![]() Whether it is “ Never Have I Ever,” or “Truth or Dare,” the truth of the matter is that these games provide an avenue for people to have fun, connect, and learn more about each other. However, one thing that almost everyone loves is games. Some people prefer calls and texts, while others prefer face-to-face engagements. Different approaches have different results on various people. There isn’t a definite way to connect with everyone you encounter. However, they lack one thing: balance! What most people seem to forget is that, in life, there is no one size fits all solution. What do I believe? I honestly think that all these perspectives have merits. On the other hand, a few philosophers claim that since absence makes the heart grow fonder, you should limit the time you spend with them to allow them to miss you. Some opine that you should spend as much time in-person with them as possible. However, others opine that incessant calls can get annoying, and you may even start to look desperate. Many people claim that you should text and call more often if you want to connect with others. Making a table of vegetables gives you the time and space to think.There has always been this never-ending debate about the best ways to connect with people. We are too rushed when cooking, seldom slow or intimate enough. I can still visualise parts of it and remember phrases. I been as intimate with a book as I was with Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native. The books and poems I most love are those I studied at school. This doesn’t just make you a better cook, but a more fulfilled one. If you prepare vegetable dishes when you’re not under time pressure you notice what’s happening, how the flavour of a particular vegetable can change through cooking. Reading Segnit’s books reminds me why it’s good to cook slowly. I put Segnit’s slow-cooked green beans with tomatoes on my list. This way vegetables suck up the flavours around them and the oil becomes imbued with vegetal notes. Olive oil can often be the key, though I’m never patient enough to cook green beans as slowly as I do other green vegetables, with olive oil, seasoning and garlic. As Segnit observes, they taste raw even after they’ve been cooked, a ‘cocktail of grass and almond milk’, almost ‘unready’. I buy a lot of green beans while knowing I never make the best of them. The book opens at courgettes and I think of giving them the ‘agrodolce’ treatment by frying them in olive oil and adding cinnamon – which I would never have thought of – sugar and vinegar. I like how serendipitous this approach is. The way I use both books is to let them fall open and riffle through them instead of looking for anything specific. Niki Segnit, who wrote The Flavour Thesaurus – about marrying flavours and ingredients – has just written a second volume that focuses on plants. ![]() Mostly I feel about meals the way I feel about novels – too many possibilities, not enough time. I can spend hours planning this kind of thing, making lists of dishes, crossing them out, fusing together the best elements of several. You set the dishes down and there’s nothing more to do except slice bread and pour wine.Ī table of vegetables has become a thing for me, an easy way to have a feast – because summer vegetables convey such a voluptuous sense of plenty – but one that can also be frugal. When I put all these on the kitchen table I felt a surge of happiness: the colours, the fact that the flavours and textures worked together, the sheer ease that can come with summer cooking. ![]() Others went beyond what you might find in Italy but seemed true to its spirit: artichoke hearts, mozzarella, currants and pine nuts with mint pesto. Some were ‘ordinary’, in that they weren’t complicated – rice-stuffed baked tomatoes peperonata with bread and ricotta and white beans with red onions, the onions sautéed gently with garlic and rosemary. ![]() The dishes I served at this vegetable feast were more or less Italian. Tomatoes, sliced nectarines, mozzarella (burrata if I was feeling flush), basil, extra-virgin olive oil and a splash of white balsamic vinegar became the hit of the season. If tomatoes have a perfect balance of sweetness and tartness you only need salt, but you can anoint them with good oil too. It had been very hot and I couldn’t face cooking meat for about a month I’d mostly eaten tomatoes and nectarines. ![]() The best meal I served last summer was vegetarian, though not deliberately so. ![]()
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