Vegetables with Mustard Sauce

The second week of June, and the household has settled into its summer pattern — a pattern made unfamiliar by James's absence during the week. The house holds four instead of five on weekdays, and the four are all women (Robert is a man but he spends his days in the workshop, which is its own kind of domestic island), and the womanness of the house during the day is a quality I notice and name because it reminds me of the parsonage — Mama and Joy and me, three females navigating a world that the patriarch had framed but that we furnished.

Carrie has been writing in the journal that has "Parsonage Kitchen" on the cover — not the cookbook itself but notes, observations, fragments of recipes and stories that she gathers from Mama during the evenings. The gathering is collaborative: Carrie asks questions, Mama answers (when she can), and Carrie writes the answers in her neat, precise hand. The collaboration is a gift I did not ask for — my daughter, voluntarily, joining the project that I have been carrying alone. The joining halves the weight. The halving is a relief I feel in my shoulders, which have been carrying the weight of preservation like a woman carrying water from a well that is going dry.

Dr. Okonkwo called with the results of Mama's latest assessment. The disease is progressing. The word "progressing" is a euphemism that does the opposite of what euphemisms are supposed to do — instead of softening the truth, it sharpens it, because progress implies movement toward a goal, and the goal of this disease is total. The medications are helping with agitation but not with memory. The memory is going. The going is steady. The steadiness is the cruelest thing about it — not sudden, not dramatic, but daily, incremental, a tide that recedes so slowly you can't see it moving until you look at where the waterline used to be and realize how much has been lost.

I visited Joy at Pathways and brought Mama's peach cobbler. Joy ate two servings and said, "More," which is Joy's food review — one word, definitive, irrefutable. I brought a third serving. She ate it. The cobbler is the bridge between us — the food that connects the sister who cooks to the sister who eats, the knowing to the unknowing, the able to the different-abled. The bridge is made of peaches and butter and cinnamon and the particular sugar that Mama uses, which is brown, not white, because "white sugar is for lazy cooks, Naomi, and I did not raise you lazy."

I made fried okra — the summer essential, the crispy, cornmeal-coated pods that are the Lowcountry's answer to French fries. The okra was from the James Island farm stand, the cornmeal was stone-ground, and the frying was done in Mama's cast-iron skillet, which has cooked more okra than any skillet in South Carolina and which shows its history in the black patina of a hundred summers of frying.

The night I made the fried okra, I also put together a simple vegetable plate — whatever was left from the farm-stand haul, dressed with the sharp mustard sauce that Mama used to make when she wanted something that “woke up the table.” It felt right to set something bright and clean beside the richness of the cast iron, the same way Carrie’s careful handwriting in that journal feels like a counterweight to all that is going quiet in Mama’s memory — vivid, present, holding the line. This is that dish: straightforward, honest, and exactly what a summer evening needs alongside whatever is coming out of the skillet.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 cups broccoli florets
2 cups cauliflower florets
2 medium carrots, sliced 1/4 inch thick on the diagonal
1 medium zucchini, sliced into half-moons
1 cup green beans, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Mustard Sauce:
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small garlic clove, minced
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Make the mustard sauce. Whisk together the Dijon mustard, whole-grain mustard, apple cider vinegar, honey, olive oil, and minced garlic in a small bowl until smooth and emulsified. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
Blanch the vegetables. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the carrots and green beans first and cook for 3 minutes. Add the broccoli and cauliflower and cook for 2 more minutes. Add the zucchini and cook for 1 final minute. All vegetables should be just tender but still hold their shape.
Drain and dry. Drain the vegetables in a colander and spread them on a clean kitchen towel or paper towels to remove excess moisture. This keeps the sauce from becoming watery.
Toss with oil and season. Transfer the drained vegetables to a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and toss gently to coat.
Dress and serve. Pour about half the mustard sauce over the vegetables and toss to coat. Taste and add more sauce as desired. Serve warm or at room temperature, with remaining sauce on the side.

Nutrition (per serving)

Vegetables with Mustard Sauce — The Cast-Iron Summer, Served Simply