How To Cook A Vegetable When You Don't Know What It Is

[tiger_spot]

Ever so often, one is presented with a novel vegetable: a mystery item in one's Community Supported Agriculture box, an interesting-looking thing from a market catering to an unfamiliar ethnic group, something your friend handed you enthusiastically. Here is what you do with that vegetable

Comments

[brooksmoses]

This all seems like good advice, but I'm reminded of the time that suzanne and I tried to cook a jicama until it got soft. I think by boiling cubes of it, even.

It turns out that jicama does not soften when cooked even for quite a long time.

(On the other hand, being now inspired, I wend looking and found several recipes for roast jicama, showing that the "or until brown" part is indeed relevant for it. This one looks pretty tasty.)

Meanwhile, I'm wondering how sauteeing would work for the arugula that's in my fridge. (Probably still pretty strongly bitter, though.) Cooking lettuce seems to work out reasonably well, from what I've tried -- it's not a thing that's typical in most U.S. cooking, but cream of lettuce soup is tasty. And uses up lots of lettuce, which is sometimes a necessity when the veggie box has been extra-generous with it!

[tiger_spot]

Boiling: not recommended.

I bet sauteing arugula would work just fine. Garlic + lemon juice, that's what I say.

[johnpalmer]

I have found roasting is a wonderful way to eat vegetables - beets were an especially pleasant surprise, but so is broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts.

I do like this set of guidelines - it's a good way to be cautiously, bravely, experimental.