Another day, another braise

I've been doing a lot of braising this cold weather season, everything from radishes to pork shoulder. This time around, I made braised beef with carrots from Patricia Wells' Vegetable Harvest cookbook. The recipe is unique because it's as much about the carrots as it is the beef. Many braising recipes use vegetables only to enhance the flavor of the meat - by the end of the cooking period, the vegetables are usually mushy and get strained out of the sauce. This recipe produced a tender piece of meat with an abundance of perfectly cooked carrots. The carrots held their shape, and even had a slight bite to them.

I always get fun cookbooks for the holidays, and this year was no exception. I got the Campanile cookbook, which is great because I'm a huge Nancy Silverton fan. I made kale with crispy garlic from the book to go along with the beef. The recipe is actually really simple - thinly sliced garlic cloves are crisped up in oil, and added to cooked kale seasoned with a squeeze of lemon and salt. I used lacinato kale, which is also known as dinosaur kale or cavalo nero. I prefer the flavor and texture, but regular kale would work just as well.
Braised beef with carrots

Adapted from Vegetable Harvest

Serves about 6

A 3lb boneless piece of beef meant for braising (anything labeled chuck is a good bet)

3 lbs of carrots, peeled and thinly sliced on the diagonal

2 cans of tomato paste

2 cups of red wine

2 cups of chicken or beef stock

4 sprigs of fresh thyme

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons of olive oil

salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large heavy pot. Season the beef generously with salt and pepper and brown on all sides. Add all of the remaining ingredients to the pot, bring to a simmer. Cover the pot and cook at a low simmer for about 3 and a half hours, or until the meat is tender. Turn the meat once per hour. After the meat is cooked, remove it from the pot and cut into thick slices. Spoon the carrots over the top. Discard thyme sprigs and bay leaves. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Chickpea and corn patties with sweet potato fries

This is a burger and fries in a non-traditional sense. This recipe for chickpea and corn patties caught my eye, and I decided to serve the patties as burger on a bun. I used frozen roasted corn which gave the patties a little bit of a smoky flavor. The burgers reminded us a bit of falafel, but with the added sweetness of the corn. I served the patties on a homemade bun with a sauce of sour cream mixed with chili powder.


The sweet potato fries are from the book Vegetable Harvest. I used two types of sweet potatoes and tossed them in a combination of olive oil, sea salt, cumin and espelette pepper. The potatoes were roasted at 500 degrees for about 15 minutes.


This was a very satisfying meal even though it was meatless!

Frederic Anton's heirloom tomato salad

My tomato plants aren't doing very well this year. I think it's because we've had a very mild summer. So when I saw heirloom tomatoes in every color at the Ferry Building farmer's market, I had to have some. This recipe is from Vegetable Harvest. It's a simple tomato salad with a unique dressing of lime and vanilla. The dressing is made a day in advance - the seeds from one vanilla bean are combined with the juice of two limes, a touch of salt, and 1/4 cup of olive oil. I chose to about half the amount of olive oil and added a squeeze of honey to temper the acidity. The dressing sits in the fridge overnight, and the zest from the limes is reserved in a separate container. When you're ready to serve the salad, simply slice the tomatoes, drizzle them with the dressing, and sprinkle them with lime zest, freshly ground pepper and fleur de sel. This was a fun way to dress up tomatoes - the vanilla really adds an exotic note to the dish.

Cookbook review - Vegetable Harvest

My review of Vegetable Harvest was published in the paper today.

Pastina with green olives, mint and garlic

This is another adapted recipe from Vegetable Harvest. The original recipe calls for spaghetti, but I wanted this to be a side dish, so I used pastina. Pastina is bigger than couscous, but smaller than orzo. The sauce is almost like a coarse green olive and mint pesto - the olives and mint are pulsed a few times in the in the food processor with olive oil, garlic and parmigiano reggiano. The sauce is tossed with the cooked pasta, and finished with freshly ground pepper and more parmigiano reggiano. I also added a pinch of lemon zest. This was really delicious, the mint gives it a very fresh taste. I served this alongside a pork tenderloin that I had crusted in fennel pollen, grey salt, and white pepper. The two dishes went really well together.

Shaved zucchini salad

This recipe is adapted from Vegetable Harvest. Thinly sliced zucchini is tossed with balsamic vinegar, seasoned with fleur de sel and topped with shaved parmigiano reggiano. That's all there is to it, and it's a great flavor combination! The original recipe calls for the zucchini to be sliced thinly with a mandoline. I didn't feel like pulling out my mandoline to slice two zucchinis, so I shaved them with a vegetable peeler instead.

Curried lentil, chickpea and swiss chard stew

This is another recipe from Vegetable Harvest, and it was a winner. French green lentils, onions, chickpeas and swiss chard are simmered together in a broth flavored with curry powder, cumin and cayenne. The stew is garnished with a dollop of greek yogurt. The french green lentils really made the dish. The lentils can be hard to find in regular grocery stores, so I ordered them online. The swiss chard came from a plant in our garden which is about 6 feet tall!

Cabbage rolls with veal and parmesan

Ok, so there's no such thing as a perfect cookbook. Vegetable Harvest came close though. This recipe from the book was good, but not great. If I had followed the recipe exactly, I think it would have been inedible. It's an interesting concept - a mixture of ground veal, rice, parmesan, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, salt, pepper and ground nutmeg is wrapped in cabbage leaves, smothered in homemade tomato sauce and baked. The issue with the recipe is that that the seasonings are not proportionate to the amount of meat. For only 8 ounces of veal, the recipe calls for a half cup of chopped parsley, a half cup of chopped cilantro and a half cup of fresh rosemary. That's a ton of herbs to season a small amount of meat! And rosemary is extremely strong! I cut the rosemary back to about a tablespoon. The recipe also called for six cloves of garlic and a whopping 1/2 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg. If I was making a pie, that much nutmeg wouldn't bother me, but for a savory dish? One that already contains a cup and a half of herbs and six cloves of garlic? I don't think so. I cut the garlic back to 2 cloves and used somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 of a teaspoon of nutmeg.

The next issue is that the cabbage rolls took double the time to bake as the recipe directed. My oven is very reliable, so it must have been a misprint in the recipe. Even then, the meat was slightly pink. The cabbage rolls, with my modifications tasted fine, but this dish is just not worth the effort. I spread the prep work out over a few days, but between making my own tomato sauce, cooking the rice, painstakingly peeling whole leaves off the cabbage head, washing, blanching and drying those leaves, making the ground meat mixture, rolling nine cabbage bundles and waiting for everything to bake, I had a few hours invested in this. But it's ok - if I don't experiment, I won't learn as much. I still love Patricia Wells.

Mahi mahi with cabbage, serrano ham and almonds

This is my version of a recipe from Vegetable Harvest. The recipe called for monkfish tails, but my grocery store didn't have any today, so I went with mahi mahi. This is a layered dish. The first component of the dish is a combination of shredded savoy cabbage, slivered garlic and serrano ham which is sauteed with grey salt and white pepper until the cabbage is tender. The fish is dredged in a mixture of flour, grey salt, ground ginger and espelette pepper and sauteed in olive oil until cooked through. The fish is served on a bed of the cabbage and topped with toasted almonds and fleur de sel. The combination of flavors worked really well together and the outside of the fish was crispy from the seasoned crust. On the side, I served toasted israeli couscous tossed with butter, grey salt and chopped parsley.

Steamed leeks in mustard and caper vinaigrette

This recipe is from Vegetable Harvest by Patricia Wells. I love the flavor of leeks, but I usually eat them as a component of a dish. This recipe focuses on the leeks themselves. The key to this dish is to choose the smallest leeks that you can find. The leeks are simply steamed and drizzled with a vinaigrette of sherry vinegar, dijon mustard, salt, capers and olive oil. The leeks are dressed when they're warm so that they absorb the vinaigrette. The final touch is a sprinkling of fresh chives. This was an elegant and unique way to eat leeks.

Roasted chickpeas, artichokes, mushrooms and tomatoes

My next cookbook review for the newspaper will be Vegetable Harvest by Patricia Wells. This is the first recipe I've tried, and it was really delicious and healthy. Chickpeas, artichoke hearts and mushrooms are combined with roasted tomato sauce and cumin and baked at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. The tomato sauce is simply tomatoes slow roasted with a touch of sea salt and dried oregano. This mixture is pureed, skins, seeds and all to create the sauce. I made the sauce a few days in advance to cut down on prep time tonight. The cumin is toasted in a saucepan to maximize the flavor. I used king trumpet mushrooms - their meaty texture worked really well with the chickpeas and artichoke hearts. As you can see from the picture, it's not the most beautiful dish, but it's very satisfying.