(Pasta-less) Primavera

Spring vegetables in fall

Super interesting dish.

I conceptualized this dish by spinning off my favorite pasta dish that has a ton of veggies in it. My favorite pasta dish had butter, snow peas, lemons, cauliflower, shrimp, carrots, onions, parmasean cheese, salt, pepper, pasta and more! The taste is really fresh, and the butter-lemon combo is amazing. So here was the challenge: I only have almost one chicken breast (which was baked with Italian seasoning), two horse carrots, a head of broccoli, and a can of organic tomato sauce. I actually had pasta in the cupboard but couldn't bring myself to make it.

The key, in my mind, to make this dish successful would be to somehow get the background flavors correct, and then try to match forward flavors of course. So the background flavors are actually what cook out of, or into, the veggies. See if you can follow me: onions, once cooked, have very little flavor when not completely caramelized yet they are in virtually every dish. Why? Because they form the complex background taste we demand of almost every dish. Also, I know that the dish I normally makes steams the veggies in chicken broth; that would mean I need the background flavor of celery, even though its no where to be seen on any recipe. Also, I need to do something to compensate for the lack of hard, pungent Italian cheese. Get it? Match flavor profiles/ perceptions, match the reception of the dish, regardless of what you actually have.

McDonald's does this too, but they use chemicals.

Okay, so using extra light olive oil instead of butter (remember, extra light olive oil adds a rich taste which almost exactly matches the response you would get from cooking with butter) saute dehydrated onions, salt, pepper, ground mustard, celery salt, and, if you can believe this, plain old white vinegar. Saute this down a little. Add 2oz of water and simmer the chopped head of broccoli and the two sliced carrots uncovered for a couple minutes. Once the water is cooked off almost entirely, add a can of tomato sauce, simmer and reseason. Slice the small amount of chicken that you have (I had to add more vinegar and readjust the oil here to make those flavors stand out (which is the lemon-butter flavor)) and add it to the pot. Season, heat then eat.

What was really critical was the mustard and vinegar addition to cover the lemon and cheese missing. It was really a cool discovery, and a really cool dish.