Tricks in salad-making trade
Smart cooks have their little tricks, back-pocket condiments and add-ons that can transform a dish. Chef and former farmer Abra Berens is one of those cooks, and her new cookbook is full of them.
Take her roasted eggplant dish, which includes two components that could each be worth a treatise.
As different as they are, the upshot is the same: They take little effort yet make such a difference.
They come from different sides of the flavor and texture spectrum. Garlicinfused breadcrumbs, which you toast in a pan in a matter of minutes, are nutty and deep, with serious crunch.
Raisins, which you quickly pickle while you make the rest of the recipe, are half sweet and half tart, with a pleasant chewiness that remains because the pickling liquid isn’t heated. (No plumping here, thank you.)
Berens focuses most of her book, charmingly titled “Ruffage,” on more than two dozen vegetables, including multiple ways to cook (or avoid cooking) each one.
She shaves raw cauliflower, roasts eggplant chunks (in a generous amount of olive oil, rendering them almost silky), grills red peppers — and offers enticing variations for each base recipe. When I started attaching sticky notes to all the recipes I wanted to try, I quickly realized the exercise was futile, because there wasn’t anything I didn’t find interesting.
The breadcrumb treatment is in the book’s introductory material. I scaled down her recipe and merged it into the directions for this roasted eggplant recipe.
But you’d be smart to make a bigger batch, as Berens does, and do the same with the raisins. Your salads — and plenty of other dishes — will thank you.