Today it’s widely recognized that fruits and vegetables are more than just good for you. Research shows that vitamins, minerals and other substances in plant foods actively protect against heart disease and many cancers. But Americans are still reluctant to venture much beyond french fries and iceberg lettuce. Studies show that only 9 percent of us eat the recommended five servings a day of fruits and vegetables; more than a quarter eat no vegetables at all on a given day, and nearly half eat no fruit.
How come? Certainly a powerful legacy of badly cooked vegetables haunts the nation: the all-day boiled beet may have disappeared, but a dispiriting little dish of wet string beans can still be found alongside the entree in many restaurants. More important, perhaps, is the quality of the fresh produce available to most Americans. Hard peaches that rot before they ripen, wooden carrots, bitter squash, mealy apples-the year-round cornucopia of handsome fruits and vegetables on most produce counters might as well be constructed of plywood. The boom in farmer’s markets may do more to promote the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables than all the diet-and-disease reports published in the last 10 years.
The boom in cookbooks devoted to greens and grains will help, too. Vegetarian manuals used to lurk on a single shelf in the cookbook section, isolated and deservedly so with their long lists of unpleasant-sounding ingredients and their gloppy stews full of chickpeas. Today that’s changed: a whole crop of new books with glamorous approaches to kale and millet and every imaginable bean has appeared this season. The chickpea stews have been spruced up, too. All the fads and fancies that have streamed through the mainstream cookbooks of recent years, from low fat to high Thai, can be found in these recipes. The best of them will make even supermarket produce worth eating.
Cooks who aren’t ready to start foraging for tempeh and quinoa but just want to serve their families a few more vegetables at dinner time will find Janet Fletcher’s More Vegetables, Please (228 pages. Harlow & Ratner. Paperback, $16.95) a great place to start. Fletcher organizes the book by seasons, selecting half a dozen or so vegetables for each. In spring, she makes couscous with fava beans or stirs a little creme fraiche into new peas; in winter, she mashes rutabaga, carrots and potatoes into a lightly buttered hash. More than a good cookbook, this one will be a real companion in the kitchen.
It’s hard to think of anything in the world that’s better for you than beans: they’re full of nutrients, low in fat and have enough fiber to make a grandmother weep for joy. A staple the world over, they had all but disappeared from the American diet until a combination of ethnic zeal and health concerns spurred a recent renaissance. Judith Choate deconstructs them beautifully in The Bean Cookbook (128 pages. Simon & Schuster. $20). What a pleasure it is to follow her clear, careful instructions: everything works, and first-time bean cooks will derive much comfort from her steady hand. Here are soups, stews, side dishes, even a bean pizza. Some are quick and others fairly elaborate, but most are homey. After all, it’s beans.
In a crowded field of vegetarian cookbooks, many of them inordinately fussy, Jeanne Lemlin’s Quick Vegetarian Pleasures (HarperCollins. 250 pages. Paperback, $15) stands out for its straightforward good food and lack of health doggerel. OK, she calls for tofu once in a while; but her pasta with tomato “pesto” is the best homemade dish taking five minutes (apart from boiling the capellini) you’ll ever prepare. Mollie Katzen, beloved mentor of many a counterculture kitchen, is back with a revised and expanded version of her original Moosewood Cookbook (237 pages. Ten Speed Press. Paperback, $16.95). She’s reduced the fat in many recipes, but they’re still handwritten and still laden with cozy sentiment. The only real difference is that 15 years later, this whole package has gotten a little hard to swallow. For ’70s diehards only.
John Midgley is in love with potatoes, and he is also entranced with beans, olive oil and garlic. He’s written a very small book on each subject, and they’re charming: The Goodness of Potatoes and Root Vegetables; The Goodness of Beans, Peas and Lentils; The Goodness of Olive oil, and The Goodness of Garlic (Illustrated by Ian Sideway. 65 pages. Random House. $12). Midgley offers a bit of culinary history, a touch of botany, a little nutrition information and a handful of well-chosen recipes.
Fans of Martha Rose Shulman, whose “Mediterranean Light” and “Entertaining Light” take healthful cooking to its classiest height, will welcome her new series, “Little Vegetarian Feasts.” Two of these miniatures have been issued-Main-Dish Salads (64 pages. Bantam. $10) and Main-Dish Soups (62 pages. Bantam. $10)-and more are on the way. Shulman’s trademark is reduced-fat cookery with bright, intense flavors. Her salads call for black beans and curried grains; her soups are hearty with vegetables, potatoes and herbs. It’s rare to find such cheerful, festive food gathered under the banner of good health, but Shulman is inspired by flavors, not nutrition charts, and she values fresh ingredients for their zest as well as their vitamin content. When she tosses a little mozzarella cheese together with ripe tomatoes, Nicoise olives and a garlicky dressing-advising, “Take this salad to a picnic on a hot summer night”-you can’t help feeling hungry for that picnic and that summer night. Limp string beans and mealy fruit will seem like relics-and that’s just what they should be.
