Archive for the 'Vegetable' Category

Eggplant and Quinoa Involtini

Published
by
marc
on May 17, 2008
in Mediterranaen, Vegetable and vegetarian
. 1 Comment

Some of my favourite foods involve a filling wrapped in something. Potstickers and bacon wrapped dates are just two examples of little parcels of tastiness whose wrappers not only serve to hold everything together, but add complimentary tastes and textures in the process.

Involtini is a southern Italian dish typically made with veal or beef wrapped around a filling. This vegetarian version inspired by Nigella Lawson’s “Soft and Sharp Involtini” is a little more Greek in flavor. Upon actually looking up the recipe in Nigella Bites, I’m realizing it’s actually quite different, so let’s just say it’s inspired in spirit.

The smokey grilled eggplant makes the perfect wrapper for the tart creamy filling. The mint gives it a nice fresh taste and with the quinoa, you’d swear there was some ground meat in it. It looks complicated but it took me a little less than an hour to prep.

Continue for full recipe

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Pizza and a dream (grilled lettuce pizza)

Published
by
marc
on May 16, 2008
in Dinner, Vegetable and vegetarian
. 12 Comments

Do you ever hear people talking about their technicolor dreams that defy the laws that govern our conscious minds and wonder… “hmm… is this person making this up?” I’m one of those people that purges his memories of any dream on my way to consciousness and as a result I never remember much of my dreams. I’m always slightly envious of those that can remember their dreams and am downright jealous of people that have those so-called “lucid dreams” where you realize you’re in a dream and can alter the course of it.

So why am I going on about dreams on a cooking blog? For me, day dreams are often a source of inspiration for new and interesting ideas. I’ll see someone eating a banana and wonder what I could do with the peel.

The other day, I was strolling through SoHo when I noticed a huge crowd outside a new restaurant. It was literally a hole-in-the-wall with a glass case showcasing their signature pizzas with ovens in the background wafting the irresistible aroma of fresh baked bread and savory cheese onto the street. Up above was a chalk-board menu with about a dozen pizza’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard of. Being the maximizer that I am, I read through every item on the menu with pizzas such as:

  • * grilled lettuce, anchovy and pecorino
  • * scrambled eggs with gruyere, caviar, and truffle oil
  • * bacon, sea urchin, beet greens and béchamel

I waited patiently contemplating my choices and watching people around me light up as they got their orders. Do I go simple with the grilled lettuce and cheese pizza or go for something more extravagant…

Before I was able to put in my order… I woke up! Still dark out, I was in my bed disoriented clinging to the memories of my tasty dream. So I did what any sensible person does at 4:30 am and got up to go make some pizzas… Well not really, but I did get up to write down the entire menu before I forgot it. The following recipe for grilled lettuce pizza comes straight from my dream, the crust comes courtesy of Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Dough by way of Smitten Kitchen.

The thin, football (or rugby ball) shaped pizza is crusty, savory and chewy with a crisp layer of romaine lettuce made smokey and sweet by the high heat. The Pecorino Grand Cru adds a potent dose of briny umami bringing a depth you just wouldn’t expect from a lettuce pizza. I skipped the anchovy this time opting for fleur de sel since I didn’t have any in the pantry, but I have no doubt this would have made for a nice addition.
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Nettle Pasta with Fava Beans

Published
by
marc
on May 14, 2008
in Pasta, Vegetable and vegetarian
. 18 Comments

My refrigerator is retarded. Items left on the top shelf spoil because it’s not cool enough up there. Things on either of the bottom two shelves, especially towards the back tend to freeze. I’ve always thought of this as a curse (have you ever seen frozen tofu?), but today it actually ended up working out.

I was digging through the back of the fridge looking for some inspiration and I found a ziplock back with a small fistful of boiled stinging nettles. Those of you that remember my foraging expedition might remember the stinging nettles I picked (and never cooked with). Though it’s been almost a month, the little baggie of boiled nettles made it to the back of the fridge where it froze solid allowing me to resurrect it in this pasta today:-)

Honestly the nettles didn’t really add much flavor to the pasta, but it does make it a nice green color. This was my first time using my newest Kitchen Aid attachment (pasta roller) so the pasta didn’t exactly turn out gorgeous, but I’d have to say this was far better (and easier) than the hand crank contraptions I’ve used in the past. The burly motor in the Kitchen Aid makes short work of the rolling process, and because you don’t have to turn a crank, you have both hands free to feed and catch the pasta on the other end.

Nettle pasta going through the Kitchen Aid powered pasta machine


Finished nettle pasta ready to hit the pot.

I really like to keep pastas very simple highlighting just one or two of the ingredients. In this case I wanted the pasta and fava beans to be the stars since they both take a fare amount of work to prepare. The Pecorino Grand Cru, an aged sheepsmilk cheese gives the fresh pasta some depth and umami while the lemon and pepper brighten it up. Fava beans, when lightly boiled and shelled have a texture a bit like edamame, but they are much sweeter and have a flavor similar to peas.

Continue for full recipe

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Nasu dengaku (grilled eggplant with sweet miso sauce)

Published
by
marc
on May 7, 2008
in Asian, BBQ, Japanese, Vegan, Vegetable and vegetarian
. 13 Comments

Here’s part 2 of last night’s light Japanese dinner. But first I have to tell you about this left over stew I made tonight.

After eating Tacos Al Pastor for 2 nights, I was getting bored with them, but I still had almost half of the roast left. I felt like something a little saucier tonight, so I fried up some garlic and onions, cut the roast into big hunks and added it to the onions with some remaining marinade, cumin, half a can of diced tomatoes and some water. Twenty minutes later I had a delightful “Mexican” stew with big chunks of moist tender meat and an unctuous sauce redolent of chiles and garlic with a mild sweetness coming from the pineapple in the marinade. I served it with some sliced sweet onion, cilantro, limes for squeezing and warm tortillas.

I didn’t take any photos because I was thinking “how good could leftover stew be”, but honestly I enjoyed the stew more than I did the tacos. I don’t think I’d ever make a roast just to make a stew, but the next time I make the taco’s I’ll be sure to make extra to make this stew. Not only did the roast meat add an incredible flavour to the stew, it was also much more moist and tender than a typical braised dish.

Okay back to the eggplant from last night. This is a fairly typical Japanese dish you’d get at an Izakaya (Japanese tapas bar). The eggplant is grilled to bring out its smokey flavour and the miso sauce enrobes the eggplant adding a well balanced sweet earthy flavour of its own. Putting it back under a broiler for a minute caramelizes the miso sauce adding even more depth. It’s great as an appetizer with some beer or as a main with some hot white rice.

This recipe makes way more sauce than you need, but it keeps well in the fridge and can be used on all kinds of veggies or even firm tofu. If you want to put it on meat, make sure you start the meat on the grill first as the sugar in the miso will burn if you put it on too soon.

for sauce
1 C dashi
2 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs mirin
1/2 C miso (I used 1/4 C red miso and 1/4 C white miso)
2 tsp corn starch
1/4 tsp yuzu kosho (yuzu pepper) optional

for grilled eggplant
4 small Japanese eggplants cut in half lengthwise (or 2 Chinese or Italian eggplants)
vegetable oil for brushing
sesame seeds

For the sauce, whisk the dashi, sugar, mirin, miso and corn starch together. Heat over medium heat stirring until the sauce thickens. Take it off the heat and add the yuzu whisking it in to the sauce.

For the eggplant, slice them in half lengthwise and score a criss-cross pattern into them to help retain the sauce. Brush with oil and grill on a BBQ or under a broiler until the tops are a dark brown and the eggplant is cooked. Give the sliced sides a good coating of sauce, sprinkle with sesame seeds then put under a broiler to get a little caramelization (be careful, this sauce will burn quickly).

Serve immediately with some rice.

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Choi sum goma-ae (chinese greens with sesame sauce)

Published
by
admin
on May 6, 2008
in Asian, Japanese, Vegan, Vegetable and vegetarian
. 10 Comments

After the meat bomb the past 2 nights, I was feeling a need for some cleansing today and decided to do a nice light Japanese veggie (well almost) dinner. By the time I got home from work, I was starving, so I cut up some lebanese cucumbers into bite size sticks and wrapped them in ramp kimchi. I figured it’s not really worthy of its own post, but they were tasty little things.

For dinner, I steamed up some choi sum (chinese greens) and made one of my favourite accompaniments for any steamed greens: goma-ae (pronounced go-ma-ah-ay). It’s like a dressing without the oil or vinegar and has a deep earthy flavor from the ground sesame seeds and dashi. I like to brighten it up a little with just a spash of yuzu juice. Not enough to make it tangy, but enough to give it that unmistakably sunny flavor of yuzu. If you can’t find yuzu, you can use a little lemon or lime zest instead.

I also made a nasu dengaku (grilled eggplant with sweet miso paste), but you’ll have to stay tuned for my next post for that.

Totally unrelated, but I got to work this morning, turned on my laptop and saw the news headline “21,000 Killed in Myanmar”, a storm that happened somewhere on the other side of the world (that last I heard had tragically taken 200 lives), suddenly got orders of magnitude more real. If you feel the need to help out in some way, I found a few organizations collecting money for relief efforts.

Global Giving is a cool organization that uses the power of the web to collect small donations from lots of people then figures out the most effective way to get it in the hands of the people doing the relief work (cutting out some of the administrative fat of giving to a bigger organizations where a chunk of your donation doesn’t actually go to the relief efforts). They also give you updates on what your money is doing which I thought is pretty cool.

If you’re weary about giving to a small unknown organization, AmeriCares International has been around for 25 years and actually has volunteers on the ground in Myanmar.

1/2 bunch of choi sum

2 Tbs toasted sesame seeds ground with a mortar and pestle
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbs dashi
splash of yuzu juice

Steam or boil the choi sum until bright green (about 1-2 minutes). Rinse under cold water and squeeze out any excess water.

While you could cheat and use instant dashi since you only need a little, I was making something else so I made my dashi with niboshi (dried baby sardines) and shitake mushrooms. If you want to make a veggie dashi, use extra shitake with some onions.

For the sauce, just mix the last 5 ingredients together and pour over the steamed veggies.

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