Cashew bechamel! And its many variations.

Once I was going to write a cookbook.

Then other things happened, like that time I bought that building and opened that chocolate shop.

So from time to time I’m going to post some of the things I wrote for the cookbook here. OK?  A friend of mine recently asked me about what to do with artichokes, so I thought I’d write a blog post about that. In order to write that post, I need to refer to this post, which I originally wrote for the cookbook. So here we go!

Let’s talk about white sauces.

First, let’s look at a photo of a lasagne made with my cashew béchamel, which I mention below:

New White Sauces

When people decide to stop eating dairy, one of the things they often miss the most is the creamy texture of dairy-based “white sauces,” (and the dishes they are commonly used in, such as macaroni and cheese) along with cheesy dishes like pizza and lasagna. Happily, tastier vegan cheeses are being developed all the time, so not wanting to eat animal cheeses no longer means forgoing these dishes.

Sadly, many vegan cheeses are still made with low quality and extremely processed ingredients and contain off-flavors and textures. As with all foods, the challenge is finding a high-quality product. The trick with vegan cheese is to find a brand that is made with few ingredients and with artisanal techniques, just as high-quality animal cheeses are. Brooklyn, NY, based Dr. Cow is one company that makes nut-based cultured cheeses that are aged using traditional techniques. Their vegan cheeses are clean-tasting, soft, and creamy, perfect for spreading on crackers. For a meltable cheese, Teese and Daiya are two brands worth seeking out.

However, to make rich white sauces, it’s not necessary to rely on purchased vegan cheeses. Below are my techniques for making several variations on white sauces, using nuts or tofu.

What most of us think of simply as “white sauce” is usually a version of the classic French béchamel sauce, which is traditionally made from a roux (equal parts fat and flour, whisked together over low heat) and milk. Endlessly versatile, this sauce forms the basis for countless classic dishes, including many lasagna recipes, classic macaroni and cheese, and moussaka.

 

Nouveau Cashew Béchamel Sauce

Along with spicy peanut sauce, this is my go-to weeknight sauce. You can make it in the time it takes to cook pasta. Though it doesn’t include a roux (not to mention that it doesn’t include cow milk) and therefore isn’t a “real” béchamel sauce, I call it béchamel because it has similar uses.

 

The ingredients below are guidelines, feel free to vary them to suit your tastes.

You can soak the cashews for this recipe (in a covered container, at room temperature) for a few hours or up to three days, changing the water three times a day. Soaking the nuts makes for a creamier sauce and also cultures them a little, thus making them more easily digested and flavorful.

You don’t need a high speed blender (like a Vita-Mix) for this recipe, but it does make a creamier sauce in less time.

This sauce seems very thin when freshly made, but when tossed with hot vegetables or pasta, it tightens up a lot, so it’s better to err on the side of a loose consistency.

Makes about one cup sauce.

1/3 cup cashews (use raw cashews if you plan to soak them. Cashew pieces are fine—and often much less expensive than whole cashews.)

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

1 tablespoon white miso

1 1/2 teaspoons shoyu

½ teaspoon sea salt

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 1/2 teaspoons prepared mustard (Dijon is nice)

1 small clove (or ½ medium clove) garlic

2-4 tablespoons olive oil

freshly-ground black pepper to taste

 

1. Blend all ingredients for 3-5 minutes, or until completely smooth.
2. If serving with pasta, blend in about ½-¾ cup of the water used for cooking the pasta, otherwise use plain water.
3. Taste and continue adjusting flavors until sauce is balanced and flavorful.

Uses for Nouveau Cashew Béchamel Sauce:

• Mix with macaroni to taste for a perfectly creamy new macaroni and cheese. I like to eat this dish with plenty of cracked pepper on top and greens sautéed with garlic on the side.
• Replace as the white sauce in any lasagna recipe.
• Add pesto for a creamy pesto sauce.

Classic baked macaroni casserole: Sauté one diced onion in a few tablespoons of olive oil. When golden brown, add 5 tablespoons of flour and whisk for a few minutes until a thick, emulsified roux is created. Over low heat, continue whisking while slowly pouring in a double recipe of Cashew Béchamel Sauce. Bring sauce to a boil, whisking often, and turn off heat.

In an 8’x8’ ovensafe dish, mix sauce with 8 oz. cooked macaroni. If you have pesto on hand, mix in two or so tablespoons as well. Preheat oven to 375°F.

Use purchased high-quality breadcrumbs, or make them by rubbing two slices of artisan bread with a garlic clove, drizzling with olive oil, sprinkling with salt and toasting until crisp. Pulse in a food processor until fine. Set aside.

Moisten mixture with ¼-1/3c water, depending on how dry it looks, then sprinkle an even layer of breadcrumbs on top (all bread crumbs might not be needed). Garnish with a few sprinkles of paprika, then bake for 25-30 minutes, or until bubbling and browned. Serve hot.

Cashew béchamel sauce can also be easily turned into delicious homemade salad dressings.

A few ideas and guidelines:

 

• Unless you want to make a large quantity of dressing, halve the recipe. If the dressing is being stored overnight, add a few tablespoons of water, as it thickens up overnight.
• For a creamy, lemony dressing, whisk or blend in two tablespoons or more lemon juice.
• Or, blend or whisk in two or three tablespoons vinegar—white wine and red wine are good choices.
• If you like chunky dressings, do not purée the cashews until completely smooth.
• Substituting almonds for the cashews makes a nice almond dressing, and adding apple cider vinegar reinforces the theme. Using skinned almonds is fine, but use blanched almonds if you prefer a lily-white sauce.
• For a more ranch-like flavor, add 1-2 more cloves garlic and a tablespoon or so each of prepared horseradish, chopped red onion, and lemon. Add more black pepper and a few tablespoons white wine vinegar. Keep tasting and adjusting flavors until it tastes right to you.
• For a Caesar dressing, omit the nutritional yeast, add another clove of garlic, another tablespoon lemon juice, 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, and ¼ cup olive oil. Blend and taste for mustard, shoyu, and vinegar. Dress torn romaine lettuce leaves with the dressing and garnish with homemade croutons, lots of cracked ground pepper, and crumbled nori seaweed.
• Blend in ¼ of a ripe avocado and a good amount of lemon juice for a creamy avocado dressing.

Feijoada

My wonderful former client, Pam, asked if I would send her a few recipes from the meal delivery months and months ago. I thought it would be fun to put them on the blog, so I promised to do so, months and months ago.

And the list of them has pretty much sat there on my to-do list since then, months and months ago.

But lately I feel the need to remember that my life wasn’t always endless trips to the hardware store and clothes with paint stains all over them. Once upon a time I cooked!

In remembrance of things past, here’s a great dish from those days, feijoada.

You can see a not-great photo of feijoada from the meal delivery archives here. The next time I make it, I’ll plate it up nicely and take a photo to accompany this post.

Feijoada is a Brazilian rice and bean dish, almost always made with citrus and olives. It’s pronounced “feij-wada” with the “feij” sort of rhyming with “veg.” I first learned to make it at Bloodroot, and my recipe is based on theirs. Usually I’m no fan of citrus in savory foods, but the oranges in this dish really work. Like Bloodroot, I serve this dish with a homemade lemony hot sauce. The super simple recipe for it is below, and it will keep a few weeks in the fridge.

I’ve scaled both these recipes down from my gigantic meal delivery service-sized potions, so let me know if anything got lost in the math.

Feijoada

2 c black beans, cooked

2 onions, diced

3 red peppers, sliced

grape seed or canola oil

2 Tb. dried oregano or 3 Tb fresh oregano, chopped

1 Tb. freshly ground cumin

5-8 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 c red wine

1 (28 oz) can whole peeled tomatoes, chopped

sea salt

fresh pepper

3 Tb. lemon juice

1/4 c dark rum

3/4 c black olives, pitted and coarsely chopped

2 bunches kale or other leafy green or steamed vegetable, washed, coarsely chopped, steamed. This is pretty much optional, but nice.

zest from 1 orange

1 cup long grain brown rice, cooked

1. Sauté onions and peppers in grape seed oil, adding spices and garlic in at end.
2. Add cooked beans, wine, tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.
3. Stir in rum, olives, zest, kale, and lemon juice. Taste and adjust flavors if necessary.
4. Serve over rice with hot sauce on the side.

lemon pepper hot sauce

1 c very finely chopped onion (resist the urge to chop it in the food processor unless you want a big watery mess)

1 clove garlic, made into a paste (chop it as finely as possible, adding a little salt and using the side of your knife to scrape everything together into a heap periodically, then chopping it and scraping it together and again until it becomes a paste.)

3-5 bottled pickled jalapeño peppers, finely minced

2/3 c lemon juice

Salt

1. Mix all ingredients.

making soup

Last week.

I don’t even know how to put into words how stressed out I was last week.

Easter rush plus building stresses had me living in that weird combination of not sleeping because I had too much to do to sleep and not sleeping because I had too many worries to actually turn my mind off. Bad combination. Then my sweetheart came home from tour (always a harbinger of sanity for me), Easter orders calmed down, and building renovations and money-pit woes seemed to turn a corner and were slowly replaced by excitement about the new shop. What a difference a week makes!

In the middle of the week was that VegNews photo scandal thing, which I, like most vegans I know, was disturbed by. I can’t imagine why a vegan would think publishing a vegan magazine full of stock images of meat would be an ethically acceptable choice. As so many people have pointed out, this choice is bizarre bordering on insane when you think about how the internet is bursting with vegan bloggers churning out amazing content accompanied with gorgeous photos. It’s never been easier to take professional-quality photos at home (or in a magazine office, or commercial kitchen), so their decision made me realize that they just must not be testing their recipes whatsoever, since they can’t even be bothered to take photos of the actual dish. I can’t imagine selling my handmade chocolates with stock photography of random bonbons, so….

Ok, I’m not going to get worked up about it again. They apologized and we’re all moving on.

The point I’m trying to make here is that last week I made some soup and it turned out gorgeously without me even trying because food is so dang beautiful and we need to honor it by taking photos of it! Real photos, not generic gross stock photos! 

The soup: it was just some Wednesday-afternoon, nothing-special soup with some leftover bits of this and that that were hanging around work. The earliest bit of spring can be a maddening time to cook—you’re craving fresh produce so intensely, and nature can be stingy with sun and warmth, like it is this year, and everything is slow to arrive. I want fiddleheads and morels and favas and ramps and asparagus, but the garden only has sorrel and wild weedy chives to offer and the farmer’s market only turns up hothouse mesclun and pea shoots….and…wait, what’s that in the corner booth, that little flash of green at Jay’s table, surrounded by overwintered carrots and beets? Green garlic? Yes! Green garlic!

So it’s spring after all. Garlic is coming back. It’s happening!! I got chills when I saw it, and then I got out my wallet. Green garlic is just the best, isn’t it? All the awesomeness of mature garlic, but fresher, younger, with no peeling necessary and absolutely no bite. Amazing.

I already had a pot of simmered white beans bursting with two heads of roasted garlic hanging out in the fridge, and I thought about how to introduce the roasted garlicky beans—from a stash of glorious local organic hardneck I’ve been working my way through since last fall—to this year’s green garlic. Usually local garlic is so expensive ($1 per head or more, wholesale) that heads of roasted garlic are a luxury I save for the organic Chinese garlic I sometimes break down and buy in deep winter when I’ve run out of good local fresh stuff. This year, however, shutting down the meal delivery left me with a glut of terrific, albeit rapidly aging, local heads, so I’ve been roasting with abandon.

I do this thing with beans a lot: cook them with some aromatics (rosemary/bay/thyme/roasted garlic/sea vegetables/hot chilies/dill/onion/leeks/whatever) and then toss them with lots of olive oil, good salt, and pepper, and maybe some vinegar or hot sauce or harissa or whatever. With whatever veggies are on hand, dinner is done.

Depending on what the bean seems to want, I sometimes cook up a nice carbohydrate too. Black beans seem to want a spicy tomatoey Spanish rice, white beans always ask for a good toothsome pasta like orecchiette (I haven’t made my own since last summer—sigh.), pinto beans like a nice plain brown rice. Of course, something nice makes the meal even nicer. In my world, “something nice” usually means something either pickled or fried or perfectly fresh—something bright that pops in your mouth. Fried sage is great on top of a white bean thing, perfectly fresh summery tomatoes and creamy-ripe avocado are good with black beans, and little quick-pickled radishes are nice on the side of a simmered pinto bean dish.

I don’t know, that’s just where my mind always goes, anyway.

I wonder what always leads me to always always always pair black beans with tomatoes? One part historical and cultural and geographical accuracy, maybe, and one part remembrance of things past, probably. Sloppy Tex-Mex meals from when I was a kid, learning to make authentic and amazingly mind-blowing refried beans with garden salsa at Bloodroot.

Sigh. I really love beans.

And cooking.

And, as I was saying before 1,000 other words interrupted: making soup.

So after I make my simmered whole-bean thingie, I usually turn it into soup the next day or so. I never make stocks for my soups, unless I’m doing so much cooking that carrot peels and celery tops and onion skins are overflowing in the compost bin. Usually i concentrate on flavoring the soup, not the stock, and I always add a stick of kombu (I get this amazing kombu). Kombu helps you digest the beans, adds rich umami flavor, and can apparently help prevent radiation sickness—so bring it on.

Like most dishes, making a good soup is about balance. Richness + acid + salt + good vegetables/beans/etc = a good soup, in my world. Airy broths have their place, I suppose, but when I’m cooking for myself I want something with depth. And by depth, I mean: fat. And in order for a nice fatty soup not to taste too fatty, it needs to be balanced with acid, which usually means vinegar.

I took my roasted garlic white beans and added them to a soup pot (my mentor Selma always says “soup kettle.” I love her.) with some kombu, a glug of oil, and salt and water just barely to cover. I cooked them until they were super extra tender while I slowly sautéed the minced green garlic bottoms in more olive oil with some red pepper flakes (actually it was aleppo pepper–so flowery/spicy/bright/great.). When the garlic was aromatic and cooked I blended the beans and garlic mixtures together. I added some homemade garlic vinegar to taste, seriously thought about adding some black garlic just to make it a four-garlic soup!!! but I’m secretly saving the black garlic to make a garlic truffle (shhhh), so I just added more salt and some shoyu too. Beans always need so much salt, you know? Salt and shoyu contribute slightly different things, so I sometimes use them together. Salt = a nice clean salty flavor, but shoyu = salt + depth. Does that make sense?

So far my soup consisted of last year’s garlic + this year’s garlic + 2009′s garlic vinegar + beans + salt + shoyu + aleppo pepper + kombu (actually I took out the kombu once the beans were done cooking). What kind of soup is that? Certainly not one I’d be OK serving my clients back when I was selling soup for a living. Too simple, too plain. But I was working 18 hours that day and plain was just fine, as long as it tasted good.

I foraged around in the fridge for something green, and found pea shoots from the farmer’s market, along with the forgotten top half of the green garlic. I minced the green garlic and quickly fried it in yet more olive oil and added yet more salt. Seriously–when I’m working really hard and tasting chocolate all day, I need hearty food to balance out my diet or I will float away on a cloud of chocolate-caffeine, and so I really don’t hold back with the old e.v.o.

I put the soup in a big bowl, added the fried green garlic and pea shoots, and drizzled it with….more olive oil.

So simple, but look what a showstopper this little soup became in the bowl!

Hot damn I love food.

brunch: french toast + potatoes and onions

I had a few beloved out-of-town visitors up to see the gorgeous upstate New York sights this weekend. They came at a perfect time, because I’m trying to distract myself from stressing out about this BIG GIANT HUGE INSANE thing happening tomorrow (check back here tomorrow for the update!!!!), so I decided to distract myself the best way I know how: cooking.

I decided to make a little brunch for us.

At first it was just going to be this french toast that I make almost every time I have sleepover guests–especially ones that aren’t vegan, because I enjoy how much nonvegans tell me that it tastes like “real” french toast. But then I realized I had a whole bunch of potatoes sprouting away in the back room at work, and I needed to test out some matzo candy for work (coming soon!) and I had just made a truly giant pot of beans, and off we were.

I know it breaks all laws of food blogging to not include a photo with a recipe, but I think my pal Cesilie took a whole bunch of photos with her fancy camera, so I’ll update this post when I get ‘em. For now I wanted to share my somewhat of a work-in-progress (aren’t they all, always?) french toast recipe. Let me know what you think!

Oh, and after much trial and error, I think I’ve perfected my taters & onions recipe. Here goes: parboil the potatoes. This is the key. Cut them into bite-sized pieces, boil in salted water (or roast, in their jackets!) until just barely tender but not as soft as you’d want them to eat them, then caramelize a bunch of onions and toss the potatoes with them, add a few good pinches of paprika/smoked paprika/chile powder/chili powder (your pick), sea salt, lots of pepper, and lots of olive oil. Then roast at 400°F or so until they are deliciously crispy and browned. Today I tossed them with some amazing roasted Hatch chiles I had, and…oh man, so good.

As was the:

FRENCH TOAST

1/4  cup chickpea flour. Bob’s Red Mill makes a chickpea flour, and it’s also available (usually cheaper) in Indian markets, where it might be labeled “besan” or “gram flour.” You could also use rice flour, tapioca starch, or egg replacer powder, but I like chickpea the best

1 cup coconut milk or Soy Nog. Around the holidays when Soy Nog is available, I use that, otherwise I’m a coco milk fan.

Peasant bread, sourdough bread, French or Italian bread, thickly sliced. Basically any kind of nice spongy bread with a relatively open crumb (not a super artisanal baguette that’s more air than bread, for example). Not a bread with a tight crumb, like 11-grain, or a fake bread, like Wonderbread or anything.)

1/4 teaspoon eggnog flavoring, optional

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

Nutmeg to taste

Cinnamon to taste, 1/2 teaspoon or so

Coconut oil or grape seed oil, for frying

For serving: powdered sugar, maple syrup, coconut cream (I use my little iSi whip to make instant coconut milk whipped cream and it is AMAZING.), strawberries, etc.

1. Whisk together all ingredients except bread and oil. (I like to do this the night before. The batter is smoother if allowed to sit overnight, too.)
2. Dip bread in liquid, then fry in hot oil until golden brown on both sides.
3. Serve with maple syrup, coco cream, powdered sugar, etc.

I just realized I have no notes on how much it makes. Hmm, maybe 8 pieces or so? I’ll let you know the next time I make it!

The frugal simple singleish gourmet: Japanese-style simmered turnips. Also: the tale of a peel.

I’ve been cooking for myself, and it’s so strange.

For nine years, I had the meal delivery as the backbone of every meal—if there weren’t leftover complete meals in the fridge waiting for me, there were enough imperfect cast-offs (overcooked noodles, improperly chopped veggies, oversalted sauces) to repair and handsomely dine on. In Hawaii, where I hide out for a few weeks every year, my sweetheart Jacob and I shop at the farmer’s market and I cook quick, market vegetable-based meals in a tiny kitchenette that doesn’t invite lingering. But right now Jacob’s on tour for work and I don’t have a meal delivery service to provide me with fresh, organic, vegan deliciousnesses every night, nor do I have plentiful farmer’s markets that decide what’s for dinner.

It’s really bizarre. It’s making me think about food in all kinds of new ways—it’s really made me understand why people don’t necessarily want to cook the ludicrously labor-intensive meals I used to make for the meal delivery themselves. Five hours for dinner? Yeah, homemade pasta and long-simmered sauces made from homemade stocks are nice, but not workable for a Tuesday night.

Also? Food is really expensive! Who knew?  I’m realizing that having the meal delivery groceries mixed with my personal groceries allowed me to splurge in ways that quickly came to an end when I started cooking for one or two (for example, not wholesaling mushrooms is so painful—you can’t possibly expect me to pay $16 a pound for wrinkly non-local shiitakes when my mushroom grower sells them for half that!).

Plus, I’m enjoying the challenge of avoiding the market, after almost a decade of making shopping lists as long as my arm and constantly ordering dry goods, wholesale produce, trekking to every farm within driving distance, etc etc etc. I’ve got a ton of pantry items, a lot of great local garlic, squash that is doing an amazing job staying firm and sweet in the basement, lovely potatoes…and that’s about it. At the periodic winter farmer’s markets I can snag salad greens if I manage to get up early, glorious pea and sunflower shoots, and assorted other roots and greens. Aside from that, I’m trying really hard not to buy silly organic produce trucked in from California, and I’m also trying to keep things super frugal because of Top Secret Plans I’ve Mentioned Here And There And Can You Even Believe They Still—STILL—Have Not Yet Come To Fruition. (More on that…the end of March? Who even knows anymore.)

So. Here we are. These days I’m a gleaner, foraging for treasures that exist in the walk-in (a giant vat of olives!), pantry, cellar (OK, just the basement), and skimpy farmer’s market.

Happily, my current favorite cookbook, Kansha, fits in with my new austerity perfectly.

Austerity–now there’s a word that doesn’t exactly make your mouth water. Let’s not call it austerity. How about…simplicity?

Yeah, simplicity is better. I’m trying to make a lot of my life simpler, anyway–my 2011 mission is all about doing less and appreciating more. Doing what I’m doing, instead of doing 50 things at once. So, moving from fancy-pants complicated meals for 20 families to joyfully spare yet tasty meals for one person fits right in. Kansha means “appreciation,” and I’ve been enjoying teaching myself to appreciate simpler meals.

Last night, Jacob was home for exactly one night before he ran off into the world again, so I thought about what we could eat. I didn’t want to run to the store for anything additional, so I prowled around the fridge and came up with a Kansha-inspired appetizer that was so nice, I decided to share.

For a main dish we had this Italianish thing that I find myself making once a week or so: caramelized onions in an obscene amount of olive oil, plus massive amounts of minced garlic, kale or escarole, white beans, really nice dried pasta, and some lemon juice and harissa hot sauce (I have about a gallon of homemade harissa in the freezer, so it’s making a lot of appearances lately. My recipe is loosely based on the one in the excellent Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison.). Sometimes I add water and make it a soup. It’s one of those dishes that’s easy, but really rewards care: enough olive oil, enough lemon juice, enough salt. It also improves with age, so it’s nice to make a big pot of it.

In addition to the Italianish thing, I also had exactly two turnips* grown by my friend Jessica, a chef-turned-farmer with the greenest thumbs you’ve ever seen, hanging out in the fridge.

Two turnips! I used to buy turnips by the bushel! Another weird thing about moving from commercial cooking to home cooking is that I have no clue how much food it takes to feed me. At the farmer’s market last weekend, I just stood talking to Jessica and another friend of ours, turning over two turnips and four carrots in my hands and asking them if they thought that was enough for one person.

I felt like a child, and it felt good. Zen mind, beginner’s mind, all that. I’m really enjoying looking at food in this whole new way. Shopping for the meal delivery had become so routine—I prided myself on my ability to eyeball how many potatoes I’d need for 40 cups of mashed potatoes, but I have no idea how many potatoes I should cook for a simple smashed side for myself (less than five, it turns out. Fun fact: after about three potatoes, your stomach pretty much almost spontaneously combusts.). Scaling back. Retraining my brain. Exciting.

I took Jessica’s two beautiful turnips out of the fridge. (I’d eaten the four carrots in the car on the ride home from the farmer’s market—they were small! Now I know. Buy more carrots.) What could I make with them to show my appreciation, my kansha, for this simple sweet night to ourselves, for this gift of silky pink turnips from an earth now frozen so solid?

I cut them into thick half moons, and heated my nice cast iron frying pan. One of the great things about making the slow transition to cooking all my meals at work to actually using my home kitchen is my glorious collection of secondhand cast iron pans. At work I have an induction stove that I am wildly in love with, but cast iron doesn’t work with induction technology, so my cheapo battered home electric stove actually comes in handy since it allows me to use such nice old pals.

I was thinking of making a Japanese-style dish of simmered turnips–very simple and classic and home-style. I couldn’t resist, however, first searing the turnips in a little grape seed oil in the pan. In my (limited) experience, Japanese simmered dishes don’t begin with a sear (subtle, elegant, super clean flavors are usually the goal), but I’m so addicted to the umami-richness of the nice browned edges that most vegetables get when they meet hot oil over high heat that I went for it.

After the sear I added some shoyu and a little yuzu juice I had hanging out in the fridge (a rapidly-aging leftover from the January Chocolate of the Month). I poured in just enough water to come maybe 1/3 up the side of the turnips, turned the heat to a bare simmer (just a little bubbling here and there) and put the lid on the pot. Every five minutes or so, I slid the blade of my thinnest paring knife into the thickest turnip, waiting for the moment when the turnip slid off the knife on its own—a sign that it was cooked but not mushy.

While the turnips cooked, I turned my attention to the turnip peels.

Normally I would toss them in the compost (OK, really I would just toss them outside, since the compost is all the way across the frozen tundra of the backyard), but Elizabeth Andoh had written so arrestingly about not wasting any precious part of a vegetable in Kansha that I rinsed them, finely sliced them, and decided to give them a quick deep-fry.

 

I felt slightly weird about it, to tell you the truth. I’m not much of a peel eater. I have not one but two friends who have independently admitted eating beet peels to me, and both mentioned it for the same reason: somehow they knew it would freak me out. And it sort of did. Beet peels! Yuck! Just take 30 seconds and peel your beets, people! So leathery!

But these turnip peels seemed nice enough. And what are peels but just slightly tougher parts of a vegetable (not beet peels though, those are just gross)? When turnips are fresh and tiny and springy and young I never peel them anyway, so these thicker peels were an edible waiting to happen, right? And making a quickie deep-fried garnish is a cheffy trick that seriously fancifies any meal. It always seems impressive, and, even though I’ve done it for Jacob a million times, with everything from carrots to leeks to sage to scallions, he still adores it.

But could I make turnip peels impressive and worthy of adoration? Let’s see.

I put my tiniest cast iron pal on the burner, poured in the grape seed oil and cranked it up. When one peel piece instantly sizzled when I tossed it in, I carefully put the rest in, gave them a quick stir, took a quick crappy phone photo, and drained them, saving the oil like my grandma saves bacon grease. I tossed them with salt, wiped out the pan (marveling at how I had also helped to season the pan with all that oil), and tried a spoonful of fried turnip peels.

Just lovely. Like a Pringle, really. (Secretly, all starchy deep-fried things taste the same, can we admit it? And that taste is the taste of awesome.) Jacob wanted to eat them all once, Pringle-style, but I restrained him.

Meanwhile, turnips were cooked. I stacked them up on the plate, added a few drops more yuzu, and garnished them with the fried peel. I wished I had a tiny, beautiful herb for the plate–one shiso leaf or even a little bit of parsley or basil for some color and brightness, but it was February and there was nothing green in or outside the house (OK except for the half-dead rosemary plant I am losing the battle to keep alive for the caramels.). Oh well. Simplicity. Four ingredients. I brought it to Jacob: first course is served!

We poured a little bit of sake and ate.

Quiet + freshness + earthiness + tanginess + umami whispers + all that simplicity I was going for, with none of the blandness I was worried about. Yum.

We ate the Italianish thing, just fine, a sturdy, comforting meal especially nice for Jacob after eight hours of flying. Then we ate some March chocolate of the Month testers, and talked about how to improve them, and we played with the cats, and washed the dishes, and my jetlagged boyfriend went right to sleep. A funny, mismatched meal, but it suited the cozy night. Nothing fancy, just you and me, appreciating everything.

*After writing this all up I just realized that pink turnip might be….a radish? I’ll have to ask Jessica. Either way, in my experience radishes and turnips are weirdly interchangeable–both roast well, simmer well, and fry well. Did the idea of roasted radishes just blow your mind? They are amazing!

Edit! My chef pal Cathy reports that she believes my turnip is a Misato Rose Radish. Thanks Cathy!!

Spicy Szechuan Peanut Noodles

When I shut down the meal delivery service, a few clients asked if I wouldn’t mind sharing a few favorite recipes. I’m a big recipe sharer—I don’t get this whole “secret recipes” thing. I want everyone to be eating delicious animal-free food, so why wouldn’t I share recipes?

Well, it does take some time, and it’s nice to have a photo to accompany a recipe, and those two factors are, to be honest, usually enough of a deterrent to prevent me from pretty much ever posting a recipe. But I’m going to push on in this case, because I so adore my former clients, and because recipes are nice. So, over the next few weeks I’ll be posting a few beloved meal delivery recipes. Let me know how they turn out for you!

The first in this series is spicy peanut noodles, the Szechuan classic also called dan dan mian. (Or: the Sichuan classic called dan dan mien, if you prefer.) Do you have dishes you always order in restaurants, even though they almost never live up to your hopes? Maybe you had a great version the very first time you tried the dish, and that sets you up for a lifetime of disappointment (or maybe you’ve just developed your palate over time? Or become a snob?). Why can’t we stop ordering them? When I see baingan bartha, or fried dumplings, or pad see ew, I have a weird compulsion to order it, even though I know it’s so often a recipe for failure. Sadly, peanut noodles are often in that camp. What’s up with peanut noodles in restaurants? Gummy, greasy, gritty, gloppy, undersalted, underspiced, underflavored, with over- or undercooked noodles, too cold, too old, made with spaghetti (!!)—for such an easy dish, terrible versions abound.

So maybe it’s time to stay in and make them ourselves.

Around my house, the stripped-down version of this dish (minus pretty much everything but the noodles and a sauce made from shoyu, peanut butter, rice vinegar (or lime juice), sesame oil, and chile paste)  is our default 10-minute meal: put water on for the noodles, then make the sauce. When I’m making it on the fly like this, I don’t measure anything, and I make sure I’m not forgetting anything by reminding myself of the building blocks of Southeast Asian cuisine: hot, sour, salty, sweet. Keep tinkering until the sauce tastes balanced, and by the time the noodles are done, the sauce is ready. Any old green thing from the garden is great as a bright burst of grassy flavor on top: chives, scallions, garlic leaves, Thai basil, or a nice steamed green like kale. Done.

But for nights when you want something a bit more complex, here’s the deluxe version of the recipe, a dressed-up quickie meal that’s so great that I used to have a client who would order five quarts of it at a time (“It doesn’t freeze!” I would tell him. Maybe he had a peanut noodle party every time it came on the menu??).

Though this is a Chinese dish, my version puts a bit of a Southeast Asian spin on it, as I’m almost always drawn to the bright, clean flavors of Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. I’ve built in quite a few variations from the traditional dish: fried tempeh stands in for ground pork, and I use peanut butter, though it’s also traditional to make the sauce with sesame paste. (I like both, but since I buy peanut butter by the case, it’s just what I usually reach for.) As well, I almost always cook up udon or soba noodles, though fresh Chinese wheat noodles are more common (breaking with tradition yet again, I serve this dish hot, when usually it’s cold. I love the way the hot sauce melts the noodles a bit.). Overall, a more traditional dan dan mian is a bit soupier and a ton spicier, spiked with preserved mustard leaves and sparked with ground Szechuan peppercorns that make your mouth buzz. Feel free to veer in that direction–this is an endlessly adaptable dish.

Here we go:

my daily bread: no work, no knead, no end to the compliments.

Bread! I’m so enjoying the no-knead, three years after I finally gave myself over to it, that I feel the need to repost the recipe with updated guidelines on how I’m making it these days.

Here’s the first thing to know about this bread. People talk about it being “five minutes of work.” That is complete crap. I just timed myself making it:

Three minutes flat.

So let’s not kid ourselves here.

I bought the book inspired by the recipe, My Bread (man, so possessive! I guess the dude got tired of everyone making it themselves and yelling from the rooftops “This is MY BREAD!!” like I do) by Jim Lahey, of Sullivan Street Bakery. It was a quick, nice read, but nothing in it was as revolutionary as the basic, stellar recipe, the one so many of us know by heart now (when asked about the great crust on the loaf I brought over to my father-out-law, I repeated the entire recipe off the top of my head.).

Here’s how I’ve been doing it lately, and here’s the original NYT recipe, which also has an accompanying video.

It’s amazing that so many words seem to be necessary to describe so little work, but here we go:

Oh: Feel free to add in nuts, seeds, chopped olives, dried cherries and chocolate chips, etc. I’ve made a stellar chocolate-cherry bread, olive bread, rye bread—the sky is the limit, my friends. These days I exclusively weigh the ingredients (in grams), and I think it’s made a huge difference. A reliable electronic kitchen scale is cheap, and will make your bread better, trust me. I also usually replace a few tablespoons of water with good bubbly sourdough starter. It gives the bread a more complex flavor. If you’re weighing the water, remember that sourdough usually weighs more than water so you might need to add a little water back in.

Also: if the best pot for your bread (taller pots are better than wider ones, for nice fluffy bread) has a plastic handle, you can usually just unscrew it. And if your pot has a glass lid, do as I do in my little Hawaii vacation kitchenette and just use a sheet pan for a lid instead.

No-Knead Bread

Makes one 1 ½ lb loaf

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour (sometimes labeled “high gluten flour”), plus more for dusting (430 grams)
¼ teaspoon instant or active dry yeast (it doesn’t matter what kind of yeast you use) (1 gram)
2 ½ teaspoons sea salt—if you have very coarse sea salt, grind it up a bit.
cornmeal or wheat bran as needed, optional—I almost always just use more flour.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast, and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups (345 grams) tepid water (err on the side of cold, for a slower rise and better flavor)—just enough to make the dough slightly too wet to handle) and stir until blended; dough will be sticky and shaggy. (At this point flavorings such as caraway seeds, chopped olives, onions, walnuts, raisins, etc can be added.) Cover bowl with plastic wrap (I use an unused shower cap). Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, (as much as 20-22 is OK) at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice (realistically, this shaggy mass will not do anything like folding over on itself. Just do your best, it’ll be fine). Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to itself or your fingers (it will still stick), gently and quickly shape dough into a ball (or something loosely resembling one). Dust the bowl with flour and return the dough to the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap.
3. Let rise for about 1-3 hours, depending on outside temperature (if it’s cold outside, it will take longer to rise). When it is ready, the dough will be about double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger. (The dough will not really look like a ball, just a mass. This is OK.)
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees (up to 500 is OK for faster browning, but be careful). Put a 3-5 quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in the oven as it heats.
5. When the dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Carefully turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is OK. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15-30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Adapted 12/2007 from the NYT November 8, 2006, which was adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery.

variations – replace some of the all-purpose or bread flour with no more than:

30% whole wheat flour OR
50% white whole wheat flour OR
20% rye flour (1/2 c rye flour and 1 1/2 Tb. of caraway seeds is great)

previousnesses: the best of the past.

Heya pals!

Here are a few links to recipes, food essays, rants, ideas, and inspiration from my old meal delivery site, as well as my personal blog. Enjoy!

Great essays, food talk, and pretty photos:

• My coconut manifesto: why coconut is the new dairy. I think maybe the best thing I’ve ever written in terms of strict usefulness.
• In case you want to email me to ask if I think you should go to the Natural Gourmet cooking school in NYC.
• Really random thoughts on cooking.
• Hey, a super famous poet wrote a poem about my bittersweet chocolate vulvas!
• The grand peanut butter taste test of 2010.
• When I read a depressing book about chocolate.
• Continued musings after reading said depressing book about chocolate.
• Photos of this cool arty chocolatey thing I did in Brooklyn.
• The fanciest meal I’ve ever had. ALINEA!
• When I was really into writing poetry in chocolate.
• Photos of one week of cooking for the meal delivery.
• I. Am. Wildly. Obsessed. With. Watermelon.
• Once I got an email from Vandana Shiva and almost died.
• Mostly about peas + politics. And pretty photos.
• A few photos from the launch party for the Bluestocking Bonbons!
• All about Jerusalem artichokes, aka sunchokes.
• When I got really excited about making chocolate from scratch.
• A little bit about mushrooming.
• Sigh. I so adore my former sous chef Veronica.
• I believe in veganic farming.
• I love gum! LOVE IT.

And a few recipes:

• Pierogies
• Potato latkes meal with variations, homemade “sour cream,” and pink applesauce
• My homemade tempeh recipe
• Lemon thyme-pine nut cookie sandwiches with strawberry frosting
• Frosting!
• Lentils + rice (mujaddara) and koshari. So good.
• My literally award-winning chili!
• Onion rings!
• If you’ve ever eaten my food, you’ve probably eaten the dang phyllo triangles.
• More phyllo, this time smaller: fennel-olive pastries.
• Your Thanksgiving dessert: the famous pumpkin-bourbon tart.
• Tzimmes!
• All about agar.
• Ethiopian wat with savory teff muffins
• Matzo ball soup!
• Mexican chocolate chipotle sandwich cookies with cinnamon ganache filling: THESE ARE GREAT!
• Sugared flowers.
• Cabbage and onion pie. My oh my.
• The only not vegan recipe you’ll ever see from me: what I feed my beautiful cats.

And finally, really pretty photos of cupcakes.

101 fast and quick–also good!–meals!

I wrote this a few years ago, inspired by an article in the New York Times with the same gimmick that I personally found unspeakably dreadful. This list had been hanging out on my old lagustasluscious.com site and the formatting was pretty bad, so here it is, all spiffed up. I’m looking forward to referring to it as I make meals for my sweetheart and me now that I’m freed from the shackles of the meal delivery service. My mom uses this list as a little mini-cookbook—I hope you like it too!

(Update: here’s what my mom had to say about it, via Facebook: I just printed it out and yes, the formatting is much better than the early version. For others who may be similarly inclined: I’ve made many of these meals & they are all delicious. The first page alone will get you through 2 weeks of great simple vegan meals (you just have to remember to take it to the grocery store so you can buy everything). #3 — addictive! #10 — easiest ever. etc. etc.) The mom seal of approval! (What etc. etc. means I am not sure. Maybe they are all “easiest ever.”?)

 

101 simple, tasty meals ready in about 10-25 minutes

Açaí to Yuzu: my fruit life list

As we speak, my little vacation refrigerator is stocked with a fresh coconut, three mangosteens, eight star fruit (10 for $1 at the farmer’s market!), 10 tangerines, three meyer lemons, two limes, a few papayas and avocados, and weird unknowable plum/cherry/lychee things that I couldn’t finagle a name for from the seller at the Kapa’a farmer’s market except “plum. Don’t eat the skin.” They taste far from any plum I’ve ever had–they have lychee-like seeds and Concord grape-like sour skins. Someone else called them cherries. Who knows. Who cares. I’m just trying to eat them before they start to ferment. (But if they do, no worries. Fruit vinegar!)

When it comes right down to it, all I really care about is fruit.

So let’s get serious about this. Let’s channel our inner David Karp. I’ve copied a list of edible culinary fruits from Wikipedia, and I’m going to start keeping track of, and making notes on, my fruit consumption. Here’s what I’ve got so far. Latin names are listed when possible and easy. All links are to other blog posts of mine with photos of or love poems to said fruits. I’m probably wrong about a few—beach plums, do I remember them from a book, or from actually eating them? Cloudberries I’ve only had in jam, but that counts, right? Sure.

My favorite fruit? Thanks for asking! It’s a two-way tie: mangosteen, the queen, represents the fruit I most love to eat (watermelon being a very close second), but my heart goes out to another, darker, fermented tropical fruit—one I don’t love to eat per se, but that nonetheless fuels my dreams. Number #22, baby, you’re my soulmate.

FRUIT LIFE LIST