For quick vegetables that sing, cook and slather them
Apologies to the Beatles, but in the kitchen, all you need is sauce. Vinaigrettes for your sal ads, c reamy purees for your grain bowls, salsas for dipping, glazes for coating. I mean, if you think about it, what is soup, if not a big bowl of sauce? With perhaps some chunks of vegetables and/or proteins swimming in it.
Perhaps that last example goes a little far, but you get my point. When I’m in the mood to make something particularly quick and straightforward, but I need to add complexity of flflavor, I turn to a sauce.
Bonus points when the sauce takes hardly any time to put together. That’s certainly the case with one from Katie and Giancarlo Caldesi’s new book, “Around the World in 120 Salads” (Kyle Books, 2017).
They got the recipe for Veget ables a la Grecque from chef Alain Roux of the three-star Waterside Inn in Berkshire, England. It’s a breeze to make, and once the sauce is ready, the rest of the recipe is flflexible.
The flexible part is the s e l e c t i on of ve get a bl e s . Roux suggests babies, and if you can get them, absolutely do.
Tiny zucchini and carrots, super-thin French beans, little radishes:
They’re perfect here. But so is cauliflflower, with the florets broken up particularly small, and you can similarly cut other bigger
Crush the coriander seed and white peppercorns using a mortar and pestle, then transfer the mixture a large pan. Add the vinegar, oil, water, tomato paste, lemon juice, garlic, bouquet garni, sugar and salt; cook gently, over low heat, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally with a whisk to form a smooth dressing.
Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. You’ll use it to cook/blanch the separate kinds of vegetables, except for the mushrooms: Allow 1 minute for the cauliflower florets, 30 seconds for the green beans, 1 minute and 30 seconds for the zucchini spears, 30 seconds for the radishes and 2 to 3 minutes for the carrots. Drain the blanched vegetables and add to the pan with the dressing.
Add the raw mushrooms to the pan and stir gently to coat all the vegetables; cook for 5 minutes. Discard the bouquet garni.
Transfer the vegetables to a serving bowl with the dressing and let cool a little. Season with salt and black pepper, as needed. Scatter the parsley on top. Serve still warm, or at room temperature.
Nutrition | Per ser ving (based on 6): 250 calories, 3 g protein, 20 g carbohydrates, 19 g fat, 3 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 150 mg sodium, 3 g dietary fiber, 14 g sugar