Making Green Look Good and Taste Better

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

You know how your mom tried to trick you into eating vegetables by hiding the broccoli and sliced carrots between layers of penne and melted cheese for a particularly colorful take on baked Mac 'N Cheese? If persistent, maybe you were able to extract one or two green things from the congealing cheese, but try as you might, a few florets of broccoli inevitably clung to the cheese, made it onto your fork and into your mouth! For most of us, despite extraction efforts, eventually the hunger pains took over and the need for cheese and noodles overcame the aversion to vegetables. Just like that, tricky Mom got you to eat your veggies.

Mom was on to something with her vegetable tricks. Sure with all our self-righteous farmer’s market trips we think as adults we no longer need these devices, but the evidence of grownups eating less and less veggies every year says otherwise. What mom knew that we may have forgotten in our own adult years is that the key to getting kids to eat vegetables, making them both look interesting and taste good, is the key to getting grownups to eat vegetables too.

Since we eat with our eyes first, the looking good part is the place to begin when working on getting those green things into everyday meals. A pile of green on a plate might as well be flashing bright red warning lights to those who are suffering from vegetable aversion. Taking small steps to incorporate vegetables, just like sneaking broccoli into Mac and Cheese, is a safe way to ease into this food group.

For instance, if you know your salad-scared husband would prefer beef stir-fry over a spinach salad, go ahead and make the stir fry. When the beef is just about cooked, toss in a handful of baby spinach for each person who is eating. Raw, this handful would be the equivalent of a side spinach salad for each person. Cooked, the spinach wilts in about 30 seconds rendering it nearly invisible next to the beef and so harmless that even as the fork bound for beef picks up a wilted spinach leaf or two, the flavors will blend seamlessly leaving the non-vegetable eaters at the table totally unaware they just did something healthy.

Part of what makes the baby spinach trick doable is smallness of the green. Baby spinach may already come small but other more nerve shaking vegetables can be made more approachable to picky eaters just by cutting down the size. Sautéed asparagus cut into one-inch long bite sized pieces on the diagonal is a nice presentation in an easy to sample format. Similarly, a Brussels sprout cut into quarters or thinly sliced is easier is less scary than the whole format. And shredded kale mixed in with pasta is easier to scoop up than a bowl of braised winter greens.

Back to the Mac ‘N Cheese trick. Part of what makes it such successful foolery is that most kids already like cheese and noodles. There is nothing like pairing a vegetable to a known loved food in order to make it more enticing to eat. For example, have you ever sautéed broccoli rabe in duck fat? How about topped a spinach salad with crumbled bacon? Or shredded a snow-like pile of Parmesan over arugula? Maybe even sautéed Brussels sprouts in rendered bacon fat, doused in a bit of Balsamic vinegar to finish, then topped with reserved crumbled bacon, toasted pecans, and Parmesan cheese? Well, that last one might be best saved for special occasions but the point is, never underestimate the power of a little fat and a little umami to turn a sometimes frightening green vegetable into something suddenly delicious.

I am not a mother yet but as I very slowly try to introduce my very grownup boyfriend to some new green vegetables, I am often reminded of the fast ones my mom would try and pull on us as kids. Something must have worked because I grew up a lover of all things salad (if only she had tried the bacon trick I might not have taken so long to come around to zucchini and eggplant). With a little patience, and a lot of duck fat, I am happy to say I’ve watched at least one former vegetable hater come to like arugula and at least tolerate asparagus. Just like the hidden veggie Mac ‘N Cheese, if it looks like something we like and tastes good, there may still be hope for the picky vegetable eater inside all of us.

Serves/Makes: 6

• 1 1/2 pound rib eye or filet of beef, fat trimmed off
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 large red onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 6 green onions
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 1 1/2 tablespoon white wine
• 2 teaspoons fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 4 cups baby spinach, loosely packed
• 6 tablespoons lime juice
• salt and pepper
• cooked rice