Recipes in the Vegetarian category are either already vegetarian or can be made so very easily.
You can find the recipe @ the LA Times or in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook.
Here’s a picture of the brine and a picture of the sliced and macerated zucchini before combining. These are very tasty, but they are refrigerator pickles so they last no more than 2 weeks. Wish there was a good way to preserve them but keep them crisp.
Pici cooked, and simmered a few minutes in a sundried tomato & oil reduction/pesto, with a bit of fresh swiss chard (red chard).
Broccoli Slaw Sesame Salad
1 stalk broccoli, stem only
1 small bunch mizuna, about 20 stems of different sizes
2 spring carrots, medium-small
2 radishes
1 1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil
2 tsp seasoned rice vinegar
1/2 tsp gomashi
1tsp black sesame seeds
Wash all vegetables and peel the carrots as well as any easy areas of the broccoli stem. Cut both into julienne as best you’re able.
Wash & pat dry the mizuna, trimming excess stems. Wash & slice radish into even pieces, either julienne or in half rounds.
Whisk the oil, vinegar, and gomashi together. If you don’t have gomashi, crush sesame seeds with the back of a knife or in a mortar & pestal and mix with some salt. Coat the vegetables in the dressing and top with black sesame seeds when serving.
Impatient Pickles (quick Japanese pickle)
1 Japanese cucumber or equivalent other cucumber (seed other types, but not Japanese cucumber)
1 square kombu (1×1 inches or so, can use some you used to make stock, no problem; this is a type of kelp used to make stocks and other dishes in Japanese cuisine)
1/4 small head of Napa, Chinese, or Savoy Cabbage, sliced thinly and washed
Pinch salt
Add a pinch of salt to the cabbage once it’s sliced and let it sit while you chop the cucumber.
Prep your cucumber by slicing off the ends. Use a lot of salt in your hands to rub the cucumber vigorously; the salt will turn green and a bit of foam will appear. This is normal. Supposedly, it removes bitterness from the vegetable. Rinse it and pat it dry, then cut it into julienne by slicing dramatic diagonal ovals and then chopping them longways to have sticks with green tips.
Mix everything together with your hands, using a light and then a firmer touch to squeeze moisture out of the vegetables. Leave the moisture in the bowl, you’ll use it. When the vegetables are flexible and soft, add the kombu. Put it in a jar with a tight fitting lid or otherwise in a ceramic or glass container with a lid and let it sit at room temp for 1 hour or in the fridge for up to 3 days with the kombu. Remove the kombu and store it another 2 weeks if you want to, assuming it doesn’t smell or look funny.
Serve in small clumps in bowls.
You can add radish or carrot or substitute it as well.
Miso Fish (black cod)
1/4 lb french fingerling (red) potatoes, cut into rounds 1/4 or less thick
1/4 lb butternut squash flesh, cubed or sliced 1/4 inch thick and cut into chunks
olive oil
garlic
Roast garlic cloves in oil in the oven, and remove when soft but not deeply colored or dried out. Puree in small food processor or with mortar & pestle. This will be spread over your pizza skin.
In a nonstick pan, use a bit of oil to cook the potatoes & squash, covering to cook through if necessary. Reserve. I used leftovers from another meal, so it’s fine if they are cold when you use them.
Preheat oven to as hot as it will go and be sure your pizza stone is clean. If you don’t have a pizza stone, place skin on a cookie sheet preferably without edges and “dock” the skin with a fork to allow air to circulate better and crisp it while cooking.
Instead of rolling out your pizza dough, use your fingers to create a thin but mostly even center, leaving an edge that is thicker.
Spread the garlic oil & garlic over the skin evenly and randomly scatter the cooked potatoes & squash. Cook until golden, 3-6 minutes depending on oven temperature. Cut into wedges.
If you’re feeling fancy, throw some fresh chopped herbs on it when it comes out (thyme or basil would be great) of the oven, and dab the edges with a bit of olive oil.
Saikyo Yaki & Konnyaku to Ninjin no Shira ae
I’ve had a fabulous traditional Japanese cookbook for some years now, never really venturing into it. I was interested in it because an old friend used to cook, by nature, a lot of fusion food, and I loved the yuzu citrus so much that I”d go to the Japanese market in Berkeley with some regularity. Now that I live in SF, I have all the expanse of the Nijiya supermarket in Japantown, among other resources.
I’m not inclined to post a lot of the recipes, because they’re complicated, and require making sauces and broths and other things before cooking your actual item, but also because for most people, it will be difficult to find the ingredients.
That said, Japanese food photographs beautifully, and I hope to integrate some of the techniques and ingredients I am learning about into my more improvisational cooking in the near future.
Miso Fish
– Best to use Salmon or Black Cod/other oily fish
– Marinate for 1.5 lbs of fish; I like to do this on Saturdays or Sundays and use it throughout the week; later in the week the flavors are stronger so it’s best to use the cod last as the marinade will remove some of the oily, fishy flavors.
-Marinade must be applied for at least 1 day in fridge or up to 5
Cheesecloth or Japanese cooking cloth
3/4 cup light colored, sweet miso
1-2 T mirin
1 T freeze dried Yuzu peel, zest of 1 fresh yuzu, or zest of 1-2 fresh lemons or limes
Mix all ingredients together thoroughly. Wrap each piece of fish in 1-2 layers of cheesecloth or 1 layer of Saryachi cloth. Paint the marinade on TOP of the cloth, not touching the fish directly. Layer neatly and reasonably tightly (without aggrevating the fish flesh) into a glass, ceramic or plastic container with a lid. Coat each side of the fish and continue layering. It is OK to mix fish types in the same container.
To cook, after marinated at least 1 day in refrigerator, remove cheesecloth and scrape any clumps of marinade off the fish. Put into small foil pan or other pan that is broiler safe with skin side up. Broil for 2-4 minutes, until skin is crisped and blackened. Flip, and cook until colored and cooked through under broiler.
I like to serve this with something acidic, like a simple salad or impatient pickles, and sometimes some miso soup as well.
Fromage Blanc with herbs from Cowgirl Creamery (well actually, from somewhere else, but they carry it?), heirloom cherry/grape tomatoes from capay organics, olive oil, chili flakes, homemade pasta dough with yolks.
FAIL on recipe supply, I’m simply not in the mood and this one is overdue.
I first learned about these Tuscan-style crepes while living in Florence, studying food and wine (both formally and inevitably informally) at Apicius. I rediscovered them when a pleasant little article popped up in the NY Times recently about them.
I made a pilgimage to Rainbow to get chestnut flour and good quality pine nuts (often rancid in my corner store). i went to work. I followed the recipe quite closely, save for the filling which I used a bit less boursoin and more sheep’s milk cheese. The rest was delightful. I wilted some spinich, squeezed half a lemon over it and we had a wonderful dinner. I’d recommend it and it’s a great one for a dinner party as you can assemble, and then pop in the oven for 10 minutes just before serving.
6-8 lipstick or gypsy sweet peppers
1 medium/small red spring onion (or shallots would do, etc)
1 bunch watercress, cleaned thoroughly
olive oil, salt, pepper
Heat the oil at medium heat, add the diced onions when hot. When beginning to sweat, add the peppers in ring slices. Remove the seeds beforehand. When softened but not greying, add the watercress, turn off the heat, cover. Serve when wilted. Toss well. Add some lemon juice or zest if you feel up to it.
Do yourself a favor and make the pesto from scratch if you have access to a food processor. It’s soooo much better than that stuff you’re tempted to buy at trader joe’s. Shame on you.
1/4 C pesto
1 C troffiette (substitute a pasta of similar size if you must)
1 bunch asparagus (~ 1/2 lb)
olive oil
salt
Clean your asparagus and use a carrot peeler gently to remove the thick skin along the bottom. The result should not be white but a paler green from below the head down. Trim the ends off. Cut in pieces as in the picture.
Heat olive oil in non stick pan (about 2 tsp) at medium heat. Add asparagus and cook until bright. Meanwhile, boil the pasta until al dente (very important not to overcook for this one). When done, drain and add to asparagus, turning to low. Add the pesto, mix, and turn off heat immediately. Serve by itself or with some meat or other dish.
By the way, troffiette is a Ligurian specialty (as is Pesto aka “pesto genovese,” I’ve mentioned before basil grows like weeds in the seaside, Italian riviera hillside that is Liguria, let’s not even start to talk about the ligurian foccacia, lobster-like delicious seafood, or wines on this tangent), though it’s not impossible to find in the US or to make yourself. It’s a very easy to make shape, the hardest part is cutting the peice of pasta dough you’re going to work with small enough and using a fine enough ground wheat flour in its construction, as well as letting it rest long enough to cooperate with you. But I encourage you to try to find it or make it.
A case of “there is a lot of stuff going bad in my refrigerator and we need to eat some vetatables. What goes with flank on the grill?” came up on me tonight.
1 small white onion (top attached, ripped from the earth ala farm-fresh-to-you style)
2 gypsy peppers (small sweet peppers)
3 medium yellow flower squash
1 small bunch spinach
1 bunch beet greens
Olive oil
Salt & pepper
Wash all your delightful veggies, and spin dry the greens. Chop the beet greens, take big stems off the spinach. Dice the squash into medium cubes, cut the peppers into small squares. Finely dice your onion.
Heat olive oil in a nonstick. When medium hot, add onion, and 1 min later add gypsy pepper, salt, pepper. 4 more min, add squash, keep heat up. Let brown, tossing. When cooked, add the greens, cover, turn off the heat.
I served it with my favorite marinated flank steak.