La Vida Veggie

The Vegan-ing of the End

2010-07-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

I lasted about a year as a vegan. I can't remember what year it even was at this point, because, all told, the experience was pretty forgettable. I remember less about the changes in my body, the experiments with new foods, the realigned social agenda than I do about my longing for pizza. So back to dairy I went, with barely little more than a "smell ya later" to the vegan ethos.

Meat, on the other hand, I've had no real longing for over the years. I've said it before, and I'll try not to hammer this point home too much, but I grew up hating the meat portion of tri-component meals (the ol' protein-starch-veggie combo). If there were a late-night commercial advertising a CD compilation of People's Reactions To My Meatless Diet, some of the greatest hits would include:

1) Don't you miss ___ [steak, burgers, hot dogs, bacon, sausage]?
2) What does your mom cook for you? (I was 16 when I stopped eating meat)
3) You'll stop being vegetarian eventually.

First of all, do those compilation CD's even still exist? There's a reason why "Jungle Boogie" is perpetually followed by "Lady Marmalade" in my head, and I think it has something to do with a little thing called Disco Fever, available for the low, low price of $14.95. In 1994. Second of all, Color Me Badd as Track #3 is on repeat.

With the increasing awareness of socially- and environmentally responsibly produced meat and dairy products, I wonder if more vegans and vegetarians are inclined to switch back to animal proteins. I wonder what the data is. I wonder if people really are buying more locally and humanely raised animal products. I wonder if locavores are the new vegans.

Hold your fire, vegan punk-rockers and PETA cheerleaders. When I think about my experience with veganism - personally and vicariously - I think about its unbreakable connection to the visual art, music, and social reform. Then I look at the small cheese producers, chocolate-makers, butchers and restaurateurs who are currently on my radar. The artisan- and local food movement of today feels a lot like the vegan an vegetarian communities of eight, twelve, and (from what I've heard and read) twenty years ago. - artists, hippies, punk-rock kids of all ages with a motivation to change shit up and make delicious dreams come true.

Lemme cut to the chase - last week, I bought and cooked meat for the first time in over a decade. I hit the Brookline Farmer's Market hard, snatching up plump corn, vibrant bell peppers, and precious, petite potatoes. With great trepidation, then a surge of conviction, I approached the line for River Rock Farm. They offer a selection of fresh, dry-aged beef for seemingly affordable prices. I bought the lest expensive and most approachable cut - kebabs, $8.95 a pound. I took home 1.23 lbs (which yielded three meals for two people). Not only did I take on cooking beef for the first time, well, ever (I seriously think I've only ever cooked chicken breast), but I also made my maiden voyage on the grill. Long story short - I kicked the ass of both meat and grill. Oh good golly it was so good. Sock it to me, patriarchy.

Stupid-Simple Beef Kebabs (From A Gal Who's Blind at the Grill)

1- 1 1/4 lbs sirloin beef, cut into manageable chunks (very technical, I know. if this hadn't been efficiently cut into chunks, I wouldn't have known what to do with it. I have so much to learn)
1/3-1/2 cup olive oil
juice from one lemon
a few splashes of soy sauce
3 or 4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
some chopped parsley or mint
assorted veggies cut into 1/2'' cubes (I used onions, bell peppers, and new potatoes)
sea salt 'n' groun' peppa

Soak some wooden skewers in water for a half an hour. Toss everything but the beef and veggies into a bowl; cover and shake or whisk to combine. Add the beef and veggies; toss to marinate. Refrigerate for an hour. Um, then the stuff goes on a skewers, the skewers go on a pretty hot grill, turn the skewers over and marinate frequently. When the veggies can be poked without too much give, they're done. When the meat is no longer alarmingly bloody, it's done (or something like that).

Have We Me[a]t?

2010-07-24T05:05:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize that I owed so many people an explanation until I started proclaiming my life changes on, well, Facebook. Cries of confusion and hints at heresy prompted a long-overdue post. I'ma just break it right down - after a twelve-year hiatus, I've started eating meat again. I made the decision to drop the edge in preparation for a two-week trip to Sicily to study, ahem, the food and culture of Sicily. I've traveled before, and always knew that I missed out on so much by not eating according to the cultural, environmental and economic constructs of the region. I didn't even eat seafood on the coast of Chile. Moron. So, for education, for experience, for Sicilia, I resigned to eat absolutely everything that everyone else ate. I steeled myself for the emotional transmission, and dismissed others' concerns about my health - "Won't you get sick?" Thought I appreciated the concern, meat-mouths and veg-heads don't seem to realize how much chicken stock, pork fat, and fish gelatin work their way into things as innocuous as lentil soup, home fries, and multi-vitamins.

So my first bite of flesh was lamb. I could scarcely recall the sinuous texture and incomparable savoriness of roasted meat, and I had never even tasted lamb. The experience was quite unparalleled. And to my surprise, I really, really liked lamb. Baaaa. It wasn't all easy. I wept openly before eating ham, and I thought that the chicken liver I tried was possibly the most foul substance I'd ever put in my mouth. But I gave it all a shot - beef, spleen, pancreas, snails, fritolla (pictured above, and captured by the unsinkable Lauren Bennett. I can't verify if it was re-introducing flesh into my diet, eating farm-to-table every day, or the Sicilian air (seriously, the simple act of breathing there was its own pleasure), but I felt stronger and more energized that I had felt since I was a little kid, spending my summers stumping through fields and collecting crayfish in the creek.

I've eaten some meat since I've been back, and this week, I even cooked it. At home. On purpose. I've had a lot of time to think about it and to feel... ok about my decision. Feel free to grill me, chew me out, get to the meat of it (see what I did there?), because I'm happy to talk about my revival of occasional carnivorousness. And to close, I thought I'd reaffirm my commitment to una vida llena de veggies. This is a picture of my my favorite thing that I ate in Sicily: a "peasant soup" comprised of pasta, broth, and and assortment of vegetables picked from literally right outside the kitchen. I never knew that zucchini leaves could sing before I ate this soup.

PastaCon

2010-03-09T18:20:00.000-08:00

I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took my arms to recover from this weekend. Embarrassed enough that I just won't say how long. Let me downplay my frailty by emphasizing my nobility – I enlisted to assist in a kids' cooking class on Italian food. Or at least what the under-ten crowd recognizes as Italian: pasta, tomato sauce, meatballs. Baddabing baddaboom. I signed on for this very short notice, knowing full well that 1) Though I usually like kids, I haven't babysat since high school, 2) I panic before setting foot in a professional kitchen (again, NOT A CHEF), and 3) I've always relegated pasta-making to the grandmotherly- or Williams-Sonomaly-types. But, rather than leading these tots off a culinary cliff, I insisted on trying the recipes out at home before taking them under my wing. Which meant making pasta for the first time. Like an old schooler. With my wrists and a rolling pin.

Usually any dough I touch turns to immalleable mortar, but this pasta cooperated, rolling out and cutting most obligingly. The kneading, shaping, rolling and cutting took me about forty minutes though, and by the end, the bones in my wrists were quivering like rubber bands. I've often read that homemade pasta is worth the effort. Maybe it was Chef Lisa Falso's flawless recipe, or maybe I just put enough courage into it. But I was ready to agree after tasting the fruits of my labor. My fettucini-like strips were still a bit thick, but tasted rich and wholesome and soaked up a basic garlic/olive oil/red pepper flakes/Parmesan treatment in a way the bland, boxed stuff only dreams. The next day I worked with the kids, and saw how quickly we turned out sheet after sheet of paper-thin, comically stretched-out pasta. Both my gang of rambunctious boys and I thought it was pretty much the coolest thing ever. And damn did it make me resent those Williams-Sonomaly types with their gadgets. I'd be doing this once a week with those labor-saving toys.

Homemade Pasta with Oven-Roasted Broccoli

a recipe of homemade pasta – really a combination of eggs, flour, and a bit of water. Bust out a KitchenAid pasta attachment, a pasta roller from a yard sale, or your floured-up hands. Try it, sweat and curse your way through it, and thank me later.

1 small head of broccoli, trimmed into small florets
1/3 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
Parmesan shavings (I'd say at least ¼ cup, and you'll want to splurge on a nice cheese, like Grana Padano)
a generous few shakes (2 tsp-ish) red pepper flakes
a good pinch of sea salt

A note on the pasta: I've never salted water for pasta before. Criminal or judicious? With dried pasta, I don't think it matters. But when boiling fresh, whether you or Whole Foods made it, you should amply salt the water and bring it to a rolling, Biblical boil. Add the pasta and cook until it rises to the surface. I think mine took about 6 minutes. Drain it through a colander, or better yet (since it's a bit more delicate than the dried kind), remove it with a pasta spoon, shake off the access water, and place it in a colander until ready to toss with a sauce.

Preheat oven to 400F.

Steam the broccoli in a colander or directly in boiling water until barely blanched, just about a minute. Drain if necessary and wait until cool enough to touch. Toss the broccoli with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper in a small baking pan. Bake until darkened along the tops, about 15 minutes or so.

Heat the rest of the olive oil in a deep-sided pan over medium-low. When the oil is hot (test it with a sliver of the garlic), add the garlic and salt and swirl the pan around until the garlic is just cooked, less than a minute. Add the red pepper flakes and swirl a few times more. Add the pasta and toss it with the oil. Garnish each plate with the roasted broccoli and Parmesan shavings. Serves 4-6 (I think. I ate most of what I made).

"Chow-dare?? Chow-dare??"

2010-02-24T16:47:00.000-08:00

Feeling not much the student, not much the cook, but ever much the desk jockey has not been good on my psyche. I never imagined that taking a job at what is arguably BU's most rewarding but misunderstood red-headed stepchild of a department has taken its toll on me. Consequently, I've decided to take a semester off from class. Hey, mad props to the grad students who pull it off with two kids, an hour commute to class, an aging parent, a needy spouse, our any combination therein, but frankly, I think life is too damn long to justify driving myself crazy. So, my thinking cap rests perkily and patiently in the corner until I'm ready to put 'er back on.

In the meantime, it's time raining. It's cold. It's winter – still (oh, haven't you heard?) But after a surprisingly early end to the work day, I was in good spirits. An icy, soggy walk back from the train had me prepped for my first afternoon nap in ages, a cup of hot chocolate, some quality time with Murakami (who gets funnier the more I get to know him), and then a look through my cookbooks, some of which I haven't had time to open since I got them. One of them was Barbara Lynch's Stir, which was apparently a big hit by the end of last year. Now that I've finally opened it, I see why. The writing is funny and sassy without being obnoxious (I imagine it's a way of pushing her nails-tough/whip-smart Southie wunderkid angle), and the recipes are simple, thoughtful, and often genius. Her Creamy Potato Leek Soup with Bay Scallops (p. 93) prompted me to close the book and take to the kitchen. I was called to a mission to make myself a similar creation, knowing full well that I had no cream, no milk, and definitely no seafood. Ah well. This is was I came up with. Starch creates a creamy base for soup, hence the potatoes and beans. Without the butter, this could be a decent vegan chowder. I don't normally advocate for a bright, summery ingredient like corn in the throws of winter, but it was in my freezer, and these are desperate times. It came out surprisingly delicious – maybe my thinking cap snuck its way onto my dome.

Wintertime Corn Chowder

1 large shallot, minced
12 oz cannellinni beans, rinsed
1 large russet potato, peeled and cubed
2 cups vegetable stock
2 tablespoons butter or oil (olive or canola)
½ cup frozen corn kernels
2 scallions, mined into rounds
plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper
fancy olive oil for drizzling

Heat the butter or oil in a stock pot over medium-low heat. Add the shallot and cook until tender but not browned. Increase the heat to medium dd the beans and stir for a minute or two. Add the potatoes and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until the potatoes are just tender, about ten minutes. Puree the soup with an immersion blender until very smooth. You may need to add a bit of water and stir the pot around, especially to break up the beans. Stir in the corn and thaw in the hot soup for a couple minutes. Season with a big pinch of salt and, oh, a dozen grindings of black pepper. Serve in a bowl topped with lots of chopped scallions, a pinch of course sea salt or fleur de sel, and maybe a drizzle of buttery olive oil. Serves 3-4.

Apparently, "I" Like It

2010-01-19T17:05:00.001-08:00

One of the few, unsung glories of working in (slaving to?) "academia" is a magical time of year called "intersession." You might know it as winter break. Ten glorious days off a work-a-day schedule, no pending paper deadlines, and if you're lucky, a snowy landscape against a kitchen that begs for some use and abuse. This recipe accounts for both. I got really into making breakfast over break (poached pears over french toast, a savory bread pudding that needs some revision), and this frittata was on the line-up. Maybe I was inspired by recent breakfast-y posts. Perhaps it was five days of listening to tapas mastermind Deborah Hansen demonstrate tortilla española to middle-schoolers. Or, more sheepishly, maybe great minds really do think alike.

Anyway, I fixed this beast up for breaky. Yes, I am white. Yes, I dig on breakfast (I know, I know, my whiteness is showing). I just DON'T get into "going out for breakfast," contrary to popular blogpinion. Five years in the coffee-filling, eggs-back-to-the-kitchen-sending business will do that to you. I'm delighted to cook breakfast when I don't wake up twenty minutes before I need to catch the bus, a luxury I had over break! The filling for this morning delight was inspired by one of the best dishes at my old restaurant, an apple and cheddar omelette. My friend John used to order it for his shift meal, but he'd up the ante by adding spinach (or sausage if we weren't sharing that day). Either way, it was a winning combination. The only trouble with my attempt was that I used a tragically UNseasoned cast-iron pan, and this mother burned like a 13-year-old's face in the "coming-of-age" talk. I peeled off the blackened bottom layer and salvaged the leftovers. My advice: oil the hell out of the pan and keep the heat to a very modest low after you add the eggs. You'll save more face than I (or your barely-pubescent self) did.

Apple, Spinach and Cheddar Frittata

6 eggs

splash of milk, cream, or non-dairy milk (anything with vanilla is lovely)

good pinch of salt a a grinding of black pepper

1 tbsp. butter

2 cups or more fresh spinach (baby leaves or stemmed grown-ups)

1 apple, cored and cut into small cubes

3/4 - 1 cup sharp cheddar cheese (I love Wisconsin)

*If you like your eggs plenty done, heat of the broiler and adjust your oven rack if needed.*

In a bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, salt an pepper until the yolks are just broken an incorporated with the whites and milk.

Steam the spinach until just wilted... in a microwave, colander in a covered stock pot, or right in a saute pan, covered, with a couple tablespoons of water and a pinch of water. Squeeze of the excess water, then add the spinach, apple and cheese the egg mixture. Stir a couple times to mix.

Generously oil a deep-sided cast-iron skillet or saute pan. Heat over medium and add the butter. Rotate the pan to coat with butter as the butter foams. When the butter has just melted, add the egg mixture. Reduce heat to *low,* cover, and let the eggs cook for about 8 minutes. When you pull off the lid, the eggs will have puffed up and the top will be foamy. Slide onto a plate, cut into wedges and serve. If the frittata resists release, cover the pan with a plate an invert it. If you want a browner, more-done crust, throw it in the oven you've preheated and broil for a minute or two (no more). Serves 4-6.

'Mmm 'Mmm Flu

2009-12-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

This was not how I was planning on honoring the conclusion of the semester. There was suppooosta be a lot more Christmas shopping and beer-drinking involved. Instead I've spent the last forty-eight hours drifting in and out of consciousness like I had an oxy habit, hacking up archaeological remains from my lungs that would make Indiana Jones swoon, and catching up TV-via-the-internet. Several hours of the Daily Show later, I have to say that I'm shocked that the naughty-language-no-no crew is ok with Jon and Co.'s rampant use of “dick,” “dickishness,” and “assface,” but puts the iron fist down on “cock” (eehheheheh, á la Peter Griffin). I mean, at least “cock” has a counterpart in the animal kingdom. But who am I to question? I'm just a helpless recipient of third-party infotainment.

Between fits of feverish delirium and picking up the graveyard of used tissues on my bedroom floor, I followed through with hankering for something similar to chicken noodle soup. It started when my amazingly matronly sister brought me some velvety-delicious red lentil and rice soup on Thursday. I ate half of it and it got my wheels turning in the way-back direction of my mom heating up some Campbell's with Ritz crackers when we were young and sick. Of course, even when I was little, those dark, globular, pseudo-chicken bits freaked me right out. So, I have an updated, chikless response that has lots of immuno-boosting goodness. It's got all the tiny minced vegetables of the original, but it replaces the mystery meat with lentils. It took me a day and a half to finish it. I kept crawling back into bed over the effort of standing. Hopefully health input will balance out the net energy output.

Sick Day Noodle Soup

1 quart vegetable stock
2 cups water, or more as needed
1 carrot, finely diced
1 celery stalk, finely diced
1 large onion, diced
1 bell pepper, finely diced
a whole mess of garlic (six cloves or more), vertically sliced
2-inch piece of ginger, grated or minced
olive oil for saute
1/2 cup lentils
salt and fresh pepper
hot sauce
1-2 ounces spaghetti

Heat the olive oil in a stock pot. When it's warm, add the onion and saute for a couple minutes, until just translucent. Add the garlic and saute for another minute. Add the carrot, celery, pepper and ginger and saute for a couple minutes to soften. Add the stock and water, raise the heat, and bring to a boil. Add the lentils, cover, and cook until the lentils are cooked, about 20 minutes. Check the liquid level and add more water if it starts to look more sludgy than soupy.

In the meantime, cook the pasta and set aside. When the lentils are cooked, add the pasta an season the soup with a good pinch of salt, several grindings of pepper, and as much hot sauce as you're up for. It's good for your sinuses.

Cocoa Cram Fest

2009-12-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

By no rights whatsoever should I be interrupting my researching/writing cram session to write a blog post right now. But of course in the frantic twilight of the semester we have the first legitimate snowfall of the year. As the sunlight reached my window and bounced the vibrance of fresh, fleeting snow through the glass, I finally put the academics on life support to go for a quick walk. It was lovely out there; the Jamaicaway looked more like the interior of a snow globe than one of the more suicidal tracks in MarioKart. I came back invigorated, ready to focus – only after satiating one relentless craving for hot chocolate. It was a perfect storm of needing to make something, and actually having everything I need to make it. And as I write this and fish out the last cinnamon-y, cocoa-y bits from the bottom of my mug (so?), I feel prepared to take my sugarized, caffeinated brain back to business.

Cinnamon Hot Chocolate

½ cup almond, rice, or soy milk

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

sugar to taste (I used about a teaspoon, since I used sweetened almond milk)

½ teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon spicy (Vietnamese, Saigon) cinnamon

1 cinnamon stick

Heat the milk in a saucepan over low heat. When it just starts to steam, add the rest of the ingredients and whisk constantly for a minute, checking to make sure that the cocoa doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. Pour into one or two (but really one) mug, garnish with a cinnamon stick.

Tandoor-ish Tofu

2009-11-22T13:31:00.000-08:00

If you ever find yourself tempted to immerse yourself in the magnificent world of food studies, prepare yourself for an inexhaustible journey into the nature of “authenticity.” Seriously, people can't get enough of it. Who eats what and why and for how long and since when – these are the questions we ask to chip away relentlessly at someone's personal or cultural identity until we either figure out why they do what they do, or, more realistically, until we just start asking different questions. These are issues I love to explore, but ones that have rendered me incapable of just sitting down for “ethnic” food without deconstructing every menu item, every ingredient. I find this to be particularly the case with Indian food (though it applies just as much to “Italian,” “Mexican,” or – god help you - “American”). The bottom line is that there is no national cuisine of India, but an amalgamation of regional specialties. Even what is arguably the most “Indian” dish around – curry – is borne straight out of the womb of colonialism.

Despite my hyper-analytical brain and pseudo-scholarly cynicism, I still found myself yesterday taking stock of the ingredients I had on hand and deciding they spelled I-N-D-I-A-N. And hey, if an American-borne white girl can't marinate some Chinese-invented fermented soy in a mix of flavors that she calls Indian, then, shoot, we might as well take the curry away from the Brits.

Tandoor-ish Tofu

1 package extra-firm tofu, drained

¼ cup plain yogurt

1 tsp tomato paste

1 jalapeno, finely diced

1 tsp cider vinegar

1 inch grated ginger

pinch of brown sugar

1 clove of smashed garlic

2 tsp-ish of garam masala powder, or an audacious mix of cumin, cinnamon, fennel, nutmeg, black pepper... combined with a mortar and pestle

Preheat the oven to 350F. Cut the tofu into strips, cubes, or steaks. Combine the ingredients for the marinade in a small bowl, whisking together and adjusting the seasoning (I emphasized the cumin, just because I thought it was “safe”). Pour the marinade over the tofu in a small baking dish and marinate for twenty minutes or so. Bake for about ten minutes, or until the tofu is slightly browned, turn, and bake until the other side is browned. Serves 4-6.

Optimist Prime

2009-11-15T08:07:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the best things happen when we suspend our conventions. In love, and life, and the kitchen, there really are no recipes, no rules – just a continuum of trial and error. Quoth the lady Julia, after expertly flipping an omelette square onto the side of a saute pan: “you just have to have to courage of your convictions.” And how she stands to embolden us all.

So today I spare the recipe. Though I'm flattered that my mom requested that every page of this modest blog be printed out so that she may try these silly recipes (!), I really can't claim to know many of the rules. I'm just finally in touch with what feels right. I will, with that in mind, share this bangin' breakfast sammy I made today, one that last year's vegan-leanin', dogmatic locavore would have only dreamt of, and never realized. In completely non-structured format, I suggest you toast a couple pieces of bread, brush one with a touch of spicy mustard, fry or scramble an egg, slice up an apple, shred some Wisconsin sharp cheddar, heat up a couple Morningstar veggie patties, stack it all up, and go to town. Life is too short and too rich with potential to worry rules, be they self-imposed or otherwise. And I was too hungry to care that London-cat walked into the frame the instant the shutter turned. 'Cause this little glass of o.j. is half-full, y'all.

¡Ay Ay Arepas!

2009-11-08T06:15:00.000-08:00

Since incurring moving costs, darting between jobs, and spending several weeks without a paycheck, the food budget's been pretty tight. But I remembered how I avoided starvation in my early 20's on a thrift store employee's salary: ethnic = cheap. Find yourself an Indian, Chinese, or Latin market in your neighborhood and put your grocery savings towards bills, beer or, ahem, a new tattoo.

Enter my new affair with Hi-Lo, the Latin supermercado up the street. I'd rather go there than to the Stop-and-Shop in Jackson Square; it's closer and cheaper, and as long as I stay clear from the creepy meat aisle, I'm all set. No, it's not organic, not local, but it's what I got. And shopping there always inspires me to cook Latin. I wanted to do something with the Goya corn flour that my sister gave me awhile back. It's just been chillin' in my freezer, so for inspiration, I went straight to the back of the bag: arepas! They're a Columbian/Venezuelan griddle cake made from corn flour, sometimes milk and butter, or just water.

Polenta, mush, hasty pudding, grits, hominy - folk culture has a long history with similar dishes, as corn was often the only grain available to poor or disenfranchised groups. Most of our ancestors probably ate a steady diet of corn and cured meat, and we can be thankful if they were spared from pellagra. Which is why I'm always amused when a polenta dish shows up on a menu. Peasant food becomes haute cuisine and the green grass grew all around...

Anyway! ¡Back to arepas! I threw in some additions based on this Times recipe and had enough batter to make 'em twice. The first time I fried them, as tradition dictates, and found them to be crispy, yes, but too greasy even for this lover of all things deep-fried (potatoes, clams, oreos...). The next day I baked those babies, and while they were more palatable with less oil, I was missing the crispy outside. So, I'll lay out both ways and let you be the judge. Also, I wussed out and removed the seeds from the jalapeño, and I got no heat, which was not my plan. And let me just say that while I don't love cornmeal dishes (I've never had a polenta dish that I like), I see oodles of possibilities with these guys. I first tried them with flash-cooked cherry tomatoes. I ate my leftovers with sauteed kale and onions. With some sort of gravy, these would be a bangin' breakfast item.

Arepas

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup water, milk, or perhaps soy milk (which I just thought of!)

½ cup queso fresco o queso columbiano, crumbled

1 jalapeño, seeded if you're shy about heat, and finely diced

¼ cup cilantro, finely minced

possible accompaniments (not all traditional, but tasty): salsa, black beans, cooked greens, quartered tomatoes, chopped scallions, gravy...

For the dough: Combine the cornmeal and queso, then slowly add the water or milk and stir to combine. Allow the dough to rest for about 15 minutes. Form the dough into a golf-ball sized ball and flatten with your palm.

To fry: Add 3 tablespoons of mild oil (corn, grapeseed, or canola) to a a fry pan with a sturdy bottom. Heat the oil and when it's good and hot, add the arepas, cooking until crisp and browned on one side (about 3 minutes). Flip and cook the other side. Set on a paper bag or paper towel to drain.

To bake: Preheat oven to 375F. Grease a baking sheet or pan with oil. Add the arepas, bake until brown on one side (about ten minutes), flip and bake until the other side is browned.

To serve: You can slit a cooled arepa through the middle like a pita and stuff it with your choice of yummies. Or you can serve them sandwich-style, with two arepas subbing in for bread. Or you can serve them griddle-cake style, with some sort of veggie on top.

Operation: Rescue Soup

2009-11-05T09:23:00.000-08:00

Try though it might, my poor little body just can't seem to get over last week. Maybe it was working 32 hours in two days. Or that, for six days straight, every meal I ate was some combination of bread and cheese (I am not making this up). Or the excessive drinking that seems intrinsic to the life of a swingin' culinarian. All I can say that it is with great irony that I am staying home sick the day after being officially offered the job I've been unofficially doing for nearly two months.

Enter the botanical rescue squad! Ginger, miso, and local honey for immunity, and good god, anything vegetal. Nothing has to be prepped for looks, and there's something so earthy and wholesome going on here that it can't not make you feel better. At least, I hope that's the case for me.

Carrot-Miso Soup

3 cups water or stock

5-6 carrots, scrubbed and roughly chopped

1 large onion, roughly chopped

I medium potato, peeled and chopped

1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped

1 heaping tablespoon miso paste, preferably white (I used brown, which I don't actually love, but it worked.)

1 tablespoon honey

olive oil for saute

Heat the oil in stock pot over medium heat. Add the onions and stir until translucent, about five minutes. Add the ginger and carrots and cook for a couple more minutes, until the carrots start to soften. Add the water or stock, cover and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about twenty minutes, or until the carrots and potato are softened. Remove from heat, then stir in the honey and miso paste (it's important to add the miso at the end – boiling miso kills its happy little microbes that lend it its healthful quality). Puree with an immersion blender or food processor and season with a few grindings of black pepper. Serves 2-3.

Fall - In a Tortilla!

2009-10-25T19:24:00.000-07:00

I must have been inspired by the perfect-beyond-description, quintessentially Autumn in New England day today. I'm talking the bluest sky and the brightest leaves you can imagine. Like, it might not have been real. So I went for the staples: apples and butternut squash. I suppose I was partially inspired by a favorite from an old haunt of mine, The Other Side. I haven't been there since they started requiring a nylon messenger hat for entry, but I used to love that apple and brie sammich of theirs. But, I can say with absolutely no bias: this is better. I can say that because it won the approval of Executive Chef Kevin Olmstead of Pittsburgh's freshest, illest spot – J'eet Cafe (plug plug plug)! Like any good chef, he knows how to steal a good idea when he sees one, so watch for something a lot like it on him menu before long... Of course, we've been friends for years and he's been my biggest fan since post the first. So Kev, it's all yours. Consider it my housewarming gift. I'm so proud of you!

Apple and Butternut Squash Quesadillas with Brie and Caramelized Onions

3 tortillas
6 oz brie, cut into thin slices
1 medium apple (I used Cortland), sliced
1 medium onion, sliced into crescents
1 small (under 2 lbs) butternut squash, unpeeled, halved lengthwise, seeds scooped out
2 tbs butter
olive oil for saute
salt and pepper
minced cilantro, parsley, chives, or toasted walnuts for garnish

Preheat oven to 375F. In a shallow baking pan, place the squash halves face up and add the butter to the hollows where the seeds were. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the squash is mushy. Allow to cool slightly, then scoop out the flesh and set aside in a bowl. Stir in a little salt and pepper. Spread the squash over the tortillas.

Heat the oil over medium-low heat, add the onions. Cook for about 10-12 minutes, stirring frequently, until the onions are nicely browned and limp. Set aside.

In the same pan, place a tortilla with the squash, then add three or four slices of brie, the apple, and a spoonful of the onions. Allow to cook open-faced until the brie starts to melt, about three minutes. Fold the tortilla in half, press with a spatula, flip and press again, and transfer to a plate. Allow the quesadilla to sit for a minute, then cut into wedges and add your garnish. Serves 3-4.

What Happens to a Vegan Deferred?

2009-10-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

I think there's another, more closeted reason why my posts have have been so few. Like with any proper latent Catholic, it pertains to guilt. I started this blog with the ambition of posting healthful, wholistic, mostly vegan (or completely veganizable) recipes. Of course, posting in this vein implies that I'm living as such. And well, I've sort of fallen off the health-food wagon since starting school. It's really, really hard to maintain a healthy, animal-free lifestyle when you work at and attend a school with an outstanding French culinary program co-founded by Julia herself. Couple that with being broke, and my defenses are completely shot. When lunch time comes around, guess which one wins: the over-priced bagel sandwich from the chaotic hipster coffee shop down the street, or a few (free!) slices of hot, homemade pizza with potatoes and brie? And I haven't even gotten to the tuna aux poivre incident (the incident was that i loved it)...

So, the moral seems to be that I have no morals. Not true! More like I'm toying with my boundaries. As if to prove a point, I made one of my most un-vegan creations in awhile tonight: quiche. I hardly even had veggies to put in it. I had a paltry amount of broccoli, and I stretched it out by chopping the stem and cutting the florets reeaally small (which addresses my love for all things teeny-tiny). I've toyed with tofu-quiches before, and will likely revisit them. But I doubt anything soy-based will come out looking as drop-dead delicious as this.

Broccoli Quiche

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour

1/4 cup cold butter, cut into small chunks

3-4 tbs ice water

4 eggs

splash of half-and-half or whole milk

pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper

1 cup broccoli with its stem, cut into tiny florets

1/2 - 3/4 cup shredded cheese (I had mozzarella on hand)

To make the crust, combine the flour and butter with a butter knife. Add the water, a little bit at a time, and stir the mixture with the knife until a crumbly dough forms. Resist the temptation to use your hands! The warmth from your hands will warm the butter and give you a tough crust. Chilling the dough is the next step, and I just discovered this trick: slip the ball of dough into a plastic bag (I used the bag my broccoli was in), flatten into a disc, and refrigerate for half an hour.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 425. Bring a small pot of water to a boil and add the broccoli. Boil for just under a minute, strain, and rinse under cold water.

For the egg mixture, lightly whisk the eggs, half-and-half, nutmeg, pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper in a bowl. It's ok if the yolks don't completely mix in with the whites. Don't overmix, otherwise the mixture will back up tough and rubbery (can you tell that a light hand is the French way?).

Now press your dough into an 8- or 9-inch pie or tart pan. I must say that I used a 9-inch tart pan and was pressing the dough dangerously thin, so I would say stick with the 8-inch. Add the broccoli, then the cheese, then the egg mixture. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the tops in bubbling up and browned nicely. Allow to cool slightly before cutting. Serves 6.

Blog's Not Dead

2009-10-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

I live for the fall. Apples and crunchy leaves and scarves and pumpkin beer and pale blue skies wrapped up in the inexplicable scents of pepper and cinnamon that linger in the air until the first snow. And this is, without question, my favorite time to cook. This fall coincides with a big move, a new job, and 200+ pages of reading a week. But I've got an itch for the kitch. I will make something awesome, soon, I swear. You'll hear about it as soon as I do.

Summertime, and This Salad Is Easy

2009-08-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

A prolonged crack of the knuckles and uncurling of the USB cable, and I”m back to work. I can't believe I've let over a month go by without updating this thing; in fact, I've barely had time to check in on the awesome foodliness that's being written on out there. So, what have I missed?

The lamentation is old and tired, but true – summer is whizzing by way too fast. I've done some traveling, a lot of working, and maybe too much boozing, but it's been a good one. My recent trip to DC yielded a stop to the King Street Farmer's Market in Alexandria, Virginia, where I awed at the okra (not a Yankee specialty), and sampled a sweet, southern peach. I loved this market, because unlike the Boston-area ones, this featured local artists, designers and cooks selling their goods. I even snagged a last-minute accessory to the wedding I was attending. And speaking of farmer's market, on another summer trip to my mom's house in upstate New York, I brought along this last-minute, produce-centered summer salad to help feed the masses. We were staging what turned out to be a very successful yard sale, and I knew we'd be hungry. Lo and behold, the fam scarfed down the entire vat of it I brought – and yes, my mother tried and liked quinoa. Summer is nothing if not a time to be bold.

Make this with any combination farm-fresh veggies, and you really can't go wrong. Throw in some fresh herbs (parsley, dill), for even more delectable umph. The secret short-cut: bottled salad dressing. I made it again with homemade pesto, though, and the results were an equally addictive salad.

Simple Summer Salad

1 cup quinoa, cooked

1 handful cherry tomatoes, quartered

1 zucchini, diced

1 summer squash, diced

2 ears of corn, husked

a couple small carrots, peeled and diced

1 bottle Goddess salad dressing, or one cup pesto

some fresh herbs (parsley, dill, basil, thyme), chopped.

Cook the quinoa in two cups of boiling water in a covered pot for 20-30 minutes. Turn down the heat and let sit for ten minutes. Meanwhile, several cups of water to boil in a large pot. Boil to corn for about 6-7 minutes until just tender. Drain, but save a couple inches of the water. Cut the kernels from the cobs. Steam the vegetables (except the tomatoes) in a colander over the remaining water VERY briefly – thirty seconds tops. Shock the vegetables in a bowl of ice water and drain. In a large bowl or plastic container, combine the quinoa, veggies, herbs, and salad dressing or pesto. Toss, cover, and head to the beach/picnic/car for your well-fed getaway.

The Great A-Scape

2009-06-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

Lawd a-mercy, things looked dicey there for a minute, but I finished my first class yesterday. Summer has solstice-d, and I must've missed the dove clutching an olive branch in its beak, but the rain has stopped! In short, things is looking up. I can't wait to attend to all the things I've been neglecting for the past few weeks, like my apartment (the bathroom is starting to attract mycologists), my cat (I just brushed a kitten's-worth of fur from her shedding coat), and of course, the kitchen. Holler!

I made this loosey-goosey soup last week after my first farmers market trip. And none too soon – another day without produce and I would've been pushing scurvy. It's great for those wet spring days that are supposed to happen in, say, April, not late June. I'm just sayin'. Anyway, spring veggies, some fresh herbs, an aromatic, maybe some white wine, and you're done. The scapes, garlic in its young, spindly stage, are great. They reached a near-celebrity status last year after this New York Times article, and well, once it's cool in the Times, it must not be cool anymore, right? Well, I'd like to believe that vegetables transcend that hipster mentality. Cut up, the taste and texture is rather like fresh green beens with a kiss of garlic. Trendy or no, what's not to like?

Spring Vegetable Soup

6 cups water, vegetable stock, or combination

olive oil for saute

1/4 cup dry white wine (like Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc)

1 shallot, cut into rings

2 garlic scapes, cut into 1-inch lengths

1 carrot, sliced diagonally into ovals

stems from a bunch of swiss chard, chopped

a few asparagus stalks, scut into 1-inch lengths (reserve a few stalks for garnish)

sea salt and freshly ground pepper

a combination of a couple fresh herbs, mix 'n' match 'n' chop – parsley, thyme, lavender, rosemary... any suggestions?

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a stock pot. Add the shallots and cook until just softened. Add the rest of the veggies and cook until they brighten up and soften (poke or taste; the cook time will depend on the veggies you use). Add the wine, stir, and cook for a couple minutes while some of the wine evaporates. Add the water and/or stock, bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer. Halfway through the simmer (probably about ten minutes), add your fresh herbs. Simmer until the soup is fragrant and the veggies are softened but not mush – twenty minutes or less. Season with salt and pepper, and serve with a garnish of asparagus spears and a pinch of the freshly chopped herbs. Serves 4-6.

June Is Bustin' Out

2009-06-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

It's a little-known fact that June marks the beginning of monsoon season in New England. Or at least that's what this week of relentless rainfall would have me believe. It is also, after seven solid months of sweaty-palmed anticipation, the beginning of farmers' market season! The one behind my apartment has just opened; others have been kickin' for a couple weeks. Check out the Massachusetts Federation of Farmers Markets for more days and locations. My overtired, overworked body was buoyed at the mere site of all the offerings. Paper-writing was just going to have to go on hold for the day. You can hardly pay me enough to go out and buy jeans, shoes... but this is a place where I'll gladly empty out my wallet week after week. I bought tons of veggies, of course, and some potted plants and herbs (to help supplement the ones that bit it as seeds under my watch), and what I'd really been holding out for: strawberries. Their time with us is terribly fleeting, and I'll snatching 'em up by the quart for as long as they're around. Half of this week's were gobbled up plain, as tiny, plump, juicy, impossibly sweet little bursts of awesome in my mouth. The rest went into this tart, one that I've been fantasizing about making for an embarassingly long time. Almond meal makes for a really moist pastry – not as flaky and buttery as one might want in a tart shell, but I think the flavor more than makes up for the difference. And if you have and fresh basil around for garnish, all the better – one whiff is like pure, concentrated essence of summer.

Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

For the tart shell:

½ cup whole-wheat pastry flour (or pastry flour. Or good ol' all-purp)

½ cup almond meal

½ cup Earth Balance

¼ cup confectioner's sugar

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an 8- or 9-inch pie or tart pan. Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in the flour and almond meal until you get a crumbly mixture. Press the mixture into the pan, pushing along the seam of the pan so the mixture creeps up the sides. Bake for twenty minutes, or until just browned (I got away without using pie weights, but if your shell starts to bubble up, throw something lightly weighted on it to hold it down). Set it aside and let it cool while you make the filling.

For the filling:

1 pint fresh strawberries, washed, stems removed, and thinly sliced (I didn't bother to hull mine, since the berries were so tiny)

2 stalks rhubarb, washed and finely chopped

2-3 tablespoons sugar

juice from one lemon

3 tablespoons flour

In a medium saucepan, gently heat the lemon juice over low heat. Add the strawberries and rhubarb and cook gently, until the rhubarb is just softened and the strawberries start to release their juices. Stir in the sugar, taste and add more if it's still quite tart. Stir in the flour one tablespoon at a time and let the mixture thicken for a minute. Pour the mixture into the tart shell and bake for about five to seven minutes, or until the mixture is pretty well firm in the shell. Garnish with ribbons of fresh basil. Serves 6.

Vegetarians: Uncle Sam-Approved!

2009-06-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

This is one of those academic breakthroughs that scholars dream about. It's also one of those revelations that rabble-rousers scour the internet trying to find. Very briefly: I'm researching the history of the American home garden for a class - American Agricultural History. There's no approaching this topic without examining the victory gardens of the World Wars. Victory gardens literally sprung up at the behest of government propaganda - boatloads of it. And by gum if it didn't work - by 1918, over 5 million Americans were "earning the right to stay home" by producing and canning vast amounts of their own food. Um, wait. So the government of a century ago implored us to be producers, not consumers, in the brink of global terror and impending war. Fast forward to the last months of 2001, and we're being implored to shop from September 12th until ever-after. Can you imagine the state of the nation's, the world's economy, if we'd again taken to the soil and not sales rack (or dare I say the sub-prime mortgage)?

Mind blow.

Anyway, back to vegetables. For my research, I got my hands on a copy of the original gangsta of victory gardening, the government-issued tome The War Garden Victorious. I literally threw my fist in the air oi-punk style when I read this quote:

There is need for vegetable food. The body is kept in better condition if it does not depend too largely on a meat diet (119).

BOO-yah! There you have it, kids. Next time your mom/boyfriend/coworker (not autobiographical, ahem) bugs you about how imperative meat is to your survival, just turn them to this non-scientifically based early 20th-century factoid. Wait, that came out wrong. But you get the idea. A plant based diet is good for you. Though to remind the government it's old opinion would be like reminding your friend about that drunken night when she peed in the sink - they'd both get really embarrassed and try to deny it.

5 Ingredients+10 Minutes = A Meal

2009-06-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

An equation even I can wrap my harried brain around. You know you're too busy when hygiene becomes an afterthought and pizza becomes a food group. I don't have time to miss flossing, but my craptacular diet since starting this class and a second job is starting to catch up to me. Somewhere in the melee I had the time to whip up this salad. The flavors here are uncomplicated, cliche even, but delicious. This truth was only amplified by the fact that it was two days before I had time to eat it. And I guarantee it would be worlds better if I'd used dried rather than canned beans. Oh well. I'll try it the right way in a few weeks. Summer school is the pits; can't wait for the end of June...

The Basic Bean Salad

24-32 oz any ol' beans - navy, pinto, kidney, chickpeas, black beans...

1 shallot, minced

juice from one lemon

salt-n-peppa

a handful of fresh parsley, minced

pine nuts for garnish

Drain the beans and rinse them in a colander. Combine the beans, lemon juice, and salt and pepper in a bowl, tossing gently to coat. Let it sit for an hour (or 48) while you run to class, the post office, Philly, whatever. Just before serving, stir in the parsley and top with toasted pine nuts. Serve as is, over rice or grains, or salad greens. Serves 6.

...Grey Gardens

2009-05-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

They paved paradise... and you know the rest. Let me clarify: by "they" I mean my landlord, and by "paved" I mean mowed, but I'm still heavy-hearted this morning. See, I took it upon myself to tackle the backyard of my apartment building. That's right, there's a yard! I did a little neighborhood reconnaissance and learned that the growth hadn't been touched in at least three years, and the dingy, Fisher Price detritus was beginning to try my neighbors sense of taste - and patience. I spent a couple weeks bagging dead leaves, pruning vines, planting bulbs, and tackling the mint. Oh, the mint. I had no idea before I got into gardening, but mint has this Godzilla-lke tenacity and will take over every inch of growing space once you give it a chance. Just FYI, best to keep this stuff in a pot.

I was, yes, proud of the work I did. And I loved that with a

little work, the overgrown vines, dainty violets and proud dandelions came to look like the Secret Garden. Mission accomplished? Until this morning, when I went out to water the porch garden to discover the yard snipped and hacked to bits.

From Secret Garden to... a poodle with an awkward haircut. Maybe this is a lesson to my ego, or to my horticultural vigilantism. And who knows, maybe my landlord has some epic landscaping plan or k

ickass vegetable garden in the works. And my story is nowhere near as heart-aching as Gayla

Trail's city garden disillusionment (she also reflects on the sometimes nasty role of the ego in gardening).

I'm glad I got to do a little foraging a couple weeks back when the pickin's were good. You've probably heard by now that those persistent little buggers, dandelions, offer an edible, nutritious, and abundant supply of greens. Early spring is the best time to hit these up, when the greens are more tender and sweeter. If you decide to snag your own wild dandelion greens, use ya head: look for small leaves unmunched by critters, avoid areas that have been sprayed (a well-manicured lawn/public park is likely laden with chemicals), and rinse them thouroughly before use. This "recipe" (unrecipe?) is a basic treatment for dandelion greens; it's fun to throw in anything else you can forage. In the case of what was in my backyard, I added some chives, mint, and violets. The flowers are edible, pretty, but add little more than a food-and-garden-nerd accent.

Sauteed Dandelion Greens

a handful of small dandelion greens, rinsed and dried

1 tablespoon water

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar (or sherry- or white vinegar. I like the rice vinegar for its grassy flavor against the greens.)

salt and pepper to taste

Heat the water in a medium saute pan and add the greens. Cover and steam for about three minutes or until wilted. Add the oil and saute briefly (less than a minute), then stir in the vinegar, salt and pepper and any other garden add-ins and saute for a minute more.

Green Gardens

2009-05-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile, too much of awhile! I haven't even started school yet, but my days are already packed. Yes, as of today, I am an officially matriculated student in Boston University's Master's in Gastronomy (insert triumphant sound effect here)! I'm tickled pink to be going back to school, studying food, glorious food, and gradually weaning away from a life of waiting tables. But the stress has been intense: applying for financial aid requires everything other than my signature in blood. And yes, the blogging has tragically suffered as the application process wages on. But that's not to mean that I haven't been loving life - and that I haven't been eating!

As springtime flowers finally bloomed from the sleeping soil, I took on a new season of container gardening. So far, so good - both my garden and I are a year older and a year wiser, so I hope this growing season will yield some better results. Last year I harvested a couple tiny bell peppers and a resilient crop of basil and parsley. The tomatoes never blossomed, the pumpkin suffered a tragic death over the side of the porch rail. I've started some herbs both from seed and seedling, and they're doing quite well. Well, enough, in fact, that I was able to harvest some for this pesto. Pesto, by conventional definition, entails basil, loads of olive oil, nuts for a surfactant and flavor, and cheese to bind. But with a garden of herbs, greens and hand, and tummies hungry enough to eat NOW, it's easy to bend the rules. This pesto uses arugula (I had some from Trader Joe's, sorry), garden herbs, and no cheese. You don't need the Parmesan if you're using the pesto immediately; the binding agent is nice, but necessary only if you're planning on storing the pesto for more than a day. And while this combination of greens and herbs isn't "real" pesto, it's herby, light, and delicious. It won raves from my dinner partner and the coworkers who sampled it when I took the leftovers in the next night. Here's looking forward to a continued harvest - cheap and fresh eats this summer while I work the hours and hit the books.

Herbed Lemon Pesto with Cannellini Beans

1 1/2-2 cups mixed herbs and greens (so. I used 1 cup arugula and a mixed half-a-cup of parsley and lemongrass. Try using all parsley in late summer when it's abundant, or mixing cilantro, or dill, or mint... just shoot for about 2 cups of tasty, light green stuff)

1/4 cup pine nuts

1/2 cup good-quality, extra virgin, cold-pressed olive oil (good oil is they key to good pesto - don't settle!)

3-4 cloves garlic: 1 smashed and roughly chopped, the rest finely slivered (or more to taste; I'm a garlic freak)

pinch of sea salt

12 oz cannellini beans

juice from one lemon

Pasta - just cook some pasta before or while you're doing the rest of the cooking. I used 4 oz whole-wheat spaghetti and it was exquisite.

Using a food processor, chopper, or mortar and pestle, process the the green stuff, pine nuts, olive oil, salt, and the smashed garlic until pasty and uniform.

Heat some olive oil over medium in a saute pan, the add the rest of the garlic. Cook the garlic, stirring almost constantly, until just aromatic and not browned. A couple brown spots are fine, just don't burn it! Add the beans and saute for about two minutes to infuse the beans with oil and garlic goodness. Turn off the heat, squeeze the lemon juice over the beans and stir. Add the pasta to a big bowl, then add stir in the pesto (it takes a little effort, but well worth it), then stir in the beans. Garnish with any extra pine nuts. Serves 4.

Champions of Breakfast

2009-04-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

Runners, tighten your laces! Liquor stores, stock your 40's! It's nearly the third Monday in April here in Boston - Marathon Monday. The marathon represents one of two things: the indomitable nature of human will or the irrepressible urge to drink in public. Or there's the soul wrenching battle between the two - I could easily be one of those people with a beer in hand, an unlit cigarette in the other, thinking to myself: "...next year... Sob!" Now, not to be Little-Miss-Goody-Two-Asics, but I've never participated in the widespread debauchery that goes down on Patriots Day (yes, Boston likes to provide two names for its construed holidays; see also St. Patrick's Day/Evacuation Day). But this is the third consecutive year where I've intensified my running routine 'round about this time. I feel like a bit of a poseur running the trails right around the marathon. I'm usually being lapped by runners with highly sculpted calves and windbreakers from a previous year's race (the older the year, the more distinguished the runner, I think). But I plan to watch some of the runners as they come down Beacon tomorrow, and I know I'll catch the elite men and women cross into Copley and, as I always do, cry like a baby over the beauty of it all.

I just got back from a run and, starving, whipped up some breakfast. There are tons of recipes for tofu scramble out there, to the point where you don't really need a recipe. The most important part for me is the turmeric, for that sunny color and umami-liciosness. I'm not usually this serious about my morning meal, but hey, gotta load up for my big catharsis tomorrow.

Anything-Goes Tofu Scramble

1 package extra-firm tofu, thoroughly drained and crumbled

1 small onion, finely diced

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 heaping teaspoon turmeric

a few splashes of hot sauce

a good plop of salsa

Additions: corn and cilantro; chopped kalamata olives and oregano, green onions and parsley... use your imagination!

Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the onion and garlic. Saute until softened and just starting to brown, 3-4 minutes. Add the tofu and cook until the tofu starts to brown, about five more minutes. Stir in the turmeric, hot sauce and any additions and enjoy (with hearty whole-wheat toast, yum!).

Easter Potluck-y

2009-04-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

Whether you mark this time of year with marshmallow chicks, matzo or a maypole, I think it's a pretty fine time to be alive. It's a time of triumph, really: over mortality, over adversity, over darkness. That's how some of our major religions slice it. But you don't need a set of dogma to feel cheered by green's victory over grey.

I got to celebrate Easter with most of my favorite people outside my bloodline, and yes, I felt like a lucky duck to be surrounded by such wonderful friends and a-freaking-mazing food. My apartment really felt like a home as soup simmered, onions brown and crusts baked last Sunday afternoon. My friend floored me with their culinary chops (quiches: feta, kalamata and asparagus, the other with apricot, peach and stilton), ingenuity (and improvised

potato and scallion soup), and resourcefulness (the food biz provided a scavenged salad and spring rolls accompanied by the best peanut sauce in Boston).

I brought to the table (literally, woo!) portabello mushrooms stuffed with quinoa and spinach. My tye-A chef-y side prepped the day before; I just put them in the oven and let everyone else have at the kitchen. Admittedly, what I made was tame and health-foody compared to the robust flavors of the rest of the meal, but hey, I keeps it real like dat.

This is an ingredient-short but prep-heavy dish, but you can do near all of it at least a day before you serve it. You could even do the quinoa-spinach mixture two day prior, bake the mushrooms and assemble the day before and reheat when it's dinner time. Anything with this many steps is suitable for company. After all, your effort is a way to give to your family and friends for free.

Quinoa and Spinach-Stuffed Portabellos
8-10 portabello mushroom caps (plan on serving one per person as a side, two if it's a main dish)
1 cup quinoa
2 cups water or vegetable stock
12oz fresh spinach or one bag frozen (thawed and super-well-pressed for moisture if frozen)
olive oil
2 shallots, minced
2 garlic clove,s minced
1 bunch chevril or parsley, chopped
2-3oz nice Swiss, like Emmantaler or Havarti (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Clean the portabello caps with a dry paper towel and scrape out the gills with a small spoon. Use a gentle hand, as the cap will break under too much pressure (for those of us not used to handling textured, meaty ingredients, this part is really cool). Discard those insides. Place the caps (cap-side down, hollowed-out side up) on a non-stick baking sheet and spray or lightly drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until you smell the earthy mushrooms and they start to release their juices. SAVE THAT JUICE! Take the mushrooms off the pan and drain the juice into a small bowl for extra flava in the quinoa...

Bring two cups of water or stock to a boil and add the quinoa. Cover, reduce heat, and cook until the liquid is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Add the reserved mushroom juice and let the quinoa sit for a few minutes.

In a large saute pan, add few tablespoons of olive oil and heat over medium. Add the shallots and garlic and cook until just softened, about 3 minutes. Add the chevril or parsley and stir until just heated. Add the spinach and stir to coat. Stir occasionally to uniformly wilt the spinach, about 8 minutes. Combine the quinoa and spinach mixture in a large bowl and season with sea salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper.

Add a heaping tablespoon-full of the quinoa-spinach mixture to the portabello caps. Top with some grated or shaved Emmantaler if desired (I did some with and without). Bake until the filling is hot, the portabellos are juicy and until the cheese -if using- is just bubbling. Serves five as an entree, 8 or more as a side dish.

Roasted Carrots and Parsnips: Kick it Root Down

2009-04-08T15:41:00.000-07:00

This was a component to one of those rare, glorious meals that reinvigorate one's zeal for the tri-component plate model: a starch, a vegetable, and a protein. I think many of us grew up with this tradition, one that's steeped deep in the fifties. It's played-out enough to make a grown person never want to sit down at a table and eat without cardboard and styrofoam detritus again. But this old-school meal can get its groove back if we acknowledge that:

The starch need include the prefix with "Instant" or the suffix "-a-Roni."
The vegetable need not be canned
The protein need not, dur, be meat.

I once again cleaned out the veggie drawer in my fridge for this piece. Still roots, yes, and it seems to still be winter - at least botanically. That's gonn

a change, though, because I'm waiting for my next actual day off to zip(car) over to Allandale FArms, whose farmstand opened last Friday. Yaaaay! I'm sorry - Opening Day? Josh Beckett? Ted Kennedy's first pitch? Farmer's opening day is one to get amped about. But I was working. Sob. Anyway, here's what I hope will be the last featured parsnip until the fall (sorry guys, but I'm ready for some leaves 'n' such). Wintered-over parsnips are something special, though, and I chased away the their winter blues with sunny, peppy lemon and ginger.

(By the way, the other star player in this meal was an adaptation on Vegan Dad's Maple Barbeque Tofu - a full report on that is hunkered down in the dugout.)

Roasted Carrots & Parsnips with Lemon and Ginger

1/2 lb each carrots and parsnips, washed, peeled, and cut into matchsticks
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon peeled and finely minced ginger
juice from half a lemon
pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 425F. Combine the carrots, parsnips and olive oil in a good-sized dish (big enough so the veggies aren't all heaped on top of each other). Bake for about twenty minutes, or until the edges are browned and the veggies are tender, turning halfway through. In the last couple minutes, pour the lemon-ginger mix over the veggies. Stir when you take it out of the oven and season with a pinch of salt.

A Wrecking Ball Through the Fourth Wall

2009-04-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

...not that bloggers have a fourth wall. But in that vein, these images are a little glimpse of my kitchen, and this post is a little window into my obsessive mind. Food bloggers are a good crowd. I suspect we're all retaining some of the quiet, unassuming middle schooler in us: bookish, averagely likeable, prone to retreat to semi-closeted nerdish indulgences like beating Mario 3 in ten minutes or less, or doggedly rehearsing some musical piece. Or maybe that was just me. Regardless, food bloggers follow the same formula - just replace those after-school pastimes with researching, writing about, and cooking up all types of comestibles.

I felt a wave of camaraderie wash over me when I heard Marc Matsumoto speak on NPR about his fantastically rad blog No Recipes. It was serendipitous that I heard the broadcast; my friend was driving over to get some dinner and texted me en route: "Turn on NPR." So I did, and nearly everything Marc said struck a chord with me. Oh, to be inspired by a single ingredient; the craftsmanship that goes into turning a botanical into a meal; the dream to stick it to the man and just cook and write, cook and write. Well, sometimes that dream is actualized in the form of a hastily-built lemonade stand after a severe downpour of lemons. But why fret when your lemonade is the best on the block? 30,000 hits per month adds up to a lotta quarters! (Really, listen to the broadcast. You won't regret the few minutes.)

Suffice to say, I was inspired - then a bit star-struck. In another uplifting turn of events, Cathy at Not Eating Out In New York done-gone-'n'-done it a-gin. This month's featured Reason for Not Eating Out is scrumscalescent montage of some of the healthiest, eye-candiest recipes on Foodblogland (rhymes with Newfoundland). She features Marc's drool-worthy pasta fazool, Becky (-and the Beanstalk's) homemade tofu bacon, and other images that I recognized from the past few months of great postings. And, gasp, there's little ol' me... my Chickpea Patties snuck in there, too! I am flabbergasted, dillywithered, to be included with some of the greats. I can humbly say that it's one of my favorite recipes on this li'l blog of mine, and Cathy's caption makes it sound all the more appealing.

So thanks to Marc for the inspiration, and to Cathy for the esteem. Don't worry, a few hours on the floor ("I wanted milk, not cream") should put my feet back on the pavement.

Defacing Vegetables, One Cupcake At A Time

2009-03-29T15:29:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with a hankerin' for something sweet. I thought of making pancakes for breakfast, but shelved the idea for the sorry truth that pancakes for one is just a sad endeavor. Too much effort for one woman's sweet tooth. Cupcakes, on the other hand... well, I can pass those off with the good intent of sharing my vice with others.
I tried to make Massaman curry awhile back with the intent of blogging about it. The results were not worth the story. But I recreated the flavors in these cupcakes with pretty decent results. Coconut, sweet and savory spices and a crunchy touch of peanut will remind you of your favorite Thai takeout and a South End bakery rolled in one. They're a grown-up treat, kind of like a foodie's upgrade of carrot cake. Flavorful, you bet. Healthy... not even Karl Rove could spin that lie. These guys are heavy and indulgent and, unlike the potato chip slogan of yore, no one can eat more than one. But sometimes the flavor alone is worth the calories.

Curried Sweet Potato Cupcakes

1 1/4 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup coconut milk
2 tablespoons plain soy yogurt (or two flax eggs)
1 cup grated sweet potato (a medium-sized sweet - not a monster)
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel (half a lemon's peel)
1 tablespoon grated ginger (about the length of your thumb)
grated lemon peel and ground peanuts for garnish

Coconut Icing
1/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1/2 cup soy margarine
3 tablespoons (scant 1/4 cup) coconut milk

Preheat oven to 375F.

Whisk together the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, baking powder, and spices. In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients: canola oil, maple syrup, coconut milk and yogurt or equivalent egg replacer. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones, adding about one third of the mix, whisking gently, then repeating until they're incorporated. Add the sweet potato, lemon peel and ginger and stir until just mixed.

Line a cupcake pan with twelve cupcake papers. Fill with the batter about two-thirds full. Bake for about 20-23 minutes or until the cupcakes are springy when touched and/or a knife or toothpick comes out clean when poked through the middle. Remove from the pan adn cook for about twenty minutes. To make the icing, simply beat the ingredients together until smooth. You may need to add sugar or coconut milk to get the right consistency, just stiff enough. Try chilling the icing for half an hour or so if it won't set. Ice the cupcakes and top with the peanuts and lemon peel. Makes 12 li'l cakelettes.

Turkey Gangs, Tempeh Pangs

2009-03-24T06:24:00.000-07:00

Important matters first:

TURKEYS

Brookline is notorious for its wandering gangs of turkeys. I think they're all part of the same gang - they all where the same red dangly thing under their beaks. Sources tell me they call it a wattle. Like the Crips, they've got a signature walk, too - they call it a waddle. These turkey-gang jokes doin' anything for ya? Anyway, Brookline is collectively unaffected by their presence. Last year I was on my bike waiting at the light on the corner of Longwood and the Riverway while I watched a turkey lazily sip from a giant puddle in the road not three feet from my tire. I desperately looked around, pleading with my eyes: "Is anyone seeing this?" If they did, they didn't care. I thought it was adorable, though I guess I'm lucky it didn't wind up and charge me - these B'line Turks have a penchant for attacking passers-by (for serious).

Anyway, this was the scene next door to my apartment yesterday at 7:30am. Had a not literally just rolled out of bed, I'd have gotten better pictures. But these hoods were trying to sidle their way through the gates of the luxe apartments. Was I witnessing some sort of Tony/Maria romantic rendezvous? All I know is the real drama is in what's not pictured - a basketball-sized hawk that was perched directly above these birds, repeatedly dive-bombing the interlopers. Police on the scene dispelled the violence within the hour (again, for serious).

After all that nature-drama, my human affairs hardly seem so important. But for the record, it's been a busy month. Too busy to cook, actually, and too busy to write about... not cooking. But I've been socializing (gasp!), working on some other projects, and applying to grad school, which has made for a lot of eating out and taking out. I've missed my kitchen. I got back to the pots and pans the other days and made of a dish with pretty much the last of what was in my fridge and pantry before the grocery shopping threat entered Code Orange. Tempeh had been kicking around aimlessly for awhile, and I had a jar of chutney that's been with me at least since my move from Dorchester. I can't remember why I bought, or what prompted me to buy something so out of character, but its flavor was desperately needed in the wake of NOTHING ELSE TO COOK WITH. Though not as healthful and a bit too fussy for my usual tastes, it made a pretty darn tasty main dish. I was never a fan of tempeh (its worst incarnation is the form of tempeh bacon... ew...) but lemme tell ya, the boiling step opened up a whole new world. It softens to texture and flavor like a dream. Me and the Big T, we're friends now.

Mango Chutney-Glazed Tempeh

1 8-oz package tempeh

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 cloves garlic, smashed

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

pinch of cumin

dash of hot sauce

1/2 cup jarred chutney (like Major Grey's, or I had Trader Joe's stuff on hand)

1/4 cup water

1 tablespoon cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 375.

Take a shallow pot or saucepan and fill it with enough water to cover the tempeh. Bring the water to a boil, add the tempeh, and let simmer for 10 minutes. Drain the water, remove the tempeh, and cut into strips.

Whisk together the soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, cumin and hot sauce. Pour over the tempeh (a shallow baking dish works well here) and marinate for 20 minutes. Bake the tempeh for twenty minutes on one side, then turn and bake for another ten minutes.

While the tempeh bakes, whisk together half the water with the cornstarch. In a saucepan over very low heat, add the chutney. When it start to melt, add the water/cornstarch mixture and whisk in quickly. Stir almost constantly over low heat, gradually adding the rest of the water. The glaze will thicken and turn shiny. Whisk in more water if it thickens too much. Serve over the tempeh. I made a meal of this with a side of dal and naan. Some sliced mango here would be ridiculously good.

High Noon At The Lentil Saloon

2009-03-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite thing to happen to lentils since daal. Growing up in a small town, well shoot, we didn't tamper much with legumes and the like. I was craving the flavors of cumin, tomato and oregano, though I've honestly never been a big fan of the usual suspects in chili (though I stand by my Sweet Potato Chili recipe). Canned kidney an pinto beans, though endlessly convenient, always come with a metallic mask of flavor. I had the idea to make a pot of chili with lentils filling in as the beans, and after poking around a little on the interwebs, I found out that even country folk have a place for lentils in their kitchens. This big ol' pot sustained me through a murderous stretch of work. I ate it every night when I get home, and yes, even took some in tupperware containers for dinner during night shifts, sustaining the bemused grins of my coworkers. But hell, I'm proud to still be the girl who brings her own lunch.

Lentil Chili

1 cup lentils (I used black, but green, brown, beluga - all the same and delicious here)
3 cups water
1 onion, diced
1 or 2 carrots, chopped
a couple stalks of celery, chopped (including the leaves if they're still attached)
4 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
pinch of sea salt
splash of olive oil

Heat the olive oil over medium in a big ol' pot. Add the onion and saute until softened and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add the carrots and celery and cook for about five minutes, until the carrot starts to soften. Add the lentils, water, diced tomato, chili powder, and cumin. Crank the heat up and bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about 40 minutes, stirring occasionally so the lentils don't stick. Season with a pit of salt and be very happy. Makes a good 6 bowls.

(Critterless) Food for Thought

2009-03-11T09:59:00.000-07:00

"[F]or all our focus on the cost of moving food, transportation accounts for barely one-tenth of a food product's greenhouse gas emissions. Far more significant is how the food was produced—its so-called resource intensity. Certain foods, like meat and cheese, suck up so many resources regardless of where they're produced (a pound of conventional grain-fed beef requires nearly a gallon of fuel and 5,169 gallons of water) that you can shrink your footprint far more by changing what you eat, rather than where the food came from. According to a 2008 report from Carnegie Mellon University, going meat- and dairyless one day a week is more environmentally beneficial than eating locally every single day."

Roberts, Paul. "Spoiled: Organic and Local is So 2008." Mother Jones, March/April 2009.

There is no simple resolution to query "what should I eat?" Every time I think I've come to a conclusion I can live with, I come across yet another study or anecdote that tells me I'm steering all wrong. That once-coveted "organic" label is now maligned by tales of the unsustainable global journeys our soybeans take to salmonella creeping its way into some of our most recognizable "health foods." Roberts' article takes a hypodermic needle to our local bubble. It's hard, real damn hard, to stay optimistic in this climate of defeat. So while the article quoted above doesn't give me much cause to dance barefoot in the street, it did offer some buoyancy in its message. I'm encouraged by other folks who report on gravitating towards a plant-based diet. Looking for inspiration, or to give society one last chance before taking refuge in a cave and subsiding on lichen and gall? Take Mark Bittman's "'vegan till 6'" plan, or Becky's Lenten vegan pledge, or this bloggah-from-down-undah's vegan test-drive.

At YEAST I Tried (Hey-Ooo!)

2009-03-08T16:24:00.001-07:00

I wish this hiatus were interrupted by some exquisite culinary development or profound sociological rumination. I also wish I could walk in heels without looking like a four-year-0ld playing dress-up.

I spent a good part of last week researching and yes, baking yeast-based breads. It was a brave new world and a frightening undertaking for me. I've never baked bread at home; frankly, the prospect always scared me. The idea of a fungus feeding off of sugar in a bowl, amassing its strength and doubling in size like The Blob - only to be baked in a home oven into an edible end-product - has always freaked me the hell out. I also remember my sister baking bread at home in her early twenties, only to have to clean a veritable Niagara of dough from my mom's kitchen counter. Not for me, thanks - until about a week ago, during our first March snowstorm (I believe we're due for another three inches tomorrow - climate change conspiricists take note). I dug out some active dry yeast packets that I've been holding on to for my gestative moment of bravery, read up on some techniques and recipes, and five hours later, behold! I had three loaves of astonishingly not sucky whole wheat bread, studded with oatmeal, flax- and sunflower seeds. Now, I feel like the "my first loaf" post is... well, frankly, it's hack. Wanna show me a slideshow of your baby's first steps while you're at it? So I declined to write about it. Ok, but since I'm on the topic, here's the dough, risen, living and bubbly as a high school chem petri dish:

So my bread was decent, especially for a first try. I got brave... I moved on to pizza dough, using white whole-wheat flour. This is where my research got dicey and befuddling. Feed the yeast for an hour; let it sit overnight. Keep the dough warm; stick it the fridge. Keep it unadulterated; throw in herbs and oil. Wha-wha-whaaat? I wanted to scrap the idea, but my undying love for pizza won out in the end.

I should have quit while I was ahead.

I won't even bother with the details of how I made the dough, as I Frankensteined my way through a number of techniques and recipes. Um, that's mostly likely my first problem. The dough looked sketchy (ahem, not stretchy) after I let it rest, but I was so excited for my cheap-and-seasonal toppings idea that, like any seasoned explorer in uncharted territory, I forged ahead. My delicious homemade tomato sauce went on the dough, followed by medallions of sweet potato, thinly sliced white onion and some minced watercress. I was met by a sense of foreboding when I opened the oven door. The crust looked brown and mealy; the edges were no doubt burned (though the topping held out nicely. I reluctantly took a bite, and...oh man...ew. Besides all the structural failures, can we talk about salt? I abhor an overly-salty bite; in fact, pretty much anyone who has sampled my cooking keeps a dish of salt strategically nearby (a precaution to you blessed few who have confessed to trying my recipes). Here she is, my test-tube baby:

There's a "Mildly Spiced Vegetable Burrito" from Trader Joe's in the oven for me now. Sigh...

Beards & Barley

2009-03-02T07:46:00.000-08:00

First, a little salute to the food community. We all know Brooklyn is cool - infinitely cooler than Boston. Newbury Comics is great and all, but then there's Sound Fix in Williamsburg. Henrietta's Table in Cambridge runs an outstanding farm-to-table outfit, but Franny's in Park Slope just makes the whole endeavor homey and sexy. And, as it appears in last Wednesday's Dining section of the Times, their men tote way radder beards than their New England brethren (with apologies to all the bearded boys in Boston I know). Ok, so the article has nothing to do with Boston, and really little to do with facial hair. But if you haven't read it, stop reading this nonsense now and follow that link up there. It's that important. I was genuinely inspired by this profile on all the hard-earned and heart-felt food crafting that's happening in the borough, and would love to see more of it here. It's happening to a certain extent; I think there's a whole enclave of us here in which "'every person you pass has read Michael Pollan.'" If you or a friend or coworker that person in our bed Saturday morning is doing out-of-the-ordinary food crafting, I want to hear about it. Patissiers, chocolatiers, underground restauranteurs, home-brewers unite!

Mmm, speaking of home-brew, that leads me to barley. The star of the recipe in this post. It's chewy, it's poppy, it's subtle but hearty. It's hard to go wrong here. Barley is a whole grain (well, see below), which we know means it's healthful, but I won't get into that here. I'm a BA, not an MD. What I am is broke, son, and whole grains in bulk are cheap cheap cheap. After I did my taxes and found out that I owe more than I spend I groceries in six months, I 1) dragged myself out of the fetal position from under the kitchen table, and 2) hit the pantry to make some serious comfort food. I'm still working on those winter reserves, and fortunately, I have a good stock to work with. Wild rice, black rice, oats, lentils...ooo, barley!

When buying barley, try and stay clear of the pearled stuff. Pearled = processed, a removal of the outer hull that contains the bulk of the fiber, vitamins and flavor. Look for whole hulled barley. Ugh, here comes that nutritionism argument again. I diminished my veggie rations for this, but it's a great way to use up what's dwindling in your fridge. Roasting then pureeing veggies creates a soup that's outrageously rich in flavor without the fuss of seasonings. In fact, all I added was salt and pepper, letting the roots sing their flawless five-part harmony. You can use any combination of roastable veggies here, though I especially like the zingy pizazz of the celery root in this melange.Roasted Vegetable and Barley Stew
1 cup whole barley
2 1/4 cup water
2 parsnips, scrubbed and coarsely chopped
2 carrots, scrubbed and coarsely chopped
1 celeriac, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 rutabaga, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 white onion, chopped
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
6-8 cups veggie stock, water or a combination

Bring the 2 1/4 cups water to a boil. Add the barley, return to a boil, cover, and simmer for 50-55 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425F. Add all the veggies except the potatoes to a large roasting pan. Toss with the olive oil, maybe toss in a bit of salt for good measure. Roast 30-40 minutes until the veggies are browned and pierced easily with a fork, stirring a couple times throughout to avoid burning.

Add the roasted veggies to a large stockpot. Add the potatoes and veggie stock/water and bring to a boil. Cook for 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. Puree with a blender, immersion blender or food processor for about five minutes, or until smooth. Add the barley and there ya go. Serves 8.

Sprouting - For Victory!

2009-02-24T09:54:00.000-08:00

When I younger and more rebellious and had more piercings, I ran around doing an awful lot in life "for victory." Boycott meat - for victory! Protest the war - for victory! Skip class and get high - for victory! I'm grateful for those activist times (though the cluster of brain cells I killed would beg to differ), and the revolutionary spirit is still a part of me - it's just much more subdued. But I have a new pursuit that has renewed my sense of justice, given my life a new zeal - sprouts!

I'm still waiting to plant until the temperature maintains an above-freezing medium, but sprouting is an amazing way to subvert nature - just a little - without perverting it. The process is absurdly easy; no gardening skills required. Search for "how to grow sprouts" and the first ten hits will all give you essentially the same instructions.

Take a couple tablespoons of seeds (right now I'm on alfalfa that I got from Mahoney's in Brighton awhile back), pour them in a clean glass jar, fill the jar halfway with water, cover it with cheesecloth or pantyhose, and leave the jar for eight hours (out of direct sunlight).
The next morning, give your seeds a good rinse, drain the water through your impromptu strainer, and leave in a warm place otu of direct sunlight (I put mine next to my radiator and they really took off).
Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat...
On day five, give them a final rinse, remove from the jar, and place on a kitchen towel. Let them sit in direct sun for a bit (I've read between fifteen minutes and an hour); this allows the chlorophyll to get kickin'. Store in an airtight container in the fridge and enjoy your greens! And might I add, they are the sweetest and freshest little sprouts you'll ever eat.

If you can grow it, you can sprout it: nuts, beans, legumes, grains... I don't even know where to start! Too bad I cooked up all those garbanzos, 'cause they'd be next. Pretty much everyone I've spoken to in the last couple weeks has endured me geeking out to this new endeavor. I feel like a proud mama when I first see those little tails poking out of the seeds. And what could be more endearing - more victorious - than a little victory-garden-in-a-jar?

From The Fields To The Frame: An Art Review

2009-02-20T17:57:00.000-08:00

I've written before on the subject of food as art; the idea that what travels from your brain to your cutting board to your plate is a an artistic pursuit in its own right. So I'm thrilled to report on a genuine artist featuring my, well, medium, in a bold new light.

We all know what you see isn't always what you get, and seldom does this work in our favor. Pablo saw: "Meters free after 6pm! Pablo got a ticket. "Eugene saw a .99 cent value menu; Eugene got hypertension." But on the more beautiful, more mystic side of the coin, what you get isn't always what you see. That's how I sum up local photographer and good friend John Steck's new show unique prints. It opened last Monday In Boston's South End at Sister Sorel, a hip, cozy restaurant and an ideal venue for this innovative body of work. As you can tell by the images on my blog, I'm not the photographer here, so I'll leave the gory production details out of it. But by using an original process that produces neither a photograph nor a photogram, John captures images of the everyday fruits and vegetables we see in the market and renders them as alien and visceral as an organ viewed from outside the body. Ever taken biology and been both repulsed and awed by the sight, the feel of, say, the delicate veins in a mammal's heart? This work has that effect on the unassuming produce he captures. It's partly weird and a little warped - but maybe because you've never seen an broccoli floret that way. You may never look at an orange the same after seeing the way the light pores through each capsule of this succulent citrus. Some images aren't readily discernible as something your might put in a salad or a stir fry. Indeed, there's a subjectivity to it all. It's not so much what the image is, but what the viewer's perception and experience allows him or her to see. Subjectivity is a mighty thing, especially in the natural world. These are the beauties of nature that have mystified and inspired us from Fibonacci to Whitman and countless numbers before and after.

If your standard food photography is like Matt Damon - straight-forward, easy-on-the-camera-easy-on-the-eyes, then compare this show to, say, Johnny Depp - that edgy, je-ne-sais-quoi kind of appeal.

unique prints by John Steck Jr.
On view through March 8th at Sister Sorel, 645 Tremont St, Boston

Images from this series are on John's blog.

And check his website for more on his work.

Damn, These Beets Are So Fresh!

2009-02-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

First off, I should start offering prizes to anyone who picks up on the nerdish pop culture references I drop on this blog. Anyone get the title (Ben, I'm looking at you and Amber on this one)?

Ok, I'm really going to shut up about the damn cupcakes already, after I share this with you all: I found a beet cake! And the picture looks an awful lot like my own little dirt cakes! So I'm feeling somewhat vindicated right now, and ready to revisit the beets that were left in the fridge after they failed to become food coloring.

I really do adore beets. The friend who turned me on to them years back aptly surmised that "they taste like dirt." Oh, that they do, in sweetest, earthiest manifestation imaginable. The beets I roasted for this recipe kept winding up in my mouth while I was cooking, like so many Swedish fish. Eat a beet with its greens, my friend, and you have yourself a whole food in the truest and most nurturing sense. While the beet root is delicious, the greens pack in the nutrition. And since we're on the topic of nerdish pop culture references, I'd like dedicate this recipe to all the Dwight K. Schrutes out there. Farm on, beet farmers.

Roasted Beet and Wild Rice Salad with Orange Vinaigrette

For the salad:
4 beets, greens removed 3/4 of an inch to the root, greens well-washed and roots scrubbed and well-washed
11/4 cups water
1/2 cup wild rice, well-rinsed
1/4 cup walnuts
1 tablespoon shoyu
pinch of brown sugar

For the vinaigrette:
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon rice vinegar (or white vinegar)

Preheat oven to 350F. Coat each beet with olive oil and wrap the beets individually in foil. Bake for 40-50 minutes, depending on the size of the beets (they're done when a fork pierces them easily). Remove from oven and allow to cool for at least 2o minutes. Slide the skin of and cut into cubes or julienned slices. (You can roast the walnuts at the same time. Whisk together the shoyu and brown sugar and toss the walnuts with the mixture. Roast for about 10 minutes and remove from the oven.) To cook the beet greens, steam in a colander for five-six minutes. The greens will soften and take on a bright green hue. Remove from heat, rinse with cold water and drain.

While the beets are cooking,cook the rice: bring the water to a boil, add the rice, cover and simmer for about 50 minutes.

Whisk together the olive oil, orange juice and vinegar to make the vinaigrette. Add a pinch of brown sugar if you want more sweetness. Stir the vinaigrette into the rice. Spoon the rice, then the greens, then the beets onto a plate. Top with the roasted walnuts. Or if you're not out to impress anyone, simply mix the lot together and marvel at how the beets stain the rice. Powerful stuff, them beets.

Chickpeapalooza

2009-02-19T08:31:00.000-08:00

I can't tell you how relieved I am to be away from the mixing bowl, and back to the stovetop. I think that, unless there's a bubbling casserole in there, my oven stays off until further notice. I will leave the vegan baking to the professionals. Before last week's cupcake debacle, I started rummaging through my pantry, taking stock of what lingered as I toward the end of my winter stores from my last big haul from the co-op. I have a borderline detrimental (or just plain mental) obsession with organizing things. Example: as a child, while my mom shopped at JCPenny, I would busy myself by arranging neglected stuffed animal displays, doggedly grouping together the adorable duckies, moo-moos and piggies in nearly militant rows. Child labor be damned - I would have a ball. I take the same scrutiny to my pantry, fridge and spice rack at least once a month, when I wipe clean all surfaces and rearrange all jars and can in sight. This was how I stumbled across a neglected stash of chickpeas, looking not unlike a stash of candy on the shelf, all round and pebbly and jingly in their glass home. So I decided to cook up the lot, rather than letting them languish any longer behind closed doors. Um, two cups of dried chickpeas yields... a whole mess of chickpeas. I right proper "where the hell did all these come from??" mother lode of chickpeas. I have a ton in the freezer now, and hummus is certainly in the works, but here's the first set on the bill for Chickpea Stock '09: a tasty little burger-guy.

Vegan burgers are tricky, because nothing binds a wet, mushy patty together like an egg. Here I just tried to get a good balance of wet and dry ingredients in hopes that the end result wouldn't crumble apart. A stint in the fridge helped, too. I originally wanted to do a Moroccan-inspired couscous plate, but I'd really need mint and lemon flavors to make it sing - not inclusive in the late winter New England palate. I'm still trying to find new uses for the parsnips and carrots that have dominated my recipes for the last few weeks, and they are naturally at home here. The nutty, creamy chickpeas paired well with the sweet and earthy carrots and parsnips.

Chickpea & Couscous Patties with Sweet Tahini Dressing

For the patties:
2 cups coked chickpeas (or 2 15-oz cans, drained)
1/2 cup whole wheat couscous, dry
1/2 cup veggie stock (or water)
1 medium carrot and 1 medium or large parsnip, scrubbed and grated (use a cheese grater or vegetable peeler)
splash of olive oil
1 small white onion, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch of parsley, minced (including stems)
2 teaspoons cumin
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup sesame seeds

For the dressing:
3 tablespoons tahini
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon honey

Cook the couscous: in a small pot, add the veggie stock and bring to a boil. Add the couscous, reduce heat to a low simmer, and cover. Allow the couscous to reconstitute for about 15 minutes, then fluff with a fork. You want the couscous to be slightly moist (not super-fluffy), so add a bit more stock or water if needed.

In a large bowl, mash the chickpeas with a potato masher or broad spoon until mostly mushed (a few un- or partially-smashed chickpeas are fine).

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until just tender, about two minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another three minutes. Add the grated carrot and parsnip and stir until just cooked, a little less than two minutes. Remove from heat.

Add the veggie mixture and the couscous to the mashed chickpeas and stir together. Add the parsley, cumin, sea salt and pepper (be generous with the salt here, if you can). Again, add more water or stock if the mixture seems dry; you want it nice and moist. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour, or overnight if you can. I found that the flavors had more chance to travel when they sat overnight.

For the dressing, simply whisk the ingredients together in a small bowl. Drizzle over the patties when they're done.

To cook the patties, remove the mixture from the fridge and form a thick patty shape with your hands. With your sesame seeds in a shallow dish, dredge each side of the patty in sesame seeds, pressing gently to get them to stick. Spray a large saute pan with non-stick spray or lightly coat with olive oil. Cook the burgers over medium-high heat for about five minutes on each side. They're done when the sesame seeds are fragrant and slightly browned. Makes about 10 patties.

She Wore Brown Velvet

2009-02-13T16:16:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start this post by skipping to the end: you can't bat a thousand.

I made a- sorry, but- decidedly delicious batch of red velvet cupcakes for my friend and roommate Lily's birthday last month. Totally unconscionable, but exquisitely good little tortitas, almost impossibly moist and dressed to the nines in a top hat of butter-laden cream cheese frosting. Since my uncharacteristic success on the baking front, I've had this idea to try a vegan version of it. It seemed straight-forward enough - simply do some substituting for the non-vegan ingredients, right?

Then the monster grew into something I couldn't control. I felt uneasy from the first batch about the, um, "secret" ingredient: copious amounts of red food coloring. FIrst off, the first batch lent to my batter some odd crunchy bits that refused to blend with the dry indgredients. Then I started reading articles and blogs online not only about the possibly toxic nature of Reds #2-#473, but about a general curiosity as to whether or not there are dye alternatives in this belle of a cake. So I got to thinking: why not veganize it AND de-chemicalize it?? Mwwwaaahahaha!

I emerged from my evil laboratory, crossed the moat, and rode my black horse into Allston. My destination was Berezka, the Russian grocery store on Comm Ave. I was searching for a *new* secret ingredient - beets. That was my gut instinct when I wondered if there was a "natural" way to put the red in the velvet; google "red velvet cake beets" and you'll see I'm not the only one with that question. Alas, Berezka turned out to be a bust. I walked around the store for awhile clutching my only option: a jar of Gold's borchst. I hate borscht. I finally left empty-handed, deciding that there was no WAY I was putting soup in my cupcakes.

Back to Brookline I hiked, to Stop-and-Shop. I should have gone there first, honestly. They have a decent international section, with a Russian aisle (not that I have much use for the gefilte fish or canned smelt), and a secret haven of Thai and Chinese staples. I ended up walking with a cluster of fresh beets (enthusiastically) and a can of sliced beets (grudgingly).

I got home, did some planning, some mise-ing, and decided that there was no way in hell I had the time or patience to attempt a from-scratch beet dye. Sorry, but I'm a working girl! So I opened the metal can of beets, held my nose, and poured out the water (in case you weren't aware, canned beets are a true crime against nature. Maybe even humanity. Someone should alert the U.N.)

I'll try to make an exceedingly long story less long - while not a complete, irrefutable, 100% failure, these cupcakes did NOT turn out how I planned (although the frosting was quite exemplary). They are palatable, yes, but not as tasty as their non-vegan cousins. And by no stretch of the imagination are they red velvets, or even remotely red. NOT RED AT ALL! I'd settle for a dirt-brown description. In fact, maybe I'll make these for Earth Day... But if you don't believe me, please consult the writer at theinnermostbox for her telling on how an improvised rendition of the same red velvet cupcake recipe went horribly awry (she's a great writer!) The embarrassing thing is that my sister is worked as a pastry chef; my mother as a cake decorator. And they were both really good at their jobs! I'm a cook, not a pastier. Sigh. Well, there goes my Valentine's-themed post. Red velvet on V-Day is hack, anyway, right? Although I'm not immune - I did bring some velvets home to a bf from some bakery in Manhattan last year for the ol' Feb. 14th. Seemed like a good idea at the time - as did a lot of things... Damn, I should stop writing before I start to sound bitter.

Oh, before I shut up, I should say that of COURSE I'm not supplying you with my recipe for this monstrosity. I can tell you that I followed Garret's able tutelage from Simply Recipes, and simply did vegan subs for the non-vegan items, as listed below:

Eggs = 1 T flax meal and 3 T water, blended in a food processor or comparable tool (x2 in this case)
Buttermilk = required amount as non-dairy milk (I used vanilla soy milk) + 1 T vinegar (it curdles and gets gross and weird and awesome)
Cream cheese = Tofutti cream cheese (I so took shortcuts in this recipe)
Butter = Earth Balance (see above parenthesis)
Red food coloring = 2 T beet juice + 2 t vinegar

If anyone out there has any input on how to make this recipe not suck, I will be forever in your debt. Actually, teach me how to bake, and I'll make you a fierce veggie lasagna in return!

It Was A Good Day

2009-02-11T16:41:00.000-08:00

Boston is thawin' and I walked all the way from Coolidge to the Village and I have to say - today was a good day.

I even had a great sammich.

On the Mend, Friends

2009-02-10T10:17:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to give my warmest, fuzziest thanks for all your well-wishes since I done banged up m'body. And extra-special thanks to those who have been in and out of my apartment the last couple days, be it to offer mobility or highly unofficial medical advice. I'm feeling much more ambulatory, though I think it may be awhile until I'm 100% again. Don't worry; in some cosmic aspect, I'm sure I deserve this.

I'd like to shout out to two special critters that have helped me out, too. One is Lavender Panda, shown above looking mighty tuckered out after being in and out of the microwave so much for my muscle soothing needs. And the other is of course London, who has been extra-snuggly these past couple days. I extended my reach enough to get out and feed the birds today, to keep the both of us amused. When the seeds are out, so are the squirrels, and London, as depicted above, loses her holy-god-given mind...

Love in the Time of Vegetables

2009-02-09T15:41:00.000-08:00

This is a little premature, but can we talk about Valentine's Day for a minute? The cynic's route is way to easy to take here, so I want to try to recount some of the things about this non-holiday that have tickled my fancy. Let me count the ways:

1) Those red, heart-shaped lollipops connected in a string of plastic. They are the Platonic form of the taste of Red.

2) The time my apartment was full of Ninja Turtle valentines scattered in secret places.

3) The year we made the best of a dorm room kitchen and prepared an awesome, all-vegan, ladies only V-Day feast.

4) The Valentine's Day episode of The Simpsons. Beyond good. "I bent my Wookie!"

5) Vegan cooking contests!

Susan at FatFree Vegan Kitchen is sponsoring another year of Vegetable Love, an annual cooking contest in which food bloggers can enter their sultriest, healthiest, veggiest recipes in honor of the Dia de Amantes. So, here's my offering...

Remember those misfit root veggies from a few posts back? Well, wanting to keep it seasonal for this February feast, I turned those guys into a creamy, savory scalloped dish. You could do this with just potatoes, or any combination of root vegetables and get the same result. The starch from the potatoes and rutabaga meld with the rice milk to bind the dish in a heavenly cream, and the onions provide color, crunch and plenty of sass. Aw, it's kinda like they were made for each other... *sniff* No, I'm not crying! I think I just got shallot juice in my eye...

Scalloped Root Vegetables

2 medium russet potatoes, 1 medium rutabaga, 1 medium sweet potato, a handful of sunchokes, all unpeeled, rinsed, thoroughly scrubbed and thinly sliced
1 medium yellow onion, 1 red onion, and one shallot, peeled and thinly sliced
2 c rice milk or oat milk (soy milk will likely break up under the heat)
2 T cornstarch
salt and lotsa pepper
1/2 c herbed breadcrumbs*
minced parsley for garnish

Preheat oven to 375F. Over high heat, add the rice milk to a large pot. Add the cornstarch and whisk until combined, about one minute. Add the root veggies and allow the mixture to come to a boil. Reduce heat and bring to mixture down to a simmer; simmer for about twenty minutes or until the rice milk is mostly evaporated and takes on a creamy texture. Add the salt and, really, lotsa ground pepper. Stir gently to mix in the salt and pepper and distribute the rice milk, but take care not to mush the veggies to a pulp. Pour the mixture into an 8"x8"-ish casserole dish. Add the breadcrumbs. Cover with foil and bake for 40 min. Top with parsley and serve. Serves 6 as a hearty side dish.

*To make the herbed bread crumbs, preheat the oven to a low heat (about 200F). Toast for 15-20 min, or until browned and crisp. Break into small pieces and place in the bowl of a food processor. Add a pinch each of basil, thyme, oregano, and a grinding of black pepper. Process into small crumbs, about 1 minute.

Ouchie Bunkers

2009-02-08T16:35:00.000-08:00

Pretty adorable phrase, right? It's one that I've heard my friend utter many times as she's hoisting a thirty-pound bucket of ice up to chest-level. She suffered a shoulder injury that's been bothering her for several months, and while I've always had sympathy for her pain, now I'm living in straight-up empathy. I did.. something dumb to my body. Was it the six quarts of OJ I heaved up the stairs the other day, trying to prove to no one but myself that I was strong enough to do it? Was it an incident that involved about fifteen cocktails too many the other night and I just plain don't know what happened? Did my aging pillows finally get the best of me? All I know is that I woke up this morning, found I couldn't move, and it took me about twenty minutes to roll out of bed this morning - literally, twisting and rolling out of bed. I'd like to think I'm too young to fall infirm as such, but I may be wrong...

I've had plenty of time to think today. Usually my days off are committed to prepping, chopping, baking, sauteing, washing, and all the other physical maneuvers it takes to make this blog work and my life happy. But I can't crane my head to see my left shoulder right now, much less peel a squash or chop an onion. I realized today how bummed (by which I mean devastated) if someone one told me "I'm sorry, but you'll never play piano again. I mean, cook again." On the positive side, temperatures hit 50 today, or so I'm told. I took my gimpy arm and me out for a little walk today. From what I could see straight in front of me, the birds were going nuts and the snow was melting to reveal months' worth of trash buried in the drifts. Urban springtime can't be too far away! I realized I need to start thinking about launching my second attempt at a proper container garden. What to plant, and how to make it grow this year... the cilantro i threw into a pot did poke its head through the soil (I photographed its debut above), so I'm bouyed to think that I won't be left with little more than compost fodder this fall. Speaking of, my compost is in iffy territory. I've been adding to it tis winter, but nothing could prevent it from freezing into a solid brick organic garbage. I think adding some more browns will help, and hopefully I can soon start a hunt for worms to add to the mix.

All this made me super-doubly appreciate the simple meal I threw together tonight - leftover tomato soup that my sister made and brought me when I may or may not have had the mumps a couple weeks back (yeah, it's been a rough winter), and a baked sweet potato. I can't cook, but I can still eat well. Mike D said it best: It's called GRATITUDE!-And that's RIGHT!

Baked Sweet Potatoes

sweet potatoes (one per person)
olive oil
salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 400. Poke the potatoes in several places with a fork, lest they explode all over your oven. Place on a sheet of aluminum foil - they will leak their sweet, tasty juices and make a mess that you don't want to try to clean out of a pan. Bake for about 45min-1hr, depending on their size (they're done when the flesh is easily pierced with a fork). Remove from oven, cut in half and allow to cool for a couple minutes. Top with good sea salt, a grinding of black pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil.

Black Radishes and Kings

2009-02-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

Since my last post, my drive to seek out local produce has evolved into something of an obsession. I've eaten a whole lot of roots, bulbs and squash this winter, and really have no complaints...except that I'm bored. Oh, the rallying cry of the disaffected! We should be so lucky to declare ourselves tired from the tyranny of a diet of staples...betcha my grandmother didn't complain about a diet based on potatoes (though maybe she did... she was a pistol, I'll tell you that much). Ok, so maybe its not so much boredom as a challenge to myself. I knew there had to be something exciting out there that I hadn't yet steamed, baked or mashed. This is, after all, the first winter where I've consciously steered clear from the brightly-colored temptations at the grocery store: yellow summer squash, red tomatoes, green peppers - when there's snow on the ground - just seem wrong to me now. It ain't natural!

So, my terms took me to Whole Foods, your one-stop shop for a clear conscience...or maybe not... Ok, it's way, way to easy for me to get jaded here, so I will try to keep up a positive spin. But seriously, you know you've come a long way from the soil when your idea of winter foraging stops after a 20-minute stroll down paved (but slushy) sidewalk to Brighton. In all fairness, I was surprised by the assortment of local produce they had to offer. Much of it was new to me - I bought everything.

My bounty included rutabagas and sunchokes from Vermont, parsnips from Whately, MA, baby spinach from Allendale Farms right here in Brookline, and perhaps the most charming and exotic pick of the litter, black radishes, also from Vermont. Now, there's an awful lot of schmultzy food writing out there, and I try my damndest to keep it out of my blog. But something got the best of me here... when I sliced the top off one of those strangely lunar-looking bulbs, it revealed a flesh as white and fine as porcelain and an aroma so fragrant and spicy and earthy. True and as full of promise as the air around my mother's old garden when the chives first start to waggle their proud stalks... yeah, I got a little choked up. I have confidence that spring will come again (thank you, Julie Andrews)! Gross.

I have lots of plans for my plunder, but I wanted to start first with what my body has been truly craving - a salad. I decided to wing it and see which of these veggiese would work raw in a bed of tender baby spinach. I sliced the sunchokes supeer-fine, and they revealed a texture and flavor similar to a young potato, grassy and sweet. I grated the parsnips for that zing I love, the marriage of the mellowness in a carrot with the zest of celery. And those radishes possessed a bright, robust bite - peppery and strong as scallions. They needed a fine, matchstick cut to impart their punch without overtly punching me in the face when I got a bite. I whipped up a citrus-maple vinaigrette, with the idea of a local maple flavor and seasonal (but not at all local) orange playing up the bite of radish and the sweetness of the parsnip. I topped it off with raw sunflower seeds (sunchokes' alleged namesake), and voila: my very first wintertime seasonal salad. Haven't quite figured out what to do with the other mutant-looking veggies on hand, but I'm working on it.

Maple-Citrus Vinaigrette

1/4 c good, fruity olive oil (I used Trader Joe's Extra Virgin California Estate)
3 T maple syrup (I used Grade B, and liked how the rich taste and color came through)
2 T white vinegar
juice and zest from an orange
1 t grainy mustard
pinch of salt
grinding of black pepper

Combine the ingredients in a jar. Cap the lid; shake like a Polaroid picture. Use to dress assertive, tangy salads and vegetables like celery, parsnip, radish, onions, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

A Freecavore's Breakfast

2009-01-26T13:16:00.000-08:00

It's nearing the end of January, and the gears on the drawbridge I drew up about six weeks ago are starting to rust shut. I am a card-carrying hermit in the winter, no two ways about it. And for the many things that I dislike about the neighborhood I live in (you can smell the sense of entitlement wafting from every street corner), I have right at my fingertips what I need to get through the winter: a library and Trader Joe's. Ample opportunity to cook and read away the winter doldrums. Lately I've been reading about processed food; I just finished Can You Trust A Tomato In January?, a quirky but heavily dated exploration of the origin of the supermarkets and some of the food science experiments found within. And by dated, I'm talking about lines that read "[t]he earliest grocery system was a a communistic one - we can admit now that the Berlin Wall has fallen and the Soviet Union is no longer a union. Cavemen and cavewomen shared what they had." The book was published in 1993, so I can accept that the fall of the Soviet Union was still hot news. But when was the last time anyone mentioned "cavemen" and "-women?" And is the author really drawing some evolutionary parallel between the Reds and the monkeys? Regardless, I learned some fun (but scary) stuff about dough emulsifiers. I'm now reading Twinkie, Deconstructed, an exhaustively-researched but readable look at those unpronounceable ingredients in the aforementioned snack cake. For the record, I have always been grossed out by Twinkies, though my now gluten-free sister probably has a closet shelf reserved for her longing for them.

And speaking of GF (no, not "girlfriend," omg lol l33t h@x0r), my sister suggested that I try taking the stuff out of my diet for a couple days. See, this winter is kicking my ass in so many ways, and one of them is with a plague of dry skin. I'm talking swatches of reptile bumps that itch like hell and belie my skin's age (don't they??). Dry skin is indeed one of the many symptoms of celiac disease, and while I have little other reason to think I'm afflicted (count those blessings!), I figured it would be worth a shot to see if my skin improved at all after a couple wheat-free days. I've been taking oatmeal to work for breakfast every day for weeks now. It's quick and filling and just plain delicious with a drizzle of maple syrup and some nuts thrown in. Today I mixed it up by bringing some leftover quinoa to make a similar breakfast porridge. (I've promised to post a proper quinoa recipe soon!) I've been longing so deeply for fruit in these dark months, and I am all appled out. As committed as I am to eating locally and seasonally, I am what I have dubbed a freecavore. Freegans are willing to ignore a covert animal ingredient when the stuff is free; I'm willing to occasionally bypass seasonality when there's free produce before me. I guess the idea is that it's ok, so long as you're not putting your money into supporting unstable foodways (though that sounds about as justifiable as buying indulgences). So I went hog-wild today and decided to toy with a decidedly unseasonable- but available- fruit choice. I helped myself to a few blueberries from a coworkers morning fruit plate. I mixed 'em in with the quinoa that I had reheated with almond milk, pecans, and oh yes, maple syrup. I was thrilled with how the grain behaved at breakfast - its slightly nutty flavor and mysterious crunchy-on-the-outside-chewy-on-the-inside texture was a great wake-up call for my mouth. But the blueberries... so unnaturally large and unseasonably present... I kinda felt a connection with my caveman author friend: can you trust a blueberry in January? My vote's a no...

Shepherd's Pie - Odyssey's End

2009-01-24T06:07:00.000-08:00

Odysseus came home to Ithaca a tired and beaten man. I almost feel sorry for him, walking into his own house and seeing a gaggle of drunken Grecian frat boys and jocks all trying to get all up in his lady's cool. Good thing he walked into a raging party, though - homeboy was probably starving, if not addled by scurvy from years at sea.

This recipe is a work-in-progress. I really the idea of it - bits of seasoned tofu, sauteed with hearty vegetables with a garlicy mashed potato topping. Yum, right? And a great way to finish off these leftovers that have been tapping on the door of my fridge crying "Hey! Hey! Don't even think about that frozen burrito! You started this leftover crusade, now finish it!" I way, WAY over-seasoned the filling, though, and the it wound up tasting a lot Thanksgiving. Not what I'm after in January. And there was too much liquid in the casserole, making it more brothy than gravy-like. Did I mention that I'm not a chef?

I've made some tweak below, though, that should help remedy those problems. I changed the spice mix, decreased that amount of liquid, and used whole wheat flour for thickening instead of corn starch. But if anyone has ever had smashing success with a vegan shepherd's pie, please let me know! I'm just psyched that now my fridge is empty and I can make something brand-new again.

Oh, and if you haven't tried this trick yet, you're soon to become addicted. When buying packages of tofu that are bound for a stir-fry, pan-sear or casserole, try freezing it first, then defrosting. The resulting texture is spongier and well, meatier, meaning it really soaks up a marinade and hold its shape while cooking. Unless I'm pureeing tofu to use in a sauce or soup, I always freeze mine first, and I much prefer the texture.

(The syntax is funny here. Is this what one might have served the strapping tofu shepherds of yore, after then came home from a long day of wrangling the soybeans back to pasture?)

Tofu Shepherd's Pie

16 oz extra-firm tofu, frozen, thawed and drained
1/4 c soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, smashed
olive oil for saute
1 white or yellow onion, diced
2 carrots, scrubbed and diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 c broccoli florets, steamed (or frozen peas for a more old-school approach)
1 c vegetable stock
1 T whole wheat flour
1/4 t dried sage
salt and pepper
Roasted Garlic & Kale Mashed Potatoes leftovers (you'll need at least 3 cups)

Preheat oven to 350F. Crumble up the tofu and place in a pan with steep sides. Mix together the soy sauce and garlic and pour over the tofu, tossing to coat. Marinate for about twenty minutes.

Steam the broccoli in a colander over a bit of boiling water for five minutes, or until slightly tender but still al dente. Rinse in cold water and set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until translucent, about five to six minutes. Add the carrot and celery and saute until softened, another five minutes. Stir in the broccoli or peas. Add the tofu and stir until it sizzles. Stir in the sage and add the salt and several grindings of black pepper. Add 3/4 c of the stock, reserving the last 1/4 c. Add the flour to the remaining stock add stir until dissolved. Allow most of the stock to evaporate from the pan, then add the stock and flour mixture, stirring constantly. You should see the mixture thicken slightly and coat the veggies with a slight sheen.

Add to a 8''x8'' casserole pan and top with a good layer of mashed potatoes. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Makes about 8 servings.

1/21/09 - and Recipe Odyssey El Segundo

2009-01-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

Wait - did you feel that?

Is that it?

I can't quite perceive it, I can't smell it or taste it or eat it, but somewhere around 1208EST on January 20, 2009 -

- the change happened.

Maybe my head is foggy by the massive collision of cynicism with optimism (on a personal and national scale), but it's been hard to perceive the momentous shift in ethos since November 4th, since yesterday. There will be no heaven-sent dove clutching an olive branch, this we know. But if we take this opportunity to really, actually initiate a new deal, both to push for it and roll with it - the signs will appear. The change will manifest. For example...

I finished my VERY FIRST Tuesday NY Times crossword! All by myself! Maybe (ok, certainly) it was all the Obamacentric clues in yesterday's puzzle, but hell YEAH! See, things are truly happening. I'm just sayin'...

I know the FDR comparisons are flying left and right, but I can't help but identify with having a national leader we can look up to; one who, when he calls on the nation to do something, then by god, you do it. (No one wanted to eff with a Roosevelt, right?). So when the 44th started business by freezing salaries in DC because so many are cutting costs, such as by opting for cheaper cuts of critter. I haven't read anything yet about a rise in vegan- or vegetarianism on account of the economy, but hey, the depression hasn't...quite...hit yet...(ack, no! optimism, not cynicism!) Anyway, this action inspired me to really challenge myself by cooking with what I have on hand. That's always sort of been part of the spirit of this blog: living minimally, healthfully, and well. But I guess you could say I'm redoubling those efforts. This ties in well with the mini-series of set up, too! So here it is, El Segundo in my dinner-party recipe odyssey. We are officially now on leftovers. Since a serving of mashed potatoes as a meal is kind of a downer (remember, optimism, people!), I decided to fool around with...

Crispy Potato Patties

Roasted Garlic and Kale Mashed Potatoes
1 c breadcrumbs*
1/4 c olive oil

Allow leftover potatoes to come to room temperature; or, if using a fresh batch, allow to cool. Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large saute pan. Form potatoes into a patty with your hands, and press each side gently into the bread crumbs to thoroughly coat. You made need to cheat a little - reform the patties if they start to break apart, or press in extra breadcrumbs in any uncovered spots.

Place the patties in the hot oil and cook until brown (about 3-4 minutes), pressing slightly with a large spatula. Turn the patties over and cook until the other side brown. Remove from oil and set on a paper towel to drain and cool for a minute.

The yield will vary, obviously, depending on the amount of mashed 'taters you're dealing with! I found that two of these guys with some gravy and some leftover Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash Bisque made quite a filling meal.

*I don't really have a reason to keep breadcrumbs in my pantry, so... I don't! To make breadcrumbs, toast two or three slices of whole-wheat bread, rip into small pieces, and process in a food processor or chopper until fine - a little over a minute. Heat a pan over low heat and add the breadcrumbs. Toast in the pan for about ten minutes, shaking pan frequently. These breadcrumbs are drier and therefore more pan-friendly than your average store variety (many of which add preservatives, sugar, HFCS, and such baddies).

Wicked Classy Dinnah Pahty! And Recipe Odyssey Part the First

2009-01-18T16:01:00.000-08:00

I'm thrilled to report that my first attempted dinner party nothing short of...well, a really good time. I don't know if I'd call it a "smashing success;" in fact, I use the term "party" loosely, as there were all of four people present (including myself). But according to hospitality maven/epic hearoine Amy Sedaris, four people do a party make! It's been awhile since I've cooked for someone other than myself and maybe a boyfriend (which, like knitting for a boyfriend, I'm convinced is just plain bad luck), and I was cooking for a discriminating - but loving - crowd, so I was a bit on edge. By which I mean I was frantically dipping into mise-en-place, flinging around around towels, simultaneously operating four burners, and working through a sink full of dishes until mere minutes before the doorbell rang. But the #1 rule of hospitality: YOUR GUESTS SHOULD NEVER KNOW THAT! Spruce yirself up and squeeze a glass of wine into that final hour of cooking. As a hostess or host, it's your job to be effortlessly fabulous.

We did quite, quite well with the food. My dear friend Michael made an charming and delicious crudite featuring HOMEMADE Goddess Dressing! It was tantalizing and visually stunning. His secret (assuming I can share this, Muffin!): blanch the veggies first. Because, as we discussed over our munchies and Prosecco, who really wants to gnaw on raw veggies as an appetizer (ducking the brick that some raw foodist just hurled through my window)? For an entree, I offered up homey plates of one of my blog darlings, Lentil Loaf, alongside Kale and Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes (more on that in shake!), served with that vegan country classic, golden gravy. (Did I mentioned I managed to pick the coldest Boston night in years to have this get-together? Ribs needed to be pasted with the heartiest of home-cookin'). Culinary wizard, good friend, and all-around amazing human being Vini Souza made an one of the best desserts I've had in my life: a flourless chocolate and raspberry torte. He said he'll be blogging on it soon, so please, if you love life, check or his post on that. When I have it, I'm all about chocolate for dessert...not a lot of healthful shortcuts for me there.

I had this idea to turn this into a recipe chronicle. I knew I'd have plenty of leftovers, even though I was feeding three boys (and later, one hungry roommate). So I invite you to see where these leftovers take me over the next couple days. Let's start at the beginning:

Kale & Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

3 lbs all-purpose potatoes, like Yukon Gold, peeled and quartered
1/2c-3/4c rice or soy milk
4T soy margarine
1 bunch kale, deribbed and coarsely chopped
6-8 large garlic cloves, peeled
1/4c olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper

Place kale in a pot and fill with water (enough to cover the kale). Cover and bring water to a boil and steam the kale for about 8 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally so all the pieces soften. Drain and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375. In a small baking dish, toss the garlic cloves with the olive oil and throw in a pinch of salt. Bake for about 25 minutes or until tender and browned, remembering to stir occasionally so as not to burn the edges.

While the garlic roasts, place potatoes on a large pot and fill with enough water to cover the potatoes. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce to a simmer and cook until easily pierced with a fork, about 25 minutes. Drain the water from the potatoes and keep in the pot. Mash to potatoes with a potato masher until all the lumps are mashed away

Add the soy margarine and dump in the garlic with the oil and mash again until the garlic is smashed and incorporated evenly throughout the potatoes. Add the rice or soy milk and stir. Start with half a couple; if mixture still seems stiff, add another 1/4c. But remember not to add too much milk, as the potatoes will become soupy. Bear in mind that they will thicken upon standing, and any leftovers will moreso. Stir in the kale, season with salt and pepper, and serve hot. Makes about 8 servings.

Apple-Pecan Pancakes: An Homage to the Weekend Warrior

2009-01-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

This weekend marked the third winter storm in Boston this season; second one of the year (the first of '09 being that cascade of ice that made sidewalk travel near impossible without a flame-thrower). I'm really not big on weekends, largely because they're not a part of my schedule - those of us in the food biz readily acknowledge that Friday through Sunday are when our monies come in. That being said, I miss out on a lot of those staples that the weekend warriors live for: the Sunday New York Times, immobile lines at any retailer or grocer, and that perennial favorite, brunch. Given that I pay my bills by working at one of Boston's slammin'-est breakfast joints, that last thing I want to do on a Sunday morning off is see how the gears turn at another brunch spot. So when it's in the cards, breakfast at home is kind of a big deal for me.

This was inspired by one of my New England-weathered friends. I whipped up these guys on Sunday as the snow kept falling and time kept creeping towards my clock-in. Those minute hands did seem to slow down as the aroma of cooked apples and warm cinnamon settled over the kitchen. The beauty about this breakfast treat is that the apples caramelize slightly when it's their turn against the pan. So deelish...almost enough for me to trade in the tips for a real-world, lazy Sunday. Ahem. Almost.

Apple-Pecan Pancakes

11/2 c flour
1/2 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1 1/2 t cinammon
1/4 t nutmeg
1 T dry sweetener
2 T light vegetable oil (sunflower, canola)
1 1/2 c almond, rice, or soy milk
2 apples, peeled, cored and sliced into thin crescents
1/2 pecans

Whisk together dry ingredients. Add oil and milk, stir carefully until just mixed. Allow mix to sit 10-15 minutes (After years of making hockey puck hotcakes, I've concluded that these two elements - not over-mixing and settling time - are the key to light, fluffy pancakes).

Spray a pan with non-stick spray and heat over a gentle medium. When a spritz of water dances off the pan, it's hot enough. Add half a cup of batter and plop some apples slices and pecans on top. Watch for bubbles to form; when they've all popped, it's time to turn. Flip carefully and cook for about 4-minutes on the other side, or until the apples brown and you catch the fragrance of toasted nuts and baked apples. Serve with butter and maple syrup. Makes 5-6 plate-sized pancakes.

Stir Crazy

2009-01-07T16:23:00.000-08:00

I think I was still in high school the last time I tried my hand at making risotto. Oh, what a fantastic disaster that was. The rice didn't cook, and I was left with a colony of teeth-shattering little bullets swimming haplessly in a pool of tepid water. I remember being so, so mad at myself for botching those misleadingly simple directions: add broth and stir, add broth and stir...

As it turns out, risotto, while not exactly fickle, is a a time-consuming affair that requires lots of special attention and constant stimulation (too much like my 18-year-old self for me to tackle at the time, perhaps?). I bought some arborio rice awhile back, thinking I might roll my sleeves up and try to settle this old vendetta. Tonight - this rainy, frigid night - was the night, and I am very pleased with the results. So, so yummy, perfect for winter, and one of those recipes you would never know is vegan. The creamy white beans are the perfect addition to this Italian classic, and the loads of garlic with lemon and basil... wow. My apartment smelled like the North End on an early summer night.

Oh, and this is my first go at this recipe, but I'm pretty sure you can achieve nearly the same result without the cashew creme; it just seemed like a good idea as I was hashing out this recipe in my head. But I think the starch from the rice alone should do the trick.

White Bean and Spinach Risotto with Cashew Creme

olive oil for saute
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1 large carrot, finely chopped
12 oz cannelini (white kidney) beans (drain and rinse first if using canned)
1 1/2 c arborio rice
1/4 dry white wine, like Pinot Grigio
4 c hot vegetable stock
1/2 c nutritional yeast
12-15oz spinach
1 tbs dried basil
juice from one lemon
salt and pepper to taste

1/2 c cashews (preferably unsalted and raw)
1 c water

For the cashew creme, add cashews to a food processor, chopper or blender and pulse until you get a fine, crumbly meal. Add water and process until smooth and frothy. Set aside.

In a large sauce pan, heat olive oil over low-medium heat. Add garlic, shallots and carrots and saute until tender and translucent, about four minutes. Add the beans and stir to coat. Add the rice and stir gently for a good minute to coat with the oil. Add wine (relish in the WOOSH sound), and stir until absorbed, about a minute.

Add 1/2 c of stock and stir stir stir until absorbed. Repeat the process: add stock, 1/2 c at a time, and stir until the rice absorbs the liquid. One cup into the process, the rice will start to get transluce and take on a gooier, stickier consistency with each half-cup addition. The rice should become creamy and cooked through until just al dente; not too crunchy, not too mushy. You may need to add or omit water by the half-cup to achieve this (and you'll need and extra half-cup if you omit the cashew creme), so test the rice to see when it's done. All told, this step should take about 25 minutes. After adding four cups of stock, pour in the cashew cream and stir until absorbed.

Stir in the spinach, then the nutritional yeast. Stir to combine. Add basil and lemon juice and stir; add salt and pepper, adjusting seasonings if need be (I like this with lots of fresh pepper). Let stand five minutes before serving. Serves 6.

Let's Play Dress-Up

2009-01-06T13:38:00.000-08:00

This is a superbly versatile recipe that you can dress up to suit your mood or tastes. Remember Barbie in the '80's, and how she was al about having forty different careers and an outfit for each one? Yeah, that's what this soup is about. It can be anything if it just puts its mind to it. I considered taking it to Thailand with a bit of red curry paste and ginger. It could assume a desert role with cinnamon and nutmeg. It can travel south with an orange - its zest and juice (the bright, orange hue of the soup almost begs for it). I was feeling nostalgic for summer, so I jazzed it up with the in-your-face presence of smoked paprika, amplified by a few crystals of fleur de sel (two appropriate and very specifically heeded gifts from my sister). I'm not usually fond of smokey flavors, but here the smoked paprika is surprisingly at home with the mellow root vegetables. You're not sure how they get along, but they do - kinda like the stern dad and the ubiquitous wacky neighbor in an 80's sitcom (one I'd be watching while landing on the moon with my Astronaut Barbie).

If you happen to have any combination of baked squash or sweet potatoes ready to go, then move to the head of the class; you're way ahead of the game!

Smokey Sweet Potato and Squash Bisque

plop of butter/soy margarine for saute
1 large white onion, diced
1 shallot, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, coarsely chopped
2-3 medium sweet potatoes
1 small acorn squash
1 package silken tofu
5 cups vegetable stock
1/2 t smoked paprika
1/4 t cinnamon
freshly ground black pepper
pinch of fleur de sel or good-quality sea salt

Preheat oven to 400F. Poke the sweets and the squash several times with a fork. Line the middle oven rack with foil to house the sweets and squash. Bake for 45-min to an hour, depending on the size of the guys. You know it's done when a fork easily pierces the skin of each veggie. When they're done, remove from oven and cut in half lengthwise and allow to cool. Scoop out the seeds of the acorn squash, then remove the flesh and set aside. Scoop out the sweet potato goo as well, setting aside with the squash.

While those guys are roasting, heat the butter over medium heat until melted, taking care not to burn. Add the onion, shallot, and garlic, and saute until soft and transluscent, about five minutes. Add the carrot and saute for another five minutes, until the carrot is slightly softened.

Add the stock, squash, and sweet potato and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally to break apart the clumps. Add the tofu, stir and remove from heat. Puree with an immersion blender until smooth smooth smooth. Add the smoked paprika, cinnamon and pepper and stir. Add a pinch of fleur de sel at the very end and stir in. Garnish with a wee pinch of smoked paprika and a tiny hint of the salt. Serves 6.

...Stir In Onion Mix And Serve

2009-01-05T05:34:00.000-08:00

A steady diet of champagne and chocolate sounds like a really good idea, but after a solid week of inundating my body with sucrose and booze, I'm only too happy to get back on track. I spent Christmas at my mom's house this year, which is always...fun, but rife with drama - a lot of it food-related. There's my brother's nascent vegetarianism, my sister's calorie consciousness (she measures shots by the ounce just to take out the caloric guesswork) , my niece's usually healthful diet offset by boundless sea of candy, and my mother's idea of entertainment fare that is firmly rooted in the 70's. I have long since given up any resistance to the annual buffet, and have simply resigned myself to a week of sour cream dips and cookies for breakfast.

Happy New Year, everyone. Pass the kale, please.

Winter Warmer

2008-12-17T13:49:00.000-08:00

My dears, I am very happy to share some pretty rockin' news with you - I've been selected as a guest writer on one of my favorite blogs, Not Eating Out in New York. I've written my praises of Cathy Erway's blog. On top of kick-ass recipes with a green slant, she also documents the DIY culinary happenings in the New York area, along with her reasons for lighting up a burner and, well, not eating out in New York. I answered the call to her readership: to offer up an outside defense of home-cooking.

What an appropriate time for this boost of confidence. My warmest thanks for the support of those of you who check up on my little space on the internet. I know you'll all dig Cathy's writing, too, so if you're not already, get yourself familiar with her site. And a special thanks to her for this honor. Oh, I'm all fuzzy inside now. I feel like I should end this with some sort of toast! So, um... Excelsior! Sure.

Santa? Toys? OK! Do That!

2008-12-16T15:12:00.000-08:00

Thus quoth my two-year-old niece on the matter of the annual gift-man. Yeah, Santa, do that thang! Inspired by her holiday enthusiasm and her tiny brain's ability to now form simple sentences, I decided to get some holiday baking underway. I tackled chocolate chip cookies, which I've been meaning to bake since the NY Times posted this back in July. The summer heat left me with no desire to fire up a hot oven, and the inspiration has been simmering since sometime right after the fireworks.

The recipe is an amalgamation of a few tried and true ones - healthed up a bit by oatmeal and whole-wheat pastry flour, inherently awesome by the presence of chocolate. I heeded the Times' advice on chilling the dough, something a step I've only ever followed on my mom's peanute butter cookies. But for reals, it made such a difference. The result was a creamier, chewier cookie with a more consistent, vanilla-y flavor. I guess that the idea is that the egg saturates the dough - though I didn't use egg, the liquid egg replacer achieved a similar effect. If you use egg replacer, make sure it's a gooey one like a store-brand or one with a water base. The fruit-and-baking-powder trick doesn't really apply here. And a sprinkling of salt on each dough-drop really plays on the sweetness - but in retaliation, I reduced the salt in the dough ever-so-slightly. And if you make these guys with the egg replacer and spoon some of the dough into your mouth when no one's looking... then no, Virginia, there is no salmonella clause.

Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 1/2 C whole-wheat pastry flour
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t fine-grain sea salt
1 c cane sugar
1 c brown sugar
1 c soy margarine or organic unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened at room temperature
3 egg replacers or 3 good-quality large eggs (EnerG Egg Replacer)
1 T pure vanilla extract
1 c rolled oats (walnuts or pecans work, too)
12 oz good-quality chocolate chunks (I love Ghirardelli, though it comes from the opposite coast) or 1 package chips

Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, beat the butter with a hand mixer until smooth and creamy. Add the sugar one cup at a time and beat until smooth - the butter should return to that state it was at when you first beat it, but grainy with the presence of the sugar. Add the egg replacer or eggs one at a time and beat until incorporated, pausing to scrape the sides of the bowl. Add the vanilla extract and beat in until the brown swirls disappear in the mix. Add the dry ingredient mixture to the bowl one cup at a time, beating until just beat - do not overmix! Pastry dough requires a gentle hand, or else the gluten in the flour become overtaxed and stretchy. Then stir in the oats and the chocolate.

If you can muster the wait...CHILL OVERNIGHT. I know, it's the hard-est part.

Preheat oven to 375. Line two cookie sheets with parchment or wax paper. Drop the dough by a tablespoon onto the sheet, allowing room for the little guys to grow in the oven (about 10 per sheet). Bake for ten minutes, or until just golden on the top. Great cookies are born from not over-baking. Transfer to wire racks and cool.

Yields about 3 dozen cookies.

Chili Sin Carne

2008-12-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

As I'm writing, I watch pairs of animals waddle, slither, march and trot outside to an unseen destination. We've entered the thirty-sixth straight hour of rain, and the arc is leaving pronto. Me, I'll stay behind. I can probably finish most of my Christmas shopping before the dove swoops down. Actually, I should really finish, like, yesterday. In my enthusiasm for giving (or perhaps overcompensation for a year of frivolity-free shopping), I am way over budget and I'm running my bank account in the ground. But, damn it, I'll enjoy every step of the way to fiscal ruin.

The weather coupled with the my need to pinch some pennies inspired a one-woman chili cook-off today. Canned beans and root veggies are always in my kitchen for just such situations (Broke! Gloomy! Hungry!). I've been craving the stuff anyway, and thought I'd try to put a spin on an old standby. Sweet potatoes are the new cocoa powder to chili ingredients. There are a gazillion sweet potato chili recipes out there, so it's not as edgy and exciting to me as I once thought. But I still love the idea of those golden-sweet tubers rocking out in a bowl of tomato-and-bean-filled goodness. Boston vegans seem to tirelessly rave about the cashew chili at Trident Cafe; though I am nonplussed by it, I love that idea, too, and invited cashews to the party. And oh yes, there is cocoa powder in the mix. It adds a comforting, dark hue to the dish and a mysterious smokiness - and I was sort of out of chili powder.

Sweet Potato and Cashew Chili

olive oil for saute
1 large onion, diced
3 gloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
3 celery stalks, minced
2 or 3 sweets potatoes (about a pound), peeled and diced
1 28oz can diced tomatoes, with the juice
1 15oz can red kidney beans
1 15oz can cannellini beans
2 t cumin
1 t cocoa powder
1/4 t cayenne pepper
pinch red pepper flakes
2 cups water or stock
1/2 c unsalted cashews

In a large stockpot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, jalapeno and celery. Cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the sweet potatoes, tomato, beans, cumin, cocoa powder, cayenne, red pepper flakes, and water. Raise the heat and bring to a boil, uncovered. Reduce the heat and simmer for about half an hour, or until the potatoes are tender. In the last five minutes, stir in the cashews (you went them slightly softened, but not mushy). Garnish with cashew pieces. Serves at least 6.

Matters of Great Import

2008-12-09T16:13:00.000-08:00

A few observations:

1) Playing bar trivia is always a good way to spend an afternoon.
2) There are few things in creation less attractive than a man naked from only the waist down.
3) There seems to be a great discrepancy in public opinion as the lifespan of leftover pizza.
4) London loves Modest Mouse.

There are a lot of great people writing great things out there. Please, visit the links I've offered and support your independent artists! And food writers in Boston: I want to hear from you.

Post Hoc Detox

2008-12-04T13:12:00.000-08:00

Not gonna lie, I'm feeling pretty uninspired lately. Cooking quasi-professionally is a quasi-nightmare, and I haven't been cooking much myself lately. I was still recovering from Thanksgiving when along came December. Not to worry; we've bedazzled our nest with all sorts of sparkly wonderment, so that cheers me up (hear me now, that if we had the disposable income, we'd fully be the creepy house on the block with light-up snowmen, animatronic reindeer and trains that follow an endless circular path to nowhere).

In an effort to detox from the last holiday's revelry, I made this miso soup. Really not much cause to write out a recipe. Miso soup is just a couple cups of water, a couple plops of miso paste, some dried seaweed, some tofu cubes, and scallions. Bring the water, seaweed and tofu to a boil. Remove from heat, stir in the miso and scallions, and yir done, son.

You Gotta Compost It...Make Less Of It...

2008-11-20T13:48:00.000-08:00

Apple cores. Potato peels. Kale ribs. Garlic skin. Corn husks. For years I've been sweeping all sorts of organic, nutrient-rich goodness off my cutting board and into the trash can, wincing every step of the way. I'm finally at a place and time where I can do something about it, and I recently started my own compost bin.

There are so many great resources online aimed at teaching the ways of thrifty, edgy gardening and composting. Such as...? you ask...

You Grow Girl is where I got the template for by bin

www.compstguide.com offers tips and encouragement for a compost endeavor. For example, according to this site, the average household kitchen produces 200lbs of kitchen waste a year. I know most of us aren't cooking for a spouse and 4 hungry kids, but even with our apartment lifestyles, there's plenty of room to grow from there.

This is just a start. The photo above features scraps from today's dinner - Citrus-Spiced Butternut Squash Soup - on its way to a better life.

I was inspired by my trip today to Christina's, the spice store in Inman Square. Truly, truly the adventurous gastronomer's paradise. Rows and rows of exotic and mundane spices, bulk grains and beans, dried chiles and mushrooms...feels like home.
Vietnamese (or Saigon) cinnamon is slightly hotter, spicier and just ballsier than what you'd normally put in cookies or oatmeal. And freshly-ground nutmeg is such a treat. Under its hard, acorn-like exterior you'll find a creamy, brown-speckled interior that looks to much like a chocolate truffle to not be immediately edible. The orange loves to cozy up to these spices. The potato - arguably the secret ingredient - adds a creaminess you thought was only reserved for dairy-based soups (a little starch goes a long way here)

Citrus-Spiced Butternut Squash Soup.

splash of olive oil and a plop of butter (soy margarine), in a pot for saute
1 butternut squash (2-3lbs), peeled and diced
1 or sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 or 2 boiling potatoes, peeled and diced
1 orange - you'll need the zest and juice (or 1/4 c orange juice)
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 nutmeg, grated
Good pinch of Vietnamese cinnamon (1/4-1/2 tsp)
pinch of sea salt
4-6 cups water

Grate the orange to zest, setting the zest aside. Save the fruit. Heat the oil and butter in a pan. When the butter is just melted, add the onion and garlic. Cook for about 4 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the squash, sweets and boiling potatoes. Stir in the orange zest. Squeeze juice the naked orange over the pot (or just add the o.j.). Stir to coat with the oil and juice. Add the water, 2 cups at a time - you want just a little more than what covers the potatoes. Turn up the heat, cover, and bring to a boil. Remove cover, reduce heat, and cook for about 20 minutes, or until the squash and potatoes are tender (spear with a fork to test the doneness). Remove from heat and puree with an immersion blender until smooth. Add the cinnamon and salt, grate the nutmeg over the pot and stir in the spices. Taste to adjust the seasonings to your taste. Serve in bowls with a little nutmeg grating as a garnish if you've got your fancy pants on. (I'll be eating my soup with the flax seed crackers from the other day!)

One Broken Cracker

2008-11-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

They call me Grace. On Saturday I smashed my pinkie toe to oblivion (a Bolivian?) and spent roughly thirty-six hours in bed with my injured little phalange on ice, resting atop a pillow. Sounds downright regal, and maybe it was for the little guy, but the rest of me has been bored bored bored. I plowed through most of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I have plenty to say on that work, namely: Emma, you're right - I'm completely ready to quit the world and start a farm. I diverge with her slightly when it comes to her theory on "carnivory." (The quotes are not meant to be derisive, just to indicate that that is her word). She says that an animal-free diet is a luxury for the affluent Northern Hemisphere, indicating that the claim that vegetarianism can save the world is biased against the truly poor. A good point, a sort of Guns, Germs and Steel argument, but guess what? Having enough cash on hand to pack up your family and drive across the country to your already- extant farmland - where you're able to take the risk of not having a harvest bountiful enough to feed the kin - sounds like a bit of a luxury to me. Let's face it: buying, and ideally raising, free-range eggs and meat and hormone-free dairy is not an immediate option for the general public. Not that I wouldn't love it... but in the meantime, I'll have to stick to my heavily-traveled tofu and go to sleep at night knowing that, yes, a lot of bunnies died under the plows that harvested that soystuff.

Gloom and doom, right? Maybe not. I was inspired enough before the Accident to start a compost bin! Very fun and fulfilling project. More on that when I can hobble outside to shoot it before the sun goes down. While I was laid up, I of course leafed through some culinary classics, both old and new. When I finally got on my feet today, the first thing I made was a batch of whole-wheat flax crackers from the seminal How It All Vegan!. My relationship with the book is a complicated one. Are there better (read: less preachy) vegan primers out there? Absolutely. Is there when that speaks more clearly to the bad-ass, good-life, post-punk zeitgest? Not for my money. And do I have a borderline-inappropriate girl-crush on Sarah Kramer? ...I'm working on it, ok? Obviously I can't reprint this recipe (I'm waiting for the day where something on here gets me sued), but check it out on page 124 of the tome. Super healthy and super easy to make! A gratifying way to get off my ass and back into the kitchen

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Stocking Me

2008-11-10T14:15:00.000-08:00

It's cold.

Not that "passing-cold-front-should-warm-up-tomorrow" cold, but the "hey-suckahs-remember-me?" incumbent New England winter kind of cold. The darkness is settled in comfortably with its feet up on the table by 4:30, and it's hard, for me at least, to get much done after that. On the flip side, the days have been so impossibly bright and beautiful that I feel like my face might explode when I look up at the azure sky through the filter of the vibrant remaining leaves. So I guess I'm saying that yes, it sucks, but it could suck worse.

For example, I'm really happy that the season of stocks is upon us. There's little more satisfying than the smell of earthy vegetables simmering in a warm, cozy, boiling bath of herb-infused water. Then to strain it, store it, serve it, while knowing that it's something you made - as is inevitably more tasty and healthful than even the best organic guys you can get at a store. I highly recommend getting in the habit of making stock to have on hand. Arm yourself - you're gonna want it this winter.

J'hab's Basic Veggie Stock

Use well-washed organic veggies here. They taste infinitely better, and you really don't want those pesticides and waxes washing off into your stock. Benzene Bisque? Not so much.

1 celery stalk, coarsely chopped
1 carrot, coarsely chopped
1 onion, unpeeled and quartered
4 cloves garlic, unpeeled and smashed with the flat side of a knife
2 bay leaves
1 sprig fresh parsley
pinch of sea salt
a few peppercorns
olive oil for sauteing
6 cups water

Heat the olive oil over medium in a large...stockpot. Add the onion and garlic and saute until fragrant but not browned (if the skins burn, it'll impart a charred flavor to your delicate stock). Add the carrot and onion and turn to coat with the olive oil. Add the water, bay leaves, peppercorns, salt, and parsley. Cover, crank the heat and bring to a boil. Remove cover, reduce the heat, and simmer for 45min-1hr. You can add more water if the level reduces too much. In that time, arm your sink with a strainer and a large bowl. Remove from heat. Pour the liquid over the strainer and into the bowl. Now, use a spoon to press out the excess liquid in the veggies (an extra pair of hands hear to hold the strainer is really, well...handy). Seal the stock in a tightly shut container, refrigerate and use within 5 days. Or divvy up into smaller containers and freeze for up to a month.

Stocks can be flighty, but they're also easily personalized. This one is the ultimate in simplicity and truly universal. Add potato peels to make a slightly thicker stock, one that'll hold its own against coups with potatoes, beans, and the like. Try throwing in some ginger and lemongrass to make some killer Thai soups.

Tooling around the interwebs today, I found this great blog: Not Eating Out In New York. I really like the cut of her jive - check it!

My Most Hated of All Loaves

2008-10-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

Ah, meatloaf. I truly did loathe the loaf as a kid, and we ate a lot of it. A pound of ground beef mixed up with packaged bread crumbs and a raw egg, smothered in Heinz and left to gel in the oven. And yet I have fond memories as my mom's meatloaf technique improved. I remember sitting on the stool at bar of our kitchen, watching her dice up green peppers from the garden and portion out mozzerella for the mix. I would inevitably grab a pinch of the cheese and pair it with the tangy, citrusy pepper for a secret snack as she cooked. The ketchup never left the equation.

The subject of meatloaf came up at work today. A group of us could not figure out why a restaurant (including ours) would feature it on a menu, and what would prompt any right-minded customer to order it. We further mused on how meatloaf is simply an economical way for a working-class family to feed the masses - certainly that was the case in my childhood. Funny how all those cupboard ingredients can bond together to make a meal.

That made me nostalgic for my mom, and how she managed to feed the six of us, maybe without a lot of taste, but with much intent and necessity. In these lean, uncertain times, I think vegans and carnivores alike would do well to put their pantries to the test and see what meals lurk on those shelves, just waiting to be made. With that, I give you my first real, uninterpreted vegan recipe: Vegan Meatloaf. These are all goodies that I had on hand - w00t! The cooked lentils give of a nutty, spicy aroma, and when squished together with the vegetable saute, bring about the squishy texture of meatloaf that, despite the ick factor, I used to love watch my mom squeeze through her fingers

1 cup dry lentils
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 celery stalk, diced
1 red or green bell pepper, diced
1 bag frozen spinach, thawed and drained (moisture pressed out)
3 slices whole wheat bread, toasted and ripped into tiny pieces (2 cups bread crumbs)
1/2 t baking powder
olive oil
1/4 nutritional yeast
a few leaves of basil, chopped (or 1/2 t dried)
a few parsley sprigs, chopped
pinch of cayenne pepper
generous grinding of pepper and a bit of sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.

To cook lentils, bring 3 cups of water to a boil. Add the lentils and return to a boil, cover, and reduce to a simmer. Cook for 45 minutes and allow to cool.

Add a splash of olive oil to a medium saute pan and warm over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until translucent, about five minutes. Add the garlic, carrot, celery and pepper and cook until softened and fragrant, about another 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Take a quarter cup of the frozen spinach and, in a small bowl, add the baking powder. Puree with an immersion blender (or use a food processor) until gooey. You're looking for a mixture with the consistency of a raw egg - you may need to add a bit of water and a splash of olive oil to achieve this effect.

In a large bowl, combine the veggie saute, breadcrumbs, spinach-egg replacer, remaining frozen spinach, herbs, salt, pepper, cayenne, and the lentils. Now the fun part - mix with your hands, squeezing until the lentils are mush and mixed well with the veggies. Spray a standard-sized loaf pan with non-stick spray and add the mixture, tapping the bottom on a surface to make sure it's all settled. Bake for 45 minutes, or until golden-brown and slightly crusty on top. Allow to cool ten minutes before slicing.

It's All Nice, Black Rice, All Right

2008-10-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

Long time, no post! It's been a busy bought with lots of work, reading, research, farmers' marketing and kitchen testing. I found Heidi Swanson's booked used (!) at the Booksmith the other day, just after Vini bought a copy and I began to pine for it. A nice little "what's up" from the universe. I made Heidi's Roasted Pumpkin Salad both at home and on the job this week (yeah, we're on a first name basis, so what?). It's exquisite, though I made the following changes: a) I cut the down on the amount of olive oil in the dressing - I found there was enough oil present from the roasting and the sunflower seeds in the dressing. b) I used butternut squash, an apt substitute for the pumpkin. c) I used black rice in place of wild rice. If you have not cooked with black rice (aka "forbidden rice), you must. I picked it up at the co-op a few weeks back and decimated my supply for this recipe. I will be biking back ASAP to replenish my supply! Its nutty flavor is encased in a firm, purple-black husk that reveals a pleasantly mealy, chewy texture. It will always have a home in my pantry. It did create quite a purply-hued mess of my white stove top after I first cooked it, but hey, no relationship is perfect.

Sickies

2008-10-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

October arrived with a solid agenda: to wipe out the healthy. One by one we've fallen to the whim of a head- and chest cold with the fervor and mucus factor usually reserved for mid-February. (To those in the know, it's been dubbed the Lene Virus). Yuck. Anyway, I've given this soup a couple trial runs, and I'm very happy with the results, both in taste and medicinal value. Slivers of fresh ginger and bits of nearly-raw garlic swimming in rich, nutritious vegetable broth, it's sure to have your mouth tingling and your sinuses (temporarily) cleared by the end of the bowl. And the noodles harken back to the days when a can of chicken noodle and a plate of Ritz crackers made the sick days off from school bearable and tasty.

PS: I couldn't take a picture of this lovely-looking dish. My camera is on vacation on the rocky coast of Maine. Wish I was there... in lieu I have a picture of Elizabeth housing a plate of tofu. Add it to the litany of reasons why she's the best niece eva.

Sicky Soup

For the marinade:
1/8 c soy sauce
1 tsp rice wine vinegar
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 T (or more) fresh ginger, peeled and slivered

1/4 brick firm tofu, cut into tiny cubes
1 T canola or peanut oil
1-2 oz whole wheat pasta or soba noodles, broken into small pieces
1 1/2 c vegetable broth

scallions for garnish

Combine the marinade in a bowl, whisking the ingredients together. Add the tofu and toss to coat, saving the marinade. While it sits, cook the pasta and drain and heat the broth over a gentle heat, taking care not to boil. In a small pan sprayed with nonstick spray, add the oil and heat over med-high until hot. Add the tofu cubes and cook for a good three minutes, unturned, until the moisture starts to give and they're nicely browed. Turn and let another side brown for a couple minutes, then dump onto a paper towel (I hardly had the patience to brown each side). Reduce heat and add the marinade, stir-frying garlic and ginger for half a minute or less. In a bowl, combine the tofu, the ginger and garlic, the broth and the noodles. Top with chopped scallions of you have any kicking around (I nabbed mine from work).

This serves one. Just double up if you've got multiple sickies to feed. If you're lucky enough to have someone make this for you, then set 'em to work. If not, you're still lucky - just be strong, pull yourself out of bed, make a cup of tea and get to the kitchen. You'll feel less sick knowing you were able to make it yourself (or at least, I did). My favorite yoga teacher once said: "You gotta be able to take care of yourself... 'cause if you wait around for someone to take care of you, you're gonna end up waiting a looong time." MMM-hmmm. Tell it, sistah-friend.

High Fructose Propaganda

2008-09-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

...really?

I just don't even know what to say. I think the most alarming thing about this is not that Big Food is fighting back, but that there are people out there who will see this on the tee-vee and believe this. If it weren't for that fact, it'd almost be funny.

There are a series of these, I suppose. My friend Beth and I have been keeping tabs in our outrage - there are at least three. If you need me, I'll be spending the rest of the day with my head submerged in a mound of dirt.

Fake Can Be Just As Good

2008-09-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

Oh, Paul McCartney. You may not have been my favorite Beatle, but your doe-eyed gaze and jowly smile always secured you a place in my heart. Maybe it's because of the aforementioned animalistic traits that you've so long been a champion for the vegetarian lifestyle. Now I know that loving and losing a compassionate, bodacious Amazonian babe like Heather Mills must have been hard enough, so I won't relate you to this story:

McCartney's Ex Donating $1m in Vegan Food to Bronx .

Wow, a boatload of vegan vittles! I was psyched by the headline. As I clicked on the link, I wondered what kinda goods we were talking about: was it going to be a sort of Food-Not-Bombs affair?

Not s'much. More like partially-hydrolyzed soy salvation. An onslaught of fake chicken, soy dogs and veggie burgers. Now, here's the deal. I love, love, love the way these things taste. Oh geez. The texture of those chik'n patties is so close to real deal that when I first tasted them, it opened up this wave of nostalgia for the real thing (in my childhood, those frozen chicken patties would inevitably be served on a white hamburger bun with applesauce and frozen peas. Holla if ya hear me). But tasty as they are, I've been trying to weed them out of my diet. Those guys are addled with sodium, fake flavors, HFCS and processed, GM-soy - all the stuff of Big Foods dreams. I didn't want to admit it, but I eventually realized that they are but the sad, frozen ghosts of a vegetable. I spent a very sad, single year subsiding on little more than beer and Trader Joe's soy nuggets with barbeque sauce - and I wondered why my broken heart wouldn't heal!

I'm sure it's a well-minded act that I really have no place whatsoever harshing on. But it's good leverage to raise the point that just 'cause it's called "vegetarian" doesn't mean it's de facto good for you (and, btw HM/AP - not all those puppies are vegan). Now I need to eat. I just got out of work, and I'm starving. And I have a wicked jones for a Veggie Samurai Dog from Spikes. Damn it!

Oh, these sour times

2008-09-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

These are troubled times, my friend. I wish I better understood what's happening on Wall Street, but shoot, I spent my college years sneering at the kids in the School of Management. So having failed to make the proper contacts, all I know is that the mortgage crisis has sunk its teeth into any colored collar it can find - white, blue, and anything in between. I can testify that it has certainly affected the restaurant industry. Sales are at a harrowing low every shift I've worked in the last two weeks. All year, in fact, people are eating out less, which as a waitress, I loathe to admit, and as a human, I embrace.

While shopping for my other venture as a personal cook today, I kept the economy in mind as I made my frugal choices. Two tips of the trade: 1) Buy bulk! I visited the Harvest Co-op today and felt like little Laura Ingalls at the general store, in honest awe of all the tantalizing choices and beautiful colors. And 2) Visit your farmer's market! I had an incredibly stressful day, and it's not just the economy, but being at the market amongst all this fresh goodness just lifted my spirits.

And in the interest of frugality, here's what I'm planning on making tomorrow. When you buy the dry goods in bulk, it's cheap cheap cheap!

Fruit-and-Nut Pilaf

1 cup brown rice

2 cups veggie stock or water

1/2 cup roasted almonds and/or pecans

1/4 each slivered dried apricots and raisins

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp soy sauce

Cook rice according to directions. In the last few minutes of cooking, add dried fruit. Fluff rice and add the nuts. With the heat still on, add oil and stir in gently. Season with soy sauce.

When Raita Met Salsa

2008-09-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

September has yet to assert itself as the summery type of the autumn-y kind. Today's been overcast and healthfully gloomy, and I made it home from a run just before this cool rain started. Tomorrow promises to be sunny and 75. So while the seasons remain in flux, I am torn by what to cook. I want to seize the last of the sweet corn and heirloom tomatoes, but I'm also giddy at the site of squash and brussels sprouts at the farmers' market. What's a girl to do??

I whipped this up yesterday in the spirit of seasonal limbo, and of using the produce I had kicking around. I don't quite know what it is (it's a mix between a raita and a salsa) or what to do with it (too chunky to be a sauce, too light to be a proper salad). In essence, it's not a moment of culinary perfection. But it's delicious but strange, refreshing but stimulating, exotic yet homey.

Apple-Cucumber Sorta Like-a Raita

1 cucumber, peeled and diced

1 sweet apple (Gala, Empire, Pink Lady), diced

1 new, white onion (not the yellow, papery kind), diced

splash of olive oil

juice from half a lemon

handful of fresh parsley, minced

sprinkle of sea salt

Mix it up in a bowl, take a bit, and ponder - what am I eating?

My guinea pig for this experiment likened it to cantaloupe - I guess that' the sweetness of the apple and the texture of the cuke talking. This might work with tofu sour cream or soy yogurt.

Small Packages

2008-09-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

Proving that that's really where good things come from, The New York Times featured an article yesterday that highlighted an encouraging deviation from the bigger-is-better business plan so prevalent in food retailers. Apparently the grocery giants are taking a cue from Trader Joe's and small-scale vendors who sell smaller quantities of better stuff. The midwest's Jewel-Osco, the ubiquitous Giant, and even - brace yourself - WalMart, are opening smaller versions of their megamarts to cater to the harried consumer who hardly has the time or inkling to peruse forty types of yogurt and eighteen varieties of peanut butter on her lunch break. The goal is to rope 'em in and spit 'em out in ten minutes or less, after which they're happily armed with the evening's dinner and arsenal of paper towels.

I feel positive but skeptical about this trend. On the one hand, it indicates that there is a demand to choose less over more, which is a healthy blow to the ethos of over-consumption. And that push has to be pretty firm to reach the guys and gals in the big, windowed offices. On the other hand, it's slightly disheartening, since it plays into this whole gulp-and-go mentality that has become too ingrained in our culture for Alice Waters and the Slow Food-ers to battle alone. But hell, I'll take what I can get.

Also, I loved this article about cookbook maven and certified badass Marcella Hazan. This feisty old broad knows that produce ain't what it used to be, and that an artichoke the size of a Nerf ball does not belong in her hallowed roasting pan. Preach it, Senora!

Patience, Young Grasshopper

2008-09-08T07:07:00.000-07:00

It's officially the unofficial beginning of fall: a couple hasty trees have begun to turn, the mornings' cool lasts until at least noon, and September 1st - that tragic circus where the city's student populace migrates en masse from one slum to another - has passed. I realized that day that for the first time in years, I had nothing to do with the traffic jams, the jaywalking, or the sinful amount of trash disposal that are inherent to National Moving Day. I almost wept with joy, and I was overwhelmed with the sense of "in yo ' FACE" -itude as I watched the parade of U-Hauls crawl through Brookline and Allston.

But, oh, Allston. This time of year floods me with nostalgic and wistful memories of that place. I spent the most blissfully unaware and recklessly irresponsible years of my youth in Allston Rock City. There was drinking and partying and falling in love and when we had the time and money, oh, we ate. I can't write a vegetarian blog in Boston without touching on that timeless vegan mecca: Grasshopper. Grasshopper, where the tea was inexplicably free and flowed like water from the Ganges, where the No-Name miraculously cured (or exaggerated) any hangover, and where duct-taped, punk-rock wallets would creak open to pay real American dollars for real un-American food.

This recipe is a sort of homage to #69: Spicy Black Peppers & Garlic Seitan, a dish that inevitably found its way to our table when we went there. Like me, it's a little different now than when I first started making it years ago. And like Grasshopper, I'm frankly kind of over it now, but I keep it around, largely for the memory, and the deliciousness.

Veggie Lo Mein with Sesame-Garlic Seitan

1 package seitan, sliced into strips, juice reserved

1 green and red bell pepper, cut into strips

2 T sesame seeds, toasted

Tons of garlic, cut into slivers (use at least three cloves, the more the merrier)

1/2 inch ginger, sliced

3 T canola oil

1/2 package noodles (to keep it ghetto, use 50-cent enriched spaghetti; for your health, use whole-wheat spaghetti or soba noodles)

Scallions, for garnish (not for the broke)

-Cook pasta, drain, set aside (but you already knew that)

-Heat a small frying pan over med-low. Add sesame seeds and toast, shaking pan often, until the first couple ones pop, browned and fragrant. Remove from pan and set aside.

-Heat a large frying pan or wok over med. Add oil. Test heat by adding a sliver of garlic. When it sizzles, add garlic and saute for until just browned- not burned. Add ginger and stir.

-Add pepper strips and cook until softened, about six to eight minutes

-Add seitan and its reserved marinade cook until browned.

-Stir in sesame seeds, reserving a bit for garnish (if you're feeling fancy)

-Stir in noodles. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds or scallions, or simply devour from the pot with chopsticks hoarded from various Chinese restaurants

A Blog Is Born

2008-09-05T17:53:00.000-07:00

Here it is, kids: blog post the first. I've gone back and forth on what I want this blog to entail, what I want to convey, and I'd be a big, fat liar if I said I had a cohesive game-plan to execute. But here's what I know:

I've been vegetarian for almost ten years. I'm very committed to health and wellness and not putting crap in one's body. I also love, love, love to cook. I have no formal culinary training (yet), but I know that nothing makes me happier than cooking up a good meal or morsel for myself and the people I care about. I've spent several years reading up on food politics, veganism and vegetarianism, agribusiness and agriculture, and I devour cookbooks like Harlequin novels. That being said, I've amassed a host of ideas and opinions that I want to put out there for anyone, like me, who's looking (not all those who wander are lost!).

Here you'll find a collection of recipes I've been working on, book and restaurant reviews, news, and my own chronicles as I try to establish myself as a cook and a figure in Boston's locavorious vegetarian community. Cross ya fingahs fah me!