Posts Tagged by Fall
Meat-Free Friday: Apple and Blue Cheese Galette
| February 26, 2010 | Filled under Fall, Fruit, Lent, Vegetarian or Vegan, Winter |
You read it right, meat-free Friday is back!! And this time around I’m going to do my best to really keep it meat-free – including no seafood. Vegetarian recipes will, as always, continue to be tagged as bothvegetarian and as lent.
Have you ever wished that you could eat apple pie for dinner? This galette stuffed with sauteed apples and fennel, caramelized onions, and blue cheese is pretty close! Just like apple pie, this dish is great either warm or at room temperature; just be sure to store any leftovers in the fridge.
I don’t know where the idea came from, but while I was doing my weekly menu-planning, I decided that I wanted to make an apple and blue cheese galette. Thinking about it more I decided that, while it sounded great, it needed more – both to add bulk and make it filling as well as to add some sharpness to the flavor. I decided that caramelized onions would be perfect. Then I saw fennel while I was shopping and decided to grab that too. Apples and fennel pair perfectly, and together, the onions and fennel moved this dish squarely from the dessert column to the dinner column. [....]
Maple-Glazed Root Vegetables
| January 18, 2010 | Filled under Fall, Lent, Quick Weeknight Meals, Sides, Vegetarian or Vegan, Winter |
I’ve never been a vegetable person. I have my favorites (ahem… brussels sprouts), but in general they aren’t something that I get excited about. Especially when it comes to vegetable side dishes, where they don’t get to hide behind other flavors. But these maple-glazed root vegetables are another story: they can be enjoyed just as much by the veggie-hater as the veggie-lover. I made these to go along with steak and french fries – at the end of dinner, my plate still had steak and french fries on it, but there were no vegetables left. I was so excited about them that I made them again right away, to bring for lunch the next day. It’s amazing what a little bit of maple syrup can do.
That’s not to say that these vegetables are super sticky sweet – the syrup really only forms a light glaze that imparts a hint of maple flavor while keeping the vegetables from drying out while they roast. You also want to be sure to use real maple syrup on these, rather than “maple flavored syrup” (like Aunt Jemima and the other popular brands) that have corn syrup as their first ingredient. Real maple syrup has a lot less sugar, and a slightly bitter taste that takes some getting used to on your pancakes, but it a perfect foil to the natural sweetness of the root vegetables and to the peppery flavor of the parsnip and turnip.
You can use whatever winter root vegetables are available, and whatever you like. I used sweet potato, carrots, parsnip, and turnip – but you can feel free to leave any one of those out or add another vegetable of your choice. When I make these again I want to try adding fennel, which I think will be fabulous. I also want to play around with adding some beets (probably not with the carrots and sweet potato though). It’s all about figuring out which vegetables you like best and going with it. [....]
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