CSA week 3: 8 vegetables, easier prep, mostly tasty meals

This is what came in
my CSA basket Wednesday.

This is what it looked like.

This is what I did - or am going to do - with it.

• The green leaf lettuce went into two hamburger buns, two side salads, and two dinner salads.
• The radishes went in a baggie, with salt, to my neighborhood playground. My daughter ate them as we watched her children play.
• The broccoli is in my refrigerator's vegetable drawer. There's a good chance we'll eat it tonight, with salmon.
• The beets, wrapped in aluminum foil, went into the oven at 400 degrees for an hour. After spending a day in the refrigerator, they joined the green leaf lettuce, a couple of oranges, some goat cheese, and a few slices of red onion in a dinner salad.
• The beet greens are likely to show up under tonight's salmon, after I've chopped them and wilted them in olive oil.
• The kale stared at me defiantly until I repeated the process I described last week. We always have potlucks to go to. And actually, the kale bread is so good that I'm making a little extra so we'll have some at home too.
• The romaine is in the vegetable drawer waiting for an avocado to ripen. It will soon join a black bean / cheese / bell pepper / chopped tomato / sliced avocado salad.
• The arugula threatened to get even more bitter if I didn't use it immediately. I found a salad recipe in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, a book you should own if you frequent farmers' markets or subscribe to a CSA, and made the salad the day the kale arrived. If you're desperate to use up some arugula, you don't have to wait to buy the book: the recipe is here.
• The zucchini is with the romaine and the broccoli in the vegetable crisper. I'm planning to dice it, sauté it lightly, and toss it in pasta, probably rotini, with diced roma tomatoes and last week's garlic scape pesto.

Whew. I think it will all be used up by next Wednesday, when the next CSA portion arrives.

Kale-cheese bread; or, taming the green-leafed monster

This is me, cowering behind this week's allotment of kale.

I do not like kale, cooked or raw.

I do not like to have to gnaw

On greens so tough you need a saw

To cut them, or they break your jaw.

I would not like them here or there,

I would not like them anywhere.

But I don't like to throw things out, either. It occurred to me that bread can improve almost anything, and cheese can improve it still more. So I tried this experiment.

KALE-CHEESE BREAD: SHORT VERSION

• Make a filling of cooked chopped kale, cheese, egg, onion, and garlic.
• Make dough for French bread.
• Spread the filling on the dough, roll lengthwise, and bake.
• Cool before slicing.

KALE-CHEESE BREAD: PAINSTAKINGLY DETAILED VERSION

1. Fix the kale. I washed mine, removed the hard stems, chopped the leaves into smaller pieces, and simmered it, uncovered, in water. When most of the cooking liquid had cooked down and the kale was soft enough to eat, I drained the remaining liquid, stirred in maybe half a cup of my awesome leftover garlic scape pesto for flavor, and spun the greens in the food processor until they were finely chopped, though not yet a paste.

(There are lots of ways to prepare kale. You could also sauté it in olive oil with onion and garlic, adding liquid and simmering it for awhile if the sauté alone doesn't get it soft enough. Different kinds of kale respond to different treatment. Just cook your kale one way or another until it's edible, if not tasty.)

2. Make the filling. Grate about 6 oz of cheese: Cheddar, Gruyère, Emmenthaler, Comté, Manchego ... take your pick. Stir it, plus one beaten egg, into the kale slurry (or give the mixture a short whirl in your food processor). Set aside.

3. Make bread dough. Easiest way in the world: Put 1 lb white bread flour, 2 tsp salt, and 1 1/2 tsp rapid-rise yeast in the food processor. Spin for 5 seconds. While it's still spinning, pour 1 1/3 C warm water into the tube with a little hole in it, so it is added in a small steady stream. Spin for 30 more seconds. Pour a little olive oil into a medium-sized mixing bowl and use your hands to slosh it up the sides. Put the bread dough in it, turning it several times so it's covered with oil. Cover with plastic wrap or a dish towel and put it in a warm place for 2 hours or more to rise. (Tasty variation: instead of using 1 lb flour, use 14 oz flour and 2 oz corn meal or polenta.)

4. Shape the dough into a rectangle. Sprinkle a little flour on your countertop and work the dough into approximately this shape. (The dough in the picture is approximately 12" by 15".) If the dough is too elastic to shape, wait another 15 minutes and try again.

5. Spread the filling on the dough. Leave a 1" border all around.

6. Roll the dough and filling lengthwise. Seal the ends and bottom by pinching the dough together. Now you have a nice loaf, ready to bake. Put it on a cookie sheet or in a French bread pan. Let it rise for an hour.

7. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Squirt water into the oven. Put the bread in. Squirt more water. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes.

Uh oh. Why did the filling leak out the sides? Why does the bread feel fragile? Is this going to be a grand disaster? Will it fall apart when I slice it? Will the bread get soggy? Will I have to throw it out and sneak in to the potluck and pretend I brought something? 

8. Relax. Let the bread cool. Wrap it in aluminum foil and refrigerate it overnight.

9. Slice and serve.

Now then, that wasn't so bad, was it?

In fact, I took this bread to the church potluck, and even avowed kale-haters said they loved it. 

Chard: The gateway green

If you've been following my CSA posts, you know that this week's delivery flummoxed me. But things are turning out okay. Thursday night I made a salad that included

• the romaine lettuce; 
• the turnips and the kohlrabies (which I sliced thin and roasted); 
• garbanzos marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic scape pesto; 
• thin sliced tiny yellow bell peppers; 
• and a diced roma tomato. 

It wasn't bad.

Last night I fixed the chard. Chard is not one of your giant gnarly greens. It's a little crisper than spinach and has a slightly sweeter flavor. It's worth trying even if you aren't a fan of the more serious greens such as kale, collards, or mustard greens.

I washed the leaves, removed the largest stems, and tore the chard into smaller pieces. You can eat the stems if you like a bit of body in your greens, though it's a good idea to cook them for at least five minutes before adding the leaves.

I cooked the chard uncovered in about a cup of vegetable broth, stirring frequently. In about 20 minutes, it was soft enough to eat. Toward the end, I added a spoonful of garlic scape pesto for flavor (that is seriously good stuff!). The whole pile of leaves cooked down to two large servings!

I served the chard with Trader Joe's Pizza Greco-Roman, one of the tastiest frozen pizzas you can buy.

And now all I have to face are the enormous lacinato kale leaves and the second installment of garlic scapes. I'm going to make more garlic scape pesto in just a minute, and I'm working on the kale. Stay tuned.

Redeeming mustard greens

[Today's CSA portion. It will be a very green week.]

I recognized the lettuces, the kale, the turnips, the kohlrabies, the chard, and even the garlic scapes. But what was that pile of disparate weeds in the middle? Some looked like oak leaves. Some were fairly large and looked like chard. Some were small and ragged. Most were green but some were almost black. The CSA list identified them as "assorted mustard greens." I had my doubts. And then I tasted one, and doubt turned to despair.

Well, I paid for those weeds, and I figured I had to do something with them. Amazingly, it worked.

Here's what I did. It's hardly a recipe for you to follow, because you don't have my leftovers. But perhaps it will save you from despair some evening when you have more nasty greens than you can manage (they don't have to be mustard greens). Your own leftovers will be fine.

1. Wash the greens and tear them into smaller pieces. Put them in a large pot. Cover with liquid: I used a combination of water and vegetable stock.

2. Bring the greens and liquid to a boil. Do not cover the pot. Let them boil, uncovered, until the greens are soft enough to eat. Mine were ready in about 15 minutes (some tougher greens could take up to an hour).

3. Let the greens cool for 30 to 60 minutes.

[Scary green slurry]

4. Drain the greens, reserving the liquid. Put the greens in a blender. Add enough liquid to cover. (You will probably have to do this in more than one batch.) Whiz the mixture until it's smooth. If it's thicker than you like your soup, add more liquid and whiz again. Hint: save the leftover liquid to use the next time you have to transform weeds into something edible.

Intermission: At this point I looked in my refrigerator and found a leftover serving of chard with pancetta (diced bacon). I dumped it in the blender with the soup and whizzed it all again. I then looked in the refrigerator again and found garlic scape pesto left over from last week. I added a spoonful and whizzed yet again. The pesto made a big difference to the flavor. 

Recommendation: Look in your refrigerator or pantry or spice rack or herb garden and think about what might improve the flavor of your watery green slurry (garlic usually helps). Give it a try.

5. Taste. I put a few spoonsful into a small bowl and microwaved it for a few seconds. I then stirred in a small spoonful of sour cream - the real stuff, not the imitation low-fat stuff that should really call itself something else.

WOW! It's a miracle! The hideous, bitter, menacing mustard greens had turned into a really delicious soup!

OK, I guess if mustard greens can be redeemed, so can lacinato (dinosaur) kale, and possibly even turnips. I'll get back to you.

Kickin' collard greens (to the curb)

I confess: I panic when I encounter large, leathery leaves that look like they could have been plucked from prehistoric bats.

This is a collard leaf on a sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper.

And yet I know people who truly love kale and collard greens and other such aberrations. Some of these people are even related to me. Besides, collard greens are reputed to be exceptionally nutritious. And anyway, my CSA portion included a hefty handful of them, so--naturally--I asked Google what to do.

I liked the name of this recipe--Kickin' Collard Greens--and it didn't look too challenging, as long as I wasn't planning to go anywhere for a couple of hours.  I modified it to fit what I had in my kitchen, so that I actually used about 2 tsp olive oil; 2 oz pancetta; half of a very large onion; 3 small cloves garlic; 1/2 tsp salt (possibly more than was needed, as it turned out); 1/2 tsp pepper; 2 cups vegetable broth; 1 pinch red pepper flakes; and maybe 11 oz collard greens, much of the stem removed, cut into small pieces.

This is 11 oz of collard greens cut into smallish pieces.

First I washed, trimmed, and cut the greens. I used scissors, since the greens were a bit tough for a knife. Then I followed the recipe's directions for what to add when.

I browned the pancetta...

and added onions and garlic.

I wilted the collard greens...

and cooked the livin' daylights out of them.

I seasoned them and simmered them in vegetable broth, covered, for close to an hour before they seemed tender enough to eat. There was still plenty of liquid in the pan, so I raised the heat and reduced it a bit. Finally the collard greens were ready to serve.

Dinner is served:
collard greens with roasted sea scallops
in a tomato/onion/basil coulis.

OK, dinner was better than I expected (I hadn't expected to enjoy the scallops). But I really didn't want to face the leftover half of the collard greens another night. So I put it in the blender, added water, spun it madly, heated it, added cream, divided it between two bowls, sprinkled it with chopped chives and pepper, and ended up with this:

Cream of collard greens soup

"This is the best possible way to fix collard greens," said my husband after his first mouthful. He may have been damning with faint praise.

The Great Scape: or, what to do with yet another weird CSA vegetable

This is a garlic scape.

It is the stem of the garlic flower. Farmers often cut it off so that the garlic bulb, the papery-covered thing we buy in little red-net packages at Trader Joe's, will grow bigger. I don't know what most farmers do with the scapes. I had never met a scape until last Wednesday.

My CSA portion included a fistful of scapes. Naturally I turned to Google, since I had no idea what to do with them, and I found "The Crisper Whisperer: 7 Things To Do with Garlic Scapes." Bookmark that link: you will need it, should you ever encounter a garlic scape.

I decided to make garlic scape pesto. I immediately encountered a problem, though: how much of each scape should I use? See that slight pale protrusion about a third of the way in, with its long tapering tip? Is that the flower? Is it the part to use? Should I use only the part that looks like a green onion? Or should I use both?

Only way to find out: eat some. OK, the long pointy ends of my scapes were not very chewable. The green tubes, were, however. And yowie! Did they ever assert themselves!

These are the ends I cut off and discarded.

So I cut off the flower ends, and then I took the long green tubes and chopped them into short pieces. I put the chopped-up scapes into my food processor along with the other ingredients the pesto recipe calls for (do check the link) and chopped everything further before adding the olive oil in a slow stream.

This is the finished garlic-scape pesto.

Cyberspace does video and audio really well, but this pesto must be tasted to be believed. One sample taste and I was a true believer. I stirred about 1/3 of the pesto into 4 ounces of cooked spaghetti and served it for dinner, along with leftover Brussels sprouts mixed with leftover marinated garbanzos (see yesterday's post) and tiny sliced bell peppers for color.

This was dinner.

If it looks good to you, I'm sorry: I have no idea where you'll find garlic scapes. But do start looking immediately. They must be harvested young, in late spring.

Oh, and one small caveat: Remember that this is garlic. If you eat it, probably everyone else in your household should too. Not that it will be hard to persuade them.

But what will you do with the kohlrabi?

That's what several of my friends wondered when I posted this picture on Facebook. It shows the contents of this season's first delivery from One Straw Farm's CSA (community-supported agriculture) program.

This is the second time I've signed up with a CSA. You pay a local farmer an agreed-upon fee up front, and then you get weekly assortments of incredibly fresh food throughout the entire growing season. One big plus is that you get to try foods you probably wouldn't have bought (or even seen) at the grocery store. One big minus is that you may not like some of the foods you get.

I had no idea what a kohlrabi (kohlrabus?) tastes like. (It's the bulbous thing on the right. There are two of them.)

More knowledgeable friends suggested roasting them and serving them with a sauce, or shredding or slicing them and using them in a salad. I like salads. Not only because they taste good, but also because I can put just about anything in them. Here's what I put in last night's salad.

1. Several hours before dinner, I made a salad dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, chopped chives, minced garlic, and a little salt. I then opened a can of garbanzos, rinsed and drained them, and set them to marinate in the salad dressing.

2. I prepared the red-leaf lettuce that I got from my CSA. I washed it, spun it, tore it into bite-sized pieces, and drained it further on paper towels. Eventually I put some of it in this bowl.

3. Next, having no idea what I was doing, I attacked the kohlrabies (yes, that is the plural: I looked it up). I removed the leaves (I hear they are edible, but I didn't want to get carried away). I sliced each bulb as fine as I could with my large chef's knife. I took a smaller knife and removed the outer rind from each slice. I noticed that some slices were woody, and I either removed the woody core or discarded those slices. I cut the slices into little triangles. I ate a few triangles to see what I was getting into. They tasted sweet and spicy with a slightly bitter undertone; they felt like crisp apples or jicama.

4. Since some small bell peppers in my refrigerator had no plans for the evening, I sliced half a dozen of them and popped them under the broiler until a few of them started to blacken.

I then dumped the garbanzos and dressing, kohlrabi slices, and slightly blackened peppers onto the lettuce and used my hands to toss them.

Finally, I divided the salad between two pasta bowls ...

5. ... and topped each salad with about half an ounce of shaved Parmesan cheese.

6. Et voilà - dinner for two!

The kohlrabi slices were delicious. Their flavor was mild, but they added a little zing. Their crunchy texture worked well with the softer lettuce, garbanzos, and peppers. If I get more kohlrabies next time, I'll try to slice them thinner. The food processor slicing blade might work, or a mandoline slicer.

Gazpacho!

Photo by Elaine Armstrong

Twelve more days of summer. Produce abounding in farmers' market and backyard. Vacation days used up: no time for labor-intensive food prep. What to do?

Make gazpacho!

I fell in love with gazpacho on a trip to Spain. It's a chilled red vegetable soup that's available everywhere in that country--and everywhere I ate, I ordered some. 

Each restaurant had its own way of making it. Some gazpachos were smooth as cream. Some were full of chunky vegetables. Most came with optional toppings served on the side: chopped herbs, diced veggies, crumbled hard-boiled eggs, even sliced avocadoes. All were good.

You can Google gazpacho and find any number of recipes, or you can play with the principal ingredients and make up your own. The only thing you must do is use fresh, ripe (but not overripe) ingredients. You can sometimes get away with dumping tired old veggies into a hot soup, but that will not work with gazpacho. The flavor depends entirely on the quality of the ingredients.

Fortunately, this time of year everything you need is abundant and cheap. Or free, if you have a generous neighbor with a green thumb (those are her veggies in the photo).

Here's what you need, to start:

• A blender or a food processor
• One or two medium-to-large tomatoes for each serving (you don't need to peel them)
• A cucumber or two (you don't need to peel them either, though I usually do)
• A clove of garlic or two (don't go hog wild here; I've found the garlic's flavor is enhanced if I soften the cloves for about 5 seconds in the microwave before adding them)
• Olive oil (just a dollop--or drizzle it on top of the soup just before serving)
• Something tangy: sherry vinegar, red wine vinegar, or lemon juice (start with about a teaspoon per serving)
• Salt and pepper (I use a pinch of red [cayenne])

Whiz it all in your blender or food processor. If it's too thick, add water. If it's too thin, tear up a slice of bread and blend it in. Taste it until you like it. You can do this in 5 minutes, once you get the hang of it. Prepare the soup before you leave for work, refrigerate it, and enjoy it with--or for--dinner.

You can make a meal of gazpacho by serving it with chewy bread and manchego, a sheep's-milk cheese from central Spain (available at a reasonable price from Trader Joe's). In Spain, you'd probably have it with a small glass of cold, dry sherry (fino or manzanilla, not the syrupy stuff). Or you might try a dry rosé or crisp white wine.

Variations:

• Add a red (not green!) bell pepper to the mix, or top the soup with finely diced yellow bell pepper
• Add a little onion to the mix, or top the soup with chopped scallion or green onions
• Add your favorite herbs to the mix, or top the soup with chopped herbs or a small sprig of basil leaves
• Add other fresh vegetables and see what happens.
• Vary the consistency. Spin it smooth in the blender, leave it coarse in the food processor. Or try this: spin the tomatoes and garlic in the blender until very smooth; then add the other ingredients and pulse to chop.
• If you forget to make the soup in the morning, you can spin it in the blender with a few ice cubes and eat it instantly when you get home. Not quite as good, but good enough!

Make It Modular: quick and easy vegetarian meal ideas

Most of the time I want food that looks good (lots of color!), tastes good (fresh ingredients!), is good for me (mostly plant based!)--and takes just a few minutes to fix. If it takes hours to prepare, I'm probably not going to eat it very often.

This is why I tend to ignore most of the vegetarian cookbooks on my shelves. Their authors seem to think I want to spend all day hunting for odd and expensive ingredients, then bringing them home to peel them and chop them and grind them into powder with my mortar and pestle.

Now and then that can be fun, but there's a much easier way to eat vegetarian: Go modular.

Figure that your meal will need three basic elements:

1. A grain. This could be made of wheat, corn, rice, barley, oats, quinoa...  Ideally, it will be a whole grain, which means it will probably be brown.

2. A source of protein. Instead of meat or fish, go for nuts, cheese, yogurt, beans, or eggs.

3. Fruit and/or vegetables, the more the merrier. Go for color. Go for texture. Go wild.

You can arrange the three elements on a plate: a mound of beans, a mound of rice, a mélange of finely chopped tomatoes, avocadoes, corn, and jalapeño peppers. You can combine the grain and protein (bean burrito, cheese pizza, peanut butter sandwich) and eat a salad or a bowl of fruit on the side. You can turn your grain, protein, and vegetables into minestrone soup. Those are all good, quick meals.

What I most like to do with the three elements, though, is stack them--grain on the bottom, protein next, fruit or vegetables on top--or mix them all up together. Here are some sample combinations:

Grain	Protein	Fruit/Vegetable
bread	peanut or almond butter	applesauce or other fruit
bread	cheese	lettuce, tomato
tortilla	beans, cheese	lettuce, tomato, avocado, chili peppers
rice	beans	bell peppers, tomato
spaghetti or linguine	parmesan cheese	tomato sauce
farfalle or rotini	goat cheese	chopped broccoli, zucchini, carrots, etc.
waffle or pancake	yogurt, sliced almonds	berries
pie crust	eggs, milk, and cheese	spinach or broccoli
couscous	chopped walnuts	chopped broccoli

Three elements--that's all you absolutely need, though you'll probably want to accessorize. Add a little salt and pepper or herbs or spices or onion or garlic or lemon juice or vinegar or anything likely to make your meal tastier. Experiment. Make up your own combinations based on whatever's in season or in your refrigerator. By late spring, you'll be an accomplished vegetarian cook. And then the farmers' markets will open and the fun will really begin.

Keep it simple - eat by color!

Good food is usually simple. It is always beautiful. I wish people who devise recommendations for healthy eating would keep this in mind.

My favorite food advice couldn't be simpler. It's from Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto:

• Eat food.
• Not too much.
• Mostly plants.

It's easy to add beauty to simplicity. Just eat by color:

• half brown

• half riotous colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple ...

You can eat by color whether you're an omnivore, a vegetarian, or a vegan. Your brown food includes meat, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds - and chocolate, of course. Your riotously colored food includes every imaginable vegetable and fruit. Serve the food on white plates for contrast, and enjoy a feast for the eyes as well as for the palate.

If your meal is breathtakingly beautiful, it's probably good for you. If it has a pale, recycled look, it probably isn't doing much for your body. How simple is that?

Disclaimer:
I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist. I don't know your particular medical condition or needs. Please follow your doctor's advice regarding food, drink, and medicines. If your doctor's advice doesn't sound right, do your own research and discuss your findings with him or her. You'll probably learn from each other. If not, change doctors.

No, I don't want your heart-healthy diet, thank you

In August I spent five days as a patient at Cleveland Clinic, which advertises itself as "#1 in heart care since 1995." Following open-heart surgery for a congenital valve problem, I was put on their "heart healthy" diet. I didn't expect gastronomic delights from a hospital food supplier, but meatloaf? white bread? sugary yogurt? caffeinated coffee? And that was just my first meal.

I am now attending cardiac rehab exercise sessions three days a week. As we pedal or row or walk or lift weights, someone lectures us on how we should be eating. This morning she told us how to estimate correct portion sizes of, among other things, canned spaghetti.

What planet do these people live on?

"My Plate" - would you
want a lifetime of this?

They are, of course, following recommendations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who periodically replaces one set of wrong-headed guidelines with another equally perverse set. The most recent is My Plate, simpler than the now passé Food Pyramid, but equally removed from the way anyone would want to eat. Dry whole wheat bread? Canned mandarin oranges? Canned green beans? A glass of milk? And what is that perfectly revolting slab of meat, anyway?

Granted, it is possible to follow USDA recommendations and still prepare an attractive plate. It is even possible - though often difficult - to follow their advice and serve food that is, in fact, heart healthy. (I am not sure why the USDA does not improve their suggestions, but certain farm subsidies and lobbyists may be involved.) Unfortunately, it was not possible for me to get a tasty, healthy meal at the hospital - except by sending my husband across the street to Cedarland, a wonderful storefront Lebanese restaurant, and ordering take-out.

Or would you prefer this?
(Add raspberries for dessert.)

"My Plate," though, doesn't have to be disgusting. Trade the bread for whole-wheat couscous with onions and raisins, for example. Top the couscous with a few thin slices of oven-browned chicken, if you like, or go vegetarian and give yourself a scoop of lentils (red lentils with curry seasoning are nice). For vegetables, think color: lightly steamed fresh broccoli, or wilted baby spinach or chard with garlic and lemon. If it's tomato season, put a few wedges in that upper-left quadrant. Drink the milk, if you like it, but realize that the dairy industry has a lot to do with the USDA's recommendations: it's OK to have a glass of water or wine instead. And for dessert, how about a bowl of fresh berries, topped with a spoonful of Greek yogurt and a handful of sliced almonds?

"Heart healthy" should not be identified with endless grim plates of gray fuel.

Folks, we can resist.

Disclaimer:
I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist. I don't know your particular medical condition or needs. Please follow your doctor's advice regarding food, drink, and medicines. If your doctor's advice doesn't sound right, do your own research and discuss your findings with him or her. You'll probably learn from each other. If not, change doctors.

What wine goes with ... beans?

Lentil patties ISO compatible wine ...

Forget the wisecracks - this is a serious question for would-be vegetarian wine-lovers. Cabernet sauvignon? Beef, of course. Pinot noir? Made for salmon. Sauvignon blanc and shellfish, chardonnay and chicken, zinfandel and grilled meats - what's a vegetarian to do?

Well, there's always slightly fizzy chilled mineral water flavored with a soupçon of orange or lemon. In fact, that's very refreshing some of the time.

Fortunately, however, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, author of Drink This - a delightful wine guide I'm going to describe on The Neff Review just as soon as I finish reading every word of it - offers wine-pairing suggestions for vegetarians as well as omnivores. Here are some of her ideas:

• Sauvignon blanc: Vietnamese and Thai salads; pasta or risotto with walnut pesto; roast vegetables; fruit
• Riesling: Butternut squash risotto; Thai coconut milk curries
• Cabernet sauvignon: Grilled mushrooms; eggplant and pasta; polenta with parmigiano or reggiano cheese
• Syrah: Rich, smoky bean stew
• Chianti: Anything Italian with red tomato sauce; grilled vegetables
• Pinot noir: 95% of all foods, including truffles, mushrooms, grilled eggplant, grilled fennel, braised chard

As far as I know, there's still no book dedicated to matching wine with vegetarian foods (please correct me if I've missed it). Maybe the book isn't necessary, though - lots of inexpensive wines work well with a variety of vegetarian dishes.

If you like white wines, it's hard to go wrong. Sauvignon blanc and dry or off-dry riesling, for example, work wonderfully with salads, green vegetables, Asian food, summer fruit and vegetables, winter vegetables, pastas with white sauce, risottos ...

Red wines are great with vegetables as long as the wines don't overpower them (some reds can get a bit pushy). Pinot noir works well with most plant-based foods. Red zinfandel is good with foods you'd serve with Coke or beer: pizza, tacos, chili, stuffed potatoes. Chianti and other red Italian wines, unsurprisingly, are made for pasta and tomato sauce.

So what wine goes with beans? Grumdahl recommends syrah (also called shiraz) for bean stew. I recommend  zinfandel (Gnarly Head is good) for vegetarian chili with onions and cheese. The lentil patties pictured above are begging for a glass of pinot noir. Or maybe it's pinot gris they're hankering for. Try both, and let me know!

10 vegetarian meals in pictures

A healthful diet is usually colorful. A good meal always is. Eating vegetarian does not need to be dull. And in case you were wondering, Adam did not trade Paradise for an apple. It was an avocado.

Breakfast (or lunch or dinner, for that matter)

1. Whole wheat waffles topped with slightly sweetened plain yogurt and fresh raspberries

Lunch (or dinner)

2. Salad with arugula, black beans (hidden), queso fresco, tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, and avocado

3. Avocado, cheese, tomato, and lettuce sandwiches

4. Insalata caprese: basil leaves, tomato slices, fresh mozzarella, pine nuts, salt and pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil; even better with homemade bread

Dinner (or lunch)

5. Chestnut soufflé with lamb's lettuce, apple, and pine nut salad

6. Gnocchi with tomato sauce and parmesan, white beans with caramelized onions, and - to add the necessary color - a strip of chopped spinach

7. Cheese and artichoke quiche with arugula and tomato salad

8. Orecchiette pasta with fava beans, ricotta, and mint (serve a colorful salad separately)

9. Risotto, asparagus, and tomato slices

10. Vegetarian salade niçoise: red leaf lettuce, tiny boiled onions, asparagus, green beans, boiled eggs, tomato, avocado, capers - all cold, in a vinaigrette dressing