Hi! I’m Mia, the newsletter editor for New York Times Cooking, doing my best Tanya Sichynsky impression for you today. I’m delighted to be here to talk about the only thing I want to eat this time of year: Big Hot Vegetables.
Big Hot Vegetables can take many forms, but their crucial characteristics are that they feel generous, maximalist, extra. Big Hot Vegetables should be served on a platter — one that requires both hands to carry — and require a knife and fork to eat, and maybe a spoon as well for scooping up dressings and crunchy toppings.
“Big” applies to flavor, too: Delicate seasoning is for summer’s perfect tomatoes or spring’s gentle snap peas. Winter’s burly produce — curvy squashes, heavy pumpkins, stiff kale that takes up a full shelf in your fridge — deserves lots of spice and sauce.
Roasted vegetables are, of course, quite large and very warm. Add a tart, sweet-salty dressing — like Yewande Komolafe does in her recipe for roasted vegetables with creamy coconut dressing — and they become Big Hot Vegetables. Cauliflower tossed in a sweet chermoula and roasted hot and fast, nestled in yogurt and showered with almonds and cilantro? That’s peak Big Hot Vegetables. And Sohla El-Waylly’s roasted squash with onion gravy, bright and spicy and the most vivid shade of orange, absolutely fits the bill.
A salad can also be Big Hot Vegetables, provided it looks like the sort of thing you’d see in a Renaissance still life next to drooping flowers and dripping candles, not in a soggy compostable bowl. Arugula takes a back seat to beets in Yewande’s beet salad with coriander-yogurt dressing, which adds roasted chickpeas for extra crunch and heft. And that giant bouquet of kale you brought home would be happy in Ali Slagle’s kale and squash salad with almond butter vinaigrette, which in turn would welcome your improvisations: Add salty cheese, thin slices of fennel, cooked grains.
And Big Hot Vegetables can be a stove-top affair, something steamy and saucy to pile over rice or scoop with bread. Ali’s vegetarian take on adobo keeps those staple soy-vinegar flavors and applies them to seared cauliflower, and this mixed sabzi from Zainab Shah works with whatever vegetables you have on hand: Add garam masala, garlic, ginger and tomatoes to turn them into a hearty, richly spiced dish that is very big and very hot.
Ultimately, Big Hot Vegetables should feel a little sexy. Cauliflower turned tan and tender in the oven; gems of beets swimming in fuchsia-dappled oil; rings of delicata squash that shimmer like golden bangle bracelets. Pair Big Hot Vegetables with your favorite wine and some Luther Vandross.
And while they aren’t strictly vegetarian, other excellent titles on the list, like Andrea Nguyen’s “Ever-Green Vietnamese” and Maya Kaimal’s “Indian Flavor Every Day,” have a lot to offer veggie-forward eaters. Any of these cookbooks would make an excellent gift for the curious cook in your life (or, of course, for yourself).
Tanya will be back next week. Thanks for reading!
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