Vegetables and Fungi
Recipes
In this winter salad, you might think the rocket could be replaced with spinach, but it doesn’t provide the needed strong contrast in flavor. Rocket...
Some Maine cooks still don’t sweeten their baked beans, or they hardly do, and this old-school version doesn’t call for any form of ...
“Green” in this old Southern US dish refers to milky, young but ripe sweet corn (“sweet corn” as opposed to field corn). Compared with more...
Spoonbread is a counterpoint to usual American cornbread. Where that calls for much more cornmeal than liquid, spoonbread calls for...
Cucumbers with sour cream and dill are good on their own and go well with smoked or marinated salmon. Peel 2 large...
Tiny green lentils from Le Puy in the Auvergne are particularly good dressed as salad. From...
The important thing is that the mushrooms be closed and completely fresh. Most often, tiny button mushrooms are used and kept whole, but you...
The cream vinaigrette works well with endive. Freshly roasted walnut pieces marry well with the rest of the flavors, and you can turn the salad into...
Very thin leeks, because of their suitability to this dish, are called poireaux vinaigrette. Usually they are served on their own rather than as part...
In France as in Italy and certain other places, beets are commonly sold already cooked, making them very handy for the cook. Raw beets, unpeeled...
This is usually prepared with mayonnaise and Dijon mustard and called céleri rémoulade, even though the gherkins, capers, and other classic...
This salad is simply a mix of grated carrots with mustard vinaigrette. Depending especially...
This French basic is seldom found in cookbooks, perhaps because it’s taken for granted. It adds a welcome richness but can overpower salads made...
Scapece is Italian for fish or vegetables fried and preserved for a short time in vinegar along with mint and often garlic and other aromatic...
This is a simple dish of pickled turnips, onions, and cumin. It is normally served as part of a mezze, and sometimes as a side...
Black carrots are grown mainly in Turkey, the Middle East, and the Far East. In Aleppo they are plentiful during the winter season and are...
Drain the wheat berries and place them in a pot over high heat with 4 cups (1 liter) water. Add the cinnamon sticks. Bring to...
Signora Antolini’s wild mushroom ragù is a recipe I come back to over and over again, especially in wintertime...
This is mostly about the sauce. You may wish to cut the sprouts in half to allow the sauce to seep into the layers...
This stew will remind you of chowder. In fact, in form it is a chowder, and if you have a favorite way to make chowder,...
The forerunner of this antipasto from Piedmont in Italy was probably peppers with anchovy sauce; both are still made and are excellent...
Sicilian zucca all’agrodolce is also called fegato di Settecannoli (or ficatu ri sette cannoli in Sicilian) — liver from Settecannoli...
This zucchini pudding, a complement to grilled meats, combines two elements from Richard Olney’s essential Simple French Food...
The combination of sweet and sour isn’t common in Italian cooking, but it’s essential to certain preparations, and I’m fascinated by it...
Celery root, or celeriac, with its strong flavor, is often mixed with potato in a white purée, which goes well with meats, especially...
New potatoes are ready, and best, when the plants blossom in early summer. Even floury varieties have an appealing waxy tenderness then...
These fried cakes, oddly named for a malicious 19th-century stage character, are especially good with grilled lean meat...
These potatoes are so good, such a superior partner to roast lamb or beef, that they may be the only vegetable...
Erba means “greens”; -one means “big.” The pie, from Reggio in the Italian region of Emilia, is made...
The simple combination of eggplant and tomato excludes the squash and red bell pepper of ratatouille, which by comparison is a confused...
Chouée is always very popular and almost impossible to make badly. It’s just boiled cabbage mashed with butter and, optionally, boiled potatoes...
The beginning of asparagus season happily overlaps the end of citrus season. Traditionally, the sole purpose of sauce maltaise (hollandaise with fresh blood-orange juice)...
These are French-style œufs brouillés, cooked slowly with constant stirring to achieve the sensual consistency of smooth custard with only a few soft...
This salad appears in the bilingual Vieilles Recettes de Cuisine Provençale, or Vieii Receto de Cousino Prouvençalo, by C. Chanot-Bullier, about the food ...
The combination may sound boring, but it isn’t. I learned it from Lucy DiNapoli, whose mother came from Catania, Sicily...
Some of the most richly flavored soups of all are onion. Some are purposefully pale, but deep flavor comes from ...
Soups of fresh, sweet green peas, cooked nearly like petits pois à la laitue but puréed and called purées, are very Parisian...
This summer soup is adapted from the cookbook La Cucina del Piemonte by Giovanni Goria, published in 1990, where it is given the dialect name...
This versatile vegetable dish, second only to gulyás in the Hungarian gastronomic canon, is actually of Serbian origin. ...
A quick cabbage soup usually gets much of its flavor from cured pork, such as smoked sausage...
This basic soup relies for thickening only on the puréed carrots themselves. Like so many other vegetables, the carrots in regular supermarkets...
Homage to the late-summer vegetable garden, the combination of carrot and tomato is excellent, with sweetness coming from one ...
Unless you have perfectly fresh asparagus, peel it to bring the taste closer to just-picked. I prefer that a soup have its own inherent consistency...
This Sicilian accompaniment to bread is a way to preserve eggplants. Its elaborate taste recalls the Arab influence on the island’s cooking...
One of the most underappreciated old preparations is a vegetable gratin made with white sauce — béchamel in French, balsamella in Italian...
The batter for this rustic pudding, from the Quercy in southwest France, is essentially the same as that for crêpes, clafoutis, popovers...
A gratin d’épinards, made with good old creamed spinach, goes well with grilled steak and other meats. The following proportions yield extra...
With this recipe, the bland, fleshy stalks of chard are boosted by a very savory sauce that, depending on your expectations when...
When peas are ready and new potatoes have formed underground in spring or early summer, that’s the time for peas and new potatoes with sweet...