Victoria Cosford
‘It’s just about getting more goodness into your body’, one customer tells me. Sipping a freshly pressed wheatgrass juice, she’s picking out a couple of bags of sprouts from Avi Karny’s stall, and I’d intercepted her to ask what she planned to do with them. ‘I put them in salads’, she replies. ‘In green smoothies, with eggs – even just to have as a snack!”
And she is just one of a steady stream of customers: Avi’s business is buzzing. His range of certified organic sprouts and microgreens includes sunflower, broccoli, radish, snow pea and wheat grass. They’re grown in organic soil which, Avi tells me, ‘adds richness to the sprouts – we have such great soil.’ The broccoli sprouts in particular have a devoted following, and I want to know why.
‘They contain a unique medicinal compound called sulforaphane’, he replies. ‘People know about it – people in the area are more conscious about what’s nutritious.’ He says that the sprout has ‘100 times more nutritional value than the vegetable broccoli itself.’ Indeed, this in general is the great advantage of sprouts – or seedlings – yielding as they do a much higher nutritional benefit than their mature counterparts.
The wheatgrass juice Avi will prepare freshly for you, using his very smart little machine. ‘It’s a purpose-built cold-press juicer’, he tells me, ‘very slow-grinding but it does the job’ – and oh the colour of the juice once extracted! This intensely vibrant green beverage just screams chlorophyll and goodness!
Back to the sprouts though: their crunchy texture is the thing. Jane Grigson in her Vegetable Book suggests adding a handful to soups or stews instead of shredded leek. ‘[It] changes the flavour and gives an even better crunchiness’, she says.
If you wish to grow your own sprouts then Avi is the man to see!
Energetic Greens is at Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday from 7am to 11am.
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