up in smoke

...is what happened to my place, when the flat downstairs went up in flames. So now I find myself with far less stuff, staying with friends, and kind of shell-shocked from knowing first hand what it's like to be pulled out of my kitchen window at 2.30 am in my jammies by a fireman. The only things I grabbed between my bed and the window were my glasses, and then, only because I instinctively put them on as I get out of bed.

So, I give you the most comforting soup in the universe, which is what I've been having most nights. It's very loosely based on the "behead the chard" soup in Don't Feed The Bears. My sweetie and I just call this The Soup. I think that The Soup has magical powers to make any situation seem better.

In a pot:
-Crumble some dried shitake mushrooms (say 3 of them) and a few dashes of soy sauce (maybe 1 tbs - go easy, because you can always add more later, but if you oversalt the soup at the beginning, it's harder to save) into enough water to make you a giant bowl of soup
-Set it on the stove to boil, and while it's heating up, add 1 heaping tsp of nut butter or tahini (I've been using walnut butter lately), as much chopped garlic and ginger as you want, a dash of mirin or white wine, and a healthy pinch of dried chili (chipotle is especially fun, but anything hot works, really).
-When the soup is boiling and the nut butter has dissolved, add one serving of rice noodles
-When the rice noodles are nearly done (say, when you've got a minute left), add in whatever veg you want + some smoked or marinated (or fried...whatever you want, really) tofu in cubes. I like to use a green veg (broccoli or kale) + mushrooms + whatever bits and bobs of leftover cooked veg are in the fridge. Sweetcorn is oddly good in this soup
-In your serving bowl, dissolve a tbs of miso in some soup broth that you ladle out of the pot.
-When the soup is done, ladle it into the bowl with the miso. Stir. Add herbs if you've got them (cilantro or basil or both)
-Taste. Adjust seasoning by adding more soy sauce or more mirin, and then add a drizzle of sesame oil. A nice variation is to use walnut butter as the nut butter and then walnut oil at the end, in which case fresh parsley is amazing.
-Try replacing the noodles with cubes of sweet potato. Sweet potatoes and miso are best friends.

Devour.

The whole thing takes about 15 minutes from the time I walk into the kitchen until I have a wonderful bowl of hug in front of me.

Lessons learned this week:
1. Never get all your Xmas chocolates made in an organized, early way. This is the first time I've managed to get everything ready by mid-November and my FRIKIN' FLAT WAS SMOKED TO DEATH. Next year I will resume my sending-presents-late routine.
2. The fire dept is amazing.
3. My friends are amazing.
4. Eat soup. It helps.

Dancing along to: Mink, Schmink by Eartha Kitt. November is an Eartha Kitt kinda month, no?

vampire-proof your spring fling

I love spring in Edinburgh. I also love wild garlic. And while I'm at it, I'll profess my love of polenta, aubergine, and anything simmered in red wine. Now, what I do not love is having cold fingers. And my fingers have been very cold for days now. DAYS. While the calendar says spring, and the wild garlic heralds spring, and the earlier-and-earlier sunrise confirms spring, it is still FRIKIN' COLD when I go out to run in the morning, and quite chilly when I bike home at night, which makes me refuse to quit eating wintery food just yet.

This recipe is kind of loose, because it kind of just happened. I wanted garlic. Lots and lots of garlic. Lucky for me, I seem to have picked an entire carrier bag full of the stuff during my (finger-numbing) bike ride last weekend. So, here's what happened.

I made homemade "faux beef" seitan (test recipe from New American Vegan), modified to make it dryer and spicier and smokier, then rolled it up in a cheesecloth and simmered it for about an hour in water + soy sauce + bay leaves + red wine. Kept the resulting broth and used it to:

-caramelize a red onion with dried basil, pul biber chilis and black pepper
-then I added an aubergine, chopped sundried tomatoes, and some chopped capers and more broth so it was vaguely stew-like.
-When the aubergine was mostly done, I added a courgette and some of the seitan.
-When that was done, I added smoked sea salt and a ridiculous amount of chopped wild garlic. Yes, my little pretties, *all* the green you see in that picture is wild garlic. I smell awesome right now.

I piled this all on polenta (I stir in white miso and nutritional yeast at the end of the polenta cooking).

Mmmmm... garlicky spring comfort.

Dancing in a most unspringlike way along to "My daddy is a vampire" by The Meteors.

bim bim baptastic

Ahem. This is soooo not authentic. But so far as I understand it, bimbimbap is "stuff on rice". And "stuff" means "a few different small things rather than one big thing". So, inspired by the recent opening of an *actual korean resto* in Edinburgh, which I want to eat at all the time, I made this:

Brown rice, topped with simmered tofu, spicy mushrooms, ginger-miso carrots, perfectly slimy okra, and kimchi. And maybe some pickled onions. YUM. Also, I have been out picking wild garlic, because, despite the craptastic weather, it is spring. Dammit.

The okra is from Asian Vegan Kitchen. It is perfect. Make it now.

Highly addictive tofu:
simmer together 2 tbs soy sauce, some sugar, 1 tsp ground sesame seeds, 1 tbs red wine, some chili flakes (I used urfa biber, cuz I wanted kind-of-but-not-really smoky). When the sugar has dissolved, carefully add tofu (enough for two people). When the tofu is cooked, add 1/2 cup wild garlic and 1 scallion, chopped. Let these warm through. Drizzle with sesame oil to taste.

Mushrooms:
Simmer mushrooms in soy sauce + mirin + kochuchang paste + grated ginger. Devour.

Carrots:
1 large carrot, grated + 2 heaping tbs pickled ginger, cut into thin strips. Sauce: 1 tbs white miso + 1 tbs lemon vinegar + 1 tbs pickling liquid from the ginger.


The next night, I might have made this again, only with greens instead of okra.

Also, I have made skully chocolates. The chocolates are not actually blurry, but my camera is acting odd. Perhaps it is afeared by the awesome scariness of my skully chocolates.

Bopping along to: Kung Fu Fighting! (getting tempered chocolate into those frikin' skully molds means) I was fast as lightning....

fun things to do with millet

Dinner of the vegan whore! Ahem. Or, more politely, putanesca-inspired millet bowl.

Toast your cumin (1 tbs) and millet (1 cup) in a dry pan and then add water (1.5 cups), sundried tomatoes (3-5, cut in strips) and turmeric (1/2 tsp). While that does it's thing, get going on the rest.

Separately, in a pan:

a goodly amount of white wine
6-8 cloves of garlic (preferably smoked garlic), chopped
1 deseeded red chili, chopped
1 tbs capers, chopped
a giant handful of kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
1 preserved lemon, chopped
a splash of the olive brine
(let all that simmer a bit)

2 small heads broccoli, chopped
1 small handful parsley, chopped

Stir in some nooch at the end if you are so inclined. I was so inclined, and it was yummy.

Would you like to know a secret? To make pitting olives faster if you're going to chop them, squish them with the flat of your knife - the pits should just come out, or at least be loose enough that you can cut the olive in half and it will just fall out.



simmer along with Yo Yo Ma, voice of the tango.

tomato chromatography

...as in a separation of colours.

First, I made clear tomato consommée, then used the brightly-coloured pulp as a tomato sauce. The consommée is from the Terre a Terre cookbook, and all I did was add a single star anise to the liquid. It takes overnight to make, but is pretty much the easiest recipe ever. Usually tomato consommée is cleared using egg whites, but you can also just drain chopped and blended tomatoes through a double layer of cheesecloth overnight. You get the most exquisitely rich broth. Oh yum. I used 1 kg of tomatoes, so the recipe for the sauce assumes that you have pulp from that. For the main dish:

Tomato Sauce
1 batch tomato pulp (from 1 kg of tomatoes)
1/2 sweet red pepper, chopped supa-fine
1/2 tsp garlic-infused olive oil
2 tbs lemon vinegar OR 2 tbs lemon juice + 1 tsp agave
8 cured black olives, chopped
tiny pinch cinnamon (be stingy. you can always add more, but you can't do anything if you add too much the first time)
black pepper
warm water to thin to the consistency you want

Mix everything together and let sit while you pull the rest of dinner together.

Creamy cauliflower crunch

1 small head cauliflower, in itsy-bitsy pieces
1 tbs white miso
1 tsp smoked salt
1 cup hummous (this was leftover from a weekend biking expedition, approximate recipe below)
2 cups bitter greens, chopped + juice from 1/2-1 lemon

Marinate bitter greens in the lemon juice in a separate bowl and let them sit there for a few minutes (say 10 or 15). Mix everything else together.


Hummous with a kick

3c sprouted (or cooked) chickpeas
2-3 tbs tahini (more if you want)
6-8 sundried tomatoes, soaked in just enough water to cover
3 pitted dates, soaked along with the tomatoes
3 cloves garlic (reduce if you do not loooooove raw garlic)
1 cup parsley
3 tbs nutritional yeast
lots and lots of lemon juice
salt to taste
optional capers

Put the parsley aside. Dump everything else, including soaking water, in a blender or food processor. Blend! Blend! Blend! Add parsley. Now, pack it (minus 1 cup for leftovers) as part of a lunch and go on a nice long bike ride. Stop and have a picnic, preferably by the ocean.

chromatographic and crunch music: mercan dede

fava tarts

A friend gave me a bunch of stuff from her garden. Fava beans were in there. Oh yes. And we all know that I have a deep, deep looooooooove of fava beans. We all know this. Not only are they extra tasty, but Pythagoreas forbid his followers to eat them, because of something to do with hinges and beanskins and the doors of hell. Undaunted, I eat them at every opportunity.

We spent the day walking in the woods by Roslin, and finally, after living in Edinburgh for (ahem) almost three years, made it to see Roslin chapel. I enjoyed 1) the sculpture of the angel playing bagpipes, which I assume was ironic since I am convinced that the bagpipes are Satan's Instument and b) the gargoyles that looked like they were clinging to the walls for dear life. It was much more interesting than I assumed it would be. Huh. As a bonus, we could actually *see stuff* since the da Vinci Code tourists were mostly not out today because the weather was extra-super unpredictable, even for Edinburgh in July. We had both rain capes and sun hats (and a thermos of tea) and were just fine (though we used all of that equipment every single hour). These tarts, along with a giant green salad, were the perfect "summer" dinner. Note the copious amounts of garlic. As usual, my food is both delicious and vampire-repellent. It never hurts to multitask.

Tart shell:
1/2 cup almond pulp left over from making almond milk (or sub almond meal mixed with some kind of liquid)
1/2 cup ww spelt flour
2 tbs nutritional yeast
1 tbs white miso
pinch salt
1 tsp (or more) finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 tsp coarsly ground black pepper
1 small onion, chopped in half-moons

Mix all ingredients except onions together. Add more flour if the dough is sticky. It should be wet but not sticky. Divide evenly in half and press into two tart tins (if you are having them as a main dish) or 4-6 muffin cases (for starters). Cover tart shells with onions. Bake at 150C for 15 mins (until beginning to brown).

While the tart shells are browning, mix in a bowl:
1 cup shelled fresh fava beans
1.5 cups sliced oyster mushrooms
2 cloves smoked garlic, chopped very finely
1/4 c white wine
1 tbs soy sauce

Let these marinate until the tart shells are ready. Then divide the filling equally among the shells and bake for another 10 mins at 180C. Remove tarts from oven. Sprinkle with (in this order): lemon juice from one lemon (divided among all tarts, not per tart), salt, black pepper. Drizzle with a small amount very fruity olive oil (I used garlic-infused olive oil...). Don't go too nuts with the oil or it will overwhelm everything else.

angels and bagpipes and flaunting the possibility of the doors of hell: Pope and Antipopes: music for the courts of avignon and rome, by the Orlando Consort.

garlicky goodness is the first sign of spring

Spring has sprung! Which means... the wild garlic is out! The boi and I spent Saturday ambling along in the sunshine. We walked up the Water of Leith and then down the Union Canal. For 5 hours. And we picked more wild garlic than is reasonable. So we are now extra-good smelling and completely vampire proof.

Wild garlic polenta for two very hungry walkers

First, get this in the oven, on as high as you can go:
2c itsy-bitsy cherry tomatoes in
1/2 c water and (an optional) 1/2 cup red wine

while the tomatoes are baking to wonderfulness do this:

1.5 cups polenta
sea salt
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 cup chopped wild garlic.

When the polenta is about 5 mins away from being done, add some (about a cup) crumbled smoked tofu on top of the (now kinda blackened) cherry tomatoes. I used smoked tofu that I had fermented according to the directions in The New Now and Zen Epicure, which I highly recommend. I find most vegan cheeses gross, but I looooooove the tofu one in this book. Pop that back in the oven to let the cheese warm through. The fermented tofu is really salty; if you are using regular smoked tofu, add salt.

Stir the nutritional yeast and wild garlic into the polenta at the end. Spoon some tomato/tofu onto each bowl. Consume. Radiate wild garlic out of your every pore for the next 24 hours. I will be radiating wild garlic for at least a week, since the rest of it is going into wild garlic pesto.

Music for ambling: Norah Jones. Come away with me.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Gentle readers (adventurous cooks). Science is a demanding mistress who leaves precious little time for blogging. Though I intend to sporadically update this blog, it will be quite rare from here on in. I'm leaving it up as a recipe archive. Enjoy, and see you when I retire (or get tenure)!

Fish balls: okara, shitake mushrooms, chopped yuba, capers, garlic, wakame, soy sauce, smoked paprika, chickpea flour.

I ate this with kimchi rice (exactly what it sounds like) and a bowl of miso onion soup.

Now, excuse me. I have some extremely nerdy thoughts to think, some slime to pipette, and fitness landscapes to paramatize.

Dancing to: Nrrrd Grrrl. MC Chris.

when life hands you lemons

...make beans. It's what I do. I *am* vegan, after all. These ain't pretty (as you see in the photo), but oh sweet jeebus, are they ever a yummy and satisfying dinner.

Lemon-thyme beans

1 small onion

3 cups cooked black eyed beans (or other white beans such as butter beans)

2 heads roasted garlic

2 large, juicy lemons (you know ... the big sicilian ones that you can practically eat straight up)

a handful (yes a giant handful) fresh thyme. I mean it. Fresh thyme or bust.

salt and pepper.

Saute onion in whatever strikes your fancy. I used a splash of white wine. Add the beans, the garlic mush from the two heads of garlic, and the zest from both lemons, and a bit of water. Simmer for a minute or 5 while you separate the thyme leaves from the stems. You should have at least 1/4 cup of fresh thyme leaves. I had about 1/3 cup. It's a lot. Add the juice from both lemons, the thyme leaves, salt and pepper. Heat up to a simmer, then cover and turn the heat off entirely. Leave it for 5 mins. If you want, stir in two or three tbs of nutritional yeast. Eat the beans! Sing! Boogie! Be happy that lemons exist! Ahem.

I served this beany lemony goodness over baked potatoes. If you don't have roasted garlic lying around (because really, who leaves roasted garlic lying around for more than 30 seconds without eating it?), just throw the garlic in the oven with the potatoes, and add it to the beans whenever it's done.

Sexy in a garlic breath, full-of-beans kinda way: Queen Bitch, by David Bowie.

confusion yum: chili meets salsa meets italy, and it all gets kitchendanced

Sometimes, I don't wanna cook the tomatoes because actual ripe tomatoes are so wonderful after a winter of using canned or dried ones. But I want chili. And then I thinks to myself : what *is* chili, really, but cooked salsa? Maybe I'll just make some salsa and put it on rice. And then I thinks: oooh, look, dried mushrooms, and isn't that fresh basil in the fridge? Maybe I want a nice fresh basil tomato mushroom sauce. But with chocolate. Finally, I think: I want it ALL. I don't care if it goes together.

Confession: I don't just think this. I say it out loud, at the tomatoes, as if they have an opinion on the subject.

The result is wonderful. In fact I will be making it again, much more decisively, and without consulting the tomatoes at all. And again, and again, because it's ridiculously easy and pretty and colourful and enables me to eat chocolate and chickpeas for dinner at the same time, both of which rank very high on my "foods to get excited about" scale. And the tomatoes agree. They told me so.

3 cloves garlic
2 nice fresh (opinionated) tomatoes
1 red or orange pepper
1 bunch basil (I ended up with just over 1 cup)
1 sprig of fresh rosemary leaves
a handful of dried mushrooms
1 heaping tbs of capers, drained
a handful of sundried tomatoes, soaked in just enough hot water to cover

See that list of stuff above? Chop it all into tiny bits and dump it in a bowl along with the soaking water from the tomatoes, if your tomatoes are pre-soaked. If you (like me) aren't the kind of girl to have presoaked sundried tomatoes around, just set them soaking now, and add them later. If you've been good and read to the end of the recipe, you'll realize you have half an hour of fudge time on the tomato-soaking.

add
1 lemon of lemon juice
1 lime of lime juice
2 tbs of toasted cumin seeds
1 tbs of dried chili (I used one that was described as "sultry", ie.. a nice complex sweet hot, but use whatever kind strikes your fancy)
some ground black pepper, to taste
3 tbs of finely grated unsweetened chocolate (I grate it with a lemon zester)
and a sprinkling of cocoa nibs too
sea salt (I used smoked)
2 c of sprouted chickpeas (or cooked chickpeas, or other sprouted legume...) I used sprouted green chickpeas because they're both yummy and pretty.

Stir this around and then let it sit while you cook rice or read a book or whatever. It needs at least half an hour for the mushrooms to soak up liquid

Just before serving, stir in a tbs or so of toasted and ground sesame seeds or almonds. Chopped mango is also nice in this, but I accidentally ate most of it while waiting for the rice to cook, so only about 1/4 of a mango actually made it into this dish. I highly recommend using more than 1/4 mango, but these things happen. You can't really expect me to know that there is a chopped mango sitting right there and not eat it. It's just impossible. There will be a fair amount of liquid in this dish. I like that, because you can then pour it over rice. If you want a thicker liquid, add tahini or peanut butter, or just don't add the tomato-soaking water.

I just stirred this into warm rice and scarfed it down. It was one of those Very Satisfying Meals. Comfort food for summer, I guess. If one can call what we have here in Edinburgh "summer". I mean, I am typing this in a toque. But it's a cotton toque and it's light out at 11 pm. So, summer.

A note on the chocolate. I've been using Willy's Supreme Cacao a lot lately. It's an unsweetened block of cocoa (100% cacao, meaning that it contains only cacao solids, including cacao butter... this is not just pressed cacao powder) that you grate onto foods. I like the Venuzuelan Black variety. At first glance, the price tag seems high, but a block of the stuff goes a long way, and even if it didn't, it's so good that I don't care. Oh yes. Fuck all the vegan parm substitutes. Just grate this on everything. I kid you not. I've put it on pasta and tomato sauce, on chili, on middle eastern soups, even on a pear and arugula pizza. The dude behind this chocolate clearly knows what he's doing. He's made a super duper high quality chocolate without any of the pretense and preciousness I've come to expect/tolerate from high-end single-origin, handmade, slave free (I could keep going on the qualifiyers, but let's just say ethical and damn fine) chocolate. So if you're in the UK, check out his stuff. Then, make confused chili.

the tomatoes dance to their death to the diabolical strains of : this offer is unrepeatable, by elvis costello

from Florence, with love: warm farro salad

Every year I get to go to Florence for work, which rocks. Florence is an excellent place to spend a week working and eating... I rarely eat out here, for a simple reason: I stay next to the central market, and like to spend time cooking with the spectacular fresh ingredients available in spring. This year I did the usual pasta (picci, which is rarely found outside Tuscany, and which I love, but I also love that it's something that is still a local food) and fresh porcini, but that's not really something you need a recipe for. However, spelt is big here. I especially like whole spelt berries, or farro. You can use them like rice, or wheat berries, or small pasta. You can make rissotto with them, which I highly recommend. They're super yummy chewy. Also, spelt seems to be the only concession to "whole grain" made here. Everything else (the bread, the pasta, the rice) is white. This year, I also happened across some fresh canellini beans (which practically melt in your mouth), and there were little zucchini flowers everywhere. Oh my. I made this, and it was perfect. It's very simple, and relies on having good, very fresh ingredients. In other words, no, you can't substitute canned tomatoes, cheap-ass olives, or dry parsley. (You can, however, use dried beans). Make this when you can get excellent tomatoes that were picked ripe, and get damn good olives. If you can't find zucchini flowers, use barely-steamed mangetout or fresh green peas.

-1 c farro, cooked (gives about 1.5 cups)
-1 c fresh cannelini beans

-8 zucchini flowers
-2 ugly but perfectly ripe summer tomatoes, chopped
-2 cloves garlic, chopped
-1 c parsley chopped
-a few spicy olives in olive oil, or if your olives are in brine, some good olive oil to drizzle plus a dash (only a dash) of hot pepper. This isn't a hot dish per se. The pepper just adds a very subtle edge. Very. Subtle. Exercise restraint, gentle reader, and you will be rewarded with a lovely lovely layering of flavours. Too much chili, and you'll overwhelm everything, which would be a shame.
-salt and pepper to taste

Cook the spelt berries/farro in plenty of boiling salted water for about 10 mins. At the 10 minute mark, add the beans. Somewhere between the 15-20 minute mark both should be done. When the farro and beans are done, add the zucchini flowers for about 30 seconds, and then pick them out with a fork and put them aside (you want to just barely cook them). Drain farro and beans. Return them to the hot pot, but don't bother turning the heat back on. Stir in all the other ingredients, and serve, topped with the zucchini flowers. Oh, and when I say "some olive oil", I didn't add any. I was just using olives preserved in oil. So if you're adding, I'd say 1 tsp or so for the whole recipe. Or you could just leave it out.

singing: a love song to ugly tomatoes that i made up on the spot.

garlicky spring risotto

A friend gave me a splendid bag of fancy-pants arborio rice. This is what happened when I got home. This is tastes like the filling of stuffed vine leaves, only in the form of risotto! So exciting! The leftovers are great wrapped in vine leaves (how shocking). Failing that, they're also great wrapped in any leafy green. Or eaten straight out of the container cold. I might have done that today at lunch.

Confession: I love fresh fava beans. LOVE. However, they take for frikkin' ever to shell, so I'm secretly glad that fresh fava bean season is mercifully short, because otherwise I'd have a pretty serious time problem on my hands.

1 c arborio rice
1c white wine
hot veg stock or water

2 stalks celery
5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 tbs cumin
1 zucchini, thinly sliced
1/2-1 c fresh fava beans (broad beans)
1/2 c fresh mint, chopped
a few sprigs fresh dill, chopped
juice of 1 large lemon
salt and pepper to taste


Usually I use brown rice, but for this, brown is a bit heavy, though it could work if you wanted to use this as a stuffing for peppers or something. Meh. Serve this with olives and a simple tomato salad.

General instructions for risotto are here. For this one, prep the rice (ie, rice, wine, stock) in a nice heavy bottom pan. While the rice is cooking, shell the fava beans. When that's done, get going on the celery and garlice: In a separate pan from the rice, saute the celery and garlic on medium heat in a splash of wine. Once they're translucent, add cumin and zucchini, drop the heat and cover. Add fava beans at end (a minute or two before the rice is done. Mix the rice into the veg. Stir in the mint, dill and lemon juice. Salt and pepper to taste.

springtime music: dance me to the end of love, by leonard cohen, for my plum.

bittersweet

Ok folks, despite what the last few posts might suggest, I don't live on desserts, I promise.  So here's a dinner, albeit one that incorporates fruit. You see, the saffron was staring at me, and then all I wanted was saffron. And there were some greens that needed to be used up, like, yesterday. It ain't pretty, but it is super duper yummy. If you want pretty, use white rice, though I rather liked the dark red/orange combo, which just isn't done justice by my cheap camera. 

Baked cauliflower (1 head, including leaves), caramelized red onion (1), mint (1 tbs dry), oregano (1 tbs dry), chopped green olives (6), currants (small handful), dried sour apricots (6), some water and salt, garlic (2 cloves), saffron (more than I like to admit), bitter greens (a bunch, chopped). Add to the pan in that order, turn the heat off when you add the garlic.  Cover for a bit and let the flavours meld. Eat it all on red rice cooked with puy lentils, a few cardamom pods and a bay leaf.

...and as I was doing this, I was singing and kitchendancing along to Le Tigre. Nanny nanny boo boo. Lather, rinse, remix.  

spring soup

Wild garlic! It's here! Yay! This soup is simple, and perfect. The mushrooms add a lot of depth, the black pepper gives it heat, and the whole thing is satisfying but unstodgy. Kinda like spring.

Spring soup:

boil up:
2 dried shiitake mushrooms
lots of galangal (um, at least 4 large slices)
some lemongrass (2 stalks, bruised)
lots of black pepper (at least a tsp, more if you like the heat)
anisseed (1 tsp)
shoyu to taste (2-4 tbs should do it, but make your food how you want, not how i want)
a dash of mirin
a leek, chopped
a medium spud, chopped
some mushrooms
a chopped carrot
chicken seitan

when the spuds are done, declare the soup done, take it off the heat, pick out the galangal and lemongrass chunks, add a bit of lemon juice, and stir in 1 cup wild garlic, chopped.

exhuberant music for exhuberant soup: king of spain, moxy fruvous.

anti-vamp chickpeas

aka: roasted lemony chickpeas with smoked garlic and kale.

I love chickpeas. LOVE. Can't get enough of them. I feel the same way about kale and garlic, so this dish is pretty much my own personal version of tastebud heaven. It's pretty simple to make, and full of crazy big tastes that go well together. However, there is nothing, *absolutely nothing*, subtle about this dish. Though you can turn the leftovers into a stew (stew in red wine, broth, and crushed tomatoes), which will be subtle and complex and kinda sweet and will make you wish that you'd made a quadruple batch of this so you could eat it all week, even if the garlic reek has a bit of an adverse effect on your social life (the way around this is to feed your nearest and dearest this as well, so you all smell like garlic together). Note that you can use liquid smoke or smoked paprika if you don't have any smoked garlic. It's not something I usually have on hand, but there was some at the farmer's market this weekend. I felt compelled to use it in large amounts. If ever there were a city where vampire attacks could actually happen, I'd be Edinburgh, land of gothicness and downtown graveyards. Ahem. Just to be safe, I ate this tonight:

-2-3c cooked chickpeas + enough soy sauce to lightly coat them, without having vast pools of sauce leftover(I like shoyu)
-1 whole lemon, sliced in very thin rounds and seeded. You're going to eat the entire lemon, including the peel, so unwaxed and organic is a good idea. use an orange if you don't like bitter things, but I think you should try it with the lemon first. really. it's much better with the lemon.
-6 cloves (just over half a head) smoked garlic, sliced in little rounds. Sometimes I use a whole head of garlic, but these cloves were huge. HUGE. So I exercised restraint and only used half a head.

-1 tbs cumin
-1 onion, cut into thin half-moons
-4-6 sundried tomatoes, cut into strips (use scissors) and rehydrated in enough hot water to cover
-1 bunch kale (or chard, or dark green cabbage, or beet greens...)
-a few olives or capers (or both), chopped
-1 tbs sumac (start with half a tbs, taste, and adjust)
-sea salt
-lemon juice

Roast chickpeas and lemon slices in the oven with shoyu on fairly low heat (280-300F) for about 10 minutes. In a nice big pan, dry-roast the cumin powder and when it gets fragrant, add the onions and sundried tomatoes and their soaking liquid, followed by a splash of white wine. When the onions begin to get translucent, add the kale, sumac, and olives or capers. Cover and let cook. The cooking time will depend on how tender or tough your kale is. You can use any leafy green, really. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste (but use a light hand because the chickpeas are going to be pretty salty). When the chickpeas have been roasting for about 10 mins, add the garlic slices to them, and pop them back in the oven for a further 5 minutes until the garlic is cooked, but not burnt. Either toss the chickpeas with the kale, or if you're feeling fancier, use the greens as a bottom layer and then carefully make a little pile of chickpeas on top of it. I think this goes well with pretty much anything. I (as usual) at it with spuds that I'd roasted at the same time as the chickpeas were going.

garlic boogie music: in the afterlife, Squirrel Nut Zippers.

highly addictive bitter green mini yet curiously round not-so-italian farinata/bastard love children of pakoras and felafel

...huh. Turns out radish leaves are edible. Who knew? I had a few bunches of radishes, and it seemed a horrible waste to throw out all those lovely greens, but I had never heard of them being eaten. So, using the awesome power of teh Googles, I checked if I would regret cooking them up and/or poison myself (which would be a shame, and isn't on my list of things to do). Several sources confirmed that people actually eat these, and that you can just treat them like any other bitter green. I nibbled on one. They were too bitter to eat raw or in a salad (at least these ones were, maybe the summer ones are more delicate?), so I made these. I love bitter greens with chickpea flour pancakes, or farinata, which is a pretty standard Italian combination that a friend made for me a few times, which started a mild obsession with farininata that I have yet to totally overcome. This seemed like a natural extension of the idea. These are ridiculously versatile and a little too addictive. The sweet potato adds depth and sweetness. These are somewhere between a pakora and a felafel, but they're not fried, and they're pretty dense (so don't make them too big).

-1 medium sweet potato, mashed
-about 1c chickpeas, also mashed
-2 large cloves garlic and a good-sized piece of ginger, grated/mushed/or finely chopped
-generous pinch asafoetida, 2tbs toasted ground cumin, 1 tbs toasted ground garam masala, 1 tbs toasted sesame seeds (just dry toast everything together in a pan) 1 tbs curry powder, 3-4 tbs dried coriander leaves (Jake, just use parsley), sprinkle of salt, 1 lemon of lemon juice (all to taste, amounts given are wild guesses of what I added)
-radish leaves, chopped, blanched and drained. I had leaves from 2 big bunches of radishes, which when cooked and chopped, yielded about 3/4 cup. Any bitter green will do (arugula, dandelion, fenugreek leaves...have fun!)
-chickpea flour (the amount will depend on how wet the rest of your ingredients are, I used about a cup)

Combine everything but the chickpea flour. Add chickpea flour a little at a time until you have something that you can form into patties. Form small (I used a tablespoon) patties, roll in cornmeal, squish to little mini-burger like shapes, and bake at 180C for about 20 mins. Flip halfway through if you're so inclined, but I didn't, and nothing bad seemed to happen. Eat them like felafel. Or like pakora. Or just dip them in eggplant pickle. Throw them on top of spaghetti with marinara sauce and you have italian-indian delight! ... they really do go frightfully well with spaghetti and tomato sauce. Above, you see them fresh out of the oven, with eggplant pickle, a baked potato, and a giant salad. These are great if you pack a lunch, btw. They travel really well, and taste good cold, I was going to check if they reheated well in the microwave, but the microwave at work is gross, and I refuse to use it, even for you, my dear readers. You'll have to check on the reheatability of these yourselves and report back to me.

bitter green love music: John's book of alleged dances. John Adams and the Kronos Quartet. I seem to be falling in looooove with the Kronos Quartet. Yummy music.

pois gris: the mystery legume of midwinter

Today I spent most of the day making truffles for the holidays. So by the end of the day, I knew that I'd be wanting something salty. I put on some field peas (pois gris) to soak last night, and let them simmer away for a good part of the afternoon while we truffled away as kind of a wierd, chocolate-addict's solistice meditation.

Some time ago, I got some pois gris from someone, and I was never quite sure what to do with them. I mean, I'd never seen them before, and I haven't seen them since. I tried a few things, and most of them were okay. But this, it turns out, is exactly what I should do, and if I come across pois gris/field peas again, I will most certainly repeat this dish: onion, garlic, soup stock (or white wine), a can of tomatoes, liquid smoke, oregano, thyme, nutmeg, pomegranite molasses (or a bit of maple syrup + a fair splash of lemon if that's easier for you), tvp, pois gris, kale, salt and pepper. Smoky goodness. I ate this on rice and it was lovely for winter, and perfect for a homey dark day spent getting ready for the holiday decadence ahead. For those of you who are wondering, I think any bean that keeps it's shape well would probably work for this, like navy, pinto, small fava beans, or even kidney beans.

Just in case you were wondering, this year's truffle flavours are: vanilla salt, balsamic vinegar, basil, toasted cumin. For the basil, I extracted some good dried basil in olive oil, and then used the oil.

dark, homey music for days when the sun sets in midafternoon: bach's coffee cantata (for the secularists among us)

stewing in afog

AFOG: another fucking opportunity for growth. And you know what they say. If you wanna grow, you should eat your veggies. This is warm and comforting and will make you reek of garlic. Good for those slightly blue, slightly misanthropic, vaguely antisocial evenings. Also useful if you anticipate any vampire encounters after dinner or if you're fighting off a cold.

Roast these: a whole head of garlic in cloves, half a large head (or a whole small head) of cauliflower, a pepper (I used yellow because it was what I have, but red would be prettier) an onion in large pieces, an eggplant in large pieces, a dozen or more whole cherry tomatoes, four or five sun-dried tomatoes cut into strips...I just chop them up with scissors. In this: enough water to reach halfway up the veg, a good swig of balsamic, a whole lemon worth of juice (you can throw in the peels as well if they're organic, and just pick them out when you're done roasting) oregano, thyme, mint, salt. This will make a stew with little blackened roasty bits where the veg poke up out of the liquid. When it's done, add more hot water (to cover the veg), some cooked white beans, chopped green olives and chopped capers. If the beans made things too cold, simmer. Stir. Sprinkle with nutritional yeast. Eat with crusty bread and a salad. Drink dark red wine and listen to soulful violin music if you're so inclined. I'm more of a Nick Cave and whiskey girl myself, but you get the idea.

That's the homey version. If you want to fancy it up for company, roast the veg in olive oil, the spices and balsamic first, then move the whole mess to the stove, deglaze with water and a touch of wine. Add the other stuff then bubble, bubble, toil and trouble for a few minutes. Squeeze in some lemon juice, garnish with parsley and toasted pine nuts and make the bread into garlic bread (because if your guests don't like garlic, they're screwed anyways, so you might as well just go with it). The homey and fancy versions are both damn good, but the homey one is ... homey-er, and less work, and way less futzy.

Use the leftovers for pasta sauce tomorrow.

Now kiddies, go eat a little something healthy before I hit you with several chocolate posts in rapid succession.

Music in afog: Cowboy Junkies, played real quiet.

Yuba yum

According to medici, this is the best yuba I've made yet. Oooookay. To make the best yuba yet: soak yuba and discard water. Use a pan you can put in the oven. Simmer the yuba in soy sauce and white wine. Fish out the done yuba (there should still be some liquid left), and throw in grated ginger, garlic, a tiny bit of sugar and mustard greens. Cook the greens down, and add enoki mushrooms. Pile the cooked yuba on top, sprinkle with truffle oil and sesame seeds and pop the whole mess under the broiler. When it crisps up, eat it on black sticky rice. Drink the white wine along with dinner. Chase with salted chocolate. How very decadent. Medici is groaning with pleasure even as I type. Because of the food. Really.

If you set the rice soaking earlier, this really is fast to make, and dead easy. Any greens will work, as will any mushrooms (or combo of mushrooms). You can add tofu, or nearly any other vegetable that tastes good when cooked through. You can use sesame or olive oil instead of truffle (but I have truffle oil sitting there, and if I let it go rancid or fail to use it for yummy inventions, I will burn in culinary hell). Go easy on the soy sauce and heavy on the wine if you're not sure. You can always add salt later if you want. The sugar is key. You can't really taste it, but it makes the soy sauce taste, well, soy saucier. It's like when you add salt to cookies, but the opposite. See? Makes total sense.

Singing: "try a little priest" and many other choice tidbits from Sweeney Todd.

am vegan, will travel, will blog for peanuts (or peanut sauce).

I travel a fair amount. And when I travel, people invariably say "Gee, it must be hard to travel as a vegan." The last person who said this to me looked at me with pity as I danced gleefully in the rain atop a munro in the Scottish highlands during a lunch break. Yup, I'm sure my giggling, dancing chocolate-eating self was the very picture of hardship and deprivation. I handed out apples, nuts and chocolate to the two people who had come without a lunch. I made friends and had lots of fun. I've never had any problems traveling "as a vegan". It just takes some minimum amount of preparation. Like, really minimum, and then you can be happy and ungrumpy and show people how very easy vegan is. Here's what I do:

1. TAKE FOOD. I have a little red bag that is my "travel food" bag. In it are: individual instant miso soups with little packages of seaweed taped to them, a small pack of crispbreads (6), mixed nuts, dried fruit, roasted dried chickpeas, a small tin of vegan spread such as tartex and a small bar of ridiculously good chocolate. Sometimes some tofu jerky as well, depending on how long the trip is and how far from civilization I'm going to be. This is pretty much always packed, so I just grab it when I"m off on a trip. The key here is that even if there is nearly nothing for me to eat on the train/plane/research station, I can make at least 3 full meals for myself. Also, I can make a feast out of a plate of plain iceberg lettuce by adding nuts, and have something to spread on plain bread/baked potatoes/pasta. I take this when I go on work trips that last a few days where I may get somewhere late and then not have any time to do shopping while I'm there and where there isn't likely to be any real choice of restaurants (ie- I have to rely on cafeterias). Basically, I find that you can always get simple salads and plain starches, so I bring along stuff to dress these things up. If you are going on a plane, put this in your checked baggage so it doesn't get confiscated. Just bring a sandwich and apple or something on the actual plane.

2. TELL PEOPLE YOU ARE VEGAN WELL IN ADVANCE. Be very clear. I always send an email saying "By the way, I am vegan. This means that I don't eat any animal products such as meat, fish, eggs, dairy, or honey. Please let me know if you will be unable to accomodate this so that I can bring extra food along with me." Generally, people have been very good about arranging to go to restaurants with vegan options and/or providing vegan food for me at work. However, most omnis won't know what to feed you, and with the best of intentions, may just give you a salad. This is fine, but I find that I often don't get *enough* food, which is where the little red bag from 1. comes in handy.

Also, it helps to give concrete ideas of what you DO eat. If you have some idea of what is easily available where you're going, don't be shy about giving suggestions. For example, on a recent trip, I had the bright idea to point out that baked potatoes and beans were vegan, which saved me from a week of uninterrupted iceberg lettuce and nut salads. Working in Italy (where I usually have no time to shop during the work, and we eat at restos/cafeterias twice a day), I bring some food, but pointed out to my hosts that pasta and pizza crust are both vegan, which they didn't think of. They were stressed over finding a "special" restaurant for me, which is unneccesary. I was there to work, not for a free tour of veg*n restaurants (though there is the most adorable vegan bakery in Florence. OH YUM). I'd much rather they stressed out about lab space and such. People often confuse vegan with gluten-free, wheat-free, etc. diets. The more specific you can be with your suggestions, the more likely you are to get something other than iceberg lettuce. The less people have to worry about feeding you, the more you can get on with the point of your visit (unless you're on a food-based visit...).

3. SHOP WHEN YOU GET THERE. You need fresh vegetables. Stop at the first grocery store you see and buy stuff that doesn't need refrigerating: carrots, brocolli and apples are my staples. Also, most supermarkets (or even tiny markets here in the UK) sell bags of precut, prewashed mixed veg. You can keep these in your hotel room/dorm/backpack for several days and they'll be fine. Farmer's markets etc. are also fun if you can find them. Do not buy bananas. They squish.

4. BRING IMPLEMENTS. Bring a pocketknife, a spoon and a corkscrew. I find that a reusable container also comes in handy in case you want to make sandwiches or something. You will also impress people with your boyscout-like readyness.

5. SHARE. If you're going to a place where you're going to be eating with people, bring extra dessert (chocolate in my case). Don't go out into the world and give people the impression that vegans are all a bunch of deprived martyrs who have to pass on dessert while everybody else eats cake. Also, I find that if you're generous with others, they will be generous with you. If you're whiney and demanding, people won't particularly care about feeding you. If you're happy and generous, you may find that they end up doing all sorts of things that are suddenly "no trouble" to make your life easier.

6.OFFER TO COOK. If you're staying in someone's home, offer to make them dinner. Ask what they like, and make a vegan version of it.

7. SAY THANK YOU. This is the MOST IMPORTANT TRAVEL TIP. Whenever somebody makes sure that you have vegan food, thank them, no matter what the food was. This includes restaurant staff who have modified menu items for you, colleagues who have phoned ahead to restaurants, field station students who have left the cheese off the communal pasta dinner, or the organizer who brought you a pb&j sandwich from their home at the last minute when they realized that the cafeteria didn't have anything vegan. Even if it's iceberg lettuce.

Other minor things are: learn how to identify "eggs, dairy etc." in whatever language you need to. Learn how to explain what you will and will not eat. It is often more helpful to say "I don't eat any animal product...including...(insert list here)", than to say "I"m vegan". Most people don't konw what vegan means, or don't get it, in that they won't give you big chunks of meat, but often think "a little egg" is okay. Generally speaking, I prefer to shop in the produce aisle or go to the market for fresh veg and bread etc. than to eat out.

For dinner tonight, at home: roasted veg with peanut sauce. For the peanut sauce: Take 2 heaping tbs each of grated (ground, pureed, superfinely chopped...whatever) garlic and ginger. Fry up in a smidge of sesame oil and a larger-than smidge of peanut oil. Add about 2c water and 1/4c soy sauce, some sugar and chilis. Bring to a boil. Add 1/4c or more peanut butter (I use crunchy natural...no ingredients other than roasted peanuts). Simmer until thick. Turn off the heat and add lime juice (from 1 lime) and a drizzle of sesame oil. Taste and adjust salt/sugar/chilis. Smother veg. Top with toasted crushed sesame seeds. So easy to make. Eat. We had this on roasted spuds, carrots, kale, celery and tofu.