Vegetables: Martha Stewart's Cooking School, Lesson 4

Book excerpt: Martha Stewart’s Cooking School Now a PBS Series Lesson 4 is a culinary master class in the techniques essential to cooking vegetables, with 8 video demonstrations to guide you on prepping and cooking artichokes, pureeing vegetables, making vinaigrette, and more, along with more than 40 recipes and dozens of color step-by-step photographs. Integrating vegetables into your meals isn’t just about establishing a healthy diet—the range of flavors and textures that vegetables offer cooks is nearly infinite. Learn how to cook them properly to bring out their brightest colors and best flavors. In this lesson, you’ll find a guide on buying, storing, and preparing vegetables and more than a dozen versatile cooking methods, such as steaming, wilting, blanching, simmering, roasting, stir-frying, sautéing, frying, braising, and grilling. Video demonstrations by food editor Sarah Carey will guide you every step of the way through simple and more challenging techniques. Then, build on your skills with more than 40 recipes and variations for dishes like Steamed Artichokes with Tarragon Butter, Roasted Autumn Harvest Salad, Herbed Rosti with Wild Mushrooms, and Spicy Stir-Fried Vegetables. Lesson 4 includes the Basics, where you’ll learn about the equipment, knife skills, ingredients, and routines that will enable you to cook with confidence. Color photographs and video demonstrations teach you how to chop an onion, mince garlic, prep and chop fresh herbs, zest and suprême citrus, and more.