I love it when friends include me in their culinary adventures. Whether it’s finding exotic ingredients in our neighborhood (“There’s an Indian grocery store where?“), or sharing ideas for how to tackle the latest CSA delivery (“What do you do with a snake gourd?!”), or spreading a habit of eating rice for breakfast — that sense of discovery and genuine fun that comes when someone’s eyes light up with wonder is truly a joy for me. One of the reasons T. calls me a food evangelist.

Of course on a purely selfish note, one of the most fun ways to join in a food adventure is to receive foodstuffs. Some are homemade or souvenir gifts, some are pantry excess — but they are always appreciated and sometimes a culinary challenge. Since our most recent move, we find ourselves within hollering distance of our good friends who subscribe to a CSA. With weekly deliveries of fresh produce and precious little time to deal with their bounty, they will send us their bounty’s bounty with pleas of not having time to deal with the veggies before they go bad. A few weeks ago this meant the equivalent of 2 Trader Joe’s bags-ful of produce which included cauliflower, broccoli stems, green beans, eggplants, bell peppers, fresh pepperoncini peppers, red potatoes and yellow summer squash from their CSA, andmountains of tomatoes, basil, chives from their garden! This week it was 3 spaghetti squashes and a sweet potato that was as big as a spaghetti squash! This is what I tell them, and is, in fact, what I do with a great deal of fresh vegetables that we don’t have a specific plan to use and which is threatening to give us the stink-eye: Roast Them!

Let your oven do all the hard work of softening, sweetening, and gently dehydrating your produce so it will keep through the week and provide you with gourmet-quality pantry staples that will make weekday meal prep a snap! Eat as is as a side dish to another entree; or toss with pasta, potato, rice, couscous or your favorite grain or noodle and you have an instant meatless meal. Add cooked meats or fish or beans for extra protein. Or with a little extra effort, a provencale vegetable tian/casserole materializes from grated veggies, cheese and eggs!

This is just a quick look for how we dealt with the 2 bags of produce we received over that first weekend. You can do this! I hope you try it soon.

Clean and cut, if desired, and drizzle all with olive oil. The potatoes are pared just for a bit of aesthetic value.
Pierce whole vegetables like the peppers to allow steam to escape.

Roast at 375F. I don’t even preheat the oven to roast veggies.
Start checking the smallest veggies after the first 35 minutes.
Remove vegetables as they become cooked through:
Potatoes pierce easily with fork,
Peppers and eggplants collapse,
Broccoli, asparagus, and cauliflower will brown on
the edges and become tender.

Green beans were added to pan with potatoes after 35 minutes
and the whole pan was removed after another 25 minutes.
Bell peppers and eggplants were turned after the first 35 minutes, and left for another 30.

Pepperoncini peppers were left whole,
and bell peppers were seeded and peeled
and everything was covered in more olive oil.
Eggplants were peeled for use within 2 days.
(Try in Grilled Eggplant Salad with Coconut Milk)
Potatoes, beans and roasted cauliflower were eaten as they were.

While the first batch of veggies were roasting, the yellow squash and some of the tomatoes were quickly grated and tossed with cold leftover rice, chives, eggs and cheese as an adaptation of one of our favorite dishes from the Canadian cookbook classic,1000 Classic Recipes — a tian of tomatoes and summer squash.

TOMATO-SQUASH TIAN
(Adapted from 1000 Classic Recipes, by Hermes House publishing)
Serves 4 persons as an entree, 6-8 as a side dish
This is the perfect end-of-summer dish that puts to best use those less-than-perfect summer veg — the will-not-sun-ripen tomatoes and the monster squashes that were lurking under the blanket of leaves! The rice makes this surprisingly light in texture, but the parmesan delivers a wallop of satisfying savoriness under the herb mixture.

3 medium yellow squash or courgettes, coarsely grated (avoid seedy core)
3 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped
fistful of chives, minced
3-6 cloves garlic, minced
3 TBL olive oil
sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
3/4 cup cooked rice
3 large eggs, beaten
3 TBL full-fat plain yogurt or sour cream
3/4 tsp dried oregano, 2 tsp fresh
pinch of dried or fresh thyme
5 TBL grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper

Pre-heat 375F/190C.

Place squash, tomatoes, chives and garlic in tian, or baking dish, and season to taste. Toss with oil and spread in baking dish. Bake for 30 minutes, or until water is drawn from vegetables and they soften.

Meanwhile combine rice, eggs, yogurt, herbs, cheese and season to taste. Remove vegetables from oven, and take out about 1/4 cup vegetables from baking dish. Stir hot vegetables into egg mixture to temper eggs, then pour all egg mixture into dish and mix well with vegetables. Redistribute mixture around dish, then return to oven for another 15-20 minutes or until eggs set and knife inserted in the center comes back clean.

Cool briefly then slice to serve. Shown here with more roasted vegetables
from this marathon session: cauliflower, red skin potatoes, and asparagus.
Garnished with roasted basil.

A whole bowl full of goodness: dark green Chinese broccoli, soft wolfberries, toothsome shiitake mushrooms, crisp slices of woodear fungus, carrot coins and fresh whole ears of sweet baby corn. A vegetarian’s delight that could make a believer of the heartiest carnivore!

The preparation could not be simpler. Fresh vegetables and rehydrated fungi are stir-fried together with a kiss of sesame oil, sugar and salt for a total cooking time of about 6 minutes!

Chinese broccoli, or gai lan, is a member of the mustard family (Brassica) along with all those other favorites: cabbage, broccoli, choi sum, Brussel sprouts, mustard greens, and rapini. It can be confused with its cousin, choi sum, but there are a few cues in telling them apart. Like its more distant cousin, the Western broccoli, the sweetest part of the vegetable is actually its stem, though I suspect the leafy greens contain the best of its nutritional goodness. No matter, you’re going to enjoy the whole thing!

Wolfberries (lycium barbarum) are commercially marketed as “goji berries” and are available both in Chinese and Korean groceries, and in most health food stores. Some high end supermarkets may also carry them in the natural foods aisle. In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), wolfberries are thought to strengthen, or tonify, the liver and kidneys, and Western science has shown that they contain nutritionally significant amounts of important nutrients including the anti-oxidants Vitamin C, linoleic acid, thiamine, beta-carotene, and riboflavin. In TCM, wolfberries are included in tonics to boost immune system function and for certain eye disorders, but most interestingly, it is also prescribed for the treatment of dry winter skin! We usually buy wolfberries in Chinese groceries (where it may often be sold by its pharmacological name, Fructus lycii), and all the packaging I’ve seen recommend that the berries be cooked before eating — so this is not something we eat out of hand either plain or in trail mix. We do, however, add them to cooked oatmeal, substitute them for raisins in oatmeal cookies, and throw them in to soups. When cooked or boiled, as in soup or oatmeal, the berries don’t really have a distinct flavor, but baked in the cookies they retain a mild tartness similar to cranberry.

Woodear, or black, fungus (might also be labelled as mok-yee) is most often sold dried. Once rehydrated in cool or warm water for 20-30 minutes, the fungus swells to 2-3 times its dried size, so a little goes a long way. Woodear does not really have a distinctive flavor, but is mostly added for the pleasant crunch it adds to stir-fries and soups. TCM also recognizes that woodear is useful to treat high blood pressure and cholesterol.

Together with fresh baby corn and carrots for additional sweetness and chew, these ingredients join for a dish as colorful as it is nutritious. And tasty!

SESAME CHINESE BROCCOLI WITH WOLFBERRIES
(adapted from Breath of a Wok by Grace Young)

2-3 pieces of dried woodear
4-5 dried shiitake or other black mushroom
1 bundle of Chinese broccoli, about 1lb/450g
4-8oz. (113-226g) fresh baby corn, washed and cut in half
1 medium carrot
1/2 cup dried wolfberries
3-4 medium cloves of garlic, minced

Prepare the vegetables:
Soak shiitake and wood ear fungi in separate bowls for 45 minutes to an hour, or until all are fully re-hydrated (will depend on the size and thickness of the fungus).

Clean gai lan, baby corn and carrot using a mild vinegar solution. Peel and slice carrot crosswise, at a slight diagonal. Separate leaves of gai lan from stems, and cut thicker stem pieces into 2” pieces.

I like to rinse the wolfberries, with a gentle rubbing action to loosen any grit that may have settled on them during processing.

Prepare the Sauce:

When things get hectic and I don’t want to think too much about meal-planning, there are certain recipes I reach for, metaphorically anyway because some of them I can do from muscle memory — I’ve made them so often! Piccata-style chicken or pork is one such dish, and pasta with tuna and capers is another (we really do like capers, don’t we?). Fortunately, I can still rely on these stand-bys even when cooking on a hotel (yes, we’re still here) two-burner cooktop.

Lately, though, we’ve had a hankering for another favorite that normally requires an oven — the Greek cornbread layered with greens known as Plasto (see photo). Plasto has been a regular part of our menus since we were first introduced to it way back in 2007 by Laurie at Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska. Following Laurie’s recipe, wild and other leafy greens are long-cooked with onions, garlic and herbs, then mixed with cheeses and sandwiched between layers of cornbread dough and baked. It’s a scrumptious meat-less meal, and is equally good warm from the oven or cold while hiking or traveling.

But being oven-less here in a hotel, we needed a way to adapt the recipe for a slow-cooker. Actually, I often cook the greens in a slow-cooker anyway when I’m planning to make Plasto. Once the greens are cooked and cooled, they will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days until the day I want to bake, then I have only to add the cheese, make the cornbread dough, and bake.

Although I had never tried one, I had seen recipes for quickbreads made in a slow-cooker so I was certain I could find a cornbread or cornmeal dumpling recipe that would work. I knew I wanted to cook the cornbread with the greens — part of what makes Plasto so tasty is that the bread absorbs some of the savory liquid from the soupy greens while it bakes, otherwise we’re just be eating greens with a side of cornbread. Don’t get me wrong, I love cornbread and greens, too, but Plasto is a different taste and texture experience. Anyway, a long perusal of the internet revealed one key difference between breads/biscuits that are baked in an oven, and those baked in a slow-cooker on top of a liquid — be they stews, soups, chili, or whatever: and that was 1/3 less chemical leavening, as the added steam from the liquid below it gives the dough a helpful lift as it also bakes.

And it worked! Once the greens were completely cooked and filled the room with their savory aroma and whiffs of dill and oregano, I stirred in feta cheese, then topped it with my usual cornbread dough minus one teaspoon of baking powder. The result was perfect — just the right mix of greens and cornbread to satisfy our craving for Plasto. The biggest difference we noticed was in the texture of the bread — it was much lighter and more moist due to the steam-action, but that wasn’t a bad thing. It was also different not to have the corn-y flavor coming from both sides of the greens, and of course this version is not as portable as the original either. But it’s definitely a keeper for days when I know I can cook the greens the same day the dish will be served. It is also a nice alternative to turning on an oven during the hot summer months.

Another concession I made in this Plasto, given the limits of the micro-kitchen, is that all the greens (turnip, collard, kale) were frozen. A time-saver and sanity saver when counter space is nonexistent and colanders are limited. One of the things that we love about Plasto is the complexity of flavor that comes from using a mix of greens, especially if a couple of them have a bitter edge like the mustards, endives, or kales. At minimum I try to use 3 different greens but have been known to use as many as 5, and at least 2 greens in the mix will always have a bite.

PLASTO, THE SLOW-COOK METHOD
(With thanks to Laurie for introducing us to the original version, which is now firmly in our culinary DNA, and from which this is adapted)
Serves 4 persons

For the Greens:
3 lbs (1.36kg) cleaned weight mixture of greens: kale, spinach, collard, chicory, mustard, turnip, Chinese mustard, rapini, watercress, etc. (unless you’re using frozen vegetables that are already cleaned and weighed, you’re going to have to eye-ball the approximate pre-clean weight of each green: consider that kales, western mustard and turnip greens, and collards have heavy, thick stems that will be discarded; while almost the entire bunch of spinach, chicories, Asian greens, rapini and cresses is edible)
2-3 sprigs fresh oregano, or 1/2 tsp dried
4-5 sprigs fresh dill, or 1 tsp dried
1/2 cup (120ml) water or broth
sea salt to taste
fresh ground black pepper
1/2 – 1 tsp Aleppo pepper (Korean pepper flakes can substitute)
3 TBL olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced thinly
3-5 cloves garlic, minced

Combine all greens, oregano, dill, water, salt, and peppers in a 6qt/L slow-cooker, and set on LOW.

Meanwhile, cook onions and olive oil in a separate skillet set over medium heat until the onions are translucent, about 8-10 minutes. Add garlic and continue cooking until garlic is fragrant, abour 4 minutes. Add cooked aromatics to the greens and stir in well.

Cover and leave greens on LOW for 7-8 hours. When cooked, you can continue with the recipe below, or cool the greens completely and refrigerate until needed, then mix in the cheese and sandwich between layers of your favorite cornbread dough in an 8” round cake pan and bake.

To Finish:
1 cup (8oz/240g) sheep’s milk feta
1 quantity Cornbread Topping (below)

Once greens are cooked, combine crumbled feta with greens. TURN Slow-cooker to HIGH.

Top with cornbread dough, keeping away from the edges of the pot to give the dough room to rise as it bakes. Cover, and do not peek for at least 30 minutes. Check with toothpick to see if cornbread is cooked through. May need another 10 minutes to finish.

Remove cover to allow steam to escape so it does not drip back onto your bread while it cools and sets for 15 minutes.

Serve with extra feta and olives, or your favorite green salad.

CORNBREAD TOPPING, FOR THE SLOW-COOKER
1 cup (100g) all-purpose flour (do not substitute self-rising) 1 cup (170g) medium-grind cornmeal 3 TBL (36g) granulated sugar 2 tsp (7.5g) baking powder 1/3 cup (78ml) olive oil, or melted butter 1 cup (236ml) milk 1 lg. egg, beaten

Combine dry ingredients and mix well. Combine oil, milk and egg and beat well to blend. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix just enough to combine — do not overmix.

Add as directed above, or use to top your favorite slow-cook chili, soup or stew. Cook as directed above.

To adapt this recipe for baking in a conventional oven, add 1 more tsp. of baking powder to the dry ingredients and bake in a square cake pan, or better yet, a pre-heated 8” skillet with 1 TBL of butter melted and swirled to coat the sides. Bake at 400F/200C for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes away clean.