I’m not the kind of person that can be rational in a grocery store, especially on an empty stomach. I lose any sense of logic at the sight of novel fruits. On a recent trip to our grocery store I lost control and picked out three of each awkwardly shaped root vegetable, leaving our cashier sweaty and confused trying to remember the codes for four different types of identical sweet potatoes (I also had no idea). Eventually a produce savant emerged and rattled off random numbers with ease until the cashier held up the final root. “That? That’s just a giant carrot.” It weighed out at nearly 2 lbs.
I don’t typically put a whole lot of thought into carrots, but this beast merited special attention. We decided to make it the star of the meal, slow roasting it in a heavy bottomed cast iron pot similar to a technique we’d heard used on cauliflower at Noma. After two hours on medium low heat with minimal oil, the carrot emerged intensely carroty with a deep rich flavor and a hearty crust.
We sliced the carrot into half inch slices and served it on top of cold sesame soba noodles with mixed vegetables and Kyle Hildebrant’s Nước Chấm. Spicy and flavorful, this sauce adds a lush accent to the roasted vegetables. I will strongly second Kyle’s suggestion that if you’re one to shy away from fish sauce to give this recipe a try before writing it off.
Maggie saw a sweet potato burger recipe somewhere that was pretty much mashed potatoes mixed with some panko and griddled. That sounded like eating a mushy desert to me, so I thought I’d try a different approach. Using the Spiralizer and then the food processor I chunked up two potatoes into small granules. A technique we saw used elsewhere to make vegetable riceish. I thought these granules looked vaguely like the little tubes of meat coming through a meat grinder.
I wanted them to keep some texture so I vacuum bagged them with some novoshape, but I assumed I used it like pectinex and didn’t add calcium. ding dong. Anyway, steam the potatoes until they’re cooked through but not mushy.
Ingredient shot of sweet potato burgers
Smash up some chickpeas with the back of a spoon, addd an egg, some flour and panko, and red onion. Stir and form into patties
Sear outside. You want crispy.
Shishito peppers are so easy to make. Add oil to pan. cook on high until they’re crusty and shriveled. Add chunky finishing salt and a squeeze of lemon.
For a great vegan shishito pepper experience, make some cashew cheese- we soak cashews for 5 days in water with a bit of salt at room temperature, changing the water daily. Apparently no one else does this, although I’m sure we looked this up at some point. I donno. I’m confused. Blend the cashews and add a bit of water, salt and lemon rind.
Top sweet potato burger with cashew cheese and avocado. Sprouts are not reccommended as a topping, unless you like the feeling of eating hair out of a burger and overbearing raw starchy taste. They look nice in the picture, but not actually good. I wonder how much people put things on food for looks on pinterest rather than for flavor. It’s an odd concept. Especially the vegan or gluten free replacement recipes where the goal seems to be more of a recreation of the look of food rather than taste, or experience. Anyway, the sprouts came off after a bite and a tomato slice went on. It was good. the texture of the patty was pleasant and it didn’t fall apart. The cashew cheese was great. probably the best we’ve made.
I have a difficult time trusting anyone that hates beets. Sweet and earthy with a color to rival any man made cuisines, beets tend to be a staple in our crisper drawer. I had stumbled across some images of a “beet pesto pizza” a little while back, and never one to turn down an opportunity to make pizza decided to explore the idea further.
This particular recipe took some liberties in using the word “pesto”, the list of ingredients leaving out any mention of basil and topping the pie with an ample amount of kale. A little wiser from my last run in with food-that-looks-too-good-to-taste-good we decided to overhaul their process from the beginning.
We roasted a large beet, half a red onion, and five cloves of garlic lightly tossed in olive oil for one hour. I tend to peel vegetables as little as I have to, and giving the beet a good scrub and cutting it into one inch cubes before roasting seemed to do the trick (it will also save you from staining your fingers too terribly). Once roasted, toss the beet, onions, and garlic into a food processor with a handful of fresh basil, two tablespoons of pine nuts, and a two tablespoons of olive oil. Pulse until the ingredients are well incorporated and form a paste and add salt and pepper to taste.
We opted to skip the layer of kale in the original recipe (the texture just didn’t seem right), and after spreading the beet mixture on the dough sprinkled liberally with lemon zest (about one whole lemons worth). I wouldn’t recommend skipping this step, the zest helped to add more depth to the overall flavor and cut the sweetness of the beet quite a bit. Next, add artichoke hearts, goat cheese, and parmesean and bake. Before serving I added a handful of baby arugula and a drizzle of balsamic glaze.
While this isn’t your traditional pesto pizza, the beets lend a new and distinct take on the classic pie. The deep flavor of roasted beets and garlic cut with the acidity of the lemon is a refreshing change from marinara while the basil brings you back to familiar territory. The crust seemed vitally important, so I would encourage taking the extra time to make yours from scratch.
As winter drudges on I find myself spending my lunch hour curled up by a space heater at my desk oggling photo after photo of soup on pinterest. One recipe in particular kept stopping me in my tracks, a cluster of vegetable based soups in bright technicolor that promised to detoxify my liver. Since I have been forced to adhere to high carb diet, our pantry was stocked with sweet potatoes so I thought I’d try my luck with this alluring orange number.
I’ll cut straight the chase on this one before we dive into the particulars. When you see a bowl of food this beautiful that also promises to rid your body of any number of toxins, the author probably hasn’t actually eaten it. If they have, I’m not really sure what their definition of “soup” is. I will categorize this more as “healthy” mashed potatoes, a little too sweet for my tastes with a one note flavor that had me fantasizing about Hearty Cheeseburger Soup by the time I’d made it through a quarter of the bowl. Yeah, thats right, Hearty Cheeseburger Soup.
We made a few alterations to the original recipe as we went along, the most important of which was the cook time and temperature of the vegetables. The original recipe called to cook for 20 minutes at 329*, which after the timer went off I realized was completely insane. We upped the temperature and roasted for an additional 40 minutes. I’d recommend starting off at 400* and roasting for an hour at a minimum.
In the end I wish we had introduced more liquid and more heat to the soup. A little cayenne went a long way on making it more palatable, and I wish I had had the foresight to blend in more stock or coconut milk to improve the consistency. Overall I think it is a promising base that, while easy on the eyes, could use a bit of massaging before I’d recommend it as a memorable soup.
Fresh parsley, 1 teaspoon coconut milk, to garnish
Instructions
Heat the oven to 400*
Line a baking sheet with baking paper, add the sweet potato, carrots, parsnip, onion, and garlic, season with salt, chili, turmeric, and cumin, add the coconut oil and toss to combine.
Roast for 1 hour then transfer into the blender.
Add the warm vegetable broth, grated ginger, and cooked red lentils into the blender and process to obtain a smooth cream.
Make great soup from the odds and ends of your kitchen
The vacmaster is great in all but one way. You know the feeling that you should save scraps of stuff to make soup with later, that gets worse. a lot worse.
We cleaned out the freezer and found about a year’s worth of badly labeled and mystery bags of potential soup bases and finally tried it. There’s some country ham and barley stock, some cheese rinds, some ends of rye bread, carrot solids, pear juice, beef bones, country ham ends, etc.
We had some duck leftover from Valentimes Day, so that was going to be used too. We had carrots, jalapenos, and cilantro quietly waiting in the back of the fridge huddled together waiting for garbage night.
Nothing would be wasted tonight. We were finally making garbage soup. Sort of cheating though, since some of the the garbage we had was soup stock. oh well. From the stuff in the fridge, we decided to make it pho ish. but use whatever the stock came out as. I threw in some pho seasoning and dumped all the stuff into the pressure cooker.
About an hour later I strained out a delicious stock. Rich and meaty. Dense, hearty, crazy flavorful. Layer noodles, duck, soon to be rotten vegetables, pour over nearly thrown away stock and whoosh, you’ve got dinner for two days and lunch one day. The smug satisfaction from not wasting anything lasts forever.
Sometimes it’s -4 degrees outside and the majority of the food in your posession is the very stale loaf of bread on your counter. Transform your odds and ends into this comfort food hit packed with kale!
¼ cup dried shitaake mushrooms (rehydrated in red wine)
1 tblsp truffle oil
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cut the bread into 1″ cubes and place in a large mixing bowl.
In a small saucepan, melt the butter and carmelize the onion.
While your are carmelizing the onion, beat eggs until they are a creamy yellow. Add buttermilk, truffle oil, salt, pepper, dill, and red pepper and whisk until incorporated.
Add carmelized onion, kale, rehydrated mushrooms, and goat cheese to the bread. Toss until evenly incorporated and move bread mixture into a heavy baking dish (we used a dutch oven).
Pour egg mixture over bread and bake covered for one hour.
We cleaned out the freezer and found about a year’s worth of badly labeled and mystery bags of potential soup bases and finally tried it. There’s some country ham and barley stock, some cheese rinds, some ends of rye bread, carrot solids, pear juice, beef bones, country ham ends, etc.
