Tag Archives: veggies

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?

Root Veggie Latkes

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Who says Hanukkah latkes have to be made with potatoes? A trio of root veggies — carrots, parsnips and golden beets — lend our latkes a golden hue and a touch of sweetness while exotic spices add a bit of heat.

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Healthy Made Convenient

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By Alison Ashton

After Hurricane Katrina rolled through the Gulf States five years ago, a friend headed to his family’s home in south Mississippi to clean up the damage. While he was there, the military came by, distributing MRE (meals ready to eat) like they were edible Mardi Gras beads. My friend accepted some and passed them along to his wife, who was my coworker. She brought them to work, where several of us gathered in the communal kitchen to sample some guv’ment fare. It was OK–and probably very welcomed by thousands of overwhelmed souls busy setting up house in FEMA trailers. When time and resources are tight, your definition of “good” broadens” considerably.

At NOURISH Evolution, we advocate cooking from scratch with fresh, whole, seasonal foods. But we also live in the real world, where long days can make getting healthy food on the table for dinner challenging. We’ve offered cook-ahead strategies to stock the freezer, shared speedy recipes that come together faster than ordering a pizza, and suggested equipment like pressure cookers that make quick work of cooking beans and grains.

Sometimes even those are a stretch, though, and it helps to have some of the work done for you. Lately, I’ve notice a wider range of steamed, shelf-stable, refrigerated or frozen legumes, grains, and vegetables that make healthy cooking convenient.

healthy-convenience-postLegumes. I’ve become a fan of vacuum-packed, steamed, ready-to-eat black-eyed peas, lentils, and various kinds of beans distributed nationwide by Melissa’s (I’ve also found refrigerated and shelf-stable varieties at Trader Joe’s). They typically have less sodium than their canned counterparts (rinsing canned beans washes away only about a third of the sodium) and much nicer texture. These steamed legumes are firm and hold their shape.

Whole grains. We’ve sung the praises of Village Harvest’s line of frozen, cooked grains, including quinoa, brown rice, and wild rice. These have terrific texture, and you can pour out what you need and put the rest back in the freezer. (I’ve used the quinoa to speed up preparation of Curry Quinoa Cakes.) Trader Joe’s also has its own label of frozen cooked grains, as well as shelf-stable versions.

Veggies. While I prefer using fresh beets with a big bouquet of greens still attached to make something like Mama Kourtesi’s Beet and Green Salad, there are hectic evenings when I appreciate the convenience of peeled and steamed baby beets that I can add to a salad or slice over pizza. Items like steamed, sliced carrots also are a fast way to add color–and nutrition–to salads and side dishes.

Products like these make it a lot faster to eat healthily on crazy days, but there are some caveats. You’ll pay a premium for the convenience. For instance, a 20-ounce bag of frozen cooked brown rice is $5, which would buy you a 32-ounce bag of uncooked rice (uncooked rice from the bulk bins costs even less). And while many of these items have little or no added salt, others may have more. If salt’s a concern, check the sodium tally on the Nutrition Facts label.

This Mississippi “Caviar” isn’t quite an MRE, but with the help of some ready-to-eat components, it’s close. And it tastes a heck of a lot better, trust me.

alison-thumbA longtime editor, writer, and recipe developer, Alison Ashton is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef and the Editorial Director for NOURISH Evolution. She has worked as a features editor for a national wire service and as senior food editor for a top food magazine. Her work has appeared in Cooking Light, Vegetarian Times, and Natural Health as well as on her blog, Eat Cheap, Eat Well, Eat Up.

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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