Archive for the 'Vegetarian' Category

©2008 Harry Kenney

What can I say about mushrooms? Ok, first off, they’re obviously delicious! Eating-wise they can add another dimension to a steak. Or to chicken as well. They give that extra “something” when added to soups, a rice mixture or pasta. They can serve as a tasty vessel for stuffing.

In many ways they are “meaty” for both the vegetarian and the carnivore in us alike. I recall the oft-quoted here Frugal Gourmet, Jeff Smith, saying something to the effect of mushrooms being a sign of a generous God that from horse manure could such amazing things as mushrooms spring. Or something to that effect. He said it partly in jest and partly serious. Anyway, we get the idea of what he meant.

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©2008 Harry Kenney

Before I publish my recipes I like to do research. Especially those recipes that feature ingredients that are considered more unusual or less-known to the American palette. And definitely those that require a different technique of preparation and/or cooking. Regular visitors here already know that I want to present you with more than just a recipe but also with some knowledge and background to go with it.

I look around not only to compare the different styles of various recipes but also to determine what are the variations folks have come with as well as what are the classical, traditional components of a dish. For instance, for this vegetable tian, every recipe but one talked about slicing the veggies such that you had 1/4-inch thick disks of roughly the same size (as much as possible) laid out on it’s side and forming a single layer atop of a bed of onions.

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©2008 Harry Kenney

This recipe was actually going to go in two different directions from where it ended up. Recipes happen that way sometime. It was originally going to be pure vegetarian. Visits to two supermarkets and failing to find vegetable stock at either (as well my being too “lazy” or not that interested in making it myself) meant I ended up using the more traditional chicken broth as base. Also, once I got past that, I decided bacon would definitely give this a more interesting taste.

So, for those of you looking for vegetarian dishes that are robust and stand-alone and not merely “sides”, you can oh so easily alter this recipe and make it so. To make it vegetarian (as mentioned above) simply substitute vegetable stock for chicken stock. Don’t use bacon. Then either leave the rest of the recipe exactly as is, or you add still more vegetables in the form of finely diced zucchini and/or yellow squash. Also black and/or white cabbage would be nice and is often used in some parts of Italy in one of the many variants of this recipe.

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©2008 Harry Kenney

Chefs are funny people. Normally they’re drawn to foods that are inherently flavorful. Sometimes, as a challenge I think, they are also drawn to things not so flavorful, but which if cooked a certain way can be made tasty and tender. Meats that are very lean such as rabbit or venison which need long time cooking and often a fat added to them come to mind.

Then there are these foods such as couscous and polenta which basically are, well, by themselves quite bland — and in recent years top chefs go nuts over it. Apparently because they can infuse taste to them. I sorta get it and I sorta don’t …. depends upon the food, the technique, the time it takes and my mood for that day. All of that said, of course this polenta is indeed tasty. For me the taste infusion comes from the long roast, browning and carmalization, and adding cheese that does it.

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Fennel is one of those “strange vegetables” Americans just don’t know much about. Fortunately, as with many vegetables and many foods nowadays, there is a greater embracing of the culinary unknown — in short, where before folks would see something in a supermarket and pass it by, slowly more and more people are now not only avoiding them, but also seeking these items out.

So I was delighted to find in a single week the sudden appearance of fennel bulbs at both my supermarket’s produce section as well as my favorite produce speciality store. Interesting, in each place it showed up as, in turn, first “anise” and then “anise root” because of it’s taste.

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Here’s another side — one I did for Thanksgiving — and yet another “odd” root vegetable. Now, depending upon where you live, you’re saying “that’s not at all odd; we have it all the time”. Here in the Northeastern United States, well, common as it is at the market during the winter, it’s also one of those vegetables most people tend to pass up when they’re shopping. Often for the same reason as they might a rutabaga or the various winter squashes, simply because they are both unsure of what it is and of how to cook it. (But then that’s why you come here to find out, isn’t it?)

While the recipe itself is one of the simplest and shortest, there does need to be a some-what extended backstory here. You see, not only is this vegetable very much confused with at least two other veggies, but to make matters worse, depending upon what country you live in, they all have different names. And, of course, to compound things still further these differing names all confuse each other, meaning the same veggie called one thing in one place, that same name refers to a totally different vegetable in yet another place.

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If you’re coming here for leftover turkey recipes, sorry. I work in “real time” like you. What does that mean? Well, it means beginning today I’ll start putting up recipes for what I had for Thanksgiving. But wait, shouldn’t I have put them up last week or the week before, you might be asking. You know, back when you were interested in such things. Like, before Thanksgiving? Well, as I said, I do what you do; I work in “real time”.

Again, what does that mean? It means I’m not the Food Network. I’m not even PBS. I don’t get paid for this. I am not given money by someone to go purchase a mess of food and cooking it all up weeks ahead of time. And then who would eat it all? My vast kitchen or network staff? You know, the one’s I don’t have. So that is why I don’t have things ahead of time. Because I am just like you. Average everyday person making meals on and for the days I’m going to eat them.

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This began as one of my experiment meals a good decade or longer ago. You go to restaurants, you see various veggies in the rice. Get a box of Rice-a-roni, little carrots or peas in the rice. So, what the heck, one night way back when, I put two dishes together, spinach and rice. They tasted good, looked great together. My mother and step-father Dave who I was cooking for enjoyed it a lot, as did I.

Can’t say it was great, but it was darn good. As time went on I started to mess with it more — aka, perfect it. Adding raw onion was too bitey. Dave thought it was an improvement though. Mom and I didn’t. Then again, Dave could smother so much horseradish sauce on a hot dog you couldn’t see the hot dog.

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This was one of the items I had listed last month in my article “Food Terms You Keep Hearing About“. There I said, “In which bread is toasted, raw garlic is rubbed into it, then olive oil is drizzled on top. Now for some folks that is the complete definition, and it stops there. For myself and others it is not complete until the above is topped with a chopped tomato, garlic, basil and olive oil salsa. Mmm. (Toss some slices of very fresh mozzarella on top for the ultimate.) Until it’s got the topping, to me it’s not a true bruschetta. This is one of the best appetizer’s in the world as far as I’m concerned.”

When I went to the local supermarket the day before a recent party to pick up a freshly baked loaf of Italian bread, I found it was all old and none had been made that day. On top of which, instead of being long and having some width to it, whoever had made all the long loafs made it in my opinion way too thin, more like baguettes — which would be wonderful were I recipe-wise going to Paris, but I was aiming closer to Rome, (And this was supposedly Italian bread, remember.)

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I needed a side for my oven BBQ brisket. Yeah I had little baked potatoes and some fresh coleslaw, but I still wanted something warm and flavorful and that was (for lack of better words) very “veggie”. I also wanted something more “regional” … in this case, southern or western or southwestern. It just seemed like that would go right with my indoor BBQ meal.

Now last week there were quite a few things I had bought for my BBQ party that I never made it out to the table. Why is that, you may ask? A combination of my being too ambitious, wanting to make too much food than was necessary, as well as for various reasons six people, three couples basically, had to bale out because of sickness or previous commitments. So there just wasn’t the impetuous to cook twice the amount of food for half the amount of people.

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A few minor mistakes and one or two interesting things I came up with for this dish. Let’s get right to it.

First I put the entire pound of lasagna noodles in, only to find out I only needed maybe 1/4 to 1/5 of the box. Now I guess I’ll do something weird or slice them down or something, as I have 3/4 a box of cooked noodles now sitting in the refrigerator. Had I known, I would have chosen to use just what I needed. Live and learn.

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Just the other day I was talking to a neighbor who I had given this recipe to a couple months back, and she told me hers didn’t taste at all as good as mine, and then detailed the problems she had. So, while (for once) I didn’t make any mistakes, I’ll share hers with you so you don’t get the chance to make them yourself.

First, she took everything out of the can, including that gunky “reminants” that’s left in the bottom of cans of beans. Also she didn’t know to wash them well first. So that took something away from the taste. It was apparently much worse the next day when she decided to take some to work for lunch: she had put the dressing, feta and salad altogether.

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