vegetarian | Slow Food Fast

Microwave tricks: keeping cool and colorful

Posted on July 17, 2023 by DebbieN

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.

*With seared salmon, these parcooked carrots are color-set and ready to finish in the microwave*

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

Quiche x Fillo = Yeah!

Posted on August 6, 2022 by DebbieN

(…plus a few more cheap cheese tricks)

Cauliflower mushroom quiche wrapped in fillo pastry is crispy, elegant and light.

I had bought a packet of fillo dough a while back, in the thought that by now I’d have a couple of fun party-food ideas to suggest. But this week I’ve been feeling like I’d rather make and serve something nonsweet, nonfussy and not heavy–an easy main dish for summer, lighter and more serious at the same time, and something that could last more than one meal and reheat quickly.

This vegetable-filled quiche is a flexible dairy main dish with a Mediterranean vibe thanks to its fillo crust. It looks a little fancier than an ordinary quiche, but it’s not actually difficult to put together, and it’s also not a heart attack on a plate.

The only trick, other than needing to bake it in a conventional oven rather than attempting the microwave (so don’t do it during the heat of the day), is to control the temperature and moisture so you get the egg and cheese filling to cook through without letting the fillo casing scorch or, possibly worse, get soggy. It stores well in the fridge for next-day dinners, and you can reheat and recrisp individual pieces quickly in the toaster oven, especially if you microwave first for half a minute on an open plate just to warm them through, then slide onto foil and toast a few minutes at a baking temperature slightly below full-stun toasting so you don’t scorch the tops.

I’ve made two versions of this by winging it, essentially, and it’s worked nicely both times. The first was an open-faced spinach and ricotta fillo tart that went well at a Chanukah party back in December, and it led me to this second riff, a cauliflower-mushroom-smoked cheese filling, this time sandwiched between top and bottom fillo layers.

Before I get into the recipe and tips for working with fillo specifically, let’s talk a little about flexibility by highlighting one of my hobbies, getting cheap with cheese:

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Filed under: appetizers, baking, cooking, Dairy, Vegetabalia | Tagged: food, recipes, vegetarian | Comments Off on Quiche x Fillo = Yeah!

Microwave Tricks: Felafel

Posted on June 19, 2021 by DebbieN

In my last post, around Passover, I made (finally) successful microwave matzah balls more or less the same way I make microwave-to-frying-pan felafel, but then I realized I’ve never actually posted on how to make microwave-assisted felafel or why you might want to. So before getting into what I was hoping would be a nice quick extra, the eggplant pickles you need for a great streetside felafel pita (next post), I decided I should really put in a word for microwave-assisted felafel.

Felafel stands were few and far between in most of the US even before the pandemic hit, and most people still don’t make their own felafel at home, even from the available box mixes, because deep fat frying is expensive on oil and frankly kind of a pain.

If you’ve never eaten felafel, they’re kind of a crunchy, spicy fried vegetarian meatball made with chickpeas, favas, or a combination. At Israel’s felafel stands, Jewish or Arab, you get them served in a pita pocket and ask for whichever additions you want from a huge selection: finely chopped tomato/cucumber salad, tehina and hummus, harissa or z’khug, sour/spicy mustardlike sauces like hilbe (fenugreek-based) or amba (mango-based), sour pickles (the aforementioned eggplant pickle is my favorite and therefore obviously the best), sometimes they even squeeze in a couple of french fries, which I really don’t get, but to each their own, which is the point. All that ends up overstuffed precariously into the pita with the three to five felafel. As with a food truck burrito, there’s an art to dealing with it: you try hard to eat it before it falls apart and do your best not to drip all the different simultaneous sauces on your clothes.

The home version is a little easier, once the felafel are cooked, anyhow, but probably a little less exciting.

You might think that with all the toppings, the felafel would somehow get lost in the mix. But the felafel themselves are actually mission-critical. Especially at home, where you’re, as my mother would say, “Not a Restaurant” and not offering every possible permutation and topping ever, so the felafel are going to stand out more. They actually have to be good or it’s not a party.

Box mixes (Near East, Sadaf, etc.) tend to lean heavily on salt instead of more complex flavorings and they’re often pretty dry because people don’t let them hydrate and absorb water well enough before frying, so they’re never going to be great unless you doctor them with some extra fresh ingredients, and by that time you might as well make a really good felafel mix from scratch, which is what we’re doing today. It’s not actually much more work, it tastes a lot better, and the cooking, especially if you take advantage of a microwave, is lighter, easier and less dangerous as well.

GOOD felafel (I’m about to get seriously opinionated here–take it or leave it):

To get the best out of felafel, classic or microwaveable, what you’re aiming for is a crunchy browned ungreasy outside and a fluffy, cooked-through-but-tender-and-moist inside. And preferably flavored with something better and fresher than the usual box mix bare minimum dusting of faded cumin and garlic powder overcome by a ton of salt. And the main thing, which Whole Foods still doesn’t get–felafel must be served hot and crisp. Not refrigerated and thus leaden in the salad bar. And not dried out and tough to swallow–you don’t want to be biting into a golf ball.

So step one is to make your own felafel mix in a food processor or blender with a couple of cups of drained chickpeas plus fresh ingredients to taste.

Israeli chefs insist on raw soaked chickpeas for the classic deepfrying version of felafel–but this may not be so good if you’re microwaving, because they may not cook through well enough. I find that well-drained home-cooked chickpeas (I’m using my updated microwave black bean method these days) or well-rinsed and drained canned chickpeas work fine, and for that matter, so does chickpea flour made up to a thick paste with water and left to sit a while before blending in the other ingredients. I’ve even made pretty decent microwave-to-frying-pan felafel using leftover thick-from-scratch hummus as a base (note: NOT commercial supermarket hummus, which is too thin and too oily, with too little actual chickpea content, plus the taste is kind of shvach).

The all-important other ingredients are spices (cumin and garlic at a minimum) for flavor, a little flour for backbone, a dash of baking soda for fluff, plus–and this is where fresh beats the box–fresh vegetables and herbs for flavor, moisture, body, and general lightness of being. Onions and a good handful of parsley or cilantro–cilantro for preference–are typical but you can also sub in a chunk of cauliflower or zucchini in the food processor for maybe up to a quarter of the chickpeas and it’ll help keep the moisture. Other spices you might not have thought of but which give a more authentic and aromatic touch (in subtle pinch-not-spoonful amounts) include allspice, coriander, and caraway. Any of these in small amounts blends well with the cumin and garlic and elevates felafel above the standard box-mix “salt bomb” style.

When you’re happy with the mixture, process the whole deal until it’s a coarsely ground mixture that holds together with the chickpeas, onion and herbs in bits the size of toast crumbs or so, not too lumpy but also not too smooth or pasty (unless of course you went with chickpea flour or hummus as a base, but the added veg will still give it a little texture).

As with the matzah ball mixture from April, when you microwave, you want a little more moisture in the felafel mix to start with because the microwave tends to dehydrate foods. You want the mixture ground fairly fine, capable of Continue reading →

Filed under: Beans and legumes, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes | Tagged: cooking, food, Middle Eastern food, vegetarian | Comments Off on Microwave Tricks: Felafel

Microwave Wild Rice Pilaf

Posted on November 29, 2020 by DebbieN

Thursday was kind of rushed–we started the morning late and kept being slow until it was nearly 2:30 and time to Zoom our family. But I managed to get a few Thanksgiving-type things going in the microwave for dinner before that and even managed to post about them at an almost-civilized length instead of going off on more tangents than anyone really wants to read even under current conditions. Artichokes–no big deal. Cranberry sauce, even less. Wild rice, though.

Wild rice, rinsed and ready to add water and microwave. Not very friendly-looking, is it?

Any grain with a tough husk takes a longish time to cook conventionally on a stovetop compared with something like white rice or rolled oats. And wild rice is tough enough that the Trader Joe’s package directions strongly recommend soaking the stuff in a bowl of water in the fridge overnight before attempting to boil it. A good suggestion that would help for microwaving too–a fine suggestion, if only we had started with things the day before. Not all that helpful when you need it the same day.

Microwaving works for brown rice, another long-cook whole grain, so it should (and in fact did) work for wild rice too. But it’s not quite the brief one-step kind of technique it is for white basmati rice. More a “nuke a few minutes to a simmer, let it sit 10 or so minutes to absorb hot liquid, stir, nuke a few more minutes and go away again, stir and check…..” kind of thing, similar to the way I cook beans, chickpeas and lentils, but with fewer rounds of cooking. I don’t know, it didn’t seem like a nuisance to me because I was doing two or three other things while it sat (one of those was sipping champagne while noshing with my husband on a few decorator cheeses and nuts and chatting with my in-laws and my daughter over Zoom). So I wasn’t in an overwhelming rush.

And it came out pretty nicely, so I’m posting it now. I would in fact do this again, because it came out pretty much as well as the original with a lot less work.

When I was younger and well before I had a child (who is now old enough to cook with her housemates, and did), I would make this pilaf in an electric wok with a lid, frying the onions and mushrooms first with the herbs, then adding the wild rice and some pearl barley and broth, bringing it to a boil and turning it down to simmer with a lid for however long, checking once in a while and stirring in the fruits and nuts and adding a little broth or water as needed. Similar idea to the microwaving, but on a stove or any heat element, you need to stay a lot more present. Microwaving lets you go away–it can stop itself and sit for a while without things drying out and scorching.

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Filed under: cooking, Grains, holiday cooking, kitchen safety, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes | Tagged: cooking, food, recipes, Thanksgiving, vegetarian | Comments Off on Microwave Wild Rice Pilaf

Crème de X: Purslane and basil dress up a lighter velouté

Posted on November 4, 2020 by DebbieN

Purslane soup with purple basil garnish — Purslane plus purple basil flowers for that Crème-de-X factor

Sargent’s infamous ballroom portrait of Madame X is today’s inspiration for a soup that, like his subject, breaks a few stodgy rules and dares to produce an elegant but fresher, bolder, more nutritious–and certainly lighter–version of a classic French soup in a few minutes flat. It’s smooth but svelte. And it still keeps you in suspense.

So before we get to today’s featured mystery vegetable (herb? green? Let’s settle on green)–let’s talk about breaking the rules.

Most classic veloutés–vegetable-based cream soups–rely on thorough boiling-into-submission of the vegetables, generally mostly potatoes, to soften them for blending, which used to be done by hand through a mesh sieve back in Madame X’s and John Singer Sargent’s day. They also add a heavy dose of cream to mask any individual or strong flavors so nobody could possibly get upset that they can actually taste the vegetables.

All that cooking softens things but also breaks down most of the vitamins. Reliance on potatoes for bulk makes things starchier and blander as it crowds out the greens as the main ingredient. And I don’t have to tell you what I think about cream–you’re free to disagree but I take statins for a reason, and I’m an inveterate cheese freak. Also chocolate.

So I say save the high-ticket calories for something that packs a bigger punch tastewise even in small, expensive, memorable bites–goat cheese, bittersweet chocolate ganache. Not soup. Make it count.

Method counts too. The modernized French restaurant-approved cookbook methods for veloutés and blended soups in general are stupid, cumbersome and unsafe. There’s no good enough excuse anymore for telling inexperienced cooks–or any cooks–to boil up a vat of something and then try to pour it into a food processor or blender hot–very dangerous, and not the edge we’re seeking here. Scald marks are not chic. Nor is hot flying soup all over the kitchen walls.

In today’s world, you have a blender or food processor AND you probably have a microwave, no matter how many TV chefs may rail against it. You can do this smarter and safer and lighter and faster.

Common sense says blend your veg of choice first, then heat it. If it isn’t soft enough raw to blend smooth before cooking, steam it through first with minimal water and a lid in the microwave for a couple of minutes or, failing that, in a nonstick frying pan or stockpot with a drizzle of water, maybe a quarter-inch off the bottom of the container or pan, and a lid, also for a few minutes. Take it off the heat, pulse a few times in your blender or food processor without most of the liquid to get it started, then add cold liquid gradually as it blends further until it gets to the consistency you’re aiming for. You’re a lot less likely to generate big steam and pop the lid that way.

Then pour it into a microwaveable container with a lid to cook or reheat the soup in a few minutes without destroying every possible vitamin or losing all the color. You won’t scald yourself and you won’t be furious and frustrated and wishing you’d never heard of it before you even get to taste it (this does happen, you know, and cookbooks never mention it)… You’ll be fabulously unruffled (well…at least for this) and ready to dine when it’s ready to eat.

So, enough with the cooking hock-I-mean-hack. What’s with the purslane? What is purslane, anyway?

You’ve been wading patiently through my diatribe, and the suspense is killing you (but a nice distraction from worrying about the election totals, yeah?)

Purslane–slightly wilted but still worth cooking. I can sympathize.

Purslane, or verdolagas in Spanish, is a slightly tart fresh herb that tastes like a lemony version of watercress or spinach–sorrel? Texture- and looks-wise, it’s a cross between a fresh green herb like basil and a succulent like…like…well, like a jade plant (despite the fact that jade plants are not edible, I’m pretty sure). That is, the leaves are smallish but sort of fleshier than normal herbs. At least when they’re at their peak freshness. Most people who buy and eat purslane put it into a fresh salad and eat it raw. Some stirfry it or chop it and put it into spinach-type dishes. And it’s pretty nutritious–high in vitamins A and C, potassium and other minerals, surprisingly for a vegetable, highish in omega-3 fatty acids if you’re still into those. Grows pretty much throughout the world.

After a week in the fridge, though, it loses a little of its puff and starts to wilt a bit–is it going bad? can you still do something with it?

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Filed under: cooking, frugality, haute cuisine, high-speed soup, kitchen safety, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes, soup | Tagged: food, recipes, vegetarian | Comments Off on Crème de X: Purslane and basil dress up a lighter velouté

A Microwaveable Passover, 5778 (2018) edition

Posted on April 3, 2018 by DebbieN

No matter how many times I vow I’m not going to work too hard this year, I always end up cleaning the fridge some time in the small hours the night before Passover, swearing creatively to get all the vegetable bins and shelving back in the way they came out. Between packing out the unkasherable dishes and appliances like the toaster oven, shopping for the week, and kashering the silverware, dishes and pots for Passover, it always ends up about 5 to 6 or so in the evening before I can actually cook.

Passover started Friday night, and it was just us at home this time around for the first seder. So I didn’t have to make a huge menu, which was good. Because I did have to kasher the kitchen–starting after a 3-hour stint at the DMV (my third this month) to help my kid finally get her learner’s permit. Type I diabetes throws a monkey wrench into the proceedings and requires extra time, paperwork, and hocking to make sure one office actually sends the other office the fax within your lifetime…so it was a bit on the late side that I actually got to start, and by the time sunset rolled around, I was kind of wiped and ready to skip it. Not a great frame of mind for experimenting in the kitchen, certainly not that night. Although the fridge IS still astonishingly clean and sparkly.

We don’t always get fully past the rush to the enjoyment of the seder, especially those of us who are doing the cooking. But the first bite of parsley dipped in saltwater always signals the start of the holiday for me, and the first bite of matzah tastes like freedom. (The thirty-fifth bite or so, perhaps not so much…)

By now I’ve played around enough to have quite a number of simple Passover-worthy dishes that can be microwaved, some of them start to finish. That can be handy when you’re either short on cooking time after getting home from work on Friday or just short on patience and yet you still want to do a simple–but still nice–small seder. It might even provide a save at least for the side dishes if you’re doing a bigger one.

Some things you can’t help cooking on the stove–hard-boiled eggs for the seder plate and for the table of hungry guests. And some things like charoset take some hand work to chop if you don’t have a food processor around.

However.

Even if you’re serving something long-cooked like chicken or brisket as a main dish, a couple of easy microwaveable vegetable dishes, appetizers and desserts–even soup–might benefit from not having to compete for stovetop and oven space, particularly if a heat wave is headed your way. And microwaving reaps big benefits for reheating or supplementing leftovers quickly during the next several days if you keep kosher for Passover, or even if you don’t.

Vegetabalia

Fresh vegetables really matter for Passover. Salad, yes. It’s spring, after all (even though my mother said they were expecting another snowfall this week in Boston). And also cooked greens. I’m a big believer in microwaving them lightly and last-minute wherever possible, so that they’re just-cooked, fresh-tasting and still green when you serve them–at least, if they’re supposed to be green.

Lightly-microwaved asparagus stays green even the next day. It’s good either cold or reheated with light vinaigrette and a poached egg (regular or microwaved) and some basil or other spring herbs.

Asparagus is traditional, and as long as you don’t abuse it the way my mother [probably] still does, by boiling the regulation seven minutes, shocking in ice water, and then letting it sit around in the cold water for ages until the stalks start shredding into floaty olive-green kelp-like bits, because she’s too busy with the soup, and dinner’s not for another whole hour…..skip all that and microwave the stalks instead for 2-3 minutes and you can be a winner.

Snaplock containers that are about the same size as the amount of vegetable you’re microwaving make it easy to prep ahead and store raw trimmed, washed asparagus, broccoli, brussels sprouts or other greens in the fridge, ready to nuke and go. When you’re ready for them, just add a drizzle of water, maybe a quarter-inch, to the container, put the lid back on, shake once or twice over the sink (in case of drips), and microwave them 2-3 minutes for a pound–you can let them sit a minute or so afterward and they’ll continue to steam. If you’re doing 2 pounds in one container, double the time, but stop and stir gently halfway through so the less-cooked ones on the bottom get moved to the top, and keep an eye on it the last minute or so–that is, stop the microwave again and check with a fork for doneness–so you don’t overcook.

Once the vegetables are just fork-tender and still green, drain them carefully and either serve right away or take the lid off and lay it back on loosely with an air gap–you can probably get away with letting it sit this way for 10 minutes or so without it cooling too much, and the veg will stay green. But obviously, it’s best to serve it fairly quickly.

Vegetables you plan to roast or pan-brown can get a very quick head start in the microwave before tossing quickly with olive oil, garlic and rosemary in a frying pan or, if you’ve already got it going anyway, the oven. The precooking definitely cuts down the browning time. Brussels sprouts, fresh fennel, new potatoes, carrots, and red squashes are easy to microwave with just a bit of water in the bottom of a covered container to help steam them quickly.

Not-Chicken Soups

Microwaveable not-chicken soups, good for a vegetarian, vegan, or fish dinner, can be made ahead in a couple of minutes (well, 5 to 15, including prep time) and reheated. They’re also good to have on hand if you’re doing a big meat dinner with the standard chicken soup in a stock pot but you also have a few vegetarian guests.

Basic not-chicken soup (about 2 1/2 quarts or 8-10 servings)

3-4 full-sized carrots
medium or large onion
4 long stalks of celery
drizzle/spoonful of olive oil
fat clove of garlic, minced, mashed or grated
handful of fresh dill or 1-2 T dry
12-20 black peppercorns
lemon juice and salt to taste at the table

Fill up a 2.5 quart microwaveable bowl or container nearly to the top with chopped (bite-size pieces) vegetables. Stir in a spoonful of olive oil, and microwave-wilt the veg for 5 minutes on HIGH with the lid on. Add a fat minced or grated clove of garlic, a handful of dill and a few black peppercorns, plus water to cover and reheat another 5-6 minutes or until steaming hot, then let it sit with the lid on. Your soup will be pretty flavorful after letting it steep half an hour, if possibly a bit sweet (just one of those leftover mongo onions from last week’s “gifting” weighed a full pound on average). A squeeze of lemon and a dash of salt–not Campbell’s or Lipton’s level salting, salt-shaker-at-the-diner’s-discretion salting–and a grinding of pepper will work it out.

Pan-browned not-chicken soup

The pan-browned minimal carrot-onion soup is a little more hands-on, but very convincing and full-bodied. The basic setup is the same as for plain, but after wilting, pan brown the veg in a nonstick frying pan until you see actual browning, about 10 minutes. Add a grated or minced fat clove of garlic, a sprig of thyme, and a splash of white wine, and cook it down to dry. Put the veg back in the microwave container, swirl a bit of water around the empty pan to pick up the browning (i.e., deglaze), add it to the veg, fill the container up to the top with water, and microwave 5-6 minutes to heat, then let it steep.

My current version (since I was gifted with celery as well last week) includes a couple of chopped stalks of celery with again, a very large onion. I also added in a bit of dill plus–chop ’em if you’ve got ’em–one or two finely-diced shiitake mushrooms, fresh or dried and soaked in half a cup of hot water, for added not-chicken potency.

A squeeze of lemon and a dash of salt and fresh ground pepper at the table makes it even better than actual chicken soup. And you never have to skim any scum.

If you want to surprise people, go with bok choy broth but skip the soy sauce (contains wheat) and add extra shiitakes and fresh brown mushrooms, plus scallions, garlic and ginger. Use apple cider vinegar. We think sesame oil is fine for Passover but a lot of people don’t; it’s okay even without it.

Whatever soup you offer, keep the vegetables in. I never really understand the appeal of throwing out good veg just to have a 1950s-style “clear consommé”.

Microwave matzah balls?!

You can, actually, but not the conventional way, at least not in water to cover, mimicking the usual stovetop boiling. I tried it one afternoon last week just to see, using the classic back-of-box recipe just to be sure (I try these things so you don’t have to…). Continue reading →

Filed under: high-speed soup, holiday cooking, Microwave tricks, Vegetabalia | Tagged: food, Jewish cooking, Passover, recipes, vegetarian | Comments Off on A Microwaveable Passover, 5778 (2018) edition

Cauliflower pakoras, lightened up

Posted on December 30, 2017 by DebbieN

Back at the beginning of Chanukah in mid-December, I was too busy to do much celebrating or posting. We were traveling more than usual and my daughter’s college application essays were still in rough shape and we were both a little panicked. My poor husband was working 13-hour days and trying to calm down the younger post-docs that this wasn’t ALWAYS how R&D goes–just sometimes. It’s the price you pay for doing rocket science.

And it was pretty hot and dry around Los Angeles–hence all those fires in the news. Makes it hard to feel safe breathing. Still, we did manage to celebrate modestly, even though the first night of Chanukah was during the nailbiter Alabama special election, whose results wouldn’t be in until after supper.

In any case, I’m posting this now because these are relatively quick and easy (and inexpensive) appetizers. They’re not super-svelte but not overloaded either, and they taste good, even after Chanukah is over (but please, make a fresh batch…)

I don’t do deep frying for Chanukah, particularly not with olive oil, which is expensive and wastes the oil and the calories (gotta save a few for the gelt–chocolate coins). And the cleanup. As my forebears did, I want to make a little olive oil last a longer time by using it sparingly with foods that deliver a slightly better svelte potential than potato latkes. Well–most of my forebears were more worried about getting enough food during the winter, not about eating too much, but let’s say my parents, who grew up in America with enough potatoes and enough oil to give you a gallbladder (and if that’s not a Jewish expression, I don’t know what is). In any case, frugality is warranted but so is enjoyment. How to balance the two?

I’m in love with gilded cauliflower–I think I’ve mentioned it a few (hundred) times. It’s quicker to prepare and probably even somewhat cheaper in salad bowl volumes than pasta or potato salad most of the year. Certainly more nutritious and sophisticated. And it contains garlic. I recently reinforced that view with my entire congregation when I brought a Sicilian (Roman? don’t exactly know) roasted cauliflower, pepper and artichoke salad to a brunch buffet after services. I was pleasantly surprised that by the end of the meal most of it was eaten and actually complimented on. I know, that’s not a true indicator in a lot of places, but Jews aren’t generally shy about telling each other what they really think, especially my congregation, and especially about food.

But I wasn’t totally in the mood for more of the same, even though I had about a third of a big head of cauliflower and some marinated artichokes left over from a frittata. Somewhere in the depths of my grains-and-beans drawer in the fridge (most people use it as a meat drawer; I use it to foil moths) I had stashed a bag of chickpea flour (Bob’s Red Mill; about $2-3 for a 16-ounce bag) because I thought I might make felafel (microwaved and pan-browned, still not deep-fried). But that seemed like a bit of work and kind of heavy.

When I went to pick up my daughter from school, I still hadn’t quite figured out how or what I was going to do quickly but semi-festively on a weeknight with homework and college applications looming. I knew I wasn’t even going to bother wrapping the presents I had for her and my husband, and I had to scrounge for enough candles to light the first night’s lights (note to self, get an extra box, one for next year).

As we passed a new Indian restaurant on the way home, though, it finally clicked.

“How about if I tried making some cauliflower pakoras?” I asked.

“That would be freaking delicious!”

OK, then. Continue reading →

Filed under: appetizers, Revised recipes, sauces and condiments, Vegetabalia | Tagged: food, holiday cooking, recipes, vegetarian | Comments Off on Cauliflower pakoras, lightened up

Surviving the holiday table

Posted on December 29, 2017 by DebbieN

Yeah, yeah, I know. Last month every newspaper and online health magazine was brimming with handy top-10 tips to avoid stuffing yourself into a coma when you got over the river and through the woods to your in-laws’. Did it work? Did you try any of them? Was it even possible with the food available? MMMmmmph.

And…now we’ve started on the next round of holiday parties. And yes, I’m well aware, after last week’s “let the fools have their tartar sauce” tax subversion bill, that the tenor of my questions could equally apply to trickle-down economics, neocon “efficient” remote war management in Iraq and Afghanistan, “I am not a crook,” “too big to fail,” “No Collusion,” “FAKE NEWS,” and other fantasy favorites.

I don’t want to add to the burden of public speculation on the kinds of people who could genuinely fall for those slogans or excuse them in the face of the visible harm they do to all of us (okay, MOST of us. 99.9 percent of us). I’ve met some of these true believers, a few are actually friends, and they are otherwise decent, but really, stubbornly naïve is the kindest thing I can say. Tunnel vision, perhaps.

But back to holiday food–an even more fraught social topic. Because the same stubborn naïveté applies.

The trouble with most of the dutifully published top-10s for navigating party fare is how incredibly vague and trivial they are. They don’t give you a plate plan diagram like the ones for DASH/MyPlate balanced meals and the Idaho Plate™-style recommendations for Type II diabetes management. They don’t help you set a reasonable goal number for carb grams for the total meal including desserts and appetizers, and they don’t help you estimate anything or give you some sample sizes to go by.

Instead, they put the burden on you (or your kid) to select and use the fictitious ideal of self-control (more accurately known as “winging it”) in an environment that, to put it mildly, probably won’t support it. Oh, dear. JUST like the tax boondoggle.

There is also a big, big missing ingredient for most of these party suggestions: vegetables of worth. People don’t cook as much as they used to, chain restaurants and drive-thrus don’t really serve them, and the big food mags have almost dropped them from any party spread that isn’t for summer.

If there aren’t greens on the table, how do you fill half your plate with them as recommended by doctors and CDEs and RDs everywhere? If there’s one green vegetable dish and it’s breaded, panko’ed, crusted, dressed, nutted, topped, creamed or cream sauced, gratinéed, gravied, stuffed, sweetened, pancetta’ed, buttered or cheesed (I know, some of that litany is starting to sound a little obscene, as it should) to within an inch of its life, is it still worthwhile counting it as a green? Or is it actually mostly yet another starch with cheese, cream, butter, breadcrumbs, bacon bits and so on?

If you need to cover up any dish that thoroughly, it should tell you something pretty important about the recipe:

It is not exactly a taste explosion.*

Sorry, I WAS trying to get away from the obvious political metaphor, but it looks like it’s going to stick. (*And my thanks to the much-mourned Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series–and more specifically another of his books, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, for that line).

In any case, to survive the holidays and look good doing it, you need a winter holiday table that works better and tastes fresher and is actually lighter than the usual stuff and won’t leave you wishing for a sleigh to schlep your stomach home in after the party.

You need vegetabalia, ungunked. Some actual greens (or purples) on the table to lighten the load and redress the balance.

Actually, vegetabalia has always been a key part of classic dinner parties and it would be a shame to forget it, especially when you’re in the heart of winter. I don’t think I actually have ten ideas here, because as you may have seen in my previous attempts at top-10 lists, I tend to go a little overboard. Let’s see.

One way to do it without too much shock is to make the starch dishes a little smaller and the greens platters a little bigger and more numerous, colored, varied and–this is actually important, at least for a party–pretty.

Another is to add a green salad worthy of a celebration–keep it simple, elegant, just a couple of key and colorful ingredients that go together, not like something you scooped out of your local chain restaurant salad bar. See the big box of salad post for some inexpensive and winter-worthy vegetable selections that are easy to prep and store in the fridge for showtime and won’t look like “rabbit food.”

The third is to provide appetizers that are bigger on vegetabalia, ones that get beyond celery sticks, baby-cut carrots and bottled ranch dressing and are actually appetizing.

…Of course, the key element for avoiding idiots who take one look and say, “Oh. Rabbit food.” is not to invite them in the first place. The second strategy is surprise (in a good way, that is, not as in “celery with marshmallow fluff!”)

Good-looking vegetable appetizers that won’t bore people aren’t necessarily more expensive, especially if you buy bulk vegetables and wash and cut them up yourself. And some can actually be easier to make, and make look impressive, than lining up all those crackers and cheese slices neatly on a circular tray (my bane, I just don’t have the hostess/catering gene). The bonus: if you’re the host, you won’t have a load of crackers and cheese sitting around the house the next day, and you might have some fresh noshing vegetables left over, ready to grab and go.

Here are a couple of more specific (forgotten?) ways to make vegetabalia rock, cold and hot.

Crudités (#4)

The “just wash and nosh” scheme for raw vegetables is pretty easy and can even be elegant for a raw vegetable tray. You don’t need fancy chef-school knife skills or fancy expensive knife sets to make the magic happen, either.

You don’t have to do a massive tray or a zillion different expensive designer raw vegetables–three or four types on a medium platter with some contrast and a good fresh dip make a nice party display. At between $1 and $5-6 (for heirloom, top-end stuff or for portobello mushrooms) per pound, most noshing vegetables are also cheaper than many chips-and-dips junk foods, designer breads, cheeses, sliced deli meats, and premade party platters of just about any kind.

Do get away from the tedious carrots-and-celery-sticks-and-ranch-dressing version, even if you are doing carrots and/or celery. Celery and carrots are still good, mind you, but you might want to grow them up a bit, cut them differently, add one or two less common dipping vegetables for variety and something fresher and more interesting than ranch dressing for a dip or spread.

Usually I’m against “fashion vegetables,” heirloom everything and bagged, prewashed/pretrimmed veg because of the price markup compared to bulk. But if you’ve got access to something a little extra in an unexpected color (purple is good, so is bright yellow), like purple cauliflower or multicolored peppers, you might want to go for it just once in limited amounts and mix them up with the regular vegetables.

And there are non-designer vegetables with enough mix of color and flavor to do the pretty at a slightly lower price point.

Regular globe radishes are pretty bright and crunchy and eye-catching and peppery–lop off the thin root and most of the stem; wash them really well to get out any sand and keep them whole or slice them in half lengthwise. If you have a local farmer’s market that doesn’t slap on chichi markups in the price per pound, or you happen to see a bunch of longer or otherwise eye-catching radishes for about the same price in the produce section of your grocery store, go for it.
Fancy variety pods like sugar snap peas and snow peas–even raw green beans–are a nice choice too. You can get bulk snap and snow peas for about $3/lb. at the Ralph’s/Kroger’s and fresh green beans are sometimes on sale between Thanksgiving and New Year’s for under $1/lb. but usually about $2/lb.
Trader Joe’s sells 2-lb. bags of multicolored full-sized organic carrots for about $2 at this writing. White, deep purple with a gold core, bright yellow…pretty dramatic and they mix up nicely with the cheaper orange ones without being a lot more expensive.
If you can get colored full-sized bell peppers, maybe get one or two, and choose colors other than green. Sliced lengthwise they go pretty far in brightening up a vegetable tray.

Continue reading →

Filed under: appetizers, DASH Diet, Dips, Eating out, holiday cooking, Vegetabalia | Tagged: food, healthy diet, holiday cooking, recipes, vegetarian | 2 Comments »

Persian Posh and Jewish Soul: Two Veg-Friendly Cookbooks for Spring

Posted on April 30, 2015 by DebbieN

"The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian" (aka "Veggiestan" in the UK) by Sally Butcher, cover photo from amazon.co.uk

"Jewish Soul Food: From Minsk to Marrakesh" by Janna Gur. Cover photo from amazon.com

Passover week didn’t exactly go the way I’d hoped, with loads of new vegetable dishes to play with and experiments in microwave gastronomy that would wow the most cynical reader…

After the optimistic start with the chocolate almond torte and the microwave shakshouka for one, I suddenly caught a bug–my husband caught it first, suffered a day or so, got better and then kindly passed it to me, and I ended up sick for the better part of the week. We all agree we got it from a kid he was sitting next to at seder. Now that our kid’s a teenager, we’re no longer used to it. Clearly we’ve gone soft.

So I was–shall we say–less than enthusiastic about cooking the last week or so, and ended up with lots of ideas that stayed in my head while I stayed in bed, attempting to keep up on tea, rice, poached eggs and applesauce. And feeling really embarrassed that every time I opened the fridge and saw all the beautiful vegetables I’d bought for the week, I peered at them suspiciously–how much trouble would they cause me? Was it really a crappy virus or was it maybe secretly food poisoning, even though everyone else was able to eat? Maybe tomorrow–and closed the fridge door again and groaned. It took a couple of extra days to start looking at vegetables with any enthusiasm at all.

This, I thought, is what most of the country thinks about fresh vegetables if a dolled-up superstar chef isn’t holding one on the cover of a glossy magazine (or even if he is). Maybe with a little less queasiness or dizziness than I experienced, but with that lurking suspicion that vegetables have dirt on them, that you have to wash them off and then cut them up and do something to them, that they’re not sterile and wrapped in plastic for your protection, and that it’s all too much bother. What a lousy, paranoid way to live.

So anyway, now that I’m better the vegetables are looking good again, and the (four or five) leftover matzah boxes have been relegated to a top shelf for sometime when I’m not sick of them and want to experiment a bit for next year.

Two bright and sun-filled new (or newish, anyway) cookbooks that make lavish and hearty use of vegetables were languishing on my desk for the entire week of Passover (and two weeks before that, when I was too busy to do more than look at them wistfully). Sally Butcher’s Veggiestan is a collection of pan-Middle Eastern vegetarian recipes that centers on her husband’s family Persian cuisine and their experience as the proprietors of a Persian specialty grocery in London. Jewish Soul Food: From Minsk to Marrakesh is Israeli food writer/editor Janna Gur’s second major English-language cookbook, and it focuses on Jewish “grandma” food from all the cultures Israel is home to.

Both books run something along the lines of Yotam Ottolenghi’s approach to food–appealing, vegetable-filled, exotic, and fun to cook and eat. But the food is generally simpler and homier, more traditional and with fewer trendy/haute touches or UK-specific ingredients like salsify or seabeans that you just can’t find most places in the US. Butcher and Gur each have a foot in both professional and home cooking, which may make the difference. The recipes here are not chefly so much as cookable. Eminently cookable, and they make me want to run right out and try so many things (especially if I can stuff any of the steps into the microwave) that I’m just going to have to get them both and give back my overdue library copies.

The authors share an approach to traditional and modern Middle Eastern food that is enthusiastic, knowledgeable, ecumenical and–I’m not sure how to say it exactly, but neighborly comes close. Reading these books is like hanging out in the farmer’s market and the kitchen with a friend who knows how to make all the dishes your grandmother might have made but never showed you.

Veggiestan is the original 2011 UK title of Butcher’s mid-sized cookbook, now out in trade paperback, but the publishers thought that title would be too controversial for the US (land of “freedom Continue reading →

Filed under: books, holiday cooking, Vegetabalia | Tagged: cookbooks, food, Jewish cooking, Middle Eastern cooking, Persian cooking, vegetarian | Comments Off on Persian Posh and Jewish Soul: Two Veg-Friendly Cookbooks for Spring

Spaghetti Squash Too Many Ways

Posted on September 30, 2009 by DebbieN

Just half of a microwaved spaghetti squash makes 5 or 6 cups!

This week my local Trader Joe’s had crates of beautiful–and hefty–spaghetti and butternut squash for less than $2 apiece–on the order of 30 to 50 cents/lb. So of course I got two of each and wobbled out of the store unsure which bag was pulling me down further. And then came the task of cooking them.

One spaghetti squash–a good-sized 5-6 lb. beast–will feed a lot more people than you’d think. It’s got some serious advantages over standard pasta: more fiber, no sodium, some vitamin A and potassium, perhaps fewer calories and carbohydrates per ounce. And it’s incredibly versatile. And you can cook it in the microwave in about 10 minutes rather than spend an hour baking it and heating up the house.

But there’s one big disadvantage–if you cook the whole thing, you have to eat the whole thing. Cooked spaghetti squash doesn’t hold up in the freezer–the strings go flat and shrivelly. And reheating too long can make it wilt as well. So can very acidic dressings.

So the choices are (for a small, moderately but only moderately tolerant family unit):

Cook half at a time and store the other half raw and wrapped in the fridge for a few days
Cook both halves, use one right away, and store the other half in the fridge for a few days, either wrapped in its shell or else scooped out into a container (recommended)
Give the other half to a friend–but not too good a friend…
Cook it all and make it for a big potluck. Maybe people will think it’s innovative and exotic…depends on what you do with it (I don’t so much recommend marinara for this if you’re looking to impress–maybe a peanut-curry sauce or an Alfredo-style sauce with lemon peel, or something involving oyster mushrooms)
Cook it all and serve it a couple of different ways over the course of the week
Make a couple of the variations ones that taste good cold and eat the leftovers for lunch (recommended)

One important tip (learned the hard way):

The strands grow crosswise inside the spaghetti squash, not lengthwise. If you cut the squash in half the way you would a watermelon, you’ll be cutting the strands into shorter bits–not what you want. Cut the spaghetti squash in half across the middle of the SHORT side, NOT from the stem to the flower end.

If you have kids, let them count the seeds in each half of the squash–it’s a good lesson in plant survival strategies. My daughter and I counted about 80-90 seeds per half and decided to wash, dry and save them for her school’s garden. At this rate, they’ll have spaghetti squash for several years. Note of caution: out of 10 that we thought had been lost down the sink but actually got caught in the drainer, a full 9 germinated, so be careful what you wish for… even commercially grown, these things are very, very determined. But we’re not ready to name any of them “Audrey II”–yet. Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, DASH Diet, Microwave tricks, sauces and condiments, Vegetabalia | Tagged: fruits and vegetables, low-salt cooking, microwave cooking, Microwave tricks, Pasta, recipes, spaghetti squash, Trader Joe's, vegetables, vegetarian, vegetarian cooking | Comments Off on Spaghetti Squash Too Many Ways

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Microwave tricks: keeping cool and colorful

Multicolor carrots, no colors touching

Red Cabbage “Stir-Fry” Salad

Quiche x Fillo = Yeah!

Microwave Tricks: Felafel

Microwave Wild Rice Pilaf

Crème de X: Purslane and basil dress up a lighter velouté

A Microwaveable Passover, 5778 (2018) edition

Cauliflower pakoras, lightened up

Surviving the holiday table

Persian Posh and Jewish Soul: Two Veg-Friendly Cookbooks for Spring

Spaghetti Squash Too Many Ways

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Red Cabbage “Stir-Fry” Salad

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About Slow Food Fast

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