blog: coopette.com: Book Review: Asian Vegetables

Book Review: Asian Vegetables

As you know, I’m a sucker for all things edible, weird and wonderful, which is why I was particularly thrilled when I opened the January edition of GYO magazine and discovered that a new book was about to be published. ‘Asian Vegetables’ by Sally Cunningham is a book about growing fruit, vegetables and spices from the Indian Subcontinent. According to the blurb on the back, it has “a wealth of information on over 40 varieties of fruit, vegetables and spices that can be grown in this country.”

Currently it can only be ordered direct from Eco-Logic Books, but (for the time being) they’re offering it post free, so it’s £14.99 all in.

Mine arrived a few days ago and I have been dipping in and out. There’s some general information at the beginning about the author and how she got involved in growing Asian vegetables, plus some handy hints about growing unusual things outside of their normal climate.

The book is then divided into 4 sections – leaves, beans, roots, spices and ornamentals. Each plant has two or three pages devoted to it, with details about culinary uses, nutritional value, other uses and cultivation in the UK. There are photographs of each plant – usually in growth and the harvested vegetable and sometimes flowers or seeds/ seedlings. Most of the pictures don’t have captions, and in one or two cases you’ll have to read through the text to work out what you’re looking at.

At the end of the book there’s a couple of interesting appendices – one with alternative names for the plants and one about different banana varieties. There’s also an index of suppliers.

Overall, it’s a nice book – easy to read, pleasantly laid out and nicely illustrated. The text is chatty rather than dry, informative and clearly the result of long experimentation and experience. There’s occasional anecdotes about plants surviving in the UK despite unlikely circumstances.

I have three issues with the book, all of which are down to the publisher rather than the author. Firstly, there are a couple of proofing errors that should have been spotted. There’s a sentence that tails off into nothing, and a capital letter that appears where it really shouldn’t.

Secondly, the title bugs me. I would expect a book about ‘Asian Vegetables’ to be far more wide reaching (compare it to Joy Larkcom’s ‘Oriental Vegetables’ – it’s much more comprehensive). The subtitle ‘A guide to growing fruit, vegetables and spices from the Indian subcontinent’ more accurately describes what you’re getting.

And thirdly, that quote from the blurb above is a bit misleading. Although the book does indeed have information about more than 40 species of plant that can be grown in the UK, it doesn’t have information about 40 fruits and vegetables that can be grown in the UK because a considerable number of the plants are in the ‘Ornamentals’ section and will never be productive in our climate.

As for the rest, the vast majority of them are plants that will not thrive outdoors and require a lifetime of protection (and for some of them, heat) to survive, and will give very small yields in return. All of the plants that are easily grown in the UK will already be familiar to all but the least adventurous kitchen gardeners.

Which is not to say that I am disappointed by the book, or that I would suggest you avoid it. It’s clearly a book (like their other title, Growing Unusual Vegetables) for people like me – gardeners who like to push the boundaries and experiment with growing unusual edibles. Sometimes you strike lucky and find something that you love and which grows well in your garden. Sometimes you get an attractive houseplant that’s too delicate to live outside. We grow these plants because we can, and whatever happens, it’s always interesting.