resonant | December daily: Vegetable dishes (Reply)

via_ostiense was kind enough to prompt: favorite vegetable dish.

Probably my most-made vegetable dish comes from Emalee Chapman's Fifteen Minute Meals. (This, along with The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, were the cookbooks my mother bought me when I went away to college, and I've used them both literally to pieces.) It's so simple you don't even really need a recipe; you grate a couple of zucchinis (she adds sliced red pepper, but I hate peppers) and sautee them in olive oil with thyme, and then you serve them over pasta with grated parmesan on top. I'd eat this two or three times a week if the rest of the family wouldn't revolt.

As I get older, I get more pleasure from bitter foods, and I've been enjoying the braised cabbage from Cook's Illustrated: you sautee the sliced cabbage in a knob of butter, and when it begins to soften, you add a splash of chicken broth and cover it until it's cooked the way you like it. Thyme, again, is the best herb. Minced parsley right before you eat it.

I love nearly any vegetable roasted with olive oil and salt and pepper. I have a recipe for roasted Brussels sprouts that gilds that lily: you start with a pre-heated pan in a very hot oven, add diced bacon and roast until it renders out some of its fat, take it out and toss with halved sprouts and roast until they're almost done, take it out again and toss with thinly sliced apple and roast until everything's nice and softened, then toss with a tiny bit of white vinegar. It's a lovely combination of bitter, sweet, sour, salty, meaty, fatty ... I kind of want some now. (Can't get anybody else in the family to eat it except a bite or two for politeness.)