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Doyle
is always looking for good vegetarian recipes. Alton Brown
recommends roasting vegetables to get a quality that is
different from frying or boiling or steaming.
DIJON VEGETABLE ROAST
This
recipe that Doyle has modified from one he found in this months
Cooking Light magazine is so simple yet surprisingly
sophisticated in taste.
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5½ tsp olive oil, divided
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¼ teaspoon salt
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¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
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¼ teaspoon grated lemon rind
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1½ pounds small potatoes
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1 medium onion, cut into ¼-inch thick wedges (about 8
ounces)
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cooking spray
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2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
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15-17 pitted ripe olives, drained and halved
Doyle
used the beautiful Dutch yellow potatoes, which cost a little
more but are worth it, but baby reds would also work. Cut them
in half so there’s an exposed surface. Quarter the onions. Put
the potatoes and onions in a bowl and mix with 1½ tsps of olive
oil. Use 2 cups of grape or cherry tomatoes, cut in half and
about 15-17 good black olives, also cut those in half and put
them in another bowl and wait. Put the potatoes and onions
mixture in a jelly roll pan and put them in the oven at 400º for
20 minutes. Then add the tomatoes and olives and cook for 10
more minutes.
The
secret to this recipe is, you make a sauce from the mustard, 4
tsps of the olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon rind, all whisked
together. That’s it for the sauce, and it’s amazingly good.
It uses minimal salt and pepper, no other herbs or spices are
necessary.
Doyle
uses his homemade mustard for the sauce in the previous recipe.
PIRYIANE
When
taking a cooking class from a Greek cook, Doyle learned another
wonderful vegetable dish that she called piryiane; this
confused him because it sounded like the name of an Indian dish,
but now he has found briam listed in a cookbook which he
thinks must be a related dish.
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3 medium size green zucchini
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2 cloves garlic
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5 scallions chopped fine
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4 Tbsp parsley chopped fine
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1 green pepper sliced fine
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1 small can peas (or ½ cup frozen peas or ½ cup fresh peas)
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2 potatoes sliced
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½ cup green beans
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¼ cup lima beans
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½ cup carrots, sliced ¼ inch thick
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½ cup celery chopped fine
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1 cup canned tomatoes
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4 Tbsp olive oil (or 4 Tbsp butter or margarine, or a
combination of any)
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2 Tbsp tomato paste
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1 vegetable bouillon cube
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1 beef bouillon cube
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salt and pepper
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½ cup water
Wash
and scrape the zucchini, slicing into ½-inch pieces. Arrange
all these vegetables in a baking pan. Add the oil and mix the
vegetables together. Dissolve the bouillon cubes in the water
and pour on the vegetables. Add salt and pepper and mix well.
Bake at 350º for 1½ hours, uncovered, mixing frequently.
On the
day the teacher made this recipe, she didn’t have tomato paste,
and so used tomato juice in lieu of the tomato paste and water.
It is important to cook this uncovered so that it is roasted and
not stewed. The long list of vegetables (specific, not just any
you have on hand) took on a vitality from the act of roasting.
BRIAM
Wash
and peel the tomatoes and chop them into small pieces; spread
half of them in a baking pan. Peel and wash the potatoes; and
slice them into rounds. Do the same to the squash and
eggplant. Clean the okra and sprinkle with a little vinegar.
Lightly salt and pepper the tomatoes in the pan; spread the
potatoes, squash, eggplant and okra over them. Add a little
more salt and pepper. Mix the onion, garlic, green pepper, and
parsley together and sprinkle over the vegetables. Tope with
the remaining tomatoes. Pour the oil over the surface. Bake in
a 250º oven for 1½ to 2 hours, adding a little water if
necessary.
BAKED CAULIFLOWER
A
caller from Champaign offers a recently-discovered baked
cauliflower recipe that is delicious and popcorn-y flavored,
which she found in a book of appetizer ideas. Take a whole head
of cauliflower and cut into florets or golfball-sized pieces.
Toss in a little bit of oil (olive oil or canola). Put in a
superhot 450º oven for about an hour; turn every twenty
minutes. By the end of the hour you have something almost
crunchy and caramelized on the outside, tender inside; sprinkle
with a little kosher salt and enjoy this tasty snack! Her
teenage girls scarf it down. Cook it on parchment paper so that
it doesn’t stick. She has experimented doing the same with
carrots, but the density means they require a really long time
to cook; Doyle suggests parsnips or broccoli.
SWEET POTATOES
Sweet
potatoes cook faster than white potatoes; if you’re cooking them
together, cut the sweet potatoes in larger pieces, they’ll come
out right. Doyle guards his sweet potatoes and doesn’t like to
mix them with other things!
David
recommends mashed sweet potatoes: steam them so they don’t pick
up a lot of moisture, then just add some butter, perhaps a bit
of brown sugar or maple syrup, and mash; Doyle suggest also
adding a bit of star anise, but David doesn’t like licorice
flavor. However, a caller from Danville reports that he also
does not like licorice, but finds that sprinkling a bit of anise
on baked sweet potato is delicious. Like Doyle, he eats the
peel.
A
caller from St. Joseph urged David to only roast sweet potatoes,
not boil them. Peel them, cut into slices, put a little oil on
the baking sheet, and roast at 350º to 400º; turn once in a
while, they caramelize too. You don’t need brown sugar or
butter. David emphasizes that the steaming is for when they
mash them. Minimally treated roasted sweet potatoes are also
terrific.
A
caller from McLean County agrees about eating the sweet potato
skin, but asks whether they should be wrapped in foil to cook,
or not? Doyle says, no foil, but poke with a fork so they don’t
explode; put well-oiled sweet potatoes directly on the rack in a
convection oven.
ROAST ASPARAGUS
A
caller from Urbana reports that roasting asparagus is
surprisingly excellent. Cut it into 1-inch pieces and peel the
lower part. David once had roasted asparagus that was wrapped
in prosciutto, and that was very good. Roasting brings out the
sweetness of asparagus, which some people otherwise find a
little harsh.
The
Urbana caller adds that for roasting carrots, put them in the
microwave for a bit before roasting; otherwise they take so long
that they might burn. The caller from McLean County, though,
questioned the use of the microwave: she had heard that when
you use the microwave, you destroy nutritious enzymes; is this
so? When Doyle uses the microwave, vegetables aren’t in there
for more than 4 minutes so it should be okay.
Roasted beets are also really good. Scrub them, put them in a
dish and bake. No other preparation is required. The skins
slip off easily. They have a different taste from boiled
beets.
ROAST EGGPLANT
A
caller from Urbana inquired whether Doyle has any eggplant
recipes for roasting? Doyle thought of the “poor man’s
caviar”: cut the eggplant in half and roast it, cut side down
on pan until it is thoroughly roasted. Scrape the meat out of
the hull, and use it as a dip, adding some garlic and cumin and
lemon juice and olive oil.
A
caller from Urbana suggested that Doyle’s recipe is a variant of
baba ghanoush: peel and mash a whole eggplant that has roasted
for at least a half hour. Add a few tablespoons of tahini, a
minced garlic clove, juice of half a lemon, and salt to taste,
and let stand half an hour; before serving sprinkle with a few
drops of olive oil and dashes of ground cumin. This makes a
wonderful appetizer.
The
other roasted eggplant is the one called “and the imam fainted”;
cut into it and stuff with other vegetables. The complete
recipe is available in a previous program:
http://www.will.uiuc.edu/am/focus/cooking/2007-04-07.htm.
David
searched on Epicurious for “roasted eggplant” and found 65
recipes, including a roasted eggplant medley, which can be found
at
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/183. The
natural things to combine with eggplant seem to be red peppers,
tomatoes, onions, etc.
ROASTING TECHNIQUE
A
caller form Champaign inquired about the proper procedures for
roasting vegetables. How do you avoid burning especially in
outdoor grilling? Outdoor grilling is not the confined heat
that we’re talking about today. Doyle recommends using a low
flat pan (jelly roll pan). You need to put oil on the
vegetables you are going to roast, but not a lot of other
stuff. There isn’t much technique. David adds, when you roast
vegetables, don’t crowd them and periodically turn them over.
This is one of the easiest things you can do in the kitchen.
OTHER WAYS TO USE ROASTED VEGETABLES
What
other things can you do with the vegetables other than just
eating them out of the oven? You can use them in soup, for a
whole different effect than using raw vegetables in soup; they
kept their roasted vegetable quality of sweetness and
crunchiness.
The
hottest thing now is “fire-roasted” tomatoes used in tomato
sauce.
Some
of the roasted vegetables are also pureed in different ways and
used as spreads. You can also use roasted vegetables as pizza
toppings.
Consider also roasted fruit: fresh peaches or pears. They get
caramelized in a different way. Treated exactly the same way as
the vegetables.
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