le blog de tranny

Ribbon salads are quite common, and I even remember Caro telling me once about a pasta salad she’d had at an Ici luncheon with strips of squash and trumpet mushroom. When Paul and I were in LA visiting my parents a few weekends ago he ordered this salad at Mar’sel that looked like pappardelle but was really perfectly dressed strips of hearts of palm and zucchini. The more that I mature as a home cook, the more I’m drawn to meals like these, that serve an aesthetic purpose almost higher than the eating of the dish itself. It’s fun and creative and feels like art.

Tired and silly as it may be I don’t think I’ll ever not find making my food smile back at me amusing. In fact I think I shall do this more often when I’ve had a bad day.

I realize how this sounds but I think I push myself more to make my food look beautiful and focus on the details if I’m cooking vegetarian. For me a meal of all veg needs to have that extra novelty above and beyond being flavorsome and well-executed. I should really create a vegetarian tag on here. FYI, if your Google Reader (hi Carson) randomly shows posts that I made several months ago, it’s probably because I’ve added or reclassified a tag on the post. I wish it wouldn’t do that because I’m constantly having to reevaluate the way things are organized on this blog.

The idea was to make a “pasta” entirely of ribbons of (or ribbon-like) vegetables. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve seen a number of veg ribbon dishes in my day, but none that went whole hog with the ribbons as pasta idea. So I had Paul pick up a small eggplant, three trumpet mushrooms, a bundle of skinny asparagus, three zucchini and basil at Berkeley Bowl. I also had him pick up the small balls of mozzarella, for a “spaghetti & meatballs” type motif. I already had panko breadcrumbs, lemons and garlic on hand.

First, I prepped the vegetables for their transformation into “pasta.” I peeled the eggplant and cut the less tender ends off the trumpet mushrooms, asparagus and zucchini. Then, using my handy dandy mandoline and tip-of-the-knife skills, I cut the trumpet mushrooms, zucchini and eggplant into strips. I tried to make the strips as long as possible (which is no easy feat) and also made sure not to cut them too thin, because I didn’t want them to fall apart after roasting. After tossing them with olive oil, salt and pepper, I roasted the eggplant, trumpet mushrooms and asparagus at 400 degrees F until tender but not falling apart. The eggplant and trumpet mushrooms didn’t take long at all because the strips were pretty thin.

I kept the zucchini raw, for a little bit of crunch.

While the vegetables were roasting, I made the lemon garlic vinaigrette we love to make around here. I actually kept track of the proportions this time: two small garlic cloves smashed in the mortar and pestle with a teaspoon of kosher salt until creamy, zest of half a lemon, juice of a lemon, teaspoon of dijon and just enough extra virgin olive oil to bring it all together (I hate it when dressings are too oily).

I tossed all of the veg strips with the vinaigrette, like a beautiful salad.

For the finishing touches, I toasted some breadcrumbs in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, some slivered garlic and a pinch of salt. I cut my basil into chiffonade, obviously, to keep with the ribbon theme. I tossed the basil with the dressed veg strips and then plated the veg “pasta” with mozzarella balls, toasted breadcrumbs and more chiffonade basil on top.

It was delicious, it took me under an hour to make, and serving four people it probably would’ve come out to under $5 per person. Maybe those vegetarians really do have the right idea..