Favorite vegetable

[Toby]

Kim, have you tried golden beets? They're easier to deal with on a visual level -- they don't bleed. I like to peel them, grate them raw and mix them with creme fraiche, lemon juice and diced dried apricots.

There's a largish-sized cherry tomato called "Isis Candy" that has a sweet but very complex flavor; the first time I ate one I realized completely that tomatoes are a fruit (botanically speaking, of course).

[mamster]

I pretty much like all of them, but if I could only have one vegetable for the rest of my life though, it would definitely be onions. It's just not eating without onions.

[=Mark]

Tomatoes are a fruit.  (Sorry, I couldn't help it.)

edit:  In the U.S., tomatoes are botanically classified as a fruit, but legally they're a vegetable.  This is ridiculous, but stems from a U.S. Supreme Court decision sometime in the 1890s (exact date), where the tomato was classified as a vegetable in order to levy the 10% tariff for vegetables that was exacted to protect U.S. growers.

If you want to get botanical (Sorry, I couldn't help it.), any seed bearing fleshy portion of a veggie is considered the fruit. Taken this way, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, green beans, tomatoes are all fruits. All fruits are vegetables (unless you could point out some mineral or metallic ones ), but not all veggies are fruits.

Oh yes, we can't leave out my favorite fruit/veggie, anyone want to guess?

[Toby]

Mark, thanks for the photo. Those are our peppers at the Bowers' Chile Pepper festival in '99, I think.

[Sandra Levine]

No silly, its not Sandy's alternate name

I resent my name being used in conjunction with this vicious ad hominen attack.

[Belmont3]

awbrig, I think if you try them you will be very impressed. They are fantastic!!

[sparrowgrass]

Asparagus, fresh out of my own patch up here on Sparrowgrass Hill. (Sparrowgrass is an old English name for asparagus.) Breakfast, lunch and dinner during the season, then wait and want til spring comes again. Can't eat that stuff from the grocery store.

Sweet corn, sweet peas, new potatoes.

Tomatoes fresh off the vine, chunked up, mash a clove of garlic to a paste with a spoon of salt, add one glug of olive oil, two glugs of cider vinegar, stir it up, pour it on the maters, and let it sit for an hour.

Ten weeks til sparrowgrass starts to pop up.

[=Mark]

Mark, thanks for the photo.  Those are our peppers at the Bowers' Chile Pepper festival in '99, I think.

Actually it was 1998. Here are more images of the Bowers Chile Festival.

[Suzanne F]

Beets any style whatsoever, same for Brussels sprouts and spinach, cooked any style, but not raw.

Ran, and just to think, I have been enjoying your posts so far! BEETS are the ONLY truely terrible food on earth..like eating dirt.

I used to hate them, too. Then I had to make and serve them as an antipasto item: roasted, peeled, cut in chunks, mixed with torn basil leaves, dressed a little fresh lemon juice and olive oil. WOW! did that change my mind. Just a suggestion.

[stellabella]

right now i like dark green and deep orange vegs, as it's the time of year for hardy winter greens and root vegs. squashes, sweet potatoes, chard, collards...i'm going to cook up some collards tonight, i think. not sure how.

beets seem to be the most oft-hated veg and i wonder why as i've loved them since childhood. i pickle them when we have them in our garden. and i love them steamed til tender with lots of sweet butter drizzled over and fresh cracked pepper and sea salt. steamed diced beets are also good, and beautiful, in salads.

[Jim Dixon]

There aren't too many I don't like...but celery root or celeriac is my favorite under-achiever vegetable. The most common recipes are for using it raw, shredded into a salad, but it's much better, I think, cooked.

Peel it, cube it, and steam it with potatoes, then coarsely mash both together with olive oil.

Cut in matchstick and slowly braise in olive oil

Combine with potato and leek for soup(cook in chicken broth, finish with creme fraiche)

Jim

[Kim WB]

Beets any style whatsoever, same for Brussels sprouts and spinach, cooked any style, but not raw.

Ran, and just to think, I have been enjoying your posts so far! BEETS are the ONLY truely terrible food on earth..like eating dirt.

I used to hate them, too. Then I had to make and serve them as an antipasto item: roasted, peeled, cut in chunks, mixed with torn basil leaves, dressed a little fresh lemon juice and olive oil. WOW! did that change my mind. Just a suggestion.

While I might conceed that this preperation sounds alomost palatable, does it mask the fresh dirt flavor of the beet? And with so many vegetables that DON'T taste like dirt, why work so hard at covering up thier taste?? Seriously, I give them another chance every few years...maybe I'm due for another shot, and I'll gather e-gullet'sfavorite recipes and give them a try.

[ranitidine]

Kim, I find your reaction to beets fascinating. I absolutely do not know what you are talking about when you say beets taste like dirt. I simply don't taste any such thing. Obviously, we have very different body chemistries regarding something that is in beets. Sandy points out that there are many people who simply do not find it possible to eat coriander because of a body chemical reaction (maybe in their saliva or taste buds?)that makes it totally unpalatable to them. Could be that you'll never be able to eat beets. Oh well, more for me.

Edited January 13, 2003 by ranitidine (log)

[Suzanne F]

Kim, I've never thought of beets as tasting like dirt. And believe me, I've eaten my share of dirt. But Ranitidine is right, taste literally varies from person to person.

If you want to try it, scrub the beets (skin on). Coat them with a little oil, and put them in a roasting pan. Cover with foil, or not. Bake them at a fairly high temperature (up to 400º F), until they pierce easily with a knife. Let them cool. Slip off the skins (wear gloves and cover the work surface; THEY STAIN!) when they're cool, chunk them up and mix with the other stuff.

The reason I hated them when I was a kid was that I had to eat them AFTER my mother had boiled all the juice out of them, making borscht. Blech. Roasting intensifies the sweetness and flavor.

[ranitidine]

Sandy points out that we're all trying to convince Kim that beets are good but that no one's trying to convince her or Toby that celery is good. Actually, I gave up trying to convince Sandy that celery is good years ago. Come to think of it, once I learned to eat eggplant, there were no vegetables I didn't like.

[Toby]

Well, you cannot convince us that celery is good because the truth is that it's bad.

[SobaAddict70]

And you cannot convince me that celery is a vegetable because the truth is that its only good for three things: tuna salad, pot roast and as a base for either chicken soup/stock or in a mirepoix. Ok, more than three things.

At least the leaves are useful -- in things like minestrone and osso buco.

But I'll never eat it in a salad or by itself if I can help it.

Not even if its stuffed with cream cheese and topped with caviar.

heheheh

Ok, time to go to bed, with visions of sugarplum coated celery stalks dancing in my head....

SA

[Kim WB]

Sandy points out that we're all trying to convince Kim that beets are good but that no one's trying to convince her or Toby that celery is good.

I feel liKE the character in Green Eggs and Ham...I DO NOT LIKE THEM, SAM I AM! NOT IN A BOX, NOT WITH A FOX, NOT IN A CAR, NOT NEAR OR FAR!!!....

But, like that grumpy old codger, who finally tried and enjoyed the green eggs, I am going to stop by the market and buy some beets, I have some beautiful basil in the windowsill, so Suzanne's recipe will serve as a late lunch. But I am going to pull the container of Curried Butternut squash soup tht I have in the freezer out...just in case!

[lamb]

Aspargus, grilled with a little EVOO and cracked pepper.

White corn, bought just as it's being dumped into baskets at our local farm stand.

Brocolli rabe, sauted with garlic.

Peas, however, are completely out of the question. Any kind, any preparation. No, no, no.

[Suzanne F]

... no one's trying to convince her or Toby that celery is good.  ...

Celery is useful. That's the best I can say about it. I always have some in my veg bin. It adds crunch (but so can other, more interesting foods); it adds some flavor (so can celeriac, better); it adds bulk (shame on me for using it as filler ). It can, with tweaking, be made into something good. But why should a vegetable need that? I'd miss it if it were unavailable, but not that much.

[ranitidine]

Well, someone's got to stand up against all this slander. I do not like celery in salads, but I do like it cooked, in tunafish and just plain, eaten out of hand like I eat raw carrots. So there.

[Jinmyo]

Well, you cannot convince us that celery is good because the truth is that it's bad.

Try roasting large slices cut on the bias with shaved celery root and shaved fennel.

Then try it roasted on its own.

[Suzanne F]

Interesting that our responses to "I hate X" tend to be "Try roasting it." Since roasting intensifies the inherent flavor, will that help someone who dislikes the flavor? Well, I guess it changes the flavor, too. Just wondering.

[bushey]

Hands down, broccoli rabe.

[ranitidine]

Interesting that our responses to "I hate X" tend to be "Try roasting it."  Since roasting intensifies the inherent flavor, will that help someone who dislikes the flavor?  Well, I guess it changes the flavor, too.  Just wondering. 

I'll let you know after I've roasted it. This will be my maiden voyage roasting as Sandy (who loves celery root pureed with potatos by the way) will undoubtedly refuse to participate in any enterprise involving celery.