I once said spaghetti squash was the most underrated yellow vegetable. I can’t think of another yellow vegetable that deserves more love. Can you?

Yes, summer squash, but isn’t it an underrated yellow vegetable that deserves to be underrated?

Among the winter squashes, spaghetti squash is one of the easier ones to work with and its mild, crunchy flesh is a blank canvas — just waiting to soak up any flavor you throw at it.

In my Cool Mountain Cookbook, spaghetti squash gets a touch of sweetness, tossed with brown sugar and hazelnut liqueur.

But today, savory strikes my fancy, with basil and fresh, local goat cheese from Crow’s Dairy.

Just roast the squash and then saute it briefly with garlic, herbs and goat cheese for a cozy, warm mid-week meal.

I love how the flesh shreds into spaghetti-like strands, tender but still full of delicate crunch.

While the squash is roasting, you can mince the garlic and chiffonade the basil.

Or, use any herbs you like. Spaghetti squash takes well to any kind of herb, especially basil, thyme, rosemary and sage.

Since mincing garlic and slicing basil doesn’t take long, you could whip up a marinara sauce and saute some chard to make it a more substantial meal.

Or, you could saute some mushrooms and scallions while you wait for the squash to finish roasting. You have about 30 minutes of down time between when the squash goes in the oven and when it’s ready for the quick saute with garlic and herbs.

After the mushrooms are tender, deglaze the pan with a little wine if you like.

I, not surprisingly, just splash in a little rosé from the glass I’m drinking while cooking.

Once the squash comes out of the oven, let it cool a bit before scraping out the flesh.

Then just heat a little olive oil in a pan and saute the flesh with the garlic, herbs and goat cheese.

Season with salt and pepper and you’re done.

It takes all of 45 minutes from start to finish.

It’s really that simple, and it’s so delicious.

I’ve topped mine with toasted pine nuts, too.

Do you have a favorite recipe for spaghetti squash?

[printable recipe]

Tags: Crow's Dairy, goat cheese, herbs, pine nuts, recipe, spaghetti squash, vegetarian
Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes, Vegetarian | 6 Comments »

Chef Bryan Dooley of Bryan’s Black Mountain Barbecue is a thoughtful guy. In the midst of smoking hundreds of pounds of beef, pork and chicken, he thinks about vegetarians.

“I think about vegetables the way a vegetarian restaurant does,” he says. “To me, vegetables shouldn’t be an afterthought.”

True, and that’s why I named his vegetarian “pulled” spaghetti squash sandwich one of the best sandwiches (meat or otherwise) in the January 2010 issue of PHOENIX Magazine.

Make no mistake, Bryan’s BBQ is a meat lovers haven, but Dooley always has something up his chef’s coat sleeve for those who eschew meat. Besides the pulled squash sandwich that’s on the menu year-round, Dooley offers seasonal items, often geared toward the non-meat eaters.

This past summer, he whipped up a juicy heirloom tomato sandwich and this fall, he dazzled diners with a fried artichoke po’ boy.

He’s tinkering in the kitchen again, thinking about what to offer his vegetarian friends this spring.

And he’s come up with something creative, incredibly tasty, and yet, a tad on the quirky side.

He calls it Veg-A-Pickle-Pie.

Veg-A-Pickle-Pie? I snickered when he first told me the name, but then I tasted it, and while it has a funny name, there’s nothing silly about the layers of flavor Dooley’s packed into his vegetable pie.

So what is it, exactly?

It’s a savory pie with a natural sweetness that comes from two root vegetables roasted to coax out the inherent sugars. He layers a pie crust with pureed roasted sweet potatoes spiked with chipotle.

Next, he sprinkles chopped, pickled green beans over the sweet potatoes. He experimented with spinach, but he’s leaning toward the pickled green beans. On top of the green beans, he layers a roasted beet and herb puree, and then he bakes it.

The kicker — what makes the flavors pop — is the topping of dill pickles.

“I made the pie and thought, yeah, this is nice, but then I put the pickles on it and said YEAH, that’s it,” he says.

I know what you’re thinking. Pickles? I thought the same thing until I tasted it with and without the pickles. The dilly vinegar really heightens the flavor of the beets.

Still, homey dill pickle slices on this gorgeous pie? Dooley likes the funky look of a crinkle-cut pickle covered pie, but I asked him, “why not julienne (matchstick) the pickles to dress it up a bit?” After all, he has a plume of lemon-pepper vinaigrette dressed watercress sitting on the side.

“I like the kinda Route 66 look of the down home pickle slices,” he says.

To humor me, he juliennes the pickle slices, and admits that it’s easier to get a taste of pickle with every bite of the pie.

Even though Dooley is a trained chef with years of high-end resort cooking under his belt, he considers himself, at heart, a simple BBQ guy.

OK, but what simple BBQ guy dreams up olive-studded coleslaw and root beer marinated apple rings with pink peppercorns?

Or, a roasted beet and sweet potato pie with dill pickles?

The verdict?

I’d order it — and I’m not a vegetarian. Of course, I’d order it with a side of the toothy pork ribs or the tender beef brisket that put Bryan’s BBQ on the must-eat Valley dining map.

Dooley’s still tinkering with the recipe, and hasn’t decided if this will be his spring Vegetarian special or not (there are some logistics to work out), but one thing is for sure:

The guy loves to play in the kitchen, and while he’s stoking the pecan wood fire in his smoker full of meat, he’s dreaming of delicious ways to bring vegetarians to his table.

So what do you think? Would you order the Veg-A-Pickle Pie?

Bryan’s Black Mountain BBQ
6130 East Cave Creek Road, Cave Creek
480-575-7155

photo credits:1, 2, 3: Bryan Dooley; 4, 5: Gwen Ashley Walters

Tags: beets, Bryan Dooley, Bryan's BBQ, savory pie, sweet potatoes, Veg-A-Pickle-Pie, vegetarian
Posted in Restaurant Journal | No Comments »

I’m doing something I’ve never done before.

I’m eschewing meat. On purpose.

There is no ulterior motive, and no need to get alarmed — it’s only temporary. How hard can it be?

Blame it on my working vacation in a mountain town filled with fit granola heads, and restaurants with plenty of menu space dedicated to veg-heads.

And I don’t have to review a single one of them, so I can order what I want, like a bowl of yellow curry with tofu and mushrooms at Squatters Brew Pub.

Blame it on my temporary housing, in the home of a lovely vegetarian, who has a pantry stocked with grains, beans, and nuts, and shelves stuffed with vegetarian cookbooks. (That’s her own cookbook in the middle, the blue Chocolate Snowball.)

The surprising thing about eating strictly vegetarian, to me anyway, is that it’s just not that hard. A piece of cake.

Breakfast has always been an easy meal to drop the meat, what with all the oatmeal and egg options, including one of my favorites, huevos rancheros from Loco Lizard — not to mention the smoothie kick I’ve been on lately.

Lunch and dinner, on the other hand, always seemed like meat meals to me.

But I’m finding I don’t have to struggle find something appealing without meat, like a juicy avocado, tomato and sprout sandwich with smoked Gouda from The Back Door Deli.

Of course, this — like all fairy tales — will come to an end.

Because at the end of the day, I’m a bacon-loving, steak-eating girl. Life without meat just doesn’t sit right in the saddle for me.

Maybe that’s why my temporarily vegetarian mouth and my permanent carnivorous brain had a failure to communicate just two weeks into this little experiment.

You see, I ordered a bowl of French Onion Soup at The Foundry Grill at Sundance Resort without blinking an eye. Delicious, caramelized onion soup with a toasted crostini and melted Gruyere — vegetarian, right? Wrong.

I had reached a turning point:

I could drop the charade and return to my flesh-eating ways, or I could dust myself off, wiped the sherry-drenched, rich veal stock off my chin, and climb back on the vegetarian horse.

In the end, I chose the latter (right after I drained the soup bowl) and, for now, I’m back on the veg-train with another week to go.

But I was wrong about one thing.

Giving up meat is lot harder than I thought, after all. It’s not a piece of cake (and I probably couldn’t give up cake for very long, either.)

How about you? Have you ever given up meat? Did you stick with it, or revert back to your old ways?

Tags: Back Door Deli, Chocolate Snowball Cookbook, giving up meat, Letty Flatt, Loco Lizard, Park City, Squatters Brew Pub, The Foundry Grill, vegetarian
Posted in Travel Eats | 28 Comments »

If there was an awards ceremony for vegetables, spaghetti squash might just win the most underrated category. It’s one of those vegetables that looks harder to cook than it actually is, so I think cooks bypass the squash bin at the grocery store, heading instead for sweet potatoes. The truth is cutting it open is the most difficult part of cooking the it (any winter squash, really, and among the winter squashes, it’s one of the easiest to cut, you just need a big chef’s knife).

After cutting the squash in half and scooping out the seeds, place the squash cut side down on a lined baking sheet. Pour in about 1/4 of water to keep it from burning and roast in a 350 degree oven for roughly 30 minutes.  While the squash is roasting, you can whip up a few other ingredients and in the end, you’ll have a vegetarian spaghetti with a simple marinara sauce, and get a good dose of greens, too, in about 45 minutes, or less.

My marinara sauce is embarrassingly simple. Dice half a large onion (any color, I used red because that’s what I had) and saute it in a healthy splash of olive oil. Once it’s tender, about 5 minutes, stir in minced garlic (as much as you like). As soon as the garlic smells wonderful, a minute or two, pour in 1/4 cup of white wine. Cook until the wine is almost reduced, and then add a can of diced tomatoes with the juice (I like Muir Glen organic tomatoes, and if fire-roasted, all the better). Stir in a generous teaspoon of dried Italian herbs and then simmer until thickened, about 20 minutes.

While the sauce bubbles, have some wine and toast some pine nuts. I like an Oregon or Californian Pinot Gris with this dish. Or, on second thought, toast the nuts first, and then have wine. You have to watch them or they’ll burn. Throw a handful of nuts in a dry skillet and toast over medium heat until browned, tossing frequently. It’ll take about 5 minutes. Once the nuts are done, saute up some Swiss chard.

I cut chard from the stems and then roughly chop the leaves before soaking them in a salad spinner to remove any dirt. Spin them dry and saute with a generous splash of olive oil in a skillet, maybe add a little garlic, salt and pepper. After the leaves are wilted, cover the skillet and turn the heat to low. It should take about 10 minutes to turn them into soft, tender greens.  While the greens are steaming to tenderness, you can scrape the spaghetti squash into lovely yellow strands with a fork, and season with salt and pepper. Place a mound of squash in a pasta bowl and top with the marinara sauce, pine nuts and a sprinkling of Parmesan. Scatter the greens around the squash and now, in less than 45 minutes, you have a healthy, delicious, vegetarian spaghetti dish.

Tags: chard, how to cook spaghetti squash, marinara, pine nuts, spaghetti squash, vegetarian
Posted in About Ingredients, Recipes, Side Dishes, Tips & Tutorials, Vegetarian | 2 Comments »

I was going to blab blog about summer zucchini, and what do to with them, since they seem to be multiplying in my crisper drawer, but then I sat down for a quick lunch and my whole world just came to a screeching halt.

I heated up some veggie beef skewers in a chipotle BBQ sauce (an item I picked up for a study I was working on), made by a company called it’s all good (trust me, it’s not). The picture on the package looks enticing, like real grilled beef kabobs. To be fair, the package gives directions for grilling and sautéing but I took the quick microwave route.

The first thing I noticed when I cut open the bag (once they were heated) was the smell. My two puppies noticed it before I did, thinking I was making them a mid-day snack. I can’t even describe how awful they taste. Vegetarians are never going to win me over with this kind of stuff. Thank goodness for the little bit of kick from the chipotle sauce.

The first ingredient is water, followed by soy protein, vital wheat gluten, natural flavors, and then modified vegetable gum. What the heck is modified vegetable gum? And honestly, I don’t know what natural flavors they put into this, enough to be the third ingredient, yet taste like anything but natural.

I had to eat a New Tree cinnamon-kissed chocolate bar just to wash the taste out of my mouth.

Tags: chocolate, vegetarian
Posted in News & Nibbles | No Comments »

The Great Ranch Cookbook

Spirited Recipes & Rhetoric from America's Best Guest Ranches

Par Fork! The Golf Resort Cookbook

Culinary Expedition Through World Class Golf Resort Kitchens

The Cool Mountain Cookbook

A Gourmet Guide to Winter Retreats