Here are some items from my own notebook. It is by no means complete, because no notebook of this sort ever can be. Use these observations as a basis for notes of your own. You obviously won’t buy items that are shrivelled, decaying, discoloured or limp. Most fruit and vegetables suffer severely from delay in transit; go for the freshest you can get.
Lettuce, chicory and cabbage have more nutriment in the outer leaves than inside. Don’t trim too much away. Keep skins on potatoes wherever possible; mashed potatoes will be more flavourful if you cook the potatoes in their jackets, remove skins after cooking. Anyway, what’s wrong with putting the mashed potato back into the jackets again and serving it in them?
Water used in the cooking process will capture much of the nutriment. Therefore, use little or no water, or use the water in soup, gravy or sauce. Vegetable water will go bad quickly; it should be used in the same meal for which the vegetable was cooked. Don’t add it to stock unless the stock is brought to the boil every day.
Mashing or creaming is good for root vegetables (potatoes, turnips, swedes or carrots, etc.) and there are many ways of serving them. Butter is most usual, but try a little cream, or poach some cut-up marrow bones (ask the butcher) until the marrow inside is very soft, then scoop this out and use it on the vegetable like butter. A little pork dripping (make it by frying pieces of belly of pork) adds flavour. Mashed vegetables can look like hell. Make them more appetizing by fluffing the top and grilling it for a couple of minutes till the peaks brown (a few breadcrumbs scattered over it before grilling will help it go golden). A pinch of paprika or a spoonful of finely chopped hard-boiled egg yolk is also decorative.
Many vegetables benefit from a final few minutes in a pan with a little oil or butter. Drain fat off before serving.
Soup Making. Use a generous amount of the vegetable you choose—nothing can get over the lack of the basic flavour. For example, put half an onion finely chopped into a pan with some butter or oil. When the onion is golden, add two or three pounds of roughly chopped tomatoes, scattering salt, pepper, a little basil (see Herb section) and a small spoonful of sugar. Lid on—low heat, and you will find that the juice comes out of the tomatoes. When they are very soft (say half an hour), sieve. Now you can decide how much liquid to add. Use milk or stock or water. Add a knob of butter or cream. Adjust the seasoning. Serve.
Not all vegetables will make their own juice like tomatoes, so most will have to be started with water, but don’t swamp your flavour with water—it tastes of nothing. Sieving helps to distribute the flavour through the liquid instead of providing a tasty mouthful of flavour, so only leave pieces in the soup if you have a generous amount of flavour already. The same basic system will give you thousands of soups. Try making soup from: cucumber, leeks, peas, white fish, asparagus, mushrooms, etc.
If you have no stock, remember that you can put some item in the soup that will add flavour (e.g. a ham bone). If you want your soup a little thicker, think before adding flour or even arrowroot. Grated potato (it will need a few minutes to cook) provides a thick creamy texture, but don’t overdo it.
When buying remember that those large items that win prizes in displays are no friend to the cook. Better to choose the tiny, flavourful vegetables. Those enormous carrots, parsnips and beetroots may look gorgeous, but they have hearts of wood. Only enormous field mushrooms grow more flavourful with size. Tiny peas are no relation of the large ones, and the tiny flattened pods of peas (pois mange tout) that are eaten pods and all, are perhaps the finest vegetable there is.
Apples. A vast field of experiment and controversy. Learn a few types. There are apples from countries as near as France and as distant as New Zealand. They vary considerably in crispness. Three of the finest English apples (Cox’s Orange Pippin, Ellison’s Orange and Laxton’s Superb) are fine eating apples of medium-crisp texture. Beauty of Bath and Jonathans are soft eating apples. Newtowns and Granny Smiths are quite hard quality eaters. Blenheim Orange is well worth searching for, it’s a delicious English apple with a fine astringent flavour.
In England cooking apples are usually mushy—Victoria, Lord Derby or Bramley’s Seedling; cooks who want apples that will retain their shapes should try using dessert apples, which are less acid, for their pies, etc., as they do in other countries.
Apricots. Too often regarded as a poor man’s peach, they really have a life of their own. Available in winter from South Africa, but the Spanish ones on sale in the summer are great. Buy the biggest. Green ones will ripen in the sun. ‘Peach apricots’ from Murcia in Spain are superb dessert-quality ones.
Asparagus. Tips should be close and compact, stalks large and even in size. Cut away the tough white stalks. Dip the green tips into beaten egg, then fry gently. Or, after the beaten egg, dip into soft crumbs mixed with equal quantities of grated cheese before frying; or steam it and serve with butter.
Aubergines (Egg Plant or Brinjal). Look like black rubber truncheons. Go for a shiny, smooth, purple skin. Fry or bake. These are generally sliced (thick or thin), then fried gently. Another way is to scoop out the interior, chop it small and fry it gently with some chopped onion. When it is quite soft, replace in the hollow aubergine. Bake at Regulo 5 (375° F.) for 30 minutes.
Avocadoes. Large, expensive, delicious cross between fruit and vegetable. Best eaten with simple vinaigrette sauce. Green ones may be a little underripe; test for softness around stalk or rely on your greengrocer. The biggest are not always the best, but those from Madeira or Israel are reliably excellent. They will ripen quickly in a warm place.
Banana. See pages 298-9.
Beans. This word is used to describe three different things in the kitchen. First there is the green vegetable eaten while the seeds inside are soft and only partly grown. These vary from the slim tiny ones to the gross coarse ones that are like boiled sandpaper to eat. Secondly there are the beans that are the seeds themselves. When young they are good to eat as they are, but old ones must have the outer layer of skin removed. Thirdly there are these same seeds dried to preserve them. I have listed these last beans as pulses.
Beetroot. Size doesn’t matter. If you buy them ready-cooked make sure the skin is loose and flesh dark red. Cooked beetroots sometimes exude a mould; it is quite harmless—wash it off.
Blackberries. Cultivated ones are less flavourful than wild ones. Large bright ones are best.
Blackcurrants. Are mostly bought by the soft-drink industry, so price remains high. Large ones are easiest to trim. Be sure they are not leaking juice as it’s a sign of bad condition.
Broccoli. A winter vegetable widely available frozen—try it fresh. Eat the stalks and flowers too, unless they are yellow, in which case don’t buy any. Gardeners should plant ‘Purple sprouting’.
Brussels Sprouts. Buy only the small, compact ones or, if possible, the very tiny ones. Mix sour cream with finely chopped onion, warm it, pour over cooked sprouts. Gardeners should try ‘Aristocrat’.
Cabbage. Heaviness is good—it shows compactness. Gardeners might like ‘Velocity’. White is the crispest.
Red. Heavy, slightly tasteless—the correct thing for preparing with apple and sugar in the continental manner.
Savoy. Use this for eating raw (e.g. Coleslaw).
Drumhead. Good cooking cabbage.
Stuffed Cabbage. Remove large outer leaves of cabbage, give them a minute in boiling water. Drain and dry. Into each leaf wrap a heap of meat mixture, make it into a little parcel, fixing it with a toothpick. Bake in the oven at Regulo 2 (325° F.) for 40 minutes, either on a greased tin or in a sauce (a tin of soup: tomato, chicken or mushroom, etc.). The meat mixture can be ground beef, lamb, veal or pork (in which case make sure