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Vegetables, Fresh, Treatment Of

Those who value fresh vegetables and sweet salads will never have them cleaned in the garden. Neither the one nor the other should be washed until they are just about to be cooked or eaten. Even potatoes lose flavour quickly after being washed; so do carrots and turnips; whilst water will very speedily become tainted in summer when in contact with cauliflowers and cabbages, and thus will destroy their freshness and flavour. The case is still worse with salads. If washed at all, it should be only just before they are dressed, and they should be dried and dressed immediately. Nothing ruins the flavour of vegetables, and renders good salads uneatable, sooner than water hanging about them. If lettuces are quite clean, they make the best salads unwashed; but if washed, the operation should be done quickly, the water instantly shaken out, and the leaves dried with a clean cloth. The best practice is simply to remove all superfluous earth by scraping or rubbing, and all rough tops or leaves by cutting. Enough tender leaves may still be left on cauliflowers and broccoli to overlap the flowers. Salad should be sent in from the garden with most of the outside leaves and main root on. The tender leaves are easily tainted and injured by exposure, and if the chief root is cut off sharp, much of the juice oozes out of the wound. Where vegetables and salads have to be bought from a greengrocer the conditions are altogether different. Not only washing, but soaking often becomes necessary to restore something like their pristine crispness.