I love making this dish with the onions from the farmer's market, but the recipe works just fine with storage onions too. With their golden, caramelized surfaces framed by the sides of an earthenware gratin dish, these onions look spectacular, yet they require minimal effort to prepare. They're perfect for winter holidays in place of the traditional creamed onions. Look for firm onions with crisp, papery skins.
My daughter, who has examined many religions, said the broccoli with chili oil was a sensation at a Buddhist breakfast. I suppose you could say this got rave reviews from vegetable experts.
Aloo Bhona
All cooks have a few basic recipes that they turn to again and again over the course of a year. Potato and green bean salad is one of mine. I make it different ways depending on the season and my mood. It's very good dressed with just olive oil and lemon juice, but it becomes absolutely superb when bound with homemade Green Goddess. If you're familiar only with the bottled version of this dressing, you must try my recipe, which is based on the original, invented in the 1920s by the great San Francisco chef Victor Hirtzler.
Each summer, Johannes Sailer—chef at Les Abeilles in the Provencal village of Sablet—creates an all-tomato menu. One year he opened the meal with this stunning soup: all red, all fresh, all full of honest tomato flavor. This liquid blend of tomatoes, seasoning, top-quality olive oil, and vinegar makes you fee as though you are drinking your salad!
This basic approach will accommodate just about any combination of root vegetables and/or potatoes, including parsnips, carrots, parsley root, and celery root. More strongly flavored vegetables such as rutabagas or turnips are best in combination with sweeter ones like parsnips.
Ingredients
I love risotto, but not as a main dish, unless something has been done to it to give it form. Here, a lemony risotto is formed into ovals, then shallow-fried until golden and crisp and served over a bed of finely slivered spring vegetables. These croquettes make a lovely supper dish for company and can be made vegan if no butter and eggs are used, although the egg does help bind the rice.
The ultrafine cauliflower purée makes the soup seem as if it is cream based—it's that shockingly satiny. The initial taste of the cauliflower comes off as earthy, but within moments it is clear just how regal this vegetable truly is. Dehydrated red onion pieces and Bibb lettuce leaves provide sweet and sharp flavor notes and a textural counterpoint, while a whisper of balsamic vinegar pushes this humble combination of ingredients to scale great heights.
Turkish Braised Eggplant (Engin's Imam Bayildi)