Simmons - Fresh & fast vegetarian: recipes that make a meal

Copyright 2011 by Marie Simmons

Photographs 2011 by Luca Trovato

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simmons, Marie.
Fresh & fast vegetarian : recipes that make a meal / Marie Simmons ;
photographs by Luca Trovato.
p. cm.
Summary: "Approximately 150 simple vegetarian dinners"Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-547-36891-7 (pbk.)
1. Vegetarian cooking. 2. Cookbooks. I. Title. II. Title: Fresh and fast vegetarian.
TX837.S4868 2011
641.5'636dc22 2010049779

Book design by Melissa Lotfy
Food styling by Rori Trovato / Prop styling by Dani Fisher

Printed in the United States of America

DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my friends at La Cocina Que Canta
and Rancho Tres Estrellas

One writes a cookbook recipe by recipe, cooking for days and days, pausing between bites to shop the markets and restock, compare notes with fellow cooks and feed friends and neighbors. Finally, the pages multiply, the deadline is near and the book is done. It's hard work, but because I am blessed with a sweet husband who encourages me each and every day and a coterie of generous, caring friends, colleagues and neighbors who share my passion and curiosity for food and are always happy to be volunteer tasters, the process is a pleasure.

The seed for this book was planted at La Cocina Que Canta, the cooking school at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico, where I often teach. I am deeply grateful to Antonia Allegra for inviting me to be guest instructor, and to the fabulous staffsome of the most charming human beings on the face of the earthwho make their beautiful kitchen sing and ensure that each of my visits is inspiring and memorable.

Food and eating are so central to my circle of humanity that it is difficult to list everyone who has helped to bring this book to fruition. Those who grace my life on a regular basis are Debbie and Peter Rugh, Kathleen de Wilbur and Perry Dexter, Kathleen O'Neill, Brooke Jackson, Richard Clark, Paula and Edward Hamilton, Wendy Beers, Caryl Levine and Ken Lee, Linda Romanelli Leahy and Rob Leahy, Marvin and Maral Angus, Tracy West and Kathryn Johnson; my yoga teacher Vicki Bell; my long-time New York food editor friends Babs Chernetz, Susan Westmoreland, Michele Scicolone and Tamara Holt; my close neighbors on Rosalind Avenue, Emory and Josephine Menefee, Chere Douglas, Roger, Jools and Ryan Hand and Ruth and Mike Peretz, who are always happy to taste and offer their comments; and my book club pals Sue Ewing, Patricia Flynn, Susan Heller, Alice Johnson and Elizabeth Tilson, who all love to cook and eat as much as they love books.

This book wouldn't exist without my amazing agent, Carole Bidnick, or Rux Martin, a fabulous editor, who said, "Let's do it," without hesitation when she heard I wanted to write a vegetarian cookbook. Thank you also to Luca and Rori Trovato and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's designer Melissa Lotfy for the beautiful photographs and the fresh, clean look. I'm also grateful to Houghton's managing editor for cookbooks, Rebecca Springer, and Jacinta Monniere for her painstakingly accurate typing.

Finally, a loving nod to my precious family: John, Stephanie, Seraphina, Shawn and Josephyou are the reason I continue to cook.

My transition from omnivore to mostly vegetarian was gradual enough to register as a nonevent. I only wish I had a dramatic revelation to share. Although I care deeply about the health of the planet, the treatment of the animals we eat and how our food is grown, there was nothing sudden or militant about my choosing vegetarian meals. The simple fact is I eat plant-based foods because they taste good and they make me feel better.

I come to the vegetarian table as a person who loves food, loves to cook and loves big, bold imaginative flavors. As my repertoire of ingredients and techniques and my knowledge of cooking grow, I find myself cooking meat less and less often. My mantra is fast, great-tasting recipes that use the freshest ingredients possible.

I grew up in New York's Hudson Valley, surrounded by farms. It wasn't unusual to come home after school on a September afternoon to bags of freshly harvested tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini (and their glorious blossoms, which Mom fried and we ate like potato chips) or just-picked corn lined up on the back steps. These were gifts from neighbors and relatives, happy to share the bounty of their gardens.

My mother, a schoolteacher and an excellent Italian cook who often quoted her grandmother's saying, "I'd rather spend money on good food than on the doctor," believed that food was the medicine we needed. And to Mom, that meant lots of vegetables. Vegetables, she claimed, had magical powers that would make us big and strong, give us bright eyes and shining hair and ward off that dreaded visit to the doctor. I believed her.

Another major reason for the vegetarian shift at my table must be credited to the growth in the glorious farmers' market movement. Growing up in an agrarian region, I took the local farm stand bounty and the produce from neighbors for granted. Later, as a young adult, I made my way to the big city. It was a time of change. The Union Square Market in the middle of Lower Manhattan opened. Saturday mornings, without fail, my husband, John, and I hopped on our bikes and pedaled over the Brooklyn Bridge to stock up. We must have been quite a sight, with ears of corn bungeed over our back wheels and backpacks bulging with peaches, tomatoes, green beans and, of course, a bouquet of flowers sticking out of the top. This adventure was simply an extension of my childhood. Some of the same farmers who supplied the local farm stands I visited with Mom as a kid were even there.

But no matter how experienced a cook you are, getting a vegetarian meal on the table day after day can be a challenge. One solution is to move the starchwhole grains or beansto the center of the plate and surround it with ample servings of vegetables. One of my favorite meals is creamy white cannellini beans topped with blistered cherry tomatoes and salty black olives, served with a side dish of broccoli florets stir-fried with crunchy walnuts and red onion slivers. The comforting meatiness of the beans, the tanginess of the tomatoes, the saltiness of the olives and the exciting mix of flavors and textures in the broccoli give the plate contrasts in taste, color and textureall the elements I look for in a meal.

In this book, "fast" means a meal that takes between 30 and 45 minutes to cook. Since prep times vary according to your skill and style in the kitchen, it's difficult to estimate them reliably, but most of the recipes in this book can be made in half to three-quarters of an hour. If a recipe does take longer than 45 minutes, it is marked "When You Have More Time." All the recipes include menu ideas for combining two or three dishessuggestions intended to help you pull together a hearty, satisfying and delicious meal. Use them as a springboard, but feel free to mix and match the recipes throughout the book to create your own favorite combinations.

Recently, a friend who was attempting to transition into cooking more vegetarian meals complained, "Gosh, I spend a lot of time chopping." It's true that when you're dealing with fresh produce, there can be a lot of trimming, rinsing and chopping, but over the years, I've discovered ways to reduce prep and cook times. For instance, potatoes, beets and winter squash cook in half the time when the pieces are sliced or cubed. Searing food in a heavy skillet is quicker than oven-roasting. Although I prefer vegetables fresh from the farmers' market, I keep bagged, trimmed supermarket vegetables on hand for emergencies. The quickest-cooking members of the grains-and-beans clanquinoa, bulgur, farro, white rice and lentilsare always in the pantry, and I keep a batch of brown rice soaking in water, refrigerated, overnight, which cuts the cooking time almost by half.