Supper Casserole with Pumpkin & Green Chile Cornbread Topping ♥ A Welcome-to-Fall Recipe

A one-dish casserole supper, meat cooked with on-hand vegetables and flavored with green chile salsa. The cornbread topping repeats the green chile flavor and adds pumpkin for color, moisture and nourishment.

Who else has noticed? When winter turns to spring, we long for the first bites of spring, waiting with much anticipation for the first asparagus, the first artichokes, the first strawberries.

But fall? Not so much. As soon as fall 'happens' -- it hit here in St. Louis on Monday -- we can immediately start cooking our fall favorites. You see, they've been around for a few weeks, we've just been ignoring them to get our last fill of tomatoes and peppers and okra and and and.

For me, cornbread is one of the siren calls of autumn and the cold-weather months, baked first, baked last, baked often in between. It was a welcome welcome to autumn. I pulled this Supper Casserole out of the pantry, you can too by using what meat (Note to Vegetarians) and vegetables you have on hand, then topping it with the pumpkin-colored and chile-spiked cornbread.

Hello fall, glad you're here.

SUPPER CASSEROLE RECIPE with PUMPKIN & GREEN CHILE CORNBREAD TOPPING

Hands-on time: 35 minutes
Time to table: 90 minutes
Serves 6 or 8

MEAT LAYER
Splash of water
1 onion, chopped
1 pound ground beef (or ground turkey or in my case, ground elk)

2 cups slow-roasted tomatoes or 15-ounces canned diced tomatoes
1 cup green chile salsa
1 cup frozen corn (no need to thaw)
15 ounces canned black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup canned pumpkin purée (make sure to buy 100% pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling)
1 teaspoon kosher salt or salt to taste

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large deep skillet, cook the water, onion and ground meat until onions are soft and meat is fully cooked (for the most flavor, let the meat 'brown' and even get a small amount of 'burn' before turning it). Stir in the remaining ingredients. Transfer to a low casserole dish.

CORNBREAD LAYER
1 egg, whisked
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin purée
4 tablespoons butter, cubed and melted in the microwave in 10-second increments
1/2 cup green chile salsa

2 cups flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal (stone-ground cornmeal is too coarse here for my taste)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt

In a large bowl, whisk together the egg, brown sugar, pumpkin, butter and salsa. Separately, whisk together the remaining ingredients, then stir into the egg mixture. Using two spoons (one to scoop, one to scrape) place small dollops of the cornbread batter atop the Meat Layer, butting them against each other. Bake for about 40 minutes or until Meat Layer is bubbly and the Cornbread Layer is fully cooked. Cover and let cool for about 10 minutes. Serve and savor!

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
If Serving 6 or 8: 406/305 Calories; 34/25g Tot Fat; 8/6g Sat Fat; 105/79mg Cholesterol; 1811/1358mg Sodium; 41/31g Carb; 8/6g Fiber; 11/8g Sugar; 25/18g Protein; Weight Watchers 10/7 points

TODAY'S VEGETABLE RECIPE INSPIRATION
Inspired by recipe from Better Homes & Gardens, October 2009

KITCHEN NOTES
Play around with the ingredients in the Meat Layer, adding more vegetables to extend the meat further or to feed more mouths. If using slower-to-cook vegetables such as carrots, winter squash or sweet potato, cut them into very small cubes so they'll cook evenly and quickly.

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MORE CORNBREAD RECIPES
~ Sweet Cornbread ~
~ Pumpkin Cornbread ~
(which I made earlier this week and inspired the casserole's topping)
~ more cornmeal recipes ~
from A Veggie Venture

~ Skillet Cornbread ~
~ Apple Cider Indian Pudding ~
~ more cornmeal recipes ~
from Kitchen Parade

NEVER MISS A RECIPE! For 'home delivery' of new recipes from A Veggie Venture, sign up here. Once you do, new recipes will be delivered, automatically, straight to your e-mail In Box.

Looking for healthy ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous Alphabet of Vegetables. Healthy eaters will love the low carb recipes and the Weight Watchers recipes.
© Copyright 2009

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Rosemary Potatoes ♥ Recipe & Roasting Tips

Just in time for roasting fall vegetables, four tricks for roasting starchy vegetables like potatoes and winter squash using less oil without compromising on texture or flavor.

Here in St. Louis, we're caught in that lovely 'bridge' between summer and fall. There's no deciding whether to slice up a quick Insalata Caprese to get the final fill of summer tomatoes or to tip over into autumn's vegetables. The solution? Salad for lunch, potatoes for supper! These Rosemary Potatoes, talk about comfort food when paired with Meatloaf. Turns out, however, that the technique used here for the potatoes can be applied to roasting other vegetables as well.

Roasting vegetables, it's the number one way to draw out flavor and sweetness. But over the years, I've watched various recipes call for so much oil. Where A Veggie Venture allows for 1 tablespoon of fat per pound of vegetables (for most although not all recipes), other recipes call for four to eight times that. No wonder those vegetables taste so good!

So here are four tricks to roasting vegetables with less oil, ones that can be applied to one vegetable after another:

DIRTY A DISH If you drizzle oil over top of the vegetables right on the baking sheet, you'll need more, it's just not as easy to cover the cut surfaces. So to reduce how much oil is used, toss the vegetables and oil together in a bowl, tossing well, more than one or two turns. You really want to distribute the oil.
ADD A LIQUID Extra liquid helps distribute the oil further. In this recipe it's balsamic vinegar, but you could use chicken stock too. I even wonder about buttermilk though haven't tried it. (Has anyone?) I might also mix good mustard into some chicken stock.
ADD FLAVOR The balsamic vinegar is a brilliant touch in the flavor department, for it adds color, and sugars that caramelize and the great complementary acid that works so well with the creaminess of the potatoes. With that touch of rosemary, too? Delicious. An added benefit? These potatoes are filling and satisfying, the portion size doesn't seem skimpy.
ALLOW TIME So many recipes call for roasting at a medium temperature for a short period of time, hardly enough to cook the potatoes through let alone drawing out flavor. Instead, use a high temperature and toss often, distributing moisture and heat and letting more than one surface take the brunt of the heat.

ROSEMARY POTATOES RECIPE

Hands-on time: 10 minutes plus occasional attention during the roasting
Time to table: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Serves 8

2 pounds small red potatoes, some times labeled 'new' potatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves, chopped small

Additional kosher salt

Set oven to 400F. Wash the potatoes well, remove any blemishes and anything sprouting from the potato eyes. Cut into quarters. (If you're in a rush, the smaller the pieces, the quicker the potatoes will cook.) In a large bowl, toss the potatoes with the remaining ingredients -- use your hands, it'll go quicker and you'll get tactile confirmation of how well the oil is distributed. Transfer to a rimmed baking sheet and roast for about an hour, tossing every 15 minutes. During the last 15 minutes, be sure that a cut-side of each potato piece is touching the pan. If needed, roast further until at least some of the pieces are quite dark and caramelized. If needed, season with additional salt. Serve and savor!

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
Per Serving: 98 Calories; 2g Tot Fat; 0g Sat Fat; 0mg Cholesterol; 152mg Sodium; 19g Carb; 2g Fiber; 2g Sugar; 2g Protein; Weight Watchers 1 point

TODAY'S VEGETABLE RECIPE INSPIRATION
Inspired by a recipe from Food & Wine, January 1997

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MORE ROASTED VEGETABLE RECIPES
~ Slow-Roasted Tomatoes ~
this is what's making my kitchen smell like a tomato factory this week!
~ Roasted Cauliflower ~
~ Roasted Potato & Red Onion ~
~ Roasted Butternut Squash with Maple Glaze ~

~ more roasted vegetable recipes ~
from A Veggie Venture

MORE RECIPES pairing ROSEMARY & POTATOES
~ Grilled Rosemary Potatoes ~
from Panini Happy
~ Rosemary Potatoes ~
from Fearless Kitchen
~ Glazed Rosemary & Garlic Potatoes ~
from eCurry
~ more rosemary potato recipes ~
via Food Blog Search, a hand-selected list of the best food blogs
from all across the world

SPUD FUN (because I can't resist)
Well, a Girl Potato and A Boy Potato had eyes for each other, and finally they got married, and had a little sweet potato, which they called “Yam”. Of course, they wanted the best for Yam. When it was time, they told her about the facts of life. They warned her about going out and getting half-baked, so she wouldn't get accidentally mashed, and get a bad name for herself like 'Hot Potato,' and end up with a bunch of Tater Tots. Yam said "not to worry, no Spud would get her into the sack and make a rotten potato out of her!" But on the other hand she wouldn't stay home and become a Couch Potato either. She would get plenty of exercise so as not to be skinny like her Shoestring cousins. When she went off to Europe, Mr. and Mrs. Potato told Yam to watch out for the hard-boiled guys from Ireland. And the greasy guys from France called the French Fries. And when she went out west in the USA, they told her to watch out for the Indians so she wouldn't get scalloped. Yam said she would stay on the straight and narrow and wouldn't associate with those high class Yukon Golds, or the ones from the other side of the tracks who advertise their trade on all the trucks that say, 'Frito Lay.' Mr. and Mrs. Potato sent Yam to Idaho P.U. (that's Potato University) so when she graduated she'd really be in the chips. But in spite of all they did for her, one-day Yam came home and announced she was going to marry former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw. Tom Brokaw!!! Mr. and Mrs. Potato were very upset. They told Yam she couldn't possibly marry Tom Brokaw because he's just... well he's just a... A COMMONTATER !!!

NEVER MISS A RECIPE! For 'home delivery' of new recipes from A Veggie Venture, sign up here. Once you do, new recipes will be delivered, automatically, straight to your e-mail In Box.

Looking for healthy ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous Alphabet of Vegetables. Healthy eaters will love the low carb recipes and the Weight Watchers recipes.
© Copyright 2009

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Perfect Stovetop Brown Rice ♥ New Recipe for Cooking Brown Rice

Today's recipe: A new technique for cooking brown rice, yielding moist and flavorful grains of rice. No more gummy brown rice!

Who's noticed? If you follow the directions on a bag or box of brown rice, it turns out tough and gummy and unappetizing. It's no wonder that people turn to rice cookers for help -- or worse, douse brown rice with butter; or worse still, stick with the far less healthful white rice whose nutrients have been stripped away.

For winter, there's the oh-so-popular Oven-Baked Brown Rice that's just oh-so-perfect, yielding almost-nutty bites of moist, flavorful rice. Frankly, it's my favorite way to cook brown rice. But here it is, summer, and turning on the oven for an hour while the air conditioning runs seems to defeat the purpose. So I was intrigued to see Saveuer's new technique for cooking rice on the stovetop. It's dead simple and takes only an hour to get to the table, 15 minutes faster than the Oven-Baked Brown Rice.

Another good thing about this technique for cooking brown rice? It stays moist! So I don't hesitate to make a batch in the morning, then reheat for supper.

Three tricks for cooking brown rice:
Rinsing the rice, removing a dusty layer of starch.
Lots of water, keeping the rice grains fat and moist.
Finishing off heat, removing excess moisture.

PERFECT STOVETOP BROWN RICE

Hands-on time: 5 minutes
Time to table: 45 minutes (see ALANNA's TIPS)
Makes 3 cups cooked rice

12 cups water
1 cup brown rice, rinsed under cold water for 30 seconds
Kosher salt to taste

Bring the water to boil in a large covered pot (see TIPS). Add the rice, stir once to distribute, then cook uncovered for 30 minutes, adjusting the heat to maintain a fast simmer. Pour the rice through a strainer, then return to the hot pot and add salt to taste. Off heat, cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork. Serve and savor!

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
(How many calories in brown rice? How many Weight Watchers points in brown rice?) Per Half Cup: 114 Calories; 1g Tot Fat; 0g Sat Fat; 0mg Cholesterol; 1mg Sodium; 24g Carb; 1g Fiber; 0g Sugar; 2g Protein; Weight Watchers 2 points

TODAY'S INSPIRATION
Adapted from Saveur, currently my favorite food magazine because it features 'whole' food and authentic recipes from around the world.

ALANNA's TIPS & KITCHEN NOTES
It seems to take forever to bring a pot of water to boil on my stove. It helps to cover the pot. But often I put the pot on the stove with say, 4 cups of water and set it on HIGH. Then I add the remaining 8 cups of water from one of my favorite kitchen gadgets, an electric kettle. This same trick works for pasta water, too.
This recipe works for plain brown rice, any one you'll find. I'm a particular fan of the rice from Lundberg which I find at Whole Foods. The rice that's pictured is a blend of sweet brown rice, short grain brown rice, long grain brown rice, whole grain Wehani rice, whole grain Japonica rice. If you like the idea of blends, check out Oven-Baked Brown Rice where I substitute wild rice (and since then, other rices and grains) for some of the brown rice. I love the color variation.

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MORE RICE RECIPES
~ Tomato & Rice Salad ~
~ Eight-Ball Stuffed Zucchini ~
~ Julia Child's Yellow Squash Soup ~
(thickened with cooked rice)

~ more recipes with rice ~
~ more Weight Watchers recipes ~

NEVER MISS A RECIPE! For 'home delivery' of new recipes from A Veggie Venture, sign up here. Once you do, new recipes will be delivered, automatically, straight to your e-mail In Box.

Looking for healthy ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous Alphabet of Vegetables. Healthy eaters will love the low carb recipes and the Weight Watchers recipes.
© Copyright 2009

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Cool-as-a-Cucumber Avocado Soup ♥ A Low(er)-Calorie Recipe

Today's vegetable recipe: a quick blender soup recipe, just four ingredients and served cold. Low carb. Vegan. Lower calorie than a typical avocado soup.

Sigh. Do your eyes go dreamy too at the thought of avocados? There's simply no matching their silkiness, their smoothness. Pillow makers? How about avocado, not the color, but the cool slipperiness.

Blending cool cucumber with smooth avocado, it was a recent inspiration. The cucumber adds liquid but flavor too, unlike plain water (as most avocado soup recipes specify) or broth (which strikes me as too heavy for summer). Better still, the cucumber adds volume but few calories, keeping the avocado soup in reasonable territory, diet-wise but still tasting like an indulgence.

This soup is served cold, its own cool pillow against summer's heat. I like to serve it in small bowls with small spoons, all to encourage savoring every single silky spoonful. So much for that idea -- when I made this last, my favorite taste tester, who always leaves a bite or two behind on the plate, slurped up every last drop.

AVOCADO SOUP RECIPE

Hands-on time: 10 minutes
Time to table: 10 minutes
Makes 2 cups

2 avocados, pitted (save a bit aside to chop for garnish, if you like)
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 - 2 green onions, white and light-green parts only
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon agave or honey

Mix all ingredients in a blender until smooth. Spoon into serving bowls, top with a little chopped avocado.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
Per Half Cup: 138Cal; 9g Tot Fat; 1g Sat Fat; 0mg Cholesterol; 7mg Sodium; 12g Carb; 5g Fiber; 5g Sugar; 2g Protein; Weight Watchers 3 points

KITCHEN NOTES
I worried that the pretty light green color would darken but it didn't, at least not when covered for about 4 hours before serving.

MORE SILKY-SMOOTH AVOCADO RECIPES
~ Avocado Dip ~
~ Homemade Cobb Salad ~
~ Homemade Guacamole with Tomatillos ~
~ more avocado recipes ~
from A Veggie Venture

~ Fruity Gazpacho ~
~ Tropical Salad Supper ~
~ more avocado recipes ~
from Kitchen Parade, my food column

~ more Weight Watchers recipes ~
~ more low-carb recipes ~

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NEVER MISS A RECIPE! For 'home delivery' of new recipes from A Veggie Venture, sign up here. Once you do, new recipes will be delivered, automatically, straight to your e-mail In Box.

Looking for healthy ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous Alphabet of Vegetables. Healthy eaters will love the low carb recipes and the Weight Watchers recipes.
© Copyright 2009

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Tomato Platter with Olives & Feta ♥ An Easy, Impressive Summer Recipe

Today's vegetable 'recipe' - wait no, let's call it vegetable 'serving inspiration': A platter of perfect summer tomatoes, topped with olives and crumbled feta. Perfect for one or two or a crowd.

My friend Mary brought a big plate of tomatoes to supper on Friday. I loved her tomato serving idea so much, I re-created it on Saturday! So this isn't so much a 'recipe' as a serving suggestion, for it really did work beautifully and flew together in minutes.

Mary made a homemade vinaigrette (carrying it in a handy-dandy salad dressing mixer) to drizzle over the tomatoes just before serving but I went a step simpler still by purchasing an olive-feta mix from the olive bar at the grocery store (where it's quick to pick up just a few olives for a salad or whatever), already moistened with a little olive oil and it was quite delicious already.

Since ours was a small group on Friday, Mary also built 'stacks' of cucumber and thick beefsteak tomato, effectively creating a 'serving' that could be easily moved to an individual plate. Since Saturday's supper was a casual large-group buffet, I just did one layer of cucumber and topped it with another layer of tomatoes. Some people took both, some just stuck to tomatoes.

So this is really flexible (and surprisingly delicious!), make it fit your table!

TOMATO PLATTER with OLIVES & FETA

Hands-on time: 10 minutes
Time to table: 10 minutes
Serves as many as needed

Cucumbers, peeled and sliced
Tomatoes, sliced
Fresh feta, crumbled
Olives, pitted
Fresh basil, chopped fine
Vinaigrette (looking for ideas? my challenge to Never Buy Salad Dressing Again has a couple of dozen ideas from my favorite food bloggers)

On a platter, arrange a layer of cucumbers, then a layer of tomatoes, stacking them if individual servings are desired. Arrange the feta and olives over top, then drizzle with a vinaigrette. Sprinkle the top with the basil.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
Per Serving (a complete estimate since will vary so much, assumes a slice of cucumber, a slice of tomato, 1/4 ounce feta, 1/2 tablespoon standard oil & vinegar vinaigrette): 57Cal; 5g Tot Fat; 2g Sat Fat; 6mg Cholesterol; 80mg Sodium; 2g Carb; 0g Fiber; 1g Sugar; 1g Protein; Weight Watchers 2 points

KITCHEN NOTES
To get perfect tomato rounds, the end pieces need to be used for something else.
Look for blocks of feta and crumble it yourself, rather than individual containers of crumbles which tend to be dry and tasteless.
My friend Mary is an artist and arranged her tomatoes on a lovely glass leaf-shaped platter that belonged to her husband's mother. When I was arranging my own platter, a more typical round shape, I realized how 'artful' it was for Mary to use a platter that didn't repeat the same round shape of the cucumbers and tomatoes. Little stuff some times matters, at least a little!
UPDATE Turns out, this is my favorite 'bring a dish to share' for the summer. When the tomatoes are larger than the cucumbers, I put the tomatoes on the bottom, the cucumbers on top. I often skip the olives, instead scatter just fresh feta and fresh herbs on the top, then take along a vinaigrette (just sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper and a little sugar) to pour over top just before serving time. It's always a hit, people really 'get' that these are stacks and move both to their plates.

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MY FAVORITE WAYS with SUMMER TOMATOES
~ Panzanella ~
the Italian bread and tomato salad
~ fresh tomato sauce ~
~ no-cook taboulleh ~

~ more tomato recipes ~
~ more Weight Watchers recipes ~
~ more low-carb recipes ~

PRINT JUST A RECIPE! Now you can print a recipe without wasting ink and paper on the header and sidebar. Here's how.

NEVER MISS A RECIPE! For 'home delivery' of new recipes from A Veggie Venture, sign up here. Once you do, new recipes will be delivered, automatically, straight to your e-mail In Box.

Looking for healthy ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous Alphabet of Vegetables. Healthy eaters will love the low carb recipes and the Weight Watchers recipes.
© Copyright 2009

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Grilled Pepper & Tomato Salad ♥ A Reader Recipe

Today's vegetable recipe comes from a reader: Familiar tomatoes and familiar peppers combined in a salad that somehow manages to turn out entirely different. Low carb. Weight Watchers 2 points.

Sold! It took about 10 seconds to buy into this recipe, sent by a reader just last week. Here's what Laurie B. wrote about her salad recipe that combines roasted peppers (bell peppers and hot chilis both) and roasted tomatoes:

"It hits all my flavor sensors - heat, salt and garlic, well, tomatoes, peppers and onions. Oh wait, that's the recipe, isn't it?!"

She went on. "It's easy to throw together and is so much more than its parts. I got the recipe from a neighbor (she said it was her mother's recipe) when it was served at their son's graduation party. I've never had anything like it and I'll bet I've made it a dozen times since then. We were taking a big bowl of it to a party and I asked my husband to taste a bit; he ate almost half of it and I didn't have enough for the party! I guess he liked it."

And that's been the reaction in my circle too. At a birthday supper on Sunday, with a buffetful of fresh summer food to remark upon, the first praise emerged with the first bite, "These peppers are GOOD." (Thanks, Brad!) Later, the one dish I was asked about? The grilled peppers and tomatoes.

I'll close with Laurie's words. "I sure hope you enjoy this. We sure have." Ditto! Thank you, Laurie for sending this recipe, it's perfect for A Veggie Venture.

GRILLED PEPPER & TOMATO SALAD RECIPE

Hands-on time: 15 'inside' minutes + 'grilling' time
Time to table: 45 minutes (can be prepped ahead)
Serves as many as needed

PEPPERS & TOMATOES
Peppers - a mix of bell peppers (red and green, say) and hot peppers (poblanos and serranos, jalapeños and Anaheim peppers, say)
Tomatoes - preferably something meaty like a Roma tomato

SALAD
Garlic & kosher salt
Onion - chopped into thin lengths
Red wine vinegar
Good olive oil
Plenty of kosher salt

PEPPERS & TOMATOES Trim the peppers and remove the seeds and membranes to discard. Cut into quarter or halves, press with the back of your hand to flatten. Grill the peppers and tomatoes skin-sides down until the skins blacken and blister all over. Leave the skins on (they provide great flavor) and let cool. (Stop here if prepping ahead.) Chop both the tomatoes and peppers into rough pieces, one-inch pieces or lengths for a side dish, or into tiny bites for a salsa.

SALAD Mash the garlic and salt into a paste by chopping the garlic as fine as possible with a knife, then mashing the pieces into the salt with the side of a knife; stir into the peppers and tomatoes and onions. (This way, says Laurie, "No one eats raw garlic and it sort of melts into the salad.") Gently splash with equivalent volumes of vinegar and olive oil. Now get salty -- stir in salt, tasting after each addition, it should taste a little salty so that later, when the juices flow from the peppers and tomatoes. If the peppers and tomatoes don't taste that good, it's likely because the dish needs more salt.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
Per Serving (Assuming the quantities listed below in the first note, serving 8): 96Cal; 5g Tot Fat; 1g Sat Fat; 0mg Cholesterol; 1317mg Sodium; 11g Carb; 4g Fiber; 6g Sugar; 2g Protein; Weight Watchers 2 points

KITCHEN NOTES
I'm not giving quantities because this salad so easily adapts to small and large quantities. Still, some guidance may be helpful. For a dozen large Roma tomatoes and 5 large peppers, I used 1/2 a white onion, 3 large garlic cloves, 2 tablespoons (yes, tablespoons, Laurie writes, "it should taste like a salted tomato" and suggest 2 - 3 tablespoons) of kosher salt, 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar.
You'll want roughly equivalent amounts of tomatoes and peppers.
I think it would work just fine to oven-roast both the peppers and tomatoes, see the technique used in Oven-Roasted Peppers.
For tomatoes, I used Romas because they're meatier (and as importantly, less juicy) but Laurie says she's used Romas and garden tomatoes both, even supermarket tomatoes that don't look so ripe.
For peppers, don't worry if you want to err on the side of bell peppers. I did too, using 2 green peppers and 2 red peppers with only 1 poblano pepper and one small hot red chili. A little bit of heat is good, it creates another layer of flavor.
BURN, BABY, BURN At every turn this summer, we're putting a little burn -- intentionally! -- on everything from meat to vegetables to fruit. (Is it the Seven Fires effect?) The 'burn' adds so much flavor, that's why the skins are left on when assembling the salad.
The salad is good the next day but does get juicier after sitting.
The photo was taken three days after the salad was made. When I compare this shot with the ones taken when it was made, the peppers, tomatoes and onion all look 'fresh' (even though roasted) rather than dark and almost pickled. It's very pretty, I just didn't get good pictures!
ABOUT PEPPERS & PRICES Red, yellow and orange bell peppers from the supermarket have become so expensive, $1.50 and even more apiece. But for the next few weeks, from early August and well into September, peppers at the farmers market will be plentiful and cheap, both. They'll likely have thinner skins than the ones from the supermarket but they'll be fresh and luscious, whether eaten raw or like here, roasted. If ever there's a time to gorge on peppers, it's now.

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This recipe for Grilled Pepper & Tomato Salad is so easy to memorize, so memorable to eat, that I'm adding it to a growing collection of easy summer recipes being published all summer long in 2009 at Kitchen Parade, my food column. With a free Kitchen Parade e-mail subscription, you'll never miss a one!

JUST LOOK HOW MANY RECIPES
PAIR PEPPERS & TOMATOES
~ Summer Vegetable Stew ~
~ No-Cook Tabblouleh ~
~ Elise's Tomato Gazpacho ~
~ Summer Lentils ~
~ Peperonata with Potatoes ~

~ more bell pepper recipes ~
~ more tomato recipes ~

~ more low-carb recipes ~

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PRINT JUST A RECIPE! Now you can print a recipe without wasting ink and paper on the header and sidebar. Here's how.

NEVER MISS A RECIPE! For 'home delivery' of new recipes from A Veggie Venture, sign up here. Once you do, new recipes will be delivered, automatically, straight to your e-mail In Box.

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Looking for healthy ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous Alphabet of Vegetables. Healthy eaters will love the low carb recipes and the Weight Watchers recipes.
© Copyright 2009

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Julia Child's Cucumber Salad ♥ Recipe

Today's quick cucumber salad recipe, from no other than Julia Child: How to soak large, seedy cucumbers so they'll be not just edible but tasty! Low carb. Vegan. Weight Watchers 1 point!

~recipe reposted 2012~
to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of Julia Child,
a world-wide celebration happening online, in restaurants and in homes
~more recently updated recipes~

Summer 2009: Seems we can't turn around without stumbling over another story of Julie & Julia, the blog-turned-book-turned-movie that opens nationwide on August 7. Just yesterday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch climbed aboard the Julie & Julia wagon with a story about four St. Louis food bloggers (2011 update, sorry, the Post-Dispatch has removed the online story) whose blogs are also 'projects', including yes, A Veggie Venture! (more about the bloggers in the story)

Summer 2009: Seems I can't turn around without stumbling over a cucumber, the 'small' ones about six inches long, the 'big' ones a foot or more. That's a lot of cucumber to consume! So I've been looking for cucumber recipes where the 'cucumber' is front and center, not just an add-in for wet crunch. Julia Child to the rescue: her The Way to Cook writes about how to make cucumbers less 'burpy' at least a half dozen times. "Soak cucumbers in a little vinegar, sugar and water". Okay, Julia, got it. And soaking the cucumber flesh really did make a difference, especially to preserve them for a few days to make – whatever –
with. I've got a big batch in the refrigerator right now, the first chunks were used in a simple but gorgeous Cucumber Salad.
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