What are your favourite vegetable combos or taste blends with other vegetables, herbs or fruit? Not talking about stews with meat here but strictly vegetal dishes. I'll bet there are some good ones among us, especially at this time of year in North America when local produce is more in abundance.

Let me add to the cabbage-raisins and potatoes-spinach, zucchini with dill.



I just rustled up a pot of organic red cabbage (from the weekly organic mini farmers's market in the neighbourhood) with Thompson raisins (my favourite kind). Just boil them up together in a little water in the bottom of the pot with the cabbage cut up into roughly 1-2" pieces. When the cabbage and raisins are soft, serve with salt and pepper. Voilà! Sometimes in the fall I also make the cabbage dish with apples cut in. Even better--but I didn't have any apples on hand today.

Another fave is spinach and potatoes mashed together with a little salt, butter and milk.

Then there's my mom's recipe for zucchini and dill. I'm not sure exactly how she made it, alas, but the combo is delicious. She made a non-fat "creamy" sauce. Any ideas how to do that?

Spaetzel with cabbage and onions (lots of black pepper and some white wine in the cabbage while simmering).
Mashed sweet potatoes and carrots, or butternut squash or pumpkin (& cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, butter)
Boiled fingerling potatoes with sour cream and horseradish and lots of black pepper
Rice and tomato and fresh basil stuffed baked zuchini


Fiveoaks, a fat free sauce loaded with flavour can be made by mixing flour (3 big heaping tbs) and water (2C) in a glass container with a lid. Shake thoroughly till smooth and lump free. Barely simmer some good strong chicken broth (1-2C) on the stove top in a sauce pan (or for a richer sauce use 1/2 chicken broth and 1/2 cream or whole milk). Slowly add, a tablespoon at a time, some of the flour water mix till desired thickness is achieved.
Now add your dill, salt, pepper, some white wine or sherry, as well as onion/garlic powder to taste and maybe a nice brown dijon mustard. Stir thoroughly and allow flavours to settle for a couple of minutes. Finish off the sauce with a light drop or two of lemon juice.
Uses for this sauce are as expansive as the imagination. Eggs benedict, vagetables, exotic little pasta shapes,
chicken sauce, salmon croquetes, etc.
Change the herbs, use beef broth or vegetable borth, try vermouth instead of sherry. It fits wherever the fatty sauces of yon (as in hither and ---) used to dwell.

There is a concoction my mother makes consisting of turnip , carrot and potato all mashed together , seasoned , buttered , and some sour cream in the mix , topped au gratin and baked.

getting hungry just thinking about it...

Spinach or other similar, leafy green vegetable, sauteed with garlic and olive oil. Garlic is also good with zucchini and the other summer squashes.

I like beets with feta cheese and dill.

It sounds strange, but watermelon with feta is very good.

Tomatoes and basil are a classic combination, but the combination of tomato with dill is less well-known, and also very good.

Excellent-sounding combos! Thank you!

Imatchgrl, thanks for the recipe!

Broccoli and carrots in red wine / black pepper sauce.
Stir-fried lotus roots.
Am out of this thread as I did not pack a sufficient amount of lunch.

I am contemplating trying a variation of Irish Colcannon with leeks and potatoes... will let you know how that works out.

I want the recipe to mrs veneering's dish! Sounds fab.

Green beans and new potatoes, yum.

Not so original, but ratatouille (the eggplant, tomato, pepper and zucchini stew with coriander seed, some chopped basil) is hard to beat.

collard greens and sweet potatoes!

I shall drag it out of my mother , see you here same time same place


I love good ole champ , mash and green onions with butter for dipping .

I'm boring.... bourgeois and ever so Irish: I like potatoes and peas.

I love a mess of greens, like mustard/collard/turnip. Turnip-root bites. With plenty of butter and salt. I'm very happy at Soul Food spreads...!

Is there a cookbook that can teach one specifically how to make mindblowingly delicious vegetables? I swear I'd eat more if I could make them more interesting.

One thing I KNOW I should like--- but I don't--- is sweet potatoes, pumpkin and yams. YUCK! I know they're so fabulously good for you, what with all that Beta Carotene. Even worse when they are given the "Thanksgiving" treatment: brown sugar, cinnamon and marshmallows. DisGUSTing!!

I've never been fond of dishes which mix sweet and savoury together... How gross is a JELL-O mold "salad" with mayonnaise, sour cream, celery, carrots, ham cubes and miniature marshmallows?

I love artichokes, hearts of palm, capers, asparagus, rice pilaf/chewy wild rice and all those posh little vegetables. The best asparagus I ever ate was in Germany during Spargelzeit: HUGE steamed white asparagus spears, thicker than a baby's wrist, melt-in-your-mouth tender, served with butter, lemon, salt , pepper and nutmeg? mm-MM.

I adore that Middle Eastern meal of pureed vegetables eaten with strips of Nan or Daal.

Fruited rice--long and wild grain rice cooked in chicken broth, then add some orange juice and dried cranberries and raisins.

Brussels sprouts in orange sauce

Sneak some cooked cauliflower into mashed potatoes

Corn and lima beans

Roased vegetables of all sorts--especially roasted sweet potatoes! David have you tried them roasted, with nothing but a tiny spritz of olive oil? Yum.

Thanksgiving hash is the best. Left over mashed potatoes, turnips and cauliflower fried with left over stuffing and a bit of gravy. Yum!

-Noelle

Broccoli Rabe with asparagus and also ratatouille.

Such very, very delicious combos to try!


In the region where I grew up (NJ) this was called succotash. Love that word!

Rasputin - Deborah Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" is a wonderful cookbook for getting to "know" your vegetables in new and delicious ways! I've had her cookbook for 6 years and use it often and everything, absolutely everything, I've made has been lovely. She describes basic ways of selecting, storing, preparing and cooking a huge variety of vegetables. She also includes recipes like stirfries, legumes, gratins, breads, pilafs, pasta, eggs, etc etc etc. She obviously has used a variety of cultures as references for her dishes. Very very good book and hopefully will turn you on to some new combinations.

My favorite cookbook, too. Her carmelized onions have become a staple in my kitchen. I put them on whole grain toast, sprinkle with walnuts and top with fontina, then put in microwave till the cheese melts. A perfect open faced sandwich.

One of my favorite salads that looks beautiful and tastes good, too, is her shredded beet & carrot salad with lime cilantro dressing. I made it for two fussy boys, children of my ex, and they gobbled it up.

I think the only recipe of hers that I didn't like was the oatmeal pancakes, which I found gummy.

Not from Deborah's book -- yesterday I steamed a butternut squash, then pureed it with freshly squeezed orange juice, grated ginger, cilantro and a bit of salt. Beautiful looking and delicious!

cauliflower and dill.

Oven roasted vegetables:

Potatoes, broccoli, onion, mushroom, zucchini, and red peppers.

Chopped and sliced, some Italian herb seasoning and olive oil. Mix it all up, layer on a baking sheet and roast in the oven.

Wonderful with brown rice.

I like corn and mashed potatoes mixed up, oh gotta have ham too!

peas & mashed potatoes

I LOVE succotash, I'm in NJ also.

this might be weird to some but I love coleslaw on a ham & swiss sandwich

I like to add apples, celery and onion to stuffing!

Sauteed apples, cinnamon, cloves, brown sugar and pineapple chunks on ham slices.

Last night I made sauteed chicken breasts with EVOO, sliced green and red peppers, garlic and I sprinkled the chicken breasts with pumpkin pie spice, It was extremely good and reminded me of something Middle Eastern.

Jersey peeps love succotash!


Hoos, sounds delicious. Your recipe also reminds me of vegetables grilled on the barbecue. Oh, my, they are good!

Oooh, I love veggies!

Butternut squash and broccoli; carrots, apples and pumpkin slow cooked in walnut/raisin glaze; tomatoes and sauteed soybeans with caramelized onions; fire grilled bell peppers and cauliflower... ok, now I'm hungry.

I recently acquired a rice cooker. And really have been wild about it the past month or so.

Here's a great rice cooker succotash (well, my version):

Brown rice
Frozen lima beans
Frozen corn

I put in about 1/2 rice and 1/2 veggies.

Let rice cooker cook. When done, add herbs/spices (freshly ground pepper works wonders). And let it stay on warm for another 15 minutes or so.

Serve with freshly grated parmesan on top.

For non-vegetarians: you can also add meat. I sometimes add a few crumbled up strips of cooked bacon along with the spices.

These recipes sound wonderful! Thanks! It's the perfect season for them too!

Yesterday I sauteed finely sliced onions with a wee bit of garlic in olive oil, then added very thinly sliced yellow potatoes and zucchini. When almost done, as an afterthought, I poured a couple of scrambled eggs over it for a stovetop fritatta. With the leftovers, I sprinkled some shredded parm on top. That took care of some stray veggies around here.

Potatoes, broccoli, corn, bean, carrots + tomato souce and a little bit of rice - yummy!