Need Bright New Ways to Cook Summer Vegetables? - No. 137

Roast okra, make a squash casserole on top of the stove, and simmer green beans with brown sugar and pepper. And zucchini is coming Thursday!

Photos: Danielle Atkins.

I live in the land of the meat and three. Country music may bring people to Nashville, but meat and threes—one meat offering and a trinity of veggie sides to go with it—feed them.

We ate meat and three at home every night of my youth. My mother didn't think she had prepared an adequate meal unless there were at least three vegetables, plus hot bread and dessert. Those were the days...

But our vegetables weren’t dripping in pork fat or bacon grease as you might imagine in the South. She simmered fresh green beans in as little water as possible and from my mother’s deft hand, I learned to blur the lines. I now cook vegetables nodding to Southern but also Mediterranean as I roast okra with tomatoes on a sheet pan, dribbling it with pesto before the oven door closes. It’s super-lazy but super-good.

So before summer is a memory, I’m sharing my tricks for cooking vegetables so enticing that everyone, even your pickiest friend, spouse, or toddler, might like them, too.

Lessons learned from the past

As I said, eating veggies was never an obstacle because my mother worshipped vegetables and knew how to cook them with reverence. I grew up eating zucchini and eggplant as well as the more familiar yellow squash and okra. She wasn’t afraid of frying, and she’d crumb coat vegetables in crushed Saltines and an egg wash before pan frying. It was so fabulous…and yet I’m not going to fry every night.

But I will thinly slice zucchini and saute it with sliced garlic in olive oil. And I will, when begged, dip eggplant slices in beaten egg and saute in a light oil til crispy. Does my calling it a saute make it less bad than frying?

Thinking back to that difficult parenting stage when I tried to get my children to eat anything green, did I not have my mother’s sly hand or were my kids just pickier? I resorted to calling eggplant ‘’aubergine’’ for a small period of time and that worked, until my older daughter found me out. But I just kept repeating the vegetables they liked and adding a new one, and yes, a little sugar and butter helped too!

You might say my approach to cooking vegetables is a case by case basis. If the okra is tender and small, it gets steamed in nearly zero water with a pinch of sugar, salt, and butter. Larger, and it gets sliced in half for the roasting pan. Really large, and it gets tossed into vegetable soup.

And green beans. They are usually the crop I can count on, but because of our high heat they’re absent from my garden this year. I am still hopeful a bumper crop will come in as the temperatures dip, but the last thing I want to do is plunge my precious home-grown beans in a cauldron of boiling water and pork fat.

So I cook them as little as possible, in the air fryer with a mist of olive oil and sprinkle of salt, or better yet in a saucepan in what I call Bebe’s Green Beans (recipe below).

According to Virginia historian Leni Sorenson, the reason so many Southern vegetables are cooked with meat is rooted in economy and hunger. "The poor didn't eat desserts and couldn't buy sugar so they made do with field peas,’’ she told me several years back. ‘’They wanted fat meat like pork for sustenance."

Those green beans or field peas simmered in a pot with water and pork was the main dish. That hog jowl, the fatback, whatever you call it, was added to give everyone the feeling of satiety. Plus, it added more calories to vegetables, which increased the amount of energy that could be expended in fields or factories until the next meal.

Cooking in very little water and other tricks

The three recipes I share today involve ways to approach cooking veggies in a new way—using as little water as possible, roasting at high heat, shortcutting classics, and using more distinctive seasoning like za’atar, a blend of dried oregano, thyme, sumac, and toasted sesame seeds.

You may already cook this way, or it might be new to you. I’d love your feedback on cooking vegetables healthfully but also with flavor. Do you have favorite seasonings you’d like to share?

In the first recipe, the green beans, are cooked on top of the stove in just enough water to cover the beans halfway. They are cooked through and not crisp.

You can take a similar approach to cooking fresh carrots. Peel and slice them into matchsticks and place in a saucepan with only enough water to cover, as well as a pinch of salt, pinch of sugar, and pinch of butter. Cover and steam until just tender. What you will taste is what you should taste - carrots!

That squash is started with some onion and just enough water so it doesn’t stick, and cooked gently until tender, then you have some fun with it…

Short-cut classics to save time and calories: Slice fresh tender, small yellow crookneck squash and a little onion in a saucepan and add only enough water to not quite cover the squash. Cover and cook until just fork tender. Drain well. Then toss the squash back into the pan for a light sauté and seasoning. I add butter and more onion and let it caramelize over medium heat. Then some crumbled Saltine crackers—is this a summer of Saltines, or what?—seasoning of salt and pepper, and we're done. Or, toss shredded sharp cheddar on the top, cover, and let it melt. If people are coming over, pile the squash into a casserole dish, scatter on the cheese, and run it under the broiler.

Roast at high heat: My favorite veggies to roast are okra and sweet potatoes. For the okra, I slice them lengthwise right through the stem and toss them with olive oil and a pinch of salt, fresh herbs like thyme or oregano, and fold in some cherry tomatoes. Then those go on the sheet pan and roast at 400 degrees F (see the recipe) until crispy like popcorn, except better. Those sweet potatoes are prepped in much the same way, peeled and diced, then tossed with garlic, salt and olive oil. After they roast, I squeeze lime juice over them, a little coarse salt, and a few red pepper flakes.

Season vegetables distinctively: To make life more interesting, add that sprinkle of chili powder or cinnamon to the sweet potatoes. Even if it’s as simple as good salt, nice pepper, and distinctive olive oil, it makes a difference.

I guess there could be a fifth rule: Don’t cook the veggies at all! If you have really fresh squash, just shred it onto pasta or a salad. Drizzle with an aged balsamic vinegar or pomegranate molasses. Or slice tender green beans thinly on the diagonal and add them to a green salad as you would cucumbers.

My mother was enough of a old-school Southern cook to eschew raw veggies, but me? I’m reinventing the way I cook one sheet pan of okra at a time. And I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.

Coming Thursday for Subscribers

Veggie Week continues! Za-za-zucchini! My five favorite ways to cook zucchini, which in spite of the heat and insanity of the 2022 summer garden, is thankfully cranking out. I’ll share a recipe for Zucchini Cake, my favorite birthday cake, because yes, I’ve got an August birthday and that’s what’s always growing in August, even though it’s National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, and if you checked our Open Thread last Thursday, you’ll read I’m a chocolate chip cookie. As in, if I were a food, that’s what I would be…Open Threads are usually how-tos and idea generators, but last week’s was a bit fanciful. We all need a good laugh!

Other Bits

RIP, Diana Kennedy, 99, cookbook author and teacher who awakened the world to regional Mexican cooking and culture. An Englishwoman, she cast aside the conventional and embraced bold spices and heated them to draw out even more flavor. When I last interviewed Diana Kennedy in Atlanta, she was living in the village of San Francisco Coatepec de Morelos, a 2½-hour drive from Mexico City. She had built a five-story ecologically sound house that hugged a mountain in the foothills of the Sierra Madras. Here she grew her own coffee, limes, and Hass avocados, made marmalade from her own orange trees, and kept cows for milk.

In August, I’ll be finishing up a book, so I’ve got some special guests lined up right here at Between the Layers! Next Tuesday, I welcome Domenica Marchetti who writes Buona Domenica on Substack. She will teach us how to make CROSTATA! So grab some peaches, plums, figs, whatever fruit you love, and plan to learn the secrets of Italy’s favorite freeform tart. Tell your friends about it, too!

Have a great week, and eat your veggies!

- xo, Anne

THE RECIPES:

Bebe's Green Beans

This recipe works with summer green beans and elevates the so-so beans you can buy all year.

Makes 6 servings

Prep: 15 to 20 minutes

Cook: 20 to 25 minutes

1 1/2 pounds fresh green beans, trimmed

Water to cover halfway

1 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup light brown sugar

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Snap the trimmed green beans in half and place in a large saucepan. Add enough water to cover the beans only halfway. Add the onion, olive oil, brown sugar, and salt and pepper to taste - about 1/4 teaspoon each. Place the pan over medium-high heat, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until the beans are just tender, 20 to 25 minutes. Taste one of the beans to test for doneness. If you like beans cooked a little longer, keep cooking them until they are your desired doneness.

2. Drain most, but not all, of the water from the pan. Season again with salt and pepper to taste.

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Summer Squash Casserole Reinvented

This is for those nights when you don’t have much time to cook but you are craving the comfort of what we call in the South, squash casserole. It is a staple of the meat and three.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Prep: 10 minutes

Cook: 16 to 18 minutes

2 pounds yellow squash, ends trimmed, and cut into 1 to 2-inch pieces

1/4 cup chopped sweet onion

Water to cover halfway

Pinch of salt

2 to 3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup chopped sweet onion

Salt and pepper to taste

2 to 3 Saltine crackers, crumbled, if desired

1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

1. Place the squash and 1/4 cup onion in a large saucepan. Add enough water to cover the squash halfway. Add a pinch of salt. Place the pan over medium-high heat, and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until just tender, about 10 to 12 minutes. Drain the water from the pan. Add the butter and 1/2 cup onion to the pan, and place the pan over medium heat, and stir and cook until the butter is melted and the onion softens, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. If there is liquid remaining in the pan, crumble the soda crackers and stir into the squash to thicken it. If there is no liquid, then you can omit the crackers.

2. Heat the oven broiler. Turn the squash into a lightly buttered casserole, and cover with cheese. Place the squash under the broiler, and cook until the cheese melts and the squash has heated through, about 1 minute. Serve at once.

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Roasted Okra and Tomatoes

You will eat this straight from the pan, and it just might not make it to the table!

Makes 6 to 8 servings

Prep: 10 to 12 minutes

Cook: 10 to 13 minutes

1 pound small to medium okra

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon minced onion, if desired

Pinch of Creole seasoning

1 cup halved cherry tomatoes

3 springs of fresh thyme, if desired

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. If okra are small, leave them whole. If they are medium to large in size, slice in half lengthwise or cut them on the diagonal into two to three pieces. Place the okra in a large mixing bowl, and toss with the oil, onion, and the Creole seasoning. Turn the mixture onto a rimmed half sheet pan, and spread out the okra so that it is in one layer. Place the pan in the oven.

3. Roast the okra until it just begins to turn brown around the edges, about 7 to 8 minutes. Add the tomatoes to the pan, and add the thyme if desired. Continue to roast until the okra is turning golden brown, about 3 to 5 minutes more. Remove the pan from the oven, and season with salt and pepper while warm.