These Are not The same old veggies

Chef offers seemingly endless possibilities for fresh produce

Plump tomatoes, slender green beans and creamy zucchini: When summer’s fresh produce starts rolling in, it can be tempting to fall back on tried-and-true methods.

But sometimes a nudge in a new direction can be a revelation. In Ruffage (Chronicle Books, 2019), chef and former farmer Abra Berens brings an abundance of such catalysts.

The Galien, Mich.-based author drew on her deep knowledge of vegetables for her debut cookbook.

The result is inviting and inventive, practical and original: An exploration of 30 different types, arranged alphabetically and accompanied by essays, tips and recipes presented according to preparation technique (grilled, puréed, raw, etc.) with plenty of variations.

Berens trained at the celebrated Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Ireland, which centres on an organic farm.

Just a year-and-a-half later, in 2009, she co-founded Bare Knuckle Farm in Northport, Mich.

“I grew up on a farm so I had a sense of what farming could look like,” she says. “It wasn’t until after Ballymaloe that I decided I really wanted my food to be of a place and to be evocative of what’s happening in a certain region.”

After eight years of farming, Berens returned to her career as a full-time chef and now helms the kitchen at Granor Farm in Three Oaks, Mich.

Vegetables are the “chosen cornerstone” of her diet and in Ruffage, she takes a generous approach to sharing her style of cooking.

Early on in her farming career, she learned “that ingredients can be repetitive, but meals need not be.” In Berens’s hands, there are seemingly endless possibilities for produce. (The book features more than 100 recipes and upwards of 230 variations.)

“The most important thing for me is this idea of inverting the way a lot of people, myself included, make their meals sometimes, which is getting inspiration from a finished dish and then going out and getting the ingredients for it,” she says. “I’ve always benefited from looking at the ingredients that I’m most excited about and then weaving those into a meal.”

Take cabbage, which is her favourite vegetable: “Sweet and mild,” suitable as “the star or the support.”

In one of the following recipes, after sizzling ribbons in duck fat, she dresses the cabbage in a brown sugar-vinegar sauce and pairs it with roasted potatoes in a bright herb salad served alongside seared duck breast.

Variations such as sausages, apples, mustard and cheddar, or sunflower seeds and salsa verde transform the dish entirely.

“I wanted the recipes to be very different in their texture and in their flavour combinations,” says Berens. “And then the variations to give a glimpse into the million different ways that these dishes can permutate to make new things.”