Backyard Bounty all-Tasmanian Vegie box: 5th August

This week’s boxes are fully of lovely leafy greens from Grown for Taste, York Town Organics, Southern Fields and Dendra Market Gardens.

It can be easy to become too rigid about what is a “salad” leaf and what is a cooking leaf, but with the exception of silverbeet (which is a bit weird raw) almost all other greens actually double up quite well. This week’s organic tatsoi and Mizuna straddle both camps very easily, equally at home in a stir-fry or a salad, but kale, with a bit more work, is a delicious salad green if you give it a solid massage with a tasty dressing. (I find the easiest option is just to put it in a stand mixer but you can obviously do this by hand too). I find myself as often as not grilling cos lettuce these days (the combo characters of char and bitter crunch are still welcoming to a range of common salad dressings), and it’s also great in a stirfry or a soup. An important thing to remember is that the more you cook leafy greens, the less of their flavour they’ll retain – flat-leaf parsley is strong and vegetal when raw in a tabbouleh, and takes on a milder flavour when added to a soup or risotto just before serving, but almost completely loses its punch if added at the beginning of cooking.