It occurred to me today the only possible progression, or perhaps regression, from gardening, is cooking. Yes that’s right folks, I’m in the kitchen. (Literally) It’s like some wave of instinctive domestic longing has come over me, clearly I’m teetering on the brink of insanity.
I have been living on the kind of bland diet that someone who converted to vegetarianism before learning to cook would live on for what feels like forever and if tomato and basil pasta were a person, I think I’d probably punch it. Yet it’s probably a bonus that my pre-existing cooking experience amounted to el-zippo, given that becoming vegetarian generally means re-learning to cook, for me it just means learning. But I decided it’s not the skills I’m lacking, and definitely not the creativity, simply the right cook book. It’s all in the book really isn’t it? And so I skipped, or perhaps rolled, off to the train station with Yellow Betty today, and ventured deep into Borders, straight past the Gardening books, in pursuit of the cooking section.
The section spans at least 5 shelves covering everything from books on wine, oils, feeding picky kids, Italian favourites and exotic Asian dishes to eating organically for dummies, finger foods, party pleasers, cup cakes, seafood, everything-you-could-ever-dream-of-doing-to-rice, vegetable menus, both vegetarian and vegan-friendly encyclopaedias and the chronicles of student friendly 30 min meal ideas. Where oh where to begin!
Guided by the basic idea that the cookbook destined to unlock my basil-shaking lentil-loving inner Jamie Oliver would under no circumstances be a Donna Hayes or Woman’s weekly flop, nor an idiots guide to anything, I poured through the relevant vegetarian bibles for those complete with pictures and those that offered recipes consisting of at least 5 ingredients that I would know from a bar of soap. Frankly, the chef’s and fine connoisseurs of this world can keep their Aubergines, celeriac gratin, tagliatelle, brioches and tangy fricassees to themselves. Yes I’m uncultured, how disgustingly suburban of me, but it comes down to this honey bun, I won’t eat it until I have some clue wether its a pulse, grain or G.L.V. (green leafy vegetable, for the uninitiated) and I’d prefer to be able to pronounce it.
And so I avoided the unillustrated Student's Vegetarian Cookbook: Quick, Easy, Cheap, and Tasty and the gourmet guide to Vegetarian Dishes until eventually, after much skim reading and even more disgruntled “What the hell is that’s?”, I stumbled across my new friend, Vegetarian Cooking and Vegetable Classics. Admittedly, it doesn’t have the stain, tear, water proof and inflammable pages I require, (Apparently, and rather stupidly, no one has thought to publish such an indestructible book.) but it does offer 1400 stunning photographs. Winning sales pitch!However the real reason this one stole my heart, is because the first 150 pages provide the history, description and culinary purpose of the shoots, stems, roots, greens, seeds and squashes that are about to bamboozle me in the coming pages.
What I learnt today - an eggplant is a variety of aubergine, which is a fruit that goes superbly with Tzatziki...whatever the heck that is!
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