This Cookbook Is Changing the Way I Use Vegetables
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As much as I fancy myself the type of person who experiments with new and creative dinner recipes every night, the reality is that I’m probably eating a pile of sautéed kale and some fried eggs with hot sauce for the third time this week. And if I didn’t have to read new cookbooks such as Abra Berens’s Ruffage for my job, I doubt I would ever deviate from this basic formula.
Ruffage, which is billed as a “practical guide to vegetables,” is the kind of book I wish I’d had when I was a line cook, because it is a master class in improvising with what you have and what’s in season right now, which are pretty much the two foundations of intuitive cooking. There are recipes for nearly 30 different vegetables, but the real gold mine of this book are the hundreds of little variations Berens provides for how to riff on the recipes as written. She doesn't just give you a beautiful recipe for, say, blistered cucumbers with cumin yogurt and parsley, she shows you how those same cucumbers would be delicious paired with peaches, mint, and chili oil, or tossed with buttermilk, tomatoes, and herbs. This is the book I want on my shelf right next to my dog-eared, sauce-flecked copy of Joshua McFadden’s Six Seasons. It's a total classic.
