Vegetable Literacy, by Deborah Madison (Ten Speed Press)

Deborah Madison doesn’t write cookery books. She writes Kitchen Companions.
Her first book, “The Greens Cook Book” has been my constant companion since 1987. Her masterwork, “Vegetarian Cookery For Everyone” is, along with Diana Henry and Marcella Hazan, the go-to resource depending on whatever lands into the kitchen.
And her new book, “Vegetable Literacy” takes the companionship even further, through the kitchen doors and into the vegetable garden.
“When we look closely at the plants we eat and begin to discern their similarities, that intelligence comes with us into the kitchen and articulates our cooking in a new way”, she writes. “Suddenly our raw materials make sense”.
Intelligence, and articulation: there you have the two defining themes of Ms Madison’s work. Everything is thought through with a thoroughness that defines a great, conscientous cook.
I met Ms Madison many years ago at Slow Food in Turin, and she is in person the same as she is on the page – articulate, calm, focused, self-effacing, a Californian Jane Grigson, if you like. Like Mrs Grigson, Deborah Madison has a taxonomists’ sense of completion – she does things from A to Z, from soup to nuts, and this beautiful new book suits her sensibilities perfectly.
Basically, she sorts out the families into which the vegetables in our plant world belong – starting with the carrot family, on through the knotweeds, the cucurbits, the legumes, and finishing with the morning glory family. The family members are introduced and explained, then we are shown what to do with them in the kitchen. So, sorrel yields up three varied sauces, there are a quintet of cabbage recipes, and eight dishes with aubergine, for example.
It’s not just the food that is gorgeous. The book itself, with photography by Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, is particularly beautiful. Deborah Madison wrote a seminal book with The Greens’ Cook Book, and then exceeded that with Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone. And, now, she has just exceeded herself one more time. No mean feat.