Kale & Chickpea Salad

This is not the recipe, I have to recreate this one. This post is just the food porn about how good this salad turned out! I wanted a nice salad, but something that would be very hearty for dinner. I've had some raw kale salads in the past and really wanted to give another go for one.

What I had was green curly kale, golden beets, carrots, chick peas, red quinoa, fresh basil, and a young Walla Walla onion. I shredded all the veggies up fine and put everything into a bowl to toss. I actually shredded up the kale very fine first and tossed it with apple cider vinegar while I worked on the other veggies.

In the dressing department I discovered we were out of tahini so I soaked about half a cup of raw cashews in hot water for several minutes. I put these into the food processor along with a bulb of raw garlic, balsamic vinegar, white wine vinegar, fine flake nutritional yeast, and some other dried herbs. Everything was processed until quite smooth and then poured over all the veggies, chick peas & quinoa.

Toss well, coating everything, serve and and bask in the appreciative compliments. This got even better the next day or two. Will be recreating this very soon with a full recipe!

New Year's Extravaganza

Really, this post is all about the food porn. I will be writing up the miso udon soup as a recipe, but for now I will talk about New Year's Eve.

In Japan people eat a traditional meal to celebrate the new year, Osechi Ryori. It is generally involved, highly symbolic, and vegan unfriendly. Needless to say, I took this as a challenge and we headed off to Uwajimaya.

Udon is a big deal - there's a special kind that gets made for New Year's with extra, extra long noodles. It is a challenge to try and eat it without breaking the noodle (one long slurp). This represents things like longevity of life, luck, etc. The udon are served in a simple, dashi broth with a few veggies.

Since I'd recently made a quart of vegan dashi (hell, yeah) this was the easiest dish to make. We'd picked up some of Jorinji's amazing red miso (small batch, miso made in Portland) and Christie wanted to include it in the soup.

The result as an amazing miso udon soup. There's a scallion caramelized first, then the dashi added, a few small broccoli florets allowed to poach, the miso added (but never boiled). Udon cooked separately, rinsed, and added to bowls. Top with age (fried tofu, this with bits of sea vegetable & carrot in it) and then add several ladles of the broth & broccoli. Top this with furikake and a piece of baked mochi (thank goodness for the Internet with this stuff... we got it home and discovered that ALL the directions were in Japanese).




So delicious. I chomped a lot of noodles, more than I slurped, it was heavenly.

I did make a salad of carrot & daikon with a little seasoned rice vinegar added to it.

This was our first course of the evening. After enjoying this we moved onto the rest of the dishes for the night.

Next the burdock, a root vegetable that's been recommended to us before. I have always been a little intimidated by it for some reason, but decided to try.



Here you see me already doing the wrong thing - peeling it fully! Apparently I should have lightly scraped off any rootlets, dirt and left the rest. I tried out a fairly simple recipe I found, but the final result was a little gray (maybe the pan, still not sure). It was fibrous and fairly tasty.

Oseschi Ryori seems to have all kinds of little fish cakes. I decided that instead we'd have sushi. I made a mango/sauteed aspargus inside-out roll, cucumber & fried tofu roll, and a shiso & avocado roll. There was some big pieces of fried tofu that I used as pockets to make a kind of inari from the last of the rice, mango & asparagus.



Here I am, looking tired after all that cooking! I'm happy we stayed home.

Some extra mango slices with lime juice for dessert, daikon/carrot salad, burdock root, sushi, and some lovely Sayuri sake

Sherperd's Pie - Food Porn!

My Mom really didn't make shepherd's pie as a dish growing up. She had a few other casserole things she did, but not too many. My Dad hated casseroles.

It was at college in Wisconsin that I was introduced to the shepherd's pie. It was any number of rich, hearty, perhaps not entirely-good-for-me fare I came to love in the Midwest. Despite this deep appreciation, for some reason I've never actually made it myself.

Until tonight.

I made a shepherd's pie in a cast iron pan filled will onions, garlic, tempeh, carrots, celery and roasted Brussels sprouts. In is mixed a golden gravy made with caramelized shallots & garlic, red & white miso, nutritional yeast, Earth Balance, fresh parsley and pepper (whole wheat flour & water too). The mixed up veggies and gravy are topped with mashed Yukon Gold potatoes.

I cannot believe I haven't tried this before!

This diner was so good. Hearty, rich, and topped with mashed potatoes! The gravy, a real experiment, turned out so nicely and it only has a little bit of added fat to it (and I sense I'm onto some kind of vegan Swedish meatballs with this gravy). Although we discussed what else could be used instead of the tempeh, it wasn't because it wasn't incredibly tasty and totally satisfying.

There is no recipe. I was in a kind of Zen work-practice mode with cooking tonight, so I am mindful of everything I did. But I just cooked food. I will be making this again and there will be a recipe soon, my friend Vicki has requested it to add to her Meatless Monday dishes.

Used from Organics to You: carrots, celery, onions, garlic, shallots, potatoes, parsley

Oranics to You November 9, 2009, and Ellen's Gone Vegan

First of all, cool news from the world of celebrities (queer celebs at that) - Ellen has gone vegan! She's got some nice resources up on her page as well as interviews, book recommendations, etc.

Today's box from Organics to You contains:

• The most lovely red, curly kale I've seen in ages
• turnips
• a serious pile of fingerling potatoes
• radishes
• Gorgeous golden beets with equally glorious greens
• A big bunch of arugula
• 4 little satsumas
• a big leek
• a few yellow onions
• adorable, intertwining carrots
• a lovely eggplant
• more celery, amazingly long stalks
• 3 lovely, mid-sized bok choy

We're doing pretty good at making it through the produce that arrives. Mostly. Still leftover from last week:

• celery (we already had a huge amount of this on account of buying more when we'd forget we had it)
• garlic (relieved that none was delivered today)
• onions
• broccoli
• corn
• persimmons
• a few carrots
• 2 leeks
• 2 Russet potatoes

Today I think I'm going to whip up some cabbage, leek, carrot, celery beet & bean soup to use up some of the veggies we have leftover. This week may see a revisit of the scalloped potatoes from last month. I think we were onto something with the creamy, raw cashew sauce and those little fingerling potatoes I think will be really tasty in it. I'm also thinking some kind of balsamic reduction with the arugula, tossed with pasta and beans. The radishes will go right into my lunch, raw, and be eaten with hummus (Christie only really likes daikon and none of the spicer types). I'll likely do a light grill on slices of the eggplant and top with miso, perhaps with some tofu slices as well, and take for lunch since I'm the one who really likes eggplant.

On another note of preserving/getting good at using up our produce purchases -- we aren't getting the apples and pears eaten quickly enough. We both tend to like apples very crisp and tart. I'm thinking of cutting up all of what's left, except the Asian pears (such a different water content), and making a maple & spice compote. Not quite cooked to sauce, thicker and more like a topping for the molasses pancakes Christie made the other day. That will get all the fruit processed before it goes to waste and the canned compote can be part of the edible goodies we'll be giving as holiday gifts this year.

Organics to You November 2, 2009

Last week's cooking also saw another squash/bean/polenta casserole to serve to guests on Halloween, a delicious soup, a Saturday breakfast scramble and sweet & sour cabbage, kale cauliflower & tofu. I didn't make it through all the veggies, not even close!!

Some notes on the Halloween casserole. This variation on this casserole included 1 of the Schwartz Hubbard and 1 Delicata squash from our basement stash, roasted until they caramelized on the edges and mashed. The squash all went into the bottom of the 9 x 12, oiled pan and was topped with the white bean, leek, garlic, rosemary & olive oil combination. The beans were topped with dry-toasted pine nuts and a chiffonade of fresh basil & oregano (I am thinking a light sprinkle of shredded sage leaves would be more fitting to the autumn season). The polenta had once again been cooked in the pressure cooker, this time I'd darkened the garlic in the olive oil then fished it out so it was just the garlic infused oil. Then in went the polenta, sea salt, nutritional yeast, white miso, and a generous amount of pepper. The cooked polenta went on top again. Baked, the under the broiler to toast the polenta a little. Delicious!

I didn't touch the giant head of purple cabbage, the radishes (only I like these, Christie does not), the greens of the beets, the garlic (already had some), or the bok choy. The Halloween party helped use up some of the beets (served raw, sliced thin, most people hadn't seen Chioggia beets before, so fun to introduce folks), the carrots, some of the cauliflower and the rest of the broccoli. All of the produce, except perhaps the baby bok choy (which seemed a little beat up), was very tasty.

That we've started off this delivery experiment with several veggies in the fridge already along with pounds of apples, it isn't too bad. I managed to use up a lot of the veggies we had already and many of the ones delivered. I'm wondering how I can preserve some things we get too much of in a way we'd enjoy using it. Maybe a big pot of cabbage soup that can be frozen to serve for lunches? I also think I just need to chop up a bunch of stuff so it is easy for us to grab raw veggies to take to work, either to eat with hummus or steam.

This week's box has a much smaller head of white cabbage and some larger, nicer looking bok choy. 2 more good sized leeks, some more broccoli (a real winner last week), 6 very nice looking Russet potatoes, more garlic, 2 shallots & a yellow onion, celery, 3 small ears of corn, a bunch of collard greens, a head of Romanesco broccoli, 1 green bell pepper, and more kiwi berries.

I'm thinking we'll have either stuffed cabbage rolls or do this with the collard greens. Or perhaps some great raw wraps one day using the collard leaves. The corn must be the very last of the season - will just steam this in the husk and enjoy. We learned that we should eat the kiwi berries right away, by the time we were eating them Saturday many were over ripe. I'm also thinking I'm going to roast some of the extra heads of garlic, we now have 4, which is kind of a lot for us. Have a lot of yellow onions as well, which I may caramelize a lot of to serve later (perhaps I'll try my hand at Mjdara this week).

Squash, squash, squash!

This is truly a "Nothing but food porn" kind of post. Immediately after the post that I'd be making all kinds of updates for Vegan MoFo 2009 I was diagnosed with an apparently months old sinus infection. Many days of antibiotics later I'm feeling a lot better and am having the energy to work on projects, writing, etc.

Did I happen to mention that Christie decided we should grow winter squash this year? The result is pounds and pounds of the stuff keeping cool down in the basement. I've not yet started on creative ways to cook the spaghetti squash, but I've been doing the Delicata and Hubbard styles a couple of different and successful ways.

First of all, a very homey, Japanese inspired stew of Hubbard squash, tomatoes, garlic, onions, Aduki beans, cooked with red miso and black sesame seeds (honestly because they look more dramatic with the squash). Everything but the beans go into the pressure cooker and 8 minutes on high-pressure later you have piping hot stew. Add the pre-cooked beans, some Nappa cabbage, and a good teaspoon or so of toasted sesame oil. Simmer until the cabbage has softened and serve with brown rice, bread, whatever. There's very nearly a recipe for this one done since Christie's mom got out her notebook and grilled me on what I'd done when the family was up here earlier this month.

The other winter squash winner has been a complete re-do of a recipe we tried last year. We had liked the casserole of squash, pinto beans and polenta but found it kind of uninspired. Great base ingredients, but lacking in a lot of places. The big thing we thought wasn't right was the polenta being at the bottom of the casserole where it never really firms up right.

This afternoon I slow roasted 3 of the Delicata from the basement stash and let them cool. I also put on a pot of diced, unsalted tomatoes and pre-cooked pinto beans. We had chili recently, so I threw a little in as well as adding sweet, smoked paprika, chili powder and cumin powder. I let all the juice cook out of the beans until it was just the chunks of tomatoes & beans coated in the reduction of the juice.

In checking around for cooking times, ratios, etc. for the polenta I discovered it is another thing that can be made in the pressure cooker. Fried about a 1/2 teaspoon of cumin seeds ('cause that's all that's left in the house - yikes) in 2 tablespoons of canola oil. Added 3 large cloves of garlic, diced and two hot, dried chili pods (seeded). Then the polenta, water, sweet, smoked paprika, chili powder and cumin powder. 5 minutes on high-pressure then let sit to come down and release the lock (about 10 minutes). Perfect polenta!

The dish came together with the mashed squash in the bottom of a 9x12 baking dish, coated with spray oil (like soup/stew I can't seem to make smaller quantities of casseroles). A generous sprinkle of nutritional yeast, add the bean/tomato mix, and top the whole thing with the polenta. Into a 350 oven for 30 minutes. Broil on high until the top is golden with a few toasty bits. Cool a bit and enjoy. Total redo of the recipe that we tried last year, absolutely what we wished it had been!

Real recipes for both dishes coming soon as well as my experiments with the spaghetti squash! We've also been experimenting with au gratin/scalloped potatoes and are on track with mucho yumminess in time for Thanksgiving!

Balsamic Tempeh & Quinoa

More Food Porn - really, this is just my way of gloating about something delicious I made so I can figure out the recipe later. Is that obvious?

Tonight was a discussion at the Dharma Center and we include some potluck food to share for our dinner. I've been trying to make something fairly hearty so we don't end up feeling hungry during meditation afterward. Plus if no one else remembers to bring anything vegan Christie and I have something for us.

She made chocolate chip cookies earlier today. I was in charge of "dinner".

First was to chop up all the cucumbers in the fridge and add in some vinegar. This was really was to get them out of the fridge to make way for the 1 "boothy blonde", 1 suyo, and 7 lemon cucumbers that Chrsitie picked yesterday!

For the real meal I thought of using the last of the leftover red qunioa. In the afternoon I grilled up all the summer squash from the garden on the cast iron, let it cool and diced it up. In went thinly chopped up Italian parsley and the last of the slightly limp looking basil.

I sauteed half a sweet onion and diced tempeh, added a little red bell pepper, and when that was all fried up nicely I roughly chopped up a large, over-ripe, heirloom tomato the neighbor had brought over yesterday. This immediately turned into a thin sauce coating the temepeh. All of this went right into the qunioa, squash and herbs.

For a dressing some balsamic and white wine vinegars whisked up with raw tahini, rice milk, and a little whole-grain mustard.

When the Garden Gets Going...

...the Going Cook Creative.

Uh, yeah. Or something like that.

This week I've made gaspacho and tonight something I've dubbed "tabouli-esque" in response to the ever increasing amount of produce coming out of the back yard garden. Tonight I forced cucumbers on the neighbor and sliced up about 2 quarts worth of them to put into rice vinegar before they got all mushy.

I haven't even been able to deal with what's in the fridge and Christie asked me, "Did you go pick some more?"

The gaspacho involved a quart of veggie juice, about a half cup of little pieces of all the cherry & grape type tomatoes that are going crazy, 1 long cucumber ("Suyo", a fave of mine), 2 cloves of garlic, 2 stalks of celery, half a red bell pepper, some sweet onion, white wine vinegar, sea salt, pepper, and olive oil.

Then I forgot that it is a Spanish dish, or ignored it because the basil in the fridge was wilting, and tossed in about 1/3 cup basil cut into thin ribbons (chiffonade). I thought it was awesome and then recalled the whole Spanish Dish thing and decided to garnish with smoked parprika. Wow, was this good!

Tonight's dish involved more tomatoes and was topped by the cucumbers I chopped up then put into seasoned rice vinegar. I had leftover red quinoa and decided to try that out in place of bulghur wheat for tabouli. I had a lemon and some Italian parsley on hand in addition to the tomatoes, so it seemed perfect. To make it even a little more hearty & filling for dinner I cooked up some green lentils and tossed those in there as well (which reminds me of an Ethiopian dish that reminds me of tabouli with brown lentils in place of bulgher).

Kind of went a little off the track with the tabouli, aside from the quinoa & lentils, and added a little balsamic vinegar to the mix in addition to the lemon juice, sea salt & black pepper. Sliced up the remaining grilled summer squash from last night (also from garden) and topped it with some diced avocado (because there was some of that leftover too).

The garden's been pretty exciting this year. I suspect this is the first of many posts about creative dishes. We're a little scared of all the winter squash looming at the back of the garden, trying to push the fence down. Be prepared for all kinds of creativity around that crop! Types of winter squash planted: spaghetti, delicata, sweet dumpling, and hubbard. We may also get a watermelon and will have a few cantalope too!

I'll write down the actual recipes and post... sometime this month, maybe (lots of travel).

Vegan Marshmallows, Baby

I have two words for you.

Vegan. Marshmallows.

I kid you NOT. After the last debacle around vegan marshmallows made with Emes not-at-all-vegan Sure-Gel it has been kind of a lost junk food. That brown rice based fluff stuff was OK for making rice krispy treats, but it wasn't something you could put on a stick and potentially light on fire. And the so-called strawberry version of the stuff? One bite and I took to referring to it as "Soylent Pink".

This year Chicago Soy Dairy came launched Dandies marshmallows on the vegan world. Soft, squishy, tasty, able to be skewered upon a stick, stuck into fire, and ignited!! Yes, real flames!

If you're into that sort of thing.

I'll be honest. I've kind of missed marshmallows. I haven't had one in about 9 years and I was kind of nostalgic for a marshmallow toasted over a real fire. I've been reading blog posts and tweets galore about Dandies so when we were by Food Fight this past Saturday we picked up a bag to take to a birthday party, with a campfire, that evening.

We pulled out our fancy marshmallows, spent several minutes explaining that "regular" marshmallows are made with gelatin, listening to the smart-ass jokes (these seem to nearly always ensue when omnivores feel defensive about their food choices, but want to be polite), building a fire, letting it die down enough, and waiting for the birthday girl to find us something stick like.

The only thing that would have improved the experience is a longer stick. I'm not one who goes for the charcoal effect. Someone else was delighted to discover that the vegan marshmallows light on fire just like the "real thing". I grew out of that and generally prefer a long, slow, methodical toast to golden brown.

The bamboo skewers were just too short for this approach without seriously scorching my fingers (worse). However, the result I could manage before the heat drove me back was very satisfyingly bubbly, lightly toasted, and gooey on the inside! I so look forward to trying this out with some dark chocolate, graham crackers and a better stick!

Ginger Garlic Tempeh & String Bean Bun - Food Porn Version

I've decided just to write about cooking rather than always wait until I have a recipe "just right" to post. It will help me recreate delicious things so I can put together a recipe later. These posts will be noted "Food Porn" to show that there's no recipe and have the tag FoodPorn as well, just my going on about something delicious.

Onto the food porn.

Best. Tempeh. Ever. Seriously.

We had in the house pounds of string beans from the garden and Christie asked for tempeh tonight. I stood around in the kitchen for a few minutes before deciding to make a stir-fry. Made up a marinade of ginger, garlic, shoyu, red miso, agave, peanut oil, canola oil, hot chili oil, and water all whisked up together. Diced tempeh went into this yummy mix.

Pulled the the tempeh out of the marinade and set it aside. The tempeh then went into a rather hot wok with some canola oil. Kept tossing it and frying with a lid on until the tempeh was browned. Then I added in a little bit of the marinade to coat the cubes further.

Some sweet onion, a carrot and a little red bell pepper for color were cut up small. All were stir fried with a pile of the green & yellow beans chopped up. After they cooked until the beans started to soften I added in most of the marinade. After the beans were cooked all the way I added the tempeh into the pan and tossed everything together.

Cooked up some rice noodles, vermicelli, which were the weakest part. Tasty, but not great. I'm really going for more of a Vietnamese bun. The noodles were a fine, just not as great as the stir-fry. Added some shredded, Farmers Market lettuce and sliced up cucumbers from the garden.

Yes, I will admit to nearly dancing in glee in the kitchen as this came together. We sat out on the deck in the breeze to enjoy. It was a lot of fun sitting a few feet from the golden string beans growing up the south side of the deck as we ate them for dinner.

Will have to try this whole thing out again with the "right" noodles as well as some cilantro, lime to squeeze over the top and mung bean sprouts. Those things would be a really nice addition to all the flavors. Christie also noted it would be great to have the cucumbers in a little rice vinegar as well. A recipe will be forthcoming on this and really, pictures soon.

An Appreciation of Sprouts

Up until 2007 I thought Brussels Sprouts were nasty, smelly and not worth eating. When they were made in my family they were boiled until the smelled badly, were a uniform ugly greenish color, and mushy. Even when an effort was made to pick up a stalk of them fresh at a farm market the end result was the same. Occasionally I'd be coaxed to eat a few raw, but that was it.

Last year, after reading a recipe in Farmer John's "Real Dirt on Vegetables" cookbook and much encouragement from many people I talked with, I bought a stalk at the Pumpkin Patch and decided to try them out. The result was so amazingly delicious! I'm not sure why I didn't have any more last year, but during the summer I thought about them, looked forward to seeing them return to the farmer's markets.

The past several weeks there have been multiple meals with sprouts on a similar theme, braised until tender. Each time the result is eaten quickly, any lingering ones in the pan popped into our mouths as we cleaned up.

Here's my suggestions for enjoying these delicious and nutritious vegetables in season until early spring. Trim the ends of the sprouts and clean off a few of the outer leaves, revealing the bright green underneath. Cut the sprouts in half. Heat a pan with some olive oil and when the oil is hot place the largest sprouts first, cut-side down into the oil. Put as many of the sprouts cut-side down into the pan and let them saute, covered, until the start to sear and caramelize slightly.

Here's where you can go simple or more complex. After the sprouts have sauteed a bit, add some liquid to braise, covered, until they are just tender. Serve and enjoy! I have tried the following for my braising liquid with great results:

• Molasses, balsamic vinegar and a little water
• Just water & sea salt
• Water & sweet chili sauce (the kind you dip spring rolls into)