On Food and Cooking

juiciness, and it becomes increasingly fibrous from the base up. These changes are especially rapid in the firs ...

of the immature stem. Asparagus has long been notorious for an unusual side effect on those who eat it: it ...

enlarged version of a bitter, thin-stalked Eurasian herb called smallage. Chinese celery (var. secalin ...

favored blanched form, originally produced by covering the growing stalks with soil, then by growing pale ...

note (from the terpene limonene) that’s especially prominent in the sparse foliage. Fennel is eaten ...

— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, 1913 The Cabbage Family: Kohlrabi and Rutabaga Kohlrabi Kohlrabi is ...

perhaps in gardens where kale and turnips were growing side by side. Like kohlrabi, it’s a swolle ...

compounds from the fresh shoots by boiling them in water until they’re no longer bitter. Along with Chin ...

harvest often results in the wasteful death of the entire tree. Other Stem and Stalk vegetables Cactus Pads or ...

keep their pores closed during the day to conserve water, then open them at night to take in carbon ...

tissue is cut or damaged. They’re often cooked in milk, whose proteins bind phenolic compounds and ...

and Korea, the bracken fern Pteridium aequilinum, has been found to contain a potent DNA-damaging chemic ...

ones can be cooked or steamed with seafood to intensify the sea aroma. Sprouts Sprouts are seedlings, newborn plant ...

prevent the development of cancer. Because the wet, warm conditions of sprout production also favor ...

after winter’s scarcity; in northeast Italy, for example, pistic is a springtime collection of more than ...

the enzymes and causes their products to react with other molecules, so the fresh green note fades and other ...

into smaller pieces, this should be done with the least possible physical pressure, which ca ...

should be added only at the last minute, because oil readily wets the waxy leaf cuticle, ...

oozes from the freshly cut base. Though lettuce is now mostly eaten raw in the West, in Asia it’s ...

lettuces; both keep significantly longer at 32ºF/0ºC than at 40ºF/4ºC. There’s also a type known as ...