A Seat at the Veg-Table
A Q&A with Nik Sharma on plant-forward cooking through the lens of biology
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Hi all,
Welcome back to “that one dish.!” The world of vegetables is big and beautiful—and sometimes, when I think there are only so many things you can do with that head of cauliflower, that ear of corn, or that bunch of chard, this ongoing wave we’re seeing of plant-forward cookbooks continues to remind me of the incredible range and potential that vegetables have. This week, I’m chatting with Nik Sharma, an award-winning cookbook writer who’s the mastermind behind the blog “A Brown Table” and the newsletter “The Flavor Files.” His new book, “Veg-Table,” is both a celebration of and an extensive guide to more than fifty different vegetables. Just as its predecessor, “The Flavor Equation,” explained the science behind achieving certain flavors like sweetness or bitterness in your cooking, “Veg-Table” explains the science behind the beautiful, wild phenomena of the plant kingdom—better equipping readers with knowledge on how to properly store their alliums, tubers, and gourds (to name a few) and cook them in such a way that they maximize their nutrients and flavors. Nik employs his background in biology to help answer questions that might’ve riddled the minds of a home cook at one point or another: “Do I keep my tomatoes in the fridge, or outside on the counter?” “How do I keep my fresh herbs and salad greens from becoming wet and slimy?” “How do I really stop myself from crying whenever I cut onions, seriously?”
And if not any of the above, “Veg-Table” is bound to inspire fun, fresh ways of expanding your vegetable repertoire and making creative use of the produce aisle’s bounty. For Nik, cauliflower can be grated and cooked down into an easy, plant-based bolognese to serve over your favorite pasta. Cassava can be roasted and served with aioli and a salsa brava for a delicious rendition of the Spanish classic. Corn husks can be toasted and cooked into a stock, which make for a great creamy corn soup topped with jalapeño oil. The world is your oyst—er, I mean, vegetable.
Keep reading for my conversation with Nik about his new book. We also chatted about the evolution of his recipe-writing, what he’s currently growing in his garden, and—surprise, surprise—the “one dish” that best captures his biculturalism as someone who grew up in India and now lives in the United States.
By the way, next week is my birthday week—and since I’m feeling particularly generous, I’ll be sending out not one, but TWO delicious recipes from “Veg-Table.” Be sure to subscribe below (and tell your friends!) to ensure that you never miss an update from me.
Enjoy, everyone! And have a great rest of the week.
How did “Veg-table” come about? Was there something about plant-forward cooking and vegetable-focused meals that you felt like hadn't been talked about or explored?
I’ve always wanted to write books that help people in the kitchen, and for them to take whatever I write and apply it to what they’re cooking at home. For me, the next step after “The Flavor Equation” was definitely vegetables. I wanted to talk about them from a scientific angle—what’s happening in vegetables, why a certain technique works better for this kind of vegetable over another, what works, and what doesn’t work.
We've seen your background in molecular biology shine in how you explain cooking techniques and phenomena in “The Flavor Equation,” but how would you say it informed the way that you talk about a vegetable’s makeup, its unique characteristics, and the proper way to cook and store them?
Vegetables are all different, drastically different. One of the things I’ve realized over the years writing for different media outlets—especially “Serious Eats,” as it’s where a large portion of [food] science writing has been—and my newsletter is that when a vegetable comes off the plant, it isn’t dead. It’s still biologically active and doing different things. That’s what I wanted to bring to the forefront. They’re producing gases like ethylene, for example, which is a plant hormone that influences ripening—which, in turn, affects the way you should store your vegetables and how they interact with other produce in its vicinity.
For me, using biology is a very important way to try and figure out the best way to cook something. Raw onions, for example, have a bitter taste and are pungent—and all of that is due to biology. So, how do I apply biology to avoid that pungency and bitterness? If I’m eating onions in a salad, the easiest way is to cut them and put them in ice-cold water because that stops the enzymes that produce those unpleasant chemicals.
Another common example I can give you is beans. There’s so much that’s been written about people avoiding them because of lectins—or, you know, they just make them gassy. But they’re a great and affordable source of protein for people in poor countries. The World Health Organization invested a lot of money into research to develop better methods for not only canning beans, but also for people in developing nations to be able to get adequate nutrition from them. What are the best methods to grow them? How do they process them to get the most nutrition? I’ve applied a lot of that kind of knowledge in the book, and you’ll see those tips and tricks in each vegetable section.
Something that stood out to me about your recipes was how they were structured—the ingredient list is actually integrated into the method.
This book is meant to be more reflective of how I cook at home every day. Even the way the recipes are written are much more conversational and friendlier; they feel less formal. I highlighted the ingredients so that people can see, okay, this is where an ingredient comes into play. It makes recipe-writing much easier for me because that’s how I usually write recipes at home—but from a user standpoint, when I checked with people, this is the style they prefer because they know where an ingredient is coming in as it’s needed and they don’t have to go back and forth between the ingredient list and the method. That made it really helpful, just knowing that people would find this useful. It’s a more friendlier approach to recipe-writing versus making it so formal. I know “The Joy of Cooking” has done it.
In creating and sharing new recipes for your books and for “The Flavor Files,” have you seen an evolution in how people are cooking at home day-to-day?
Yes. I definitely think people have become more global in their approach to ingredients. They’re cooking with a global pantry in mind, and are willing to go and buy ingredients and try new things that they’re unfamiliar with—which is fantastic. And they’re also using these ingredients outside of their normal repertoire. An ingredient is meant to be versatile, right? If it works in a different type of dish, you should, by all means, use it. That’s something I’ve noticed has become less of an issue than it used to be before, which is kind of cool.
Can you give an example of that?
I remember when I was writing “The Flavor Equation” and I sent out recipes to testers. I’d put miso and parmesan in a recipe with buckwheat noodles. One of the testers came back and said, “Oh my gosh, this tasted really great—but I was very upset because it combined Japanese and Indian and Italian flavors all together.” It was the most bizarre thing to hear. I didn’t realize there was some sort of “nationalism” in the way ingredients are used. Nobody ever says that, because tomatoes came from the Americas, we can’t use them in Indian or Italian dishes. I removed that recipe from “The Flavor Equation.” Over the years, when I started my newsletter, I started testing out different kinds of ingredients with people. I’d done a tomato miso pasta recipe and they loved it. When I started testing out those kinds of combinations I said to myself, “Okay, ‘Veg-Table’ is the place now where I can go full steam, flip the script a little, and bring back those ideas I was once hesitant to do.”
What are you growing in your garden now?
I’ve got a bunch of citrus plants that I’m struggling with a little bit—just because of leafminers, which are these little insects that suck the juice out of the young leaves. That’s been a bit of a pain. The thing about home gardening is that you spend more time actually trying to get rid of pests. I’m not a big fan of white sweet potatoes, so anytime I get them I put them in the ground, use them as ground cover, and they spread really fast, which is fantastic.
As someone who grew up in India and now lives in the United States, what’s one dish that best encompasses your experiences—without thinking of what’s authentic?
Patra. It’s a dish I grew up eating as a snack in Bombay [now Mumbai]. It’s usually made with taro leaves; it’s not that easy to find in America unless you go to an Indian grocery store, and not all of them even carry it. I use collard leaves to make them my own. They’re not as large as taro leaves, but at the same time they’re adaptable and flexible. I roll them up, steam them, fry them, and they look like little leaf rolls.
And so, I feel like that’s how I am. I grew up in India but moved to America, and I’ve lived in both countries for a while now. I’m somewhere in-between. I somewhat fit here, I somewhat fit there, but I don’t fit in either country because I’ve spent half my life here and half my life there. I’m molded by different experiences and the places I’ve lived in, different cultures I’ve been exposed to and have observed. So, what I write and create in my kitchen are expressions of those experiences that I’ve lived.
This interview has been condensed for clarity.