I mostly feel unsatisfied if there isn't a quantity of animal or fish protein in a dish. An egg will do or even a tasty, oily, tinned sardine from Portugal. Not so last night, all that is out the window. Barbara Drake and Peter Huck are on the purely vegetarian straight and narrow. So last night's dinner at their elegant Paramount Studios-adjacent digs was an unusual event for me. Dinner was completely satisfying and extremely delicious in its simplicity. Each mouthful had a wonderfully complex "green "aftertaste. Me crushed the peppercorns in a mortar to help. I thank them here for a wonderful evening with sparkling chit-chat and intriguing stories. They kept the bargain, despite a harrowing day for the both of them.
All organic:
We started with
Fresh, home made hummous and toasted olive bread.
The main course was
Tofu, Brocolli, yellow carrots, and quinoa, lightly stir fried.
After's were
Brie, water biscuits and sweet strawberries. (Organic? Some yes ... some no )
To finish
Dandelion "coffee" with soy milk - after midnight!
Goodness, my bedtime is 10!
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4 comments:
I bought some broccoli rabe but I don't know how to prepare it. Help!!
Thanks, Sue
Sue, I'll bet you have some of that nice Brocolli Rabe from Trader Joe's (they call it baby brocolli) often just on the verge of flowering.
Take the bunch from the package and rinse it thoroughly under the tap or better still submerge it in a bowl and shake it underwater. After this, remove and shake the bunch out well but allow some of the droplets of water to remain as they provide the steam in the cooking. Put the bunch on a chopping board and align the heads so that the stalk ends are ragged - then trim the dried stalk ends off in one fell swoop of the knife.
Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a heavy non-stick skillet so that is hot but not smoking and while it's heating chop two or three garlic cloves into thin rough slivers.
When the oil is hot - and be careful because the droplets of water will burst in the hot oil - put the brocolli in the pan and add the garlic. Use tongs to turn the brocolli and garlic a couple of times in the pan and after about a minute and a half remove to a serving plate. The brocolli should be a wonderful deep translucent green but not burned at all.Spray a lemon wedge over it and sprinkle with a pinch of flaky sea salt (Maldon is good) and eat the crunchy things.
I like the italian name for brocolli rabe - rappini
Jonathan, how would you roast a caulifower so that it's still a little crunchy on the inside and browned some on the outside?
thanks
Good question, Dolly. I have never done this but I have a few suggestions.
The secret probably lies in the prepping of the head and an old baker's trick. Cauliflower is very dense and instead of coring the heart out with the point of a knife as one would when boiling a whole head to let the water penetrate, leave it intact. You need to keep every natural barrier to the heat that you can. If you can get a nice one from a farmer's market with the beautiful green leaves on, all the better.
Blanching or parboiling is the important thing here in order to preserve the raw crunchy interior of the cauliflower and soften the outside without losing form. Blanching is a standard way of purifying a vegetable and setting its color. It also releases flavor. To blanch submerge the vegetable in boiling salted water for 30 to 45 seconds. Add a little lemon juice to the water if you like. Remove and chill under running water or in a bowl of ice water. Few nutrients are lost in this process.
Size is important of course and a cauliflower is of the larger type of veg. Par-boiling is the next step in setting color and partially cooking an item and in this case par-boiling is longer than the standard 5 minutes.
Put the head upside down in the boiling water of as close a fitting pot as you can find with the trimmed core of the head exposed to the air and the rest submerged. Weight it if necessary - remember we are trying to help the core resist the heat. Also to preserve the whiteness of the head add a half a lemon, rind and all, to the water with the salt. Leave in for approximately 7- 10 minutes or until a knife goes into the head but still gives a little resistance. When you par-boil something you don't refresh it so transfer the head to a collender and allow to drain. Some preparations such as whole peas or beans require blanching to set the color and then after the refresh, par boiling, so that they are colorfully soft and ready to eat, but the longer you cook something the more chemistry takes place. I'm all for minimally processing stuff. Romaine lettuce is great parboiled or blanched and if you read Careme, father of modern cooking, he uses lettuce in many blanched and boiled ways. I'm surprised that more people don't cook lettuce these days as it can be truly wonderfully delicious enriching the flavor and softening the leaf while preserving the crunchy rib!
In the meantime pre-heat the oven to around 350 degrees f. Now the baking trick. Use an old cleaned can for this part and one that has no special interior coating. Clean it well so that there are no odors left from the garbanzos or whatnot that used to live there and then fill it with fresh water. Put it in the back of the oven five minutes before placing the dish in there.
Transfer the par-boiled head to an oiled, oven-safe low sided dish and evenly brush a thin coating of canola or some such regular cooking oil over the snow white head. Pop in the oven on a high rack. Keep the door closed. The evaporating water in the can will hold the moisture level high in the oven and should keep the head somewhat moist and the heat more even. Check after 20 minutes and then leave in until the desired browness is achieved, Resist the temptation to brush it with more oil or to look at it too often. The steam and oil should do its work well enough.
Let me know if this works - I think I will try it myself sometime soon maybe with a thin, mild lemon sauce with lots of finely chopped flat leaf parsley, one that complements the subtle sweet flavour of the cauliflower.
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