and his team are in the process of breeding carrots with stronger flavors not yet seen in the U.S. yet. “We have some very good tasting red carrots that are derived from a cross between Korean and Chinese carrots,” he says.

·         Source: Here

-          Heirloom Tomatoes:

Despite the name, you probably won't find heirloom tomatoes at an antique store, or in your grandmother’s attic. (Well, you might, but that would be pretty weird.) The tomatoes themselves are not dusty fruits passed down from generation to generation, like old high school yearbooks and silver lockets. The tomato seeds though? Yeah, those are.
The seeds are what make an heirloom tomato an heirloom tomato. They are passed down from season to season, taken by the farmers from the tomato plants that produced the best fruit. This process allows farmers to select for certain desirable traits like juiciness, size, shape, or color. Heirloom tomatoes are also often open-pollinated, which means that they are pollinated naturally, by birds, insects, wind, or human hands. No weird science-y genetic modification here.

Basically, heirloom tomatoes have potential for greatness because their DNA hasn't been manipulated in the same way that the genetics of a lot of mass market 'maters are. Most tomatoes that we find in the grocery store have been bred to look like cartoon tomatoes: plump, red, round, and easy to store in the produce section of the supermarket. These tomatoes were created for consistency, but not necessarily flavor—good for people who sell tomatoes, not the people who buy them. We're talking about those watery, mealy, flavorless guys that get sliced up and put on fast food burgers. Hard pass.

But all that said, just because a tomato is being sold with the word "heirloom" attached to it doesn't mean it's going to be delicious. Plenty of farms, especially big ones, market their tomatoes this way to as a cover for what are actually genetically modified seeds and/or gnarly growing practices, cashing in on the heirloom hype while selling you an inferior product that might have travelled a thousands of miles to get to you. It's an unregulated designation, like "natural," so it's kind of a buyer beware sort of situation out there—calling a tomato an "heirloom" doesn't automatically mean that the tomatoes were grown locally, or organically, or in any way that you might associate with groovy, high-quality produce. And even the best local farms sometimes produce "meh" tomatoes, no matter how good their seed stock, farming practices, or intentions might be. The only way to make sure you’re getting a beautiful, delicious heirloom tomato is to buy them from someone you trust.

That’s why we like buying our tomatoes at a farmers market. We can ask about the variety and how they’re grown, and often taste a sample to ensure that we're getting what we want. And you know what we want: a bright, colorful, juicy, flavorful, rebellious tomato with some history. You know: an heirloom.

·         Source: Here

-          Shishito Peppers:

The appeal of the shishito pepper is simple: it has great taste, and its small size and thin skin make it easy to work with in the kitchen. Plus, it has a surprise element in that 1 in 10 of these peppers is hot! And that makes serving it at parties’ extra fun!

We’re countrified foodies, so when we hear about a new veggie getting rave reviews in the culinary scene, we like to jump on board. But we don’t just want to eat it, we want to grow it!
We fell in love with this plant right away, and it’s definitely going to stay on our grow list from now on!

WHAT ARE SHISHITO PEPPERS?

Shishito peppers are a Japanese heirloom pepper variety with a crisp fruity sweet pepper flavor and just a tiny hint of heat and smokiness that is brought out by cooking them.

Padron peppers and shishito peppers are not the same. Shishitos look similar to Padron peppers and are prepared in a similar manner. However, shishito peppers have a more wrinkled shape and are less spicy than Padrons.

BUT ARE SHISHITO PEPPERS HOT?

Well…no…and yes. Although they are a sweet pepper, they can be mildly hot. And about 1 in 10 is crazy spicy which makes eating them a bit like playing Russian roulette. On the Scoville scale, shishito peppers fall in the 50-200 range. For comparison, a jalapeno is 2500 to 4500.

So that means most people will notice, but not be concerned by, the heat in a shishito pepper.

My husband made me some blistered shishito peppers this spring, and I was hooked after the first bite! They tasted like a more delicious version of a grilled bell pepper with a smokiness from the blistered skin.

Honestly, I just sat down with the full plate and ate them all by themselves.

My husband told me to pick them up by the stem and eat the whole pepper in one bite. For a girl, it’s a good mouthful, but I devoured them one after the other until i got a hot one.

-          White Asparagus:

At this time of year, in parts of Europe the first appearance of white asparagus is so revered that full-blown festivals mark the season. Chefs and home cooks alike go crazy for the slightly milder, colorless spears. So what is white asparagus? The difference between white and green asparagus: white asparagus is grown underground. Growers cover the spears in mounded dirt or black plastic tunnels so that they’re not exposed to light and don't produce chlorophyll (which would turn them green).

The delicately sweet spears demand kid-glove treatment in the kitchen too. Lay spears flat on a cutting board and peel the bottom two-thirds of each spear with a vegetable peeler. Boil in a large skillet filled with several inches of water until very tender, 10 to 20 minutes. (Don't leave them tender-crisp as you might with green asparagus.) The traditional way to eat them is with your fingers, dipping them in hollandaise sauce.

Source: Here

-          - Golden Berries:

Golden berries are bright, orange-colored fruits that are closely related to the tomatillo. Like tomatillos, they are wrapped in a papery husk called a calyx that must be removed before eating. Slightly smaller than cherry tomatoes, these fruits have a sweet, tropical taste somewhat reminiscent of pineapple and mango. Many people enjoy their juicy pop of flavor as a snack or in salads, sauces    and jams. Golden berries are also known as Inca berry, Peruvian ground cherry, poha berry, golden berry, husk cherry and cape gooseberry. They belong to the nightshade family and grow in warm places around the world.

Source: Here

-          Champagne Mango:

The Champagne Mango is also called the Ataulfo Mango – a special variety of the mango known for its incredibly sweet taste, smooth texture, and thin pit. Smaller than a typical mango, the kidney-shaped Champagne Mango weighs about 8 ounces although the Ataulfo Mango can weigh as little as 5 ounces and as much a pound, depending on the grower and when the fruit was picked. Grown throughout the world in tropical climates, the Champagne Mangos sold in the US are primarily from Mexico and Central America.

The Champagne Mango grows on a tree and is green when picked but gradually turns a deep golden-yellow color as the fruit ripens.  When the fruit feels slightly soft with a gentle squeeze or when the skin just starts to wrinkle, the Champagne Mango is ready to eat.  Simply cut or peel the skin off and slice chunks of fruit off the pit. Each mango yields a surprising amount of fruit because the pit is so much smaller than a regular mango pit.

The season for Champagne Mangos is from March to late July – a short time – but hopefully this will change as more people discover the fruit and growers respond. At $1 to $2 each, the Champagne Mango is reasonably priced and available at a wide variety of grocery stores throughout the country.

Delicious at room temperature or chilled, the Champagne Mango is high in Vitamin C and A and has no fat. But, the flavor is what will impress and cause you to scour grocery stores for more because once you try a Champagne Mango, you can’t help but want more. My daughter calls Champagne Mangos the “turkish delight” of fruit; I call them the Dom Perignon of mangos.

Source: Here