microwave oven just 30 seconds too long, and you end up with a product ready to be puréed for

baby food. Microwave cooking doesn’t brings out flavors, either. Test it for yourself and

compare. Cook, say green beans, in the microwave to the same doneness as green beans you

cook in boiling water or in a steamer.

My memorable microwave cooking lesson was at a good friend’s summer dinner party at

the height of the corn season. He was a first-class gardener and his wife was a third-class cook.

Unfortunately, she was the designated cook in the house. Minutes before dinner he picked fresh

young corn in his backyard garden, handed them to his wife while us guests looked on in an

expectation for fabulous culinary delights. Fresh-picked corn is a rarity in most of our lives and

the flavor is often ahead of caviar and truffles. The corn cobs were ready in record time—she

microwaved them. Instead of culinary delight it was a struggle to chew and swallow the tough,

flavorless kernels. The microwaves totally annihilated them. It was a pure waste growing them

since in this case frozen corn would have easily surpassed the fresh.

Vegetables at their best

For best flavor, appearance and least nutrient loss cook vegetables as quickly as possible.

The quickest-cooking methods present us with most tasty vegetables—blanching, stir-frying,

deep-frying, grilling and broiling. But the slow-cooking oven roasting also brings out full

flavors.

When you want to cook several kinds of vegetables together irrespective of what method

you use, you have two choices to arrive at vegetables with the same degree of tenderness. Either

add them to the pot or pan at different times, starting with the slowest-cooking, densest

vegetables then gradually adding the faster-cooking ones, or cut them into different sizes—the

slow-cooking vegetables into smaller pieces than the fast-cooking ones.

You may also combine two cooking methods. For example, pre-blanching vegetables

significantly speeds up grilling, broiling or sautéing. Blanching is also an efficient way of

preparing vegetables to fast last-minute serving, the way restaurant chefs serve freshly-cooked

crisp vegetables in the shortest time. The chef has the supply of pre-blanched, cooled vegetables

ready to sauté on high heat in butter or oil and seasonings in less than a minute. Efficient home

cooks do the same.

When cooking strong-flavored vegetables, such as those in the cabbage and onion

families, the flavor becomes milder if you cook it in water to cover. The strong flavor

components leach into the liquid. They also become milder if you leave your pot uncovered so

some of the strong volatiles spread their aromas throughout your house, leaving their vegetable

source behind. Due to chemical reactions, prolonged cooking increases the strong flavor of

cabbage-family vegetables, but decreases the onion-family vegetables.

A useful way of concentrating flavor in some high-moisture vegetables is a technique the

French call dégorger. The idea is to get rid of part of the water without heat. You grate or finely

dice the vegetables (cucumber, zucchini, cabbage) to increase the surface area and sprinkle it

generously with salt. After several hours the salt draws out some of the water that you drain in a

colander or you wrap the vegetables in a kitchen towel and squeeze out the water by twisting the

towel. After thoroughly rinsing out the excess salt, the vegetables are ready to sauté, stir-fry,

bake or whatever method is suitable.

Serious Kitchen Play