Vegetables have their place at the Christmas table. For inspiration turn to the new book by chef Jeremy Fox.

Fine vegetable dishes have their place at the Christmas table, and there’s no better place to turn for inspiration than On Vegetables, the new book by Californian chef Jeremy Fox.

This is not a book about vegetarians; it’s a book about vegetables. Or, to be more specific, plants. In much of the world there’s often a mentality of either liking meat or vegetables. I still eat steak. I cook pig trotters. I obsess over the many things to do with the head of a humanely raised hog. But I also believe that a carrot deserves the same attention. Yes, you can sprinkle salt over a ripe avocado and it will taste wonderful. But what else can you do? Plants, I dare say, deserve your full attention.

Pretty much every chef in the world believes in nose-to-tail cooking. Well, what if cooking responsibly isn’t just about honouring things with heartbeats? I hate throwing things away. Discarding food is incredibly wasteful. But also throwing away food embarrasses me. It makes me feel like a hack chef. I don’t want to just cook nose-to-tail; I want to go seed-to-stalk, too. I want to cook the whole damn plant.

At my restaurant, Rustic Canyon, we don’t throw away pea pods. We don’t throw away stems. The smallest scraps can be used as components of a larger dish. Carrot tops, beet greens – use them all. Does it taste good? Yes – hopefully very good. But the goal is to look at the plant as a whole, and to cook better, smarter and cheaper. I want to unlock flavours that have been undiscovered after the past half-century of people assuming that certain bits are food and other bits are just garbage.

This book isn’t intended to give you a full menu for a dinner party, or to show you how to throw together a vegetarian family brunch. Quite simply, it’s about exposing people to the different things one can do with a vegetable.

Don’t get too worried if you can’t find the exact things I use. I cook what I find in my surroundings. If your surroundings are different, you’re going to want to adjust and adapt as needed. This is not a bad thing. Ultimately, I want to inspire you to change the way you think about vegetables, and to have the confidence to expand your horizons.

This book is by no means a full and comprehensive collection of everything one can possibly do with every part of the plant, but it’s a start. Rustic Canyon, 1119 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, California, +1 310.393.7050, rusticcanyonwinebar.com