The I Hate to Cook Book (13 page)

Moreover, there is a certain social cachet to serving your vegetables plain. Indeed, if your entrée is in any way fancy, the
haute cuisine
crowd frowns on anything but the simplest vegetable as an accompaniment, which should be a load off your mind and off your back.

So just gird your loins and serve that big bowl of tiny, buttery, fresh-from-the-garden beets, murmuring—if you care to—“After all, there’s nothing like good butter, salt, and coarse-ground pepper.” (Always be sure it’s coarse-ground, because a lot of people feel that anything peppered should look as though it has been fished out of a gravel pit.)

However, just once in a while, when you are serving a very easy main dish, like something thawed, or when you yourself get so tired of plain vegetables that you cannot stand them any more, it is nice to know a few things to do.

First of all, find a commercial seasoning you like, and add it to the melted butter. This is an easy way to improve vast hordes of vegetables.

Second, you can also add a bouillon cube, or a teaspoon of instant bouillon, to the water you cook them in. This helps a bit, too.

Third, the authorities maintain that a wee pinch of sugar, in addition to your other seasonings, brings out the flavor of any vegetable. The debatable point here is whether you want to bring it out or cover it up; but this is every girl’s own personal decision.

Fourth, there is an
easy cheese sauce you can make and keep on hand to give a gentle assist to cauliflower, cabbage, asparagus, green beans, et cetera.

     EASY CHEESE SAUCE     

1 pound sharp processed cheese, diced

1½ cups evaporated milk (low-fat is okay)

1½ teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons dry mustard

Melt the cheese in the top of your double boiler over hot water, add everything else, and stir it till it’s smooth and hot. Then pour it into a jar, cover it, and keep it in the refrigerator. When you want to use some of it, put the amount you want in the top of your double boiler again, thin it with a little milk, and heat it.

Fifth, there is an easy fake hollandaise which is good with artichokes, asparagus, and whatever else you think you’d like hollandaise on.

     FAKE HOLLANDAISE     

¾ cup mayonnaise

cup milk

salt, pepper

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Cook the mayonnaise and milk together in the top of your double boiler for five minutes, stirring constantly. Then add the other things and stir just long enough for one good chorus of “Gloomy Sunday,” and it’s done.

And so to the recipes.

     COMPANY CARROTS     

3–4 servings

(Through the ages, people have gone to enormous trouble to camouflage carrots. Once I saw a recipe that called for carrots, strained honey, oregano, grated Swiss cheese, and chestnuts, which is like sewing diamond buttons on denim pants.)

Cut a reasonable number of carrots into strips—so you have two cupfuls, say. Cook them till they’re tender and drain them. Then mix these things together in a skillet

3 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons sugar

½ teaspoon paprika

juice of half a lemon

Add the carrots and sauté them about ten minutes, stirring so that all the strips get well acquainted with the sauce.

     OVEN CARROTS     

4–5 servings

(If you’re out of lemon juice and feel that you must do something about carrots anyway, you can do this. It is more trouble, but it demands no last-minute attention, the carrots stay crisp, and the dish looks quite polite.)

4 green onions chopped, tops and all

3 tablespoons butter

10 to 12 small carrots (or 5 big ones), cut in strips

3 tablespoons minced parsley

1 teaspoon salt

dash of pepper

¼ cup light cream

Fry the onions in the butter till they’re tender. Add the carrots, parsley, salt, and pepper, and put it all into a buttered casserole dish. Pour the cream on top, cover, and bake at 350˚ for forty-five minutes.

     KIDS VS. CARROTS