Vegetables with a Bit of Bite

The term “vegetables” covers a whole variety of edible parts of plants—roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits—whereas seeds are considered as something separate. The texture of a given part of the plant mirrors its biological function. In the kitchen we rarely differentiate between these parts. When we think of broccoli and asparagus, we include both the stalk parts and the flowering tops as part of the whole. At other times, we use stalks, such as rhubarb, as fruits, while we often forget that tomatoes and bell peppers are fruits and that corn is a grain.