Keeping It Simple

Keeping it simple doesn't mean that your meal will be tasteless. Gasp! Why, there's a whole dietary movement devoted to "clean eating" where you cook the way people all over the world used to cook--you eat whole foods without much added and without sauces and processed foods. If you try it, it will be a mind-blowing experience. You'll wonder why you ever thought that you had to add honey or brown sugar or cheese or three different spices to that beautiful potato or green beans or beets or that lovely steak or Norwegian salmon. There's a place, certainly, for all of that additional glitter and gold leaf and bling of cooking, but in everyday cooking, all you need is good ingredients, a little technique and a little bit of time.

Gorgeous roasted root vegetables finished with fresh fennel fronds.

Recently we hosted friends for a couple of days. Brunch was Tortilla Espanola, my Greek chickpea salad, chicken Italian sausage (the only lightly processed food), tomato salad with basil, balsamic, olive oil and chunks of burrata. We also had a small bowl of strawberry slices with blueberries--no sugar, no bourbon, no honey. Dinner was the lovely bejeweled platter of roasted root vegetables with local green beans and poached salmon. We had two pieces of salmon left, but the vegetables were dished out over and over and picked on until we only had a small serving left (almost not enough to save).

My roasted root vegetables come together quickly and require very little to show off their best and most delicious qualities. Here's what I did for this no-recipe recipe.

You decide how much of everything:

Sweet potatoes, rainbow carrots, red beets, garlic cloves, salt, pepper, good olive oil. Toss and roast in the middle of a 450F oven for about an hour. They should be tender with darker roasted edges. Naturally sweet and so delicious that you can eat them without rice or a sauce or a dip or a steak or chicken or fish or...anything else! If you'd like a recipe, try this one from a few years ago.

Now, don't get carried away and start adding paprika and sage and maple syrup and that fancy seasoning that your favorite celebrity chef sold you. I'm here to tell you that everyday cooking with the most basic of healthy ingredients is not just enough, it's outstandingly delicious.

Half runner green beans cooked in beef broth and a bit of black pepper.

There are wonderful recipes that use all of the extras, and we all cook those sometimes. But if we always cook with the extras, how do we know the beauty of a boiled potato or a fresh cucumber? How do we know what exceptional flavor secrets are waiting to be discovered in that lightly salted wedge of a Cherokee purple heirloom tomato? How do we tell the difference between heirloom corn grits ground on old milling stones and the ones that come out of a factory and are cooked in the microwave, if we always dump a pound of shredded cheddar into the pot? 

Join me in this easy cooking life. Buy good meats and vegetables and keep the cooking simple. Eat the fruits of your time spent in the kitchen, and see if your taste buds are happier. Do this long enough, and your health may even improve! Remember when everyone was doing Whole 30??? It's still around, and it's not a gimmick. 

Sometimes, maybe most of the time, all that's needed for a properly stocked kitchen is good olive oil, good butter, sea salt, black pepper in a grinder, a few fresh herbs, fresh vegetables and a little bit of protein here and there.