Got some beet greens and mustard greens at the farmers market today.

Got some beet greens and mustard greens at the farmers market today. Sauteed them in olive oil and garlic tonight. The beet greens taste pretty much the same as chard, to me. And I have teeny, tiny baby beets that I plan to clean and roast later. The more interesting experiment turned out to be the mustard greens.

I nibbled on them before cooking and they were sweet and peppery. After cooking, however, they had become bitter. Growing up, one thing I had learned was that if you pick greens (along with many other things) after they had gotten too large, they would be tougher and more bitter, which has generally been my experience. These were not large, late greens. Besides, as I said, I tasted them and they were not bitter at all before they were cooked. 

After thinking about it a little bit, my suspicion is that the greens reacted with the aluminum pan. They shouldn't, it's a fancy anodized one. A theory I will test with either a cast iron, ceramic, or enamel pan another time. However, just as I discovered that picking greens younger got rid of taste and texture issues that others continue to insist are inherent to the plants, I am unwilling to accept that something that didn't start out that way can become bitter after cooking for no particular reason.