Vegetables

In the last few years, the whole-grain pasta offerings on supermarket shelves have expanded with gusto. Where there used to be one or two, there were now up to a dozen. There’s everything from mass-market brands touting health claims (High fiber! Good source of omega-3’s and antioxidants! Extra protein!), to artisanal pastas made from ancient strains of wheat like farro and spelt in tastefully rustic packaging, selling for upward of $10 a pound.

I’ve been making this pasta for a very long time, probably since the 1980s, since it’s derived from a Marcella Hazan recipe. It’s dead simple — one of the things that I love about it — and you can pre-cook the cauliflower a day ahead or so if you’d like. I usually do the whole thing at once: cook the cauliflower in water, scoop it out and then, later, cook the pasta in the same water. It’s already boiling, and you want the taste of the cauliflower anyway, so why not?

Stir-fry guru Grace Young suggests brown rice for vegetarian stir-fries, and she’s right: the rich nutty flavor and chewy texture make for a very satisfying meal. The trick to successful fried rice, whether you use brown or white rice, is to cook the rice a day ahead and refrigerate. Cold rice will not clump together.

Travel anywhere in the Mediterranean region, and you will find stuffed vegetables. In Provence, they tend to be filled with meat (a way to stretch leftover stews), but in the Middle East and Greece rice and grain fillings prevail. Regional cooks make abundant use of fresh herbs like parsley, dill and mint, and sweet spices like cinnamon and allspice.

This dish is based on a Turkish stuffing for vegetables, a delicate sweet-savory rice mixture seasoned with allspice, cinnamon, parsley, and dill or mint. I decided to use barley instead of rice for a heartier dish. Once stuffed, the vegetables are gently cooked in a mixture of water and oil.

Lemon risottos of any kind always delight guests. The lemon juice and zest are added to this comforting mixture at the end of cooking.

The key to fresh tomato flavor in our creamy gazpacho Andaluz recipe was salting the tomatoes and letting them sit to release more flavor. We then followed the same process with the other vegetables—cucumber, bell pepper, and onion—and soaked the bread, which we used to thicken the soup, in the exuded vegetable juices. A final dash of olive oil and sherry vinegar further brightened the flavor of our gazpacho, and a diced-vegetable garnish made our creamy gazpacho recipe look as fresh as it tasted.

Our perfect grilled vegetable recipe would have to produce charred-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside veggies with great smoky flavor and a lively dressing. Matching the vegetables in pairs doubled up our recipe’s flavor, while cooking them over moderate heat for 20 minutes gave us a great result, both inside and out. To finish our grilled vegetables recipe, we drizzled them with a quick vinaigrette while they were still warm, which boosted their flavor without overpowering them.