Country Enterprise - Exotic vegetables such brussel sprouts, red cabbage, cardoons, celeriac, chicory, corn salad, courgettes and endive

<P> To sell Brussels sprouts pull up the whole plant. Hung upside down in a shed, the sprouts stay fresh for a few weeks. This often encourages people to try fresh as opposed to frozen ones. </P><P> Red cabbage is delicious cooked or uncooked; it sells well in areas with a continental population. </P><P> Cardoons are appreciated on the continent but you will have to do some customer-education here with a recipe leaflet. They look rather like globe artichokes but it is not the spiky globes that you are after. Tie black polythene around the plant in mid-September to blanch the stems: this is the part you cook, using the same recipes you would use for celery. </P><P> Celeriac is now sold in many supermarkets. It is a celery-flavoured root and really at its best fresh. </P><P> Chicory is interesting to grow; you produce a root from seed, then you dig it up and force it in pots in the dark and up come those shiny nobs of chicory (some varieties produce a pink chicon). </P><P> Corn Salad looks like forget-me-nots. You can eat it in the winter when other salad stuff is in short supply and it makes an excellent salad mixed with thinly sliced red cabbage and a few nuts. </P><P> Courgettes are not really very special unless you grow yellow ones. If you live near an area with a continental population, grow a few big dandelions and blanch them; these are delicious in salads and much appreciated by healthy eaters because of their beneficial effect on the liver. </P><P> Endive is another salad vegetable not appreciated so much here as it is on the continent. It has a bitter flavour and we only like it when it is mixed with lettuce. </P><P ALIGN=RIGHT> <A HREF=veg15.htm TARGET=mainframe STYLE="text-decoration: none">exotic vegetables</A></P>