EP #6 Part 1: Turn Up (HA!) Your Vegetable Knowledge with The Chef's Garden's New Book

Farmer Lee Jones knows a thing or two about vegetables...and not just the ordinary ones like carrots, potatoes and peas. For more than 30  years his Huron, Ohio farm has been growing the most interesting, nutrient-dense, and beautiful vegetables for the prestigious restaurants around the country. Vegetables from The Chef's Garden are a staple ingredient for well-known chefs that include Daniel Boulud, Jose Andrés and Thomas Keller and are familiar to food TV celebs as well as northeast Ohio's culinary greats.  Lucky for us, we can also access those same veggies at an old fashioned farmstead or in home delivery boxes. Farmer Lee Jones and food writer Kristin Donnelly have just released a 600+ page book that is the quintessential encyclopedia of vegetables. The Chefs Garden, A Modern Guide to Common and Unusual Vegetables with Recipes shares decades of knowledge about familiar vegetables and those that might be new to us like cardoons, salsify and oca. Chef-in-Residence Jamie Simpson has devised recipes that honor the best qualities of each vegetable and stretch our understanding of what we can do with them. In the first of two interviews we talk to Farmer Lee and Chef Jamie about why a plant-forward future is inevitable and necessary, how looking back in time is actually the key to our culinary future, and how asking more of our plants and vegetables is a key to a more sustainable food system.