Pizza = Vegetable (another absurdity from Congress)

I love the USA. I really do.

But this type of crap really makes me sad. We throw common sense and children's health out the window simply to make some money.

This is a photo of the typical school lunch in an American public school. I'm not quite sure what that gunky white sauce is in the photo, but I assume it's ranch dressing. You tell me whether anything on this plate should be considered a vegetable.

Feijoas

I tasted a fresh, ripe feijoa for the first time today. It's a beautifully fragrant fruit with the texture of guava, but with a floral aroma and wonderfully tasty pulp. Do not eat the skin, but scoop the pulp and soft flesh out with a spoon. Feijoas make wonderful jams and chutney, but the naked fruit is delicious on its own. It is also known as pineapple guava or guavasteen and is in season during the Fall months.

Baba Ghanoush

I love a good Mediterranean platter full of dips, toasty pita and savory bites. Pickled radishes, briny olives, tapenade and roasted peppers. Creamy hummus and smooth baba ghanoush. Oh man, there is nothing better than a freshly ground roasted eggplant with the bite of raw garlic and zingy lemon juice.

I lived with a girl in university with Armenian roots, and her father Pierre made the best baba ghanoush I have ever eaten. Pierre won't give up his secret recipe, but I think I have come close.

Interestingly enough, the eggplant originated in South Asia. It's a nightshade that is closely related to the tomato and potato plant. It's also not surprising that one of my favorite Indian dishes is bhengan bartha, another smooth dip-like eggplant dish eaten with naan, an Indian flatbread. I wonder if traders along the Spice Route during the first century AD brought back the eggplant and showed the people in the Parthan and Roman empires how to eat it, and the baba ghanoush is actually a derivation of the Indian dish? Who knows. All I know is that I love it in all of its wonderful incarnations.

Baba Ghanoush

Ingredients

2 large eggplants
1/4 cup your best extra virgin olive oil
garlic salt
2 large cloves of raw garlic, chopped and smashed
sea salt
finely ground black pepper
2-3 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp of lemon juice
1 tsp of chopped flat-leaf parsley (or cilantro or green onions)

Preheat oven to 200C

Split your eggplant in half and rub the flesh side with olive oil. Sprinkle some garlic salt onto the flesh-side of the eggplant, no need to get it on skin since we won't be using it later. Roast the eggplant in the oven for 15 minutes, until browned and soft. Let it sit out for 15-20 minutes until cool and then peel the skin off. Chop into large chunks and toss in food processor along with garlic, sea salt, pepper, tahini, lemon juice and half of the olive oil.

Process until smooth paste forms.

Place in bowl or large ramekin. Drizzle olive oil over and top with garnish of your choice. Sprinkle some more sea salt and pepper. Eat with warm pita, your favorite flat bread or vegetable crudites.

Kumara (New Zealand Sweet Potato)

I've been fascinated with kumara ever since my first trip here to New Zealand. Its sweet, delicate flavor is not as rich as the American variety, but is just as hearty and packs lots of flavor as a roast or mash.

On the Kaipara Kumara website, they talk a little bit about the history of the kumara and how Maori first cultivated and used the root vegetable:

"The kumara has a long history of cultivation in New Zealand. Brought here by the early Maori settlers over one thousand years ago from Pacific Islands, they were widely grown especially in the semi-tropical regions of the North Island.

The Maori managed kumara growing with great horticultural skill, making use of the ideal growing climate and controlling kumara caterpillar with the use of tamed black-backed seagulls. Kumara caterpillar could devastate a crop almost overnight, hatching in their thousands. Pre-European Maori grew several different varieties of 'bush' kumara, but compared to the varieties we eat today they were very small in size, being no bigger than a finger.

The kumara we eat today has evolved from a larger American variety. It was imported in the early 1850's, and quickly adopted for its superior size and taste."

That said, our American sweet potato is only distantly related to the potato. The softer, orange variety is often called a yam in parts of North America, a practice intended to differentiate it from the firmer, white variety. The sweet potato is botanically very distinct from the other vegetable called a yam, which is native to Africa and Asia. To prevent confusion, the United States Department of Agriculture requires that sweet potatoes labeled as "yams" also be labeled as "sweet potatoes."

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