St. Patrick's Day Dinner (5 Easy Veggie Sides)
Sautéed Red Cabbage, Boiled Potatoes, Boiled Carrots, Sautéed Mushrooms and Spinach, Roast Asparagus
This was, without a doubt, the strangest St. Patrick’s Day we’ve ever had. I’m sure that goes for everybody while we are in a state of pandemic-induced quarantine. It feels like a very bad, very surreal, apocalyptic, dystopian film with a poorly written plot. But I digress.
Coming from an Irish family, I always enjoyed our annual meal of traditional foods (sans corned beef of course!). My mother always said the plate must have the colors of the Irish flag - so plenty of green, orange, and white.
Well… THIS year, when I went to buy a nice green cabbage, orange carrots, and white potatoes, everything was sold out. The produce shelves were so picked over you would’ve thought it was the last grocery store on earth during the zombie apocalypse.
I managed to get my greedy hands on an itty-bitty red cabbage, a small bunch of multi-colored carrots, and a nice big bag of white, purple, and red-skinned fingerling potatoes. So in addition to the green and white, this year’s meal boasts a lovely hue of bluish purple! At least we can always count on some fresh parsley to add additional green (I think I bought the last bunch of parsley in America).
Be sure to pair this meal with a Guinness (if you can find one) and follow it up with some Irish Coffee.
Sautéed Red Cabbage
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 head of red cabbage, sliced and cored
1 medium onion, chopped
3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tsp white sugar
1 Tbsp back mustard seeds
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh chopped parsley to garnish
Instructions:
Heat olive oil and onions in a large pan over medium-high heat.
When onions are translucent and soft, add cabbage. Saute, stirring every minute or so, for about 8 minutes or until the onions start getting dark brown and sticking to the pan.
Add vinegar (and a little water if the vinegar isn’t enough liquid to un-stick everything) to deglaze. Stir/scrape pan with a wooden spoon to make sure nothing is sticking to the pan.
Add sugar, mustard seeds, salt, and pepper, and stir to incorporate. Cover and cook on low heat until cabbage is extremely tender (20 min or so).
Garnish with parsley and enjoy!
Boiled Potatoes
Ingredients:
Any potatoes - cut into 1-inch cubes (or, if fingerlings, you can cut in half or leave whole)
Vegan butter, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
Parsley, to garnish
Instructions:
Add potatoes to a large pot of salted water. Bring to a rolling boil.
Boil until potatoes are fork-tender (should be about 20-30 min depending on your potatoes!)
Drain and slice potatoes and return to pot (heat should be off).
Add butter (I always add a very liberal hunk), salt, and pepper to taste, and carefully stir to coat potatoes. Be careful not to mash them!
Garnish with lots of parsley and enjoy!
Boiled Carrots
Ingredients:
1 small bunch carrots (about 3 cups), cut into 1-2 inch pieces
Vegan butter, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
Parsley to garnish
Instructions:
Add carrots to a medium pot of salted water. Bring to a rolling boil.
Boil until carrots are fork-tender (should be about 15 min).
Drain and return to pot (heat should be off).
Add butter, salt, and pepper to taste, and stir to coat carrots.
Garnish with lots of parsley and enjoy!
Sautéed Mushrooms and Spinach
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 lb spinach (about half of one of those big plastic containers’ worth)
2 cups button or white mushrooms, sliced
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (optional)
Instructions:
In a large pan/pot, heat olive oil, salt, and pepper over medium-high heat.
Add mushrooms and fry/saute until golden brown (stirring occasionally to prevent sticking and to ensure even cooking. If they stick to the pan too much, add a little water to de-glaze).
When mushrooms are a nice golden-brown, add spinach. Using tongs, turn spinach to coat in oily mushroom mixture.
Reduce temperature to medium and continue to saute (using tongs to turn spinach frequently to ensure even cooking) until spinach wilts.
Add nutritional yeast and stir until incorporated (this step is optional)
Enjoy!
Roast Asparagus
Ingredients:
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed so only the tender spears remain (about 5-in. long pieces)
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
2 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions:
In a large mixing bowl, combine oil, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper.
Toss asparagus in mixture, evenly coating.
Arrange asparagus on cookie/baking sheet so spears do not touch.
Cook in oven on broil setting for about 5-10 min until just crispy - watching carefully so as not to burn!! (The time here really depends on your oven… mine gets very hot very quickly, so this only takes five min. Make sure you watch the asparagus, because I have definitely burned it before…)
Enjoy!
