Category:
Introduction

On Nightshades

One of the most peripatetic families of higher plants to have been traded 'round the World are the nightshades, in the genus Solanum and other closely related genera. The members most known at table are tomatoes and potatoes.

These plants are closely related to extremely toxic species, and indeed many parts of the very plants from which foodstuffs are derived are themselves poisonous, as are, for example, potato tops. (Potatoes, themselves, are not tubers in the strict sense, but swollen repositories of stem tissue, complete with chloroplasts and other mysterious chemical factories. Thus are they capable of going green with incipient photosynthesis when exposed to ultra-violet light.)

One of the complex chemical structures that is produced by spuds in various quantities (dependent on the varietal, growing and storage conditions) is dubbed 'solanin.' This and other compounds (gluco-corticoids which can mimic mammalian hormones) have caused a lot of arthritis sufferers to eschew consumption of these foods. The evidence is, for the most part, anecdotal, and we'll put in our two slices as well. You'll find the recipes herein to be devoid, for the most part, of ingredients from this family of plants. You'll have no difficulty finding dishes that do include them in other cookbooks, rather the opposite in fact.

The glaring exception, is, of course, the capsicums. Some things we simply will not give up.

Tomatoes have become so ubiquitous in various modern cuisines that many cooks are at a loss without them. Curiously enough, in most of our common cultivars, the active gluco-cortical compound, 'tomatidine' to its familiars, disappears almost completely in the very last hours of vine-ripening. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case with tomatoes picked and shipped green.

Table of Contents

More Intro:

On Frugality | On Cookery | On the Board | Batterie de Cuisine | Keeping it Fresh | Keeping it Dried | On Water | On Sourdough | On Pizza | Arthritis in the Kitchen |