Winter vegetables are not boring
They just need the right touch. Here are a few ideas:
ROAST
High heat brings out the natural sweetness of root vegetables. Chefs like Jason Morris of Le Fantôme roast them in a salt crust. But you can take the easy route, starting with beets. Wash them and leave them unpeeled. Arrange in a baking dish, drizzle with a little olive oil. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake in a 450 F oven for 45 minutes or more, until the beets are tender. Remove from oven, let cool and peel while still warm (to keep from staining your hands use gloves or rub the beets in paper towel to remove the skin.) Serve drizzled with olive oil and toasted walnuts and/or crumbled blue cheese.
To roast other root vegetables, including carrots and parsnips, peel them and cut them lengthwise in half (or in quarters if necessary to keep all the pieces roughly the same size), toss with a dressing of olive oil, pomegranate molasses and honey or maple syrup plus ground cumin, salt and pepper), cover with foil and roast for about 30 to 40 minutes, until tender and golden around the edges.
QUICK PICKLE
I can’t think of a single winter vegetable that doesn’t like to get pickled. Use a julienne peeler to cut carrots or parsnips into long strings. For cabbage or onion, slice thinly with a knife or cut using the slicing blade of the food processor. Make a brine like this one borrowed from Smitten Kitchen’s Pickled Cabbage Salad recipe by mixing together in a saucepan: 1-1/2 cups white vinegar, 1-1/2 cups water, 1/3 cup sugar, 1-1/2 tbsps salt (or less if desired) and 1/2 tsp celery seeds, pickling spice mix, juniper berries or caraway seeds. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently for a minute. Remove the brine from the heat and let cool slightly. Pour over the prepared vegetables, toss and let sit at room temperature for at least an hour or in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks. Drain liquid and serve.
STAY RAW
By shaving or shredding raw root vegetables and cabbages you get crispy crunch as well as flavour. Make an Asian-inspired coleslaw by adding sesame oil, rice vinegar and toasted peanuts or sesame seeds to shredded or very thinly sliced raw cabbage or Brussels sprouts.
Or try adding dried cranberries, sliced apples and toasted nuts or pumpkin or sunflower seeds to celery root or turnips that have been sliced paper-thin using a mandoline. Toss with a simple dressing of sunflower oil and apple-cider vinegar or lemon juice (which adds tang and prevents the apple and celeriac from turning brown) and salt and pepper or hot chili flakes.
Purée sounds like baby food, but if I call it carrot butter, you’ll want to slather it on crostini, which is what Brooklyn-based writer and food blogger Karen Mordechai does in her cookbook Sunday Suppers. To make carrot butter, bring 1-1/2 cups water and 1/2 tsp salt to a boil in a large saucepan then add 7 medium carrots, sliced into 1-inch-thick rounds, along with 6 sprigs of fresh thyme. Reduce the heat and simmer until the carrots are tender, about 20 minutes. Drain, discard the thyme sprigs and transfer the carrots to a blender, adding 1/4 cup olive oil and 2 tbsps of honey. Purée until perfectly smooth. Toast 1/2 cup of coarsely chopped walnuts in a dry skillet over medium-low heat. To serve, spread the carrot butter over toasted baguette slices and top with walnuts, shaved Parmesan cheese and a drizzle of honey plus a grinding of black pepper.