LITMIR.BIZ

       Introduction

      I have no choice but to make this introduction relatively short. I’ve used up my space allowance several times over already, and the book has grown royally in length since its original inception. The trouble with writing about vegetables is that there are just so many, so much to say about each one, so many enticing ways to prepare them. This is also the joy of writing about them and more importantly of cooking and eating them.

      When I compiled my original list of vegetables that I wanted to include in this book, I decided to concentrate on those that could be bought relatively easily in this country, with just a handful of exceptional rarities (such as chervil root or wild asparagus) thrown in for good measure. The original 60 vegetables have increased to over 70, ranging from the familiarity of the carrot or potato, to the more unexpected taste of oca or jicama. And still I have not shoehorned them all into these pages. Devotees of Chinese arrowheads or waterchestnuts, Indian tindoori or drumsticks or bitter gourds will be disappointed. My daughter complained that there were no recipes for palm hearts, and remains barely mollified by my excuse that I’ve only once bought them fresh, in Spain, and canned vegetables have no place on these pages.

      Vegetables have long been something of a passion of mine. This is my second book on vegetables, coming over a decade after the first. I’m still learning about them, coming across new ones, delighting in new and old ways of cooking homely vegetables. I remain fascinated by their differences, their similarities, the way they take starring role, or blend comfortably into the chorus, the way they contrast, the way they add subtlety, the wonderful colours, the rich earthy tones, the sweetness and the textures, the forms, the connection with the land we live in, or with the magic of foreign worlds. I like the notion that the onion is virtually ubiquitous, that other cooks all over the world chop them and fry them just as I do, I love the exoticness of oca, so strange and new in Europe, but as old as the hills of the Andes where they are used without a second thought. Even familiar territory harbours magic discoveries – like the white sprouting broccoli of Leicestershire, or the dramatic purple carrots of Mallorca.

      To make the book easier to use (and write) I’ve grouped vegetables together with the cook in mind. This may occasionally make botanists blench, and from them I beg indulgence. To me it makes more sense to slot beansprouts alongside asparagus and cardoons in the ‘shoots and stems’ section, than to keep them with beans and peas. Globe artichokes caused endless arguments, but in the end we kept them next to cardoons to which they are so closely related, even though no-one could ever argue that they are either shoot or stem.

      One repetitive refrain runs through the following pages. With almost all vegetables, freshness makes a marked difference in flavour. With some it is more apparent than others. Newly picked spring greens are sensational, for instance, as are peas eaten straight from the pod out in the vegetable garden or allotment where they are grown. These are the kind of simple pleasures we should all have access to. Unfortunately so many of the vegetables sold in our shops have been held in storage for too long, or have been flown so far, that they have lost their brand new sparkle. They will still be in notionally good condition, but no longer in their prime.

      This is why I like to buy locally grown vegetables when I can. If they are organic, so much the better. I’m no puritan – I eat cherry tomatoes in the middle of winter from time to time because I can’t bear the thought of going totally without fresh tomatoes for nine months of the year. I regularly forget which day of the month my local farmers’ markets fall on, but when I do get it right, both I and the environment around me reap the benefits. The more we support our local producers, the more opportunities there will be to buy locally grown crops and the more choice we will have.

      Above all, however, the message of this book is to make the most of the incredible richness of the vegetable world. This is no health manual, but we all know that vegetables are good for us and we should be eating more of them. It’s not difficult if you give them a chance. Buy widely; choose wisely; cook exuberantly.

      Sophie Grigson