Featured Recipe from Vegetable Literacy: Ivory Carrot Soup with a Fine Dice of Orange Carrots
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 onion, thinly sliced
- 1 pound white carrots, scrubbed and thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon raw white rice
- Sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- 1 thyme sprig
- 4 cups water or light chicken stock
- Few tablespoons finely diced orange carrots and/or other colored carrots
- Freshly ground pepper
- About 1 tablespoon minced fine green carrot tops
Directions
Warm the butter and oil in a soup pot and add the onion, white carrots, rice, 1 teaspoon salt, and the sugar and thyme. Cook over medium heat for several minutes, turning everything occasionally. Add 1 cup of the water, cover, turn down the heat, and cook while you heat the remaining 3 cups water. When the water is hot, add it to the pot, cover, and simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.
While the soup is cooking, cook the diced carrots in salted boiling water for about 3 minutes and then drain.
When ready, let cool slightly, then remove and discard the thyme sprig. Puree the soup until smooth in a blender. Taste for salt and season with the pepper. Reheat if it has cooled.
Ladle the soup into bowls, scatter the diced carrots and carrot tops over each serving, and serve.
Featured Recipe from Vegetable Literacy: Peas with Baked Ricotta and Bread Crumbs
Serves 2
Ingredients
- Olive oil
- 1 cup high-quality ricotta cheese, such as hand-dipped full-fat ricotta
- 2 to 3 tablespoons fresh bread crumbs
- 4 teaspoons butter
- 2 large shallots or 1/2 small onion, finely diced (about 1/3 cup)
- 5 small sage leaves, minced (about 1 1/2 teaspoons)
- 1 1/2 pounds pod peas, shucked (about 1 cup)
- Grated zest of 1 lemon
- Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
- Chunk of Parmesan cheese, for grating
Directions
Heat the oven to 375°F. Lightly oil a small baking dish; a round Spanish earthenware dish about 6 inches across is perfect for this amount.
If your ricotta is wet and milky, drain it first by putting it in a colander and pressing out the excess liquid. Pack the ricotta into the dish, drizzle a little olive oil over the surface, and bake 20 minutes or until the cheese has begun to set and brown on top. Cover the surface with the bread crumbs and continue to bake until the bread crumbs are browned and crisp, another 10 minutes. (The amount of time it takes for ricotta cheese to bake until set can vary tremendously, so it may well take longer than the times given here, especially if it wasn’t drained.)
When the cheese is finished baking, heat the butter in a small skillet over medium heat. When the butter foams, add the shallots and sage and cook until softened, about 3 minutes. Add the peas, 1/2 cup water, and the lemon zest. Simmer until the peas are bright green and tender; the time will vary, but it should be 3 to 5 minutes. Whatever you do, don’t let them turn gray. Season with salt and a little freshly ground pepper, not too much.
Divide the ricotta between 2 plates. Spoon the peas over the cheese. Grate some Parmesan over all and enjoy while warm.
With Pasta: Cook 1 cup or so pasta shells in boiling, salted water. Drain and toss them with the peas, cooked as above, and then with the ricotta. The peas nestle in the pasta, like little green pearls.
Review
“I have always marveled at Deborah Madison’s deep knowledge of vegetables and her original creations, which taste just as delicious as they sound. Vegetable Literacy is her latest tour de force, a massive well of knowledge that makes you want to read and learn as well as cook. A fine achievement and a real inspiration for me.”
—Yotam Ottolenghi, author of Plenty and Jerusalem
“I have long been a fan of both Deborah’s vibrant food and her many thorough, thoughtful cookbooks. In Vegetable Literacy she offers, with abundant warmth and generosity, observations from years of garden-to-table cooking. Filled with fascinating botanical notes and inspired recipes that really explore vegetables from the ground up—it is a pleasure to read. The writing is beautiful and the lessons are astutely down to earth.”
—David Tanis, author of Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys
“Deborah Madison has taken vegetables to a whole new level. You’ll want to know what she knows—about botany, family pairings, and companion flavors on the plate. In cooking, Madison excels, but she’s also a natural with observation in the garden. Her passion is palpable, her scholarship tops, and her prose exquisite.”
—Amy P. Goldman, PhD, author of The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table
“The are few people equipped with the curiosity, skill, and eye for observation required to construct a volume of this size and scope—and Deborah does it masterfully. Vegetable Literacy will shift the way both home and professional cooks think about the relationship between ingredients, and vegetables in particular. Using this book has felt like a missing puzzle piece snapping into place—inspiring, intimate, informative, and beautifully illustrated.”
—Heidi Swanson, author of Super Natural Every Day
“For those of us who love vegetables, Deborah Madison gives not only practical tips for buying them, but also a bounty of diverse recipes. This is a monumental cookbook from a gifted writer and one of the best cooks of our time.”
—David Lebovitz, author of Ready for Dessert and The Sweet Life in Paris
“In Vegetable Literacy, Deborah Madison elegantly folds together a joy of gardening, a fascination for botanical kinship, and an expansive knowledge of fine and simple cooking. This book is a nutrient-dense treasure.”
—Wendy Johnson, author of Gardening at Dragon’s Gate: a Work in the Wild and Cultivated World
“In her most exciting and innovative book to date, Deborah Madison shows us how the botany in our gardens can inform and guide our preparation and cooking of meals that will both delight and nourish us all. Come directly from the garden to the kitchen with Deborah, and you will never observe or use vegetables in an uninspired way again. This book feeds our imaginations and souls with more insights per page than any cookbook I know.”
—Gary Paul Nabhan, ethnobotanist and author of Coming Home to Eat and Desert Terroir
About the Author
DEBORAH MADISON is the author of eleven cookbooks and is well known for her simple, seasonal, vegetable-based cooking. She got her start in the San Francisco Bay Area at Chez Panisse before opening Greens, and has lived in New Mexico for the last twenty years. In addition to writing and teaching, she has served on the boards of Slow Food International Biodiversiy Committee, the Seed Savers Exchange, and the Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance, among others. She is actively involved in issues of biodiversity, gardening, and sustainable agriculture.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
It started with a carrot that had gone on in its second year to make a beautiful lacy umbel of a flower. I was enchanted and began to notice other lacy flowers in my garden that looked similar—parsley, fennel, cilantro, anise, as well as Queen Anne’s lace on a roadside—they are all members of the same plant family, as it turned out. Similarly, small daisy-like flowers, whether blue, yellow, orange, enormous or very small, bloomed on lettuce that had gone to seed as well as on wild chicories, the Jerusalem artichokes, and, of course, the sunflowers themselves. Were they related? They were, it turns out. And did edible members of this group somehow share culinary characteristics as well? Often they did. That led me to ask, What are the plant families that provide us with the vegetables we eat often, what characteristics do their members share, and what are their stories?
Cauliflower with Saffron, Pepper Flakes, Plenty of Parsley, and Pasta
For 4
I love this approach to cauliflower. In fact, I’d say it’s my favorite way to cook it. It’s golden, aromatic, and lively in the mouth. It’s good alone and very good spooned over pasta shells, which catch the smaller bits of the vegetable. Even a small cauliflower can be surprisingly dense, weighing a pound and yielding 4 cups florets.
1 cauliflower (about 11/2 pounds), broken into small florets, the core diced
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for tossing the pasta
1 onion, finely diced
2 pinches of saffron threads
1 large clove garlic, minced
Scant 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
4 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
Sea salt
8 ounces pasta shells, snails or other shapes
Grated aged cheese or crumbled feta cheese (optional)
Steam the cauliflower florets and core over boiling water for about 3 minutes. Taste a piece. It should be on the verge of tenderness and not quite fully cooked. Set it aside.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil for the pasta.
Heat the oil in a wide skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and saffron and cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is soft, 6 minutes or so. The steam will activate the saffron so that it stains and flavors the onion. Add the garlic, pepper flakes, and a few pinches of the parsley, give them a stir, and then add the cauliflower. Toss the cauliflower to coat it with the seasonings, add 1/2 cup water, and cook over medium heat until the cauliflower is tender, just a few minutes. Season with salt, toss with half of the remaining parsley, and keep warm.
While the cauliflower is cooking, cook the pasta in the boiling water seasoned with salt until al dente. Drain, transfer to a warmed bowl, and toss with a few tablespoons of oil and the remaining parsley. Taste for salt, then spoon the cauliflower over the pasta, wiggle some of it into the pasta crevices, grate the cheese on top, and serve.
With Shrimp: When wild Gulf shrimp are in season, take advantage of their sweet goodness. Peel 1 pound shrimp, then sauté them over high heat in olive oil until pink and firm, after 5 minutes or so. Toss them with chopped garlic and parsley and divide them among the individual pasta plates or heap them over the top of the communal dish. Omit the cheese.
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