Vegetables, Greens and relevant dishes

[athinaeos]

It is summer, and we have a fantastic variety of vegetables and greens to choose from, cook and enjoy.

What vegetables and greens do you eat in summertime? And how do you cook them? Or make salads out of them?

Anything goes, as long as at least one vegetable is the basic ingredient of the dish.

I start with fresh zucchini and their flowers. They are so tender and juicy that I just steam them, sprinkle over a bit of coarse sea salt , some olive oil and a drop of lemon, and serve steaming hot for immediate consumption.

P.S. I have learned the hard way that extra care should be taken when cleaning the inside of the flowers!

[marlena spieler]

last year when we were visiting friends in zakynthos, we stuffed zucchini flowers with fresh cheese mixed with a bit of grated kefalotyri, and i'm thinking an egg, nutmeg and chopped parsley. dripped them in a light batter than crisp-fried in olive oil.

they were sooooo good! you're so lucky ot have zucchini blossoms available! i love the fruits and veg of greek summer......all the luscious tomatoey eggplanty things, and also the watermelon, peaches, and cherries are delish.

marlena

[MelissaH]

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Just need to say:

That is the most beautiful zucchini picture I've ever seen. I wish we could get some like that here!

MelissaH

[Ktepi]

Right now I'm waiting for my mother's garden to start producing things, since she always has such a surplus that she cans things in such quantity she'll never go through the backlog. It's New Hampshire, so she hasn't even planted everything yet, much less started to pick.

Unlike a lot of people, I guess, I find that my vegetables are cooked just as often in the summer as the winter -- if I'm having something raw, it's more likely to be melon, cucumber, strawberries, things I don't usually cook anyway.

So right now, with supermarket produce, I'm making a lot of collard greens (they're in the pot right now) and roasted okra. As soon as it's available, corn on the cob will feature heavily, probably enough so that I'll do what I used to do and just have three ears of corn for lunch. I'm not a huge fan of fresh tomatoes, but a few slices will find their way onto pimento cheese sandwiches, grilled or plain.

The cucumber I slice unpeeled, dress with vinegar, sliced chiles, and sometimes garlic, and let sit in the fridge for a few hours or overnight; I usually salt it at serving instead of ahead of time, but I don't remember if someone told me to do this or if it's a habit from forgetting the salt one time. Melon gets cut into chunks and tossed with a little bit of sugar, lime juice, and fresh mint -- as do strawberries, with Vic Cherikoff's fruit spice instead of the mint. Sometimes one or the other -- post-maceration -- gets tossed with some vinegar and salad greens, especially Boston lettuce and chicory.

Broccoli raab, kale, or dandelion greens I'll saute in olive oil or bacon fat and use with a pasta -- often just chiles and garlic, sometimes a spoonful of cream. Beets are roasted and served hot, cold, or in hash.

Tonight I'm having the collard greens with roasted chicken -- tomorrow I'll have leftover chicken with chicory and some kind of dressing, probably a spicy and tart one.

[athinaeos]

White eggplants from Santorini

They are seedless, and very sweet.

I use them to prepare a dish I call "Tortiera of white eggplants with lentils"

[marlena spieler]

what a beautiful tortiere of eggplant and lentils!!!

after the inspiration of your gorgeous pic of zucchini blossoms, i spent yesterday in our local botanical garden. when i saw the blossoms, all pretense of being a law-abiding citizen flew out the window. i can answer no more questions as they might incriminate me.

meanwhile, in the land of cucumbers, my column tnis week (wednesday) will be on the cuke, with some cool recipes. www.sfgate.com

[athinaeos]

... when i saw the blossoms ... i can answer no more questions as they might incriminate me.

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I am inclined to think that a poem titled "blossoms du mal" will come out of this, and Baudelaire will have nothing to do with it!

Cannot wait to read the recipes!

[Druckenbrodt]

I wish I could buy eggplants like the ones in athinaeos' picture in Paris... Please please can we have your Tortiera of white egg plant with lentils recipe? Even if it is just for the purposes of dreaming?

The greengrocers I saw in Heraklion on a recent trip to Crete were the stuff of dreams, especially their piles of strange green veg I'd never seen before.

[mizducky]

Heh. I'm in a quandary. There's tons of great produce in the markets, but there's also a heat wave on, and I hate cooking in the heat, and a lot of my favorite green things I like much better cooked. So I've been doing "guerilla cooking" -- waiting for the cool parts of the day/evening (which, allowing for the apartment to cool down after its western exposure has been roasted all evening, sometimes doesn't arrive until midnight ). Or I have in desperation resorted to pseudo-braising veggies in the microwave (with a cup or so of liquid in a lidded Pyrex casserole)--hey, it's better than nothing!

When things cool down at least a little bit, I expect I'll be making big vats of ratatouille and of greens saute-braised with garlic, onions/shallot, olive oil, and a little broth--these are two of my all-time fave veggie dishes--and chilling them down for consumption over the following days. I also go through tons of my mongrel pico de gallo/chopped salad recipe--roma tomatos, cukes, and anything else that looks likely at the market, cubed and tossed with minced garlic, maybe a minced jalapeno, minced cilantro, and a very vinegary vinaigrette.

Right now I've got a big bunch of fresh mint in the fridge that is begging to be used. My first thought is mint chutney, but I don't have any fresh chiles in the house (plus my tum's feeling a little out of sorts, so chiles may not be wise right now anyway). Soooo I'm contemplating coming up with another mongrel invention--a non-hot mint chutney? We shall see ...

P.S. That photo of the zucchini with blossoms attached was pure food porn at its finest (fanning herself--and not from the heat wave )

[BarbaraY]

I am so envious! I love zucchini blossooms but haven't yet been able to get to our local Farmer's Market where we may or may not find them.

Tonight it will be zucchini from my neighbor's garden, fanned and cooked on the grill with the chicken.

[Nikki Rose]

Wow, the zucchini blossoms are beautiful!

They are great stuffed...and just raw in a salad.

I've got a couple of food photos and summertime recipes on my website at www.cookingincrete.com. There's always more to add...every day!

Happy cooking!

Nikki

[nakji]

Has anyone tried cooking with zucchini stems? Here in Vietnam, a really common dish is to take "pumpkin" stems, fairly young ones, I'd say, by looking at them, and stir fry them with garlic and a touch of oyster sauce. They're really great, and the stems are lovely and crunchy.

[mizducky]

The other night I roasted sliced fennel and chunked onions, liberally sprinkled with fresh-ground pepper. Absolutely heavenly, especially the fennel.

[silentmeow]

Wow, I usually just brush off the zucchini flowers. Didn't know that they are tasty! Guess that's a habit I'll be breaking shortly. When stuffing do I wrap the petals around the stuffing and tie the end to keep it closed? I'd really like to try this. That is a beautiful photo of the zucchini and eggplants. Thanks.

[CanadianBakin']

The other night I roasted sliced fennel and chunked onions, liberally sprinkled with fresh-ground pepper. Absolutely heavenly, especially the fennel.

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I've never had fennel let alone cook it but I have seen it in the store and always wondered what to do with it. I often roast cauliflower, broccoli and asparagus. How do you prepare fennel for roasting?

[project]

Sam's Club has been selling 'Haricot Vert' from Guatemala.

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Bought a box.

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Blanched. Took a nice handful, about 1/3 of the box, rinsed

and drained three times, dropped into 2 quarts of boiling

salted water, brought to simmer, simmered 2 minutes, dumped

into colander, dumped into bowl of water and back into

colander, dumped into bowl of ice water and left them there.

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Took about 6 large white button mushrooms, washed, dried,

sliced thinly, and sauteed in a cast iron skillet with peanut

oil and S&P until well shrunken and slightly brown -- about 30

minutes at medium heat. Removed and drained.

<br><br>

Removed and discarded oil in skillet. To the skillet, still

warm, added 1/2 stick of butter, S&P, about 1/3 C minced

garlic, set off heat to let butter melt and the garlic warm;

stirred occasionally to get the garlic coated with the butter.

<br><br>

When the charcoal broiled steak was ready and the baked

potatoes were ready (from microwave -- works well), drained

the beans, dumped into the skillet with the butter and garlic,

added the drained mushrooms and more S&P, warmed through with

lots of 'folding' to get the beans coated with the good stuff,

arranged in an oval serving dish, dumped over the top the rest

of the skillet contents, and feasted!

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They were good!

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For more, white wine, chicken stock, bacon?

[misgabi]

Am so depressed. In the middle (nearly) of winter here (was 10 degrees today) and am craving those zucchini flowers.

Oh well, will go back to rattatouie and braised lamb shank.

[athinaeos]

I wish I could buy eggplants like the ones in athinaeos' picture in Paris... Please please can we have your Tortiera of white egg plant with lentils recipe?  Even if it is just for the purposes of dreaming?

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It is a very simple recipe and easy to prepare.

1.Cut the eggplants in thick slices, place them in a baking dish, sprinkle some olive oil on top and sea salt, and bake in 220 Celsius for about 10 minutes, or until the eggplant is soft.

2. Boil the lentils until they are crunchy. Once you dry them, add some salt and peper.

3. Combine the ingredients building shallow cylinders as in the picture. Bottom layer is eggplant, next lentils, next eggplant, and top layer is lentils. I use some metal cylinder forms that are topless. I add a bit of tomato sauce on top and bake in 220 Celsius for about 20 minutes.

4. The dish is served in room temperature, preferably 6-8 hours after it was baked.

5. You may add olive oil and/or cheese if you want.

Enjoy!

[purplewiz]

Zucchini season is coming early - I've got two which will be ready to harvest this week, which is 3-4 weeks early for around here. I can't wait - just tried a new (to me) recipe for fried zucchini patties last night with the last of this year's store bought zucchini. While I want to tweak with the ingredients, we both liked them a great deal, so I expect to be making them as long as we have zucchini.

Marcia.

[cakewalk]

I made and ate collard greens for the first time last night. Damn, they're good. I was looking up recipes and was a little discouraged because just about every recipe started like this:

2 lbs collard greens

2 ham hocks ...

I figured leaving out the ham hocks would leave a major taste-gap, to say the least, so I was looking for a recipe that didn't have them in the first place. (Full disclosure: I don't even know what a ham hock is!)

So in the end I combined two recipes. Slice collards into two-inch pieces, boil in water for 15 minutes, drain. Saute sliced red onion, minced garlic, S&P in olive oil until the onion is soft, then add the collards and cook on low for another 10-15 minutes. Turn off heat, add juice of one lemon. It was great, and I am now sold on the stuff.

Who knew?

[sanrensho]

I've never had fennel let alone cook it but I have seen it in the store and always wondered what to do with it. I often roast cauliflower, broccoli and asparagus. How do you prepare fennel for roasting?

I usually just slice/quarter and toss with olive oil, S&P. Same as the infamous roasted cauliflower, you can roast them together. The roasted fennel tastes amazing when dusted with parmesan or pecorino out of the oven.

[mizducky]

I made and ate collard greens for the first time last night. Damn, they're good. I was looking up recipes and was a little discouraged because just about every recipe started like this:

2 lbs collard greens

2 ham hocks ...

I figured leaving out the ham hocks would leave a major taste-gap, to say the least, so I was looking for a recipe that didn't have them in the first place. (Full disclosure: I don't even know what a ham hock is!)

So in the end I combined two recipes. Slice collards into two-inch pieces, boil in water for 15 minutes, drain. Saute sliced red onion, minced garlic, S&P in olive oil until the onion is soft, then add the collards and cook on low for another 10-15 minutes. Turn off heat, add juice of one lemon. It was great, and I am now sold on the stuff.

Who knew? 

←

Yep, that certainly works great with collards, including the splash of sour at the end. Other acids also work great--I especially like a nice tart red wine vinegar.

When I'm not doing the full-fledged ham hock thing, I often do collards by starting with some sauted garlic and onion/shallots/etc.; I then give the greens a bit of a toss in the sauted veggies, add a smallish amount of well-flavored broth (chicken or vegetable), and braise, covered, till tender. Oh yeah--many recipes say to discard the stems, but I love 'em--just slice them up into small pieces and they'll cook at the same rate as the leaves.

(Ham hocks, by the way, are cuts from the lower portion of a pig's leg--I think of it as their ankles--smoked/brined with skin and bones intact. Cooking with them is like cooking with a nice well-flavored ham bone--really perks up beans, rice, and other long-simmered dishes. However, they do tend to be really salty--I usually parboil ham hocks before adding them to a recipe. Smoked turkey parts, becoming more and more available, are a great substitute--they tend to be significantly lower in fat, though not so much lower in sodium.)

I've never had fennel let alone cook it but I have seen it in the store and always wondered what to do with it. I often roast cauliflower, broccoli and asparagus. How do you prepare fennel for roasting?

I usually just slice/quarter and toss with olive oil, S&P. Same as the infamous roasted cauliflower, you can roast them together. The roasted fennel tastes amazing when dusted with parmesan or pecorino out of the oven.

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Yep, that's how I do it too.

First I give the fennel bulbs a trim--remove all the feathery leafy bits, and the stalks; the fatter stalks I do include in the roast, but the skinny bits I think would just burn. Then I take the bulbs and slice them lengthwise--i.e. perpendicular to the root-end, so that the slices hold together because they're still connected by a bit of the root. And then season 'em up and roast them just as sanrensho says. (You don't need to discard the trimmings--raw, they make great garnishes.)

More veggie action: last night I kept it really simple--after cooking a pork chop on the ol' reliable Foreman Grill, I cut some zucchini in halves lengthwise, crosshatched the cut surfaces, seasoned them up with a bottled spice blend, and then slapped them on the grill's hot still-porkified surface. Five minutes grilling with the top lid down and voila! yummy "grilled" zuke, full o' porky flavor!

[jdtofbna]

I'm stuck on succotash at the moment, my own convoluted versions of it. Every time I run across fresh limas or lady peas along with lovely SMALL fresh okra, it's succotash time again. I cook the limas in water with salt, pepper and sliced garlic, and in a large skillet I saute onion and okra in a little olive oil, add a large home grown diced tomato and the kernels from 2 or 3 ears of corn, cover that all and let it cook about 5 minutes, then dump in the limas and their cooking juice. Usually when I'm sauteeing the okra and onion I'll throw in some Indian or Mexican spices just to make it really unconventional. A bowl of this is dinner for me!

And--this has nothing to do with vegetables or greens, but I made my first batch of pickled peaches this past weekend.

[cakewalk]

I made and ate collard greens for the first time last night. Damn, they're good. I was looking up recipes and was a little discouraged because just about every recipe started like this:

2 lbs collard greens

2 ham hocks ...

I figured leaving out the ham hocks would leave a major taste-gap, to say the least, so I was looking for a recipe that didn't have them in the first place. (Full disclosure: I don't even know what a ham hock is!)

So in the end I combined two recipes. Slice collards into two-inch pieces, boil in water for 15 minutes, drain. Saute sliced red onion, minced garlic, S&P in olive oil until the onion is soft, then add the collards and cook on low for another 10-15 minutes. Turn off heat, add juice of one lemon. It was great, and I am now sold on the stuff.

Who knew? 

←

Yep, that certainly works great with collards, including the splash of sour at the end. Other acids also work great--I especially like a nice tart red wine vinegar.

When I'm not doing the full-fledged ham hock thing, I often do collards by starting with some sauted garlic and onion/shallots/etc.; I then give the greens a bit of a toss in the sauted veggies, add a smallish amount of well-flavored broth (chicken or vegetable), and braise, covered, till tender. Oh yeah--many recipes say to discard the stems, but I love 'em--just slice them up into small pieces and they'll cook at the same rate as the leaves.

(Ham hocks, by the way, are cuts from the lower portion of a pig's leg--I think of it as their ankles--smoked/brined with skin and bones intact. Cooking with them is like cooking with a nice well-flavored ham bone--really perks up beans, rice, and other long-simmered dishes. However, they do tend to be really salty--I usually parboil ham hocks before adding them to a recipe. Smoked turkey parts, becoming more and more available, are a great substitute--they tend to be significantly lower in fat, though not so much lower in sodium.)

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I didn't see this before. Thanks mizducky. A few friends of mine mentioned that they also eat the stems, I think I'll keep them on for the next bunch. And I have some chicken stock in the freezer. I guess the possibilities are endless.

[athinaeos]

Melange Biryan (in Greek it is called Briam) - an extremely easy and tasty vegetable dish with Iranian, Turkish and Greek roots, one of my summer favourites. (In Iranian, the word means baked, cooked.)

Take the freshest zucchinis and eggplants (they form the foundation of the melange) , slice lots of onions and potatoes, throw in loads of garlic cloves, sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper, some diced tomatoes and olive oil, and bake for 45 minutes in 200 degrees celcius.

The baking dish before the tomatoes were added.

Ready to eat.

After you take it out of the oven, season with olive oil and let it rest for a couple of hours before serving.