I don’t really intend to, but I’d say about half the dinners I eat are actually vegetarian. And for full-time as well as part-time vegetarians, Spring is a fabulous season. Chef Jerry Pellegrino will tell you the options are nearly endless.
We put together some ideas for vegetarian-themed dishes that takes advantage of all the good local produce we have. So, let’s start with the pasta.
The Italians have a special sauce called “puttanesca”, whose origins may be a little disreputable, but whose flavor is strong and enticing. What if we serve a puttanesca sauce over pasta, and serve it with some spring veggies?
To make a puttanesca sauce you simply combine canned San Marzano tomatoes with
anchovy filets, red pepper flakes, fresh garlic, pitted black olives, capers and oregano.
For the veggies, we’ll be sautéing cut up spring onions bulbs, minced garlic, capers, and chili flakes in olive oil. This is a quick sauté, so don’t overdo it. Toss in a little white wine and stir in cut up spring onion greens and some salty olives and cook a while. Then you’ll finish it by stirring in your pasta, (say linguine) along with about a cup of the pasta water, and a little shredded arugula and chopped parsley. Stir it all together, and you’ve got a terrific first course.
For our next course, we’re thinking of a lemony tortellini soup with spinach and dill. This is a Greek-inspired recipe that works in eggs and lemon into the broth. For starters, trim up a pound of mature spinach, and chop it coarsely. Heat up 8 cups of vegetable broth and cook your cheese filled tortellini in it. When done, fish them out and divide them among your serving bowls. Next, whisk together 4 whole eggs with the juice of two lemons. Gently add a little of the warm both to the egg mixture to “temper” it… which keeps the eggs from scrambling. When the egg mixture is warmed up, again gently add it to the broth pot, stirring all the time.
Finally, the chopped spinach and some fresh dill go in, and you pour it over the tortellini. And “bingo”, you’ve got a great soup.
For something a little more substantial, we’ve got just the thing: a vegetable pot pie!
This is going to be a single top crust pie, using puff pastry. You’ll make a filling with chopped up portobello mushrooms, carrots, onions and Yukon Gold potatoes. Sauté them, sprinkle your seasoning, and once everything is softened, add vegetable broth, lentils, minced garlic and a bit of miso sauce and simmer it all together until the lentils are cooked.
Then you put it in a baking dish and cover with the puff pastry. But you have to cut slits into the pastry to allow steam to escape. Otherwise, your crust will be really soggy. Bake it until it’s golden brown, and bring it to the table.
And for dessert, how about an Apple and Blueberry Crumble? And it’s so simple. Peel and cut up some apples and put them in a bowl with the blueberries. Mix with some sugar, lemon juice, a bit of flour and baking spices. Spoon it all into a baking dish and then mix up your crumble. And that is nothing more than rolled oats, a little more flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. You should pour a stick of melted butter over the crumble mix, and then use it to cover the fruit. Into the oven it goes, and when it’s all golden and bubbly it’s done.
