Food, Home & Lifestyle

A Vegetable Lunch: Roasted, Steamed, and Raw

Lesson time 19:39 min

Alice walks you through her process of planning an India-inspired lunch based on the ingredients in her shopping basket. Learn how to prepare vegetables three ways, and reach into your pantry to round out the meal.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Timing Your Cooking • Roast for Intense Flavors • Steam for Delicate Flavors • A Raw Salad: Marrying Texture and Flavor • An Everyday Sauce: Yogurt Raita • Plate and Serve Lunch

Alice Waters

Teaches the Art of Home Cooking

In 16+ lessons, learn to cook beautiful, seasonal meals at home from the James Beard Award-winning founder of Chez Panisse.

Preview

ALICE WATERS: Simplicity, as in this lunch menu, is incredibly valuable. It doesn't mean you haven't thought something through. In fact, it's the reverse. You've thought it through so well that you can just do it simply. I decided I'm going to make a little lunch with all of these ingredients here. And I'm trying to really think about timing. What do I need to do right at the last minute? And what do I need to do ahead of time? I'm thinking of roasting the squash with some of this kaffir lime leaves from my garden. I'll just chop them up and put them in with the squash. While the squash is cooking, I'm going to make a carrot salad with cumin. That's perfect for the timing. And then I'm going to make a little raita, so that we all go with it all of these vegetables that I'm cooking. And I'm going to warm up the rice, add some coriander that I already chopped. And the very last thing I'm going to do is steam the turnips. When you roast something, it intensifies the flavor. And really, any vegetable, it's pretty much wonderful roasted in the oven, just with a little olive oil and some salt. And squash, it's exceptional. I'm going to take off the ends, and I'm going to peel it a little bit, but not too much. I love the kind of look of the whole vegetable after it's cooked. So I'm going to leave a little bit of the skin on there. And again, all scraps in my compost. What I'm going to do is cut this in half and cut it this way so that I don't endanger myself. And then I'm going to bring my compost over here and take out the seeds. And now I'm going to cut these in very even pieces. That's what's important, so that they all cook at the same time. If you cut them too thinly, they won't have the really beautiful, soft part in the center. And I'm just going to cut up a little bit of this, because I want it to release its oils. And I'm not being very careful about it, because I'm going to take them out before I put the squash on the plate. OK. Now I'm going to put the squash in the bowl and season it. I think I'll put these kaffir limes in the bowl too, leaves. Pour a little olive oil over, some salt, a little bit more. Toss them. And then I'm going to lay them out on the baking pan. Maybe a little bit of red pepper flakes too. Then I'm going to put them in a very hot oven-- it's about 400 degrees. And they'll take, oh, I'd say, maybe 20 or 25 minutes to cook. It's amazing what happens to vegetables when they're simply roasted with olive oil and salt. Even the oddest vegetable that you could possibly imagine-- like kohlrabi-- is transformed when you cut it and roast it. The reasons that I wanted to steam them is that this time of year, they are incredibly sweet. These are new turnips, they aren't the turnips that have been stored during the winter. And I would think about it very different. I might roast the turnips at another time. Now these here are a little bit bigger t...

About the Instructor

Alice Waters started America’s farm-to-table revolution. When she founded the iconic restaurant Chez Panisse, her local, organic ingredients sparked a movement and earned her the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef. In her first-ever online cooking class, Alice opens the doors of her home kitchen to teach you how to pick seasonal ingredients, create healthy and beautiful meals, and change your life by changing the food you make at home.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Alice Waters

In 16+ lessons, learn to cook beautiful, seasonal meals at home from the James Beard Award-winning founder of Chez Panisse.

Explore the Class