It’s always a good idea to know several ways to prepare each of the vegetables that most often reside in your refrigerator. It adds a greater flexibility and interest to your meals without having to buy vegetables you don’t usually cook. Having said that, I find that when I have a little spare time for domestic goddessness, it’s also fun to come home from shopping with one or two kinds of vegetable I don’t normally purchase. But back to the idea of vegetables that multi-task. Let me pick a couple of examples.
Green beans can be steamed, stirfried, put in one-pot wonders alongside other vegetables or cooked, cooled and eaten as a bean salad with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Capsicums can be eaten in salads, added raw at the end of stews to give some crunch and colour, drizzled in olive oil and roasted, used as an edible bowl (stuffed with rice and vegetables and topped with cheese then baked), put in omelettes or a myriad other ways.
Potatoes are the master chameleons of plant food. They can be everything from mash to hasselback, roast to steamed to chipified. They can form the basis of creamy potato bake or be used cold in potato salad. Whole recipe books have been devoted to the humble potato!
Tomatoes go well raw in salads or gazpacho, cooked into bolognaise-style sauces or cooked to a concentrate that adds depth and colour to so many dishes. They work overtime in Italian and Mexican cuisine.
We’re lucky that we live in an era where we can choose cuisine that is multinational and pretty adventurous. But let’s not leave it to others have all the fun in the preparation of interesting food. Our own kitchens deserve to have their own 15 minutes of fame. So, out with the sharp knife and the chopping board. Where are my tomatoes?