College cooking should be fast, simple, cheap and taste better than most things you can purchase…

Luv Purohit | Assistant Visual Editor

Vegetables spice up college cooking with healthy and easy recipes.

College cooking should be fast, simple, cheap and taste better than most things you can purchase on Forbes Avenue. Otherwise, there’s no incentive to fire up the oven and pull out your spatula.

The first three of these attributes are relatively easy to work into your culinary repertoire. But taste  is where people often run into trouble and consequently fall into the trap of wolfing down Antoon’s pizza more often than they go to class.

That’s why I want to go out on a limb and suggest something that you probably haven’t heard since you were five years old: Eat your vegetables.

Yes, I am fully aware that I sound like your mother. And yes, I’m sure they tasted terrible when you first had them as a child. But incorporating vegetables into your cooking helps satisfy all the requirements for excellent collegiate cuisine, and thus has the potential to take mediocre dishes and transform them into delectable creations.

Also, vegetables are relatively cheap when bought fresh from supermarkets or farmers markets, and most types cook up quickly and easily with a lot of variations.

Let’s take the carrot. As a child, I wouldn’t even touch one — let alone eat one — and I’ll bet that many people had a similar experience. That’s because carrots often don’t get the culinary treatment they deserve.

While sitting on a platter at a family party with other dry, assorted veggies surrounding some lame store-bought dip, they are quite bland and, frankly, cause me to choke a bit.

However, cooked carrots coated in butter and brown sugar taste like candy and pair great with fish or chicken breasts that you can freeze and then easily defrost. Both entrees can be quickly cooked and plated with the carrots as a nearly well-balanced meal. Add some instant (or even microwaveable) rice or other starch to the plate, and you’re covering all of your nutritional bases at once in a hearty, filling meal.

So you’re still not sold on taking the extra time to create veggie side dishes? Then let’s discuss a different cooking strategy: incorporating those vegetables into the main dish.

Casseroles are simple to throw together and are so large that they last much longer than a single main dish. Freezing casseroles keeps them fresh even longer than storage in the refrigerator, allowing you to space out your casserole consumption so that you won’t get sick of eating the same dish all the time.

Incorporate sautéed onions and mushrooms into a cheesy tuna noodle casserole to create a salty, gooey, flavorful concoction. Tomato slices laid over top while the casserole bakes add a colorful, juicy contrast to the dish that take the flavor to the next level. Feel free to play around with different recipes and vegetable combinations until you find a balance that perfectly suits your palate.

After spending some time working different vegetables into all of your recipes, you’ll have a better appreciation for the variety of flavors that vegetables provide, and you’ll have a whole list of personalized recipes at your culinary disposal.

Compliments to the chef? Email Pat at [email protected].

Recipe

A favorite recipe of mine is for lasagna. I’ll concede that lasagna is a many-stepped process, but that doesn’t mean the process must take a long time.

Here is my personal recipe for lasagna, which is easily adapted to fit your own vegetable tastes. I hope you’ll take time in the near future to explore and develop those tastes – you’ll be a better cook for it. I’ll leave you with one suggestion, whichthat is the only vegetable I insist you should incorporate in your own lasagna: try adding spinach. Don’t be afraid, it will only make you a healthier cook …… and leave you comingwant to come back for thirds.

Feel free to make your own pasta sauce from scratch and purchase noodles that must be boiled before they can be layered; I’m willing to cut a few small corners to spend my time working on something that I find more beneficial to the flavor of the dish as a whole – the add-ins.

Pat’s simple, not-so-famous veggie lasagna:

1 box no-boil lasagna noodles

1 package spinach (frozen is easier, but fresh is more fun)

1 jar pasta sauce (doctored to suit your fancy)

8-ounce container ricotta cheese

3/4¾ cup grated parmesan cheese

14 ounce bag of shredded cheese (mozzarella, asiago, or some other type or blend of Italian cheeses)

garlic, basil, parsley, salt and pepper all added to taste

1/4¼ teaspoon nutmeg

1-3 tablespoons cooking oil

whatever cooked veggietables you’d like to include (I usually stick with mushrooms, eggplant and spinach)

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, combine the ricotta, eggs, spices (to suit your taste) and the other cheeses until well mixed.

Sautee the spinach in oil (with some fresh garlic, if available). Frozen spinach is quick and easy to defrostheat and requires less oil in the pan (only about a tablespoon), but I find that wilting fresh spinach in a pan of hot oil and garlic is much more fun and fills the whole kitchen with a beautiful aroma. Either way, add the nutmeg to the spinach at the last second before removing from heat. Strain all liquid from the spinach and add it to the cheese and egg mixture.

In a baking pan, layer ingredients in the following order, repeating until you reach the top of the pan: sauce, noodles, cheese, vegetablesgiesmushrooms (or whatever veggies you choose to include). Be sure that you end on a noodle layer and bake in the oven for about 30 to 45 minutes. When the lasagna is done baking, the top layer should be golden brown and the noodles should be curling and crunchy around the edges.