Food, like all good things, comes in threes. Our traditional dinner entrée features three

food elements on our plates. A protein-rich food, typically meat, fish or poultry, featured as the

main focus, a complementing hot vegetable which gets a smaller spotlight and a third, starchy,

carbohydrate-rich item that hardly gets any spotlight at all. Here I will focus on the starch-rich

foods that need to be neutral and subtle in flavor but form a foundation that balances the entrée in

both flavor and nutrition. In addition, their carbohydrate content contributes substantially to

filling up the diner. The cook chooses this third food item from any of a number of well-defined

food: either from a root crop like potatoes, or from grasses like rice, pasta, grains and cereals.

This category is so unassuming that it even lacks an acceptable household name. The old-

fashioned term "starch" comes to mind, but now this word has unpleasant overtones conjuring

the image of obesity. It smacks of something fattening that you want to avoid. It is true that most

foods in this category are high in starch. That is what gives them the power to satiate appetites

and provide the energy for the body. Yet, all of them are moderate in calories and high in

nutritional values. The calorie count goes over the top with the traditional things we add to these

basics—butter, sour cream, rich sauces and fatty things.

Side dish is another term you often see in older cookbooks. Newer cookbooks prefer the

term accompaniments or they may not even list them separately. They may group potatoes with

vegetables, while they treat pasta and rice individually. They often leave grains dangling

somewhere or even omit them altogether.

These starchy foods suffered from sad neglect, though they gained a somewhat more

prominent position, even respectability on the American culinary scene since the early 1980s.

Dietitians advised us that this group is not only nutritious and modest in calories, but it is the

source of longer-lasting, more healthful energy than calories we gain from proteins and fats.

Nutritionists discovered, for instance, that athletes on high carbohydrate foods (what they call

carbohydrate loading) perform better than those on the high-protein, high-fat steaks, eggs and

similar foods.

There is no ready solution for a good name that gives an honorable status for this group. I

would like to see cookbook authors treat all these starchy, mild-flavored and indispensable food

items under one single heading for ease of choosing and comparing them. To further that cause,

I’m discussing all the currently fashionable choices in this single section.

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