TORONTO — With trend-watchers predicting that more people will be making vegetables as the mains for their meals, Jessica Nadel’s new cookbook is timely.
In Greens 24/7: More Than 100 Quick, Easy, and Delicious Recipes for Eating Leafy Greens and Other Green Vegetables at Every Meal, Every Day, she guides readers through using 43 veggies in entrees, breakfasts, small bites and even desserts.
“Everyone knows they need to eat their vegetables, but we’re all so busy and we don’t really have time and so it’s left to an afterthought where we think, ‘OK, we need a vegetable. Let’s steam some broccoli and put it on our plate or put together a quick salad,’ which is fine and good, but it’s not exciting and I do think food should be enjoyed,” Nadel said during a visit to Toronto.
It was her blog Cupcakes and Kale, in which she profiles the vegan lifestyle she shares with her husband and their two-year-old son in Sudbury, Ont., that drew publisher The Experiment to contact Nadel to write the book.
She created recipes with ingredients that are found in most grocery stores and that are easy enough for home cooks to recreate. Many are gluten-free or can be prepared that way.
“Some of them are my go-to fixes that are part of my menu planning all of the time — smoothies, salads, entrees — and then others it was a matter of getting creative and innovative and starting to think about greens in ways that I hadn’t done so yet,” she said.
Less common greens — such as dandelion, nori and spirulina — are showcased.
Dandelions might be considered weeds, “but they’re also so full of vitamins and minerals and you can play to the bitterness,” Nadel said. In the recipe Dandelion Colcannon, the greens provide a bite of bitterness in contrast to rich creamy mashed potatoes.
Spirulina, a blue-green algae that is a good source of protein, can be added to smoothies and soups.
People might be familiar with the sea vegetable nori because it’s used in sushi.
“But for someone who doesn’t want to have to go to the trouble of rolling sushi I have the Deconstructed Sushi Bowl in the book,” she said.
Torn nori strips top brown rice with other sushi ingredients such as cucumber, avocado and ginger.
For dessert, 33-year-old Nadel —who does special-order baking for weddings and showers and provides organic vegan baking for local cafes — makes chocolate-covered kale chips, zucchini cake, cheesecake with a spinach and mint swirl component and Hungarian-inspired cabbage strudel.
Some desserts use purées. “Not that I want to hide vegetables,” she declared. “I don’t want to be sneaky about it, but with desserts you do end up camouflaging them a bit more.”
For households with picky eaters, Nadel noted vegetables can be disguised in smoothies and sauces. Her favourite pesto, which combines kale and walnut, is delicious in pasta, over rice or on pizza as a sauce.
For those who want to go green, Nadel suggested visiting farmers markets or subscribing to a Community Shared Agriculture vegetable delivery service.
“You do end up meeting new vegetables that way that you might not have brought home otherwise.”
RECIPES: Two dishes that don't look like vegetables
Jessica Nadel insists you can enjoy eating all kinds of green vegetables.
“I just want to turn veggie eaters into veggie lovers,” says the Sudbury, Ont.-based writer of the cookbook “Greens 24/7.”
“So it was important to find a balance between the common and the uncommon and sort of tie it all together with big flavours.”
Nadel, who calls herself a “passionate self-trained home cook,” explored vegetarianism at age 10 and transitioned to a vegan diet about five years ago. In her cookbook, she showcases many ways of preparing meals with green vegetables, such as using spinach in pancakes, kale in cornbread and parsley in vegan cheesecake.
She once tasted coconut “bacon” in a restaurant and was determined to make her own version.
“I thought about what bacon tastes like, what I remember it tasted like — it’s a little bit sweet, and it’s a little bit smoky and it’s definitely salty and it’s crunchy — or those were my favourite parts back in the day. And so using coconut — which is full of fat like meat is — as sort of the vessel and finding the right seasonings, it’s awesome,” she explains.
Here’s her “bacon” recipe, along with a rhubarb pie that incorporates Swiss chard:
Avocado Toast with Coconut “Bacon”
Nadel says she could eat this for breakfast every day. Any leftover “bacon” will keep for one month in an airtight container.
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
Makes: four servings
8 slices multigrain bread
2 ripe avocados
For Coconut “Bacon”
2 1/2 Tbsp gluten-free tamari
2 Tbsp maple syrup
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1/2 Tbsp liquid smoke
4 cups unsweetened flaked coconut
Pinch sea salt
Preheat oven to 325 F.
In a large bowl, place tamari, maple syrup, sesame oil and liquid smoke and whisk to combine. Fold in coconut flakes to coat them in mixture.
Spread coconut on parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, stopping every 10 minutes to stir coconut and rotate pan. Once cooked, remove from oven, sprinkle with salt and let cool.
Toast bread and mash avocado with a fork. Spread avocado over toast, top each piece with coconut “bacon” and serve.
Rhubarb and Chard Pie
“This is one of my favourite recipes …, using those gorgeous stems from Swiss chard and using those in conjunction with rhubarb,” says Nadel.
It’s a great way to keep red chard stems from going to waste — they are almost indistinguishable from the rhubarb once everything is cooked.
Any colour chard stem can be used, but the brightness of the red stems is especially pretty.
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes
Pie shell
1/3 cup coconut oil or 70 g (2 1/2 oz) vegan butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar
Filling
4 cups chopped rhubarb
2 cups chard stems, chopped
1 cup unrefined cane sugar
3 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp cornstarch
Coconut milk ice cream, to serve
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Shortbread crust: Mix together oil or butter, flour and sugar with a fork or your fingers. Press into a 23-cm pie dish. Prick a few times with a fork. Bake for 12 minutes, then remove from oven and let cool.
Filling: In a saucepan, place rhubarb, chard stems and sugar. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, until fruit has softened but still holds its shape.
Remove from heat and stir in flour and cornstarch until no lumps remain. Pour into prepared crust and bake for 20 minutes, until filling has firmed.
Let cool and serve with a generous dollop of coconut milk ice cream.
