Book Review: A Student’s Verdict on Verdura by Theo Randall

We know that many of you share our love for cookbooks and can never resist adding just one more title to your bookshelves. With that in mind, we’re asking you, our discerning Leiths Online students, to take a look at some of the new titles on the market. Former Essential student Jenny (@coastal.toast on Instagram) delivers her verdict on Verdura, the new collection of vegetarian Italian dishes by acclaimed chef Theo Randall of Theo Randall at the Intercontinental in London. 

Theo Randall’s fifth cookbook, Verdura, celebrates the variety, versatility, and simple joy of vegetables, underpinned by his love for Italian cuisine.

In his introduction, Randall explains how his love for home-grown produce started with his grandad’s home-grown tomatoes. From there, his youthful excitement for veg blossomed when he was in charge of making the family salads: combining the tomatoes with cucumber, lettuce and a simple dressing.

The simple salads sowed the seeds of a successful career that has seen Randall spend 15 years as head chef at London institution, The River Café, open an eponymous restaurant at the Intercontinental in London, and establish himself as a beloved British TV chef with a widely acknowledged expertise in Italian cookery. This latest book Verdura brings it back to simple family meals whilst highlighting the, often unsung, beauty of vegetables.

The recipes in Verdura are structured in a surprisingly simple way: 10 vegetables, 100 Italian recipes. Each chapter highlighting the variety, not only in the type, but also the cooking techniques and recipes possible with a single vegetable. The vegetables championed by Randall include aubergine, zucchini (courgette), asparagus, artichokes, mushrooms, broccoli, tomatoes, beans, squash, and potatoes. The ingredients list for each recipe reflects the core of Italian cookery: minimal and seasonal.

My first impressions of Verdura are that the simplicity of the structure, and recipes within, means this cookbook is well-suited to a wide range of home cooks. Home cooks including those who require simple and crowd-pleasing family dinners; individuals wanting to eat more vegetables or try out different ways of cooking vegetables; those conscious of eating seasonally; or others who want to explore vegetarian Italian food. For me, personally, as someone who primarily creates meals at home by throwing together odd leftover ingredients, the next time I ask myself - “what do I do with the other half of this butternut squash?” - I have 10 recipes in Verdura to choose from, with only a few extra fresh ingredients to pick up to complete the dish. My kind of cooking.

The first recipe I knew I had to try out was the green mushroom lasagna. As a mushroom lover, this was a must. This is a recipe for a slow Sunday at home, definitely a labour of love. It took me pretty much a whole day to complete, including a few breaks between stages. The most time-consuming and tricky element in my opinion was the homemade spinach pasta. I probably would not recommend this recipe to someone who had not made homemade pasta before as the instructions included for the pasta are a little sparse. I was very thankful to my skills learnt in the digital Leiths Essential Cooking Certificate for this one. For example, I knew to expect a coarse crumb texture when making the pasta in a food processor, which isn’t mentioned in the recipe in Verdura and which might’ve made me panic without this prior knowledge! Another tip learnt from Leiths that proved invaluable in this recipe was to run the pasta dough through the first setting on the pasta machine, fold, and repeat to achieve a smooth dough. Perhaps a sign I need to upgrade my budget food processor, or in hindsight, I needed to add a little extra egg into the dough, but I had to repeat this stage several times to stop the pasta ripping in the machine. Despite these few hiccups, I can say it was absolutely worth the effort and resulted in possibly the best homemade pasta I’ve made yet! The silky sheets of spinach pasta combined with the sticky dark mushrooms and creamy ricotta bechamel resulted in a wonderfully indulgent yet lighter version of the well-loved lasagna. I’m chuffed with myself that I have four leftover portions waiting, perhaps not for long, in my freezer for a lazy day.

I thought a perfect pairing for the green mushroom lasagna would be the green beans with butter, garlic and parsley. In fact, I was able to rustle this up in the 15 minutes the lasagna was resting out of the oven for - ideal! I’m usually a bit lazy with vegetable sides and often just steam, boil, or roast with a bit of salt and pepper, so wanted to see what an extra effort could achieve. Well, who knew that garlic butter makes everything taste great! A super easy way to elevate simple green veg.

The next recipe I tried out was the broccoli, squash and lentil salad with walnut pesto. This is a substantial salad and is a great use of autumnal squash. I realised when making this salad that I’ve never cooked dried lentils before; I was pleasantly surprised at how easy and fool proof they are to cook. I’ll be bulking up my salads with this excellent source of protein in the future. Although I do regularly cook butternut squash, I have only ever roasted it before. In this recipe, you par-boil the rainbow-shaped slices of squash, dry, and grill in a pan. The result is an al-dente type texture with a sweet & charred taste. This recipe really shows off the versatility of this vegetable. The walnut pesto was obviously a winner and I had plenty of leftovers from which I made a simple pasta dish the next day, together with the leftover squash.

I appreciate the cheffy tips scattered throughout Verdura that can be used to elevate home-cooked meals to the next level. One of these tips I found particularly effective is showcased in the next meal I prepared. For my weekend brunch I made the baked eggs with zucchini and spinach. In this recipe you place the oven dish in a bain-marie. This simple step made sure the egg whites remained silky and set and the yolk perfectly soft and jammy. The combination of garlicky caramelised courgettes, creamy spinach and baked eggs makes for a special but simple vegetarian brunch. Another staple egg-cooking technique to add to those I learnt from Leiths. 

Overall, Verdura inspires a range of home cooks to make vegetables the star of the dish. In none of these recipes, did I feel that meat or fish was missing from the dish: all complete, satisfying, and delicious meals. From a quick lunch to lovingly laborious Sunday-style dishes, Randall shows us how Italian cookery is the perfect practice for making the most of vegetables all year round. 

Verdura by Theo Randall (Quadrille, £28) is out now. Photographs by Lizzie Mayson