Glazing Vegetables

Glazing vegetables is an extremely useful technique for punching up an otherwise boring vegetable side dish. I used to avoid recipes that used this technique, because I associated glazed vegetables — specifically, carrots — with a sugary, syrupy sweet dish. If I wanted to eat dessert, I’d have ice cream.
But I was wrong. The traditional [...]

Farmers Market Vegetable Soup

The problem with going to the farmers market is that it is all too easy to yield to temptation and grab up way too many fresh vegetables than you can possibly eat in a week. What better way to take advantage of all that bounty than to make a huge pot of soup? You can [...]

Simmering: A Technique for Cooking Flavorful Vegetables

There are probably two main ways we all learned how to cook vegetables with liquid: boiling and steaming. But both of these techniques have disadvantages. Boiling vegetables in a lot of water often yields overcooked, mushy results that many of us remember (and hate) from our childhoods. And steaming all too often lets the flavor [...]

Eat Your Vegetables! Prepping, Blanching and Revitalizing Vegetables

colors in the market, originally uploaded by Zé Eduardo
Sometimes it seems like a lot of work to sneak in those 5 servings of vegetables per day. When I’m trying to throw together a quick weeknight supper, I often don’t want to spend time making side dishes. And I’m not going to eat fresh vegetables for [...]

Mediterranean-Style Roasted Vegetable Salad

Are you overrun in garden goodness? Then try this salad. It was a big hit at our house and is chock full of delicious veggies. While I made it with eggplant and squash, I think it might also take well to additions or substitutions of tomatoes and sweet peppers. A little bit of roasted chile [...]

Hearty Pasta & Vegetables

If you have pasta in your pantry and one or two vegetables lurking in your crisper, there’s no reason not to make a filling and healthy dinner. This is one of my ‘go-to’ recipes when I’m short on time, energy or creativity. Using this basic blueprint, you can pretty much make any pasta dish you [...]

Roasted Vegetable Salsa

When it’s wintertime and you’re missing fresh salsa, this can be a more-than-acceptable substitute. The seasonings I give here provide a Mediterranean flavor, and I like to serve this salsa as part of a mezze with pita chips. If you want a more Latin-style salsa, use hotter chilies and substitute seasonings like lime juice, vegetable [...]

Steamed Vegetables with Sesame Dressing

This Asian-influenced sesame dressing is a light accompaniment for pretty much any vegetable that can be steamed: asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, green beans, snow peas or sugar snap peas. (If you substitute another longer cooking vegetable, remember to adjust the steaming time accordingly.) Serve this as a light starter before a heartier soup or stew. Serves [...]

Sour Cream Dip & Crudites

It’s getting to be that time of year, again — party time. And while I love to try out new recipes for hors d’oeuvres, it’s good to have a few tried and true workhorses on standby. Such is the Sour Cream Dip, always a favorite and literally a blank palette for the cook to experiment [...]

How to Roast Vegetables

It has turned cold and wintry here this week. The wind is whipping the leaves off the trees, and when I walked my dog this morning, I had to break out my hat and gloves. I expect we’ll have a few more days of this and then we’ll get our Indian summer, which is the [...]