A pleasing composition using a minimum of exotic ingredients, this vegan riff off of Vietnamese bean-thread noodles highlights fresh tomatoes and basil.
The tomatoes make this traditional Asian dish somewhat offbeat, and while it’s especially perfect for warm weather, you can enjoy it year round — an easy mélange of slippery noodles and barely-cooked vegetables.
Delectable raw or cooked, Belgian endive, curly endive, escarole, frisée and radicchio are part of the chicory vegetables family of leafy greens. Each variety offers an appealing hint — or in some cases more than a hint — of bitterness, and are available year-round.
Belgian endive is pale green; the lighter the color, the milder the taste. The red variety, burgundy with thin creamy-white ribs, tends to be slightly more bitter, but pleasing nonetheless.
Curly endive takes bitterness up a notch but balances it with gentle sweetness. It looks like a bushy head of deep-green lettuce with frilly tickle-producing edges. Frisée, a sub-variety of curly endive, has smaller, more delicate leaves that are creamy-yellow at the base and turn an apple green toward their tops.
In this preparation of sautéed escarole, red onion and raisins provide a sweet contrast to the pleasantly bitter leafy green.
Escarole is a tender leafy green that’s a bit under-appreciated. Quick-cooking, easy to prep, it has just enough bite to please fans of bitter greens, but not so much to put off those who aren’t big on that type of vegetable.
Escarole mellows quite a bit with any amount of cooking, whether simmered into soup (like the classic Escarole Soup with White Beans and Potatoes) or quick-sautéed as it is in this recipe.
A quick guide to fennel, a unique vegetable with an anise flavor and celery-like texture — how to buy, prep, and use it in recipes.
Sometimes markets label fennel as “anise” or “sweet anise,” both are misnomers. Because it has its feathery, dark green tops, it’s sometimes mistaken for dill. Fennel is a green-tinged but almost white bulb with celery-like stalks sprouting at the top. The stalks are adorned with fernlike, dark green leaves.
It has a gentle, sweet flavor reminiscent of anise or licorice. Eaten raw, it has a pleasing crunch. It’s available both in mature sizes, with stalks about 14 to18 inches long, as well as immature “baby” sizes, with stalks about 5 to 8 inches long. Baby fennel is especially sweet, with an intense anise aroma.
