There are many ways to celebrate the beauty food brings to our lives. I encourage you to try these:
Nudge just one young person toward a plate of freshly sautéed French-cut green beans in drawn butter — and don’t be upset if she isn’t impressed.
Share a meal with a friend more often.
Bring more people to your dinner table.
Try to make at least one person a little less hungry.
Tweak your diet so that it is healthier.
That last one is inspired by an interesting email exchange with a reader who said she reads my column on a regular basis, but wondered if I could focus a little less on meat and more on plant-based cooking.
We both agreed that it would be a noble effort. Not to push for all cooks to become vegetarians, but to simply point out that eating less meat is a healthier way to live.
By the beginning of the 21st century, there was a word associated with that philosophy, flexitarian. And in 2003, the American Dietetic Associated voted “flexitarian” to be the year’s most useful word. It’s simply a word that describes the semi-vegetarian, encompassing people who aren’t that strict as vegetarians, and meat-eaters who are striving for a more health-conscious, planet-friendly diet.
New York Times food columnist and cookbook author Mark Bittman observed in his award-winning cookbook, “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian,” that the flexitarian concept was “a recognition of the benefits of a more varied diet, one that can’t be described as meat-and-potatoes. The health and nutrition factor isn’t complicated, and it can be summed up like this: A diet that’s high in vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes is a healthier diet than one that isn’t.”
With that in mind, here are a couple of recipes that fit right into a flexitarian approach to cooking. Little or no meat, plenty of gorgeous produce, grains and legumes. Bon appetit!
Winter vegetable stock
When adapting non-vegetarian soups to a vegetarian soup, quite frequently you need to find a substitute for chicken or beef broth. This is a good one. No one flavor dominates in this complex, full-bodied stock, so it can be used unobtrusively in simple soups, or as a broth in stews and rice dishes
2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
1 yellow onion, diced into 1/2-inch squares
1 cup leek greens, roughly chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
3 to 4 outer stalks of celery, plus some celery leaves, diced
1 cup winter squash, cubed, or squash seeds and skins
1 cup chard stems, cut into 1-inch lengths
1 medium potato or 1 cup thick potato parings
½ celery root, scrubbed and diced
1/4 cup lentils, rinsed
6 branches thyme or 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
2 bay leaves
2 handfuls borage leaves, chard leaves, bok choy leaves, lettuce or nettles, roughly chopped
3 sage leaves
10 branches parsley, roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons nutritional yeast (optional, but delicious!)
8 1/2 cups cold water
Heat the butter or oil in a wide pot, add the vegetables, herbs, garlic, salt, nutritional yeast, if using, and ½ cup of the water, and stew over medium-low heat for 15 to 20 minutes. Pour in the remaining 8 cups of cold water and bring to a boil; then simmer, partially covered, for 30 to 40 minutes. Pour the stock through a sieve and press out as much of the liquid as possible. Use it as is, or reduce it further for a richer flavor. Taste and season with more salt if needed.
May be frozen for up to 6 months.
Winter vegetables baked in cream with Gruyere
Winter vegetables, particularly the root vegetables, are sweet and delicious when baked in cream and cheese and covered with a layer of crisp buttered bread crumbs.
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 to 3 medium leeks, white parts only, sliced into 1/4-inch rounds
1 fennel bulb, trimmed, quartered, cored, and sliced lengthwise into 1/4-inch thick pieces
6 small red or white potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/8-inch thick rounds
4 medium turnips, peeled and sliced into 1/8-inch thick rounds
1 yellow onion, halved and sliced into 1/4-inch thick pieces
½ celery root, trimmed, quartered and cut into thin slices
½ teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
2 cups heavy cream or half and half
11/2 cups shredded Gruyere cheese
5 tablespoons butter
1 cup bread crumbs
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9-by 13-inch baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Rub the surface with the crushed garlic clove.
Layer half of the vegetables in the dish, and season with some of the salt, pepper and thyme. Drizzle on 1 cup of the cream and half of the Gruyere cheese. Make a second layer with the rest of the vegetables, season them with remaining salt, pepper and thyme. Add the cream and then the remaining Gruyere cheese. Dot the surface with small pieces of the butter, using 2 tablespoons in all. Cover loosely with a piece of foil and bake for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, melt the rest of the butter and toss it with the bread crumbs. After the vegetable dish has baked for the 30 minutes, cover the surface with the bread crumbs. Return the gratin to the oven (without the foil cover), and continue baking until the vegetables are tender and the top is nicely browned, about another 30 minutes.
Remove the gratin from the oven and let it rest for 5 to 10 minutes before serving. Makes 4 to 6 servings.
Both recipes were adapted from “The Greens Cookbook — Extraordinary Vegetarian Cuisine from the Celebrated Restaurant” by Deborah Madison.
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