Hunting for Veggies in Brooklyn

Kale salad has become shorthand for a certain type of Brooklyn restaurant, with locally sourced ingredients, hand-crafted cocktails and Fedora-wearing patrons.

In fact, at Hunter’s, it was a woman wearing a Fedora. But I will happily accept a parody of hipster-dom – Brooklyn – landia? for another crack at Hunter’s grilled kale salad.

The salad included toasted chickpeas, toasted squash and hard-boiled egg for a hearty fall starter.  Our friends raved about the chicken liver and bacon mousse, a dish that is sure to make any Jewish grandmother plotz. We ate their delicious vegetarian-friendly pickles.

I first encountered Hunter’s at the Brooklyn Exposed cocktail bacchanalia, Brooklyn Shaken & Stirred, where the Hunter’s Paradise shined: Junipero gin, vermouth, Aperol, OJ and a hint of peach jelly. 

There were even better drinks at the restaurant: the Handsome Hound, a Manhattan-like cocktail with local whiskey & barrel-aged bitters and the Rusty Bulleit, with rye, lime and bitters.

We also happened to come on a Sunday, when bottles of wine are half price.  Score!

I will return again to try the farro risotto, with root vegetables and the beet salad with walnuts and feta.

We had the excellent butternut squash agnolotti, scattered with Brussels sprouts leaves and pumpkin seeds and the wild mushroom pot pie, which has a rich sauce and more root veggies.

Both the Nutella bread pudding and ricotta fritters are warm, sweet endings to a great meal.

Vegetarian Chicken Soup

As a Jewish mother, I supposedly have the panacea for colds, chicken soup. This legendary broth-y soup has been spooned in the mouths of generations of kids, with the urgent, “eat it, it’s good for you.”

I don’t make chicken soup, since my family is vegetarian, but for years I have made a rich vegetable soup, using vegetable stock to make a soup with carrots, parsnips, celery and onions.

But my youngest daughter doesn’t like broth-y soup.

Now, we take other measures to ensure winter health, getting flu shots, drinking Traditional Medicinals cold tea when we get the sniffles, and not going outside with a wet head (not sure what this one does, but my own Jewish mother instilled it in me).

Still, I wanted Nora to eat the restorative soup.

Here’s the thing – she loves soup, but only cream soup. One day, I took her bowl and buzzed it with the immersion blender. Voila – she ate the soup.

Then I thought about other soups and ways to get more vegetables into her. Nora hates cooked carrots, but if they are blended in soup, she willingly eats them. And I find ginger to be particularly soothing when I have a sore throat. Since Nora is a singer (and a screamer) she gets a lot of sore throats, cold or no.

Note: You can make this soup vegan by sautéeing the onion in olive oil.

Carrot-Ginger Soup

1 onion, roughly chopped
1 T butter
1 3 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
2 quarts vegetable stock (homemade is much better, but you can use Imagine)
3 carrots, peeled and cut into 2 inch pieces
3 parsnips, peeled and cut into 2 inch pieces
1 sweet potato, peeled and chunked
1 potato, peeled and chunked
slat and pepper, to taste
Tabasco sauce, to taste

Cook the onion in the butter on low heat till soft, about 10 minutes. Add the ginger, stock and all the veggies and turn the heat up high. Add salt and pepper.
When small bubbles appear, turn the heat down to medium, cover, and cook for about 45 minutes, or until all the vegetables are soft.

Remove the piece of ginger.

Blend the soup with an immersion blender (you can do this when the soup is hot) or wait till it cools and blend in a food processor until smooth.

Add the ginger back. Heat and taste; add salt, pepper and Tabasco sauce, if needed.

This soup gets even more ginger-y the next day. Just don’t serve anyone the huge chunk of ginger; it can turn them off ginger forever.

Have a bowl after you get your flu shot.

Telepan: Friendly to Vegetarians

I loved the restaurant Judson Grill (where Bar Americain is now) so I was not surprised to like the same chef's upper west side place. Bill Telepan, owner of Telepan, is a greenmarket fan and though he has meat on his menu, he also offers many vegetarian choices.

Starters on the late summer menu include a vegetarian-friendly vegetable-bread soup, enriched with olive old and parmigiano cheese. Cabbage is cooked slowly until it is sweet and tender.

A 'gazpacho' salad featured chopped heirloom tomatoes, covered with bits of cucumber and onion. Sadly, no spoon was offered, so the delicious soupy liquid went to waste (I'd finished my bread).

There is also an egg on fried green tomato, and smoked trout on a corn blini, an upgrade of what your Russian bubbe might have served on Sunday mornings.

Family Meal: Where are the veggies?

It was always challenging to raise vegetarian kids who didn’t eat vegetables. For years, we fell into a pasta trap, making a vat of pasta most nights and letting the kids carbo load.

At a certain point, I’d had enough. I wanted my daughters to eat vegetables. It took some work, but eventually, I was able to get them to eat a more balanced diet, one that included many different vegetables.

I didn’t want to hide the veggies, like The Sneaky Chef Missy Chase Lapine so I came up with a few tips:

1. Drop the pasta. The first thing I did was just stop buying pasta. If I didn’t have it in the house, I couldn’t make it or offer it.

2. Rethink the sauce. Ok, so I do now make pasta once every other month. But I make a tomato sauce that includes an entire package of frozen chopped spinach and the girls are none the wiser. I dub this sauce ‘puttanesca’ and add chopped black olives, capers and hot sauce, along with shredded carrots and chopped tomatoes. So they get plenty of vegetables.

3. Go to the farmer’s market. The unusually colored vegetables, like orange cauliflower and purple carrots, have enticed my kids to try an array of veggies.

4. While I make dinner, I put out carrot sticks, slices of red pepper, jicama, or sugar snap peas. If a child comes by fainting from hunger, I point out the spread, which also includes hummus or another dip. If a kid is truly hungry, she will eat the veggies.

5. One of my kids just won’t eat salad. She hates leafy greens. Since my husband and I love salad, this causes great consternation. But, she loves fresh peas. We used to buy them just for her – snapping them is so time consuming – but the other girls figured they were missing out. So now they all eat fresh peas.

6. Read cookbooks together, and not just ones specifically designed for kids. The photography in Chez Panisse cookbooks makes almost anything look appealing. Except meat, but that’s another story.

7. Bake with veggies. Roasted acorn squash puree enlivens my waffles and muffins. You can even cut down on the sugar in muffin recipes when you add the puree. In a pinch, I have used prepared baby food.

8. Eat at ethnic restaurants. When kids get served food they don’t recognize, they might be more apt to try, not snub it. Since my kids like spicy food, they will try almost anything pungent at a Korean, Indian or Vietnamese restaurant.

9. My husband and I would sometimes treat ourselves to a snack before feeding the kids; samosas, or Spring rolls, saying we just had to eat right away and we couldn’t share. Of course, this made the kids really want to try our vegetable-filled treat and we’d ‘reluctantly’ offer a taste.

10. Finally, don’t stress too much. Soon enough, they go to school, on play dates, or out with their own money and make their own food choices. Model good eating habits and hope some of it rubs off.

Hotel Dining

When I was a kid, the only reason we ate at a hotel was we were staying at Howard Johnson and kids ate free. Now, hotel restaurants are destinations in and of themselves, and on a recent trip to Boston, we ate at Henrietta's Table in The Charles Hotel, but we weren’t even staying there.

The market focused restaurant, which has a large outdoor patio in warm weather, relies on local farms to supply it with produce. So the huge salads are an excellent way to start a meal. Try the simple ‘native’ greens with a lemon vinaigrette or the spinach salad, with blueberries, goat cheese and spicy maple pecan vinaigrette. The latter is a bit sweet with the berries and maple, so I tried it with the lemon- much better. There is also smoked salmon over greens, with a potato wafer and a retro iceberg lettuce (but an heirloom variety) with blue cheese dressing.

I am always happy when a menu offers more than a token vegetarian pasta and no other veggie choice. Here, there is no pasta on the menu, but you can have an entree of roasted carrot, squash, celery root and spinach with quinoa, white beans and farro. This changes seasonally, but when I had it, it was a festival of flavors, each offering a delicious morsel.

You can also create your own vegetable plate from sides: we tried the roasted beets, wilted greens, butternut squash puree and Brussels Sprout. Or get the appetizer of grilled Portobello, with blue cheese but without the bacon vinaigrette, and add some other sides: roasted root vegetables, roasted or mashed potatoes.

Seasonal drinks also offer vegetarians a place at the table; instead of trendy bacon infused drinks, find a Dilly Bean Martini with beans, or the Pepperoncini Martini with pickled peppers. Don’t try to say that five times after a drink or two.

10 Tips: Fun with Vegetables

I may have been a picky eater when I was a child, but I also ate most vegetables. It was never a problem to get me to eat a salad – I just liked it plain, with no dressing. It was all part of my no condiment stance. But it angered my mother, who insisted I use dressing (why? It’s not the healthy part).

Anyway, at some point I discovered blue cheese dressing and started dumping it on my greens.

With my kids, it was a different story. It was a challenge to get them interested in vegetables, possibly because they had few other choices. Perhaps if I’d plied them with meat, they would have rejected it, as I did, for the veggies. So I had to be creative, and think of ways to sneak veggies into food and involve the kids in the process.

1. Farmer’s markets: from the time the kids were little, we took weekly trips to the farmer’s market and let the kids choose what to buy. When you are faced with a bounty of fruits and vegetables, healthy food is bound to be chosen.

2. Read cookbooks together. And not just ones for kids. I have a huge cookbook collection, and I look through them with my daughters, or let them read them alone, and mark them up with post-its.

3. Cook together. This can be frustrating for kitchen control freaks, but when the result is ownership of the meal, kids are more willing to try exotic foods.

4. Taste tests. Since my kids actually like dressing, I let them experiment with different kinds. We would put out bowls of three kinds of ranch dressing, for example, and let them sample each – by dipping in string beans or baby carrots, of course.

5. Shop at ethnic markets. In NYC, we are blessed with Chinese and Japanese supermarkets, Middle Eastern stores, kosher stores, cheese shops galore. We once visited a Polish store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and came home with dozens of unknown items.

6. Cut food into fun shapes. Make a radish flower, a heart shaped sandwich, pinwheel wraps, all of which can entice kids to try different foods.

7. Color your food. Let your child add a drop of food color to milk to turn it her favorite color, or make green eggs with food color and spinach.

8. Have a picnic. Food can taste better when eaten on the ground, whether in the backyard or on a blanket on the floor of the dining room.

9. Use different utensils to try different food. Our kids were a lot more receptive to Asian soups when I bought the large ceramic soup spoons that the Chinese restaurants use. And they tried Japanese noodles dishes loaded with vegetables and veggie dumplings when I got them special kid-sized chopsticks.

10. Have breakfast for dinner. But make your pancakes with butternut squash puree or mashed sweet potatoes and serve fried bananas on the side.

Try to keep the mood light and have fun.

I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and The Hub blogging program, making me eligible to get a $50 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

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The Grocery - friend to vegetarians

When The Grocery first opened on Smith Street in Brooklyn, we were among the early adopters. We went several times before its astronomical Zagat rating, including one memorable anniversary dinner in the garden, where I was attacked by mosquitoes and owner Sharon Pachter helpfully surrounded me with Citronella candles.

But for whatever reason – excellent restaurants closer to home, the tanking economy, busy lives, we hadn’t returned in a couple of years.

This was a mistake.

The Grocery is even better than I remember, a pitch-perfect restaurant that even has a nightly “vegetables grains, greens and legumes” plate, a vegetarian’s delight. The entrée, also available in an appetizer portion, has 12-15 different ingredients, which show a particular care towards vegetarian diners.

The night we went, our party of four had to wait 15 minutes for our reservation. Not so terrible, but if The Grocery has one flaw, it is that it is a bit cramped. And extremely popular. On a cold night, there is nowhere to wait.

But the waiter took our cell phone number so we could go to the bar next door and he could call when they were ready.

The effusive apologies – plus 2 amuse bouches, both vegetarian, more than made up for our short wait. Potato balls and parsnip soup eased our hunger pangs.

We couldn’t decide between roasted beets with goat cheese ravioli, fried artichoke and escarole salad, and the farro cake with cauliflower and hen of the woods mushrooms (but without the bacon) so decided to get all three and share four ways. Our waiter also brought us a surprisingly delicious special, French fry salad, that he said we had ‘accidentally forgotten to order.’ It had mushrooms and lots of parsley, and the fries stayed crisp.

Other veggie apps include ‘teenage’ greens and smoked salmon with endive and potato pancake.

Vegetarian entrees include the aforementioned vegetable plate and a spinach & mushroom lasagna with celery root puree that tasted nothing like a traditional lasagna but was rich andflavorful. Seared scallops in a spinach and Meyer lemon puree is the only other vegetarian choice, though specials included an amazing sounding pasta and another fish.

Tuesdays – Thursdays, The Grocery offers a green plate special, a 4 course vegetarian tasting menu for $35. We will be back.

Eat your greens - and eat green

One of my reasons for becoming a vegetarian was to eat lower on the food chain. The Green Restaurant Association helps by certifying green restaurants, based on a point system. Del Posto is a 2 star certified restaurant, due to such practices as buying energy star appliances, using compact fluorescent bulbs and serving vegan and vegetarian food.

Italian restaurants are particularly well suited to vegetarians, and Del Posto is no exception. Appetizers include salads, roasted vegetables with truffled hazelnuts and lobster with broccoli rabe. Main courses range from pasta with beans and black cabbage or pumpkin pasta with almond and black truffles to a number of fish dishes. There are meat entrees, but vegetarians should have no problem choosing a meal.

If you are looking to get more protein, you can finish your meal with a cheese course. But if you want to mix sweet and savory, get more vegetables in your meal with the carrot torte with parsnip gelato. If you didn’t know you were eating root vegetables, you would just think this was a delicious dessert (there is also tartufo, for the less adventurous.

One important note for vegetarians – though the bread basket is delicious, the accompanying butter comes with a whitish mate on a tray. The non-butter substance turns out to be lard. Proceed with cauthion.

Living off the land

Although I live in New York City, I have farmer fantasies (no, not X-rated ones). I love to grow my own vegetables and herbs, although I probably wind up spending $25 to get a full bunch of basil. I buy seeds, new soil, organic vegetable fertilizer, I compost my produce leavings, but I still cannot grow a decent tomato.

Part of this is a sunlight issue. In our old brownstone, our south facing garden was flooded with light and we grew, well, not bushels, but armfuls of vegetables. Our current home has a north garden and I’ve tried container tomato plants that I obsessively move to sunny spots, hybrid tomato plants, heirlooms – nothing seems to work.

This year, I have a new plan. I got one of those ‘magical’ upside down tomato planters that I can hang off our trellis, 6 feet off the ground and closer to the sun.

Allegedly, each plant should grow up to 30 pounds of tomatoes.

Planting did not go smoothly.

First, we mixed the dirt and water. Admittedly, fun. We were making mud pies! On the dining room table! But this soil was not like ordinary dirt –it was light and fluffy and I worried that it was loaded with chemicals.

Then it turned out our ‘complete kit’ came without seeds. But no worries –we had bought two, and the seed pack had extra seeds.

So we planted, and now we wait.

And wait.