Ugly Vegetable Winter

Give ugly produce a chance to become a beautiful swan

People only eat vegetables for the first 7 days of January, until Epiphany, when New Years Resolutions and Christmas trees go out the window. The epiphany is that we don’t need beach bodies yet – we need roasts, pot pies, and lasagnas to keep us warm and comforted through the dark days of winter.

But why can’t vegetables be comforting?

I didn’t really eat vegetables growing up, pizza was my comfort food. My mom wasn’t a great cook, and my dad didn’t cook back then because it was a woman’s job. What they don’t teach you about sexism is that when your wife dies at 58 then you’re going to need to learn how to cook, since you’ll now have 20–50 years of doing it for yourself.

He’s a good cook now. But you might as well learn when you’re young.

I grew up eating boiled vegetables. Carrots? Boiled. Beets? Boiled. Cabbage? Everything was boiled and seasoned with Vegeta – the Yugoslavian spice blend, not the Dragon Ball Z character. Vegeta is made with salt, dehydrated vegetables, MSG, sugar, spice, and riboflavin to make it yellow. It tastes like stale chicken bouillon and the poverty that comes with choosing to destroy your country with a culture war instead of embracing a multi-ethnic democracy.

It wasn’t until I really started to focus on seasonal, local cooking that I really understood how to cook vegetables. Nigel Slater’s Tender became my guidebook. When I started treating vegetables with respect, not obligation, everything changed for me.

Meat is expensive, so it makes sense to treat it with care and respect. Turkey should be brined, chicken should be roasted, steak should be reverse-seared. You don’t let a steak rot in the back of your fridge.

But vegetables? Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew.

When you overcook chicken, you don’t blame the chicken – you blame the cook, the recipe, the stove. When vegetables aren’t treated with respect you blame the vegetable – not the cook, not the recipe, not the stove. The carrots are mushy. The brussels sprouts are bitter. The parsnips are problematic.

Some vegetables even intimidate people, rutabagas are as scary as haggis. Rutabagas are like a cabbage-turnip that you can roast, they are very good. And you get to sing rutabaga!

Vegetables need better marketing

Whoever is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of vegetables should be fired.

Think about the marketing for a steak: It’s a picture of a steak being seared, the outside is crispy and caramelized; the inside is tender. You can feel it melting in your mouth, fat dribbling down your chin. You can smell the picture. Taste it in your soul. It’s in your mind’s eye right now. You’re drooling.

Now think about the marketing for cabbage: It’s a middle aged white lady eating coleslaw (vinegar, not mayo). She is explaining that cabbage is high in vitamin C and K, it’s rich in prebiotics, it’s high in fiber. Her doctor recommended it to reduce the risk of a heart attack and keep her regular.

No one tries to sell you a steak by talking about how it’s high in iron, rich in zinc, and has the same protein content as beans. So why do we only talk about how much cabbage will make you shit?

So here’s my pitch for cabbage: my perfect cabbage is slowly roasted. The outer edges are crispy and lightly charred. The bottom is caramelized from high heat, creating a deep umami flavour. The inside leaves are rich and tender from roasting in olive oil. It melts in your mouth. It’s topped with lemon and garlic, so bright and punchy it will make you remember that one day in January when the sun came out – when you could feel the sun’s warmth across your face and you knew everything would be okay.

My cabbage is perfect. I want to eat it every day.

This is my recipe for perfect cabbage with gremolata, you can learn how to make it here. It’s a one-pan dish with 5 minutes of work. You don’t even need to pre-heat the oven!

This recipe came from a challenge I gave myself – I’m calling it Ugly Vegetable Winter. I am finding locally grown ugly vegetables, I am turning them into delicious, desirable meals. I am making one every day. I am searing, sauteing, roasting, glazing.

I am respecting my ugly vegetables, they are becoming beautiful swans.

Marketing is only half the problem with vegetables. I live in Canada, and I love living in a place with four distinct seasons. But if I’m being honest, winter in Canada is long, dark, and cold. By the time February rolls around Hot Tomato Summer is a distant memory. I’m fully in the clutches of darkness, standing in front of the oven hoping its warmth can combat my drafty house.

For the 2 weeks in January people choose to eat vegetables, it often means getting sad, imported baby spinach, wilted romaine lettuce that’s been on a truck for a week, flaccid cucumbers, and somehow… tomatoes… in January… in Canada. All of this produce is trucked in from Mexico or California, harvested before it’s ripe so it doesn’t rot. Tasteless, but familiar enough to be inoffensive.

But a sad tomato does not warm you in your very core, wilted romaine will not remove the chill from your bones. What my soul needs is the creamy, vanilla warmth of celery root mash. The tangy brightness of a roasted cabbage with gremolata. A kohlrabi soup so creamy and warm that I can forget that it went from raining sideways, to sheets of ice, to several feet of snow in the matter of hours. Give me roasted turnips. Glazed parsnips. Carrots. Beets. And even salad – but with shaved brussels sprouts that still have a great texture even in January.

Ugly vegetables are here to hold you close, tightly wound around you like the leaves of a cabbage. Singing rutabaga from the rooftops.

These are all Ontario vegetables that are hardy. Good for cold storage. They know how to survive the winter. They can teach you to survive winter, if you let them.

So yes – I could argue that you’re doing the right thing for the climate (no trucking in food!), getting better ingredients (harvested fresh!), getting more nutrition (such regular poops! Such perfect skin!), and supporting the local economy (it really does work!) – but at the end of the day if you do not desire vegetables you are not going to enjoy eating vegetables.

This is how I make ugly vegetables desirable.

Kohlrabi is a cabbage-turnip hybrid, it tastes like a very sweet broccoli with the texture of a crisp apple. It makes an extraordinary soup. Recipe here.

Vegetables need fat

Many people do not eat food because it is good for them. You eat food because you desire it. It’s satisfying, it’s nostalgic, it makes you feel full. Food can transport you from a terrible day into a beautiful day.

Vegetables often aren’t seen as desirable, most often vegetables are seen as a health food. You eat vegetables as an act of penitence for your sins. A sad salad is a punishment for eating a cheeseburger.

Because vegetables are a health food, adulterating them with fat and salt is seen as a waste of time. Why bother? Your broccoli is basically a cheeseburger now

Any vegetable is better for you than no vegetable.

A good burger is 20% fat. An egg is 11% fat.  And remember that you’re cooking both of these in additional fat.

A cabbage has no fat. If your cabbage weighs 1,000g, you could add 110g (a stick of butter!) worth of fat to it before it's equivalent in fat to an egg. You could add 2 sticks of butter and still be less fat than a burger per serving.

I’m not suggesting you cook a cabbage in 2 sticks of butter (but how good would that be…). What I’m saying is that fat is flavour. Fat fills you up. Being sparing with fat is going to leave you hungry in the name of “being healthy.” But if you end up hate-eating bland vegetables, literally starved from lack of calories, you’ll be eating salami from the fridge at midnight dressed in your duvet as a snacking cape.

If you have to turn broccoli into a cheeseburger to eat it, turn your broccoli into a cheeseburger. Maybe not every day, but I also wouldn’t eat a cheeseburger every day. If you want to eat a vegetable forward diet, why not treat vegetables like any other food so you feel satisfied and full?

If you make vegetables that taste good will you eat them more often? What if you make vegetables that you crave, instead of viewing them as a punishment?

Vegetables need protein

Vegetables by themselves are not filling. You can be chewing for 30 minutes and still be hungry. To feel full (and function as a human) you need protein. Of course you can serve any of these vegetables as a side dish to a protein. But why cook twice? What if you want to make them a meal?

Beans, lentils, and almonds have as much protein as a steak – around 21%. You can warm up a can of white beans (add some lemon, salt, pepper) and add it to your soup. Top your roasted cabbage with chopped toasted almonds.

Grains like wheat and oats have as much protein as eggs – around 10-15% protein. Walnuts, hazelnuts, and pine nuts are all around 15%. Edamame (soybean) has 11%. Green peas and quinoa at 8%. Put braised beets on a bed of farro, it’s as easy and low effort to cook as the vegetables. Add toasted hazelnuts to a radish salad. Serve rapini with green peas and quinoa.

When I’m feeling really lazy I crack open a beautiful can of tinned fish to go with my vegetables. I never regret it.

I am not vegan or vegetarian – I had a cheeseburger last night after watching The Menu. But I am vegetable forward. I put eggs and cheese on most things, I eat meat sparingly. When I buy meat I buy it from local regenerative farms. Of course you can top any of these vegetables with a fried egg, some sliced up sausage, or even a roast chicken. But you already know this, and as the new CMO of vegetables I want to let you know that you are allowed more than Obama’s seven almonds.

Vegetables need salt, fat, acid, heat

Most winter vegetables are bitter, like a Canadian in February. If you treat your vegetables well the bitterness will leave. Salt, fat, and acid act like distractions for your tongue. They activate all the different flavour receptors so the bitterness receptor is muted – like the noise of the holidays distracting you from it being the darkest day of the year. February has as much sunlight as October, it’s the lack of distraction in February that makes it so bitter.

Citrus season being aligned with ugly vegetable winter is a gift. Play with lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins, grapefruits – embrace the magical, weird, bright flavours that can transport you through zest and juice.

Heat is transformative and can actually remove the bitterness entirely. Steaming, blanching, searing, roasting, braising – winter vegetables need a trip to a tropical island. If your vegetables come back with a tan (or even a sunburn) they will be transformed to a sweeter, sunnier disposition.

(Speaking of salt, fat, acid, heat – if you haven’t read Samin’s book or listened to her podcast you’re missing out. Samin is a gift to the world.)

Celeriac is the ugly, alien-looking root system of the celery plant. Don’t be scared – once cooked, celery root has a very creamy texture, with a sweet and nutty taste that pairs well with savoury dishes. It’s light, it’s bright, it’s the best mashed potatoes you’ll ever have – and it’s not even potatoes. Recipe here.

Try new techniques

Braised cabbage is delicious, but you cannot eat braised cabbage every day without losing your mind. The secret to surviving ugly vegetable winter is variety. I spent most of November and December developing and testing all of these recipes. They are all extremely delicious. It’s been months of making them and I still crave them.

All of these recipes will be added to my website over the next few weeks and I’ll update the web version of this newsletter with the links.

• Make soup: anything can become be soup, but I love kohlrabi soup, Brussels sprout soup, and slow onion soup

• Wilt-and-fry: rapini with garlic chips and sesame

• Sear: seared radicchio with orange, seared Brussels sprouts with balsamic

• Add cheese: broccolini with crispy cheese a la Carla Lalli Music

• Quick braise in the pan with a glaze – braised salsify (or parsnips, or carrots) with miso-soy (or maple, or honey, or mustard) glaze

• Roast in the oven: roasted cabbage with gremolata, roasted winter radish (as good as the best roasted potatoes), roasted rutabaga

• A long braise in the oven: braised beets and carrots, braised cabbage

• Make a fresh salad: winter radish and blood orange salad or Brussels sprout caesar salad with popped capers

• Make a mash: celery root mash (mashed radish also competes with potatoes)

Give ugly produce a chance

My challenge to you is to try to add a few ugly vegetables into your winter meal rotation. Start with what you know or be adventurous.

If you have a hard time finding winter vegetables at your grocery store, you’re not alone – grocery stores stock what’s in demand, and that’s mostly imported sad salads, flaccid cucumbers, and mealy tomatoes during the winter. Save those for Hot Tomato Summer.

Here’s what I recommend:

• If you have a local farmers market, head there and buy right from the farmer. Ask if they are a farmer or an importer. I go to the Kitchener Market.

• Find a local community-share agriculture (CSA) or vegetable box program. I subscribe to the Wednesday Box at Legacy Greens, which is sourced from local (to me) farms. Google “CSA box + your city”. Check that it’s local food and not imported food being delivered.

• Talk to your grocer – whether you shop at a big box store or an independent shop, you can speak to the grocery manager and ask them to bring in special produce for you. They’re usually excited to do it, and might bring in a few extras to see how the local market responds.

• Look at the labels for where produce is grown. It’s late January and I’m still able to find local celeriac, brussels sprouts, savoy cabbage, carrots, beets, parsnips, and more.

• Frozen produce can be a great way to continue to eat local produce – picked at the peak of freshness – all through the year. You can’t turn frozen spinach into a salad, but you can add it to a beautiful soup or make a delicious cream of spinach.

Local food is usually the most delicious food. Food that is driven in from far away locations – for that’s commonly California, Chile, Peru – has to be harvested 5-15 days ahead of when it’s harvested for local sales. Most of the sweetness and flavour development happens in those last days.

To shop local will mean shopping for different vegetables. We don’t grow lettuce in the winter in Canada. We do have cabbages, turnips, and cabbage-turnips (rutabagas).

Vegetables take time and effort to make them taste good. I think this is why so many of us have bad childhood experiences with vegetables. Parents do not have time and cannot put in effort. Parenting, from what I’ve seen, is exhausting.

A bonus for paid subscribers

Probably Worth Sharing is a reader-supported publication – it’s only made possible thanks to the support of paid subscribers. Later this week I’ll be sending out a beautiful, printable PDF guide as a paid subscriber exclusive. This will include:

• A 7-day ugly vegetable meal plan, with easy weeknight recipes and longer weekend meals

• A grocery list with everything you need, including substitutions

• A guide to spin each recipe for new flavours and vegetables

Please consider a paid subscription to support my work. If a subscription is out of reach for you right now and this content would help you eat healthier this winter, send me a note and I’ll send you a copy no questions asked.

You can manage or upgrade your subscription here.

Marko