5 Culinary-School Tricks That Turned Me into a Vegetable Lover
I ate them because I should; now I do it because I want to
I’d never been a big “vegetable person.”
My favorite green thing used to be scallions, and my idea of getting my veggies in was stirring spinach into my Annie’s mac and cheese.
I know it’s a bit embarrassing, especially for an adult who’s enrolled in culinary school.
Before I started my cooking classes in Florence, I thought my vegetable-averse habits would remain the same. I’d learn how to make fresh pasta by day, eat doughy pizza by night, and supplement my diet with mozzarella cheese and pistachio gelato.
But then I noticed something: Vegetables were making their way into just about every dish we learned to prepare in class, from involtini of red bell peppers, breadcrumbs, capers, and anchovies to caponata to frittata.
We had several lectures emphasizing the proper preparation of different vegetables, learning how best to preserve their colors and optimize their textures.
We even had entire courses, Cooking Light and Nutritional Cooking, that focused less on pork and pappardelle and more on light, vegetable-forward cuisine.
