Truth: I'm a dietitian and I hate cooking vegetables. Now, I love eating vegetables - all kinds, all ways - but preparing them...well that’s a chore I'd rather avoid, or at least I used to.
At the heart of it I’m lazy, and it feels like unnecessary work to cook up a vegetable recipe in addition to a main entree when I’m fine eating most veggies raw. Plus my child husband usually refuses to eat vegetables at dinner (he adamantly claims a salad for lunch fills his quota for the day, but that's another discussion), so I'm usually not inclined to cook veggies for one.
(photo credit: Meal Makeover Moms.com)
But all of this doesn’t mean I prefer to eat veggies plain and raw. In fact, my absolute favorite part (eh, second to the desserts...) of any potluck dinner, buffet, or party is finding all the veggie-based side dishes that others have thoughtfully prepared, so I can enjoy my beloved vegetables in different ways. At one such event hosted by a former professor (read: dietitian), I had the pleasure of sampling four or five salads/sides that immediately caught my attention. They were bursting with flavor and featured vegetables, herbs, and grains in unique combinations. I had to ask for the recipes and I was surprised to learn they were all from Yotam Ottolenghi, a renowned chef with a penchant for plant-based recipes.
At the party I thumbed through two of his cookbooks, Plenty and Plenty More, and found recipe after recipe that actually inspired me to start cooking vegetables. So I purchased Plenty and have been making my way through it, with much success. A recent favorite was his Tomato Party, which I made this weekend using our surplus of garden tomatoes. Then with a few modifications I enjoyed the leftovers as two different main meals over the next few days.
I won’t list out the original recipe (check the link above for it), but I tweaked it a little by increasing the amount of herbs, adding basil, using whole wheat couscous and quinoa (any grain combo would work), and my tomatoes of choice were what my garden provided: plum, Big Boy, and cherry tomatoes (red and yellow). I roasted the plum and Big Boys together (I didn’t add any tomatoes at the mid-way point as advised in the recipe), first at 325F for 20 minutes and then 400F for another 12-15 minutes as recommended, tossing in between. Then I halved the cherry tomatoes and mixed it all together with the pre-cooked grains. This was easy to prepare and a great side for any barbecue.
The next night I threw in some chickpeas to turn it into a main meal. The added protein and fiber helped keep me full, but another easy alternative could be adding some canned tuna or even cheese (feta would be nice).
I only had about a cup or so of the tomato party/chickpea mix leftover tonight, so to stretch it into another dinner I added it to a tomato and jalapeno soup that my husband made a few days ago. I really loved this combo because it added a chunkiness to the soup (which was made in a Vitamix, so it was pureed very thin) and the added spice from the jalapeno was a nice kick. I also shaved some Parmigiano-Reggiano on top, which is always the right decision in my book.
Suffice it to say, this is an extremely versatile recipe that helps you use up any excess tomatoes (a tasty alternative to tomato sauce) and allows you to adjust the ingredients to your liking, what’s on hand, and if you want to serve it as a side dish versus main meal.