How to Cook (and Enjoy) Broccoli Stems

Broccoli is my husband's favourite vegetable and we eat it incessantly. But I can't stand the little dark, curly leaves. And I think the stems taste like ick.

Thankfully a recipe from Ellie Krieger's cookbook Weeknight Wonders has come to my rescue. I have learned how to cook broccoli stems so that they are delicious. Yippee!

There are just two tricks:
1. cut away all but the sweet, inner portion of the stem, and
2. make sure the stems get the most heat while cooking.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

There are two types of people in the world: those who love Brussels sprouts and those who hate them. Well, I've realised that roasting makes all vegetables better*, and Brussels sprouts are no exception. If you would like to switch to loving them, this is how. If you already love them, this will make them even better.

*except maybe lettuce? Roasted lettuce probably isn't any good.

Actually, let's explore this roasting idea further. Roast potatoes are wonderful, especially when the skins are crispy and glistening with some oil. Roasted sweet potatoes are enough to distract me from even an expensive steak. Roasting aubergines or red peppers transform them into silky, complex dips (see here and here).

Herb Salad with Goat's Cheese

I am terrible at using up the herbs that I buy in little plastic packets. And I am annoyed at myself for this. Often I will buy a pack of mint or parsley or coriander to use with a specific meal. Then I put the remaining herbs away thinking they will be just the things to sprinkle over a meal in a day or two. But then I forget. Later I realise I have a pack of leaves where half of them are already past using and the rest should maybe--no, definitely--be used right now.

Courgette, Corn, and Tomato Sautee

Fresh corn looses its sweet flavour soon after harvesting. I read (in The Vegetable Bible) that corn is past its best only a few hours after it is picked. I guess this explains why frozen corn often tastes so good. It is frozen immediately after harvest, thus preserving both nutrition and taste.

Cauliflower Gratin

Roasted cauliflower is just so deep, delicious, and nutty. If you grew up with wet, limp, boiled cualiflower, then roasting cauliflower will feel like a whole new vegetable. And to make it even more revelatory, add some caramelised onion, cream, and Gruyere cheese for a gorgeous cauliflower gratin.

This is a recipe from a magazine which said to mix store-bought caramelised onion relish with cauliflower florets, then top it with a mixture of cream and cheese. Since I couldn't find any store-bought relish, so I just made some caramelised onions the day before I wanted to make the gratin.

Seaweed, Ginger, and Carrot Salad

After a recent knee injury, I have started taking swimming lessons. Until last October, I was a keen long-distance runner. Then I had quite a bad injury that put me on crutches for eight weeks. (I wrote about my first social outing with crutches here.) I'm still not able to run, though I have managed to cycle three times in the last few months.

On my physiotherapist's advice, I needed to take up a sport that has a lower impact on my knees. I never learned to swim as a child, so I have just started a series of lessons.

Chez Panisse's Baked Goat's Cheese Saald

During our honeymoon we had one memorable meal. We were young and poor at the time, so we planned to have one fancy meal out during our week in Quebec City. We went to a restaurant called Toast near our auberge (inn). It was the most expensive meal either of us had eaten up to that point in life. (I seem to recall that it cost about $100. This was ten years ago, by the way.)

We still talk about some parts of that meal. We remember Anthony ordering a salad that came presented in a massive bowl that tilted the spinach leaves towards him. There was a piece of baguette balanced on the leaves, covered with two pieces of oozing, baked goat's cheese.

Born Round by Frank Bruni [book review] & Italian Creamed Onions

I just finished reading Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite by Frank Bruni, a memoir by the former New York Times restaurant critic. It was very engaging to read about his American-Italian childhood. I was enraptured by the stories of the feasts his grandmother, aunts, and mother created for family events. Having a huge bounty of food was a sign of love in his family. Special occasions always merited a massive spread of food for the whole extended family. His grandmother even had two kitchens in her house, one in the basement for creating the plethora of dishes, and one upstairs for guests to marvel at how she cooked it all without leaving the kitchen in a disastrous mess. One of the dishes I made after reading about it was creamed onions.

Thai Basil and Cashew Stir-Fry

Sometimes my body just craves a big pile of vegetables. One of these days was last week during my half term holidays. After ten weeks at school my body was run down and seeking nutrients. What I needed was more sleep, less stress, and some highly healthy food.

In the past I have arrived at my half term break on the verge of illness. Many years I have made it to the Saturday after school ends and succumbed to a cold or the flu. I have laid on the couch and dribbled away my holiday.

Caramelised Cherry Tomatoes

Caramelised cherry tomatoes, otherwise known as my new easiest side dish. I have started a new job and I am working much longer hours than before. I have to admit that I gave up on cooking for a while. I bought fast food from the train station and enlisted the nearby delivery restaurants to keep us fed for a month. But too much food cooked outside my own kitchen starts to taste strange after a while. Enter: this laughably easy dish.

I bought some white fish to pan fry since that's a fast main dish. Then I added this Donna Hay recipe for caramelised cherry tomatoes. The idea is really that you pan fry some chicken or fish and remove it. Then deglaze the pan for two minutes with balsamic vinegar and halved cherry tomatoes. Then serve. That is all! Cooking the tomatoes add only two minutes to the overall time of making dinner. I served it on some courgette noodles (they were raw, and the balsamic juices warmed them a bit). That's the kind of fast food I need right now.

Quick Pickled Okra

Today I was marking a piece of student work called "Patterns in Our Lives". The idea is that we see patterns all around us, especially in design features, and there are mathematical ways to describe the patterns. This got me thinking about the patterns I see in my life more generally. As I got up from my completed marking to make lunch, I realised that I eat a variety of foods, but very similar types of dishes and meals. For example, most of my lunches are a mainly a mixture of raw or lightly cooked vegetables. This pattern of eating makes me feel energetic after lunch.

Cucumber Salad with Cumin Vinaigrette

All last school year, every Monday I went to a group personal training session. A trainer came to work and a small group of us pushed ourselves through a punishing number of of press ups, burpees, TRX rows, and the like. I did this every Monday. Every Monday, that is, except one.

Spinach with Sesame Dressing

If you are looking for a quick side dish, look no further! This is officially the recipe with the shortest cooking time on this entire blog.

Let's play a guessing game. Look at this beautiful spinach with sesame dressing, adapted from a recipe by Donna Hay. How long do you think the spinach is cooked for?

How to Reduce the Sharpness of Raw Onions

I love raw onions but find they taste too strong. I feel as though their sharpness is just one notch too high for me. Thankfully there is an easy way to reduce the strong bite of raw onions slightly. And it only requires reordering your preparation steps.

Easy Braised Endive

Finding some endive at the grocery store was exciting! I have recently been wanting to try cooking it. Simple cooking is best for me - I don't have the patience to faff about too much. So I read up about cooking endive and distilled what I learned into the simplest tasty recipe.

Riced Cauliflower

This recipe is affectionately known as "cauli rice" in my house. It's a rice substitute that I eat all the time, most recently with beef chilli and chicken curry.

Cauli rice is very mild and neutral tasting - just like rice. It is just finely chopped cauliflower, pan-fried in butter until translucent or a little charred. It's a very simple backdrop to a spicier main dish.

Warm Bean and Courgette Salad with Mint

I read a lot of food blogs. Precisely 278 food blogs. I use Google Reader to do this - it aggregates all the new posts and if you've never tried it before, you should! Start by adding Simply Cooked and a few other blogs to your Reader and away you go! (You'll love it, I promise.)

Here's the thing. There is a big, gaping hole in my list of food blogs. I want, but can't seem to find, more food blogs that concentrate on vegetables. I can't get over my love to all things veggie, and I want to find more people who feel the same. I want to drool over pictures of beautiful salads. I want to find intriguing combinations of crisp and green things. I want to feel inspired to make more of my vegetables and inspired to buy more new-to-me items.

Bean Sprout Salad

Bean sprouts - not the sexiest of vegetables. In fact I find them kind of unpleasant. But I learned a new method of preparing them and I was mighty impressed. Blanch them - a brief dip in boiling water made them silky! I was amazed at how much more palatable, enjoyable, even, the sprouts became.

Valentine's Day Ideas

We long ago stopped debating about eating out or in for Valentine's Day. Eating out on February 14 is too expensive, with fancy, overpriced set menus. And the service always seems a little surly because the restaurant is busy and the staff would rather be elsewhere. As a result, we eat at home on Valentine's.

(The best day to go to a restaurant, we discovered, is February 15! The restaurant is much quieter and the meals are back to normal price.)

What about you? Will you or your loved one be cooking for Valentine's Day? Here are some ideas to make this romantic day easy and successful.

Starters:

Pumpkin and peach salad with lemongrass dressing

Cauliflower soup with roasted red pepper swirl

Carrot Salad with Spiced Bacon Topping

Here's the easy kind of food I like to make and eat. This is just some chopped vegetables and a bacon topping. But it tastes special because the bacon is fried with garlic and a few aromatic spices in butter.

Carrots and courgettes (zucchini) are such simple and cheap vegetables, but I really love finding ways to make them seem new again. I chopped them into tiny pieces in my food processor, and made this little bacon topping to go with them. There's just enough butter to coat the vegetables very lightly; you may like a bit more butter or olive oil. I ate the whole lot for lunch one afternoon.