July 18, 2015 by Marios

Crispy Broccoli with Black Vinegar

Imagine this. You are sitting at a restaurant. You order food and a bottle of wine that you’ve never tried before but sounded interesting on the menu. When the waiter pours a glass for you and you taste it you immediately love it. “We should find this and buy a few bottles,” you say. So you pull out your smartphone, open an app, and take a picture of the wine label. Despite the dim lighting, the app immediately recognizes the wine and shows you how much other users have liked it. Right there, next to the name of the wine is a red button with the price per bottle. You click it and within ten seconds, you have ordered half a case of the wine. Three days later it shows up at your doorstep.

Ten years ago, this would have been an “in the future” scenario. But it’s exactly what Steve and I did a few weeks ago while eating at a restaurant called The Gorbals. The app is called Delectable and it works like magic. Even though Steve and I both work in tech, we still find ourselves awestruck at times at how amazing technology can be.

We were also awestruck by some of the food we had that night, including a dish of crispy broccoli, doused in an umami-rich vinaigrette. I immediately identified that it was made with black vinegar, also known as Chinkiang vinegar. It’s a Chinese vinegar made by adding acetic acid and bacteria to glutinous rice, but also to wheat, millet, or sorghum. It’s deep and soulful, with a light smokiness, a strong malt flavor, and a very distant hint of sugar.

The very next day, I bought some broccoli and tried to recreate the recipe. I am pretty sure that they deep fried their broccoli but I was able to get pretty similar results by roasting it at a high temperature in the oven. The result is an addictive combination of sweet, salty, and sour. Make a lot. You will eat it.

And while we’re at it, can someone create a device, which I can point at a cooked dish and it figures out the exact recipe with which it was made? In the future, I guess…
Crispy Broccoli with Black Vinegar

Ingredients:

1 lb (480 g) broccoli florets
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons black vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425º F. Place the broccoli florets in a large bowl and add salt and pepper. Add the 2 tablespoons of oil and with your hands toss the florets well. Place in a large baking sheet and roast in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes or until the tips of the florets are very dark brown.

Meanwhile, make the dressing by whisking together the vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, and 1 tablespoon oil. When broccoli is done, place it in a large serving bowl and pour the dressing over it. Gently toss it in the bowl to get it dressed. Serve immediately.

March 7, 2015 by Marios

Miso-Glazed Turnips

I started learning English when I was 8 years old. My parents enrolled me in after-school lessons that took place at a private high school called The English School. In my first two years there, my teachers spoke Greek, so they would explain things that we learned in a language we understood. Towards the end of my second year, though, I found out that starting the following year, my teachers would only speak English. I was terrified. How would they be able to explain things to me? It took one lesson that following year to ease my fears. I hadn’t realized that I had already learned enough English to be able to communicate with the teacher.

One day, our exercise revolved around a fairy tale called “The Enormous Turnip.” It’s an old Russian fable of a farmer who plants a turnip that grows so large that he can’t pull it out of the ground. He calls his wife to help and then progressively more and more people and animals come to help them pull it out. It’s not until the tiny mouse joins them that they are able to finally pull the turnip out of the ground.

We read the story in class and we all had one question: What the hell is a turnip? We had never seen or eaten one. There wasn’t even a Greek word for it. The teacher struggled to explain that it was a root vegetable like a carrot but round and purple-white. It took a couple of decades for me to finally eat a turnip and when I did, I loved it.

Its pungent, almost medicinal smell is tempered by a sweetness that is especially brought out by roasting it or sautéing it. This recipe is simple but it creates a really flavorful side dish that can accompany either meat or seafood.

Miso-Glazed Turnips – Slightly adapted from Bon Appétit

Ingredients:

1 pound small turnips, trimmed, scrubbed, cut into 1” wedges (peeled or unpeeled)
2 tablespoons white miso
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon sugar
¾ cup water
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Directions:

Combine turnips, miso, butter, sugar and water in a medium skillet.

Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook turnips, turning occasionally, until they are tender and liquid is evaporated.

Once all the liquid has cooked off, keep cooking turnips, tossing occasionally, until they are golden brown and caramelized and the sauce thickens and glazes the vegetables, about 5 minutes longer.

Add lemon juice and a splash of water to pan and swirl to coat turnips. Season with salt and pepper.

November 15, 2014 by Marios

Steve’s Vegetable Chili

Steve has always talked about the vegetable chili he used to make in college. He has talked about how other students would appear in the kitchen when they smelled the zucchini sautéing in olive oil. Everyone loved it, he has always claimed.

I was not convinced. An all-vegetable chili just didn’t sound that appetizing to me. So we never made it.

Steve insisted. “My mom sent me to college with this recipe,” he always liked to remind me. Every now and then, he’d go through the folder with printouts of old recipes that he’s had for a couple of decades and he’d show me the xeroxed page from Parade magazine in 1986, with his mom’s handwritten changes and additions to the original recipe for “Red Hot Vegetable Chili.”

I was still not convinced. The recipe went back in the folder and we moved on to something else.

Then a week ago, we were hosting some friends, one of whom is vegan. As we were trying to plan a menu for the dinner we would cook for them, the vegetable chili came up again. This time I relented. We bought everything we needed and spent Saturday afternoon making it together.

I began to suspect that he had been right all along, that the chili would be good, when I put together the spices that went into it. That was a lot of spices. But it wasn’t until we sat down and I took a first bite that I really understood. This chili was exceptional, managing to explode with flavor without even a hint of meat. Every bite offered texture, a little heat, gentle sweetness, and sultry smokiness. I couldn’t stop eating it.

I was finally convinced.
Steve’s Vegetable Chili – Adapted from Parade magazine

Ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil
4 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
3 medium yellow onions, chopped
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 large red bell peppers, cored and chopped
2 28 oz cans of whole peeled tomatoes
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
3 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 cup chopped Italian parsley
1 14.5 oz can red kidney beans, drained
1 14.5 oz can chickpeas, drained
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Directions:

Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add zucchini and sauté until just tender. Remove zucchini from pot. Add onions, garlic and red pepper to the pot and sauté until just wilted, about 10 minutes. Lower heat to medium low.

Using kitchen sheers or two knives, roughly cut up tomatoes in their cans. Pour tomatoes with their juices in pot with onions. Add chili, cumin, oregano, pepper, salt, fennel and parsley. Stir to combine. Cook uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring often.

Stir in kidney beans, chickpeas, basil, dill, and lemon juice. Cook for 15 minutes more. Stir well and adjust seasonings to taste.

Serve over plain white rice or polenta.

October 4, 2013 by Marios

Sauteed Eggplant with Balsamic Vinegar

We get quite a lot of food fads in New York. Some are big and national (like kale or ramps). Some are small and local. The last few weeks have revealed one such small and local fad: fairy tale eggplants. No, they don’t turn into a horse-drawn carriage and whisk you away to the palace ball. Nor do they grant you three wishes. They are simply a breed of eggplants that grows really small, somewhere between 1 and 2 inches.

I had never heard of them before until this fall, when suddenly they appeared at the local markets and I started seeing some online chatter about them (like here and here). Steve and I bought some, of course, and had them simply roasted in the oven. I don’t think it was the best preparation for them, but we appreciated their delicate form and sweet taste.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with eggplant. I love to eat it but I’ve always hated cooking it. It seemed to me that every single recipe for eggplant called for salting it and draining the water out of it, or for charring it over an barbecue fire, something most New Yorkers can only dream of. Whenever I tried to cook eggplant it always ended undercooked or burned.

So, I generally stayed away from eggplant until I found this recipe. It turns out, you don’t have to go crazy with pre-cooking preparations for eggplant. You can just cook it on the spot, with a combination of sautéing and steaming in a single pan. No salting, no charring, and no draining. Since then, I’ve made this as a side dish countless times. Though I still dream of a barbecue fire where I can char eggplant for some delicious baba ganoush.

Sautéed Eggplant with Balsamic Vinegar – Adapted from Epicurious.com

Note: This recipe works best with long and skinny eggplants, such as japanese eggplants. If you have the more traditional thicker dark purple variety, slice it crosswise in 1.5 inch sections.

3-4 japanese eggplants (or other variety, see note above)
1/4-1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Sea salt
Freshly ground pepper

Slice eggplants lengthwise in half. Lightly salt and pepper the slices and heat a sauté pan for which you have a lid over medium-high heat. Add olive oil to pan, and when it shimmers add eggplant, cut side down. Lower heat to medium and cook, covered, for about 6-7 minutes. Turn eggplant slices cut side up, recover the pan and cook for an additional 4-5 minutes or until eggplant is soft.

Turn the eggplant slices one more time, cut side down. Turn heat off. Immediately add balsamic vinegar in the pan. Cover the pan and shake back and forth for a few seconds. Let it rest, covered for 2-3 minutes, until the vinegar caramelizes a little.

Serve eggplant slices with balsamic vinegar sauce spooned on top and sprinkled with a little flaky sea salt and additional ground pepper.