Vegetable | Sybaritica

This isn’t much of a post today… just a little note about something I tried recently.

I have posted about Roast Vegetables before and, indeed, I love all sorts of produce done this way as it develops flavors that just don’t come out with other cooking methods. The other day, I wanted to roast potatoes and a few other things to go with steak and did a search of the fridge to see what I could add. I would have like to include some carrots but my wife is really not a fan and so I hit on the idea of throwing in a few red radishes to the blend. Basically, on the assumption that radishes would take the same roasting time as potatoes, carrots or other root vegetables, I just tossed them in the same herbed and seasoned oil as my potatoes, and popped them into a 400 degree oven (the orange bell pepper you can see in the mix was added a bit later).

Now I should point out here that, after trying it, I ‘googled’ the idea and discovered I wasn’t the first to come up with the idea by any means. Still, I thought that it might turn out nicely and it definitely was a treat. The normal sharpness of fresh radishes mellows into a real sweetness and adds a component to the typical roast vegetable dish that is unique. If you would like to try this yourself, I recommend using fresh rosemary sprigs in the mix as I did. Enjoy…

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I have been making a conscious effort to try and include green vegetables in as many meals as possible these days, and Kale is a particularly healthy choice. This particular preparation, intended as a side dish for leftover roast pork, uses bacon, whose smoky richness complements all the cruciferous veggies… Read more

I am something of a latecomer when it comes to using this particular vegetable. It wasn’t something that I ever recall being serve at home as a kid, and it is only within the last year or so that it has been appearing in our grocery stores with any frequency. Still, I have been remedying that situation over the last several months and, if you haven’t experienced this tasty green vegetable yet, you may wish to give it a try… Read more

There are dozens of varieties of Mustard greens used for culinary purposes. The descriptive appellation ‘greens’ is sometimes not entirely accurate, however, as the range of coloring varies from  very pale light green to a deep purplish-red, with all sorts of simple and variegated gradations in between. The variety you see above is one of the Brassica juncea sub-types which, although it is actually native to China, is most commonly known as Japanese Giant Red Mustard. These plants, pictured here, were grown by my wife as part of her current greenhouse project… Read more

After featuring Chinese Dried Scallops in a recent ‘Foodstuffs’ post, I decided to use some in a very simple vegetable preparation that beautifully illustrates how this basic, yet flavorful ingredient can enhance an otherwise plain dish. Baby Bok Choy is a favorite vegetable in our household and the succulent greens really do well when treated this way… Read more

In my ‘Foodstuffs’ post featuring Fiddlehead Greens I mention that, although I ate these very often when I lived in New Brunswick, I didn’t care for them very much as most people there usually cook them by boiling them to death and then serve them with just a little butter or vinegar. However, once I got older and experimented a little, I discovered that if you blanch and then sauté them with different ingredients they can really be quite good.

While I was trying to decide what to do with a batch of fiddleheads my wife picked up, I came across a pretty decent recipe over at One Dad’s Kitchen that looked pretty good. That recipe braises green beans and bacon in chicken stock and I thought that, with a little modification, it might work nicely with this vegetable… Read more

Fiddleheads are nothing new to me, but I suspect that they may be unknown to some of my readers. They grow wild in the Canadian Province of New Brunswick, where I lived for almost twenty-five years before moving North, and I have picked and eaten them more times than I can count… Read more

After featuring Okra in a ‘Foodstuffs’ post, I added some to a Jambalaya but, unfortunately, there really wasn’t enough in that dish to really appreciate it for itself. As okra is quite popular in Indian cookery, I decided to use what I had left in a simple curry … Read more

Okra has appeared a number of times in our local store, Arctic Ventures, but always, it seems, just before I have been about to go out of town on a Court circuit. Although the ones you see in the package above weren’t as fresh as they might be, I had a bit of time to do some experimentation and grabbed some… Read more

When I introduced Celeriac in a recent ‘Foodstuff’s’ post, I said that I was thinking of preparing a Celeriac Remoulade.  I did end up making the salad you see above and, though it is not quite a Remoulade in the most traditional sense, it is made very much in the spirit of that particular preparation… Read more