Posted by The Serious Eats Team, May 14, 2008 at 2:45 PM
- makes 1 1/2 quarts -
Adapted from Entertaining by Martha Stewart.
Ingredients
4 or 5 stems broccoli
3 red bell peppers
1/2 small bunch fresh tarragon or basil
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 cup tarragon vinegar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper
Procedure
1. Wash broccoli and cut into small florets. Seed the peppers and slice them into slivers. Wash and mince the herb.
2. Blanch the broccoli in rapidly boiling water until tender (4 to 5 minutes). Plunge into ice water to cool and then drain well.
3. Combine the remaining ingredients with the minced herb. Pour half of the dressing over the broccoli and pepper slivers and toss well. Taste and add more dressing if desired; the full amount of dressing was far too much for me, which I discovered after tossing it all it, but maybe it will suit you.
Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 30, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Gordon Ramsay’s In the Heat of the Kitchen has been fun to look through, but I haven’t really been able to put it to much use. Most of the recipes seem rather complex for a hectic weekday night. So I was a little surprised to find this quick little broccoli recipe stuck between “Caramelized baby onions with beet jus” and “corn fritters with lime crème fraîche." With only eight ingredients, seven of which I had already, this proved to be a perfectly practical side.
While the crisp garlic is fun and those onions sure do add a lot of sweetness, what really separates this dish from a standard accompaniment is the oyster sauce. It somehow binds all the ingredients and transforms this into an interesting side dish worth paying attention to. It’s such a simple addition, too. This, of course, all depends on whether you have oyster sauce just hanging around the fridge ready to go in to random dishes. I do. Its cost is so small, and it keeps surprising me with dishes like this one.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, January 26, 2008 at 4:00 PM
This past Sunday while my boyfriend drank beer and watched football, I sat next to him on the couch and drank wine and flipped through old issues of the New Yorker. All in all it was a lovely afternoon: the Patriots won (I'm from New England), and I read a wonderful short story, "Broccoli," by Lara Vapnyar. In my opinion, there's nothing better than when a writer blurs the line between fiction and food: "But, most of all, Nina loved broccoli. It smelled of young spring grass, and it looked like a tree, with its hard solid stem and its luxuriant crown of tight, grainy florets. Nina bought a bunch of broccoli every week, along with various other vegetables. She carried big brown bags to her car, firmly believing that this weekend she would find time to cook."
Inspired by Vapnyar's eloquent, evocative prose, I decided to make the Creamy Broccoli Soup with Cheddar Crisps from February's Food & Wine for this week's magazine recipe review.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, January 21, 2008 at 4:00 PM
We were having vegetables. That was a fact. The fiancée and I had spent the weekend eating crispy, fat covered carnitas which we then stuffed into homemade corn tortillas. More succulent than pulled pork, and probably three times less healthy, they kept us happy and warm on one of the coldest days Ohio has seen all winter. That was until we woke up this morning and needed something green to get our bodies back in balance. An all veggie recovery meal was in order. I immediately pulled out my spanking new Jamie Oliver’s Cook with Jamie
, knowing that he’d have something good to show us. Isn’t his new show fantastic? I’d never seen so many vegetables on a plate before!
It wasn’t long until we were debating between having Steamed Broccoli with Soy and Ginger or the titled dish. I guess you can tell which one I chose, and it was all those spices mixed with yogurt that really got my mind racing. It reminded me of the Donna Hay’s Baked Chicken with Yogurt and Chili Paste, a previous Dinner Tonight entry, and one that I really enjoyed. Before I knew was happening, I was off to get a chicken to round out this proto-Indian meal with lots of yogurt and so much spice. It wasn’t until halfway through that I remembered the original veggie pledge, but, I thought, it is still very cold. There is always tomorrow to try again.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, December 31, 2007 at 12:30 PM
One of the simplest little tricks I picked up this year came from Larousse Gastronomique, which taught me the wonders of a basic vinaigrette. I had always confined them to the traditional lettuce salad, but that big book urged me to pour them on nearly anything, including everyday vegetables. And, really, that’s the lesson today. Green beans + Vinaigrette = great side dish—even if that is a tad boring. So I’ve been looking around.
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