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This could have been named “Sweet and Sour Escarole” but the sour is not that pronounced, unless you choose to add vinegar to the dish. Escarole is a chicory that is milder than most radicchios, and is a great foil for dishes such as grilled steaks and chops. It has a mild pleasant bitter flavor and a little bit of chewiness with a silky texture when cooked. This is a basic recipe for sautéed escarole and is easy to elaborate on. Escarole cooks in minutes so is great for meals on the fly.
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This tart can work as a starter or the main course. You could even work it into a dessert, and serve it with an ice cream or sorbet. The recipe is flexible owing to the fact that you can cut the pastry bases to any size you wish. Use a cookie cutter to form many small ones for a party, or just roll out a whole sheet of puff pastry and make one large one for a family style meal. This recipe is four 4 individual ones around 4 inches across.
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At some point, I will try to “caramelize” every vegetable that comes my way. Sometimes the dish doesn’t work out. This time it did. There are enough natural sugars in the squash that no sugar is needed in the ingredients. I usually do this with zucchini, but the technique will work with all manner of summer squash, although squash like Pattypan (the flying saucer ones) take a couple minutes more to prep for uniform slices. Making this with different color squash makes for a very nice presentation.
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Watermelon radishes share many qualities with turnips. They cook up like turnips, but they are amazingly colored inside, like a late Autumn sunset. When cooked, the colors soften a little but are still vibrant. This cooking method softens the slight bitter quality and plays up the sweetness.
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This is a dish I eat for breakfast from left-overs, or as dinner if I am alone and want something simple and satisfying as a “comfort food”. The main parts are the winter squash, onions, and greens, but feel free to add mushrooms, tomatoes, beets, or apple. Eggs poached or fried either way, as long as the yolks is soft and can run into the ingredients as a sauce. I douse them with plenty of something spicy and vinegary.
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Although it says marmalade, there really is no citrus peel here, it is just that the carrot shreds look like orange zest. Use this to top fish, pork chops, or chicken roasted with a fennel coriander seed crust (see the recipe). You want to have your Ben-Riner or mandolin handy for this recipe to make things easier, but a sharp knife can do the trick as well. The best pan for this recipe is a “chef’s pan”.
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This is a pureed soup, so it is smooth and “creamy” feeling, although there is no cream. The ingredients combine to make a slightly sweet soup, so serving this with a salad of bitter winter greens with a sharp-ish vinaigrette is excellent. The flavoring of this soup can go from Provençal to Southwestern American to Indian with ease. See Chef’s Notes for ideas.
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Persillade is a condiment or topping, the most basic version of which is a mixture of chopped flat leaf parsley (persil in French) and garlic. Here is a riff on my variation that includes toasted bread crumbs that add a nutty quality, as well as crunch to a dish. This version uses grated or chopped carrots to add moisture and sweetness. The carrots must be chopped fairly finely to release enough moisture to achieve the desired effect. To that end, coarsely grate the carrots and then use a knife that is not razor sharp, or pulse in a food processor or blender.
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Okay, let me just get this out there right away. This dish started out as baby food for my first child. At the time, many of our friends wanted to come over and play with him, and stayed for dinner. At some point, I was too tired to make separate dishes for grown-ups, so I just served what I had made him (a trio of purees if I recall correctly), and it was a hit. So here it is, in its amended grown-up form.
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This sauce has an intensity to it-both sweet and deeply earthy/carroty. The color adds a burnished look to the plate, and this technique is pretty versatile. I know this sauce is really good, as I once watched a couple at my house eating it, and when the wife asked the husband to get something for her, she ran her bread through his sauce and got half of it. When he called her on it, she was unrepentant. Next time they were over and I made the sauce, I doubled the amount and put some in a pitcher next to her. It all disappeared.
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Carrot Sauce v.1 is a sauce made with carrot juice that is reduced to a syrup almost. This recipe continues the “vegetable as sauce” motif I am fond of, but is made from whole carrots and is thicker and less intense. Although this was originally conceived to go with seared fish or chicken, it is excellent with very thick spears of grilled asparagus. A drizzle of balsamic vinegar reduction and/or thinned pesto would be great with this.
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Not truly a pesto, but as it is close, and it is in the same spirit of “cucina povera” that true pesto was invented in, why not call it a pesto? No basil or pine nuts, but oregano and almonds stand in. Garlic could easily overwhelm this, but if you decide to give it a go, try using only half a small clove of peeled and de-germed garlic. Use this on roast carrots, sautéed mushrooms, or with cappelinni pasta.
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The sauce is based on traditional teriyaki sauce, and is a little less sweet that what many are used to. See the recipe for ideas about that. This is a quick and easy recipe, especially if you have the sauce in the refrigerator, which I highly recommend. Use carrots that are nice and sweet for this. Some carrots are earthier and can have a slight bitter edge, which the soy sauce can amplify.
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One year we hosted an Indian exchange student and during that time, we would cook a traditional Indian meal one night a week. The thing I loved the most is dry-toasting the spices before cooking with them. I have a small 6” skillet that I use to combine the spices in, then toast on the stove over a medium heat. It seems to give a richness to the taste when combined with the other ingredients. I also just like the way it makes my kitchen smell.
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I was reminded of a dish from a restaurant I worked in long ago when flipping through a recent cookbook about modern French bistros. We used to cut potatoes to the size of rice grains and cook it like risotto. The starch of the potatoes gave a very similar texture to traditional risotto. Here, carrots are cooked similarly, but you won’t get the same mouth feel until you choose to take some of the veg and broth and pureé it in a Vitamix or food processor and add it back in at the end. As I love to play with variations of peas and carrots, I include an option for adding shelled edamame. Look for frozen non-GMO organic beans, and cook them a little longer than called for. They should be tender all the way through, with a creamy texture. The recipe is great without them if you wish to keep things quick and easy.
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A sort of culinary pun on the theme of peas and carrots. Usually the peas carry a sweetness that matches the carrots, but here the favas act as a foil to that inherent sweetness with their almost cheesy nutty flavor and slight bitterness. The basil bridges the sweetness and earthiness of the carrots and the earthy and sharp notes of favas with sweetness and the slight edge that basil has. If you do not have basil, oregano would be great here, or even mint.
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A variation on a theme, where carrots get cooked in some water and then a glaze is made of the cooking liquid. Pomegranates are in season right now, and if you see a white pomegranate, the seeds would look lovely in this dish and would add a nice textural and flavor “pop” to the whole.
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Sweet and hot, with normally crunchy carrots cooked tender and sauced with whole grain mustard which adds pop and crunch texture to the dish, along with a little heat and sweetness, as well as depth from the fig. Serve with kasha, pork chops or chicken, or greens. This is a dish that is quite simple, and is easy to gussy up.
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The apple in this brings out the sweetness of the cauliflower, and the potato adds body and echoes the nutty flavors of cauliflower. The Apple Balsamic vinegar can be found in gourmet shops and better grocery stores. It is a syrupy vinegar made as Balsamic vinegar is made, but uses apple juice as a starting point rather than grape.
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The pesto is on quotations because you can just toss a handful of basil and garlic into a blender and then add almonds for a quick pesto-ish mélange rather than making a full on batch of pesto. If you wanted to, you could toss in flat leaf parsley with the basil to stretch it, or you can even use pesto from a jar. You would still need to add almonds for the flavor they impart. This is here to use up the last of the season basil you might have in the garden, or in the refrigerator.
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This is a hummus where the cauliflower stands in for the chickpeas, so it is lighter both in texture and flavor. The garlic is blanched as well so the sweetness of the cauliflower stands out, but if you like, feel free to use raw garlic for a more assertive flavor. Using garlic roasted in its skin would enhance the sweet and nutty flavor of the cauliflower while backing off the heat and breath enhancing qualities of raw garlic. Use this where you would traditional hummus.
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Another recipe from the Quickles file. Cauliflower lends itself beautifully to this technique-it maintains it crisp texture yet no longer tastes raw, and the blend of lavender, fennel seed, and peppercorns brings out the sweetness of the cauliflower. The lavender will tint white cauliflower, but if you use purple cauliflower the color is even nicer. These are nice to serve as an appetizer or as a side to accompany braise and stews, roasts, burgers, or as part of a salad. They go really well with a dish of lentils topped with a poached egg. It turns out kids like them as well, and they last for quite a while in the refrigerator.
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