tomatoes from my garden! on december 29th! totally unrelated to the following kitchen adventure, but i'm so happy! :)
stuff to use:
2 big ass yams
2 small zucchinis
1/2 red cabbage
a small branch of broccoli
an armload of chard (from the garden)
two halves of leftover yellow onion
garlic
old red wine (yellow tail shiraz)
bragg’s (liquid amino acids)
olive oil
butter
veggies are awesome because they are a) colorful, b) delicious, and c) versatile. even one or two gives a unique flavor and composition.
the process:
1. i chopped up the yams into chunks of relatively similar (bite) size and put them on to boil some things need to be timed. yams don’t. they’ll get soft, and then softer.
2. i chopped up the onion and put them in a large frying pan with some butter over low heat.
3. i chopped up and tossed in (in no particular order) the broccoli, cabbage and 1 zucchini
4. i dumped in some bragg’s and wine to give the veggies a little liquid to stimulate releasing their own juices. this was my first time to actually put wine in food, but other people do it and it sounds impressive (and i reasoned that it couldn’t really do any harm).
5. garlic went in after the veggies. it will burn if it’s directly on the pan, but it needs time to do its thing, so the earlier the better.
6. i cut the other zucchini in half and cut the halves horizontally into 3 slabs (since there were three of us). less or more cuts will just mean less or more cooking time. those went into a small frying pan with a little butter on medium low, so they would blacken a bit, but not actually burn. flip them occasionally.
7. when the yams were soft enough for my liking i put some butter and cracked salt with them, letting the veggies simmer with a lid on ‘til other things were ready. again, they’ll just get softer, within reason. don’t push it.
8. sometimes you can reuse water, such as i did saving the yam water to boil the chard in. (perhaps it’s because i live in texas, and the word “draught” has significant meaning here, but why not if you can?)
9. with chard i always chop the stems off and chop it of. size doesn’t really matter (in these circumstances, of course). i drop it into boiling water (or anywhere near boiling water....it really just needs to be “hot”) and a couple inches will do it, since the greens cook down so much. a few minutes will make them edible, and again the theme of the night: they’ll just get softer from there.
10. i drain the chard as well as possible, and it takes a little while. i don’t like it too wet because it waters down any seasoning you put on it, and can leak all over everything else on the plate. i just use a little olive oil (ok, ok, or butter......i do like butter....) and and gets served (with a little cracked salt on top) as soon as possible, because it cools down really fast.
on the plate:
yams with veggie stir fry, “grilled” zucchini, and fresh chard!
3 people (2 strapping lads and myself) barely made a dent in the amount of food this made.
approximate price: $8
