Cutting Vegetable For A Green Polenta Recipe

Video Transcript

"Okay, I'm Kristina Vanni for Expert Village and it is time to get cooking. So I am going to start with two parsnips and you want to cook off the woody end. Oh, I've already peeled it and gotten the outside off. You want to cut off this woody end so that it will get a little stiff there. So go ahead and chop those off first and toss them in our garbage bowl here and I will take off the extra tip. Then you just take these and I am going to cut them into about one inch pieces. Do this at the same time. Okay then it gets kind of thick and you have to do them one at a time. Don't want to hurt yourself. And at the end because parsnips are really tiny at the front and really big at the end, I would kind of cut them in half so that they are nice pieces to bite. Okay and I am going to toss them into the roasting pan. Okay and do the same things with the other ones. These two parsnips they vary in size a lot when you get them at the store or the Farmer's Market. But they should weigh about a half a pound, both of them together. And then I am going to go ahead and do the same thing with my other root vegetable, the carrots. I've already peeled these as well. I think that carrots are better when you get them with the greens on the top. They just seem to have more moisture, they taste better and you know looks pretty. So I would always get the ones with the tops especially if you are buying at the Farmer's Market. They usually come that way. So I've already peeled them and I am going to cut off the yucky part here and cut off the ugly part at the bottom and again, this will be about one inch chunks. I like these nice hardy bites because when you roast them, they will shrink a little bit. Once they are in our casserole, they will look really nice. So just toss these as well into the roasting pan and all of this can go into the garbage bowl. Then we have a yellow pepper. So cut this up as well. We have yellow peppers here and red peppers. but you could throw in green or whatever color you want. Actually with any of this if there is a vegetable that looks particularly good at the Farmer's Market that day, go for it. Maybe some squash, zucchini something like that. That would be great too. But this is just what sounded good today. This is what was fresh at the market. So your peppers you are going to want to cut them into one inch pieces, one inch strips. This color is absolutely beautiful. Adds so much brightness to the dish. I'm all about colorful when it comes to any recipe. They always say eat with your eyes first. So that's our yellow pepper and we have two red peppers. Because red is a good color, you should have twice as much I guess. So I'll cut this up and I forgot to tell you that I am taking out the core and the seeds of these peppers because of course, all of the hotness is in the seeds. So you don't want to have too much in there. A little bit is good but too much, you will be dying. We don't want that. So again, about one inch strips. I like these nice and long because they are all tossed together. Get out all of this gunk. You can just brush this right into your garbage bowl. It saves you going back and forth to the trash can. Nice and crisp, so that's that for the peppers. "