This chef wants to help you cook ‘misunderstood’ vegetables

SEATTLE – Misshapen, patchy and frankly blobby, the celeriac drew Becky Selengut like a gray-green magnet.

The table at the University District Farmers Market was heaped with oriole-orange carrots and slim young leeks, but the chef reached past them to the celery root’s scabby skin. Taking two plastic googly eyes kept at hand for such occasions, she pressed them onto the tuber. It suddenly looked like a friendly snowman.

It’s hard to be intimidated by celeriac – or rutabaga, radicchio, eggplant or okra – when it’s wiggling googly eyes at you. “You’re going to laugh,” said Selengut, who began pasting eyes on produce while teaching a “Misunderstood Vegetables” cooking class and writing a related new cookbook.

Laughing is second nature for Selengut, a tall, sharp and very funny New Jersey native who inexplicably hated tomatoes in her childhood. Working in fine-dining restaurants after graduating from Seattle Culinary Academy, Selengut was often the only woman on her shifts, a gay woman facing annoying questions about her qualifications from male counterparts. “I tried to be one of the guys, and I eventually used humor to get in with these guys, and I ended up loving them like a band of brothers, depending who was there.”

She moved on to working as a private chef and teaching, podcasting and improv comedy and writing cookbooks. In her words, she’s made a career from “taking the unapproachable and breaking it down for the novice.”

For misunderstood vegetables, that means disarming cooks into opening their minds – along with their veggie dips, pot pies and pasta sauces.

Which vegetables are misunderstood?

In Selengut’s years of asking students that question, it means any vegetable they would walk past in the grocery store without ever thinking to buy. At an individual level, that decision depends on students’ cultures and backgrounds. Mostly. (Nobody understands rutabaga.)

Other candidates for the “misunderstood” title are vegetables that people disliked the one time they tried them because they were poorly prepared, or vegetables where only a single preparation comes to mind. (Think tomatillos – most students hit a dead end after “salsa.”)

Selengut has plenty of practical advice on all those categories: For those who revile beets as “metallic dirtballs,” for instance, she suggests adding flavors that offset their sweet-soil earthiness. “Just like you wouldn’t want a margarita that had no lime juice, you have to have that balance,” she said.

She pairs beets with acidic ingredients, creaminess and crunch, as with a brilliant magenta hummus blending roasted beets with tahini, garbanzo beans and lemon juice, garnished with fragrant, crunchy pistachio dukkah.

It’s not always that simple, because food is about context as well as flavor. “My misunderstood vegetables may not be yours,” Selengut said. Indian students tend to appreciate eggplants, native Italians generally recognize radicchio, because they’re common in those respective cuisines. Textures are an issue for many American cooks; as Fuchsia Dunlop stresses when writing about Chinese food, Western palates typically reject textures that are popular in Chinese dishes. (Dunlop calls out “sliminess” and “slitheriness.”)

Slime is a turnoff for many diners trying out okra – but again, context is all. Southerners often know that its mucilaginous texture can benefit stews and gumbos by adding thickness and body, or they know how to cook it in ways that eliminate the goo. Add in its complicated history: “Ships carrying enslaved Africans brought okra to America; it is a storied food that cannot be separated from the complex and brutal way it arrived on our shores,” Selengut wrote.

Understanding like that begets more understanding, and Selengut started realizing an important corollary: Human empathy and vegetable empathy aren’t so far apart.

“It’s human nature to put people in categories, to other them, to say that they’re ugly, to say that they don’t know anyone like that or they wouldn’t want to know anyone like that,” she said.

If a student found nettles horrible and hate-worthy because they were stung by the wild greens on a springtime hike, for instance, Selengut might show them how blanching deactivates the stingers. “They’re the most delicious thing” when blended into pesto or mixed with potatoes into a vibrant nettle colcannon, she said. Haters transform into evangelists.

How is that any different, she asked, from someone meeting someone who’s gay for the first time and realizing “my God, they’re actually funny and they’re lovely and they’re wonderful?”

Here are a few common vegetables Selengut singles out as being misunderstood, with her suggestions on how to increase your understanding:

Radicchio

Radicchio, “revered” in Italy, is typically misunderstood in the United States because it can’t typically be munched on its own like romaine lettuce or arugula. It requires some advance preparation, Selengut said, particularly for “super tasters” who might react to it more negatively.

“Yes, it’s very bitter. So how do you use that bitterness?” Selengut said. “Think of it like bitters, and what do bitters in a cocktail do? They create depth.”

• Radicchio is a member of the chicory family and has several varieties. If you’re looking for a milder version, try yellow-green Castelfranco over the more common red Chioggia.
• Fruit or a balsamic glaze helps balance its flavors, as do creamy ingredients.
• Submerge thin ribbons of radicchio in water for 30 minutes to tame its bitterness.
• Grill or roast it to add sweetness and complexity – but don’t burn it, which would add more bitter notes!

Eggplant

While some people love eggplant, many others see it as “a slug making love to a worm on my dinner plate,” Selengut wrote. The slug-seers, to her mind, have fallen victim to improper cooking techniques.

“Eggplant to me is the fish of the vegetable world,” Selengut mused while at the farmers market. “It has a window of perfect doneness.” Go too far and it gets “snotty,” pull back too soon and it’s cottony-dry.

• Eggplants have such different sizes, varieties and other variables that it’s hard to provide cooking times. Look instead for visual signs of doneness – when they’re “caramelized, aromatic, tender, and almost wet-looking in the middle without any white or light patches of undercooked flesh.”
• Different varieties have somewhat different qualities: Italian eggplants are denser and a bit more flavorful than the larger and more common black “globe” eggplants, while long and slight Japanese eggplants cook quickly, and small, green Thai eggplants are better cooked lightly.
• Due to their high water content, give eggplants plenty of room as they cook.
• For the same reason, cook them under high enough heat to evaporate moisture quickly so they cook rather than steaming.

Rutabaga

Selengut calls rutabaga “the superfood nobody is talking about,” perhaps the most ignored and undervalued vegetable in the produce department. It’s inexpensive, super-rich in vitamin C and also full of fiber, potassium and other nutrients.

Look for firm, smooth-skinned roots that feel heavy for their size.

• Use a sharp chef’s knife to peel them before use.
• Store for up to two months in cool areas.
• Rutabagas take longer to cook than other root vegetables; bake or boil for 10 minutes separately before adding them to a mixed group.
• Swap them out for some of the potatoes in mashed potatoes or gnocchi for more flavor and nutrition.

Okra

Okra wins the rueful prize as the most misunderstood vegetable of all, to Selengut’s eyes – “historically, culturally and culinarily.” She gained practical insights into it by learning “to use the mucus for good and not evil” – and some deeper appreciation by studying its history and speaking with such experts as culinary historian Jessica B. Harris. (Harris herself has called okra “the Rodney Dangerfield of vegetables” for the lack of respect it gets.)

“I can learn to appreciate something culinarily when I learn something historically. Things taste better when I get the context,” Selengut said.

• Choose smooth, brightly colored pods with no brown spots.
• Use as soon as possible – don’t let the pods get soft or brown.
• Don’t wash okra pods until you are ready to use them, and dry them well after washing.
• Most of the commonly recommended methods for reducing okra’s gelatinous texture – cooking whole, soaking in vinegar, drying overnight – don’t have the desired effect. What does work, Selengut says, is cooking with high heat, allowing plenty of air circulation around the pods and cooking with acidity.
• Looking for an okra substitute? Try cactus paddles.