Although I don't like eating vegetables very much, I think I'll love all of them because they are colourful and look like yummy. I think parents can make some of this healthy food for their children when their children don't like to eat vegetables, just like me! This kind of colourful food might let the children think they are yummy, then they can have enough nutrients for their growth.
I'd love to try any/all of these desserts. Still, I wouldn't pretend they were better for me that the typical offerings. People can argue about fat, but added sugar is conclusively bad for one's health. All things in moderation but added sugar rarely.
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As Brazilians well know, avocados are delicious in smoothies.
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One can't help but ask just what are they smoking these days?
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Give me cane sugar or give me nothing for dessert!!
Thought this would be 80% vegetables, 20% sugar/cream. Looks like the opposite.
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pumpkin pie. sweet potato pie. carrot cake. avocado ice cream. zucchini bread.
Nevertheless, these desserts at the restaurants listed sound very exciting.
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Sweet potato pie has been a staple of Southern black culture for a long time, but I guess when Gramercy Tavern does it, it's Times worthy...
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I think the difference is that sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie have loads of added sugar whereas these desserts do not. For people like myself who avoid added sugar, these new desserts sound like a great thing to try.
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It’s a shame that all the corn that garnishes the ice cream tacos has to just get thrown away.
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I once made a carrot pie reasoning that there was carrot cake. It wasn't very popular. I know a lot more about cooking now than I did then. I may take one on just to see what I can do with it.
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Incredible article - thank you for inviting us into the world of vegetable desserts. I’ve been to almost all of the restaurants mentioned above, and think they are great; yet, I must not have paid attention to the desserts - I will now!
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We don't eat veggies for dessert. Rather after a dinner of steak-frites, a good stew, etc. ( I am sure all you cringing veggies get the picture), with perhaps some olives, then comes the salad. Yes folks, the salad you had to start your meal. Dessert is an entirely different matter.
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If you add sugar to anything- vegetable or fruit- you end up with a dessert. The sugar defines the sweetness, just need to add a little more to the veggies. Just like a smoothie..
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The subject itself is interesting. But as is often the case in the Times, you write about an interesting subject as long as it has something to do with expensive restaurants and their well-known chefs. I think it's great Dan Barber is experimenting with this. I also wish the Times would write less about 5-star restaurants, where most of us don't or can't eat. There are plenty of chefs within reach who could probably have contributed something to this article. But I think one of the reasons this article is here because the Times gets to mention Blue Hill. No offence to Blue Hill. But the thinking in this section really needs to expand in this area.
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I agree, I don't eat at any of those restaurants (a bit too much for my wallet), but i do think the reason they are mentioned is chefs at those restaurants have achieved what most of us would like to have in the restaurant of our choice - innovative and "healthier" at the same time. Without busting our wallets.
Thank Ms. Pope, you offer great suggestions, the home cook can easily try to imitate
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I am trying to find a cookbook that isn’t just sweet potato pie. Any suggestions?
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Great article, but I wish there were recipes included.
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This is only news to people focused on European cuisine. Asian cuisine is full of examples of vegetables and tubers in desserts. Vietnamese make delicious cakes using cassava and taro root and avocado shakes are common (and delicious). Filipinos use the purple ube tuber extensively in cakes, candies and ice cream. If you visit San Francisco, be sure to check out Mitchell’s ice cream, which makes many Filipino and Latino flavors, like avocado, corn and cheese, and ube. Chinese desserts can include sweetened beans, and the Japanese use bean paste extensively. Korean markets carry rice cakes that include beans and sweet winter squash. It is nice to see the western culinary world finally catching up.
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Or halwas from India- made from carrots, beets, gourds, split peas, yams or lentils. Key is adding a boat load of ghee to them
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My favorite is an azuki bean cookie, azuki beans on shaved ice. Both available in our small town on the Central Coast. Our family ended dinner with a green salad, anything from the frig, dressing of oil, wine vinegar etc.
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Or a black bean brownie, yum.
For one of the best treats of your life, head to Kennett Square, PA. On one end of the main street is an ice cream parlor run by Mexicans who are magicians when it comes to vegetable desserts.
Kennett Square is the mushroom capital of the world so of course you'll find mushroom ice cream as well as other indescribably delicious ice creams such as corn, eggplant, artichoke, beet, and almost every other vegetable you can think of.
Just thinking about those choices starts an intense craving, and if I had a car I jump in and head there right now. If you love ice cream and you love vegetables, so should you.
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So, let me get this straight. You're saying vegetables make great desserts. But only when just about every example here is paired with ice cream? Riiiiiight.
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This is not exactly new - during rationing and WWII, Lord Wotton and his staff had lots of helpful recipes for cakes using parsnips and carrots etc. to cut down on sugar usage.
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I meant Lord Woolton - sticky keyboard!
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We are not sweets fans, and have been advocating for years for restaurants to offer "dessert salads," basically a cheese course with some fruit (or veg), nuts, and greens. Proper cheese courses are often too fatty and heavy on their own. The cheeses are often mindless and the accompaniments predictable. A fresher, more thoughtful approach is what we're looking for -- and what we serve at home when we can get away without the sugar bombs.
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Sugar is sugar is sugar...all bad for you. The British got us all hooked on the stuff way back when they were trying to fund their wars with cane from the islands.......it worked! Now we humans can't get unaddicted and spend mega bucks trying to lose all the unnatural pounds.
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There are two differences between a veggie dessert and a regular one. First, veggies have a lot of healthy nutrients that standard desserts do not, so that is an added health benefit.
Second, for a veggie or fruit that is not cooked to death, the cell wall of the plant encases the sugar. It takes time for our bodies to break down the cell walls, which means that the sugar enters our blood stream more slowly and we don't get the big sugar spikes of traditional sweet things. Of course, cooking or making juice destroys that benefit, which is why it is a lot healthier to eat an apple than to drink apple juice.
- A Scientist.
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Let’s have some recipes!
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An interesting article but doesn’t do the home cook much good. I kept looking for recipes that could be used at home instead of high-priced restaurants.
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Looks delicious. But, if fiber consumption is the end, leave some fiber intact, so our gut can develop the bulk needed for best function.
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In Kerala, there is a dessert made with semi-ripe jackfruit, split mung beans, coconut milk and jaggery. I eat mounds of it for the fiber content.
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what is the dessert called? what is the recipe? I'd love to try it out!
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Home canners have had to change their recipes because fruits and vegetables are now grown for maximum sugar content in the plant.
Sugar, “vegetable” sourced or not, is not good for you.
If you begin to look at sugar as the poison that is, you will find it much easier to forgo the wine and dessert.
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Skip the desert ! Veggie or not.
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Vegetables would be more popular if more people had access to home-grown produce. It is indeed tastier than typical grocery store fare, whether served for the main meal or dessert.
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Community supported agriculture (CSA) programs are they way to go. In the northeast participants receive produce weekly from June to October. Help yourself and help local farms. If you do a bit of research, I bet you still have time to join one in your area.
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I tried a CSA once. Even with just a half share every two weeks, I've never thrown away so much food in my life. I'll stick to the farmers markets, where I can buy only what I actually need and will eat.
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I'm fascinated by the high percentage of my friends who do not eat vegetables. I assume they had bad experiences as children eating veggies that had all the flavor and texture boiled out of them.
Local, organic, fresh...none of that matters. They are vehemently opposed to eating vegetables.
It is, as I said, fascinating.
I can't imagine how hard their bodies have to work to eliminate waste.
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Natasha Pickowicz is also doing amazing things at Flora Bar and Altro Paradiso with vegetables in desserts.
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I bought a delicata squash this year for the first time. It was so sweet (roasted), I resolved to buy it often and serve it for dessert. Unfortunately, the local season turned out to be over. I'm looking forward to fall!
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I agree! Unfortunatley unlike other squash this was has a very short season when it's available
.
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All sounds very tasty but for many of the items there isn't much vegetable content. A few leaves of arugala or a parsnip ribbon aren't a "helping" of vegetables.
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sweet potatoes, yam (cassava), corn and yes, avocado! have been used in asian desserts for ages - i grew up eating mass manufactured corn icecream . Yam is also used quite a bit in Taiwan (Taiwanese have the best yam cream cakes), and the people from the Teochew dialect subgroup are known for a yam dessert called "orh nee", some versions of which include pumpkin. Indonesians do a great avocado and coffee / or gula melaka drink - i see that always as a satisfying end to a meal.
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Avocado is technically a fruit, not a vegetable.
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avocados are also regularly used in vegan desserts like chocolate mousse or brownies, cakes & cookies in recipes that call for creamy and dense consistency without dairy or eggs, etc.
there is no avocado "taste" and non-vegans never suspect their chocolate pudding or brownie has something good for you like avocado in it!
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Such an interesting article! I've never liked desserts but around 20 years ago, started getting into farmers' markets, always was OK with veggies but saw my consumption really go up after doing the farmers' market regularly. I adore vegetables now(tomatoes and cukes are my go-tos although I just finished a lovely sweet potato dinner), even when farmers' markets aren't going on in Chicago. And it's quite cool that we have several farmers' markets in Chicago's Loop during the season! Will have to either try some of the suggestions in this article or schedule a trip soon.
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No avocado taste? Haha, that's what I thought when I made chocolate avocado pudding. Absolutely disgusting. I love avocados. I love chocolate. But not together. See also: black bean brownies. Yeeeeech.
Many years ago in Indonesia we had 'es avocat' which was an avocado smoothie. Bright green, creamy and delicious.
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Avocado rarely used in dessert? Not true in the Philippines, where avocado ice cream is one of the favorite ice cream flavors. Also ube--purple yam. Both are delicious!
Thanks for a great article--and for supporting those of us who for medical reasons have to eat a low-glycemic diet and would love to have more options for less-sweet desserts.
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Ecuadorians have figured out avocado ice cream too - very delicious!
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But wouldn't all this attention to raising the Brix scores of vegetables make them a lot more glycemic?
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