Vegetarian Recipes

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

These are some very random and idiosyncratic vegetable recipes. I eat lots of veggies, and almost all of these are vegetarian. A few recipes do include yummy porky bits like guanciale or pancetta, but in every case you can leave them out — and wherever I call for chicken, beef or game stock, know that you can substitute vegetable or mushroom stock. 

• Sicilian Sun-Dried Zucchini, sauteed with mint and chile
• Tuscan Baked Beans
• Calabrian Hot Pepper Pasta
• Fresh Fava Bean Spread
• Ancient Roman Fava Bean Dip, with lovage and cumin
• Stewed Artichokes and Fresh Fava Beans
• How to make a Classic Spanish Tortilla omelet
• Herb Salad with Walnut Vinaigrette
• Borage Ravioli, a Ligurian Pansotti
• Borage Chimichurri (hosted on my About.com Fish Cooking site)

NETTLES

• Stinging Nettle Ravioli, made with rye flour in an authentic Northern Italian style
• Strettine, a sort of nettle linguine from Emilia Romagna
• Nettle Risotto, with cheese and butter
• Nettle Pesto, with garlic and pine nuts

CARDOONS

• Cardoon Gratin
• Honeyed Cardoons with Pine Nuts and Thyme
• An Ancient Roman recipe for Cardoons with Herb Sauce
• A Tuscan cardoon recipe with parsley, from Juls’ Kitchen

ACORNS

• Acorn Flour Honey Cake, also good with chestnut flour
• Acorn Flatbreads, in the style of an Italian piadina
• Acorn or Chestnut Flour Pasta

MUSHROOMS

• Mushroom and Wild Greens Empanadas
• Angel Wing and Stone Mushroom Pasta, with radicchio and a gin-cream sauce
• Winter Solstice, with black trumpet mushrooms, squid ink pasta and black aged garlic
• Mushroom ‘Potatoes’ with Spiced Butter
• Raw Porcini Salad, with oregano vinaigrette and prosciutto
• Porcini Sugo or Ragu, with Barley Pasta
• Porcini Ravioli, with porcini in the pasta and in the filling
• Another Wild Mushroom Ragu, with red wine and cavatelli
• Escoffier’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, with Chanterelles
• Farro Risotto, with Morels and Madrone Bark Tea
• Hens and Chicks, a dish using both Hen of the Woods and Chicken of the Woods mushrooms
• Classic Italian White Truffle Risotto

ROOTS

• Sunchoke salad with persimmons
• Salsify (Scorzonera) Croquette 
• Beet Salad with Feta Cheese and Lovage

SWEETS

• Greek Oregano Ice Cream
• Elderberry Creme Fraiche Ice Cream, good with any seedy fruit
• Blackberry Panna Cotta, also works with raspberries
• Gooseberry Sorbet, for wild or domestic gooseberries
• Greek butter cookies with wild fennel
• Italian Olive Oil Cake, with fennel pollen or rosemary
• How to Make Sykomaitha, or Greek Fig Cakes
• Fig Jam with Ouzo
• Wild Plum Pie
• Mini Berry Pies, made in ramekins. Good for salal berries, huckleberries, blueberries, or really any non-seedy wild berry

SOUPS

• Summer Borage Soup 
• Cicerchia Bean Soup, with borage leaves and pheasant confit
• Spring Asparagus Soup with Absinthe
• Pumpkin or Squash Soup, with bacon and creme fraiche
• A Winter Minestrone Soup
• Escoffier’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, with Chanterelles

 DRINKS and SYRUPS

• Elderflower Syrup or Cordial
• Blackberry Syrup
• Elderflower Liqueur
• Elderberry Liqueur
• Making Fig Syrup
• How to Make Prickly Pear Syrup
• Spruce or Fir Tree Syrup, made with the young tips
• Sassafras Syrup, made from the green twig bark of the tree
• Homemade Root Beer Syrup, with real sassafras root bark

 PICKLES

• How to Preserve Grape Leaves, for making stuffed grape leaves
• Pickled fennel agrodolce
• Sweet Onion Pickles, with ginger and mint
• Pickled Ramp Bulbs, with saffron, honey and thyme
• Pickled Cauliflower, Italian restaurant style
• Sunchoke Pickles
• Old-Style, No-Vinegar Carrot Pickles
• An Old Method for Preserving Roasted Peppers

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