Category: Vegetables

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The Book Vegetables

85. Bok Choy with Soy Sauce and Butter p.524

The recipe

This is about as simple as side dishes get. Just fry up some bok choy, toss on a mixture of water, soy, oyster sauce, and butter, cook for a minute or two, then eat. I prefer baby bok choy to the gargantuan full grown versions. They don’t taste much different, but I like the finer texture of the smaller ones. Full sized bok choy also leave you with the cabbage and celery conundrum of what to do with the rest of these enormous vegetables?

Bok choy is a prototypically Chinese vegetable, and it’s almost always prepared with that in mind. I don’t think I’ve had it any way but stir fried with some vaguely Asian flavourings tossed at it. I wonder if bok choy really has an affinity for soy sauce, or if it’s just the case that no one has ever tasted it without it? While this preparation isn’t innovative, it is quite tasty.

I liked that this dish is simple, and uses ingredients you probably have on hand. I’m not actually sure that most people have oyster sauce on hand. But, a geometric expansion of condiments is squeezing me out of my fridge, so oyster sauce was no problem to find.

This recipe was reliable, easy, and very quick. Bok choy looks great on a plate, and has a unique and appealingly mild flavour. This is a great side dish, and it could even see myself making these as dinner-for-one after an exhausting day.

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The Book Vegetables

82. Whipped Chipotle Sweet Potatoes p.583

The recipe

Chipotles were the taste sensation of 2006 for me. In fact they were a taste sensation that took the fast food world by storm, from Doritos to Subway you could hardy avoid these often mispronounced smoked jalapeños in adobo sauce. Bobby Flay (restaurateur, Iron Chef, and lover of limelight) is generally cited as patient 0 in the spreading chile epidemic. I’m happy to say that I’ve been infected, and that the taste sensation of 2007 are some of Bobby’s other favourites, Anchos, Gualliros, and Pasillas. I’m still deeply fond of the chipotle, it’s unbelievable depth of flavour, and layers of smoke add a mysterious smouldering quality to any dish. As it turns out this is one of Bobby Flay’s own recipes.

It’s a very straightforward preparation, sweet potatoes are roasted in their skins, then scooped out and beaten together with chipotles, butter, and salt. The mixture is spread into a baking dish and baked for another 20 minutes. The flavours are spot on in this recipe, the sugar soaked earthiness of the sweet potatoes is a perfect compliment to the chipotles. Heat and sweet go together so very well, and these two ingredients bring out the best in each other. The recipe also resists the temptation to make things complex, there are only four ingredients here, and that simplicity is its greatest strength.

Texture unfortunately is a weakness of the dish. The sweet potatoes are whipped, but not whipped in the sense of light and airy, more dense, wet, heavy, and textureless. There’s nothing in here that would give it the structure necessary to become light. I suppose you could fold in stiffly beaten egg whites before the final baking, but I’d rather go the other direction. I wouldn’t whip them at all. This would be much better as smashed chipotle sweet potatoes. Leaving some nice chunks of firm but yielding sweet potato in there would be a major improvement.

I’ve made these a couple of times, and once I had problems with my potatoes splitting and drying out in the oven. Be careful to use undamaged potatoes, and to prick them well. If they split all is lost.

I really really liked the flavours of this dish, and it’s texture could easily be improved. It’s designed as a prepare ahead casserole that can be warmed up when the Thanksgiving hoards arrive. If you’re making it a la minute you can probably skip the final baking step. It gives the dish a crust, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. If you felt like it adding cheese before baking would turn this into a nice gratinée, and a substantial main course. This recipe is easy, cheap, and delicious. I never get tired of the sweet potato chipotle interplay, and its become a standby for me.

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The Book Vegetables

81. Spaghetti Squash with Moroccan Spices p.581

The recipe

This recipe was extremely simple, and as far I’ve seen is the only recipe in The Book that calls for the use of a microwave. Basically a spaghetti squash is microwaved, the strands are pulled out and tossed with a compound butter made with garlic, cumin, coriander, cayenne, and salt. Top with a bit of fresh cilantro and you have a simple side. This dish tasted good because spaghetti squash taste good, but I’m not sure the compound butter was the best possible pairing for it. The title of the recipe is a bit of a misnomer, there’s nothing all that Moroccan about the spices, in fact they read like basic Tex-Mex cookery. I suppose it’s the coriander that’s supposed to recall North Africa?

The dish probably would have been better if it had gone more Tex-Mex. A splash of lime juice would have added some welcome acidity, and replacing the cayenne with chopped fresh jalapenos would have added more dimension than the straightforward heat of cayenne. The ground coriander was the least appealing part of the butter, it was only 1/2 teaspoon, but a little coriander goes a long way. I found it a bit distracting, and out of balance with the other flavours. The recipe could also have cut back on the butter without anyone missing it.

All of those issues are easily fixed, and the basic method of preparing the squash is great. All I did was poke the squash with a fork, then microwave on high for ~7 minutes per side. The instructions in The Book are for an 800 watt microwave, and I think mine is 1100, so it cooked a bit faster. The quicker cooking didn’t seem to have damaged anything, and you’ll know when it’s done when the squash gets soft, so the exact time doesn’t really matter. A little bit of juice flows from the holes you pricked, and the sugars quickly caramelize making the outside quite sticky. I didn’t put the squash on a plate, and the microwave try was a bother to clean.

The strands of squash come out nicely separated, and whole. They have a great texture, and they’re inherently fun to eat. My squash was sweet, deeply flavoured, and vibrantly yellow. I don’t think I’d toss it with this particular butter again, but from now on my spaghetti squash are going in the microwave.

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The Book Vegetables

55. Riesling Braised Sauerkraut and Apples p.575


The Recipe

This is kind of a funny recipe. It takes the “and the kitchen sink” approach toward sauerkraut. This version starts with packaged sauerkraut, then braises is with two kinds of apples, onions, shallots, slab bacon, Riesling, chicken stock, thyme, juniper berries, and a bay leaf. It was already getting a bit busy flavour-wise at this point, but we’re not done. Once the braise is finished the sauerkraut is tossed with two cups of heavy cream, and some apple schnapps. Thankfully the cream and schnapps were optional, and I opted for only the schnapps. I get the impression that the people at The Book looked up every traditional sauerkraut ingredients from every culture that makes it, and tossed them all into one recipe.

The main problem with the dish was the word sauerkraut. If it had been called stewed cabbage with apples, bacon, and cream it would have been fine. But sauerkraut should as a minimum be sour. In this version the sauerkraut is soaked and drained twice to get rid of a lot of the salt, but also a lot of the flavour. All of the braising ingredients are there to mellow the harsh bite of the sauerkraut, but at least the stuff I bought was pretty smooth after the rinsing. All the sweet ingredients just overwhelmed the remaining flavour of the sauerkraut. There were also far too many flavours competing here, some of the comments on the epicurious version of the recipe suggest that adding the cream would have tied it together, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

This recipe simultaneously had too many ingredients, and not enough. The flavours were a jumble, but it was drastically in need of some more acid to cut all the sweetness. On a positive note the thyme, juniper, bay leaf combination worked very well, and bacon makes everything taste good.

I guess the recipe was fine, and if I’d had some more potent sauerkraut as a starting ingredient maybe all the sweet additions would have been a nice compliment. As it was the dish was going in too many directions at once, and tried to do too much. All of the additions ended up taking away from what makes sauerkraut good in the first place.

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The Book Vegetables

50. Winter Vegetables With Horseradish Dill Butter p.526

This version of the recipe makes three times as much as The Book’s, and recommends steaming the veggies for two thirds of the time.

Parsnips, turnips, and Brussels sprouts, horseradish, and dill all in one recipe? My goodness gracious, it’s almost too good to be true. The parsnips, turnips and Brussels sprouts are steamed together, while potatoes and carrots are steamed in another pot. Then everything is tossed with a horseradish dill butter augmented with a hit of cider vinegar.

I admit I cheated a bit and cooked the veggies wrapped in tin foil on the grill, but steaming is steaming right? The biggest trick with the recipe is to get all the veggies to be done at the same moment. For example, by the time my potatoes were finished, the carrots were overdone, and while the Brussels sprouts were still crisp, the turnip was a bit mushy. This is probably my fault, I don’t think I followed the recipe very precisely when it came to cutting the veggies. For example, the carrots are to be cut diagonally into 1 inch long pieces, but the parsnips were supposed to be 2 by 1 inch sticks. They’re pretty much the same shape, so I cut them into pretty much the same size chunks. The nice people at Gourmet spent quite some time experimenting with different vegetable geometries to get this right, I’d recommend taking their advice and not going it alone.

This recipe stars often overlooked and under appreciated winter vegetables, presents them beautifully, and plays up their fundamental bitter nature. I love that the recipe resists the temptation to sweeten, or add cream. The carrots and potatoes keep this from being too bitter, all the while celebrating the joys of roots. The horseradish boldly adds a tangy punch of heat, in fact I could have happily added more. The use of dill makes me think of the dish as Eastern European, and brings romantic notions of hearty Ukrainian farm families fending off the winter’s chill to my mind.

I really enjoyed the flavours and concepts here, but the execution was a bit trickier than the recipe led me to believe.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

42. Pan-Browned Brussels Sprouts p.526

the recipe

A while back I mentioned that I’d think about opening a restaurant that specializes in helping adults overcome their childhood food traumas. Brussels sprouts will feature prominently on the menu. This preparation is the perfect reintroduction to this maligned vegetable. Boiled or steamed they can be fairly one-note bitter, and overcooked they have that sulfurous stink that’s so common in foods kids hate. Here they’re prepared simply with garlic and pine nuts in a bit of butter and olive oil. The garlic, and the nutty flavours of the browned butter, and pine nuts compliment the sprouts beautifully. The presentation is dramatic and very attractive, and the sprouts end up crisp, lively, and just cooked through. My dining companion and I made twice as much as we thought we’d eat, but polished the whole plate off.

I liked these so much I made them for the boys on one of our weekend getaways. That experience emphasized how important a heavy bottomed pan, and careful heat management are to getting this recipe right. Using a flimsy non sitck, on an unfamiliar stove I managed to leave half of them mostly raw on the inside, the other half overdone and all of them unappealingly blackened on the bottom.

That said this is still far and away my favorite Brussels sprouts preparation. As long as you can maintain low even heat the sprouts get caramelized on the bottoms, and perfectly cooked though. This recipe is ideally balanced; it manages to show off everything that is great about Brussels sprouts, and deftly avoids their weaknesses.

Pan-browned Brussels sprouts, you’ve earned your 5 mushroom rating.

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The Book Vegetables

38. Roasted Carrots and Parsnips with Herbs p.529

the recipe

I nip, you nip, we all nip for parsnips!

I love them mashed, boiled, grilled, broiled, sauteed, and particularly roasted. They behave almost exactly like carrots, they look like carrots, they taste quite a bit like carrots, and yet… the carrot is a superstar of the vegetable world, and the poor parsnip is drinking alone at the bar slurring “whachs ur problum, not ornge enough fur ya??” at unsuspecting passersby. They’re not as sweet as carrots, but I think they bring a lot more flavour to the table. They’re also a whole lot starchier, meaning that they pretty much have to be cooked.

It’s hard for me to be objective about this recipe, because I’ve been making my own version of it for years. I normally toss carrots and parsnips with oil, salt, pepper, and assorted dried herbs, then roast them. The advantage this recipe has is the addition of water to the pan which helps the vegetables get tender, then as the water evaporates they’re able to brown up. When I make this I generally just use dried herbs, I’m not sure it makes a whole lot of difference in a dish that’s roasted for an hour. That said the sage and rosemary were delicious.

This is one of those pretty basic recipes that’s hard to rate. It would be delicious if you followed the recipe exactly, or if you improvised wildly around it. But it was solid, and it won’t lead you wrong.

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The Book Vegetables

37. Swiss Chard and Chickpeas p.542


the recipe

This quick stew was fine, nothing special, but fine. It’s centred around swiss chard and chickpeas, with a bit of tomato, onion, garlic, and lemon juice. It was a bit bland, and the flavours never really came together. The fibrous swiss chard and grainy chickpeas didn’t make for the most appealing texture either. On the other hand it was a heathly and simple side dish.

I think this was a case of great things being inappropriately combined. Sauteed swiss chard with a bit of onion garlic and lemon is an excellent summery vegetable dish. Simiarly a simple chick pea salad with those ingredients is a satisfying dish any time. Put them together and add tomato, and you get something less than the sum of it’s parts. I don’t think tomato would be particularly good with the chard or the chickpeas alone, and it didn’t really add much to the stew.

On the plus side the ingredients were easily available, there was almost no effort involved in making it, it’s cheap, and it feels healthy. Unfortunately “tastes really healthy” is the food equivalent of “has a great personality”.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

33. Creamed Turnips p.588


the recipe

Turnips are among the most maligned and under appreciated vegetables out there. They’re right up there with Lima beans and Brussels sprouts. Some day I’ll open a restaurant serving nothing but childhood nightmare vegetables, as far as I can tell I love them all.

Turnips have got a wonderful bite to them, and should be appreciated for what they are. My grandmother makes mashed creamed turnips she serves with roast beef. It’s the only vegetable my uncle will eat, but that’s because the turnips are swimming in so much cream and sugar the turnip is serving as more of a thickener than anything else. I love my grandmother dearly, and in their own way I love those turnips. Roast beef at her house wouldn’t be the same without the turnips and canned peas. But, I can’t say that they’re a cherished memory of my youth.

I liked that the turnips were left in good size chunks in this recipe. It allowed for some contrast between the sharp bite of the turnip, and the smooth cream sauce. I wasn’t nuts about the texture of the sauce, kinda slimy, and the white on beige coulour palate of the dish wasn’t really doing it for me either. The thyme and nutmeg worked really well here, both of which seem to have great affinities for roots and gourds of all types.

The recipe calls for white pepper, which I don’t really get. Obviously the purpose is to avoid sullying the sauce with black flecks which would be unpleasing to the eye. But it might have helped with the whiter shade of pale thing going on here. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but sprinkling this dish with parsley might not be crime against humanity.

I thought the flavours here were pretty good, but it wasn’t turnipy enough. The cream sauce masked a lot of the kick of the turnips, getting the kids to eat it shouldn’t be a problem, but it was missing something. I prepared this for a friend who’s decided that nouvelle cuisine is overrated, and who yearns for the days of butter in a butter sauce (he made me a memorable buttered rabbit). Escoffier would have loved this dish, but I grew up in the world that Alice Waters made and I’m a bit weirded out by vegetables swimming in cream.

I generally prefer my turnips roasted or grilled and relatively plain. The flavours in the sauce worked well with the turnips, but all the dairy cut the turnip flavours too far. There was nothing bad about it, but it was too mellow to satisfy my turnip craving.

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The Book Vegetables

30. Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes with Caramelized Shallots p.559


the recipe

These were nice potatoes, not spectacular, but good. These were part of the same meal as the pork chops, so I I was scaling this recipe up too. I’m not always a fan of stuff in mashed potatoes, I do like a little roasted garlic, but people can go too far with cheese, bacon, chives and who knows what else. I’m sure if you looked hard enough you could find a recipe that will tell you to put hot dogs in your mashers. In this case the additions were very restrained, just some caramelized shallots. They added a nicely sweet edge, and brought the goodness of the Maillard reaction to this dish.

The sweet shallots were a nice compliment to the sour bite of the buttermilk. I think buttermilk was the real star of this dish actually. It helped to take them from straight ahead starchy goodness to a more nuanced place. Sour cream has an undeniable affinity for baked potatoes, and the same magic is happening here. The recipe calls for very little butter (1/2 tablespoon for 3/4 lb potatoes), this is both the recipe’s virtue and it’s vice. They were very flavourful, and the thickness of the buttermilk helped them take on a bit of a creamy texture without too much added fat, but I can’t deny that I missed the butter. I was serving this to a room full of ravenous 20 something boys, so they wouldn’t have cared if I’d added butter by the pound.

My take on the lack of butter might have been quite different if it was making this for just my dining companion and I. She eats most of these meals with me, and often asks if I can look for something a bit less rich to make from The Book. I’m already running out of heart-healthy options. This is one of the few recipes that fits the bill, and I wasted it on The Boys.

There were a lot of good ideas going on in this recipe: Limited additions, not much butter, building texture and flavour with buttermilk. But, somehow it just didn’t gel into the ne plus ultra of mashed potato recipes.