Vegetable

The part of the broccoli plant that we eat is the unopened budding sprout, meaning that broccoli is, more or less, a big unopened flower. The most typical variety of broccoli is green and fairly large. Other types include sprouting broccoli, which produces small, dark green sprouts that are harvested individually. Romanesco broccoli looks a little otherworldly; it is chartreuse-green with a conical head made of pointy spiraling florets. There is also purple broccoli, some of which has such compact heads that it looks more like cauliflower than broccoli. Select broccoli that is brightly colored and firm, with compact heads that are not wilted, yellow, or blooming. Remove the florets from the main stem and cut or break them up as desired. Trim the end of the stems, and when they are large, peel them with a paring knife or peeler. Cut the peeled stems into sticks or slices.

A boiled dinner, which to be more precise might be called a simmered dinner, is an assortment of meats and vegetables simmered slowly and gently until tender. The resulting broth is clear and full of flavor and the meat is fork-tender and moist, comfort food at its best, restorative to body and soul. A variety of meats can be put into the pot; among them is usually a gelatinous cut to add a bit of body to the broth and a bony one to enrich the flavor. Some favorites are short ribs, brisket, beef cheeks, shanks, oxtail, chuck, beef tongue, chicken (either legs or a whole chicken), and sausage, or sausage-stuffed cabbage leaves. A boiled dinner is often served with the broth as a first course followed by the meats and vegetables, but I prefer to serve it all at once, with the meat and vegetables arranged in deep soup plates, moistened with a generous ladle of broth. Typical accompaniments for the meat are coarse sea salt, pickles, and a piquant sauce such as salsa verde, Dijon mustard, horseradish cream (grated horseradish, heavy cream, a pinch of salt, and a splash of white wine vinegar), or a tomato sauce spiked with capers. It is worthwhile to get the meat a couple of days ahead and to season it generously with salt and pepper. This will make it even more succulent and tasty. When a beef tongue is included (and I am quite partial to tongue in a boiled dinner), it should be soaked in salted water for at least eight hours to purge and season it. When deciding how much meat to buy, plan for ample leftovers. The broth makes fabulous soups and risottos and the meat is great sliced and served hot or cold with salsa verde, or in sandwiches, or chopped for hash. Classically, a boiled dinner is made with water. For a richer, sweeter broth, I like to use chicken broth instead, or half chicken broth and half water. This dish is easy to make, but it does take a while to cook, so plan for a few hours of simmering. Keep the pot at a bare simmer, with bubbles breaking the surface only now and then. Cooking meat at a boil will make it dry and stringy. Because their flavors can dominate the broth’s, beef tongue, sausage, and cabbage should be cooked separately from the beef and chicken. As an option to cabbage and sausage, or as a lovely further addition, consider preparing stuffed cabbage leaves. Add vegetables to be served with the meats towards the end of the cooking so that they leave a fresh, sweet taste in the broth. Here is a recipe for a complete boiled dinner—a classic Italian bollito misto—that includes different cuts of beef, a beef tongue, chicken legs, sausage, and stuffed cabbage. This is a bountiful dish that can easily be pared back all the way to the simplicity of boiled beef with carrots alone. Although this is a long recipe, some parts can be prepared in advance. The meats and tongue can be cooked ahead and stored in their broth. The sausage, stuffed cabbage, and vegetables are best prepared and cooked close to serving time. Timing is not critical; once everything is cooked and ready to eat, all the meats and vegetables can be reheated together in the broth and served.

The most common summer squashes are green zucchini, the light green flying-saucer-shaped patty pan, and the gooseneck-shaped yellow crookneck. More obscure varieties with different flavors and textures can be found at farmers’ markets. One of my favorites is Costata Romanesco, a ribbed, mottled-green, zucchini-shaped squash. It has a sweet flavor and a texture that doesn’t break down while cooking. Choose small, firm squash with bright skin. Larger ones tend to be watery and seedy. Wash the squashes or rub them clean with a damp cloth. Trim off and discard both the blossom and stem ends. Once cut, squash can be stored in the refrigerator under a damp towel for several hours. The blossoms of summer squash are good to eat as well. Trim off their stems and shake them well to rid them of any bugs they may be harboring. Chop the blossoms, sauté them, and add to an omelet, a pasta sauce, or a risotto. Or cook them whole, stuffed with cheese perhaps, and poached, baked, or dipped in a simple batter and fried.

Pumpkin, Delicata, acorn, butternut, spaghetti, and kabocha are a few of the many sweet-fleshed winter squashes available in the markets. These are all squashes that are eaten after they have matured and their skins or rinds have hardened. Squash continues to sweeten off the vine. Choose unblemished squash that are firm and heavy. They don’t need to be refrigerated unless they have been cut open. Cut squash in half carefully with a heavy knife on a stable surface. Scoop out the seeds and fiber from the inside cavity. The halves can be roasted until tender, cut side down, or they can be peeled (a swivel-bladed vegetable peeler will work on most squash) and cut up to roast, steam, or sauté. They’re delicious made into soup, by themselves or with other vegetables in a flavorful broth, or puréed.

For a very colorful ratatouille use different colored peppers, squash, and tomatoes. Don’t hesitate to double this recipe, as any ratatouille left over will taste even better the next day.

This is a very simple preparation to satisfy that wintertime craving for deep tomato flavor. Exact proportions are unimportant.

Nothing compares with a vine-ripened, fragrant, colorful tomato. Farmers’ markets (and your own backyard!) are the best places to go for tomatoes. Most of the supermarket varieties sold year-round have been bred for structure and not flavor. They can be shipped around the world, but they won’t make a tasty meal. There are many, many tomatoes to choose from. Little cherry tomatoes ripen quickly and are the first to market. They come in many colors; the golden and red ones are the most flavorful. Plum tomatoes are good for sauce. And then come all the other types, many of them called “heirloom tomatoes” to remind us that they are tomatoes our forebears planted in the days before produce was shipped globally. There are yellow, golden, orange, green, purple, striped, and, yes, red tomatoes to choose from. They come in as many sizes as there are colors. Choose deeply colored tomatoes that are neither soft nor too firm. Tomatoes will continue to ripen off the vine, and do so best out of direct sunlight. Don’t put your tomatoes in the refrigerator; the cold really steals their flavor. Wash the tomatoes and cut out a cone at the stem end to remove the core. If the skin is thick, tomatoes may be better peeled. To peel, plunge them into rapidly boiling water and remove them once the skin is loosened, which will take between 15 seconds and a minute or so (check the tomatoes oft en to know when to pull them out). Cool the tomatoes quickly in ice-cold water and slip off the skins. To seed a tomato, cut it in half horizontally and gently squeeze each half, coaxing the seeds out of each little cavity with your fingers. The juice can be strained to use in cooking, or to drink. Cooking tomatoes this way concentrates and intensifies their flavor. Each one is like a spoonful of sweet sauce.

Shelling peas (or English peas), snap peas, and snow peas are the three most common varieties. Shelling peas are shelled, and only the peas within are eaten. Snap peas and snow peas are eaten pod and all. The tender shoots or tips of the pea vines are good to eat as well. All peas taste best when harvested while young and tender. They are the sweetest at this stage, as the sugars have not yet transformed to starch. Shelling peas have a very short season; they are only around while the cool weather of spring is here. Snap peas and snow peas can tolerate a bit of heat and will last into the early summer. Select peas that are vibrant and firm, with shiny pods. When very fresh the pods will actually squeak as they are rubbed together. Smaller peas of any variety will be tastier than larger ones. The edible-pod varieties, especially snow peas, are best when the peas are tiny, almost undeveloped. As they mature and become too stringy to eat whole, sugar snap peas can be shucked like shelling peas. To prepare snap and snow peas, snap back each end and pull it down the side of the pod to remove any strings. Pea shoots need only to be picked over for any yellow leaves and then rinsed and drained before being sautéed or steamed.

Baking potatoes, boiling potatoes, new potatoes, and fingerling potatoes—there are many kinds of each to choose from, some yellow, some blue or red. The red-skinned potatoes oft en called boiling potatoes have dense, white, waxy flesh that holds its shape when boiled. They won’t do very well for baking and make terrible mashed potatoes, turning gluey when mashed. Baking potatoes usually have light brown skins with white flesh that is dry and fluff y when cooked. These are best for baking and for French fries. Kennebecs and russets are common varieties. The tastiest, most versatile potatoes are the yellow-fleshed varieties such as Yellow Finn, German Butterball, and Yukon Gold. The flesh of these potatoes has a texture between that of a baker and a boiler. They have enough waxy starch to hold together when boiled, but not so much that they can’t be mashed—and best of all they are full of flavor, much more so than any white-fleshed variety. New potatoes are those that are dug while the plants are still green in the fields and have thin shaggy skins. They are a real treat. Fingerlings are smaller potatoes shaped, as you might guess, like long thin fingers. Some delicious varieties to try are Russian Banana, German, and Ruby Crescent. Select potatoes that are firm and free of discolored spots. Don’t buy potatoes that have green on the skin. This is caused by exposure to light and may indicate the presence of solanine, which is toxic. The green may be peeled away, but it is better to avoid having to do so. Store potatoes in a bag or cupboard away from any light. New potatoes and fingerlings never need to be peeled; just wash them well before cooking. Other potatoes should be peeled, depending on the recipe and your wishes. Once peeled, potatoes should be kept submerged in water to keep them from turning brown. I like this best when the potatoes are sliced quite thin (a mandoline makes this easy): that way the potato slices are less likely to curl up and burn on the edges. Yukon Gold and other waxy, yellow-fleshed potatoes keep their texture in a gratin; floury potatoes like russets fall apart.

There is a spectacular array of varieties and colors of sweet peppers and chiles, all from the same genus. For the most part, sweet peppers are larger and fleshier than spicy chiles. All peppers start out green and then change colors as they ripen; the palette extends from green to purple to red with all the shades of yellow and orange in between. The most common sweet pepper is the bell pepper, but there are many others: Hungarian wax peppers, which are small and pale yellow; lipstick peppers, also small, in brilliant shades of red-orange; larger, less fleshy gypsy peppers; tiny red cherry peppers; long pointy Corno di Toro peppers; and fat fleshy pimientos, to name just a few. All these peppers are sweet, but they have many nuances in flavor as well and are especially suited to the Mediterranean cooking of the South of France, Italy, and Spain. Select peppers that have ripened beyond the immature green stage. A green pepper has not had the chance to develop its full flavor and is much harder to digest. Peppers are tasty whether raw or cooked, roasted or peeled. There are even more varieties of chile peppers. They vary in flavor and spiciness as well as size and color. Chiles are eaten immature and green, fully mature, and dried. Choose shiny, bright, fresh peppers and chiles. Avoid any that have spots or blisters on their skin. Peppers and chiles are prepared the same way, regardless of size: either roast them whole to remove the skins and remove the cap, internal veins, and seeds (the veins and seeds are the spiciest part of a chile); or cut them up without cooking them fi rst, removing the cap and stem, carving off the tough internal veins, and shaking out all the seeds. When using dried chiles, split them open and discard the seeds and stems. Th ey can be toasted briefl y in a hot oven or pan and then rehydrated in water for a sauce or can be added directly to a stew. Sautéed peppers are good on pizzas and pastas, in omelets, or on croutons. If you like, mix hot and sweet peppers.

I love endive cooked this way. It is so succulent and really does melt in your mouth. Serve it with all kinds of roasted meats and poached or baked fish.

This is one of my favorite greens. It has an assertive flavor that is bitter, nutty, sweet, and green. The stems have a great texture that’s both juicy and chewy. It calls out for garlic and strong flavorings such as hot pepper, anchovies, and vinegar.