vegetarian Archives • Page 3 of 4 • Ant & Anise

Green Beans and Asparagus with Tangy Parsley Sauce

The holidays, for me, don’t officially end until we’ve eaten up the Christmas baking. We’re almost there: Just a few savory gruyere-pecan shortbread cookies, spiced with cayenne pepper, left to eat.

Now that we’re back into regular schedules and reasons for celebrating the season are dwindling, I’m craving vegetables — especially green ones — more. Maybe it’s to make up for all that shortbread I savored, err… inhaled, this past month.

This recipe for green beans and asparagus with a tangy parsley sauce hits the spot….

Coconut Curry Squash Soup

I wouldn’t say I hate winter squash, as in the way former president George Bush famously hates broccoli.

It’s not something on my regular grocery list either.

Is it the texture I don’t care for? Partly, yes. I also find winter squash to be, well, stodgy. My tastes in vegetables, even on the dreariest winter day, run to lighter flavors and greener colors. Give me some stir-fried beans or kale any time, especially with a smashed garlic clove and a squeeze of lemon….

Kale Salad with Orange Vinaigrette

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks. Long days at the computer to meet a series of deadlines. And then, to take advantage of the unusually dry weather lately, getting outside on the weekends and going on hikes.

One hike in particular, the Stawamus Chief, has a certain appeal to Bob. It’s a challenging hike, a steady 600 meter elevation climb, and the views are spectacular at the top on a clear day….

Pico de gallo

If you can handle a little chopping you can make one of the freshest tasting summer sauces ever, and one of my favorites: Pico de gallo.

I bought some prepared pico de gallo in July at Whole Foods. I was scurrying around getting groceries because I had house guests arriving and was running short on time.

Vacuuming up cat hair tumbleweeds trumped spending some time in the kitchen.

You would think with a dark brown/black cat, his clumps of light-as-air fur would blend right into the dark wood floor. But they don’t. It’s a disappointingly unforgiving surface that shows everything. (And while I am the family neat-freak I don’t follow the Unclutterer’s advice on taming fur tumbleweeds. I usually just try to ignore them for as long as possible. 4-5 days is as good as it gets before I’m yanking the vacuum out.)…

Garlic scapes and mushroom crostini

Ah yes, garlic scapes. This is only the third summer in my life that I’ve run across them, because of the CSA.

Working with ingredients that I don’t seek out regularly is partly why I love getting a weekly surprise box of vegetables every summer. It’s a challenge to make something good — as in, wow I want to make this again — when a key ingredient is unfamiliar.

Last year I made a garlic scape pesto, and eventually used it in a summery pasta dish with some prawns. (Truth be told, I found the pesto way too garlicky right after I made it. It hid in the back of the fridge for at least two weeks before I worked up enough courage to use it.)

This week when the scapes arrived in my veggie box, I thought I’d try a different tack. I mean, scapes are part of the garlic plant. They’re pungent. Maybe not as pungent as the bulb of the garlic, but there’s no mistaking that it’s garlic. So what, then?

…

Hard to Beet Hummus

What a brilliant idea it was to split a community shared agriculture box from Cropthorne Farm. And I think the strategy of alternating weeks, rather than splitting each box is going to work out just fine too.

In fact, when I read the CSA’s email about this week’s box, and saw garlic scapes in the mix again, I was delighted on two counts: it’s your week for the box, and it’s the last week of garlic scapes.

There’s the rub with eating local: if you want the joy of saying “that came from our farm,” then you have to like what grows there.

As satisfying as they are to look at – curvy green snakes! how cool is that? – I can easily wait a year before eating garlic scapes again. They’re okay, just underwhelming.

Ah, but the beets, that was another story.

I roasted them – four medium sized beets – the day I picked up the box – and served one still warm from the oven as the delicacy it was, cut into segments, and sprinkled with a little salt.

We could have just eaten them like that. But I wanted to expand my repertoire of beet recipes. Remembering your parsnip hummus, I searched for beet hummus recipes and found the Minimalist Baker’s – just one beet, and a 14-ounce can of chickpeas, but still proof-positive that someone had made beet hummus and liked it enough to post it.

We agreed that more beets would be better and ditched the chickpeas. There was a lot of tasting – at first I put in too much tahini, which had to be balanced with more lemon – but in the end it was very good indeed.

Three medium beets turned into what seemed like a very large quantity of hummus. We ate all but half a cup before dinner, with fancy carrots and cucumber, both from the CSA box, and tonight I finished off the last of what was left, making pretty canapés with a Cropthorne cucumber and mint from the back deck.

And yes, I’m happy to say that the beets came from our farm.

Hard to Beet Hummus

Serving Size: 6-8 people

Bob, your best beloved, made so many puns, so steadily all night that I can’t remember if “Hard to Beet Hummus” was his best line or not. As a recipe title it is, indeed, hard to beet. Allow at least an hour for roasting the beets – even better, roast them the day before.

Ingredients

3 medium beets
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 tablespoons tahini
2 to 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Black pepper to taste
2 fresh mint leaves for garnish (optional)

Instructions

To roast the beets: Preheat the oven to 375 F. Scrub the beets and trim off greens and long roots. Toss the beets in a teaspoon of olive oil, enough to coat, and season with salt.
Cut a large piece of aluminum foil, enough to make a sealed package that will hold your beets. Place the beets on a baking sheet, and roast for an hour, then check for doneness. A knife should easily penetrate through the beet.
Set aside to cool. when the beets are cool enough to handle, remove the skin. It will rub off easily.
In a food processor or blender combine beets, garlic, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Blend until you have a smooth paste. Taste and adjust for seasoning.
Transfer the humus into a bowl, and garnish with mint leaves cut into chiffonade