You could find mainstream-America-obscure veggies here in the days before Food Network!

When I initially wrote about The Unabridged Vegetable Cookbook (Nika Hazelton, copyright 1976, but mine is from the 1980 Bantam printing), I discussed how it introduced foods that seem commonplace now but were new to mainstream America back then, like salsa, hummus, and kimchi. I didn't even mention something else that was special about this collection, though. It also includes a lot of vegetables that mainstream readers may never have heard of. The produce is not just European veggies that are rare here, either, but veggies from all over the world, and from cultures that the more mainstream cookbooks tended to either ignore or Americanize so heavily that the original, likely hard-to-find ingredients wouldn't even be mentioned. 

Granted, I don't have the knowledge to judge how similar these recipes are to ones that might be considered "authentic," but I am impressed that these veggies showed up in a mainstream cookbook from 1976 at all.

There are a couple of recipes for akee (more commonly spelled "ackee"), including this one that's supposed to be a beloved Jamaican dish.

As someone with boring European ancestry who lives 50 years after this book's initial print run, I still only knew about a[c]kee from watching Food Network shows.

There's a recipe for calabaza.

I only knew about calabaza from watching Food Network shows.

There's a recipe for dasheen.

I only knew about dasheen from watching Food Network shows.

And there is also a recipe for winter melon. 

I only knew about winter melon from watching Food Network shows.

There's a recipe for callalou (more commonly spelled "callaloo"-- which are the leaves of the dasheen root, if I understood the book correctly).

I only knew about callaloo from... say it with me...

Nope! I tricked you. I don't remember seeing this on a Food Network show. I'm a lazy academic who only knew Callaloo as the title of an African-American literary magazine. So I didn't even realize it was food-related!

In short, while white Americans have learned a lot more about recipes from non-European cultures than we did 50 years ago, this book also shows that a lot of common-elsewhere veggies are still not well-known here. (Or maybe that I'm just hopelessly behind the times? Probably a little of both...)