How is it that English cookery has never found any better
treatment for vegetables than to boil them quite plain? French
beans so treated are tender, and of a pleasant texture on the
palate, but I have never been able to find any taste in them. They
are tasteless largely because the cook persists in shredding them
into minute bits, and I maintain that they ought to be cooked
whole--certainly when they are young--and sautez, a perfectly plain
and easy process, which is hard to beat. Plain boiled cauliflower
is doubtless good, but cooked alla crema it is far better; indeed,
it is one of the best vegetable dishes I know. But perhaps the
greatest discovery in cookery we Italians ever made was the
combination of vegetables and cheese. There are a dozen excellent
methods of cooking cauliflower with cheese, and one of these has
come to you through France, choux-fleurs au gratin, and has become
popular. Jerusalem artichokes treated in the same fashion are
excellent; and the cucumber, nearly always eaten raw in England,
holds a first place as a vegetable for cooking.
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