Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book

This book, first published in 1978, has been a favourite of mine since the early 1980s. It's a great place to start when faced with a new vegetable (or a familiar one that needs a new approach).

She describes over sixty vegetables and gives a variety of recipes for each. Here is a sample from one of the less familiar vegetables she deals with.

Dandelion Leaves

We have used dandelions for wine and beer, but rarely for salad. Bitterness has been the problem, as it once was with many other kinds of salad greens, celery, lettuce, endive, chicory. The solution is the same, the plants must be blanched. I suppose that dandelions may may have been unpopular, too, for their diuretic nature; we do not have the same affection for our old name of piss-a-bed as they doo in France, where pissenlit is a far commoner name than dent-de-lion. In France, too, strains have been developed for forced cultivation in the manner of chicory and seakale.

Dandelion Salad with Bacon

Salade de Pissenlits au Lard

A popular hot salad in several parts of France, and one of the best ways of enjoying dandelion leaves, blanched, from the garden. If you use wild dandelion leaves, pick young ones and mix them with a crisp lettuce.

350 g (¾ lb) dandelion leaves

2 tablespoons vinaigrette

salt, pepper, hint of sugar

125 g (4 oz) piece smoked streaky bacon, diced

1 cm (½ in) slice white bread, cubed

2 tablespoons wine vinegar

1 hard-boiled egg, crumbled

Tear the washed greenery into pieces and place it with the vinaigrette in a slightly warmed salad bowl. Sprinkle on a little seasoning. Fry the bacon and bread in oil until golden-brown and tip the panful, complete with sizzling fat, on to the salad. Turn it well. Rapidly heat the vinegar in the frying pan and when it is bubbling hard add that to the salad, turning it again. Serve immediately with a sprinkling of egg over the top.

This salad is delicious on its own but it also goes well with omelettes, e.g. a ham omelette - omit the hard-boiled egg.

The hot oil and bacon fat and vinegar wilt the salad leaves slightly. Crispness is provided by the bread. Altogether a fine combination of flavours.

Grigson, Jane (1978). "Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book" (Penguin books, 1980). pp. 250-251.