DAYTON EATS
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HOW TO MEET AUTHOR CARA MANGINI IN DAYTON
When: Aug. 2
Where: Books & Co At The Greene, 4453 Walnut St., Dayton
What: Mangini will be giving a talk about her book "The Vegetable Butcher," doing a vegetable butchery demo, sharing tastes from the book, answering questions and signing books.
When: Aug. 3
Where: Dorothy Lane Market Culinary Center, 6161 Far Hills Ave., Dayton
What: Mangini will be teaching a cooking class of recipes from The Vegetable Butcher and signing copies of the book.
Cara Mangini doesn’t necessarily have favorite recipes, but like any artist she has a favorite medium.
Seasonal vegetables help inform the cooking and creations she gravitates toward.
For spring there’s asparagus, hazelnuts and mint with quinoa; lemon vinaigrette, snap pea, asparagus, and avocado salad with radish vinaigrette; artichoke torta; swiss chard crostata with a fennel seed crust, and ramp (or leek) and asparagus risotto.
For summer she’s in the kitchen preparing zucchini, sweet corn, and basil penne with pine nuts and mozzarella, corn fritters with summer bean ragout and seaside gazpacho
For fall she’s preparing fall farmers market tacos, roasted sweet potatoes, chard and coconut black rice and broccoli and radicchio rigatoni with creamy walnut pesto.
And for winter she’s busy preparing dishes like celery root pot pie and spaghetti squash with sage brown butter, lemon, hazelnuts and parmesan.
Mangini, 37 — chef and owner of Little Eater, a produce-inspired restaurant and artisan grocery in Columbus’s North Market — is the author of a new, beautiful book called “The Vegetable Butcher.” A book that not only highlights her favorite recipes, but shows you “how to select, prep, slice, dice and masterfully cook vegetables from artichokes to zucchini.”
Filled with more than 250 step-by-step striking color photographs, the book is a deep dive into vegetable education that I haven’t ever come across.
The first-time author has two Dayton visits scheduled in early August, but with many veggies starting to be in season, now is the time to make time to study these tasty recipes that make vegetables the star of outstanding dishes.
Little Eater, which opened in 2015, offers North Market customers the kinds of dishes that Mangini focuses on in her book, providing the opportunity to taste the season at any given moment. Their most popular spring salads are a ramp pesto couscous with almonds, currants and local farm greens, local asparagus and quinoa with lemon and spring herbs, organic and local lacinato kale with avocado-scallion dressing, jalapeno-pickled golden raisins and an Ohio sheep’s milk cheese. Two other very popular dishes that are usually on the menu are a beet and avocado sandwich layered with pickled onions, citrus-dressed greens, and chevre from Cleveland’s Mackenzie Creamery and mixed mushroom and shallot quiche with an Ohio gruyere from Laurel Valley Creamery. Mangini is committed to offering the best of what’s in season in Ohio, every season.
Her passion for cooking and working with vegetables is contagious and it shows through both her business and her book.
Here’s an excerpt of an interview I recently had with Mangini.
Q: What is your culinary background?
A: I spent a lot of time pursuing a culinary career before taking a leap into the professional culinary world and going to culinary school. I studied and cooked on my own, and traveled throughout France, Italy, Spain, Croatia and Turkey learning from chefs and home cooks. Eventually, I attended the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City, where I received a mostly plant-based culinary education and perhaps, most importantly, one that focused on the connection between food and health… The most formative roles included working with visiting chefs at the James Beard House and as sous chef at The Culinary Loft, and as a vegetable butcher at Eataly. In Napa Valley, I worked on a farm and associated farm-to-table restaurant called Farmstead. The experiences in Napa ultimately showed me how to build a restaurant that truly supports local and seasonal foods. All of these experiences brought my interest in vegetable education into focus.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for this book?
A: I came up with the idea for The Vegetable Butcher over time, but ultimately, through travel experiences and various professional experiences I realized that I wanted to help make vegetables more approachable and second nature in our culture. I wanted to share all the tips, tricks, techniques and recipes that I have gathered over my years of working exclusively with vegetables in hopes of making the preparation of vegetables more approachable and less intimidating. My goal was to produce a cookbook that would serve as a guide to vegetables, demystifying produce with practical, how-to information (the stuff that, somehow, no one ever taught you), as well as a resource of produce-inspired recipes that would encourage readers to cook with vegetables and experience the joy that comes with it.
Q: What was the experience like for you?
A: I loved the whole process and appreciated the opportunity to study vegetables and focus on them in a way that is different from my work with vegetables in my restaurant. I enjoyed shopping for the ingredients that I love so much, talking to farmers about them, and getting to cook and test them over and over again. I continued to learn so much about vegetables and how they behave under different conditions and with different accompaniments.
Q: What are you favorite tips you share with readers in the book?
A: It’s really important to have a good, 8-inch chef’s knife as well as a sturdy cutting board that provides plenty of room to work. These two things will set your vegetable prep up for success from the start.
As for vegetable-related tips, my favorites are usually ones that help minimize waste and save money! Tips like…
• Save your vegetable scraps to make vegetable stock (you can freeze them until you are ready to make a big batch)
• Don’t throw away your beet greens or kohlrabi leaves — you can sauté them like other greens (think kale, spinach, collards, Swiss chard). Carrot tops make a great pesto.
• Don’t toss broccoli stems. Peel them, cut them up and add to a dish along with the florets.
Q: What do you think is the biggest misconception about cooking with vegetables?
A: Vegetables don’t have to equate to sacrifice. They can produce over-the-top flavor and craveable, deeply satisfying food.
Q: Do you see more vegetable centric dishes at restaurants and more attention being paid to them?
A: I do think vegetables are becoming less of an afterthought for a lot of reasons, but perhaps most important is that there is demand for healthier options.
Q: What do you think are the most underrated veggies?
A: Celery root, broccoli rabe, beets, kohlrabi, fennel and rutabaga don’t get enough love. When prepared well, they are all stars.
Q: Favorite tips when selecting vegetables?
A: Look for brightly colored, fresh-looking produce that is in season. It may seem obvious, but avoid vegetables that are discolored, limp, overly soft, shriveling or dry. Veggies in their prime have a much better chance of lasting longer and remaining in good condition until you are ready to cook them. Don’t be afraid of irregularly-shaped vegetables. Nature produces vegetables that are perfectly imperfect. Go with what stands out and looks most appealing to you and will be more inspired to get cooking.
Dayton Eats looks at the regional food stories and restaurant news that make mouths water. Share your menu updates, special dinners and events, new chefs, interesting new dishes and culinary adventures. Do you know of new exciting format changes, specials, happy hours, restaurant updates or any other tasty news you think is worth a closer look at? E-mail Alexis Larsen at alexis.e.larsen@hotmail.com.
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