Fast, Fresh & Green
Read Fast, Fresh & Green Online
Authors: Susie Middleton
Tags: #Cooking, #Specific Ingredients, #Vegetables
More Than 90 Delicious Recipes for Veggie Lovers
By Susie Middleton
Photographs by Ben Fink
Chapter 1: The Pantry:
Get Personal—Stock up with Your Favorite Flavors
Chapter 11: Baking Gratins (Bonus Chapter—Slower but Worth It
)
Acknowledgments of Kindness, Grace, Time, and Patience
I start thinking about dinner when I wake up in the morning. I know—I’m crazy like that. Fortunately, I usually get distracted by breakfast. Most mornings I’m busy figuring out how I can design yet another killer egg sandwich. Today I stuffed my butter—broiled English muffin with some really sharp Vermont cheddar cheese, one of my roasted tomatoes (
page 41
), and an egg from a farm I like to visit, scrambled up with a bit of cream and a few chives. Did I mention I like to cook? For myself, my friends, my ninety—three—year—old father-in-law, even the dog.
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be making a big deal out of it; it’s just that I want you to know that this is a
cook
book—and a highly personal one at that. It’s my gift to you, because I love helping people learn to become better cooks. And I don’t mean that in the “I am wearing a chef’s coat and you are quivering in your clogs wondering when the fun begins” kind of way. I’m just offering up all the tips and techniques I know about cooking vegetables—and more than 90 recipes to mess around with. In my years as editor of
Fine Cooking
magazine, I got downright evangelical about vegetables—not because I’m a health nut, but because I think they taste so much better when properly cooked. And because I know everyone would like to eat more of them.
Despite the name of this book—
Fast, Fresh & Green
—I don’t want you to think that it’s all about speed. You
will
absolutely learn to turn out delicious vegetable side dishes—many, many of them in under 30 minutes. I promise. But you will also be chopping and stirring—
cooking
—and, well, loving it. At first, you may stumble a bit and find that some things take you a little longer than you’d like. (If that happens, just stop and make a recipe like Sautéed Sugar Snap Peas with Salami Crisps on
page 85
or Brown Butter Summer Squash “Linguine” on
page 93
and you will feel better. They’re ultra—easy and fast.) A few (very delicious) recipes may even take 45 or 50 minutes. But once you start tasting what you’ve cooked—and hear the roars from your crowd—you’ll feel great.
Then one day you’ll find yourself coming home from work or school or a busy round of errands and automatically turning the oven on or pulling out your sauté pan—because you’ve already decided how you’ll cook your veggies, and what you want to make with them. You might not even need to look at the recipe anymore. It might be Sautéed Carrots with Warm Olive and Mint Dressing (
page 87
) or Gingery Braised Brussels Sprouts (
page 62
). Or maybe Vanilla and Cardamom Glazed Acorn Squash (
page 51
). You’ll be dreaming about how delicious it is going to be before you even start. You may just forget about the steak or chicken altogether.
“How is all this going to happen?” you might be asking. Well, I’m going to encourage you to make a little mind shift. I want you to think about
how
you’re going to cook before you think about
what
you’re going to cook. Do you feel like grilling tonight (easy on the cleanup)? Want to turn the oven on to do some roasting, which means hands—off cooking? Maybe you feel like stir—frying or sautéing to ease your tensions. Deciding which method you’ll use to cook your vegetables (there are nine in this book) is the first step in a strategy I’m going to share with you for creating
yummy vegetable side dishes every night. It’s an approach I’ve developed over the years, which I think will help prevent the problem we’ve all had of standing in front of the refrigerator at six o’clock in the evening, staring dumbfounded at a bag of carrots.
When I get home from a long day, the first thing I do (after petting my dog, feeding my dog, letting my dog out, and, oh, petting my dog again) is turn on the oven, light my grill, or get out my sauté pan or skillet. Next I rummage through that fridge, or more precisely, the vegetable bin. I begin to look at what I’ve got and imagine some kind of yummy vegetable thing. (I almost always keep meats simple on weeknights—grilled skirt steak, roasted chicken thighs, seared pork tenderloin—and let my vegetable side dishes bring the interest and excitement to the plate.) If I’m lucky, there’s a stash of good stuff in that vegetable bin. I buy local produce directly from the farm or the farmers’ market when I can these days, and, not surprisingly, it usually lasts a lot longer than the store—bought, trucked-in, poly—bagged stuff. But like everyone else, I’m often stuck with whatever I’ve managed to get at the grocery store on Sunday, and it may not be the absolute freshest. (I realize that may seem like a heretical admission in a book like this, but we all have to do our best.)
Once I’ve pulled a few vegetables out of the fridge, I rifle through the pantry—and the fridge again—to look for flavor ideas, like hoisin sauce, fresh ginger, and a few scallions; or sherry vinegar, briny capers, lemon, and fresh parsley (see The Pantry, on
page 11
). Once I’ve got the flavors going, if I haven’t already, I grab the right pan for the job—heavy—duty sheet pans for roasting, a heavy—duty straight—sided sauté pan for sautéing or braising, or a midweight stir—fry pan for stir—frying. Then I start slicing and dicing my vegetables. So my weeknight vegetable improvisation goes like this:
1. I pick my cooking method.
2. I pick my vegetables.
3. I pick my flavorings.
4. I start chopping.
I say “improvisation,” because that’s a word I’m comfortable with after years of developing vegetable recipes. But don’t be scared by that expression, because I’m not asking you to improvise in this book (unless you want to!). What I’m really offering you is a strategy, and a wealth of recipes organized around eight simple techniques: quick—roasting, quick—braising, hands—on sautéing, walk—away sautéing, two—stepping, no cooking, stir—frying, and grilling. (As a bonus, I’ve included a ninth “slower—but—worth—it” chapter, Baking Gratins, for weekend vegetable cooking, because making these yummy casseroles is so satisfying.) With these techniques, you, too, can start thinking about what to cook based on what you want to turn on, how involved you want to be in the cooking, how much time you have, what flavors you’re craving, and what results you’re looking for. Now you’ve got options, no matter what you’ve got in the vegetable bin.
Yet I also want you to know that I’m not asking you to think
too
hard about these techniques. People have different cooking—and learning—styles. I find most people like to just dive right in and
try a few recipes before necessarily putting a name to what they’re doing. That’s why there are recipes in each chapter that you could turn to right this minute and start making. (Though I would be really happy if you’d take a quick glance at the tips in the chapter introductions first!) But each chapter has a foundation recipe, so if you decide on a certain technique or a certain vegetable and don’t have all the flavorings that a specific recipe calls for, you can take a few liberties and create your own vegetable side dish. And in the process, you’ll learn a few of the fundamentals of that technique. You’ll find it gets to be sort of a game—one you’ll be really good at.
I just have to warn you about one other funny thing that may happen to you after you’ve cooked out of this book for a bit. While all of the recipes are designed to be side dishes, you might find yourself eating them as main dishes (especially some of the heartier recipes, like the quick—braises, the walk—away sautés, and, of course, the gratins). Or you might do as we do in our house and make dinner out of two or more of them, along with some good bread. So be open—minded; sometimes a side dish is a main dish in disguise.
A note to vegetarians (and the rest of you!):
While my meals tend to be vegetable—centric, I am not a vegetarian, and I did not set out to write a vegetarian book. But, as it happens, I wound up with a book that is 75 percent vegetarian recipes. Most of the other recipes can be transformed into vegetarian dishes by replacing the chicken broth with a high—quality vegetable broth diluted with some water. As much as I love pork fat, I only used pancetta, ham, or salami in about a dozen recipes. I think that’s because the techniques I use and the other ingredients I include to build flavor make a meaty boost unnecessary. Aromatic vegetables such as onions and garlic, mushrooms and peppers, even the cabbage crowd, contribute a huge depth of flavor when they’re allowed to brown and caramelize, helping us to make exciting vegetable dishes, which are often more enticing than the meat on the plate!
Chapter 1
The Pantry
Get Personal—Stock up with Your Favorite Flavors
My pantry has a distinctly Mediterranean flair
, probably because the biggest influence on my cooking style was the time I spent working for George Germon and Johanne Killeen at the award—winning Al Forno restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island. Technically, I guess you could say Al Forno’s cuisine is Northern Italian, but what George and Johanne are really known for is fresh, simple cooking that is also hearty and highly flavorful without being heavy or overwrought. Even when I worked at the restaurant more than fifteen years ago, almost every ingredient was brought in from local farms and purveyors on a daily basis. There was no walk—in refrigerator and only a very small chest freezer (to hold the canisters for made—to—order ice cream), so all of the raw ingredients were fresh. Both the ovens and the open grills (to cook Al Forno’s famous grilled pizza) were wood—fired, and that’s where I fell in love with roasting and grilling—and the intense flavor that high—heat cooking brings to so many things, especially vegetables.
When working with fresh ingredients (even ones that aren’t just straight off the farm!) and good cooking techniques, you don’t necessarily need an army of condiments to make things taste good. But having a pantry stocked with some carefully chosen, high—quality ingredients, will make it easier—and more fun—to create high—flavor dishes when you want to. (By “pantry” I mean not only cupboards, but the refrigerator and freezer, too.) At Al Forno, I came to appreciate the bright flavors of fresh herbs, citrus fruits, aromatics like garlic and shallots, and especially good—quality olive oils and vinegars. George and Johanne also bought the best Parmigiano—Reggiano cheese and prosciutto (dry—cured Italian ham), and used it judiciously.