Pan Roasted Root Vegetables
- By Katie Roche
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- 16 Oct, 2019
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For once in the short history of this blog, a seasonal recipe actually fell upon me in the correct season. It is fall (ok, to borrow the phrase from the country song, "it's fall somewhere") and it's a root vegetable recipe! Now I suppose root vegetables might be considered more of a winter thing, but it is also winter somewhere (miss u, AK) and therefore, stores are carrying parsnips again. I will never forget that rude awakening to the concept of seasonal availability - the day I went to TJ's in search of parsnips and Paul the Wine Guy was like, "Yeah those are seasonal." Ok, PAUL, I wanted them NOW, and I really thought that was one of the points of living in America, like, getting whatever you want when you want it. Guess not.
I went to TJ's again for this ItemQuest, mostly because every time I've bought parsnips from Kroger, they've been moldy, and also because I knew this was going to take more than one store so I wanted to be close to Lowe's when TJ's inevitably did not have some of the weird stuff this recipe calls for. I easily located carrots, parsnips, thyme, Brussels sprouts, and celery. I did a double take at the recipe when I saw that it called for, specifically, EIGHT Brussels sprouts - count 'em, EIGHT - and dismissed the notion of it somehow being possible to select a precise number of Brussels sprouts unless you live somewhere fussy like the Hamptons. However, when I moved on to Lowe's in search of the bizarre components of this recipe, lo and behold, I saw a bin of loose Brussels sprouts and regretted buying them from TJ's. I hate it when I buy more than exactly what I need of something and it happens ALL THE TIME. My fridge is very real nightmare, and cleaning it out is even worse. No one covers that in premarital counseling, by the way - who's going to clean out the fridge (answer: BOTH OF YOU, it's a team effort) - and they really really should. I have a list of things, actually, that I would cover in premarital counseling If I Ran That Zoo. Maybe I'll blog about that next. Haha. Kidding. I think. Anyway, in addition to having individual Brussels sprouts, Lowe's also had the turnips I was looking for - to be honest, I was looking for the word "turnip" on a bin because I had never seen one and had no idea what they look like - as well as the celery root, which I now recognize from the unfortunate puree we made of it a few posts back. From that ingredient alone, I was honestly not excited about all of this. As a note of probably unnecessary clarity, the cupcake tin you see in the background of the ingredients photo was because I was making vanilla cupcakes at the same time. Gotta be ready to cleanse the palate somehow.
I went to TJ's again for this ItemQuest, mostly because every time I've bought parsnips from Kroger, they've been moldy, and also because I knew this was going to take more than one store so I wanted to be close to Lowe's when TJ's inevitably did not have some of the weird stuff this recipe calls for. I easily located carrots, parsnips, thyme, Brussels sprouts, and celery. I did a double take at the recipe when I saw that it called for, specifically, EIGHT Brussels sprouts - count 'em, EIGHT - and dismissed the notion of it somehow being possible to select a precise number of Brussels sprouts unless you live somewhere fussy like the Hamptons. However, when I moved on to Lowe's in search of the bizarre components of this recipe, lo and behold, I saw a bin of loose Brussels sprouts and regretted buying them from TJ's. I hate it when I buy more than exactly what I need of something and it happens ALL THE TIME. My fridge is very real nightmare, and cleaning it out is even worse. No one covers that in premarital counseling, by the way - who's going to clean out the fridge (answer: BOTH OF YOU, it's a team effort) - and they really really should. I have a list of things, actually, that I would cover in premarital counseling If I Ran That Zoo. Maybe I'll blog about that next. Haha. Kidding. I think. Anyway, in addition to having individual Brussels sprouts, Lowe's also had the turnips I was looking for - to be honest, I was looking for the word "turnip" on a bin because I had never seen one and had no idea what they look like - as well as the celery root, which I now recognize from the unfortunate puree we made of it a few posts back. From that ingredient alone, I was honestly not excited about all of this. As a note of probably unnecessary clarity, the cupcake tin you see in the background of the ingredients photo was because I was making vanilla cupcakes at the same time. Gotta be ready to cleanse the palate somehow.
Now that I look more closely, this sort of looks like Groot's head, but if you put that out of your mind and think of it as something you're going to eat, it looks really horrifying. I wish I could make this come through somehow with words and photos, but the really and truly gross part is its slimy texture. I think Lowe's needs to place some hand wipes or sanitizer or something next to their bins of celery root because I have never wanted to wash my hands after touching a produce item so badly. Because there is no end to its awful qualities, this single produce item also cost me NINE DOLLARS because it is $5/pound and very heavy. Really, whoever grew this should be paying ME to eat it.
As usual, I chose the incorrect size of cutting board for the task at hand and was running out of space. This is just about everything (turnips, celery root, sprouts, carrots, parsnips), and the only thing that gets added later is the actual celery. So, on to the most agreeable component of this recipe:
This here is half a stick of butter. I am tickled by this because in her rapturous descriptions of this dish which include the phrase "a mélange of root vegetables"(Really, you can't just use a normal-sounding synonym? There are so many.) Ina describes said mélange as being cooked "in a little butter". This is what she means by "a little" which might make you wonder what she means by a lot. I can tell you from one of her best recipes ever, her meringue buttercream recipe, that what she probably means by a lot is SIX STICKS because that is how much goes in a batch of that frosting to frost a cake. No joke. Six sticks. She shouldn't apologize though, it is easily the best frosting I've ever had and every time I make it, people are like, "What IS this and how do you do it???" Anyway, LOL, "a little" butter is here melting before the "mélange" gets added.
As always with these random side dishes, this was getting eaten with whatever I happened to already be making, in this case, grilled pork tenderloin. Neither of us were able to summon up much excitement, despite the fact that we both like *most* of the vegetables in this dish. Dan's thoughts: "All of this just tastes like different-textured carrots coated in butter." And, alluding to a conversation I had with a black coworker of mine about how white people don't season their food, "This is white people seasoned." He did a good job of eating everything on his plate, but stated more than once that he really couldn't tell which vegetable was which because so many of them were the exact same shade of white. I did point out to him that the turnips, since they were left unpeeled, had purple coloring on their skin (she called for white turnips but I could only find purple, I mean, whatever right?) but I guess they still tasted just like everything else. I cannot disagree...this was not good. I can think of so many better ways to prepare these vegetables, with the exclusion of celery root, because it is actually garbage.
And finally, the most hilarious thing to come out of my Italian dude's mouth: "I'd rather eat a Hot Pocket." Wonder if Ina's ever had one?
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!