Quick Vegetable Main Dishes

By Food & Wine
Updated March 08, 2017
Credit: © Kana Okada
From a layered eggplant, zucchini and tomato casserole to a rustic vegetable tart, here are some fantastic and quick vegetable recipes.
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Crabless Cakes with Hearts of Palm & Corn

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When chopped, hearts of palm break down into shreds that look like fresh crab meat. Richard Landau seasons the hearts of palm cakes with Old Bay, vegan mayonnaise and Dijon mustard for a sensational main course.

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Cauliflower Steaks with Spiced Corn

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Eat this cauliflower filet with a steak knife; it's surprisingly hefty.

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Summer-Vegetable Casserole

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The restaurant at Abruzzo's Sextantio hotel serves centuries-old recipes like this simple dish of layered summer vegetables.

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Asparagus and Bok-Choy Frittata

Credit: © KAREN MORDECHAI
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When making an Italian frittata, don't limit yourself to traditional ingredients. The Asian flavors that fill this version offer a real change of pace. Cook the eggs on top of the stove or in the oven—but be sure to use moderate heat so they don't turn rubbery.

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Spring-Vegetable Paella

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You don't need a paella pan to make paella; any large frying pan will do. Serve this paella hot or at room temperature (as it is often eaten in Spain), as is or topped with toasted sliced almonds.

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Fresh Vegetable Curry

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Chef Way Vikram Sunderam blanches the carrots, squash and green beans individually before cooking them in the curry sauce.

Easy Way Cook the vegetables directly in the sweet and spicy curry sauce.

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Baked Butternut Squash–and–Cheese Polenta

Credit: Quentin Bacon
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Anna Thomas's 1970s book, The Vegetarian Epicure, is iconic; updated in the '90s and rechristened The New Vegetarian Epicure, it focuses on recipes for entertaining. One of her latest dishes is this crusty baked polenta, swirled with mashed butternut squash and smoked Gouda cheese.

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Broccoli-Rabe and Ricotta Frittata

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Though frittatas are often served cooled as a first course, they make an equally good main dish, either warm or at room temperature. Here ricotta mellows the bite of broccoli rabe.

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Vegetable Potpies with Sweet Potato Biscuits

Credit: © Ditte Isager
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"At every gathering these days, there will be a vegetarian," says Renato Poliafito. Stefania Rubicondo, a baker at Baked and its resident non-meat-eater, brought these wonderful individual pies, filled with a mix of sweet celery root, brussels sprouts and parsnips in a sage-infused cream sauce and topped with tender biscuits made with roasted sweet potato.

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Polenta with Pinto Beans and Roasted Vegetables

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This satisfying dish can be whipped up in a breezy 30 minutes.

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Crispy Kale-and-Tofu Salad with Coconut

Credit: © Quentin Bacon
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Heidi Swanson, author of 2007's Supernatural Cooking, has already proven she's a master at creating amazingly healthy and tasty vegetarian recipes with very few ingredients. Here, she toasts kale, coconut and tofu until lightly browned and crisp, then tosses them with brown rice.

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Spinach Bread Pudding with Lemon and Feta

Credit: © Antonis Achilleos
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Heidi Swanson, who blogs about healthy food on her excellent website, 101 Cookbooks, shares this lightened bread pudding in her cookbook, Super Natural Every Day.

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Winter Vegetable Chili

Credit: © Con Poulos
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This vegetable chili, thick with kidney beans and hominy (dried, hulled corn kernels), is deliciously smoky and spicy.

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Maple Root-Vegetable Stir-Fry with Sesame

Credit: © Con Poulos
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In Korea, cooks typically create stir-fries with just one kind of vegetable—lotus root, say, or potatoes. David Chang decided to break with tradition and stir-fry an assortment of vegetables, including Jerusalem artichokes and parsnips. Also unconventional is the maple syrup he adds to the dish; there are maple trees all around South Korea but not much maple syrup.

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Swahili Vegetable Curry

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The South Asian spices in this vegetarian stew reflect the influence of Kenya's generations-old Indian community on the national cuisine. Feel free to substitute other vegetables based on seasonal availability, as Hubert Des Marais does.

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Layered Eggplant, Zucchini and Tomato Casserole

Credit: © Quentin Bacon
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When your garden's too prolific, have friends over for a swap: your excess produce for theirs. But save some vegetables to make the irresistible casserole here.

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Spring Vegetable Stew

Credit: © Anna Williams
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When fresh fava beans are available, use them in place of the cranberry beans.

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Oven-Roasted Tomatoes Stuffed with Goat Cheese

Credit: © Martin Morrell
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For these buttery-soft roasted tomatoes, Alain Coumont boosts the flavor of the creamy goat cheese filling with garlic and basil. The result works both as a side dish or a main course with a salad and crusty bread.

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Luxe Bubble and Squeak

Credit: © John Kernick
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Traditionally made with mashed vegetables left over from a Sunday roast (here shaped into cakes and pan-fried), bubble and squeak allegedly gets its name from the sound the ingredients make in the skillet.

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Rustic Vegetable Tart

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Kenny Rochford loves to pair this tart with citrusy Medlock Ames Sauvignon Blanc. "This area is so hot, I'd have bet money on that grape not succeeding here," he says, "but I had to eat my hat."

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Mushroom-Stuffed Eggplant

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Greek Xinomavro pairs nicely with this savory veggie dish.

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Roasted Delicata Squash with Quinoa Salad

Credit: © John Kernick
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Quinoa is definitely a superfood: A grain-like seed, it's a "complete" protein containing all eight essential amino acids (another plus: it cooks much more quickly than most grains). To create a terrific vegetarian main course, Michael Symon of Cleveland's Lola tosses quinoa with arugula, apple, raisins and fresh herbs, then spoons the salad into a halved baked squash (a great source of iron and vitamins A and C).

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Tofu, Eggplant and Shiitake Noodle Soup

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Chef way The base for this tofu, eggplant and shiitake katiev ("noodle soup" in Cambodian) is a made-from-scratch vegetable stock with a long ingredient list, including two types of cabbage and dried Chinese mushrooms.

Easy way To simplify the Cambodian noodle soup, we added fewer vegetables to store-bought vegetable broth.

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Broccoli and Wild Mushroom Casserole

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Photographer and Alabamian Robert Rausch grew up eating vegetable casseroles—he and his mother are both vegetarians. The broccoli casserole his family ate is a step up from the standard church cookbook recipe, which calls for using canned mushroom soup: In place of that, he uses wild mushrooms. He still relies on Ritz crackers, though, for the crispy, buttery topping.

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Braised Baby Artichokes with Tomato Coulis

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This healthy, zippy Provençal classic is known as artichokes barigoule. Served over whole-grain brown rice or buckwheat couscous, it makes a lovely vegan main course.

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Eggplant Börek

Credit: © Petrina Tinslay
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Börek is a Middle Eastern pastry filled with anything from vegetables to cheese and ground meat. For this version, Meltem Conant sautés eggplant, peppers and tomatoes and bakes them in layers of phyllo. It's a great option for a vegetarian main course.

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Poblano-and-Cheddar-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

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The Good News Dr. Andrew Weil believes cooked mushrooms are more nutritious than raw ones, so F&W's Grace Parisi developed this vegetarian entrée of grilled mushrooms filled with smoky chiles.

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Celery Root and Mushroom Lasagna

Credit: © John Kernick
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"In Marche, we only make lasagna for special occasions like Christmas," Fabio Trabocchi says. For this streamlined version of his luxe lasagna in bianco (white lasagna), he layers flat noodles with a supremely rich sauce, along with a root-vegetable ragù, fresh mozzarella and whole basil leaves.

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Eggplant Parmesan with Crisp Bread Crumb Topping

Credit: © Kana Okada
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This eggplant Parmesan is all it should be: delicate slices of fried eggplant nestled in a bright, tangy tomato sauce, layered with gooey fresh mozzarella. The best part is the exceptionally crisp topping, made with dry bread crumbs.

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