Letter: Hard to swallow

Sir: Much as I enjoyed the letter on the Indian way with vegetables by Malathy Sitaram (27 January), it was the last sentence - "Vegetables deserve tenderness" - that really grabbed me.

Would that it could be posted up in the kitchens of those trendy restaurateurs who assert that the almost raw vegetables served by them are cooked al dente, when they barely yield to the knife and fork, never mind the tooth. We do not want to go back to the soggy cabbage and flabby beans we are reputed to have enjoyed in the past, but surely there is a happy mean.

E M STORR-BEST

Maidstone, Kent