Are you eating your vegetables? It's becoming quite trendy to eschew meat at the center of your plate. This style of eating has long been embraced in Asia and out of necessity in many poorer countries. In fact, it's not so dissimilar from the Mediterranean diet, which was endorsed yet again in a study released last week. It's really no big news that a vegecentric diet is the way to go, as evinced by this 1819 quote from Thomas Jefferson: I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables which constitute my principal diet.

I love the notion of animal products as a condiment and often use them this way in my cooking. Small amounts of highly flavored meat or fish—smoky pork, spicy sausage, salty fish roe, pungent anchovies—add just the right hit of umami to salads, pastas and vegetables, raw or cooked. Look to what some of the more ingenious chefs are doing for ideas on vegetables dishes with heft. Consider the oven-roasted slab of broccoli I had at The NoMad. Daniel Humm made it the star, with a little bacon to keep things interesting. This cauliflower dish is from Dan Barber, who never met a vegetable he didn't like.
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I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that the firm white head of the cauliflower is referred to as "the white curd," for it looks like nothing so much as a big virginal cheese. Of course it comes in other colors—orange, green, even purple—but it is the white that is the most common, the most classic and perhaps the most invitingly pristine. It's lovely baked with cheese sauce, pureed into a creamy soup or steamed whole and dressed with a caper vinaigrette and toasted breadcrumbs, but it's also a rather surprisingly capable foil to far more assertive flavors. This Indian "dum," a type of steaming done in a tightly sealed pot, traditionally over a wood or charcoal fire, transforms the cauliflower into a velvety heap cloaked in a fragrant and highly-spiced sauce. You can make a simple meal of it along with a pile of nutty basmati rice, or serve it as part of a larger repast with braised lamb or grilled chicken. Either way, it's certainly no wallflower.
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