Category Archives: vegetable side dish

Zucchini with nicoise olives & almonds

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Zucchini, nicoise, almonds

There’s a little market not far from my house. I love it! I have to stop going! It’s not like a regular farmer’s market, with local vegetables you can afford. It has irresistible, beautiful things that you can’t afford, but can’t not buy. I’ve gone the last three weeks, and I’m like a kid on christmas morning, with my trumpet mushrooms, fiddleheads, castelvetrano olives and french feta. But it has to stop! Yesterday, I stood clutching my bag of olives and my loaf of bread, my brain feverishly trying to catch up with the fact that I’d just spent nearly ten dollars on two kinds of olives, whilst simultaneously trying to figure out if it was worth waiting for the french feta to arrive on the scene. Sigh.

But I bought more castelvetrano olives, because I still have a big crush on them, and I bought some little nicoise olives, which are the cutest things you’ve ever seen! Small and perfect little purply-brown ovals. They’re firm and salty and meaty, and very easy to pit. I decided to add them to some quickly sautéed zucchini, with some garlic, summer savory and chervil, for a quick, light side dish. And I decided to fry some sliced almonds in butter to top it off, because they’re ridiculously tasty that way! (But you could toast them in a dry pan, if you’re vegan). Nice with an arugula salad, but it would be good tossed with pasta, as well!

Here’s Nat King Cole with This Side Up, to listen to while you make this side dish!
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Baked asparagus custard with arugula and tarragon

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baked asparagus custard

Yesterday morning I was feeling a little tired and discouraged. I decided to tag along with David on a bike ride up the towpath that runs between the river and the canal. I pedaled along, looking at the pebbly path, because going over the big ruts makes my back hurt. Which makes me feel old. Then I looked up. The late morning light glowed in the early spring leaves so beautifully it almost hurt. Against the dark tangle of branches, the small leaves hummed with a bright hopeful light. A light that’s only there this time of year, and doesn’t last very long. Well!

I think asparagus is a little like that. It’s so vivid and slender and pretty. It tastes like early spring. You wouldn’t want to eat it all summer, but you do want to eat it now. I like it best lightly steamed with butter and lemon, but you can’t eat it that way every time! So I try different things. I’m not sure what made me think of this, and I’m not sure what it should be called. It’s not a custard, exactly. It reminds me of Stouffer’s Spinach soufflé. When I was a child, that was the special thing to have with our steak. It’s not a soufflé, because there’s no bechamel, and the eggwhites aren’t whipped. But it does feel special. It’s quite light, but substantial enough to serve in slices. It would be nice with a light tomato sauce or red pepper coulis, but it’s flavorful enough to serve as it is. And it’s quick to make!

In Blackalicious’ Green Light – Now Begin, they say,

No more of that sittin’ in a slump and uh
No more of that coulda-woulda-shoulda junk
No more of that waiting for the inspiration, innovation

Or a green light–now begin

That’s right!!
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Eggplant, roasted mushroom, red bliss, spinach bake

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Eggplant mushroom bake

There are certain things in the world I like a lot. I think of these things as “Claire-y.” Otters, for instance, or green chairs with unexpected drawers, or boxes with little secret compartments and little bottles in them. These things are claire-y. I was trying to think of a way to describe this, and I kept coming back to the word claire-y. I love eggplant, mushrooms, spinach and potatoes. I love them cooked these ways, and I love them all together. I also seem to be drawn to odd dishes that defy definition and categorization. I’m not sure what to call this? Is it a gratin? A tian? A bake? A casserole? (For some reason a casserole seems like something my fourth grade teacher from the 70s would make. The one with the polyester suit and the glasses on a chain.) As I understand it, most of these words describe the dish it was baked in. But I don’t know what my dish is called! ACK! I decided to call it a bake. Because it’s baked. Here’s what it involves…thinly sliced vegetables, each prepared in a slightly different way, layered together with some cheese and baked. That’s about it. The potatoes are boiled, the eggplant is fried, the mushrooms are roasted, and the spinach is sautéed. It’s quite easy though! It sounds like a lot of steps, but they’re all pretty easy and quick. And then when it’s done, what is it? It’s hearty and satisfying enough to be a main course, but it also works quite well as a side dish. It’s whatever you want it to be, I guess!

Eggplant mushroom bake

Today friends, instead of finding a song about casseroles, tians or bakes, I’m going to post this song that has been haunting me. It’s so beautiful and plaintive. When a song like this is an earworm, it’s like having a little ghost howling in your head! It’s Tommy Johnson’s I Want Someone to Love Me.

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red pepper semolina crepes with broccoli rabe & chickpeas

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My favorite meal in the summer is any meal that involves a lot of different little dishes. A mezze or tapas type of situation. It’s sort of funny that this makes me think of summer, because in the summertime we like to eat outside. If you do the math, you’ll see that this means that we carry lots of little dishes out the kitchen door, down a small path, down a step, and onto the outside table. It’s worth it, though! I swear it is! It was crazy warm last week, so we ate outside, and I’ve already started in with the summer meals.

Let me tell you about this one. I like to make a kind of crepe, a kind of green, a kind of sauce, a kind of salad, and a kind of potato, and have them all together. However…although we’ve had exactly this kind of meal before, we’ve never had anything quite like this!! I made crepes with semolina flour and roasted red peppers. Delicious! Not thin and elegant, exactly, but very satisfying! I made broccoli rabe sauteed with chickpeas and grape tomatoes. Lovely! And I made thinly sliced roasted potatoes seasoned with sage and Spanish smoked paprika. Finished with a simple salad of baby spinach and baby arugula dressed with with olive oil and balsamic, salt and pepper.

I’m going to post Dead Prez’ Happiness at this point. I should probably save it for later in the summer, but I need it now. So here we go…
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Magic broccoli

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Magic broccoli sauce

The other night, I got home from work latish, I was tired, I wasn’t up to making anything elaborate. But I did feel a little guilty about the dearth of vegetables in my vegetarian sons’ diets, so I decided to make some broccoli. I threw some in a pot with a little water, cooked it till it was bright and just starting to soften, drained it, but not very carefully, and added four ingredients. That was it!

The boys loved it! The fought over the last piece! They poured the broth on their plates and mopped it up with bread! They asked me to make it again the next night. Which I did. And I’d like to have saved some to take a picture of, but there wasn’t a morsel left. If you served this over rice or noodles, you’d have a meal! You could always add tofu or chickpeas if you wanted a bit of protein. And you could add nut butter, or hot pepper, or garlic… I had to stop myself, because I think the beauty of this recipe is its simplicity.

It’s magic!

Here’s Junior Murvin with Magic Touch.
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Collards with sweet, spicy, salty peanuts

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Collards and spicy peanuts

Sometimes the recipe picks the song, and sometimes the song picks the recipe. Most of the time, I’ll think of what I’d like to cook (and eat!) and the music will come into my head while I’m making it. Yesterday, as I was wheeling around town, I started thinking about the perfection of the song Salt Peanuts by Dizzy Gillespie. Honestly – have you heard it? It’s killer! The only words in the song are…”Salt peanuts, salt peanuts.” Right now I can’t think of anything better than that!

Then I got to thinking about how I don’t cook with peanuts very often. I cook with all sorts of other nuts. Tree nuts, but not peanuts. We eat peanuts in their shells. Half the household eats peanut butter in their sandwiches every single day. But I don’t cook with peanuts very often.

spicy salty sweet peanuts

To make it about Salt Peanuts, the peanuts would have to be salty. I also wanted them to be a little bit sweet, and a little bit spicy. And then I wanted to eat them with collard greens, because I love greeeeeeeeeeeeeeens!! But I kept the collards simple, because the peanuts were very flavorful. The way I made the peanuts, they got a bit burny-tasting. Blackened, if you will. I really like that flavor. If you don’t, keep a close eye on your peanuts and don’t let the pan get too hot.

Here’s a performance of Salt Peanuts from 1947.
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Collards with tiny spicy crispy potatoes

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collards

We’ll begin today, friends, with a reading from the liner notes of my new (brilliant) Jimmy Smith album, Home Cooking.

On the front of this album, there is a brilliant color photograph of Jimmy Smith by Blue Note’s talented lensman, Frank Wolff. Jimmy is standing in front of what is, to many musicians, the “soul station” in the neighborhood of Harlem’s Apollo Theatre.

Kate’s Home Cooking is located on 126th Street, not far from the Apollo’s backstage entrance. Performers such as Ruth Brown, Cozy Cole, Count Basie, Fats Domino, James Moody, Art Blakey and Horace Silver make it their prandial headquarters during the course of a week when they are playing the big A. Jimmy Smith is an ardent admirer of “Home-soul” cooking, especially the brand dispensed by Kate O. Bishop. Home Cookin‘ is a dedication to Kate. This “all blues” date musically approximates the feeling her cuisine imparts. The distance from grits, greens and gravy to swing, sounds and soul is a short one for Jimmy Smith.
…
This salute, Home Cookin‘, in recognition of a certain brand of culinary art that has not perished (thanks to Kate Bishop), finds Jimmy Smith and his colleagues demonstrating that the blues, if utilized when just ripe and seasoned correctly, will never lose any of their flavor either.

I love that! The whole idea. Food, music, soul. Yeah. Well, after reading this, I went out and bought some collard greens. I love greens of any variety, I really do! I know I’m not remotely from the South, so this isn’t exactly my home cooking, but I love it all the same. The idea of it and the taste of it. I’ve given some thought to what my home cooking might be. Savory pies, I guess, with greens and beans in them?

These collard greens are sort of a fusion of two different quintessential collard recipes. One is Ye’abesha gomen, an Ethiopian dish with garlic and ginger, and the other is one more typical of the American south, with chiles and bacon. Obviously, I don’t eat bacon, but I roasted some potatoes that had been chopped into small cubes, and then I tossed them with my spice mix, which has the smokey, savory flavor I associate with bacon or sausage.

I usually like my greens bright and cooked just as much as necessary, but for some reason, I wanted these collards to be meltingly soft, so I cooked them for quite a long time. The crispy potatoes on top formed a nice contrast of texture. I added a dash of vinegar at the end, to bring out the hot savory flavors, and that’s about all I have to say about that!

Here’s Jimmy Smith with Messin’ Around from Home Cookin’
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Salad of warm greens, french lentils and wild rice

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warm kale salad

We’ve had a reprieve in the weather lately. In the afternoons you actually feel the warmth of the sunshine, and there’s a hopeful light that makes you forget we’ve got all of February to get through. And then you buy lettuce or tomatoes, and the iciness comes back to you. Luckily we’ve still got warm salads! This is a very substantial one – with flavorful french lentils and wild rice tossed in, and a handful of almonds thrown on at the end to add crunch. I made a sort of dressing with plum tomatoes briefly sauteed in olive oil and balsamic. This salad is a meal, and this meal is vegan. Cheese would make it taste even better, in my opinion – goat, or fresh mozzarella, or some grated sharp cheese. But then it wouldn’t be vegan, obviously! Anyway, it was quick to make, so I’m going to keep it quick now. (Yup, I’ve got to go to work!)

And here’s Big Daddy Kane with Warm it Up, Kane to sing to yourself while you warm up your kale.
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Kale, carrots, couscous…

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Braised carrots and kale

My nine-year-old son talks in his sleep. (Sometimes he even walks in his sleep, which scares the heck out of me.) He always says the sleepiest, sweetest, most nonsensical things. The other night, he called me, I went into his room, he said, “mommy, how do you cook dinner so fast?” and then he lay back down, asleep. He had no memory of it the next day.

By the harsh light of day, the truth is that I don’t always cook dinner so fast. Sometimes I make dinners that take all day, on and off. But, as it happens, some of the best dinners are dinners that take no time at all. This doesn’t mean they’re dull, it just means that we’re vegetarians, and the best vegetables are frequently lightly cooked vegetables. So, here’s a good meal for a night that you want something quick and tasty. Kale and carrots braised in white wine with thyme and caraway seeds, served with israeli couscous made into a sort of pilaf with apricots and pistachios and goat cheese. Simple.

Israeli couscous with apricots and pistachios

Here’s the Budos Band’s version of Sing a Simple Song, to listen to while you make this simple dinner.
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Puréed spinach with potatoes

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Spinach & potatoes

Puréed spinach is a tricky thing. On the one hand, it can conjure pictures of creamed spinach from a can, featured in remarkably unflattering photos in 50s magazines. On the other, it can be a flavorful and comforting dish, prettily bright green and good for you, too. I’ve always loved saag aloo, the Indian combination of spinach and potatoes, in which the texture is pleasing, not drably mushy. This is inspired by that dish. It’s flavored with basil, rosemary and smoked paprika – some of my favorite flavors, and all really lovely with the spinach. The spinach is quickly boiled, and then pureed and returned to the heat, but not cooked to sogginess. It emerges bright green, and still in possession of the full force of its delightful spinachiness. The cornmeal makes this substantial without being stodgy, like a tiny touch of polenta. And the potatoes – boiled simply in their skins – are surprisingly good. You can actually taste them, they’re not just a starchy background element. We ate this with some curried white beans and my ootoes, or yeasted semolina pancakes. Simple and satisfying.

Here’s Belle and Sebastian’s Simple Things
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