Vegetable Medley

Tuesday 3 July

After so much fishy goodness, we turned to the vegetable kingdom. (We once tried to convince a vegetarian friend to become an ichthyophagous vegetarian like another friend, Janet, by claiming that fish are as dumb as vegetables. This piece of sophistry was unsuccessful.)

We set about cooking various vedge using three types of heat: boiling, frying, and roasting (not in fact as bad an idea for a summer's day at it might first appear).

1. Beets, roasted. Tender, baby beets went into the oven at 475º first, since even baby beets take longer than anyone else.
2. Beet greens, sautéed, with shallot and garlic, following the advice of Chef Julie at Nectar, whom Barbara ran into at Findlay Market. Needed a splash of wine and to be covered. Monter-ed au beurre (monty-o-burr-ed?) at the last moment. Amazing how a sink-full of greens cooks down to two heaping tablespoons each. Tasty, but not perfect like hers.
3. Corn, boiled: 5 ears of bi-color corn in a pot of boiling water. Saved three for chowder. Served them painted with a chili-lime butter.
4. Garlic, roasted: Garlic is a vedge round these here parts. A handful of cloves tossed, unpeeled, into the beet roaster. Went pretty fast, 'cuz they were nearly caramelized by the time the beets were done.
5. Asparagus, roasted. Once the beets were done, we extracted them to a bowl to cool and substituted the asparagus.

What's amazing is how perfectly the beet skins peel off when rubbed in paper towels (it also would help to have Julia Child's asbestos fingers, though). Maybe Helene would like beetskin paper to go with tomatoskin and onionskin?

Somehow, eating only vegetables makes you feel virtuous - until you start breathing roast-garlic breath on everybody.