Root & Crown

Eighty recipes where the vegetable is the dinner, in eight chapters — a whole cauliflower roasted until it collapses, mushrooms cooked like meat, beans given the center of the plate. Not a side-dish book with the meat removed, and not a salad in sight that is pretending to be a meal.

Recipes

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What's inside

01 10 recipes

Whole Heads & Halves

Cooked whole, which is slower and better than florets.

02 10 recipes

Mushrooms, Cooked Like Meat

They start in a dry pan and stay there until they brown.

03 10 recipes

Eggplant, Peppers & the Nightshades

Including where the salting step is worth its twenty minutes.

04 10 recipes

Beans, Lentils & Chickpeas as the Main

From dried, with the soaking argument settled.

05 10 recipes

Tofu, Tempeh & Paneer

Starting with making the paneer.

06 10 recipes

Roots & Tubers in Winter

For the months when there is nothing green.

07 10 recipes

Greens with Weight

Greens cooked long rather than briefly.

08 10 recipes

Stuffed, Layered & Baked

These go to the table in the dish they cooked in.

Sample recipe · page 7

Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Brown Butter

Ingredients

1 large cauliflower, about 2½ lb (1.1 kg), leaves on
2 tbsp coarse salt, for the water
6 tbsp butter
3 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsp capers, drained
juice of 1 lemon
3 tbsp parsley, chopped
1 tsp flaky salt
½ tsp black pepper

Method

Boil the whole cauliflower in heavily salted water for 12 minutes, then lift it out and drain it upside down for 10 minutes.
Sit it in a tin, rub with the oil and half the butter, and roast at 425°F (220°C) for 45 to 55 minutes.
It is done when the outside is deeply browned in patches and a knife slides into the stem with no resistance.
Cook the rest of the butter in a small pan until the milk solids turn nut-brown and smell of toffee, then take it straight off the heat and add the capers, garlic and lemon.
Pour the brown butter over the whole head, scatter with parsley and flaky salt, and carve it into wedges at the table.

Page 7 of Root & Crown — Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Brown Butter recipe with dual metric weights and steps

Sixty-six of the eighty carry a gram weightA medium cauliflower is anywhere from 600 grams to a kilo and a half, and the cooking time is not the same. Each is given by weight, and the per-serving figures are computed from those weights rather than a guess.

Protein is stated, not assumedThe commonest complaint about vegetarian cooking is that dinner does not hold. Every recipe prints its per-serving protein, and the bean, lentil and tofu chapters were written to land where a meat main lands.

No meat substitutesNothing here is shaped or flavored to imitate something else. The mushrooms are cooked like meat because that is the right technique for a mushroom, not because they are standing in for a steak.