The first time I tasted delicate radishes with butter and rustic bread was a revelation. How could only three ingredients be so transformative? I suppose it didn’t hurt that I was in the south of France on a weeklong cooking school adventure.
That dreamy nosh came to mind as I flipped through the 600-plus pages of The Chef’s Garden: A Modern Guide to Common and Unusual Vegetables—with Recipes by Farmer Lee Jones with Kristin Donnelly (Avery, $60). When I hit page 316, the Radish Butter Terrine took me back to that old-convent-turned-culinary-school in the medieval village of Aups. The terrine recipe and beautifully graphic photo are included here and those of you without patience (and a very sharp knife to cut slivers of butter) can make do with sliced radishes topping butter slathered on a slice of sturdy bread. A few grains of coarse salt, too. Heaven.
Vegetable guru Jones, who famously wears overalls, crisp white dress shirt, and a red bow tie, wrote The Chef’s Garden with Kristin Donnelly, a former editor at Food & Wine. This whopper of a coffee-table cookbook/gardening guide weighs in at about 5.5 pounds and its physical heft is matched by the substantial content. There are 100 recipes for such curious dishes as Peas-and-Carrots Ice Cream Sandwiches. The veggie-infused treat is odd in name only because once you read about the featured veggies and then take in the recipe, you’ll see that the sandwich part of the confection is carrot cake and you won’t question the sweetness and electric-green color that the peas impart. It might even inspire you to plant carrots and peas. These recipes come with lessons, too.
Author Jones grew up in a farming family on the outskirts of Huron, Ohio. After a hailstorm destroyed the farm, it was reborn as a specialty vegetable farm in the 1980s. The customers were ingredient-obsessed restaurant chefs like Thomas Keller of the French Laundry and Charlie Trotter, the late Chicago culinary legend who is lauded in a section of the book. The resurgence of the Jones farm led to the Culinary Vegetable Institute, where chefs gather to learn more about ways to feature often-ignored vegetables (Cardoons! Parsnips! Red Russian Kale?) on their own menus. The chef there, Jamie Simpson, developed the recipes for The Chef’s Garden.
Just 100 recipes might seem paltry for such a big book, but The Chef’s Garden has an encyclopedic vibe with deep dives into history, people, health, and growing food and making connections. Any home vegetable gardener would love to have this book as part of their collection. Central Florida gardeners will need to adjust growing season information but we are used to that and know that when northern gardens are fallow and covered with snow, ours are bursting with bounty.
Next on my must-try list? Farmer Jones’s marshmallows, made beautifully pink with homemade beet juice. I am considering them to top a Thanksgiving root vegetable casserole.
