2012: The Year in Glorious Vegetables

I took a lot of pictures of vegetables in 2012. This is partly because I was working on The Glorious Vegetables of Italy, which will be published in the fall, so I was paying extra attention to my subject. But mostly it’s because vegetables are beautiful and deserve to be photographed. (BTW I am no professional photographer and did not photograph the book; I just like taking pictures and find it a valuable form of research and inspiration.)

While a few of the pictures I snapped appeared here on the blog, most of them were in my Instagram feed, and others have been residing in my iPhone. Rather than share yet another last-minute holiday dessert recipe or party dish, I thought you might enjoy this gallery of my favorite vegetable shots of the year:

Fava beans are a pain in the neck to prepare, but their season is short and they are delicious in soups and also mashed with olive oil for a crostini topping.

You already know how much I adore fennel.

Chioggia beets, from Italy’s Veneto region, have a bullseye pattern that is visible in cross-section.

Where would Italian cooking be without carrots? Finely diced carrots, celery and onions comprise the flavor base of most Italian sauces, soups and stews.

Baby cauliflower in creamy white, bright green and purple, appears at farmers’ markets in spring.

Baby squashes follow soon after the cauliflower. Some are so tiny that they can be roasted or sauteed whole. Slightly larger ones are perfect for stuffing.

Bundles of peperoncini, finger-sized hot peppers, are displayed at a farmers’ market in Cisternino, Puglia, along with green beans and cetriolo melone, a vegetable that is a cross between cucumber and melon.

Ripe cherry tomatoes, dressed with olive oil and basil, make a great topping for friselle, crunchy bread rings that are a staple in Puglia.

 A salad of green beans, wax beans and ripe tomatoes is one of my favorite summer side dishes.

Before tomato season ends, I make sure I make at least one batch of slow-roasted tomatoes.

Bietola, or Swiss chard, ranks as one of my top 10 vegetables. I toss it into soups and tomato sauces and saute it with lots of garlic.

Romanesco cauliflower (aka Romanesco broccoli), lime green in color and patterned in a series of logarithmic spirals known as a Fibonacci sequence, is one of Mother Nature’s finest examples.

An abundance of dried legumes is on display at the farmers’ market in Cisternino, Puglia. If you look closely you’ll see a sack of red lentils among them. As you may already know, lentils are considered a good-luck food in Italy, and Italians eat them on New Year’s, often with sausages, in hopes of ushering in a year of good fortune and prosperity.

 I’d like to wish all of you a healthy and prosperous New Year. Buon anno a tutti!

Domenica

Tagged as: farmers' market, Italian cooking, vegetables