Try high heat at first to give vegetables a toasted exterior

They say brown is "the new black." I'm no fashion diva, but I can tell you that lately brown is "in" when I'm cooking veggies.

Cooking with high heat makes me nervous. It's pretty easy to end up with burned food. And, I've always tried to cut calories by not adding much oil or butter during cooking.

So for years I stuck to steamed asparagus, microwaved broccoli and carrots braised alongside my Sunday roast beef. Even when I thought I was "stir-frying" onions and bell peppers, they ended up more "steamed."

A few years ago Ben Ford, the chef who is also Harrison Ford's son, came to town. He told me how more home cooks should learn to sear their meat or fish or whatever first, to give it a crispy exterior, then let it finish cooking at a lower, slower temperature. I always knew this applied to meat, but it's taken me a while to regularly apply the concept to veggies.

Since then I've been grilling veggies alongside whatever meat or poultry I was cooking. I toss them with a little bit of olive oil, pepper and garlic salt, and put them in a metal basket so I can easily shake and stir them while they're cooking. Last year, I started roasting veggies a lot more after attending a class taught by Tara Bench, a former editor at Martha Stewart magazine. It's the same concept of high, dry heat, only using an oven.

In both cases, the browned veggies aren't nearly as bright and pretty as if they were steamed. The asparagus and green peppers take on Army camouflage hues, and carrots are more pumpkin colored. They're shrunken, due to lack of moisture, and scarred with scorch and singe marks.

But I love the "browned," caramelized flavor. The veggies are sweeter and richer-tasting, and my teenagers tend to eat more of them when they're cooked this way. Although I'm adding some fat and calories by tossing them in oil before cooking, they taste so good that I don't need to add butter at the table.

In the past few months, I've carried the same concept to the stovetop, which takes less time than roasting. I use a nonstick skillet, a little bit of olive oil and high heat for the first five minutes. You do have to be vigilant, stirring the veggies so they don't stick and burn. It's not like leaving something to steam or simmer on its own.

Just let them get a little toasted on the outside — golden, not black. Then turn down the heat to low, put on the lid, let them steam in their own moisture until they're tender inside, maybe five to 10 more minutes. Dense veggies such as carrots take longer than thin ones such as asparagus.