Vegetable Side Dishes

Appears in

Published 1986

About

In cookery books, one often states the obvious. To get the finest flavours from vegetables, they ought to be freshly picked and in prime condition. Then, they should be briefly cooked and eaten with the simplest of accompaniments like sea salt and good farm butter. On of this book, I talk about various ways of briefly cooking vegetables - steaming, poaching, stir-frying and so on.

When vegetables are plucked straight from the garden, they are best cooked in the simplest of manners. However, it is rare for us to be fortunate enough to eat as well as this for most of the time. For vegetables just off the peak of perfection, we have contrived limitless ways of treating them with various flavours, sauces, herbs, spices and dairy products. The whole tradition of international cuisine has an infinite number of vegetable dishes. In this section, I briefly touch upon the range. Hopefully, it will encourage you to have your own imaginative ideas. Do not be afraid to try unexpected combinations; for example, nut spreads mixed with miso can be used as a sauce. Both yoghurt and garlic are indispensable as sauces and background flavours.