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Our beloved columnist and all food genius Jenny Rosenstrach has written a new cookbook! Weekly Vegetarian chronicles Jenny, her husband, and their teenage daughter commit to going without meat for a week. He developed more than 100 bold and tasty meals, including Mushroom Galette, Cauliflower Chops and Pizza Salad. I LOVE a fun and inspiring book, so here I am talking to Jenny about vegetable stars, nice recipes for people, and fun failures …
First of all, how did you decide to become a vegetarian of the week?
Long ago, our family used to say that we should eat less meat – for health reasons, for the environment – but we were scared to know the next steps, as many of our family favorites were centered around meat. Then one day, on her way to the office, I sent a message to my husband, We need to do this. And he was there. Our kids were ready too. This helped motivate me. The week-long strategy did the same – it made it easier for me to get in knowing we weren’t going to go absolutely say goodbye to our favorites.
Has the transition been harder or easier than expected?
The first thing I did was sit down and look at the repertoire of meals we cooked all the time, and it was good to see that we already had so many recipes that were vegetarian on the bench – like pizzas! As well as black bean burritos, grain bowls and pasta, of course. I found that I immediately turned to six or seven vegetarian meals.
It seems doable.
The whole book was basically about recycling my brain to the idea of “vegetables first”. I didn’t want to eat meat, I wanted to learn how to cook with vegetables and I wanted to become the most attractive on the plate.
I love putting vegetables in first.
It’s amazing how rooted the meat is, at least in my brain. I thought, Okay, leave the chicken and what I surround the chicken with; let’s have burgers and what we put around burgers. So I realized in my aha moment “What meat should we have?” “What vegetable do I love?” I could think of it. and what vehicle I like it – a bowl, pizza, salad, soup, a bunch of small dishes? »This makes it much easier to focus on cooking and the meal around vegetables.
Did any of the components become MVP?
Chickpeas! My kids have never liked this road before – they would drown in hummus but they wouldn’t be able to eat cold chickpeas in a salad. That changed when I learned how to do it crisp. I fry or roast them and throw in spices, but mostly my kids tend to be salty. They have become my default protein. (It’s kind of like chicken for me.) You can add crispy chickpeas in grain bowls (on top) or in salads, or you can eat them with yogurt and flatbread. So easy.
Any ridiculous mistakes?
Yes, a lot! My sick children! We called an essay dish a “tofu massacre”. Melissa Clark had a podcast episode about reducing tofu. Supposedly, when you do it right, it behaves like grinding meat. I blame my patience for not hearing my specific clarifications, because when I cut it, it was somehow blurry and noodles. It was very raw. I also tried making fried tofu with buffalo wing spice and it was light orange. I was like, I can’t do this.
Which recipe did your family like the most?
Every time her husband Andy eats a mushroom cookie he says, “I’d pay $ 25 at a restaurant.” What’s fun is because it’s made with such basic ingredients – Pillsbury cake, supermarket mushrooms, frozen peas – but so satisfaction.
What about your girls?
They love it bean broth and vegetable burgersI have a big bunch for the weekend and I freeze. (They’re perfect for a weird meal before or after a late sports practice.) We also made a pasta with corn, summer tomatoes, and bacon. And my daughter Abby said, ‘Why don’t we try it without bacon?’ So now we toss in the cooked red onion, which adds as much umami-flavor and depth as the bacon. The whole dish is very good right now, I like it today, because corn and tomatoes are in season, and because it tastes like summer.
Pop Quiz: What would you be worth if you had some friends?
Mac n cheese made with small tomatoes. Or rigatoni walnut pumpkin, with chard and hazelnuts; looks beautiful with oranges and greens. Full showstopper, especially in the fall.
What would you do when you want to get on the couch at the end of a long day and see it White lotus?
Migas tacos. They are very good and are a little more special than eating scrambled eggs for dinner.
I’m always curious about the covers of books. How did you choose your cover image?
We had the idea to show off a bunch of dishes, and the sold beans deserved a “girl’s cover”. I also wanted something that a parent would see and think, My baby would eat that, so we showed the pasta. And beautiful sugar with peas and mint roast! I wanted to make sure people knew that this book would be a love letter for vegetables.
In the end, does eating vegetarian on weekdays make you any different?
Actually, there’s a way to eat meat (and all food) and feel healthy, so I don’t feel that way. I’m more than happy because I’m doing something beyond the four walls of our kitchen. I’ve always used the dinner table as an almost safe fictional world, where I feel distant from all the families of my four friends – school, work, pressure. But we all continued to read that influencing climate change, personally, one of the most important things we can do is eat less meat, so we feel good about using the dinner table in a better and better way.
Congratulations Jenny! Find his wonderful book here. Could you become a vegetarian of the week? Or are you one? Let’s all do it!
PS 21 completely subjective rules for growing teenage girls, and talking about how to get your child to dinner.
(Recipe photos Weekly Vegetarian according to Christine Han.)
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