Garlicky braised greens with polenta
Welcome to To Vegetables, With Love, a celebration of a vegetable life, less ordinary.
My book Tenderheart is available from Books are Magic, Kitchen, Arts and Letters, Book Larder, Bold Fork Books and also here or here.
Our diets and what we like and dislike to eat changes as we get older. In recent times, my intake of leafy greens has been at an all time high. For several years, I have eaten an iteration of the avocado massaged kale salad in Tenderheart three to four times a week, usually with stellar line up of toppings - roasted veg, tofu, pickles, things from the freezer like falafels, dumplings or my favourite cauliflower hash browns. Sometimes, I switch to crunchier, more watery leaves like romaine (cos) or butter lettuce as my base. But kale salad never goes out of fashion for me. Some days it is my savior, other days, my redemption.
This year, I’ve had a new green obsession. The phase started on the 3rd of January, when we had a family dinner at Al Di La, a local Northern Italian restaurant that has been in the area since 1998 - in New York hospitality years, that makes it about 100 years old, at least (an old article by Business Insider stated that 80% of restaurants go out of business in the first 5 years in NYC). That night, we dined on beautiful salads, one vibrant with bitter leaves and a tangy vinaigrette, the other a perfect plate of winter citrus, and while the family tucked into toothsome handmade pasta, I chose the bowl of creamy polenta with wild mushrooms and braised kale, topped with an oozy soft egg. I doubled down on the greens with a side of their braised greens with garlic, chilli and lemon. Chinese people cook greens really well, but so do Italians. In both techniques, it is the garlic which imparts aroma, bringing out the vast and rich earthiness of leafy greens, while ample seasoning, whether that be from fermented tofu in the Chinese dish, or salt and stock in the Italian dish, unlocks sweetness and tempers bitterness. Braised - or stir-fried - greens is a foundational dish that can be the meal itself, or an element of a dish like my recipe today.
Braised greens is often all I want to eat. Sometimes I will make my stir fried snow pea shoots and call it dinner. There is a case for making a batch of greens at the start of the week and keeping them in the fridge for the days to come. They add an instant hit of big vegetable magic to every meal.
Served with polenta, braised greens are comforting and more-ish. Top this recipe with a jammy egg or crumbled feta. But there are also endless serving options:
Eat with rice, noodles or pasta
Pile onto toast
For breakfast, alongside scrambled eggs
Toss through white beans or chickpeas
As a topper for miso oats or jook (congree)
As a side to a carb heavy meal such as pasta
COOK / EAT / SHARE
There’s something new here on To Vegetables, With Love. Finally, a RECIPE INDEX! You can now find this in the main navigation of my newsletter homepage. It’s organized by vegetable, the same as the chapters in TENDERHEART, so I hope you will find this equally as useful.
It’s a bit of a work in progress and will be updated manually.
Overheard at a high school baseball game the other day: “sheet pan dinners are the best. Once I put it in the oven, I can then clean up the kitchen”. I smiled to myself discreetly, in vehement approval of this workflow approach. In honor of baseball parent conversations, here’s a few sheet pan ideas for this week:
Sheet pan tofu with Brussels sprouts and hoisin-tahini sauce
Crispy sheet pan noodles with glazed tofu
Sheet pan fried rice with vegan ‘xo’ sauce
Sheet pan gnocchi with chili crisp and baby bok choy
Gnocchi broccoli tray bake with lemon and cheese
Note, in Australia, a sheet pan meal is known as a tray bake.
I’m thoroughly enjoying the book Sebze, Vegetarian Recipes from my Turkish Kitchen, by Özlem Warren. Turkish food is ubiquitous in Sydney, so many of the recipes felt very familiar to me. Additionally, Turkey remains one of my favourite vacations, a trip when I ate a lot of eggplant, yoghurt, and more eggplant. No complaints here. The first recipe I cooked from Sebze was my daughter’s choice, a very cheesy pide called Trabzon-style Pide with cheese and egg yolk - it reminded me of the pide at Erciyes, our favourite local Turkish place in Sydney. I highly recommend, both Sebze, and Erciyes.
And while we are on the topic of Turkey and yoghurt, here is a recipe loosely inspired by a dish called manti, which I ate in the seaside town of Kaş. Rather than the more traditional dumplings, I’ve opted for store-bought pasta for my dish. It takes no time so great for midweek!
The unstoppable
, who launched a very clever newsletter called about 6 months ago, kindly asked me to compile my list of forty essential ingredients, and then shared three recipes that she would make from my pantry list. Such a fun idea and I am particularly enamored by the cacao e pepe dumplings.
THIS WEEK’S RECIPE
Garlicky braised greens over polenta
© Hetty Lui McKinnon for To Vegetables, With Love