From the category archives:

Vegetables

Honey and Cumin Braised Carrots

March 4, 2010

Me: How much broccoli should I cook?
Andrew: How much Cheez Whiz do we have?
Me: How long to you want to remain married?
Andrew: [...]
Okay, moving onto safer territory — carrots.
I got the idea for these after dining in a restaurant when the accompanying vegetables outshone the forgettable duck confit. While the poultry disappointed, I was so [...]

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Swiss Chard with Raisins and Pine Nuts

February 18, 2010

I fall easily into a vegetable rut. If it weren’t for this blog I’d happily get my daily quota of greens from string beans, broccoli and mesclun mix salad. I once ate Basil and Walnut Green Beans every night for a week. When I stopped I swear, the stock for California walnuts plummeted.
But I have [...]

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How to Roast Vegetables

February 4, 2010

I got a bit carried away. I was experimenting with roasted vegetables for today’s CTV appearance and ended up making five variations. I just couldn’t make up my mind which version I liked best, so I made them all. Well, almost all. Having recently posted about Herb-Roasted Potatoes I felt I could skip this one [...]

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Vegetable Tagine

January 28, 2010

In the comment section recently, Leslie asked about eggplant. She’s tired of it drowned in tomato sauce or swimming in oil. Joe Girard of Rouxbe Online Cooking School provided some great answers, but even his professional advice didn’t get me off the hook. I’d promised Leslie I’d look into other ways of cooking it, and [...]

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Spicy Green Beans

January 8, 2010

Wouldn’t you know it? The week I post my culinary resolutions, my gas range rebels. The stovetop works just fine, but the oven fluctuates wildly, making baking a crap shoot with wheat and a roast chicken dinner the poultry equivalent of Russian roulette.
And the real kicker? My stove’s so old a replacement thermostat is no [...]

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Aix-en-Provence Black Olive Tart

December 8, 2009

The area of a circle is ∏r².
This bit of high school math comes in handy when a recipe calls for a 12-inch tart pan and you go to three stores in search of one and all you come home with is a 118-pound, 5-litre cast iron Dutch oven you bought on impulse.
Why math? Had I [...]

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Kitchen Scraps and a Brussels Sprouts Recipe

October 29, 2009

Every once in a while I do something unpredictable. Like cook Brussels sprouts.
I don’t like Brussels sprouts, but Pierre A. Lamielle’s book Kitchen Scraps made me do it. Here, Monty Python dukes it out with Edward Gorey as Martha Stewart barks encouragement from the wings. Sure, this cookbook looks like it sprung from the demented [...]

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Fried Green Tomato Parmesan

September 29, 2009

The deed is done. I have picked all the tomatoes, uprooted the plants and put the garden to bed.
I’d like to think the tomatoes didn’t want to go any more than I wanted to remove them. I had ambitious plans to deal with the garden on Sunday. But it was unseasonably hot and muggy. After [...]

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Fresh Tomatoes with Balsamic Vinegar

September 3, 2009

I can’t believe I didn’t think of half the tomato dishes people suggested yesterday, especially since I Summer Fest ended with tomatoes. Given my mental lapse, I’m quite surprised how polite you all were with your suggestions. Not one of you put “Doh!” in your answer or called me names.
Well, I’ll do it for you.
Doh! [...]

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Summer Fest Week 4 – Tomato Salad

August 18, 2009

Tomatoes are a paradoxical plant. Botanically, they’re a fruit — they have their seeds on the inside — but in the kitchen we treat them as vegetables. While their flesh is a staple in many world cuisines, their leaves are toxic enough to poison a small child. Heck, we can’t even agree on how to [...]