Martha Stewart is known to most as the queen of domestic perfection for her obsession with heirloom tomatoes and freshly laid multicoloured chicken eggs. And she has the ability to keep the younger generations listening thanks to occasional dips into the pop culture zeitgeist be it filming a show with rapper Snoop Dogg, shading a Kardashian-adjacent D-lister by asking her millions of Twitter followers if she’s supposed to know who he is, and roasting Justin Bieber during the height of his infamy.
Perhaps her latest book, Vegetables ($39.50) will inspire young cooks and pop-culture junkies to head into the kitchen to make one of the 150 recipes covered in the book.
The book: The just-released Vegetables cookbook is a guide on how to work with different types of tubers, leafy greens, roots, flowers and bulbs that inhabit your garden (in my case, my supermarket aisle). Chapters are divided by type of vegetable with an introduction on how to buy, store, prep, and serve them. In some recipes, vegetables act as the accompaniment to meat dishes (braised chicken and Brussels sprouts, pad Thai, pork roast with rhubarb chutney), other times they’re a sauce or salsa and in other recipes they are the main star, propped up with vehicles like pasta, pizza and bread. So while the most of the recipes are vegetarian, this isn’t one of those raw, vegan, gluten free books.
Experienced home cooks won’t find this book particularly challenging as many recipes are essentially easy salads, sautés, braises and roast vegetables. Just by reading the recipe title and looking at the picture you can imagine what is involved. Still, it’s a good resource for the beginner home cook looking to incorporate a variety of vegetables into their everyday meals without veering into the diet cookbook route.
The quote: “For a cook, understanding the role of stalks and stems in the life of a plant can help with selecting, preparing, and cooking them … Picked young, just as they are reaching toward the sky, stalks such as asparagus, celery, and rhubarb will be crisp, lithe, and tender. But allow a few days or weeks to pass, and they begin to turn stringy, even woody, because nature has designed them to stiffen into reliable support structures for the growing plant.”
The tester: I’m a huge Martha Stewart fan who learned many kitchen skills watching “Martha Stewart Living” as a kid from using stale bread to clean the crumbs in a coffee grinder to making the perfect brownies (coincidentally, it was from the episode with Snoop). The most useful tip was how to make iced tea fast: brew extra strong tea, pour it into a glass full of ice and stir vigorously with a metal spoon to instantly absorb the heat.
Recipes I’m dying to make: Lamb Stew With Jerusalem Artichokes, Spiced Parsnip Cupcakes With Cream Cheese Frosting, Green-Pea Burgers With Harissa Mayo.
Yukon Gold and Sweet Potatoes Anna
This old French dish would be impressive at a Thanksgiving gathering but it’s actually just slices of potatoes layered on top of each other and baked in a pan (with lots of butter). The recipe asks for Yukon Gold and sweet potatoes, but feel free to experiment with different root vegetables such as rutabaga, celery root or sunchokes as hearty root vegetables become more abundant in the fall.
When choosing potatoes for this recipe, opt for ones that don’t have as much of a tapered shape so that the slices stay relatively the same size when layering. The recipe just calls for salt and pepper for seasoning, but herbs such as rosemary, thyme, or sage would make an aromatic addition.
If your potato cake doesn’t have that nice char when it comes out of the oven (mine didn’t at the first attempt), flip it back into a hot pan and sear it over medium-high heat on the cook top for a few more minutes.
3 to 4 medium-sized Yukon Gold or yellow potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thick
2 medium-sized sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thick
6 tbsp (90 mL) unsalted butter
Salt and pepper, to taste
Herbs such as freshly chopped rosemary or sage, or dried oregano or basil, optional
In a medium-sized, oven-safe, non-stick skillet melt butter over low heat. Swish butter around till pan is coated. Pour extra butter into a bowl and set aside. Remove pan from heat.
Starting in centre of pan, arrange Yukon Gold slices, slightly overlapping in a circular pattern. Continue to edge of pan. Brush with butter. Season with salt, pepper, and herbs, if using.
Make second layer in same fashion with sweet potatoes. Brush with butter and season. Repeat with remaining potato then sweet potato slices. Drizzle any remaining butter on top of potatoes.
On stove top, over medium-high heat, cook potatoes until butter starts bubbling, about 5 minutes. Transfer pan to oven and bake at 425F (220C) for 30 minutes. Remove from heat and cover loosely with aluminum foil. Return to oven and bake for another 20 minutes, or until potatoes become tender and are easily pierced with a knife.
Remove from oven. Gently take a heatproof, flexible spatula and loosen potatoes from pan. Let cool for at least 10 minutes before flipping on to a plate to serve.
Makes 6 to 8 servings.
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