Root Vegetable

In the spring we go to the farmers’ market for morels and in the fall for chanterelles. Either mushroom is wonderful in this dish, as are cremini, oysters, hen o’ the woods, trumpets, porcini, and portobellos. One cautionary note: Know your mushrooms, and never eat any that you pick yourself unless you are absolutely certain they’re edible. See Alice in Wonderland for the effects of eating the wrong mushrooms or speak to someone at your local emergency room for details.

Afine choice for a spring menu, although good whenever you can find fresh asparagus, this frittata has an especially nice flavor because the asparagus and leeks are roasted and caramelized before being added. If you like, roast the vegetables a day ahead of time and refrigerate them until ready to use.

The key to making a great broccoli omelet is to slightly overcook the broccoli. One of the best cheeses to pair with broccoli in many a dish is Cheddar because of its sharp, tangy taste.

As turnips do so well with orange, it is only a small step to use them with marmalade. Duck has this affinity too, so the three can come together successfully in a darkly sweet and rich casserole. Like duck à l’orange but sweeter and more suitable for a freezing winter’s day. The orange flavors here, from both fruit and bitter marmalade, should not dominate. The final flavor can be tweaked to your taste at the end with lemon juice or, better still, a bitter Seville orange. Rice, pure and white, would be my first choice of accompaniment. If you start this dish the day before, you will have a better chance of removing most of the fat that floats to the surface.

Small squashes deep-fry particularly well, offering a refreshing, almost juicy contrast to the ethereally crisp batter. This is one of those recipes—pancakes are another—that I tend to make when there are just two of us, and we can eat our sizzling fritters at the stove while the next one cooks. I find I get a much crisper result if I don’t overcrowd the pan.

Whereas most meats give us a choice of cooking on the bone or not, wild rabbit is one that really needs its bones if it is not to be dry. It is not the meatiest of choices, so you need to be generous with quantities here. Rabbit bones are small, and it’s important to watch out for the tinier ones. The turnips in this provide all the carbs you need to soak up the sauce. It just needs some purple sprouting broccoli on the side.

Beef and tomatoes have enjoyed a long history together. Whether it’s tomato ketchup on your burger or tomato paste in your beef casserole, the two have an established friendship. Winter tomatoes—why do we buy them?—can add a surprising depth to gravy if they are roasted alongside the Sunday beef. I chuck them in with the onions and bay leaves that provide the background music for the gravy. The tomatoes sharpen up in the searing heat, their skin catches and burns, and they add a certain piquancy to the sweet onion and caked-on roasting juices. The winter tomato has at last found a point. You may well want some roast potatoes to go with this. I usually boil them first for ten minutes, then drain and add to the roasting tin.

The classic Indian spinach dish saag aloo, where spinach and potatoes are added to spiced and softened onions, is often cooked a while longer than I would like it to be. Authentically, the spinach goes in before the potatoes, so that it makes an impromptu sauce. Delicious. But I sometimes make it less than classically, keeping the spinach almost whole and adding it last, so that it comes to the table singing brightly, more as an ingredient than a “sauce.”

I ate this rather soothing way with lettuce twice last week, once for lunch, accompanied by a piece of salmon, the second time for supper, with nothing but a hunk of soft farmhouse bread, the sort with a dusting of white flour on top. Light, juicy, and clean tasting.