Move Over, Baby Greens

Baby greens are giants compared to the latest minuscule culinary trend: microgreens.

These are tiny versions of familiar plants such as arugula, amaranth, chard and beet greens and of plants not so well known, including shiso, popcorn shoots and menegi (Japanese green onion).

Micros are not sprouts. They are recognizable plants, plucked as soon as the first true leaves--leaves shaped like those of the mature plant--appear.

Right now, you’ll find them only in the trendiest restaurants, where they are employed as costly garnishes. They are not yet in markets no matter how upscale because they are too perishable to store and too expensive. The minimum price is $35 a pound wholesale, or about $60 a pound retail. Some cost even more.

The two main suppliers in Los Angeles are Japan California Products, which distributes micros raised in hot houses in Camarillo by FMK Products, and Country Fresh Herbs in Tarzana, a farm that grows its own micros as well as other produce for restaurants.

Brian Hashizume, vice president of Japan California Products, sells more than 100 pounds of micros a week. That’s a lot if measured in bulk, because micros weigh almost nothing. The company had to reduce package size from a pound, which was too big for most buyers, to a quarter pound, which fits into a sandwich-size bag. Some are sold in 2-ounce lots.

Microgreens first became popular on the East Coast about three years ago, Hashizume says. His company entered the field two years ago. “We started getting calls from chefs asking, ‘Hey, can you do this?’ It’s something taking off now, so we are fortunate to be in this early.”

Country Fresh Herbs put in microgreens last fall on a farm that looks like a gorgeous garden, with billows of rosemary, brilliant flowers and stretches of colorful herbs such as Joseph’s Coat amaranth.

About an eighth of an acre--roughly the size of a typical suburban home lot--is devoted to micros. “You get a pretty high yield out of a small area,” says Sandy Tandler, partner in the business with Michael Feig, once chef at Ma Maison. Feig’s wife, Kathy, who formerly managed Rive Gauche Cafe in Sherman Oaks, handles orders and preparation of the micros for shipping.

Working with a quarter of a pound at a time, she washes the micros by immersing them in a salad spinner, then dries them and packs them in plastic containers. Orders are collected early in the morning, and picking starts shortly after 6 a.m.

Country Fresh experimented with micros in response to a request from Sang Yoon, then executive chef at Michael’s restaurant in Santa Monica. “I wanted to get certain varieties planted that I hadn’t seen yet,” Yoon says. These included green purslane, golden purslane, fennel and celery.

Yoon was intrigued early on by micros. “I grew some celery. Just the tips came up. I picked one and ate it, and it had an amazing celery flavor. Just the pure celery flavor. It didn’t dawn on me that other things could taste this way.” Yoon is now consulting corporate chef for azia Restaurant Group, which recently opened its first restaurant in Beverly Hills.

To show how micros can make a dish stand out, Yoon topped a stack of grilled sea bass and tempura-fried long beans with micro magenta spinach, micro tatsoi and a feathery headdress of popcorn shoots. Then he added micro Thai basil and micro cilantro to azia’s “deconstructed” Thai salad. “You want them to be seen. You want to show them off. They’re so beautiful,” he says.

Yoon buys micros from both suppliers. Of Hashizume, he says, “He’s kind of a leader, pushing the envelope.”

Hashizume first imported micros from a shipper in Pennsylvania. “He couldn’t keep up with what we needed because of the cold weather,” he says. And the greens did not always arrive in good condition.

Hashizume then contacted Dwight S. Fujii, plant physiologist and co-owner of FMK Products, whose main business is vegetable transplants.

“There were things we had to learn,” says Fujii. “We had to play around with this a lot. Each micro takes a lot of effort to learn how to grow.”

Microgreens can be grown year-round, but seed availability can interfere. Burgundy amaranth is sold out, and golden beet seed is unobtainable because of crop failure.

Japan California Products now can supply 33 varieties of microgreens, all grown by FMK. New to the line are Osaka purple, a type of mustard, and an Oriental mix of micro mizuna, tatsoi, red mustard, mitsuba and daikon greens. Country Fresh grows about a dozen varieties.

Along with Yoon, an early advocate of microgreens was Robert Gadsby, whose now-closed restaurant, Gadsby’s, was on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles. Gadsby began to experiment with microgreens in the early ‘90s. “A lot of the stuff I grew myself,” he said.

At Gadsbys, he used micros as “a springboard to come up with more creativity. About the first thing I used was popcorn shoots,” he says. Gadsby tossed the shoots, which are intensely sweet, with popcorn seasoned with salt and sugar. This formed the garnish for a lobster and corn soup.

“On a full-scale menu, micros would devastate your food costs,” Gadsby says. “It’s not something you would put in a sandwich, because this would be one expensive sandwich. And they are very fragile. They have to be stored separately from other foods.”

Gadsby treats micros with scrupulous respect. He stores them in chests that he buys from office supply stores, lining the drawers with towels dampened in cold water, and squeezed to eliminate excess moisture. Then he arranges the micros in plastic bags, opened slightly to admit air.

“Darker micros keep best if placed on top, lighter greens on the bottom,” he says. Popcorn shoots should be stored in the dark or they lose their bright yellow color, and they should stand in sweetened water. Gadsby uses Sprite, which he says has the proper balance of sugar and water.

Whether microgreens will make the transition from a rarefied decoration to an ingredient for home cooking is hard to predict. Yoon would like to see them in farmers markets, but Tandler says, “I don’t think people are going to want to pay the price. In the heat of the summer, I don’t think they are going to hold up outdoors.”

Fujii agrees. Micros, he says, are “very highly perishable . . . Young plants tend to respire more and can burn themselves to death if not cooled. Basically, in cooling, the plants go to sleep.” So you can’t toss these tender greens into the trunk of a car that has been standing in a hot parking lot.

Hashizume is more optimistic. Although some micros are extremely delicate, others are a little stronger and can go retail, he says. These include mizuna, arugula, upland cress, pepper cress, fennel, burgundy amaranth and bulls blood beet greens.

“It will get to that stage, just like baby leaves made it. More and more people are seeing it [micros] on the plate. They start asking for it.”