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More meatless meals
By Ann | September 5, 2008
Now that we have a kitchen again, we here at Cooking the Books are delighted to continue with our review of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Good Food. At 996 pages, this is not a book to be taken lightly. And so, as with our review of Martha Stewart’s cookbook, we’ll try to sample at least two recipes from each of the eleven chapters. We’ll focus on recipes from the list of “20 Essential Vegetarian Dishes,” which appears on the book’s endpapers.
We went simple last night with the recipe for “Fast Tomato Sauce,” essentially your basic red sauce. Let me know if you’d like the recipe, but it’s pretty basic: sauté 1 chopped onion in olive oil, add 1 can whole tomatoes, cook for 10-15 minutes, or until “saucy,” garnish with basil. Pretty ho-hum, but I thought I could get a little fancy by trying one of the twenty-five “fast and easy ways to spin tomato sauce.” Some of the variations are so easy they are silly — for example, add garlic (#2), chili (#3), wine (#5), bay leaves (#6) or other fresh herbs (#10) — but some are intriguing, particularly #19, “peanut tomato sauce” (add 1/4 peanut butter and a dash of rice vinegar).
I tried #15, “red pepper and tomato sauce,” which is exactly as it sounds–add a chopped roasted red pepper to the sauce. Mark Bittman describes the result as “just amazing.” I found it pretty straightforward. Also, I strongly disliked the slight crunchiness that the sautéed onion added to the sauce–and that’s why my fast and easy tomato sauce uses crushed garlic cloves, and never onion.
I did find this whole wheat pasta from Barilla amazing. Its texture is identical to regular spaghetti (completely al dente)–I challenge you to discern the difference–yet it has 5.1 grams of fiber per serving! I’ve eaten a lot of whole wheat pasta (mostly DeCecco) and I’m here to tell you that this one wins hands down. (P.S. I just googled this to see if it’s available in the States–it is, and it’s called “Barilla whole grain.”)
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