Vegetables
Select the right vegetables, then keep them fresh. Keep most vegetables in a cool and airy place
away from direct light, a slatted wooden vegetable rack is ideal. Potatoes must be protected from light
or they turn green which is bad. Vegetables with a short shelf life like tomatoes, peppers and green
beans do better in the fridge.
Onions grow your own if you can. Shallots are similar but smaller. To prepare, place on chopping
board, hold firmly with left hand (if you are right handed) and cut off the top and bottom with as little
waste as possible. What you do next depends on the recipe. If you want small onions or shallots to
cook whole in a casserole, just slice through the skin, then pick and roll it off with your fingernails or a
small knife. If you want onion rings for deep frying or salads, hold the onion firmly and slice crosswise.
This sends up onion juice droplets which may irritate the eyes; spectacles help. For most other uses,
cut the onion in half lengthways before skinning. Lay it flat side down and holding it carefully slice
progressively until its all sliced, turn the last quarter on its side to slice. If you need very finely
chopped onion, turn the slices at right angles and slice across the repeatedly. A big cook’s knife is
best, hold the end down with your left hand fingers and chop up and down, to and fro, until the onion
is fine enough for the recipe. Shred garlic and ginger in the same way.
Leeks are a winter vegetable, similar to onions but milder. Wash and prepare carefully to remove
any earth between the layers. Discard roots and yellow leaves, strip the outer layers and wash off any
earth The cleaned loose layers can be shredded, the stalk chopped across like carrots. Leeks are
nice fried in butter, perhaps with bacon scraps, or steamed. They are ideal in soups and stews.
Carrots are sweeter and tastier when fresh. Young carrots just need rubbing with a scourer under
some water, peel larger ones with a potato peeler. The thinner you slice them, the quicker they cook.
For slow cooking in a casserole, cut into 3cm sections, slice 4-5mm thick for regular boiling, slice thin
or ‘matchstick’ for stir fries, grate for salads. Boil carrots (and most vegetables) in just enough water to
barely cover them, in a pan with a lid on. This saves fuel and gives more concentrated ‘vegetable
water’ which can be used in gravy.
Potatoes New potatoes become available with the first imports from Jersey in late spring. Rub any
loose skin and earth off with a scourer and boil until soft (test with a sharp knife), serve with butter.
You can oven roast them with olive oil and rosemary, no need to par-boil, takes about an hour.
Regular main crop (old) potatoes need peeling: there are several designs of potato peeler, the
simplest are probably best but try a few and see what you like. Roast potatoes are made by boiling
peeled potatoes for 10 minutes then roasting in fat in the oven for an hour, spooning the fat over them
every 20 minutes. Goose or duck fat is best (see ‘Christmas’), at the time of writing you can buy handy
sized jars of goose fat from Lewry’s in Botley high street. Oven baked jacket potatoes are unpleasant
if underdone and crunchy but lovely when baked slowly for 90 minutes in a low/medium oven. Stick
them in 4 or 5 places with the point of a sharp knife before putting them in the oven or they can
explode as expanding steam bursts the skin. They are great with butter and grated cheddar cheese,
baked beans, prawn mayonnaise etc. Potato cakes are a treat-boil then mash the potatoes, add salt
and pepper and finely chopped green onions or chives, coat with breadcrumbs and/or dried fried
onions from Chinese or Asian retailers, shape into cakes or croquets and oven bake or shallow fry
until slightly crisp on the outside.
Here is a special potato recipe for dinner parties.
Pommes de Terre Dauphinois
1lb potatoes sliced very thin (red skin potatoes are best)
Clove of garlic chopped fine and rubbed round the dish
Salt and Pepper between layers
2oz butter
1 pt double cream
Arrange sliced potato with butter dotted around in layers in an earthenware dish, pour the cream over
evenly and cook for 90 minutes in a medium oven (mark 4). Delicious on its own as a first course with
salad or with a meat or fish course at a dinner party. Variation-add parsley or chives, add grated
cheese for the last 30 minutes.
Chips (or fries) are made by cutting potatoes into chips and deep frying in very hot vegetable oil. If
you make a big batch, keep the first lot in a roasting tray in a low oven while you fry the next lot. If they
go a bit soggy, fry them hot for another minute just before serving. Try to cut your chips all the same
thickness. Chips are NOT ‘junk food’; they are a good source of vitamin C and fibre, and taste good.
They are only bad news if eaten to excess, and only then because they soak up a lot of oil, which can
make you fat.
!!!!WARNING!! For successful deep frying, of chips or anything else, the oil must be really
hot. If you over fill the chip pan or leave the kitchen, hot oil may spill over, catch fire, and burn your
house down. This can happen if a man comes home from the pub full of beer and hungry, puts
the chip pan on the gas, then slumps into a comfy chair to watch TV while it warms up, and
falls asleep. It’s the last mistake he ever makes. NEVER leave an unattended chip pan, there’s no
point anyway as you can clean and cut up the potatoes while it warms up.
French beans are easy to grow and freeze well. Top and tail (i.e. slice the ends off) and boil for 5
minutes if fresh, for 2 minutes when using frozen beans. Great with anything, excellent as a warm
salad with olive oil, crushed garlic and slightly too much lightly cracked black pepper (just stir the hot
drained cooked beans into the other ingredients).
Runner beans are good when small or medium sized, big ones need ‘stringing’ with a potato
peeler to remove tough bits. Fun to grow, freeze well. Stringless varieties exist. I prefer French beans.
Broad beans come in white or green varieties, green ones taste better. When small and fresh
they are a delicacy, treat as peas. Older broad beans are much improved by boiling, draining, then
frying with a little chopped bacon and garlic.
Peas Fresh peas are a wonderful taste experience, but rarely found unless home grown as the
sugar turns to starch quickly after picking so they taste less fresh than frozen peas. Cook once
defrosted for 3 or 4 minutes. Remove peas and other frozen food an hour before cooking to let them
thaw at ambient temperature or in cold water, this saves cooking time and therefore energy.
Peppers green or red are good in stir fries, raw in salads or oven roasted with olive oil and
quartered onions. Cut the top off, scoop the seeds out, slice into strips (thin for stir fry, pizza or salad,
thick for oven roasting).
Parsnips give a lovely richness to beef casseroles, and we like them roast like potatoes at
Christmas. Also good as part of mixed roast root vegetables. Clean and chop onions, carrots,
parsnips, sweet potatoes (Kumara) and roast with olive oil for a hour in a medium oven, turning once
or twice.
Swedes are a large member of the turnip family which chopped, boiled and mashed are traditional
for Burn’s night with haggis. Nice with little bits of bacon mashed in, you can also add gravy, stock, or
butter.
Pumpkins Forget the tasteless Halloween Hundredweight pumpkins, bred for size and shape;
decent pumpkins like Butternut, Turk’s Turban or Crown Prince are a totally different vegetable. Also
called squash, the best ones have a taste and texture reminiscent of parsnip and chestnut. They are
easy to grow and store through the winter. Use for soup, boiled or oven roasted with olive oil. If they
have decent sized seeds, these can be roasted with salt for 10 minutes in a medium to low oven and
make a nice savoury nibble.
Cabbage Cook cabbage in very little water for about 10 minutes. With green cabbages, I pull off
some leaves and slice thinly with the big cook’s knife. With a dense white cabbage, slice off a chunk
and slice that, it’s easier. Wrap the rest and keep in the fridge, the cut edge may turn grey if you don’t
use within a few days, don’t worry, just slice off and discard. Don’t put cabbage in casseroles. It is a
great accompaniment to pot roasts and other slow cooked meat stews, but must be boiled fresh just
before serving.
Try frying some sliced onion and bacon in a wok, then add shredded cabbage, 2 dashes of soy
sauce, a glass of white wine or half a cup of chicken stock. Stir, steam for 5 minutes before serving.
Sweetcorn is usually from a tin, warmed with a dab of butter as an alternative to peas or beans,
useful in rice salads. Hampshire sweet corn on the cob is a nice seasonal treat; peel, boil for 15
minutes, butter, and hold with a fork at each end to eat.
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