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This recipe involves cooking tomatoes, onions, and garlic down to a jam-like consistency and tossing blanched broccoli in the sauce to coat. The recipe may make more than you need for the broccoli, and if that is the case, just freeze the remainder and use it on pasta, other vegetables or use it coat roasted chicken, fish, or shrimp.
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This dish is a pretty jade green color flecked with gold and velvety black and white. The flavors seem to appeal to everyone and the dish tends to disappear rapidly. The key to this recipe is restraint; use a light hand when blanching the broccoli, adding the sesame oil, as well as the candied ginger. Prep for this dish could be done ahead of time.
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Carrots and mint, carrots and basil, these seem a natural combo. Adding the caramelized Tokyo turnips adds just a touch of bitter to the mix which contrasts nicely with the sweet carrots. If using purple carrots, keep the turnips separate until serving so the color of the carrots doesn’t make the turnips look smudgy. As bunches of everything vary, you want an equal amount, or slightly more carrots than turnips.
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A variation of Sautéed Celery, this adds silky ribbons of leeks and a little white wine for depth and contrast to the crunch of the celery. Use scissors when trimming the celery leaves for ease. You have to use good butter for this dish as that is really all there is for the sauce.
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The sweet crisp apple is a great foil for soft chard with its shaved tongue feeling engendered by oxalic acid. Also, adding a little vinegar seems to tame that feeling and helps with calcium absorption. The un-toasted pine nuts give a resinous nutty flavor that helps pull things together. Be sure to cook the stems and onions gently so they do not turn bitter or singe.
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This is a dish of bolder flavors with hints of bitterness to it, so it goes well with fattier dishes such as pork chops, chicken thighs, or things with cheese or cream in them. If you wish, you can dice the chard stems and use them, but they will add more of the “fuzzy teeth” feeling to the dish. Save them with the turnip greens for a stuffing for ravioli or pork chops instead.
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Another dish in the “I love to sauce vegetables with vegetables” category. Here, the earthy funky qualities of leeks and collards are counterbalanced with the sweetness of carrots. The carrots are cooked and milled to a consistency that is not quite a pureé, not quite chunky, but a good match for the silky leek and collards. Although the recipe seems long, the time to make is not, and it is a simple dish to prepare. The sauce goes well with other items such as cauliflower, grilled squash, chicken, pork, or fish.
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Yes, yes, it sounds weird. Everyone tells me so. And then they try it. And really, really like it. Sautéed cucumber is milder than zucchini with deeper flavor. If watched carefully, it maintains a crunchiness that is wonderful. The trick is to cook it just until it heats through and is turning translucent. This dish is a wonderful combination that goes well with fish or chicken, or as a foil to something richer like brisket braised in porcini stock.
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I do get a lot of interesting looks when I mention cooking cucumbers, but they are really good. Much of their appeal rests on cooking just enough so they get hot all the way through, but are still succulent and crisp. This dish relies on temperature contrasts (hot cucumbers and cold tomatoes) and sweet/bitter contrasts (cucumber has a slight bitterness in the background, tomato has a slight acidity, and they both have sweetness) for interest. A very simple dish that is easy to play with; add garlic, basil, pine nuts, etc. for variation.
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Use this to top grilled or roasted fish, or serve as a side. This would be good mixed into hearty grains or thinned with a little pasta cooking water and used as a sauce on pasta shapes like campanelle or dischi volante. The fava greens are the tips of some of the plants and may include flowers. They have a “green” spring quality to them, and you want to just cook them.
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This dish has both brightness and depth of flavor. Use this as a pasta sauce tossed with orecchiette pasta, to sauce fish or chicken, or just eat it as is. Although the tomato/basil water adds a lot of extra flavor and will reduce to add a bit of a glaze to the dish, the dish is fine without it if you don’t feel like taking the time. The tomato/basil water can be used in other dishes as well.
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INGREDIENTS:
2 pounds of favas in the shell (about 2 cups peeled) 1 bunch of red radishes, tops and “tails” removed ½-1 tablespoon good unsalted butter 2 tablespoon flavorful extra virgin olive oil High quality large crystal sea salt or kosher salt to taste Fresh ground pepper to tasteContinue reading »
This topping grew out of another recipe used on salmon. This is a little more subtle, and more floral with the addition of the fennel seeds and lavender. While made initially for seared halibut, it would go nicely with pork chops, chicken, or other firm fleshed white fish. It can be tossed with kale or other greens as well, or stirred into grains such as farro or barley.
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There is almost always a jar of tapenade in the refrigerator, just as there should be one in yours. It is like a magic wand in the kitchen, able to take disparate ingredients and turn them into a trip to far off lands. To get the right kind of sear on this dish, you want to use your biggest pan, like a 14-incher. If the vegetables are too close they will just steam and get mushy, so if you do not have a big pan, do this in a couple pans or batches.
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Tagged with: basil • cherry tomatoes • filet beans • lemon • parsley • Purplette onions • saute • summer squash • tapenade
Use this as is for a side dish, or cook some pasta such as orecchiette, cavatelli, or casarecce (or whatever) and use this as a sauce. Don’t forget to add 4-6 ounces of the pasta water to the dish to help form the sauce. It may seem odd to use salami here, but it is not uncommon in Italy, and the right salami can bring a lot of flavor to a dish. The Toscano called for here is typically flavorful and fairly easy to find. For this dish, larger fat grains are good, and a fine deep flavor with some spice is good.
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With the orange squash and almost black ribbons of lacinato, this dish is great for Halloween parties, although anytime is a good time for these flavors. It is great as a side dish with poultry, pork, and sausage, or add grains and mushrooms to it for a hearty vegetarian main course.
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Part of the appeal of this dish is the gentle seasoning so the flavors of the ingredients stand on their own. Blanching the garlic mitigates the heat, but leaves behind the wonderful garlic flavor. If you have green garlic, that would be great in lieu of the garlic. Simply cut it into ribbons as wide as the leeks and cook it the same. For the stock, you want a very light vegetable stock, preferably homemade.
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A quick sauté with lots of earthy green flavors with funky overtones from the onions and garlic chives. Use this as a side for chicken of pork strips, add tofu, or add some cooked Chinese style noodles.
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This is a dish to be served as an appetizer or tapa would be, before the meal or as part of a series of small plates. It goes well with sherry, wines, or ice cold beer. Remember, since it is the sort of dish that can scatter easily, toast the bread so it is still soft and doesn’t crack and fall apart at the first bite. If you have leftovers, try them on a sandwich with fresh mozzarella and tomato.
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This could be eaten as a side dish, used to bed grilled steak or chicken, or serve on rafts of grilled toast as a tapa. As a tapa, have some olives, cubes of cheese, and chilled sherry, white wine, or beer handy. For this dish, use a milder Spanish for French style olive oil for best results.
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This a colorful and aromatic dish that has plenty of crunch due to just cooking the vegetables lightly and quickly. The recipe lists shiso, which is a Japanese herb that usually shows up in sushi. If you do not have it, don’t worry, carry on without it. I used as it was in the garden, and it adds depth to the dish, but you won’t miss it if it is not there. Leftovers make a good cold salad as is, or you could lightly dress it with a little white balsamic vinaigrette.
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