Vegetables
1337 recipes found
Polenta or Grits With Beans and Chard
Anson Mills creamy polenta or grits is very inviting for a savory, brothy bean stew with lots of greens stirred in at the end of cooking. I like to use a reddish bean for this – I have used a number of heirloom varieties from Rancho Gordo, but also regular supermarket pintos and red beans. The recipe makes twice as much bean stew as you will need for 4 portions of polenta or grits. So make the polenta (or grits) again the next day and polish them off!
Banh Xeo
Banh xeo are Vietnamese rice pancakes filled with various vegetables and meats. Thin and crispy, the finished pancakes are cut into pieces, tucked into lettuce wraps, and finished with fragrant herbs and a spicy nuoc cham dipping sauce. This recipe features the classic shrimp and pork, using bacon for the hit of smoky flavor. If bean sprouts are unavailable, try finely shredded cabbage instead. The batter can be made two days ahead and stored in the refrigerator. When ready to use, bring it to room temperature and whisk until well blended, adding water if needed to thin the batter. (It should be slightly thicker than the texture of heavy cream.) Banh xeo are best eaten as they are made, but if you need to keep them warm while making all four pancakes, heat the oven to 200 degrees and set a rack over a baking sheet. As you make the pancakes, transfer them to the rack to keep warm.
Deep-Fried Cauliflower With Crispy Dukkah Coating
Deep-fried cauliflower is a Middle Eastern specialty, so why not make it even more Middle Eastern and use a batter made with dukkah, the complex Middle Eastern condiment made with a mixture of nuts, seeds, spices and, in this version, chickpea flour. The batter is thin (you have the option of adding a bit more chickpea flour) but the cauliflower gets just enough of a coating to come out of the oil with a perfect thin crispy shell. Serve it with garlic-laced yogurt or with tahini sauce. In this recipe you have the option of using olive oil, which is traditional; but use a work-horse oil, not the expensive oil you reserve for drizzling and dressing salads.
Greek Bulgur With Brussels Sprouts
I love the way the bulgur swells and fluffs after you let this comforting, nourishing dish sit once it’s cooked. In fact, I liked the leftovers even more than the freshly made dish. I also love the lemony flavor, the result of just a small amount of lemon juice added at the end of cooking. This is one of the few times I am happy to allow brussels sprouts to cook until they are quite soft.
Roasted Cabbage With Parmesan, Walnuts and Anchovies
Roasting cabbage wedges at high heat makes them crisp at the edges and tender in the middle. Here, the lacy crevices between the leaves are stuffed with a piquant mix of anchovies, walnuts and Parmesan, giving the sections crunch and a deep savory flavor. Serve them as a light, meatless main course, paired with noodles, rice or crusty bread, or as a hearty side dish to roast chicken or fish.
Herb Fritters
Inspired by a recipe in Clifford A. Wright’s “The Little Foods of the Mediterranean,” these fritters are light and delicate. You can use a mix of herbs and finely chopped greens – mild ones like spinach and chard, or more robust greens like dandelion or arugula – or all herbs, or all greens. You can also use this batter as a vehicle for other finely chopped or grated vegetables, like cabbage or carrots, onions or leeks. The fritters make a great hors d’oeuvre or side dish.
Endive, Apple and Kasha Salad
Nutty, earthy grains of kasha go beautifully with crunchy, juicy apples and bitter endive, long a favorite salad combo. Cut the apple into small dice – 1/4 to 1/2 inch – to maximize this marriage of grain, fruit, nut and bitter salad green. The acid to oil quotient in the dressing is on the low side; I use lemon juice only and sweeten the mix with a little honey. You could also use agave nectar, and leave out the Gruyère in the salad for a vegan version; though I love the Gruyère here because it, too, has a nutty flavor. This salad holds up well on a buffet.
Roasted Cauliflower, Hazelnut and Pomegranate Seed Salad
In this memorable salad from "Jerusalem," the beloved Middle Eastern cookbook from Yotam Ottolenghi, roasted cauliflower, celery and hazelnuts are combined with pomegranate seeds, fresh parsley, cinnamon and allspice. A sweet-tart vinaigrette finishes it off.
Rice Noodle Salad With Salted Peanuts and Herbs
This satisfying salad has rice noodles and vegetables in equal measure, making it bright, crisp and light. The peanuts add richness and a salty crunch, along with a dose of protein. And the dressing is a little spicy and a lot tangy, with a pungent kick from fish sauce, garlic and ginger. The recipe makes just enough dressing to lightly coat the vegetables and noodles, but if you’re a fan of heavily dressed salads, consider doubling it. Any leftover will keep in the fridge for up to a week, and you’ll be happy to drizzle it on fish, chicken and all kinds of vegetables.
Caramelized Winter Squash With Pumpkin Seed Persillade
This method of flame-roasting a whole winter squash, just as you would roast a bell pepper, comes from the San Francisco chef Dominique Crenn. Surprisingly, the skin becomes soft, smoky and entirely edible. (The dish can also be made with squash chunks: see note at the end of the recipe.) Caramelizing the fragrant mash at the last minute brings out the sweetness and smoke, and a fresh herb sauce brings it back to earth. The pumpkin seeds in the garlicky, green sauce, or persillade, echo the flavors of the squash.
Moussaka With Roasted Mushrooms
In this Balkan style Moussaka I have substituted the roasted mushroom mix for half the meat. But you can also make a vegetarian version with no meat at all. It is delicious either way, with a complex, slightly sweet Eastern Mediterranean sauce spiced with a little cinnamon, a pinch of allspice and a few cloves. Greek moussaka is topped with béchamel, which can be heavy, even gummy. But this one has a light, fluffy topping made with yogurt and eggs. There are a few steps involved here and the sauce is a long-cooking one, but you can get that started while the eggplant is roasting in the oven to speed things along or make the sauce the day before.
Spinach and Feta Borek
In Turkey, savory pastries like these are made with hand-rolled yufka sheets, but store-bought phyllo dough makes a fine substitute. Often shaped into bite-size parcels, this large version may be cut into wedges. Serve it with a salad of sliced cucumber and radishes, and a bowl of olives, if desired.
Spiced Green Beans and Baby Broccoli Tempura
Deep-frying is not something I do often, but after I’ve eaten well-executed tempura at a restaurant and can’t shake the memory of delicious batter-fried vegetables, I get out my wok. I turn on the hood fan, open the window and start heating up oil. I like to play around with different batters and coatings. This spicy, delicate batter is somewhere between a puffy beignet-type coating and a simpler egg, flour and bread-crumb dusting. It’s mostly cornstarch, with a small amount of cornmeal and whole wheat flour — just enough to hold the batter together. I add dukkah, cilantro and cumin for flavor and texture. Ice-cold sparkling water helps keep the batter light; it fries up crispy rather than bready because there’s very little gluten to toughen it. You can use this batter with all sorts of vegetables, but I particularly love green beans and baby broccoli. The batter wraps itself nicely around the smooth beans and nestles in among the spindly flowers at the end of a baby broccoli stem, resulting in lacy, extra-crispy tempura. A wok is ideal for deep-frying. It can accommodate a lot of vegetables at one time without crowding, and it holds heat well. The oil should hover between 350 and 375 degrees so that the vegetables cook quickly and crisp up without absorbing too much oil. Be sure to let the oil come back up to temperature between batches, and use a thermometer. You will be amazed to find a green bean tender and hot inside its crispy coating in two minutes or less.
Freekeh, Chickpea and Herb Salad
There is a lot to love about freekeh, an earthy grain that I’d like to see catch on in more kitchens. It cooks up in about 25 minutes, and it’s light, like coarse bulgur, which it resembles, except that the color is darker and greener. But freekeh has a more complex flavor than bulgur. What stands out is its smokiness, a result of the production process, in which durum wheat — the type used for many pastas — is harvested while still green and soft, and carefully roasted in the husk over open fires. The wheat is beaten to remove the chaff, and in the Middle East it is sold whole or cracked. The cracked version is what you’re more likely to find here in the United States, and happily it’s become easy to do so. Look on the shelves of Middle Eastern markets, at whole-food markets or online. Cracked freekeh is tastier and easier to work with than whole freekeh. Add it to soups or stews, or use in the same way you would use rice or bulgur. The cracked wheat has a grassy, herbal quality that also makes it great for use in lemony salads like this one, in which the freekeh is tossed with chickpeas, scallions and a welcome dash of bright green in the form of fresh mint and parsley.
Kasha
For years I have had uneven results with buckwheat groats, or kasha, as the dry-roasted grains are called. I have tried different methods, both stovetop and oven, and usually mixed the grains with an egg before cooking. Sometimes my grains cooked up to a mush, other times they held their shape but still seemed rather soft and indistinct. I sort of gave up on kasha for a while, opting for more predictable grains and pseudo-grains like quinoa and spelt. But I love the flavor of buckwheat, so this week I took another stab at buckwheat groats with a box of medium-grain kasha I bought at the supermarket – and everything changed. These grains were cracked, like bulgur, something I hadn’t seen before. I followed the directions on the box, and they turned out perfect -- dry and fluffy, with the wonderful nutty/earthy buckwheat flavor I find so appealing. To see if it was the cut of the grain only or the combination of the cut of the grain and the cooking method that gave me such good results, I used the exact same cooking method using whole toasted buckwheat groats. The whole groats turned out better than any I had made before, but they took three times as long to cook than the cracked groats, yielded a little less, and because all of the egg is not absorbed by the whole grains the way it is by the cracked grains, which have more cut surfaces to absorb the egg, you get some egg flakes floating on the top of the cooked kasha, which is not very attractive (though it’s easy to remove them).
Italian Meat Sauce With Half the Meat
It’s been a long time since I have made tomato sauce with meat, and this one transported me back to the first recipe I learned to make. I called it spaghetti sauce, and it was a simple tomato sauce with ground beef. It didn’t taste that much different from this sauce, which has only a quarter pound of meat in it – but that is all it needs to have a rich flavor and a meaty texture. The mushroom base is a perfect stand-in for half the meat; you could double the amount for a vegetarian sauce.
Gingery Cabbage Rolls With Pork and Rice
These fork-tender cabbage rolls, filled with savory pork, rice and ginger, are the ultimate comfort food — perfect to serve as a cozy meal on a cold night. When assembling the rolls, you can simply fold the cabbage leaf onto itself as you would fold a burrito — and don’t worry if the cabbage leaves tear. If there are any leftovers, reheat them with more chicken broth. They are good the day they are made, but even better the next day.
Chicken Pot Pie
Risotto With Chard and Pancetta
This satiny risotto uses an entire bunch of chard, both stems and leaves, which gives texture and color to the tender grains of rice. Pancetta, crisped up in the pan, adds a savory, brawny crunch that contrasts with the sweetness of the shallots or onion. Red chard turns the rice a subtle shade of pink, but Swiss or rainbow chard will work equally well. And don’t neglect that squeeze of fresh lemon juice right at the end; it brightens everything up.
Green Bean, Mushroom, Pepper and Olive Salad
Turkish Spinach with Tomatoes and Rice
Not every tradition allows rice during Passover; in this fragrant dish there’s just enough of it to add substance to the vegetables. Some Sephardic Jews have traditionally allowed rice during Passover, whereas many Ashkenazi Jews do not. There isn’t much of it in this Turkish spinach dish, adapted from a recipe in Clifford A. Wright’s “A Mediterranean Feast,” just enough to add substance to the vegetables.
Thiebou Dienn (Cheb)
Radish and Cheese Salad
Asparagus With Morels and Tarragon
This dish is a French classic, a combination of strong, uncommon flavors that could have been designed to go together. Combining dried and fresh mushrooms is a reliable way to transfer the exotic flavor of truly wild mushrooms to tamer domesticated ones. Using the soaking liquid for the morels makes it certain that none of their essence goes to waste.