Jack Bishop, Vegetables Every Day: The Definitive Guide to Buying and Cooking Today’s Produce, with More Than 350 Recipes (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 416 pp.
Vegetables are sexy now and getting hotter by the minute. Between the moralism of the anti-meat crowd, anxiety over the planet, and finally something like a decent farmer’s market trade flourishing in the U.S., people raised on frozen limas and canned green beans are actually excited about botanical foodstuffs again. And that’s to say nothing of the kale phenomenon.
Accordingly, publishers meet the demand by cranking out one gorgeously photographed cookbook after another, with increasingly weird fusion combos and an ever-receding horizon of Amish-sourced heirloom varietals to keep the revenue churning.
But they’re all latecomers to the game. The best veg cookbook ever was published almost twenty years ago already. Allow me to reintroduce you to Jack Bishop’s Vegetables Every Day.
Bishop is no minor player in the food world: he’s been with Cook’s Illustrated since its launch and has appeared on “America’s Test Kitchen.” It’s been fifteen years since his last cookbook came out (A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, also pretty good) and obviously he’s been plenty busy since. But somehow this particular brilliant tome seems to have slipped into oblivion. It deserves greater standing.
What the book lacks in photographs (i.e. none: but seriously, can’t you just use the internet?) it more than compensates for in comprehensiveness, accessibility, and deliciousness.
First, comprehensiveness. What attracted me in the first place was its Table of Contents: a long alphabetical list including every vegetable I already knew and loved (arugula, broccoli rabe, kohlrabi, garlic, and of course tomatoes), every vegetable I knew and had rather mixed feelings about (brussels sprouts, celery, okra, radishes, and turnips), and a whole bunch of vegetables I’d either never had (celery root, dandelion greens, endive, fennel) or never heard of (escarole, malanga, salsify). I was ready to expand my narrow vegetable repetoire, and this clearly was my guide to doing so.
Which leads to accessibility. I was a less skilled cook then (obviously) than I am now, but if I’d gotten started on cheffy fussiness with pea-green curls and microplaned meyer lemons, I’d have stuck with potatoes and lettuce. Sure, I knew the principle of steaming artichokes and pulling off the leaves, but I’d never braised them (wow). I’d bought beets but thrown away the greens; now I learned to cook them together and finish them with goat cheese and walnuts (double wow). Turns out you can sear both endive and baby bok choy, halved and placed face-down, and make something green into something edged with roasty-toasty brown! And no need to have a culinary school training to do it. I pulled all these off on the first try.
And if I haven’t persuaded you yet of deliciousness, let me tempt you with a few more. The tomato chutney and the slow-roasted tomato sauce quickly became annual staples, as did the roasted red pepper soup with basil cream. If you have never tried a cardoon, rush right to your nearest Turkish/Greek establishment for a gigantic bouquet of them and prepare to be amazed. The sorrel purée may be the very best accompaniment to an omelette, and if you are anxious about too many zucchini in your garden, pinch off the blossoms to deep-fry in beer batter or (better still) stuff with cheese and pan-fry.
I have to concede that, unlike Please to the Table, Bistro Cooking, and Flatbreads & Flavors, I have not actually cooked every single recipe out of this one. By my calculations I am thirteen recipes short, due to 1) lack of access to certain tropical tubers like yuca and boniato and 2) the fact that the one and only time I tried Jerusalem artichokes it felt as if the Fourth of July fireworks display went off in my stomach, thus inhibiting me from further culinary exploration along those lines. However, that leaves approximately 337 recipes tested at this point, which should be testimony enough to the excellence of this book.
In case you need further convincing, two favorites…
Chard Stems with Golden Onions and Bread Crumbs
As Bishop sensibly observes, “There’s no reason to throw out perfectly good chard stems when a recipe calls for just the leaves.” And if you grow chard in your garden, you know that at least half the vegetable is stem itself. You may even come to like this better than the leafy part.
1 lb. chard stems (about 12 large stems), any bruised parts trimmed
Salt
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 medium onions, minced
½ c. heavy cream
Freshly ground black pepper
1 c. fresh bread crumbs [about 6 oz. stale white bread, torn up or food-processor-ed]
1. Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot. Add the chard stems and salt to taste. Cook until the stems are almost tender, about 8 minutes. Drain and reserve the stems.
2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Use 1 tbsp. of the butter to grease a 13 by 9-inch glass or ceramic baking dish.
3. Melt the remaining 2 Tbsp. of butter in a medium skillet. Add the onions and sauté over medium heat until richly colored, about 8 minutes. Add the cream and simmer just until thickened, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Arrange the chard stems in a single layer in the greased baking dish. Drizzle the onion mixture over the chard. Sprinkle with the bread crubms. Bake until the crumbs are golden brown and the cream has glazed the chard, 15 to 20 minutes. Serve immediately.
Pureed Fava Beans
This was my introduction to fresh favas. Yes, the amount of waste if you buy them in the whole pod is staggering, so you should consider keeping pigs in the backyard to eat the leftovers. However, the tender sweetness will amaze you; beans as you never knew them before. This puree is really good spread on baguette toasts.
2 lbs. fresh fava beans [in the pod], shelled (about 2 c.)
¼ c. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
2 medium shallots, minced
Salt
1. Bring several quarts of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the fava beans and simmer for 2 minutes. Drain and refresh in a bowl of cold water. Drain again and then use your fingers to scrape away part of the outer light green skin on each fava. Squeeze the skin to pop out the dark green bean. Set the peeled favas aside.
2. Heat the oil in a medium sauté pan. Add the shallots and sauté over medium heat until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add the fava beans and salt to taste. Cook, stirring well to coat the favas with the oil. Add ¼ c. water, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cover the pan. Cook, stirring once or twice, until the beans are tender but not mushy, 3 to 6 minutes depending on their age.
3. Place the contents of the pan in a food processor. Pulse, adding more oil as necessary until the favas form a chunky puree. Adjust the seasonings. (The puree can be refridgerated in an airtight container for several days.)