The best ways to cook vegetables, according to the new Kismet cookbook

Call them the vegetable whisperers. Sarah Hymanson and Sara Kramer are the two produce-obsessed chefs behind Kismet restaurant in Los Feliz, the growing chain of takeout shops Kismet Rotisserie (there are now three in Los Angeles, where tahini-roasted cauliflower is so popular like chicken) and a new Vegetable Cookbook will be published in early May.

How is it that Hymanson and Kramer can cleverly and surprisingly create seemingly simple dishes composed primarily of vegetables (and a little meat, too) with such appealing, complex, and spicy flavor? It's the foundation on which they built their restaurants and their careers, from New York, where they met, to Los Angeles, and it's what they set out to show us in “Kismet: Bright, Fresh, Vegetable-Loving Recipes.”

His approach seems informal, even light-hearted, but in fact it is thoughtful and demanding. “I think we're not very picky people,” Kramer says. She stands in her yellow and orange kitchen, in her house atop a landscaped hill in Echo Park. “And our food, although basically demanding because we are very specific, I think we have transmitted it in a way that is not very demanding either.

“It's through a lot of our own neuroses, how do we make the best of this in the most efficient way? …that I think translates to: how is this going to be easy for someone and natural and beautiful and delicious?

Take broccoli as an example. Here's how to cook America's most popular but unattractive vegetable: Kramer hands you a piece of broccoli that's been blanched in a pot of salted water to speed its path to tenderness, then charred briefly in a pot. hot. cast iron skillet.

“The blanching already gives it flavor because we season it with salt and it is really permeable,” he says. “And then we roast the broccoli quickly, which gives it another dimension of this roasted flavor… so just, if you try a piece right now, it's super delicious and it didn't take too long, maybe. 15 minutes to do that process.”

The broccoli is for a salad in the book and the dressing is a “jazz” (a la Molly Baz, the food personality who throws around cheerful monosyllabic culinary terms). The name is cute, the flavors are serious.

Is this the best way to cook broccoli? Maybe!

Kramer tops the florets with a blend of pumpkin seeds, olive oil, grated garlic, salt and Aleppo pepper, along with fresh mint and pomegranate seeds, a nod to the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavors Kismet is known for. known, even if, as Hymanson points out, “we get a lot of influence from a lot of places.

“What I've actually worked hardest to learn about is more Asian cuisine,” he says, “generally speaking, a lot of Chinese food, Indian food, and Southeast Asian food. Sometimes they will be the same blended spices that you will find in the Middle East and that you will also find in India, China or Thailand. So I would say we are even less specific than [Middle Eastern]. “We both have our own preferences, we come together and this is where we land.”

For Broccoli with Pumpkin Seed Jazz, flavors, colors and textures collide in its combination of seeds, spices, fresh herbs, tart citrus juice, the touch of pomegranate seeds and, here's another tip, grated raw garlic . They suggest adding a little of it (always fresh, never pre-peeled) to finished foods (roasted vegetables, a pot of cooked beans, aioli, tahini sauce) to give it “life and depth.”

All-Day Soup: This chicken broth-based vegetable soup (think egg, avgolemono, and minestrone) is easy to make. A great optional addition is leftover cooked rice.

“We're always trying to create flavor in different simple ways,” says Hymanson, who is in Kramer's kitchen stirring a big pot of soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner, another recipe from the book, an egg amalgam, minestrone and avgolemono. . “We're also big fans of things feeling fresh, so I would say in almost every dish there's a fresh component that helps our food feel alive.”

And though they're wedded to Southern California's seasons and microseasons (for peak combinations like stone fruits and tomatoes in the warmer months), the two know exactly how to (slightly) bend the rules. One of the tastiest salads in the book combines grapefruit with tomato. Why a winter citrus with a summer fruit? In much of the US, cherry tomato varieties are available year-round; They taste pretty good, but even better when roasted in spiced oil. Creamy, tangy marinated feta cheese balls combine with roasted tomatoes and grapefruit wedges, tangy cheese and tangy fruit juices melt into an addictive dressing. “The combination is Shakespearean,” Hymanson and Kramer write in the book, “a love match for the ages.”

Sara Kramer drizzles the spiced oil from roasted cherry tomatoes over dollops of creamy, tangy feta cheese for a tomato and citrus salad that blends summer with winter.

The ideas for combining ingredients are kaleidoscopic: shaved apple with kohlrabi for a winter root vegetable salad; chamomile with caraway in slightly vinegary honey to season the escarole; more marinated feta cheese was added to the roasted pumpkin and caramelized onion with anchovies; their can't-take-off-the-menu cucumber salad with parsley seed za'atar, rosewater labneh, cherries and chervil.

For Kramer and Hymanson, who worked at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York and cooked together at Glasserie in Brooklyn before moving to Los Angeles, the way they eat defines their food as much as the way they cook: “We love having Many small plates to choose from: variety of textures, colors and flavors on the table. This style of snacking is us in a nutshell,” begins the chapter titled “As Good Tomorrow As It Is Today.” It's as festive as mezze, banchan, tapas or zakuski, paying homage to California's abundance of seasonal vegetables, and fitting in with Angelenos.

“We want things to look delicious, to be delicious, to not take up too much of your time,” Kramer says in her kitchen, “and to be fun at the end of the day.”

Find Sarah Hymanson and Sara Kramer in the Los Angeles Times book festival on Saturday, April 20 at Booth 410, where they will answer questions about “Kismet: Bright, Fresh, Veggie-Loving Recipes,” from 10 to 11 a.m.

A kumquat tree in Sara Kramer's Echo Park garden.

The recipes