Oven-Roasted Ratatouille

Happy New Year! At least here in the U. S. Yes, it's almost Rosh Hashanah. But today is the new year!

January 1st isn't, right? I mean, it's crammed at the end of the holidays, the last gasp of utter exhaustion. It's not really at any change of seasons. You don't really do anything different from 12/31 to 1/2.

But the day after Labor Day in the States? It's truly the new year. The kids go back to school--or are already there. Everyone bears down a bit more at work. Everyone's even at the office at the same time! The days are starting to turn shorter. Time itself just feels different.

I've always felt we in the U. S. should celebrate this day as the new year. It's time to start new projects, new ideas. It's time to get more serious about our reading. It's red wine, not white.

Best of all, you can have a new year and not even think about any darn resolutions. Except more real food, of course.

I love this recipe that Bruce made up for THE ULTIMATE COOK BOOK, our 500-recipe tome. Mostly because (yes, I admit it) I've never liked ratatouille. I don't know about you, but for me it's always too soft and squishy. I'm not much into soft food. Unless it's pudding. Then back up!

But by roasting the ingredients for the ratatouille, Bruce has turned it into more toothsome fare. Imagine: both roasted veggies AND ratatouille. Sold yet?

Shoot, I had it in omelets for a couple of days at lunch. And I also put it on stale bread, shaved Parmesan cheese on top, and broiled it for bruschetta.

So let's get to it. You'll end up with about 8 healthy side servings.

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Cucumber Gazpacho

Relationships have to be balanced, right? There has to be give and take, yin and yang. Or else the only option is a full-on break-up, messy and tangled.

Which I had with gazpacho a few years ago. I wanted to like it. I tried so hard. I was open and stable. (Well, stable for me.)

But it didn't like me back. Good grief, no relationship is worth a stomach ache. If you remember back to your college days, I'm sure you know what I mean.

Frankly, it's the onions. Raw onions and I don't get along. A little? Fine. But too much? Ugh.

You'd think, being from the American South, I'd be a fan. Every one of my kin eats a big slice of raw onion on a hamburger. For heaven's sake, my paternal grandmother used to go out to the garden, dig up an onion, wash it off with the hose, and eat it like an apple while she weeded and tended the other plants. No lie.

As is so often the case in my life, Bruce to the rescue. He has morphed gazpacho so it and I can have a lovely relationship again. (Does this mean Bruce and I have some sort of open relationship? Um, no. Gazpacho and I have our limits.)

He's made the classic soup with way more cucumbers than normal. Which suits me just fine. I got no beef with cucumbers.

One warning: if you look at that top picture, you'll see this gazpacho is a little soupier than some versions. That's because of the extra cucumbers. Which is fine by me. I like a little soup so that my hunk of crunchy whole-grain bread can "accidentally" fall into the bowl.

So let's get on with it. You'll end up with a lot, about 10 to 12 servings, enough for several meals in the days ahead. (Have lots of crunchy bread on hand, too. Smeared with a little soft goat cheese, it's even better.)

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Glazed Cauliflower

I suspect I've lost a lot of you already. Why is cauliflower one of the most hated vegetables? Only Brussels sprouts seem to some in for more bad-mouthing.

Yet cauliflower is not only tasty, it's so darn good for you, packed with fiber, laced with B vitamins--and a veritable warehouse of vitamin C: one 100 gram/3.5 ounce serving has 77% of your suggested daily intake.

Maybe I can change that. Maybe I can get everyone eating their cauliflower. Maybe I can flap my arms and fly to the moon.

Well, maybe. Especially when the florets are to be glazed, herbaceous, and gorgeously aromatic. Like in this recipe.

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Melanzane Pizza

People always ask us if we have a big vegetable garden. Mostly, we have a CSA. Our travel schedule this summer doesn't allow us to plant a big garden. Flowers aplenty, sure--but we do have a few things in pots on the deck. Tomatoes, mostly. And chiles. Or at least we thought we did.

Earlier in the season, we shot a series of videos for weightwatchers.com, technique videos that will soon be up on the site. One of our editors brought her dear parents to the shoot at our house, an older Italian couple. Frankly, I wanted to blow off the shoot and spend time with them. Italians are some of the world's best foodies! We had lunch out on the deck and they were checking out our pots. "Melanzane!" her mother exclaimed. We were very patient. "No, no, peppers. Chiles." But she was insistent. We showed her the little tag from the farm where we got the plants. "Peppers," we kept saying.

They were eggplants. She knew. We should have listened. Italians, after all. So we've now got eggplants growing on the deck. Not such a bad thing. And certainly worthy of a good pizza.

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Zucchini Burgers

I used to dislike veggie burgers. There was something about the inevitable smell of patchouli that came along with them. Plus, the tie-dye and hemp shoes. It didn't promise much. Was there going to be anything to chew?

One day, when I was in graduate school at UW-Madison, birthplace of patchouli, I went out to lunch with some fellow earnest English types ("Of course Shakespeare was the first transsexual"). As we stepped into the restaurant, we got hit with the strangest question I've ever been asked from a hostess at her little stand: "Scent or no scent?"

This particular establishment actually had a scent-free section: a place for people who didn't wear cologne, didn't use scented hair products, didn't put on lotion. It was also run by the kind of vegetarians who would whip you with a celery stalk if you mentioned pork chops. I'll admit I was a tad worried: I wasn't too sure I didn't have some sort of scent somewhere. But I bit the bait, went to the scent-free section, and tucked into a vegetarian burger--to never once hesitate again.

These days, I crave the things as a simple lunch (or dinner). This recipe today is for Bruce's zucchini patties, great on a bun with lettuce and mustard as well as in a pita pocket with a creamy blue cheese dressing--or simply as Bruce and I had them: on a plate with a little Pickapeppa Sauce and some sliced tomatoes sprinkled with crunchy sea salt.

Here's the drill for 8 zucchini cakes:

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All-Vegetable, No-Noodle Lasagna

We're closing in on writing our 19th cookbook (that's counting the two for the fussy celebrities) and there are a two things I've learned over the years: 1) some people like exact recipes and 2) some people don't.

I'm a recipe-follower. Probably the debt of a stern Protestant upbringing. I follow the rules, make it as it stands. If I make it again, I might alter the recipe. Maybe (after a glass of wine). Mostly, I do it by the books. Give it to me in grams and I'm happier.

Bruce never met a recipe he couldn't disregard. He rarely follows one. Even his own. Right now, we're cider-curing a bone-in, big-butt ham for a cookout this weekend, using the recipe from our up-coming book on ham (AN OBSESSION WITH THE HINDQUARTER), and yesterday I had to walk him carefully through the procedure to make sure he observed his jots and tittles.

Even when we're done recipe-testing for a book, Bruce will read through the manuscript and say, "Oh, you know, we could make that with thus-and-so."

"Did you?" I'll ask, a little exasperated.

"No, but you could."

So this post is for him--to celebrate one of his on-the-go, never-the-same-way-twice summer veggie casseroles. It's like a lasagna, tomatoey and cheesy, but without any noodles. And the recipe's going to be inexact. Very.

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Tabbouleh With Grilled Vegetables

Back in graduate school, I was a tabbouleh-phobe. OK, maybe I'd been to one too many parties where earnest medieval scholars and post-modern poets in ill-fitting shoes shoved bowls of it under my nose. All I could smell was parsley and onion. Well, that and the patchouli. Blech. The whole thing added up to dirty socks to me. (I'm even more phobic about dirty socks. But that's a whole different story--and way too much information.)

I got over it. Not the sock phobia. Rather, the tabbouleh one. Because Bruce has taught me that it has nothing to do with parsley and raw onion. Rather, it's simply a whole grain salad with veggies, pitched together as you will. Sign me up.

So we've been having a summer of tabbouleh because 1) we're both under book deadlines (me with the step-by-step plan to get off processed food and Bruce with his knitting book) and 2) it's just so darn easy, a vegetarian meal for several days in a row, even better when combined with a couple other easy salads for a lunch spread.

So here goes.

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