Vegetables without water

"Water is the enemy of the well-cooked vegetable. Remember this and you're well on the way to giving vegetables the importance they deserve in our daily diet." Robert Carrier

I thought I had finished with Robert Carrier's book, but I remembered the quote at the top of the page and stored it away to use some time. And then I came across a mini review of Jamie's Veggie program on the TV in The Age Green Pages. It went like this.

"Jamie Oliver wants us all to stop thinking of vegetables as side dishes and realise that they can be delicious and fulfilling meals in themselves. He is completely wrong of course - vegetables are awful and we only eat them out of a sense of duty - but it's quite amusing to watch him try to prove otherwise. You might think that after all these years the Oliver schtick is getting old, but you'd be wrong: it actually got old about 10 years ago. And combining it with vegetables isn't improving the brand at all." Ben Pobjie - The Age

It made me very angry. Yes I'm sure that lots of people can be annoyed by 'Jamie's schtick', you either love him or hate him as a personality. But to say that vegetables are awful and that we only eat them out of a sense of duty, is a bit alarming. Indeed although I am sure there are a lot of people who think like that, the current trend towards vegetarianism would seem to belie his words. And I would think that this is a trend that need not just be restricted to the well off. Vegetables after all are cheaper than meat and fish by a long way.

So black mark to The Age.

When I was young, before the days of Robert Carrier et al. vegetables were indeed, mostly cooked in water and probably rather destroyed in the process, though I don't actually remember disliking cabbage, or brussels sprouts, or boiled potatoes or boiled peas and carrots. Indeed there is one argument for keeping the cooking of vegetables as simple as possible to maintain their original taste. I guess the problem was that they tended to be boiled to death, losing their goodness into the water and their taste too. They were just cooked too long.

As Robert Carrier said back then,

"all too often they end up as a soggy, colourless, tasteless mess."

I think possibly the very first really delicious vegetables I cooked were carrots vichy - glazed carrots. I'm also pretty sure that I got the recipe from Elizabeth David, but these days I just do it by eye. Cut the carrots in chunks and put in a saucepan. Just cover with water, add a knob of butter and about half a teaspoon of sugar - well it depends on how many carrots you are doing and cook. When they are boiling you cook fairly fast, until almost all the water has disappeared and you are left with carrots in a buttery bit of juice. You can then sprinkle them with parsley if you like. The picture at the top of the page is said to be Vichy carrots, but they look rather more like roasted carrots to me - which are yummy too. Perhaps these are more like Vichy carrots.

Vegetables without water, is the very first section in Carrier's Entertaining book, which sort of demonstrates how important he thought it was. It's yet another example of how this cook/chef who is somehow often associated with the glamorous and the complicated is actually a champion of very simple food. It's a very short section of the book with one basic method and half a dozen or so recipes that follow his basic method but have slight twists. His philosophy here is as follows:

"The secret of cooking vegetables is simply this - use no water! Any cooking water you throw away is waste water. So it follows that if you use less water, your food will have that much more flavour. This is the secret of Chinese cookery, with its delicious, crisp and colourful vegetables. Little liquid is used. No liquid is thrown away. Therefore, no flavour is lost. Simple isn't it?"

And of course the same principle applies to all of the other vegetarian cuisines around the world. Here is Robert Carrier's basic method - very similar to my Elizabeth David one but not quite the same. And note that he uses a stock cube rather than real stock, which is probably a bit of a no no these days. But then again he is only using a few tablespoons so why not use a stock cube?

"Melt 2 to 4 level tablespoons butter in a saucepan; place washed fresh vegetables or frozen vegetables in the pan; sprinkle with a little sugar to bring out their natural sweetness and 2 to 4 tablespoons chicken stock (made with a cube) for extra flavour. Stir vegetables over fairly high heat for a minute or two; then cover tightly and simmer on the lowest possible heat for about 15 minutes, or until vegetables are fork tender. Taste vegetables, then add salt and freshly ground black pepper, as necessary, just before serving."

And you can apply this method to just about any vegetable you care to think of. I remember doing a similar thing with grated zucchini, probably a bit more of a stir-fry, but only just, and discovering a totally new and surprisingly delicious vegetable. There might have been some garlic in there too.

Roasting and grilling are also, of course, ideal ways of bringing out the flavours of vegetables, and this is very fashionable, so how Ben Pobjie can say that 'vegetables are awful' is a mystery in this day and age. Hasn't he eaten in a trendy Middle-Eastern establishment, or even a Greek or Italian restaurant? And yes, - as Robert Carrier says - Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese ...? Even all those fast food places have heaps of salads and slaws to choose from.

I will leave you with a picture of a Turkish bread and roasted vegetable salad from the beautiful Greg and Lucy Malouf New Feasts book - a book which celebrates vegetarian food. This and Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty books, could turn anyone into at least a partial vegetarian I think. Not to mention delicious and the Coles and Woolworths magazines. No water would have been used here.