Do You Really Like Vegetables?

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
Anybody tried quinoa? I first tried it about a year ago, and haven't had it since then. I liked it a lot and I'm hoping to get my Peruvian friends to cook it again!

Quinoa It's a welcome variation to cous-cous and bulgur.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
(and I Don't like dressing).

There is no dressing you like? No vinaigrette? Or is it just that creamy crap (maybe including some ketchup :vomit: ) which you don't like?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I've made some inroads to veggie meals since my last post.

For meat-like vegetarian dishes, I've found some good mileage from: squashes, zucchini, and eggplant (all of which readily absorb whatever sauce you cook them in - I like to use light soy sauce with some wine and rice vinegar). Mushrooms also make for good bulking agent in foods without being heavy in the stomach, and they also take readily to flavorings.

For more fibrous vegetables, carrots will cook to a very mellow sweetness if stir-fried in oil. You need to slice them fairly thin for this, like French fries size, but it's worth it. The oil turns golden when you're doing it right, and you can scorch them slightly for a sweet caramelized taste.

Onions lose their astringency and become deliciously sweet when you finely chop them and stir fry them in oil on high heat. When they start to turn translucent, turn the heat down and cover it. This will release the sweet oils from the onions and convert their sourness into a sugary flavor.

Quite by accident, I learned that onions can also be stirfried without any oil at all. You need some liquid, and light soy sauce works best. Scorch them and then turn the heat low, and the oil inherent in the onions will do the rest.

Broccoli stir fries well, but you need to add a little water to stop it drying out because it's so fibrous. It becomes slightly sweet if you scorch the florets a little. The florets take on sauces well - I like to mix light soy sauce with wine and a bit of corn starch and water for gravy.

If you really want to move away from meats, Asian supermarkets will sell packages of dofu (soy curd) textured and flavored like beef or chicken. These are delicious and they're basically flavored shredded protein. Added to any vegetable dish, they add bulk but not much in the way of calories or carbs.

My favorite veggies are the leafy veg. Baby spinach is the best I can find in western supermarkets. In Asian markets, look for 上海白菜 (Shanghai bai cai in Mandarin, Shanghai bok choy in Cantonese - brassica rapa) or 油菜 (you cai/yuk choy). Both are thin-stemmed leafy veg with a slightly milky and pleasant flavor when stir fried. If you see a plant with leaves, thin stems, and yellow flowers, it's 菜心 (cai xin/choy sum - brassica campestris L.) and this stir fries well too. The flowers are sweet. 芥兰 (jie lan/kai lan - brassica oleracea) is one step heavier than cai xin - the leaves are smaller and the stem is thicker, making for a crunchier dish.

Finally there is a dish I make that comes from Buddhist cuisine where they wanted the texture of meat but kept it vegetarian. Soak day lily (金针菜 jin zhen cai), shiitake mushrooms (香菇 xiang gu), and wood ear fungus (木耳 mu'er) in water for a few hours, then fry in oil with garlic. The day lily gives a dusty sweet flavor, the wood ear lends a crunchy frilly texture, and the shiitake mushrooms provide a strong forest scent. My father often put doufu in it too, especially the deep fried puffy type, because that had a meatlike consistency.

[SlowwHand]

I've had thoughts of being a vegetarian; but I'd have to live off potato, black-eyed peas and pinto beans.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You could also have black beans

[molly bloom]

Slow cooked spinach or mustard greens, Indian style, with butter/ghee and chillies.

Mattar paneer, Imam bayildi, Chinese monk's vegetable with noodles...

Tempura vegetables- shiitake, baby aubergine...

White gazpacho...

Vegetarian canneloni or lasagne...


Moroccan vegetarian tagine dishes (served on cous cous) are also very tasty- as are Lebanese vegetable dishes.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Grains are not vegetables?

Not in common parlance.

[Zkribbler]

Three-bean salad is delicious.

Tomatoes -- although they never really caught on as a hand vegetable -- are also good. :

I also keep a bunch or two of radishes bobbing around in a bowl of water in the fridge. I chomp them down instead of chips.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Tomatoes -- although they never really caught on as a hand vegetable -- are also good. :

In San Francisco we went to restaurant that had a to-may-to cart.

Yes, just different varieties of fresh to-mah-toes, from which you could choose a selection. They all tasted great, but were all very different in flavour and appearance.


I liked the Stinking Rose garlic restaurant too- their motto:

'We flavour our garlic with food' .

I felt sorry for the people sharing the Coit Tower with us afterwards, though...

[Alinestra Covelia]

On the subject of vegetarian foods, I've tried some meat substitutes. Soy products work well, especially shredded flavored soy. If you have a meat roast going on the stovetop, then drop in some soaked "soy bamboo" (腐竹 ). These have a great texture and they have a large surface area, meaning they'll take up whatever sauce you're cooking in. I usually get a meat cut with the bone in, and brown that on all sides in a Dutch oven with ginger, garlic, red wine, soy sauce, and star anise. Then cook it on very low heat for hours. Adding in the presoaked soy bamboo in inch-long segments takes place about an hour before you're done.

The drawback of this is that they work best with a delicious meat sauce, which sort of defeats the object of having vegetarian food. You can also add them to stirfried dishes with a good amount of sauce. I add them to doufu vegetarian dishes, which I usually add soy sauce gravy to. They also go well with carrots stir fried with celery - a pleasing soft texture to go with all the crunchiness.

Wheat gluten (面精 ) is a high protein, low carb extract from wheat that can take on a meatlike texture. The best I ever ate was in Hangzhou in China, at the massive Lingyin Buddhist temple. My dad made a big charitable donation, and the monks invited us for dinner. They made a dish called "Heaven Swan" (天鹅 ) which was made from pressed textured wheat gluten. It was delicious - it really tasted like poultry, and it was served in a wonderful caramelized soy sauce. They also did vegetarian eels, which were actually shiitake mushroom caps, cut in a spiral from cap to rim, and then straightened out, breaded, and then fried.

It was so good I took an extra serving in a bag all the way from Hangzhou to Beijing, refrigerated first in the hotel fridge and then later in the aircraft fridge, just so that my little brother could try it. He loved it too

[Asmodean]

Do olives count as a veg??

I love olives, but other than that I actually do like vegetables. That is if someone else cooks them. I hate cooking vegetables. All the peeling and cutting and slicing makes me go mad.

Asmodean

[muxec]

Cucumbers

[Alinestra Covelia]

Barley is awesome. It's like rice, but if you overcook it, it turns fluffy instead of mushy. Well worth throwing into soups with some mushrooms, spices, celery, and carrots. Reduce it down to a stew and then serve.

Edit: The main problem with barley is that it takes a lot longer to cook than, say, rice. Take the time you'd need to cook the same amount of rice, and double it.


Easy come-home recipe:

Four peeled, chopped carrots
One bunch of celery, chopped
One block of extra firm tofu, cubed
One tub of sliced mushrooms
Some barley

Throw in beef stock into boiling water, add all the ingredients and pepper and garlic salt.

Watch three episodes of your favorite TV show back to back, check the soup. If the barley hasn't yet absorbed all the water and flavor, go back and give it a fourth TV episode.

[Guynemer]

Carrots, spinach, artichokes, corn... yum.

Sweet peppers are my favorite by a country mile, however. I used them in almost everything. Roasted or raw, blended into marinades or tossed with pasta, sliced as an appetizer... ****, I'm making myself hungry.

[aneeshm]

If I was going to make a blanket statement, I'd have to say no.
I like potatoes cooked in most any manner.
Spinach? Brussel sprouts? Cauliflower? Broccoli? BEETS, for God's sake!

Just thinking about it makes me ill.

Just out of curiosity, in what forms do you generally eat these vegetables? How are they cooked?

And are these the archetypical "vegetables" in American culture?