Know Your Ingredients
The global nature of the world in which we live has opened up endless possibilities to the kinds of foods that are readily available to us for our dinner tables. The fact that there are some many varieties and flavors, eating healthy no longer means giving up on good flavor. This month’s “know your ingredients” is dedicated to providing a brief overview on the many kinds of vegetables and the families in which they all are a part of. The idea is to provide you with endless choices as you seek to provide good and healthy foods for your family table. A great resource that was used for some of the information included in this article was referenced from; Cooking ingredients by Christine Ingram.
This list is designed to serve as a reference to you as you make choices for your dinner table. In future issues, you will also be provided with recipes and available resources to either purchase or grow your own.
Vegetables are divided into the following categories:
Onions
- yellow, white, red, grelots, and cipolla or borettane
- shallots — banana, pink, brown/English/Dutch, Asian reds, Chinese, potato
- garlic — elephant, solo, green
- leeks — ramp or wild
- spring/scallions
- Asparagus
- Fennel
- Celery
- Artichokes
- Potatoes — new, sweet, yams, taro, cassava, jicama, celeriac
- Parsnips
- Turnips
- Carrots
- Beets — red, yellow, orange
Green Vegetables
- Spinach
- Swiss Chard
- Cauliflower
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Kale and Curly Kale
- Collards
- Mustard
- Turnip Greens
- Broccoli Rabe
- Bok Choy
- Chinese Cabbage
- Chinese Broccoli
- Mustard
- Choi Sum
- Garden or Wild leaves — vine, dandelion, sorrel, nettles, orache and fat hen
- Garden peas — mangetouts, snow, petits pois
- Field peas
- Black eyed
- Fava
- Green Beans — French, haricots verts, thai, yellow wax, lima, soya
- Conch
- Corn
- Okra
Squashes
- Summer — zucchini, marrow, pattypan, crooknecks
- Winter — pumpkins, butternut, acorn, hubbard, delicata, onion, kabocha
- Tomatoes — beefsteak, cherry, plum, yellow, orange, green, pear
- Peppers — bell
- Chillies — Anaheim, Ancho, cherry hot, jalapeno, habanero, hot gold spike, poblano, red, scotch bonnets, Serrano, yellow wax
- Aubergines/Eggplant
- Olives — Spanish, Greek, Italian
- Avocados
- Breadfruit
- Ackee
- Plaintains
- Green Bananas
- Lettuce — round (iceberg, butterhead, crisphead), romaine, lamb’s, iceberg
- Leaves — arugula, watercress, winter, mustard
- Chicory and Radicchio — chicory, curly endive & escarole
- Cucumbers — English, gherkins, Kirbys, ridged
- Radishes — red, breakfast, Mooli or Daikon
- White
- Field
- Oyster
- Shitake
- Bay boletus, CEP, chantrelle, horn of plenty, hedgehog fungus, saffron milk-cap, chicken-of-the-woods, giant puffball, orange birch bolete, wood & field blewit, morels, piedmont or white truffle, summer truffle, enokitake, shemeji, straw, wood ears, silver ears