Parsnip

Parsnips look like large ivory-colored carrots. They are indeed related to carrots, but biting into a raw parsnip is not a good idea: they are almost inedible. When cooked, however, the flavor of parsnips is nutty and sweet. They are wonderful roasted or mashed, by themselves or with other vegetables, and they add a deep, complex note to broths and soups. At the market look for medium-size, firm, smooth-skinned parsnips; when you peel small ones, there’s not much parsnip left to eat, and very large ones have a woody core that needs to be removed. Prepare parsnips just like carrots, peeling away the skin and trimming off both ends.

When I serve roasted vegetables, my guests often ask me, “How did you cook these vegetables? They are so delicious!” I tossed them with a bit of oil and salt and threw them in the oven, is my answer. Eyebrows rise in disbelief, but it’s true: roasting vegetables is that easy and that delicious. As vegetables roast, their flavors intensify and the brown caramelized edges they get add sweetness and texture. Very little oil is used during the cooking so they are quite light as well. Most any vegetable can be roasted, either simply with salt and olive oil or with garlic, herbs, and spices for added flavor. The critical points for roasting vegetables are: the shape in which they are cut; the seasoning and oiling; and the temperature at which they are cooked. Winter root vegetables should be peeled and cut up into smaller pieces, though the very tiny ones can be left whole. Carrots, turnips, celery root, rutabagas, parsnips, and kohlrabi are all excellent roasted. Cut the vegetables into pieces more or less the same size so they will cook evenly and be done at the same time. Avoid shapes that have thin edges, as they tend to burn before the centers are done; and don’t cut the vegetables too small or they will be mostly browned bits with very little soft flavorful vegetable left to eat. Toss the cut vegetables in a large bowl, using your hands or a spoon to coat them evenly with salt and olive oil. They only need a light coating of oil; if oil is accumulating on the bottom of the bowl you’ve used too much. Taste a piece to see if they are seasoned correctly and keep adding salt until it tastes right. Lay the vegetables out in a single layer on a baking sheet that has low sides. The sides make it much easier to stir the vegetables while they are cooking and keep them from drying out. Cook the vegetables in a hot oven preheated to 400°F. A lower temperature will dry out the vegetables while they cook, making them leathery before they are done; a higher temperature will burn them before they are cooked all the way through. Stir the vegetables a few times while they are cooking, turning those along the edges into the center. Cook them until they are tender and nicely browned here and there. Probe a piece with the tip of a knife to test for doneness, or better still, taste one (be sure to let it cool first). Don’t let them go too far: a little browning makes them sweeter, but if you let them get too dark they will taste bitter. Potatoes can be roasted whole. Use small new potatoes (fingerlings or creamer-size potatoes work really well). Wash the potatoes and peel them or not, as you prefer. Put them into a baking dish with sides as high as or slightly higher than the potatoes themselves. Sprinkle with salt and drizzle with olive oil. Add a head or more of garlic cloves, separated but not peeled, and a few sprigs of fresh herbs. Shake the pan now and then while the potatoes are cooking; turn them if they are browning too much on the top or bottom. Smaller winter squash, such as Delicata and acorn varieties, can be roasted in halves to serve right in the shell. Halve the squash and scoop out the seeds, place the halves cut side up on an oiled baking sheet, drizzle lightly with oil and sprinkle with salt, turn cut side down, and roast until soft. Unpeeled butternut or Delicata squash, once halved and seeded, can be cut into slices and laid on an oiled baking sheet to roast. The skin is so tender after roasting that it is fine to eat. Squash can be cut into cubes and roasted as well; it is wonderful with lots of fresh sage leaves tossed in before cooking. Fat asparagus—the butt ends snapped off, the spears peeled and tossed with oil and salt—roasts very well. Lemon thyme is an intriguing herb to use with asparagus. Stick to larger spears when roasting; the smaller spears tend to shrivel and dry. To roast broccoli, peel and cut the stems into thick slices and break the head into florets. O...

Why should stuffing be only a once- or twice-a-year treat? A savory bread pudding has all the comfort food flavors of stuffing with no need for the bird. This one is especially delicious, packed with homey winter vegetables and a hint of sweetness and spice. Serve it at your holiday feast or with any meal you want to make a touch more festive.

A longtime symbol of cuisine bourgeois—the simple, hearty home cooking of France (which is more valuable to most of us than haute cuisine, the four-star stuff)—this is an immensely satisfying dish and quite straightforward. Serve it over white rice or with crusty bread.

Most vegetables can be prepared with little more than olive oil and salt, but few are as rewarding as beets, which can be stunningly delicious when done this way. One key is to bake them—which dries out their flesh a little bit and concentrates their flavor—rather than boil them. (Think of the difference between a baked and a boiled potato.) It takes some time, but it is easy and reduces staining. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: carrots or parsnips (peel before roasting), turnips or rutabagas; cooking time will vary.

Poached veal tongue is one of the ingredients in the classical Italian dish bollito misto, boiled mixed meats. It is one of my favorite dishes, but even without the other four or five meats I enjoy the poached tongue. The brining somewhat cures the meat and makes it retain the lively pinkish color throughout.

You’ll need lamb shoulder chops again for this great dinner dish, but, unlike the thin chops for skillet cooking, the right ones for roasting won’t be in the meat case. Don’t just pick up a package of thick-looking chops: ask the butcher to cut lamb shoulder chops expressly for you, each one 2 1/2 inches thick (or as close to that as possible). If he or she looks surprised, it’s because she’s never cut them that thick before. The chop size is unusual, but the meat is exactly the same as everyday thin chops—so make sure she gives you the same price! Thick chops are treated here like roasts, following my covered/uncovered roasting procedure. To shorten the roasting time, I divide each chop into two pieces. Still, the meat needs 90 minutes or more in the oven, typical of the long cooking all shoulder cuts need, to melt the connective tissue and fat, to extract the flavor of bones, and to soften the meat fibers. Bigger pork and beef shoulders will take twice as long as these lamb chops.

Try this with poached garlic purée too.

This beautiful fall dish is a study in silken textures, from the velvety purée to the creamy interior of the ivory scallops. Quick searing gives the scallops a crispy, caramelized exterior that is well matched to the sweetness of the pear in the purée, while the chanterelles add texture, depth, and a luscious, buttery flavor. Although there are three separate parts to this recipe, it’s still relatively straightforward to prepare. Make the purée first, then hold it at room temperature; the searing and sautéing take no more than five minutes.

This soup uses a very simple technique that is time-consuming, to be sure, but requires very little attention and rewards you with loads of rich flavor. Consider this a Sunday afternoon on the back of the stove kind of dish. Although I use carrots, celery, celery root, and one of my favorite underutilized vegetables here—parsnips—you can use any variety of root vegetables that you have on hand or that look good at the market. Just be sure to use at least a few different kinds to lend real depth of flavor to the soup. I add the vegetables toward the end of cooking to keep the flavors bright and save them from turning to mush. Any leftovers will make Monday night dinner a snap, and the soup even improves if made in advance. Be sure to cool it properly in the fridge and taste for seasoning the next day. You may want to thin it with a little additional water if it’s too thick upon reheating.

Roasted vegetables are so easy and delicious—with nothing more than a drizzle of olive oil, a dash of sea salt, and a hot oven, the vegetables get all crispy and caramelized on the outside and soft in the middle. It’s a great dish for company, since it can be made ahead of time and reheated or served at room temperature. But even when you don’t have guests, cook enough for a crowd and use the leftovers in salads, sandwiches, quesadillas, or omelets. Most all vegetables are good for roasting, including turnips, beets, rutabagas, fennel, asparagus, corn, summer squash, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and all kinds of winter squash and pumpkins. Just make sure to wait to add quick-cooking vegetables until any slow-cooking vegetables are almost done.

When buying parsnips, choose those that are smooth, firm, and about 8 inches long, roughly the size of a large carrot. They should not be soft, spotted, or damp.

The chicken is in the oven—heat forming a golden crust that seals in the juices, salt working its silent alchemy within, denaturing some of the proteins in tough muscles making those parts more tender and flavorful. Roasting is the easiest way to cook chicken and the tastiest. All that is required to reach perfection is time and the perfect salt. Sugpo Asin, a king among salts, glowing rose-cloud white, lush and firmly crunchy, with dulcet brine notes that play lavishly (but with discipline) against the sweet tamed gaminess of poultry, honors this basic meat and vegetable meal as all basic meals should be honored—asserting the preeminence of simple home cooking as the cornerstone of eating well.

It is often worth introducing some sort of richness to vegetables with a heart of starch. Ideal suitors include butter, cream, bacon fat, and honey. Jane Grigson suggests cheese, often in the form of Gruyère or Parmesan, as do others, who have been known to roll a stiff parsnip mash in grated Parmesan and deep-fry it as a croquette. To this list I add my own, a shallow cake along the lines of a pan haggerty (potatoes and onions topped with cheese), made with thin slices of the root layered with grated cheese and herbs. Parsnip haggerty, anyone?

At the top of the garden, past the sunny stone terrace, the little beds of vegetables and the unruly shrubs, is a thicket, less than ten feet (three meters) deep but just enough to give the whole garden an unkempt, relaxed feel. Here lie the compost bins with their lids of rotting carpet, green plastic bags of decaying leaf mold, and four small trees of damson, hazel, mirabelle, and a King James mulberry—the latter being a “guardian” tree planted in the northernmost corner to protect the garden from the north wind. In between grow drifts of snowdrops, wild garlic sent by a friend from Cornwall, and fraises de bois, with which this garden is littered, and whose flowers twinkle like tiny stars in spring. The work in this part of the garden is mostly done in winter, if only because the leaflessness of the trees makes it possible to see what you are doing. It is always dark and cold here, and damp, too. I come in from turning the compost or cutting hazel twigs with my feet like ice, my fingers numb. Invariably it’s a Saturday, when I have been early to The Ginger Pig for my sausages. I leave them to bake with parsnips and stock. A slow bowl of food, which often sits patiently until I come in, too chilled to the bone to do anything but eat.

The kormas of India, serene, rich, silken, have much in them that works with the sweetness of the parsnip—cream, yogurt, nuts, sweet spices. The Mughal emperors who originally feasted on such mildy spiced and lavishly finished recipes may not have approved of my introduction of common roots but the idea works well enough. Despite instructions the length of a short story, I can have this recipe on the table within an hour. For those who like their Indian food on the temperate side.

Dried porcini are expensive, but even a small handful added to a soup will bring with it a wave of smoky, almost beefy notes. A general instruction with parsnip soup is to prevent the vegetables coloring, presumably to keep the soup pale, but I suggest the opposite. You want the parsnips to cook to a gentle golden color before you add the stock; that way the soup will have a deeper flavor and a color reminiscent of heather honey.

Eventually, possibly toward the end of your meal, you reach the point where the salty, herbal juices from the meat mingle with the sweet creaminess of those from the parsnips, a moment of intense pleasure. While winter was in its death throes, and the first white narcissi were starting to peak through the damp earth, I produced this for Sunday lunch with a leg of lamb spiked with tough old rosemary twigs. We passed round a bowl of winter chicory and watercress for everyone to take handfuls with which to clean the mixture of juices from their plates.