Cold salad vegetables, water and fruit are always a key part of my survival strategy once the weather gets hot–and by hot, I mean by Pasadena standards, 90-plus, which it’s finally started hitting–along with a very large part of the US this week. It’s normal here, even though we had an unusually cool and rainy spring, and up until last week we were just into the 70s most days. Obviously it’s not normal to be pushing 100 degrees over so much of the country.
Even the newspapers that tend to carry all-brown/all-beige food pics along with their recipes are remembering and recommending fewer heavy starches, more vegetables and fruit as a hot-weather strategy.
Most veg and fruit you can just wash and nosh, which is perfect in hot weather. You don’t have to run the dreaded stove, and biting into fresh salad vegetables–tomato, pepper, cucumber, lettuce or cabbage–will actually cool you down. On one road trip a few summers ago I got a lot of eyerolls from my nearest and dearest for packing cucumbers–small ones, but whole–along with the usual sandwiches and water bottles. But when we hit a rest stop halfway to San Jose, they really proved their worth. It was a pleasant surprise that my kid and my husband both said so…
In any case, just wash and nosh the vegetables you can get away with raw, and the ones that do need cooking can go in a microwave for a few minutes so you stay cool in the kitchen.
With that in mind, I have a couple of colorful, cheap and very simple microwaveable tricks for the moment.
Multicolor carrots, no colors touching
You can now get big 2-lb. bags of multicolor carrots, even organic, for nearly the same price as orange whole carrots even at the big chain supermarkets like Ralph’s/Kroger, so I do. I love the look of the purple-and-gold “black” carrots when I first slice into them, but how do you keep the purple from bleeding onto the white or yellow carrots beside them? I still haven’t figured out how to keep the purple completely purple once they cook, because any acid or heat will turn the purple part maroon, but I have found a way to keep it from bleeding.
Start by grouping each color of cut-up carrots in a separate pile on an open microwaveable dinner plate or casserole dish. Sprinkle lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil, maybe a grating of ginger if you have some, on each pile and mix it in gently. Then nuke the plate with its different piles of carrots for a minute or two on HIGH to parcook. That sets the colors without cooking the carrots to death. You can cook the carrots longer if you want to, or keep them crisp-tender. Mix the carrot colors together right before serving–they’ll end up looking fun and not tasting overcooked.
Red Cabbage “Stir-Fry” Salad
Red cabbage, my relatively cheap perennial favorite useful vegetable (other than Fresno tomatoes and bok choy), is a little more cooperative about staying purple as long as you keep it with acidic ingredients. Usually I like red cabbage raw for salads, and occasionally in the winter I cook it in the microwave Swiss/German sweet-and-sour style, but I was in the mood for something more like a pan-browned stir-fry, only without actually bothering to stir-fry.
I had most of a head of red cabbage sitting in the fridge for more than a week, and I knew I had to use it up, probably cooked, though as lightly as I could get away with, because it was just starting to wilt and was no longer entirely crunchy. After seeing an article on charcoal grilling cabbage and romaine wedges as a dramatic 3-smoke-alarm barbecue side dish, I decided to cut it in thin wedges, cook it lightly in the microwave with a little acid to keep it purple and a little oil to keep it from being rubbery, and then decide whether I really wanted to pan-brown it or not.
…I decided to skip the pan-browning and just toss the microwaved cabbage with a few basic stirfry-type flavorings–vinegar, garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, dab of molasses, hot pepper flakes, basically my version of a jao tze dipping sauce. I ended up with a surprisingly good impromptu hot salad that tastes something like the noodles from pad see ew or the chewy seaweed salad at a sushi restaurant. But bright vivid purple. In any case, it’s delicious, takes less than 5 minutes, and the leftovers are just as good–maybe even better–cold the next day.
The trick for this dish is to keep both the color and the flavor bright while you keep the cabbage from going limp or rubbery. So just as with the multicolor carrots, it’s a two-step microwave. The lemon juice and/or vinegar go on with a little oil first, to keep the purple bright and the cabbage from going rubbery, you nuke it briefly just to set the color and parcook, then mix in the rest of the flavorings and nuke it again briefly to get it to the degree of cooked you prefer.
The amounts here are “use your best judgment”–you can use 1/4, 1/2 or the whole head of cabbage for this, depending how many servings you want to make. I did about 1/4 head of a medium cabbage for 2-3 servings, so the dressing amounts are for that but can stretch a little. Cooking times will vary a little by how much food you have, so if you make half a head or more at a time, check the doneness and stir up the cabbage so any undercooked shreds are on top for additional microwave time.
- Head of red cabbage, rinsed, 2 outermost leaves peeled off and discarded, and cut in halves, you decide how much you want to chop for this recipe and wrap the rest tightly in plastic in the fridge for your next masterpiece.
- A spoonful or so of cider or red wine vinegar and/or squeeze of lemon juice, or just enough to turn all the sliced cabbage magenta
- A small drizzle of olive or salad oil, about 1 T
Flavorings for 1/4 head worth or so of salad (so scale up and adjust to taste)
- 1/2 t toasted sesame oil
- 1/2 t. dab of blackstrap molasses or a couple of pinches of sugar, brown or white
- 1-2 t low-sodium soy sauce
- small minced clove of garlic (or half a bigger clove)
- pinch of hot pepper flakes or a few drops sriracha to taste
- toasted peanuts and/or chopped scallion, optional
Slice the red cabbage into thin (quarter-inch) lengthwise wedges or crosswise shreds. Pile them on a microwaveable plate or bowl large enough to hold them and squeeze on some lemon juice and/or sprinkle on the vinegar, toss them to coat just so that all the purple starts turning brighter magenta. Drizzle on the olive or salad oil, toss again, then microwave uncovered 2-3 minutes (3-4 minutes if more than 1/4 head of cabbage), or until lightly cooked. Mix in everything else but the peanuts and scallions and toss, let sit a few minutes, taste and adjust, nuke 1-2 more minutes depending on your preferences for tender vs. chewy, and top with the peanuts and scallion as desired. Serve hot or cold.
For taste–I prefer mine balanced slightly toward the toasted sesame oil, with undertones from the garlic, vinegar, soy sauce and molasses and just a little latent heat from the chile flakes, but not overtly vinegary, sweet, salty or hot. Your mileage may vary; feel free.
This goes well with any proteins and other vegetables you’d stirfry, grill or dress with soy sauce-type dressings. Steamed or pan-browned tofu, pan-grilled tuna or salmon, chicken or seitan with bok choy, beef with broccoli, broccoli and ginger, etc. Toasted sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, walnuts or almonds would also work in place of peanuts. Thinly sliced raw or barely-nuked carrots too.
And if you run across some bargain-bin snow pea or sugarsnap pea pods, carrots of many colors, or any other vegetable you think goes, snag them, wash and trim them, nuke them very lightly and toss them in.
Be good, eat nice, and stay cool and colorful!
Filed under: cooking, Microwave tricks, Vegetabalia | Tagged: 5-minute recipes, food, microwave cooking, vegetarian | Comments Off on Microwave tricks: keeping cool and colorful
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