Required Reading: Vegetable Literacy - Gardenista
This is a cookbook that assumes two things about you, that you like vegetables for the sake of their being vegetables and that you already know how to cook. Photographs by Michelle Slatalla. If you fit into one (or more) of these categories, you will be grateful for Vegetable Literacy the next time you stare into your crisper drawer and wonder if there’s a secret to combining ingredients to create the best flavor. “You can use any kind of leafy green here,” Ms. Madison writes, and I took her at her word. In addition to the lentils and greens, the ingredients list called for a “Big Handful” of chopped cilantro and a “Smaller Handful” of chopped dill–music to my ears, because when is the last time my refrigerator hasn’t contained a surfeit of both? This is a quick soup, speeded up by Ms. Madison’s suggestion that you soak your lentils in hot water for 15 minutes or so before you add them to the soup broth. The recipe also calls for red pepper flakes, cumin, and coriander. A pleasurable aspect of the book is Ms. Madison’s reassurance that the ingredients you already have on hand are fine. “I’ve made countless lentil soups with greens, usually without a recipe and just improvising with what’s around, and the combination, whatever it is, always seems to work,” Ms. Madison. If you make this soup, I highly recommend that you extend that philosophy to include meat–for instance, some crispy pancetta cubes sprinkled on top of the bowl when you serve the soup will add considerably to the taste. The second instruction that might lead a beginner astray is Ms. Madison’s evenhanded suggestion that before serving, “you can serve it as it is, or you can puree it and end up with a deep, dark green soup. Or puree a cup or two to give it a smooth background.” A hardcover copy of Vegetable Literacy is $21.74 at Amazon. If you are at the stage of your adventure of learning to cook where you want a book that will teach you how to coax the most flavor out of a simple vegetable, then Alice Waters is still your woman.