I'm a fan of reference-ish type books for food. I don't have many cookbooks because recipes generally bore me. Even with bread books, the kinds I like are reference-ish types with some recipes. Recipes are okay, but I like to get the "theory" behind them. Recipes are easy to come by. The "theory" part isn't. I have the Oxford Companion to Food, a great reference book but it doesn't focus enough on vegetables. Can anyone recommend a reference-type of book for vegetables?

Qualities I'm looking for in this type of book would be:

• good illustrations (in colour) of the different vegetables
• a history of the vegetable (culture, history, geography)
• some common ways to prepare them
• things to watch out for when preparing them
• how to pick out the good varieties
• some nutritional facts about the vegetable
• covers an extensive list of vegetables that are not only common in North American diets, but also Asian, African and European ones.

In browsing Amazon, I haven't yet found one that jumps out to me. Unfortunately, Oxford Companion doesn't produce a vegetable companion book, as far as I can tell.