The Flavor Files is a read-supported online space for curious cooks passionate about flavor. Learn how to cook with bold flavors to create food that nourishes and satisfies and apply food science to make you a smarter cook, written by Multi-award Winning and Bestselling author and photographer Nik Sharma.
I’m being a little playful; honestly, anything can be a vegetable. We eat fruits like tomatoes and eggplant and call them vegetables. Flowers, roots, stems, leaves, etc., can all be vegetables. From a botanist’s view, there is no such thing as a vegetable; that’s a cook’s point of view. The definition of a vegetable is much looser; I think of it as any plant or plant part that is cooked in a savory fashion.
When I set out to write Veg-Table, I realized I needed to learn and understand where our vegetables come from before developing my recipes. Without context, an ingredient or recipe can be a soulless creature, an aimless and haphazard ship sailing without direction in a vast ocean. My recipes and cookbook needed a compass to guide them, and that compass would be a hybrid of biology and flavor.
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One Response
I loooove longstem broccoli (I refuse to use the branded names that give one seller more business than they might merit). It’s a weird love for me since I so dislike the short stubby kind – calabrese I think?