Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- To be honest, America's relationship with vegetables has been a train wreck.

Just a complete horror show.

If you go back and look at the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, you know, Fannie Farmer's book, 750 pages and 40 pages on vegetables-- that's it.

And the first recipe is baked beans, which sort of gives you an indication of how she likes her vegetables.

And in that book, she curries them, she scallops them, she casseroles them, she stuffs them, she boils them, but she just doesn't leave them alone to be vegetables.

Now, most of the places in the world actually know how to cook vegetables.

Meat was expensive, and so they got really good at it.

So today, we're gonna take three recipes that are really meaty.

You know, if you like meat, you're gonna love these recipes.

The first is a spanakopita, but we do it on the stovetop in a skillet, get rid of that bottom layer, which tends to get soggy, and that makes a great main course supper.

The second thing we're gonna do is take a whole head of cauliflower and roast it.

We know people love that with feta.

I've done that many times, and that is a great, meaty main course.

And finally, we're gonna take Oaxacan-style vegetables and have a chili-garlic sauce to really brighten them up.

So let's go into the kitchen and put vegetables at the center of the plate.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

An assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments.

Some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

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- Spanakopita is one of those things you order at a restaurant, you probably don't make at home.

The reason is phyllo dough is a little tricky.

So we're gonna figure out how to do this at home, simplify the whole phyllo part of it and end up doing this dish in a skillet.

So we're gonna start with wilting the greens.

We're gonna put this on medium, medium-high heat, and we're gonna put just one tablespoon of butter in there.

And we have a pound-and-a-half of greens, a pound of spinach, and half a pound of kale.

We'll do this in two batches, and we're just going to wilt this down.

So it's a manageable size.

So one of the questions about this recipe, you know, is this Turkish?

Is this Greek?

Well, most people think it's Greek.

Phyllo dough actually comes from Turkey.

As for the Greek part of it, well, they've been making cheese pies for over 2,000 years and using phyllo dough, so it's a little bit of both.

And we'll do, as I said, two batches.

By the way, if you've ever seen phyllo dough made, you can go on YouTube, it is pretty amazing.

They're so thin.

And I know you probably know this, if you... you can actually see through the phyllo dough.

It's translucent.

By the way, a little tip on using cast iron; every time you use it, when you're finished, just wipe it out and heat it up with about a tablespoon of oil in the skillet.

When it starts getting hot, rub that oil, using paper towels into the cast iron, and then take it off the heat and continue rubbing every 30 seconds or so.

And you'll get this kind of wonderful nonstick surface.

Okay, we're going to let those cool because I have to get my hands on them to squeeze out the water.

So we have two tablespoons of butter, and we have leek, garlic-- four cloves, quarter teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon pepper.

I don't know why I measured it.

You don't have to really measure it.

Okay, that's good, we're gonna turn that off.

Okay, now, for the rest of the filling, we have three eggs.

Whisk them together.

Two cups of feta, one cup of ricotta, and a whopping one cup of dill.

That's a lot of dill.

Okay, there's still a lot of water left in these greens, so I'm gonna get my hands in there, make sure, obviously, it cooled down.

You want to squeeze to get as much of that liquid out as you can.

You just keep squeezing and squeezing and squeezing until it gets down to the size of a tennis ball.

I'm going to take just a minute to really get this mixed together.

Now, you want to make sure that this is... ...yeah, pretty cool because you have, obviously you have cheese and eggs in here.

And we're going to put that into the skillet.

And we want to mix everything together, make that one layer.

So obviously, we're not doing a bottom layer.

We are going to create a top layer, and we're going to take the phyllo dough and do something quite unusual with it, which gives it a really interesting-looking topping.

And it's so easy to do.

So here we have the phyllo dough.

And as I said earlier, you know, you can... can you see me through here?

It's translucent.

So, we're now gonna cheat.

We're gonna do something really unusual.

I'm gonna take a little bit of butter.

Flip it over just on the top sheet.

And then we're just going to scrunch it up like this.

So we're going to make a completely destroyed piece of phyllo dough on top.

Do that again.

This is gonna look good no matter how imperfect it is.

You have a little bit extra butter left, so it gets nice and dark.

So this goes into a 375 oven for 30 to 35 minutes.

Another thing about this that's really nice, because it's not just layers.

You get a lot more surface area available to that oven heat, with that extra butter, and it gets really brown and crispy.

So you have more crispiness on top.

So it's out of the oven, it's cooled, and as I promised, you can actually hear it's nice and crispy on top.

(phyllo crunching) So there we have it.

Looks great.

And... who cares if it looks great?

What does it taste like?

Tastes like really good spanakopita.

You know, I'm not here to tell you to take meat out of your diet, 'cause I certainly love meat.

But once in a while, vegetables in the center of the plate really work well.

But they have to be substantial and interesting.

So this spanakopita has a nice, crisp exterior, a wonderful cheesy kale spinach interior, and you can just serve it on its own or maybe with a salad.

And there you go, you have dinner.

So if you've had fear of phyllo all of your life, this is a great starter recipe 'cause you can mess it up all you like, and it's still gonna come out great.

- This episode is all about how to put vegetables in the center of your table to make them the stars.

And there are full recipes included in this episode, but there are also lots of little tips that you can use to make some of your recipes even better.

We call these meat cheats.

A lot of people, when they're going to roast cauliflower, try and break the whole head down into these beautiful, dainty little florets.

But when you want roasted vegetables and robust, caramelized flavor, don't be so particular.

Make sure you cut off the bottom so you have a nice, flat area to work with.

And then you're going to go through this sort of making the ever-popular cauliflower steak.

You just want to slice straight through.

What that does is it makes surface area.

And all of this can go flat against your sheet tray.

So you can roast them as whole steaks, which sometimes is a really nice way to present sort of a main course cauliflower meal.

But you can also then just break them up.

So then you get these small florets.

Let me prove it, you don't have to believe me.

Pretty little floret, not much browning.

Flat surface area, flavor.

Now we're going to talk about charring-- so charring sort of mimics the grill.

When you're cooking inside, all you need is a cast iron skillet and a ton of heat.

So again, surface area.

We're cutting our broccoli to have all these flat areas so that we can develop good char here.

Slightly kiss whatever you're charring with just enough oil so that they don't stick.

So I'm going to put this broccoli straight into a preheated cast iron skillet.

It's dry; there's no oil in here.

If we added a lot of oil now, we just get something too greasy.

Then the hardest part is don't touch.

You really want to let the browning develop and turn into little bits of char, so stay away from the pan.

A-ha, perfect.

So you can actually see that it's charred.

It's beautiful, it's got tons of flavor, that smoky grill thing.

But then it's actually drier than if you look at one of these roasted cauliflowers, right?

So this had more fat and salt and caramelization.

This has that nice, dry char.

So here are two ways for you to develop that robust caramelization or charred flavor for your vegetables so they can take center stage.

So we just reviewed how to create robust flavor through surface area and char, and that all relied on your knife work.

I have no knife here.

We're going to approach making vegetables hearty and satisfying and real centerpiece showstoppers a completely different way in this recipe.

we're going to use a whole head of cauliflower.

It's going to come out at the end as the pice de rsistance of your menu, whether you're serving it next to a hunk of meat or 5,000 other vegetables.

This is the dish everyone's going to gravitate towards-- and what we rely on instead of knife work and surface area is high-impact flavor development, both through roasting and technique, but mostly through our sauce.

So our sauce starts with two-and-a-half tablespoons of Dijon mustard.

We have two grated cloves of garlic.

We have a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, and we have two teaspoons of honey.

This not only helps balance all of that mustard, it helps a little bit with the caramelization, as does the balsamic vinegar.

Then we want to add in a half a cup of olive oil.

This is going to become both sort of the rub for our cauliflower head, much like you would make a spice rub for meat, but it's doing double duty.

This is also going to become our serving sauce, And we're also going to add in about a teaspoon of salt.

And a half teaspoon of fresh black pepper.

And really, your best friend in this case is the whisk.

You want a nice, homogenized dressing.

I first learned to make this from Diane Kochilas, who writes Greek cookbooks.

She likes to sneakily invite a lot of carnivores, a lot of meat-loving friends over for dinner.

She'll serve this as the main course.

And they leave so happy, they don't even notice.

They don't even comment that there was no meat on the table because they had vegetables prepared in these really luxurious, thoughtful, and hearty preparations.

We want to set aside about a quarter-cup of our sauce for serving later.

If we just had the cauliflower, it would be, to politely put it, bland-- cauliflower's sort of a blank canvas.

Let's call cauliflower a blank canvas for flavor.

So it would develop caramelization, because all vegetables have starches that will caramelize.

We're really adding a flavor boost, a huge flavor boost, because through the dry heat, the sauce is going to dry out a little bit.

It's going to become almost like a next textural element because it will have a little bit of crunch.

All right, we've got this covered in its flavorful, if not beautiful glaze.

We're going to put it into a 450 degree oven for about 50 minutes, but really, the test is you want to put a skewer into the core, and you just want a tiny bit of resistance.

So into the oven we go.

All right, here she is, our bronze beauty.

Now, while she mellows out just for a second, we're gonna make our second layer of flavor.

So, when in doubt, use cheese.

We've got feta here.

We're mixing in parsley.

So here, let's just get in there with your hands, it's so much easier.

So we're gonna have an herb-infused feta blanket that goes onto our-- onto and into-- all of the cauliflower.

That's good enough.

Okay, but before the feta goes on, more mustard.

Remember, the cauliflower is this lovely blank canvas.

And so we're adding more flavor, more punch.

And when you cook things like our first layer of mustard, you mellow out the flavors.

They become sweeter.

They have a little less of the punchy punch of mustard that we want.

So here we're going to cook this for much less time.

It's going to be a little bit protected from our feta parsley magic over here.

And then remember, we have our remaining sauce.

So we serve three layers of mustard flavor.

Now we get to play with our food.

You get little bits of the feta parsley mixture and really go between the florets.

This makes these gooey, wonderful crevices.

I mean, sort of like when you get pasta sauce caught up in a shaped pasta.

That's the same effect here.

So we're gonna get little pockets of extra cheese, parsley, somewhat gooey, somewhat crumbly, wonderful flavor in between these little florets.

All right, back into the oven.

Same 450 oven for five to eight minutes until the cheese just starts to melt.

Oh, it's sizzling, it's so beautiful-- hello, buddy.

It's bronzed, it's gooey.

It's elegant.

It's all the things you want a cauliflower to be.

All right, so, transfer it-- easy, see?

Thank you, foil-lined sheet.

I'm going to go for a whole quarter.

And you can hear... that there's some resistance.

That's perfect, it's very soft, it cut right through.

It wouldn't have if it weren't fully cooked, look at this.

So while nice, it's impractical to serve it standing upright.

You do want to put it on its side just to be nice to your eaters.

Now we just want to finish it with our final flavors.

Our third layer of mustard.

This is our reserved sauce that we made at the beginning.

And then a little punch of lemon.

And there you have it.

Our whole roasted head of cauliflower with feta and mustard deserves a star billing in the center of your table.

- The recipes in this episode are very, very center-of-the-plate centric.

These are vegetables that have a lot of life and a lot of flavor.

But there's another little trick here using some high-power ingredients we can use to boost their level of flavor and power even more.

First, miso.

Vegetables take very well to miso.

Of course, miso is fermented soybean paste.

It's very salty, has a lot of rich, earthy flavors.

You can find white miso in the supermarket, and red miso; I'm gonna go for the red.

That has more of a sort of mushroom-y flavor, but still very salty and fermented.

So a couple tablespoons of the red miso and just olive oil.

You need about the equal amount, maybe a little bit more.

You want it so it's spreadable.

And this is great for grilled vegetables.

This is great on meat, but we're focused on the vegetables today.

You can even make a dressing out of that.

But using miso has a real grounding, earthy flavor to anything you add it to.

As Rosie showed us earlier, we're going for surface area here and just baste the cut edges with that oil and miso mixture and roast them.

And they look like this when they come out of the oven.

It's very meaty, for lack of a better term, it's really meaty and rich.

Just finish this up with a little bit of fresh herbs, and that is a beautiful plate.

If you have that at a barbecue, no one's going to miss the steak.

Second ingredient that really packs a punch are dried mushrooms.

I'm going to throw a few in a spice grinder with just a few needles of fresh rosemary, and we're going to grind that up.

(grinder whirring) Now, I'm simply going to take that and mix it into a little salt.

I have a nice plate of really basic steamed vegetables-- summer squash, zucchini-- and I'm going to sprinkle a little of my mixture into some melted butter, and then just drizzle that over my basic steamed squash.

And this will add a whole new element of deep, rich, earthy flavor.

So when you want some veggies that are really going to be the star of the meal, and you don't need any meat on the table, think about the ingredients you use to season them.

Use some miso, some dried mushrooms, and you'll be set.

- In the southern, central part of Mexico is the state of Oaxaca.

From that state comes this delicious dish called chileajo.

Chileajo is a garlic chili sauce.

Now, classically, it is chileajo de cerdo, which is pork.

But today, we're gonna focus that sauce on vegetables.

The sauce is made with guajillo chilies.

Now, these are a little bit nuttier and milder than other dried chilies, and they make a delicious sauce.

So in a saucepan, I'm gonna heat up about a tablespoon of oil, and the chilies are gonna go in.

Now, as they toast, they'll start to just lightly char a little bit, and they will also impart a little red hue and color and flavor into the oil.

Now, the vegetables that are gonna go into this delicious dish, which, by the way, can be used in tacos, tostadas, in a torta, as a sandwich, like I'm gonna make it, potatoes, cauliflower, green beans.

And I'm using gold potatoes here and the reason is because they're gonna hold their shape better.

We want texture.

Also need a little garlic.

Just give those a smash.

And just take all that papery coating right off.

Keep an eye on those chilies, because they can go from nicely toasted to charred and black really quickly.

And don't stand right over the pot and breathe.

You'll be choking.

Just a couple cups of water into that saucepan.

Back over to the heat here.

Once the water is boiling, shut it off and let these stand for ten or 15 minutes, and they'll become really pliable and soft.

You can almost mash them with your fingers.

Now, when you're cutting cauliflower, they can fall apart in boiling water if they are sliced through the top of the floret.

So I just go in and make a cut where the stems are and just kind of pull them apart.

You end up with nice florets.

Better texture makes for a better eating experience there.

All right, I'm gonna take those chilies off.

And getting some water boiling here.

Potatoes.

Just about a half-inch cube on these.

You want everything roughly the same size.

And then the green beans, same thing here.

I just want to cut these down.

I'm gonna salt the water here, and I'm gonna drop those potatoes in as that water comes to a boil.

And as the water gets hot, the potatoes already start to cook.

Then they only need about three minutes before we add the cauliflower and the green beans.

So I gave the potatoes a head start.

They've been simmering for about three to five minutes.

Now for the rest of the veggies-- the cauliflower florets, and the green beans.

Again, three to five minutes, you want them crisp, tender.

Don't overcook them; you don't want them mushy.

If you want to have a vegetarian entree that tastes like meat, don't overcook your veggies.

Now for our sauce.

The flavor of these Guajillo chilies is going to give this a really meaty, meaty flavor.

So into a blender jar, the soaked chilies, you can see how soft they are.

I can almost squeeze them apart with the tongs.

In they go.

And then a half a cup of this liquid.

Be a real shame to dump it down the drain, so use it.

Now, our other ingredients, very classic here.

The garlic-- whole cloves go in.

We smashed them, they'll break apart.

Some cumin, of course.

This is a really earthy sauce, but adding fresh oregano will give it a little bit of a brighter kick.

And then a little acid, some cider vinegar.

And then some salt and pepper.

And away we go.

Give it a good minute or so, so it's nice and smooth.

Beautiful.

Now, you're probably wondering, there's raw garlic in there.

I'm not a huge garlic fan, and raw garlic really kind of jumps out at me.

But we're going to put the hot vegetables into the cool sauce, and the heat from the vegetables is going to lessen that garlic bite.

It's going to mellow the garlic.

So these look beautiful.

The green beans are still... have a nice bright green color.

Potatoes are softened, you can see them.

And cauliflower, I don't even need to poke it with a knife.

I can see it's translucent all the way through that cut stem.

That cauliflower is ready.

So into the sauce, right into the sauce.

Drain off any excess water, Coat them really well in the sauce.

And guess what?

You've made a dish that if you were using meat, pork or beef, it would have taken you hours and hours and hours of braising; in this case, this whole thing came together in about 20 minutes.

Beautiful.

You put these right over a plate of greens, it'd be great.

But in this case, I want to make a torta.

Now, this would be, in Mexico, a telera roll, which is a very soft, kind of sweet, chewy roll with a bit of a crusty exterior.

It just looks so great.

Some very finely shredded cabbage, red and green, tiny bit of sliced onion as well, some cilantro leaves and then a little bit of crumbled cotija.

Very much like a feta, but not as salty.

And since we don't have any meat in this sandwich, this adds a lot of richness.

And there it is-- Oaxacan-style vegetables in chili garlic sauce, or chileajo de verduras.

Kind of one of those exploding sandwiches, but...

So many textures in there.

Little bit of spice, really round, earthy sauce on those vegetables.

I don't miss the meat.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street on MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From cacio e pepe and skillet spanakopita, to Brazilian-style carrot cake and Thai coconut soup, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments.

Some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.