Tag Archives: vegetables

10 Ways to Dress Up Your Veggies

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Veggies are awesome. I am forever enamored with how many flavors and textures and colors there are to play with. And the fact that the palette changes each season makes me feel like a wide-eyed kid playing nature’s version of Iron Chef.

10-ways-to-dress-up-veggiesBut I can get in a rut with veggies too. I love the uber-simple Alberto’s Grilled Marinated Asparagus so much, for instance, that I make it over and over and over again. But then, that’s not very fun.

So I developed a little arsenal of ways to dress up any vegetable. Use these like shadows and highlights on your ever-changing palette of seasonal veggies to add a bit … more to something that’s already quite lovely. and by all means, mix and match at will.

  • Toasted nuts – Nuts have a lot of things going for them. Their (healthy) fat adds a touch of richness, they have an incredible range of flavor, and then … there’s that crunch. I like to chop or slice them rather than using whole nuts, both because I like the texture better and because it makes a little go a looong way.
  • Cheeses – Gone (I hope) are the days when vegetables had to be covered in a gooey blanket of cheese to be appealing. Fresh seasonal veggies from a CSA, farmers’ market or garden are way too interesting to be covered up like that. But a tiny bit of flavorful, pungent cheese—shredded, shaved or crumbled—is a wonderful addition to almost any veggie.
  • Brown butter – Try these Sautéed Radishes with Mint to see the effect brown butter has on veggies. Just a tad adds luxurious texture and deep, nutty, lip-smacking flavor.
  • Vinegar – Not all flavor additions have to do with fat. Vinegar—and vinaigrettes—brightens veggies even out of the salad bowl. Try our Roasted Beet Wedges with Champagne Vinegar to see how. I also like tossing our Mustard-Shallot Vinaigrette with grilled or roasted veggies.
  • Spices – Simply adding a new spice to a basic dish elevates it to a whole new level. I make roasted broccoli all the time, for instance. Then I pushed the envelope and came up with Roasted Broccoli with Garlic Chips and Spanish Paprika.
  • Citrus zest – Citrus zest packs a surprisingly bright, tangy wallop. A little run of a lemon, lime or orange over a Microplane zester does wonders, especially on richer items like asparagus and potatoes.
  • Soy sauce and miso paste – Both soy sauce and miso paste are umami enhancers, which means they add that voluptuous mouthfeel to the foods. This is especially helpful for vegetables which, for the most part (the big exception being mushrooms), are low on the umami scale.
  • Grated aromatics – I like grating things like garlic, ginger and shallot onto veggies; I find the effect more pungent than simply sautéing them with minced or chopped aromatics. Do beware though: they can burn super-quickly. It’s best to add them in closer to the end of cooking, as I did with our Swiss Chard with Grated Garlic.
  • Honey – Honey truly gilds the lily when it comes to vegetables that have an inherent sweetness to them—like carrots (try our Honey-Ginger Roasted Carrots and you’ll see what I mean). Use it, too, as a semi-sweet counterpoint to salty and sour components like soy sauce and vinegar.

There are my 10 … have any you’d like to share?

Learn to Love Your Vegetables

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A few years back, I interviewed Mollie Katzen—the vegetable guru—for a profile in Prevention Magazine and she spoke about a concept that really resonated with me. She talked about teaching to love vegetables rather than just telling people to eat more of them and—flash—I realized that the shift from “gotta do” to “want to do” was precisely when everything changed for me.

love your vegetablesClockwise from left: Roasted Winter Veggies; Sauteed Radishes with Mint; Garlic Parsnip Fries; Fennel and Granny Smith Salad with Blue Cheese

Sure, I’d learned through my writing that vegetables were incredible allies in health and weight management. Yes, I’d become aware of their role in eco-clean eating, and those reasons alone made me want to eat more of them. But it wasn’t until I began experimenting with a variety of veggies in ways I hadn’t thought of before—often inspired by people like Mollie—that I discovered the most compelling reason to eat vegetables yet … they can be downright delicious. And this from someone who detested vegetables (other than lettuce, raw carrots and cucumbers) well into her twenties, so was against all odds we became an item.

Here, in one neat little package, are the reasons I fell in love:

Vegetables reduce risk of heart disease

Several studies around the world have concluded that people who eat more vegetables are less prone to heart disease. One of the most wide-ranging studies, looking at nearly 85,000 women over a period of eight years, concluded that each additional serving (1/2 cup for most, 1 cup for leafy ones) of veggies a day reduced risk of heart disease by 4%. Pretty significant! Vegetable’s cocktail of micronutrients (called phytonutrients) are probably a major contributor.

Vegetables can help you maintain a healthy weight

Many studies have looked at associations between diet and weight, but some are now beginning to specifically analyze whether people who eat more vegetables weigh less. Initial results look like indeed they do. One of the theories behind why this is so is that vegetables are less calorically dense (or energy dense) than other food groups (and, at the same time, more nutrient dense).

Eating more vegetables (and less meat) can reduce your carbon footprint

Many people don’t recognize that livestock farming—the intensive concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—that most of our meat comes from produces more greenhouse gas than all forms of transport combined (18% of global, man-made greenhouse gas emissions). It also uses a great deal of water. It takes an average of 22,000 gallons of water—22,000!—to produce just over 2 pounds of beef.

Eating vegetables is FUN!

Eating seasonal, locally grown vegetables opens up whole new worlds of foods to play with. It’s like a Dr. Seuss book—your carrots can be orange, white or purple, and your cauliflower the same. Radishes can be red hot and spicy, or icy white and sweet or a gorgeous hue of magenta. If you don’t like steamed broccoli, try roasting it. If you don’t like boiled carrots, try sautéing them with a bit of spice.

Don’t just eat more vegetables (boorrrinnng) … fall in love with them.

Roasted Root Veggies

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This basic recipe  for roasted winter root veggies is one we turn to again and again with different mixtures depending on what’s at the market. I love how, after about 15 minutes, the kitchen is perfumed with a deep, sweet scent that lingers well past dinner. These seasonal winter vegetables are super versatile too. Serve them with anything–or on their own–or fold them into pasta or a frittata. And it’s a perfect recipe to practice your knife skills.

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