Long-Cooked Vegetables
- Total Time
- 2 hours 20 minutes
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- ⅓cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 8cloves garlic, peeled
- ½teaspoon red-pepper flakes
- 1large shallot, thinly sliced
- 3anchovy fillets, optional
- 2pounds Romano beans, green beans, wax beans or filet beans
- 2tablespoons water
- 20large basil leaves, divided
- Kosher or fine sea salt
- ½of 1 lemon
- Ricotta salata, pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese, for serving, optional
- 2¾pounds broccoli (about 3 large heads or 6 smaller ones).
- 2pounds summer squash (about 6 medium zucchini), trimmed and cut into 1-inch long pieces on a bias.
- 2pounds cauliflower or broccoli romanesco (about 1 large head or 2 smaller heads). Trim the florets into 1½-inch pieces, and cut any remaining stem into ½-inch thick slices. Use the leaves too.
- 2¼pounds fennel (about 5 medium bulbs), trimmed and cut into ½-inch thick wedges.
- 2½pounds red or orange bell peppers (about 6 peppers), seeded, stemmed and sliced into ½-inch wide pieces. Or, preferably, 2¼ pounds red Italian frying peppers, stemmed, seeded and halved lengthwise.
- 2pounds celery (about 2 bunches), trimmed and cut into 4-inch long pieces.
Vegetable Variations
Preparation
- Step 1
Set a large Dutch oven or similar pot over low heat. Add oil, garlic, pepper flakes, shallot and anchovies (if using), and stir to combine. Gently cook mixture, stirring occasionally, until the garlic and shallot are just very lightly sizzling, 5 to 7 minutes. Do not brown.
- Step 2
Add beans and water. Roughly tear 10 of the basil leaves into the pot. Add 1 teaspoon kosher salt or ½ teaspoon fine sea salt, and stir to combine. Cover the pot, and reduce heat to as low as possible.
- Step 3
Cook beans until the steam has caused them to wilt, about 45 minutes. Stir, and continue to cook 1 hour and 15 minutes more, stirring every 20 minutes or so. Treat the shallot as a bellwether — if you hear it starting to sizzle or see it beginning to brown, scrape the bottom of the pan and add a teaspoon of water to deglaze, if necessary. The garlic cloves will completely break down and coat the beans as they cook.
- Step 4
After 2 hours, remove the lid, and increase the heat to medium-high. Let any remaining water evaporate, and lightly brown the beans, stirring regularly, about 10 minutes. Roughly tear in the remaining basil. Taste, and adjust salt, as needed.
- Step 5
Transfer the beans to a serving dish, and finish with a squeeze of lemon and a grating of ricotta salata, pecorino Romano or Parmesan, if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Vegetable Variations
- Step 6
(Just to be clear, the weights given here are guides for shopping, before trimming and prepping. The aim is to end up with about 2 pounds of trimmed, prepped vegetables.) When preparing broccoli, squash, cauliflower or fennel, take care when stirring toward the end of the cooking to prevent the vegetables from falling apart.
Private Notes
Comments
I think I'll try this. It goes quite well with my new system, developed since I got old, of putting food on a burner or in the oven and then falling asleep (accidentally) until the vegetable or meat is dead. Maybe a planned death would work better, with attention paid to the amount of water, seasonings and heat level.
A summer favorite, growing up, was fresh taglierini tossed with zucchini that had been cooked in this way. Now it's a staple for my children and their children too -- immensely flavorful, a great way to use up the six pounds of zucchini that just emerged from your garden.
A shower of minced garlic in the last five minutes of cooking is a nice addition. And, with enough pasta, a couple of slices of salami on the side adds up to a deeply satisfying late-summer meal.
Some years ago I discovered the Turkish delight, vegetables cooked "zeytinaglu" - a technique of very long cooking in a lot of olive oil (and aromatics and tomato). I do it with green beans; I don't use the giant amount of olive oil that is recommended, but I do the very long cooking, and it is divine.
Can you do this with less olive oil?
Every mother in my small town neighborhood during the wartime 1940s cooked vegetables this way, and they tasted horrible. Of course people like my mother knew nothing about seasonings, other than salt and pepper/Garlic was a foreign substance, and soy sauce unheard of. I'm glad to learn there's a way to cook long and slow that ends up delicious, but my memories of pushing those beans or asparagus to the side of my plate are still with me. Maybe in time.
Trust the process! It is delicious. Received a ridiculous amount of long beans in our CSA so tried this. Served at an informal dinner party not knowing how it would work out and it was a hit.