Favorite Vegetable (vegetarian) recipes

Mushroom recipe serves for 2 people.
Ingredients:
* 1 tablespoon butter
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* 3 zucchinis, sliced
* 1 (9 ounce) package mushroom ravioli
* salt and ground black pepper to taste
* 1 tablespoon butter
* 1 teaspoon white truffle oil
Directions
1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. While water is heating, melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium heat, and cook the garlic until fragrant but not brown, about 1 minute. Stir in the zucchini slices, and cook until tender and slightly browned, about 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. About 5 minutes after starting to cook the zucchini, stir the mushroom ravioli into the boiling water. Let them cook until they begin to float, about 5 minutes; scoop out the ravioli with a slotted spoon, and add them to the zucchini. Melt 1 more tablespoon of butter with the ravioli and zucchini, and drizzle the dish with truffle oil. Gently toss the ravioli and zucchini to thoroughly coat with butter and truffle oil, and serve.

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Slow cooker chili recipes are one of the easiest ways to enjoy the benefits of spicy fresh food cooked using a variety of spices.

Many amateur chefs or home cooks are scared by the prospect of cooking spicy food. Such cuisine is often perceived to be the domain of professionals or cooks that have grown up in regions famous for spicy foods such as Asia or south America. This could not be further from the truth.

Spices such as chili, turmeric, garam masala, all spice and cumin offer a very simple way for the inexperienced or amateur cook to liven up an otherwise bland dish. Take for example a tin of chopped tomatoes: place them in a pan with some garlic, fresh chili and some cumin and you immediately have a lively sauce that could form the base to many Indian dishes.

So assuming chili peppers and other spices offer the cook a simple way to liven up simple cooking, adding a slow cooker simplifies the process of putting dishes together such that the chef can focus more on flavour combinations and taste rather than cooking methodologies.

Using a slow cooker chili recipe simply involves choosing a nice selection of base ingredients that can be used in most dishes; chili peppers, potatoes, carrots, courgettes, onions, garlic. In addition the cook can then add other more specific ingredients such as chicken, beef, red or white wine, fish, liver etc. Once these two elements have been combined and are cooking slowly the chef has little to worry about.

Slow cookers therefore remove the need to be concerned about timings, browning onions, searing, crisping etc and instead let the chef free to concentrate on the 3rd element to a successful slow cooker chili recipe; spices. Once the first two elements are cooking, you should taste and experiment by adding different varieties of chili, turmeric or other spices and herbs in order to perfect the blend of flavours in your dish.

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ok - it's pretty spam-like and turkey chili is NOT a vegetarian recipe - but the linked site does have some good recipes


(errr, and I didn't go there using the link - went there sideways from a different browser)

quick-cooking ratatouille on tonight's menu (taken from "Best of FIne Cooking, 101 Quick & Delicious Recipes")

1/3 cup olive oil
1 yellow bell pepper, cored, seeded, and coarsely chopped
5 scallions, cut into 1/2" pieces
1 small eggplant, peeled and cut into 3/4" chunks
1 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
2 cups cherry tomatoes (about 16), quartered
1 large clove garlic, chopped
1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
1 Tbs. balsamic vinegar; more to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In large, heavy skillet, heat about 2 Tbs. of the olive oil over high heat. Add the bell pepper and scallions and saute until lightly browned, about 4 mins. Add the remaining oil and the eggplant. Reduce the heat to medium high and saute the eggplant until just barely tender, about 4 minutes. Add the zucchini. Continue cooking, stirring often, until all the vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, garlic, and thyme. Cook until the tomatoes are just heated through, about 1 min. Remove from the heat. Sprinkle the vegetables with the balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. Serve warm.

Serves 4

I was just thinking today we should have a meatless dinner at least twice a week.

Once in CA I spent four days in a cabin up in Big Bear with some friends. Barbara was a vegitarian and she wanted to make everyone dinner.

I thought I was going to hate her cooking and was quite surprised how tasty everything was.

Ever had a portobello burger? Delish!

I prefer vegetarian food, myself, and make meatless spaghetti sauce and chilli. There are so many vegetables, so many herbs and spices, and so many ways of cooking that the variations are endless.

Just made a curried carrot & coconut milk soup - yum! Add a few hot peppers to make it a bit more interesting.

One of my do today or tomorrow plans is to make up a batch of bulgar/fresh parsley/garlic/mint/tomatoes tabbouleh - this recipe, except that I'll saute some shallots instead of the scallions, since I have a couple of small shallots and no scallions:
http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/tabbouleh/


I still like meat a few times a week, but I like lots of vegetables. (Who else do you know that will eat a bowl of broccoli previously sauteed in olive oil and anchovies (hi, Mame!) and garlic and hot chile flakes, for breakfast?) Now that feels like you've eaten something besides pabalum. 'Course with the anchovies, it's not vegetarian, but pesce.

I really love a quinoa salad.

Cook it like you would rice in chicken broth and lemon juice (1/4 c. lemon juice and 1 3/4 c. broth).

When cool, add feta and whatever the hell else you like. Fresh peas, al dente chopped asparagus, peppers, grilled corn kernels, lettuce, black olives, whatever. Then I drizzle some lemon-EVOO-honey dressing over it. Sooooo good! I could eat that every day. I think I might go make some, actually.

Safeway sells a 250 gr box of quinoa for about $8.50 - President's Choice sells the same box of organic quinoa for $2.50. Whadda deal.

I haven’t but it sure sounds good! I’ve started a nice collection of cookbooks but no vegetarian books. I’ll be looking for one this week!

Do you like okra, jcboy? Have you every tried any of the Patak's curry pastes?

How easy is this? Saute an onion. When translucent, add some garlic and about 1 lb of washed, cut okra. Stir around, then add 1/4 of any of Patak's curry pastes. Stir to cover everything in curry. Add a small can of diced tomatoes and a bit of water. Simmer for 10 - 15 minutes (depending on how al dente you like your okra). Add more water if needed. Voila.

You can add meat, potatoes, whatever you want - just increase the amt of tomatoes, curry and water. It's quick, easy, cheap and delicious. Oh, and healthy

I love Okra, fried okra, gumbo isn’t gumbo without okra! That sounds rather tasty and I will be giving it a try!

I've avoided quinoa for money reasons but I get why everybody likes it - nutrients and taste. I don't remember what cracked wheat's cost is locally (cereal section at my store) but I got a big box for not too much. I gather that is the same thing as 'bulgar' (I saw some chart).

People also make barley tabbouleh. Not me yet, so I've no opinion.
The words are similar - maybe someone made barley tabbouleh by mistake and it turned out good.

Sigh, tabbouleh might be one way for me to get rid of my black (forbidden) rice. That's the only rice from Lotus Foods that made me go 'eh'. It's possible I might like it in cooked differently from whatever I did.

I didn't even know what quinoa was until I just googled it.

Well, hell, you're in your twenties. Takes years to gather information that often turns out to be wrong. Chai is a big fan of quinoa and I think has posted some recipes and more about it, nutrient-wise.


(I'm in a good mood. I just cooked up the caramel for pear caramel ice cream and didn't burn myself or burn the house down.)

It's delicious! I just made a salad -

quinoa, feta, grated homegrown carrots, celery, red pepper, corn, and toasted pine nuts.

I cooked it in the chicken broth and lemon juice - doesn't need a dressing, but I made my honey-lemon-EVOO one anyway.

Osso - if you can it cheap like I just told you (you have to look around), one box goes into 2 cups of water - it doesn't swell like rice does, but it obviously does somewhat to fill the 2 cups of broth. Add your veggies and what not and that's a lot of salad. Put it on lettuce... I can send you some of the President's Choice stuff if you want to try it out. It's a Cdn Superstore and i don't know if you can get their products down there.

I've names of vegetable cookbooks (as opposed to strict vegetarian cookbooks) that you might like (they're in my cupboard). They'd be in the used book section.

Jane Grigson, Vegetable Cookbook, 1979 paperback. The woman knows what to do with sorrel.. This might be a classic, she was well respected.

The Victory Garden Cookbook, by Marian Morash. First edition, whenever that was. She'll tell you what to do with kohlrabi. I can't give it away yet since you never know, I might need to know that.

Niki Hazelton's Way with Vegetables, the unabridged vegetable cookbook, 1976.
By its condition in my closet, I haven't used it much, but it's source material.

My own take, even now, is to look at vegetable recipes in different cultures, not vegetarian cookbooks. A woman I consider knows her food is Marlena Spieler, who has long written for the SF Chronicle, worth looking up in general. She has a book called The Vegetarian Bistro, 250 authentic french regional recipes. My copy is from '97.

Not that you should just look at those, but consider books that are not strickly marketed to vegetarians. The offending item, say, butter, can be dispensed with for a substitute, if that is your choice.

Hold off, I'll see what's around, meantime thanks.

I use the Patak curry stuff too. Might use it tonight, if I can recover from my ice cream making.

Two others I have that are respected -
Madjur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking. Not a vegetarian cookbook, but plenty (many, many) of vegetable recipes.
And Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

I'd suggest trying some cooking magazines rather than cookbooks - you can get a good exposure to different approaches to cooking - some of the better mags like Fine Cooking and Cook's Illustrated have very good technical lessons about the chemistry and physics behind how the recipes work and help you really understand why some recipe modifications will work and others won't.