Recently in vegetable Category

I seem to crave this dish in the summer more than the winter, as with salad in general.

I wanted a little vegetable to go with my fish and chips so I made this healthy and spicy, mayonnaise-free, coleslaw. It's good, but not great. It's missing something that I was unable to discern, but I did eat the whole thing. A work in progress.

½ lime, juiced
½ tsp. cumin
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp. sriracha
⅛ c. olive oil
salt
pepper

cabbage, finely sliced (about 1 ½ cups)
1/2 carrot, grated
red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 jalapeño, seeds and ribs included, minced
cilantro, chopped

In a bowl, whisk together the first group of ingredients to form the dressing. Add the vegetables and toss to coat.

This should be vegetarian, of course, also vegan (and therefore dairy-free), soy-free and gluten-free. Wow.

This recipe is roughly based on this recipe from Epicurious. I incorporated some of the changes in the comments, and it's scaled somewhat oddly. I made a serving for 1 to 2, but the amount of spice is closer to the serving for 8.

I'm pretty sure the cumin and lime are fighting with the sriracha. I think it would be better with more jalapeño and no sriracha, which would be the exception to the "everything is better with sriracha" rule.

I made a loaded baked potato to go with my steak. It was very delicious, though a little high in calories. But once in a while it is a treat.

Make a standard baked potato. A large Russet potato works well for this recipe as each serving is half a potato.

Clean the potato, dry it, then coat it with olive oil and kosher salt.

Place on a wire rack on a sheet pan and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes at 350°F.


Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes or so.

Cut the potato lengthwise. Scoop out a little bit of the potato to make it easier to fill and not have the filling fall off. In a twice-baked potato you'd scoop out the whole thing, mix it with stuff, and put it back in, but I just scooped out and discarded a little potato to make room here.

Add thin slices of butter. I used 1 tbsp. per serving (half a potato) which might be a little much, but it was tasty.

Microwave a small amount of broccoli, covered, with a little added water, for 0:50, and add to the potato.

Take 1 slice of frozen, pre-cooked Vermont Smoke and Cure bacon, cut into small pieces and add to the potato.

Season with salt and pepper.

And finally top with a little grated Cabot cheddar cheese. I could have added a little more.

Put the completed potato on a sheet pan in the oven at 350°F for 15 minutes or so.

Serve with sour cream on the side.

One of the things I like to do when I get fresh green beans is to immediately snap off the ends, wash, blanch, and chill them. I vacuum seal them, but that's not strictly necessary.

The reason is that one of my favorite dishes, spicy green beans, really requires that the beans be blanched first. But it's enough effort to clean and blanch them that I'd let the beans sit in the refrigerator until I ended up composting them.

On the other hand, if I prepare them far enough that all I have to do is toss them in a pan of hot sesame oil and add hot pepper sesame oil and chili sauce, that I can do no problem. And also, after expending the effort to prep the beans I have much more of an incentive to not just throw them out!

Two ears of fresh sweet corn from CSA Week #14, real butter, salt, and red wine (Sebastiani Zinfandel, Sonoma, 2006) makes for a meal, right?

Cut potatoes in half, then into wedge-shaped steak fry sized pieces. I used thin-skinned red potatoes, which I left unpeeled. I used about 12.5 oz. of potatoes and cut them into 4, 6, or 8 pieces per potato, depending on the size of the potato.


Blanch the potatoes in the deep fryer at 270°F for 4 minutes or until almost tender. Remove from the oil.

Increase the oil temperature to 360°F and cook for about 2 minutes to 2:30 until golden brown. Drain.

While still hot, season with salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder.

I made extra; I put the remainder in a vacuum bag in a single layer, separated as much as possible, and froze them solid. They then were vacuum sealed for future reheating in the oven.

This recipe has been really popular on the New York Times web site, so I thought I'd give it a try with the beet from CSA Week #5. I'd say it's good, but I didn't think it was all that. I'm skeptical that people who don't like beets would really like it. Now deep fried beet balls, that's another matter entirely.

8 oz. beets, peeled and grated
3 tbsp. freshly squeezed orange juice (half an orange)
1 tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice (half a lemon)
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp. parsley, minced
salt

Serve on a bed of romaine lettuce.

It's a little early, but it's always fun to have the first sweet corn of the year. Usually not the best of the year, but still a treat.

My favorite way to prepare it is:

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil.

Remove the husks and silks.

Salt the water. Add the corn to the pot and bring back to rolling boil. Cover the pot, turn off the heat, and let sit for 5 minutes. Remove the corn from the hot water and serve immediately.

This works best if the pot is not overly crowded, because it will take too long to come back to a boil.

Faced with an abundance of zucchini from CSA Week #4 and CSA Week #5 I decided to make zucchini fritters today. They were pretty good!

10 oz. zucchini, shredded (1 medium-large)
3.8 oz. yellow onion, chopped (1 small)
1.2 oz. jalapeño, chopped (1 large)
0.5 oz. garlic, chopped (2 large clove)
0.3 oz. fresh parsley, chopped (5 sprigs)
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. black pepper, freshly ground
1 large egg, beaten
2.2 oz. all-purpose flour (½ cup)

Shred the zucchini using a coarse grater or the shredding attachment for the food processor.

I don't normally like to mince my vegetables in the food processor because it tends to create a vegetable mush, but in a fritter it doesn't really matter, and the food processor already needed to be washed after grating the zucchini so I just roughly chopped everything else and put it in the food processor with the steel blade. If not using the food processor, then finely dice everything.

I like my food a little spicy so I stemmed the jalapeño and put it in whole. If you don't want it as spicy leave out the seeds and ribs. If I made this again I might add some cayenne as well.

Add the seasoning, egg, and flour to make batter.
I prefer to make fritters in the deep fryer, a couple minutes at 360°F. Take a small handful and drop directly into the hot oil.

It's also possible to sauté them in a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil, 2 to 3 minutes on each side, though the batter is really soft and the fritters are pretty fragile, so this may be tricky.

Remove from the deep fryer and drain. Salt again while still hot.

Can be served with lemon or tzatziki. Or just plain!

This recipe is a combination of a recipe from Martha Stuart, a rather poorly implemented recipe from allrecipes, and my own modifications.