Posts Tagged ‘vegetable cookery’

28 Feb

Roasted Vegetable Harissa

Posted by wooddogs3 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Anyone who enjoys the foods of northern Africa is familiar with harissa, the chile-based condiment that often accompanies the meal. It comes in innumerable variations, from a chile-hot thick “broth” ladled into soup or over couscous to a thick paste of chiles (either toasted or not,) vegetables (cooked or not,) seasonings, and oil.

This particular iteration is rather like a thick, textured mayonnaise with the emulsion based on roasted vegetables instead of egg. It‘s a variation on the recipe for Mo’s Harissa in Wild Flavors by Didi Emmons, but Ms. Emmons’s version just dries out the vegetables in a warm oven for a little while, while I like them actually roasted. 
For the hot element, I dip into a small canning jar kept in my refrigerator in which I keep one large or two small cans of chipotles in adobo that have been put through the blender with just enough olive oil to keep the blades turning. It adds a mildly smoky garlicky hot element that makes the harissa taste as if the vegetables were roasted over a wood fire. But you can also use a few toasted ground Guajillo chiles, or a couple of fresh jalapeño chiles roasted with the peppers, or even a heaping spoonful of Kashmiri chile flakes.

I make this in larger batches because we eat a lot of it and I give some away, but you can cut the recipe in half easily.

First, put a teaspoon of cumin seed and half a teaspoon of caraway seed in a small skillet and toast briefly over a medium flame just until the scent comes up. They shouldn’t darken more than a shade. Grind in a spice/coffee grinder or pound thoroughly in a mortar and pestle. Set aside.

Coarsely chop 3-4 cloves of garlic, and chop the stems of a bunch of cilantro. Save the leaves. Set aside.

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Then, start with your bell peppers. While making a run through a big box store I picked up a bag of six bell peppers, two each of red, orange, and yellow. You can use any combination of these colors that you want, and you can substitute a green bell pepper for one of the ripe ones if you want to. Wash the peppers, seed and core them, and cut them in chunks. Put them on a baking sheet. If you want to use fresh jalapeños for the hot element, seed and core one or two, cut in chunks, and add to the bell peppers. If you line the baking sheet with baking parchment, it will make your life easier later on. Roast at 325° for 30 minutes, then put the chopped garlic and chopped cilantro stems on the sheet too and continue roasting to your preferred degree of doneness, which for me is when they have a definitely roasted look as shown below. Keep the garlic by itself so that you can take it off the sheet if it’s browning too fast. Be sure not to let the garlic turn brown or burn.

Now put the roasted peppers, cilantro stems, and garlic in a food processor and process to a chunky paste. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or a chopped quarter of a preserved lemon and a teaspoon of salt, more or less. Add your chipotle paste or toasted ground chiles if you didn’t use jalapeños. With the processor running, pour in very good olive oil in a slow stream until the texture is the way you want it. It’s hard to say how much oil you will use. Have at least a cup handy, and if you use less, no harm done. I aim for a smooth but textured gloppiness as shown in the top photo, but you could also make it in a blender instead of a food processor and blend it completely smooth if you wanted. Add the ground spices and taste for heat and salt. Adjust if needed. Scrape into a bowl and start putting it on stuff. 
I love cilantro leaves chopped over the top but don’t like the leaves blended into the harissa at all; it makes the texture odd and it doesn’t keep as long. But suit yourself.


I think this harissa has a particular affinity for eggs, and we recently made a quick meal of scrambled eggs and hot buttered basmati rice in a bowl with a lavish amount of harissa and chopped cilantro leaves. Delicious. I also like to make a spicy egg salad with hard-boiled eggs and harissa and pile it on a chunk of good baguette. 

Put a good spoonful alongside a greens borek or on top of horta. Or nearly anywhere else.

8 Jun

The Oregon Giant Pea and the Taste of Early Summer

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, front yard gardening, recipe, Uncategorized, urban homesteading, Vegetable dinners, vegetable gardening. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

I think that I have written before about my entrancement with the snap pea/sugar pea called Orgeon Giant. In my opinion, it’s the most delicious thing of its kind  and I gorge on this type for as long as its season lasts. I begin to harvest my early spring planting in late May, waiting until the pods are bulging but not round and making sure to pull the strings off, and at first I eat them blanched in boiling salted water for four minutes and then sautéed in butter with a pinch of salt for a couple of minutes. They go well next to everything.

But as the season gets into full swing, I have enough of them to get ambitious. I continue to be obsessed with Joshua  McFadden’s new cookbook Six Seasons,and tonight I happened to be struck by his addition of English peas to Pasta Carbonara. I don’t eat pasta for carby reasons, but it occurred to me that the traditional carbonara flavors, while rich, are also rather full and gentle, and might go wonderfully with sugar peas even if there were no pasta involved. I hasten to add that there is no question that a large plate full of sugar peas will not do anybody’s carbohydrate count any good. However, we all have our vices, and I do tend to allow anything green.

Have all the prepping done before you start cooking because it goes very fast.
So I started with 2 quarts of enormous peapods, loosely packed. I picked them over and pulled the strings off, and cut them diagonally into pieces roughly an inch long as you see above.
There is no question that piggy products do peas a world of good. I did not happen to have the classic carbonara ingredient pancetta on hand and so I decided to use a thick slice of mild applewood smoked bacon. I cut it into cubes a little bigger than 1/4 inch square. I chopped two cloves of fresh garlic very fine, finely  chopped a small onion, grated about a cup+ of very good Parmesan, and separated out the yolks of three eggs. A quarter cup of heavy cream ended up smoothing out the mixture.

The bacon cubes were rendered gently over medium heat, and the onion and garlic thrown in when they were about half cooked. This mixture was cooked together until the onions were cooked soft without allowing it to color, and meanwhile a couple of quarts of salted water were brought to a fast boil. The heat was turned off under the bacon mixture, and the chunks of pea pods thrown into the salted water and cooked for exactly 4 minutes. The pea pods were drained well in a strainer but not shaken totally dry, and then returned to the hot saucepan, the bacon mixture added, the cream poured in, and sautéed over medium heat for about a minute. Now, working very fast off the heat and stirring  continually with a wooden spoon because a metal spoon would break up the peapods, the egg yolks were added and tossed around for a little under a minute, until the cream looked a bit thickened. Then the Parmesan was tossed in off the heat. When the sauce amalgam look thick and creamy, about a half teaspoon of freshly ground pepper was stirred in and the dish was immediately plated. You can add a little more cheese on the top if you like. Serve hot with some additional black pepper ground over the top.
This may be the purest expression of the sugar snap pea pod, somehow even more classic than the simple blanched pods. The pods retain some texture, and the swollen peas that float around the finished dish are pure essence of early summer. This is a main dish  and if you accompany it with some good white wine, you are very unlikely to want anything else.

1 Jun

A Veggie Cookbook Worth Owning

Posted by wooddogs3 in Books worth reading, cooking, Nose-to-tail vegetables, recipe, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

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There are a lot of vegetable cookbooks on the market currently,most of them much of a muchness and pretty forgettable as far as I’m concerned, but now and then I come across one that must be bought. I bought this one. Then I bought another copy for a friend. It’s of special interest to anyone who grows their own vegetables or gets a CSA box for a few reasons:

1. The organization is by vegetable type, so if you have leafy greens in the garden you can turn to the leafy greens chapter and consider some cooking options.

2. It offers suggestions for vegetables, or parts of vegetables, that aren’t usually eaten. Broccoli leaves, for example, which are good to eat and highly nutrient-dense ( be careful how many you harvest, though, or your broccoli-bud crop will be significantly reduced.) Ms. Ly’s improvisational kale-stem pesto gives you a flexible way to use up the “nasty bits” of your kale. Tomato leaves are used well as a seasoning, and no, they aren’t poisonous. There are numerous other examples: I am looking forward to trying her chard-stem hummus later in the season. The recipe for pan-charred beans with bean leaf pesto looks like another winner.

3. The recipes that I have tried work and taste good. This does not go without saying. I have come across recipes, especially no-waste recipes, that look lovely in the picture but aren’t really edible. Ms. Ly’s recipes are good.

Oh, and 4. It’s available on Kindle if you need to save space on your cookbook shelves.

I don’t accept review copies of cookbooks. I buy them at my local indie bookstore, paying the same price that you will pay. That’s the only way that I can judge whether the value/ price ratio is really favorable. I think this one is worth the money. Even an old hand in the kitchen will pick up some new ideas for using vegetables.