You can use just one of the vegetables or any combination
This is a specialty from Surat in northwestern India. I am always drawn to the scent of a green papaya enhanced by nutty mustard seed popped in hot oil.
Seaweed is a wonderful side dish in a Japanese meal - slight, delicate, usually with the subtlest taste of the sea. But there are many kinds of seaweed out there. For this salad, I strongly urge you to acquire one remarkably springy, frilly, fresh-tasting green seaweed imported from Japan.
A real caper is the flower bud of a caper plant, Capparis spinosa, and its large seedpod is called a caper berry. The seedpods of nasturtiums look just like the caper plant's buds, and when pickled they taste remarkably similar. Nasturtiums usually don't start forming seedpods until late in the summer and you have to search for them. You'll find them attached to the stems underneath the foliage, where they develop in clusters of three. Pick only young pods that are still green and soft. When they mature, they turn yellowish and the seed inside the pod is very hard and unpalatable.
When roasted, the flesh of winter squashes such as butternut, acorn, and kabocha becomes creamy and dense and caramelizes on the cut surfaces.
This salad is a luscious and refreshing way to use blood oranges and navel oranges in their prime.
Fonio (Digitaria exilis) has been grown in West Africa for centuries. For a long time, it was of marginal importance as a cereal due to its small seeds, but is now the object of renewed interest as consumers begin to recognize its flavor and nutritional qualities.
Saag means greens; sarson da saag specified mustard greens, and palak da saag is spinach. This flavorful side dish often accompanies hearty whole-wheat griddle breads in Punjab, the wheat-growing capital of India.
The word "revolconas" means tumbled, or rolled over, and here it probably refers to the act of mashing up the potatoes. The dish is a specialty of Extremadura (as well as parts of Castile), where the potatoes are mixed with oil flavored with garlic and the local paprika, pimenton de la Vera. This gives the dish a rusty hue and an addictively dusky taste. Bacon or chorizo bits are sometimes mixed in as well. After being mashed, the potatoes are shaped into a cake and served as an appetizer (or a poor man's main dish), though they definitely make a welcome side dish. Smoked pimenton is essential here; it is available at better food shops and by mail order.
Caramelized and concentrated into slightly crisp nuggets, roasting gives cauliflower a new personality. Granted, it loses its pearly white complexion, but the payback is in the flavor.