Hakurei turnips are a variety of salad turnips. They are small in size, white in color and have a sweet, light flavor. Their texture is crisp an tender and they are often eaten raw.
How to prepare Hakurei Turnips:
As a salad turnip, Hakurei turnips are often enjoyed raw. They can be sliced or cubed and added to salads. As with any root vegetable, they can also be roasted and enjoyed cooked.
The Roma Tomato is a plum tomato. They can be egg or pear-shaped and are generally a good for canning, sautés and sauces because of their small size and firm, meaty texture. Compared to other tomato varieties, these little guys are great for cooking: they boil down faster, have more flesh, less juice, fewer seeds and have great big sweetness and acid flavor. Smaller plum tomatoes can be closer in size to cherry tomatoes and are sometimes called ‘baby Romas.’ All tomatoes are a great source of phytonutrients, several vitamins and minerals and are known especially for the carotenoid lycopene, which packs a strong antioxidant punch and gives them their red color. The Italians are thought to be the first Western society to adopt the tomato into their diets, and their word for it – pomodoro – means golden apple.
How to prepare Roma Tomatoes:
Roma tomatoes are often used in canning or sauce making. They can be enjoyed raw and eaten as any another tomato. Slicing a roma tomato is best done from the halfs: take each half face-down and anchor them to the cutting surface with your hand. From here, make several vertical slices and let the size be determined by how many slices you want. To create a dice, rotate these slices 90 degrees and slice downward, away from you.
Beets are the beetroot, or the taproot portion of the beet plant. Usually beets are deep purple, golden, or red, though many varieties exist. The pigments that give beets their rich colors are called betalains. Other than as a food, beets are uses as a food coloring, dye, and for medicinal purposes.
How to eat Beets:
Beets are often eaten boiled, roasted, pickled or raw. They can be added to salads, eaten as side dish or made into soups, among many other recipes. The green, leafy portion of the beet is also edible.
Farms that grow Beets:
Kualoa Ranch
Recipes:
The French Breakfast Radish, or les radis petit déjeuner, is an oblong radish that is reddish-pink at the top and white at the bottom. It has a mild flavor an is high in Vitamin C. The French Breakfast radish was first introduced in 1879 and quickly became a popular market radish of Paris.
How to Prepare French Breakfast Radishes:
In France they are often sliced lengthwise, spread with butter and salted, or placed atop a buttered baguette for a “tartine.” Radishes can be eaten raw or they can be fried, braised, steamed or roasted. Cooking radishes reduces some of their peppery flavor. Radishes can be stored for at least a week in your crisper drawer f your fridge wrapped loosely in a kitchen towel or paper towels.
Rambutans are native to the Malay-Indonesian region of Southeast Asia. The fruit is closely related to the lychee, longan, and mamoncillo. The name rambutan is derived from the Malay-Indonesian language word for ‘hair’ (rambut) due to its numerous hairy protuberances or spines. The fruit has a red, leathery skin with the fleshy spines. The flesh is translucent to white with a single seed. The peeled fruits can be enjoyed raw with a sweet flavor similar to grapes. The seed is also edible and the whole fruit can also be cooked.
How to eat Rambutan:
Rambutan can be eaten raw or cooked. The fruit can be cut open or the rind can be bitten into. Once the rind is cut, the fruit can be pried open and the inner flesh squeezed or popped out.
