Self-styled vegetable butcher Cara Mangini gives vegetables the chop
Most of us will never have that problem, because even though 75% of Irish people know about the recommended five-a-day, not even one in three of us is eating that much.
When we do eat veg, it is the tried-and-tested ones, such as tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and mushrooms.
We are bottom of the European fruit-and-veg-eating table.
Last January, the National Adult Nutrition Survey, and Safefood, found that people in Ireland ate an average 276g of fruit and veg a day, compared to 605g in Spain, and 467g in France.
Enter vegetable butcher, Cara Mangini.
Her mouth-watering new book, The Vegetable Butcher, not only hammers home the message that vegetables maintain a healthy weight and cut the risk of heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, and Type ll diabetes, it also shows you how to “select, prep, slice, dice, and masterfully cook” them.
“Here,” she tells Feelgood, “vegetables are at the centre of your plate, not an afterthought or obligation. They are modern, sexy and extraordinarily delicious.”
She has just opened a restaurant, called Little Eater, (which loosely corresponds to a translation of her Italian surname) in Columbus, Ohio, in the US, where she and her team promote the cooking of vegetables at home.
Her Italian grandfather and great-grandfather were both traditional meat butchers, but Mangini, too, can wield a knife to cut thin ribbons out of crinkly kale or work against the curves of the stubborn butternut squash.
Her vocation as a vegetable butcher became clear when she worked at Eataly, a chic Italian marketplace in Chicago.
“Customers walked right up to me with their produce and I would clean it, peel it, slice it and prime it. I shredded cabbage, shelled fava beans, shaved celery root and prepped case after case of baby artichokes,” she recalls.
“I discovered that even the most sophisticated foodies didn’t always know the best way to cut and prepare vegetables. They needed some inspiration and encouragement.
"The experience reinforced my innate sense that vegetable education would be my mission.”
And part of that mission is writing this book, a beautifully photographed and easy-to-follow homage to vegetables that is packed full of advice on how to pick, prep, and prepare them.
“You don’t need much to make eating vegetables easy and pleasurable,” she says.
Certainly, Mangini has come up with something that should inspire the average Irish person to move beyond tomatoes and onions.
She goes right through the alphabet, offering advice on everything from avocados (which, in fact, are tropical fruits) through nettles and rhubarb (which is a vegetable) to zucchini.
It’s all not all clean-eating virtue, either.
One of the best things to combine with avocado is chocolate, Mangini says, and she offers a luscious recipe for chocolate avocado budino, a custardy Italian pudding.
Some of the vegetables featured in the book might not be available on Irish supermarket shelves, but one that is in plentiful supply — and which is free — is the humble nettle. It is in season now.
“Nettles are highly nutritious and delicious. They are sweeter and stronger in flavour than the best spinach you have ever had,” Mangini says, encouraging readers to steam, boil, or stirfry them, or to use them as pizza toppings.
She also encourages people to use vegetables and herbs — a “can’t-cook-without ingredient” — in new ways.
For instance, rhubarb is great in stews and savoury dishes, she says.
Once you start exploring the world of vegetables, you will be impressed, even surprised, by the kind of awesome food they can produce, she says.
“I want you to start right now by getting inspired by each cauliflower and polished turnip you see.”
ORGANIC snacks from baby and toddler snacking company Heavenly Tasty Organics will now be available in 71 Tesco stores across Ireland.
The snacks are 100% natural and contain a variety of superfood ingredients such as spinach, kale, pumpkin, and coconut milk.
MD and founder Shauna McCarney-Blair, pictured, said Tesco recognised the huge demand for healthy snacks .
“The fact our range has no added sugar and includes dairy-free and gluten-free products was also a bonus as the demand for these types of products has increased rapidly in the last few years.”
Bord Bia says there are“significant export opportunities” for the Irish producers of gluten-free food in Britain, Sweden, Spain, andRussia.
While the explosion in ‘free-from’ foods is primarily due to improved diagnosis of food allergies, it is also fuelled by a desire for a healthier lifestyle.
Orla Donohoe, Bord Bia’s bakery sector manager, said: “Health for many people is now more about a natural and balanced food intake rather than ‘diets’ and calorie control and this is driving growth in the free-from market.”
An estimated 1% of the Irish population has coeliac disease but the gluten-free market is worth €29m.
www.coeliac-ireland.com
WANT to take an omega 3 supplement, but can’t bear the fishy aftertaste?
Well, Wiley’s finest Wild Alaskan fish oil is now available here.
The range is sustainable, gluten and dairy free — and there is no fishy aftertaste or smell.
Wiley’s are available in capsule form or as fruit-flavoured oils, which can be added to soups, smoothies and juices.
Omega 3 has a wide range of health benefits from improving cholesterol to cutting the risk of heart disease.
SUMMER might be a distant dream, but you can, at least, taste the season with M&S’s new range of summer salads.
There are seven new salads that combine a number of different ingredients — from so-called superfoods quinoa and avocado to more prosaic offerings such as peppers and cauliflower — to make low-calorie lunches.
For example, the Carnival Slaw salad (€2.99, 145g) has 180 calories per pack and is low in fat and sugar.
It contains 5% of your recommended daily intake of salt.
