Self-styled vegetable butcher Cara Mangini gives vegetables the chop

A VEGETABLE butcher? It sounds like a contradiction in terms, until you have to cut an armoured artichoke or a boulder-strength butternut squash, which need not only a butcher’s razor-sharp knife, but skill.

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.