Vegetables + Salads – Page 8 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Stuffed Zucchini

My new Microplane Ultra Coarse grater came in very handy when I was making this recipe. It’s not often that I find a giant zucchini on my desk at work, but Lisa brought me one of the bounties from her garden earlier this week. Zucchini bread and stuffed zucchini were both suggested by co-workers. I opted for the latter because I already had the ingredients handy; ground pork and bacon were in the fridge.

I’ve never owned a grater before–I’ve always used a vegetable peeler if I needed grated cheese when cooking and I simply shaved the cheese off. For a recipe like this, a peeler would have taken me an extra 10 minutes; it took less than one with the Microplane for me to grate all of the Piave I needed.

I realized how easy my cooking life would have been if only I’ve purchased one years ago. Without putting too much pressure on the grater, the Piave cheese I used with this recipe easily fell on the plate like soft snow. I loved the rubberized stand at the end of the grater: it kept it steady against a plate even when my cheese wedge came down to a small knob. The hefty handle also had a very firm grip–my hands didn’t even feel like they did any work.

Now I just have to find more recipes that require grating everything I can get my hands on!

Ingredients:
1 large zucchini, halved lengthwise, each chopped in 2 or 3 large pieces
1/4 lb of ground pork
4 strips of bacon, chopped
shiitake mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 small wedge of Piave cheese
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
red chili flakes
salt
oil

1. Take each zucchini piece and spoon out the flesh to make them hollow like boats. Roughly chop including the seeds. Set aside. Place the boats on a lined baking sheet and brush with some olive oil. Preheat the oven to 350º.
2. Make the filling. In a large skillet, render some fat by cooking the bacon pieces. Add garlic and sauté until brown. Add the onions until soft. Add the ground pork and brown while occasionally stirring to avoid burning. Season with chili flakes.
3. In the meantime, pass the zucchini flesh through a sieve to remove excess water. You might have to do this one more time before adding to the filling. When ground pork is cooked through, add the zucchini flesh to the skillet, stir until well-combined and keep cooking for another 5 minutes.
4. Salt the zucchini boats. Spoon the filling into the zucchini boats without pressing in. Finish off with a generous sprinkling of grated Piave. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the zucchini boats have heated through and a crust has formed at the top. Best served hot so the filling doesn’t dry up.

Recommended tool/s:
Microplane Ultra Coarse Grater

Green Mango Salad

Mangoes are abundant in the Philippines. When I was growing up, we had a mango tree in our backyard. When the mangoes were ripe, they were sweet and supple. Slicing each cheek with a check board pattern allowed you to flip the skin up and push out the mango flesh. When they were still green, you peeled and chopped them to make a salad. A dab of shrimp paste gave it flavor perfect with cold beers.

Nowadays, I make this salad for barbecues and they’re always a hit. I usually just use salt instead of shrimp paste so that I don’t have to worry about vegetarian guests and those with allergies. For more color, add a handful of arugula or mixed greens. It’s also a good side to serve with a simple steak or leftover roasted chicken.

Ingredients:
2 green mangoes, peeled and sliced into smaller pieces
red onion, chopped
a handful of cilantro, finely chopped
grape tomatoes, cut in half
1 tsp shrimp paste

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl. If not using shrimp paste or fish sauce, substitute with a jigger of fish sauce or a dash of salt and pepper.

Kale and Bacon Salad

I saw a bunch of lacinato kale at the market and I immediately thought of the delicious salad I had at Lupa over the holiday season. At the time, I didn’t know there were other kinds of kale because I’ve only seen the curly ones in Harlem. It turns out kale is classified by leaf type and lacinato is also known as black cabbage. It’s crispier and can be eaten raw, where as the curly ones need to be cooked down or else the leaves are too tough to chew.

The Lupa salad used guanciale, or unsmoked pig’s cheeks. I made do with a slab of bacon sliced thinly because I didn’t want to spend too much money after paying only $2.99 for the bunch of kale. The kale was also roasted but I left that out here to make the recipe even more simple. This might not be hefty to be its own course, but it sure was a good starter.

Ingredients:
1 small bunch lacinato kale, washed, leaves torn from hard stalks, chiffonade
6 to 8 strips of bacon, chopped
juice from 1 lemon

1. In a skillet, render some fat by frying the bacon. Cook until bacon pieces are brown and slightly crispy. Remove from pan using a slotted spoon. Set the fat aside.
2. Put the kale leaves in a big bowl and toss them with lemon juice using your hands.
3. To serve, put a handful of kale on each person’s plate. Sprinkle with bacon and drizzle with some of the fat for extra moisture.

Fennel and Celery Root Salad

It’s so nice to step out of the gym at 4:30pm and squint because it’s so bright outside. We New Yorkers like our different seasons, but oh, nothing is as sweet as welcoming spring. I’m actually way ahead of the weather with this recipe because I think of fennel in a cold salad as a summer produce: bright and fresh.

If you have a mandoline, you can make a better presentation with this salad, but a sharp knife will do as long as you use extra care especially with the celeriac. A very good Parmiggiano is necessary, although Piave cheese will do okay, too. Add to the salad’s brightness by plucking a few flat parsley leaves from its stem and serving them whole.

Ingredients:
1 fennel bulb, sliced thinly
1 celery root, peeled, sliced thinly
3 sprigs of parsley, leaves plucked from stem
Parmiggiano Reggiano cheese
juice from one lemon
oil, salt, pepper

1. In a bowl, toss fennel and celery root with lemon juice and some salt. The lemon juice will keep the vegetables’ color until you’re ready to serve. Add parsley leaves and season with pepper. Drizzle a generous amount of good olive oil.
2. Before serving, slice some cheese and add to the salad.

Sichuan Dry-Fried String Beans

I picked up a copy of Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty from the library last week. I skimmed through it before I checked it out because I wanted to see if the recipes were easy to do at home. I’m obsessed with this dry-fried string beans dish I always order when I’m eating at Grand Sichuan, so I made sure there was a similar string beans entry caled rou mo jiang dou. My mouth watered while reading the recipe and I knew I just had to do it pronto.

Before heading out to Chicago earlier this week, I pickled the string beans. Emptying them out when I was ready to make a Friday lunch, I couldn’t believe how fragrant it had gotten. The star anise and the ginger together gave the beans a most familiar smell: I knew I was on the right track.

Thank you to Fuschia Dunlop’s time in Chengdu! The recipes gave me an understanding of how much history came with each, but she’s deciphered them to make it easy to replicate at home.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of long green beans
1/4 lb ground pork
1/2 tsp rice wine
1/2 tsp light soy sauce
3 dried Thai chiles, snipped in half and some of the seeds discarded
1/2 tsp whole Sichuan peppercorns
salt
peanut oil for cooking

For the pickling solution:
4 dried Thai chiles
1/2 tsp whole Sichuan peppercorns
2 tsps rice wine
1 star anise
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 large finger of ginger, peeled, chopped in smaller pieces
1 cinnamon stick
salt

1. Pickle the string beans up to 3 days in advance. Wash the beans thoroughly and store in a pickling jar large enough to hold all the long beans. Meanwhile, boil about 3 cups of water with some salt until it dissolves. Add the rest of the ingredients and let simmer for 5 minutes, or until water has reduced to more or less 2 cups. Set aside and let cool. When pickling solution is cool enough, separate the solid ingredients and stuff them in the jar with the beans. Pour in pickling liquid to fill the jar; there should be enough water to submerge all of the beans. Close tightly and store in the fridge until ready to cook.
2. At time of cooking, mix ground pork with rice wine, soy sauce and salt in a large glass bowl. Set aside.
3. Remove beans from pickling solution and chop into small pieces to complement the small grains of the ground pork. You can pick the brown tips and throw those away.
4. Using a wok or a large frying pan, heat some peanut oil until almost smoking. Add the pork and stir-fry until dry and crispy. Transfer back to the same bowl.
5. Add a fresh coat of peanut oil to the pan and heat. Add chiles and peppercorns and stir-fry until fragrant. Be careful not to let them burn. Add the beans and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add the pork and stir-fry for another minute. Serve with a steaming bowl of white rice.