Thank you for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever. And quinoa.

With the exception of those whose job it is to be as ungenerous as possible (insurance companies), everyone has been so incredibly generous with me following my flat smokyness. Which has reminded me that I'm fine, and that things are just things, and that I'm in a pretty good situation (I have a job, I have a place to move into soon, I have somewhere to stay in the meantime, and I have lots of looooooooove).

However, the one thing that has kept me from turning into a ranting, raving bitch is my yoga practice. I've been getting on the mat most mornings and whispering "Thank you for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever", which is some not-random mantra that I read years ago in some hippie-woo-woo book that one of my flatmates had left lying around. And you know what? It works. Of course I'm frustrated over the beaurocrats and the unfairness of some idiots setting fire to a flat. But saying this every day keeps me focused on what I do have, which, let's be honest, is more than most people on the planet, even now. And when you can have so much of your material possesions wrecked and be depending on others to put you up and still have more than most of humanity, you're in a pretty good position. So, just to reiterate: Thank you for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever.

Complaint-free quinoa and roasted cauliflower:

1 cup quinoa. Cook that. You know what to do.

While it's cooking, roast 1/2 large cauliflower, separated into chunks that have been tossed with olive oil and cumin seeds.

When the quinoa is cooked, stir in some chopped kalamata olives and some raisins, and douse it with lemon juice and salt, and crumble in some smoked tofu.

Just before the cauliflower is done, toss it with some chopped kale and pop it back in the oven for a few minutes.

When the kale is bright green and happy, mix the roasted veg with the quinoa. Yum.

dancing along to: random conversation with friends.

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?

Pretty please, with a cherry on top.

I like it when fruit attacks my dinner. Also, I bought a cherry pitter on a recent trip to Cambridge. I kid you not. There was a cafe. The coffee was excellent. And for some completely unfathomable and wonderful reason, they had little cherry pitters for sale. While killing time waiting for my train to London, I had one coffee and bought one cherry pitter and was very pleased with life in general (though that could have also had a lot to do with the fun science and bright sunshine and the fact that I was headed to a roller derby game in London).

Cumin-basil socca-like-thing (chickpea flour, flax meal, salt, toasted cumin seeds, dried basil, water). I like to preheat my cast iron pan in the oven, then take it out, melt a tiny bit of coconut oil in it, and then pour the batter in and put it back in the oven. It makes a lovely crust on the bottom. I call this a socca-like-thing because it's not nearly as fried as actual socca. It's more like the love child of socca and chickpea pizza crust.

The socca is simply topped with rainbow chard wilted in white wine, then liberally sprinkled with cracked black pepper and then festooned with pitted cherries. The sauce is reduced balsamic vinegar into which I've melted some unsweetened chocolate.

So easy. So good. And... first cherries of the year!

Dancing along to: Ray Spoon. Fun and yum, just like this dinner.

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.

land and sea rolly buns

Perfect for breakfast (or dinner). They go well with slices of apple and slices of almond cheese. Actually, I think they go well with pretty much anything, but that's because they contain two of my favorite things: seaweed and spinach.

1 and 1/2 c buckwheat flour
3/4 c brown rice flour
1/2 c soy flour
2 tbs ground flax seeds
1 tsp xantham gum
pinch salt
1 tbs quick yeast

Mix all this together, then add warm water to make a wet dough. Let it rise for about an hour or two. It won't rise very dramatically, but it *will* rise.

Rinse and chop up 1 c sea lettuce (or use dried)
wilt and squeeze the water out of and chop lots o spinach (enough that you have just over 1/2 when you're done) - or use 1/2 cup frozen

Paste made from 1 tbs ume paste + 1 tbs rice syrup (or agave) + a squeeze of lemon juice (fine, about a tsp, more or less to taste). If you don't have ume paste, try substituting miso. This will taste totally different, but the key is that you need some sort of strong fermenty taste.

Mix the sea lettuce into the dough. Dust a surface liberally with buckwheat flour. Dump dough onto surface. Knead a bit. It will absorb the flour. Worry not! When the dough stops being sticky, stop kneading. Re-dust (liberally) the surface with flour, then dust the top of the dough with flour, then roll it out into a rectangle. Spread your ume syrup over this. Spread the spinach on top of all that. Roll up and cut into four or six buns. Let rise overnight.

Preheat oven to 220C with a metal cup of water in. Drop the oven dial down to 200, and put the buns in. Bake at 200C for 25 mins. Brush with a thinned out version of the ume syrup (1 tsp ume, 1 tbs agave, few drops of lemon, 1 tbs water) when they come out of the oven, and if you're feeling really fancy, a wee bit of coarse sea salt.

land and sea music: all you can eat by kd lang

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

raw pakorafy me, baby!

Okay, these are sooo not pakoras. They are loosely inspired by pakoras, and even then, "loosely" might be too restrictive a term for what I've done. Basically, I wanted something to serve as a vehicle for some awesome chipotle tamarind-date chutney I have on hand. Also, I had to use up some sprouted buckwheat, and I've been having this methi craving... you can see where this is going. Like many of my "recipes", the end dish was the product not of a plan, but of a series of unconnected thoughts that I just happened to have while making dinner. Serendipitous dinner creation is a wonderful thing. Option 1 (which I have been known to do): mix chutney into sprouted buckwheat or cold rice or any other vaguely starchy thing that the chutney will adhere to and then eat it on salad. Option 2 is slighly more elegant, and much prettier than it looks here. Sometimes you only bother with one photo before devouring the food. It is, after all, a food blog, not a photo blog.

3-4 c. sprouted buckwheat, half of it blended to a paste
1 tbs toasted cumin seeds
a few toasted fenugreek seeds, squished roughly
1 tbs toasted coriander seeds, squished roughly
1 tsp garam masala
1/3 cup methi leaves, crumbled (I used dried ones)
1 large carrot, finely grated
1 handful of dulse, torn into tiny pieces
as much jalapeno as you want, chopped fine
1/2 tsp garlic paste (1 small clove)
1 tsp ginger paste
squeeze lemon juice
large-ish pinch smoked salt

Mix everything together. At this stage, you can just use it as a highly addictive pate and scoop it up with red pepper chunks (and then drizzle them with tamarind chutney). To make something a little more stand-alone, you'll need to add something to make it a bit less wet and then form it into patties. You can use ground dried coconut or chickpea flour or oat flour. I used chickpea flour, since I don't particularly care if something is 100% raw, but I do care that it's not full of fat. I added about 1/3 of a cup. Make your own choices on this one. I imagine if one owned a dehydrator, one could then dehydrate them for a billion hours. I don't, so I didn't. Also, that would have meant waiting, which frankly, I was simply not willing to do. I just decorated them with the chutney that caused all this in the first place and ate them. With a giant salad, because I'm that kind of vegan. Yuuuuuuuuum.

As a note, one of the things that keeps me from eating more raw food is that I like to eat without adding fat (or relying on large amounts of high-fat food like nuts, avocados or coconuts), and I do love my starches. Everyone has their own take on nutrition etc. nowadays, but the thing that works for me is to do a no-added-fat vegan, starch-based diet with lots of fresh fruit and veg. Doing this, I run, bike, do mad science, goof off, read, have a personal life, get up far too early because I hate missing out on life, and am generally happy and healthy and full enough of energy to annoy those around me in the early mornings. That being said, I like the lightness of eating a high proportion of raw foods, especially in the summer when I have to eat so much heavy food when I travel for work and so when I'm home... sprouted buckwheat! Yay! These are nice because they're starchy and filling and heavy without being full of fat. Also, can I just mention again that they're the perfect vehicle for tamarind-date chutney?

A little note: I wrote down the conservative amounts for the spices because my chutney was super-flavourful. If I was having these alone, or with coriander chutney, I'd probably up the coriander seeds, ginger and garlic.

serendipitous music based on... : in C, by whoever you want, dammit.

less is more

Fresh peas! With the first fresh peas of spring, it is best to do as little as possible. Why fuck with something that's already perfect?

Fresh raw pea soup

1 cup peas, shelled
1/3 cup Malborough sauvignon blanc. (yes, I insist. you need those capsicum notes)
1 handfull fresh mint leaves
1/2 tsp marmite
ground pink peppercorns
1 cup water

Put everything in a blender. Blend until frothy. Add more water if you need it. Eat.

I served this with a blood orange, fennel and sprouted buckwheat salad.

1 heaping cup (okay, proably more like 1.5 cups... we were hungry) sprouted buckwheat
1 head fennel, in ridiculously thin slices (use a mandoline)
1 blood orange, sectioned
large handful dandelion greens, picked on your bike ride, washed well and chopped
large handful chopped flat leaf parsley
a few mint leaves, in ribbons (optional)
a few kalamata olives, seeded and chopped
pomegranite seeds from half a pomegranite (because you need to snack on the rest of them, duh)
a few walnuts

dressed with
fennel seeds crushed and mixed with the juice from the blood orange, some lemon juice, some of the brine from the olives, salt and pepper

music: Good morning sunshine.

crunch!

I've been eating more raw food lately, and I loooove it. Granted, I've been a super salad fan for some time now, so I fail miserably at convincing people that vegans don't just eat salad. I mean, I don't eat *only* salad, but I do eat a lot of it. Because salad is yummy, and it makes me feel so good when I eat it, and it's crunchy and colourful! Now, I've said it before: if the only option is a sad iceberg lettuce, then the prospect of a giant salad is indeed rather underwhelming. But there's no reason it has to come to that, is there? Repeat after me: There is no excuse for boring salad. EVER. Also, I love saffron (just for the record). This vaguely middle-eastern and not-vaguely yummy. So satisfying. So tastey and simple. And yeah. Just.. yeah.

Bottom layer:
sprouted quinoa
chopped dates
chopped green olives
chopped rocket (arugula for those of you on the other side of the pond)

Salad layer:
chopped tomatoes
shredded purple cabbage
veeeeery thinly sliced carrots

the salad is marinated in
crushed fennel, saffron, a drop of lime oil, salt and pepper, all dissolved in apple cider vinegar.

music: mirah. yay!

beets, lentils, and homemade mustard.

...which is a lot for one little post, but they all go together. This lentil and beet dish is incredibly versatile. You can change the ratios to make it mostly beets, mostly lentils, mostly onions, or anything in between. You can also make it as simple or complex as you want by adding some or all of the extras.

For the lentil and beet salad:

3c cooked black beluga lentils

2 beets

1 large onion

1/2c dried mushrooms (nice strong ones, like porcini)

fresh dill, chopped (I used about 1/2c, but others are usually more, um, moderate with herbs. I don't see why.)

balsamic vinegar OR vincotto + a splash of lemon juice (I used my new favorite thing, which is vincotto with carob)

scant 1 tsp good carob powder

salt and pepper to taste

optional add-ins

any or all of: chopped walnuts or toasted hazelnuts or green olives or capers or chopped fresh parsley to taste.

Bake or caramelize the beets and onions. Rehydrate the mushrooms in as little hot water as possible. When the beets and onions are done, take them out of the oven to cool a bit, and simmer the mushrooms briefly in their own juice. Chop up the beets and onions. I like big slices. When the mushrooms are done, hopefully there will still be some liquid left. Combine everything, including the mushroom liquid. Add the optional add ins. Or don't. They are, after all, optional. Serve this salad warm (or cold) on chopped bitter greens and apples. Or just chopped bitter greens. Either way, you can schmancy it up if you toss the greens first with a mustard/agave/vinegar dressing (which is those three ingredients in a 1:1:1 ratio, using apple cider or red wine vinegar)

I like mustard, and it's insanely easy to make your own. Here, I used my homemade whiskey mustard. Yes, whiskey. Because what's the point of living in Scotland if you can't cook with whiskey? 

To make your own whiskey mustard: put mustard seeds of the colour(s) you want in a glass container and cover them with whiskey and leave it in the fridge for a day or two or three (the exact length of time will depend on whether or not you forget it's there). Then blend it to the smoothness you want, add apple cider vinegar until it's the right consistency (the consistency you want), and return it to the fridge for a week so that it can calm down a bit. Make sure you put a lid on it. There. Now you have mustard, made to your own taste. You can even add sugar (agave nectar) or salt or other flavours (tarragon is yummy, for example). Don't you feel smart?  

While your beets are baking and your mustard is mustarding, dance around wildly to whiskey-mustard music with a sweet side: The Pubcrawlers

it's not easy being green.

Green is the colour of spring. It's the colour of so many things.... and if green has a taste, this is it. I love foraging for edibles (though I actually didn't pick these myself). Wild garlic, nettles, berries, mushrooms... yum. And there's something extra yum about food that is a) free and b) seasonal and so precious. This soup is dead easy, so long as you don't touch the nettles. I used a cunning combination of chopsticks and scissors to remove them from their stems. If you lack chopsticking skills, I recommend gardening gloves.

Nettle soup.

1 onion or leek, chopped
1 large spud, cubed
3 cloves garlic, crushed
cover with either lightly salted water or broth, and boil until soft

when the spuds are cooked through, add
1 cup of parsley, chopped
2 cups of nettles, leaves only (don't chop them, just dump them directly from the colander into the soup, then wash off the colander immediately lest any of the diabolical little stinging hairs be left behind)
let this simmer for a few minutes

Blend! Blend! Blend! Reheat if you need to.

Off the heat, add
1/2 cup of okara or soy yogurt
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
juice from 1 lemon
2-3 tbs of white miso

Eat, preferably while listening to Kermit the frog sing "It's not easy being green"

vegan caviar (!). greens and ume salad

See? Not some insipid little plate of iceberg lettuce drowning in icky oily dressing. Here we have wilted red chard, pears, fennel, carrots and almonds. And for the dressing: ume paste, shoyu, elderflower vinegar, agave syrup, lemon juice. And yes, it's all heaped on a full-size dinner plate. Dark greens and ume may be my new favorite pair of edibles right now. Sometimes I have to post a salad because I love salad. Love it. It's super easy and fast to make and yummy and a riot of colours and flavours. Salad gets sooo undersold.

On a completely unrelated topic to which I shall provide no segueway whatsoever, I was up in the Orkneys looking at neolithic stuff just for the hell of it, and found VEGAN CAVIAR. Yes. I was so excited and curious upon discovering it that I accidentally started dancing in the fancy-pants grocery shop where we found it, much to the amusement of the woman working there, who didn't even know that they stocked Sea Relish, much less how much it was supposed to cost. She phoned the manager. The manager phoned the owner. Finally, a price was agreed on. It was all very amusing. Having never ever tried nonvegan caviar, I have no idea if this tastes anything like it, but I can tell you that it's damn good and made of seaweed and we ate it on smoked seaweed-infested tofu and bread as we picnicked near the Ring of Brognar and it was awesome. Both the standing stones and the caviar. I bought some extra caviar to take home with me, and I must say, I feel an attack of blini making coming on.

parsnip plum pancake perfection

I had me some parsnips, but I wanted pancakes. Like, reeeeeally wanted pancakes. But the parsnips were getting kind of menacing. "Eat us now",  they were saying. "You've had pancakes for a few days in a row. Your vegbox will have more of us next week, and you have to keep up!" I've been on a okonomyiaki kick lately, since finding the perfect recipe for them in the Asian Vegan Kitchen cookbook (by the way, I can't say enough good things about this cookbook. It rocks.) Now, having figured out basically how to make *anything* in my veg box into scrumptious and highly addictive japanese/kitchendancing fusion pancake madness, I'm unstoppable. 

Unstoppable, yes. But I did pause when I realized that I had taken parsnips, leeks, some soaking shitake mushooms and umeboshi plum paste out of the fridge, plus the requisite greens, (because it's not dinner if it ain't got anything green).  Really? I thought. Is this a good idea? OH SWEET JEEBUS YES. This is heaven if you like foods where the flavours strongly contrast but still play nice together. The parsnips are sweet and earthy. The mushrooms pick up the earthy note and run with it,  the greens lighten up the dish a bit and the picked plum sour/salty/sharp just skips over the whole thing and somehow ties it together. It also keeps it from being too sweet to eat for dinner. I like sweet and savory together, but  at least for main dishes, I"m not a big fan of out-and-out sweet. Try this. You won't be sorry. By the way, you'll need 4 shitake mushrooms soaked in about a cup of water beforehand.

parnsnip rosti/okonomyiaki (makes 2 pan-size pancakes, or 4 smaller ones)

2 large grated parsnips (about 3c. grated parsnip)

1 smallish leek, chopped

1/3 c shittake mushroom stock (just the soaking water from the mushrooms)

2 heaping tbs chopped pickled ginger

1 heaping tablespoon white miso

dash shoyu

dash sake

salt

grind of black pepper

about 2/3c. ww flour mixed with 1 tbs baking powder

Mix all ingredients together. This should be a very thick batter, with the flour just barely present enough to hold the parsnip and leek together. This isn't a pancake batter that you can pour. It's more like rösti with a bit of adhesive. Adjust the liquid/flour if you have to.  Fire up a pan (if you have a nonstick, now is the time to use it), spray with oil, and spread/press one pancake of batter into it, smothing it out with the back of a spoon. Cook covered until the bottom is browned, then flip, and cook covered again until the other side is brown. Repeat for pancake number two.

ume-mushroom-spinach sauce

4 rehydrated shitake mushrooms

1/2 cup cooked spinach, chopped  (I just used frozen)

2/3 cup shitake stock (ie, the rest of the stock)

dash shoyu

1 heaping tbs umeboshi plum paste

Simmer the mushooms in the stock and shoyu. Let it simmer down until there isn't much liquid left.  About 2 mins before you want to serve the pancakes, add the cooked spinach into the mushrooms and stir to combine and heat  the spinach. When you're ready to serve, stir in the plum paste. 

Oddly enough, this is really good with a few spicy dill pickes on the side. 

plum-a-riffic music: My favorite plum by Suzanne Vega.

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.  

Ceci n'est pas un dessert.

Sometimes you just have to do this sort of thing. At least I do. This is a really involved dinner, but totally worth it to see people's faces when you serve them chocolate cake and ice cream for dinner (first photo). And dessert (second photo).




For the most confusing and fun effect, make the dessert cake first, then while it's cooling make the dinner cake in the same cake pan, so the two look nearly identical. Use the same colour ice creams and sauces for each. Both go well with sprinklings of cocoa nibs. Both of these are pretty heavy, so go easy on the serving sizes. The dinner below will comfortably serve 6-8 with a salad, and (light) starter.


Savory Chocolate Dinner Cake

Note that because a few of the ingredients need to be soaked, or blended and reduced, you're going to have to use some judgement with the liquid to dry ingredient ratio. I recorded the volumes I used, but you might have waterier tomatoes or meltier chocolate or whatever, so do go with your gut at the end and adjust. If you've never made cornbread before, and have no idea what the consistency of quickbread batter should be, this recipe probably isn't the best place to start. I love you all, but this is an unashamedly "advanced cooking" recipe.


Liquid goo:
1 large mango chopped
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
(blend and simmer until reduced to a paste)

Mole fixins:
(note that this is a fairly modified/simplified mole recipe, that would not be suitable for use on it's own. it works well in this cake though. if you want to make stupendous mole that can be enjoyed as a real sauce, suck it up and do it properly. The cocoa is added in addition to the nibs so that your cake looks like chocolate cake. If you don't care about that, just double the cocoa nibs and leave the cocoa out.)
1/2 c raisins, soaked in enough water to cover (keep and use water)
1 tbs crushed peanuts
1tbs sesame seeds or pepita
1-2 large ancho chiles, soaked and seeded (discard soaking water)
1 chipotle chile in adobo sauce (optional, seeded if you want)
2 heaping tbs cocoa nibs (or some unsweetened chocolate)
1-3 heaping tsp cocoa powder (depends on how much chocolate you used, and personal taste)
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground aniseed
1/2 tsp cinnamon

puree all of this in a blender with half of the liquid goo.

you may need to supplement with 1/2 cup water or veg broth. At this stage, you should have something the consistency of slightly-too-thin chocolate pudding.

mix dry ingredients and then add them to the mole + liquid goo:
2c maize meal
1 tbs baking powder
dash salt

You should now have something the wetness of cornbread batter (or other quickbread, if you've never made cornbread. You might need to add more liquid or more maizemeal. However, this will be considerably heavier than normal cornbread. This extra heavyness is why you need the vinegar.

stir in
1 large onion, baked and chopped finely (bake it while you're baking your dessert cake)
1 large bunch spinach, steamed and chopped finely, water squeezed out
1 tbs balsamic vinegar

Bake in an oiled and cornfloured cake tin at 180C for 30-40 mins.

Ice with black bean hummous (cooked black beans with the rest of the liquid goo, pepita butter or tahini, garlic, some annatto, a squeeze of lime, and some salt)

serve warm with vegan sour cream ice cream, roasted red pepper and cilantro puree.


Sour Cream Ice Cream

1 batch of your favorite vegan sour cream (about 1 block silken tofu worth)
1 cup soy yogurt
1 tbs sweet white miso
lime zest
dash salt
1/4 tsp guar or xanthan gum.
additonal lime juice to taste

Mix everything together in a blender or with a hand mixer and freeze, stirring every hour or so for 4-5 hours, or use an ice cream maker if you have one.


Chocolate Whiskey Dessert Cake

A.
1 and 1/4 cup okara or soy yogurt
1/2 cup chopped chocolate
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2-1 cup of sugar, depending on the sweetness of your chocolate
3/4 cup whiskey
orange zest

B.
1 - 1.5 cups flour (this will depend on if you used soy yogurt or okara, and how watery it was to start with)
1 tbs baking powder
dash salt

1 tbs apple cider vinegar

Mix list A. Mix list B. Add B to A. Mix well. Stir in the vinegar just before pouring into cake pan.

bake in an oiled and floured cake pan at 180C for 30 mins. Let cool . Serve with vegan citrusy ice cream and raspberry, lemon and mint puree. The lemon is key, as it really brings out the whiskey flavour. This cake is ridiculously rich and doesn't actually need icing, but if you must, just use a simple ganache.


This dinner has enough steps that I thought I'd actually give a timeline for it.
fimeline:
-night before: put black beans to soak.
-early in the day: start the ice creams, put raisins and chillies to soak, cook black beans
-about 3 hours before dinner: start liquid goo reducing, then prep the dessert cake
-While the dessert cake (and onion) is baking, roast red peppers, make the sauces (pureed roasted red peppers with chopped cilantro, pureed raspberries with lemon and chopped mint)
-Rescue dessert cake, remove from tin, leave to cool
-Prepare mole, then dinner cake. You may want to begin drinking at this point. If you want to serve some veg with dinner, I recommend a raw jerusalem artichoke salad (grated jerusalem artichokes and carrots, chopped olives and capers, lemon juice, salt). Something crispy and light.
-While dinner cake is in the oven, make black bean hummous.

Note: you want to serve the dinner cake warm, so put it in the oven as your guests arrive.

Double-take music: One. By U2, then by Johnny Cash.

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.

I *heart* salad.

Eat your vegetables, and you'll grow up big and strong and be recruited for such prestigious secret international organizations as SSOV, like me.

Salads are so misunderstood. I blame the limp lettuce leaves and cardboard-tasting hothouse tomatoes swimming in tasteless oil that pass for "salad" in most people's lives. It's tragic, really. Here are some downright untragic ideas that are simple and yummy and probably just the ticket after you've finished off the last of the decadent holiday leftovers. Ideally, salads should be fresh, flavourful, exciting, crunchy goodness. Make them nice and big...they can constitute the main dish of a meal... just add soup or some bread and hummous or peanut butter or whatever and you have a lovely lovely dinner, after which you'll feel good. The key is to go to the grocery store or farmer's market, see what looks good and THEN decide what to make. Do as little as possible to the nicest in-season produce, and it will be delicious. Another key is to go easy on the dressing. If you actually need to smother your salad in dressing in order to make it yummy, you've bought bad produce. Don't do that. Keep in mind that in-season produce is usually the cheapest, and it's often worth (both taste and money wise) to go with what's in season rather than making that simple tomato salad in mid-January. Savour the tomatoes in the summer when they taste like heaven. Right now, enjoy citrus, cabbage, beets... mmmmmmmmm.....

The salads:

Fennel, sliced really thin, with sections of grapefruit. Add salt, pepper, a mild vinegar (I used bramble, but apple cider would also work) and depending on the tartness of your grapefruit, a little bit of maple syrup or agave nectar.

Mixed greens (substantial ones...rocket/arugula, radicchio, dark green lettuce, spinach or finely chopped kale) with as many fresh herbs as you can muster (any or all off basil, mint, oregano, parsley, coriander). Cherry tomatoes if you can find them, roasted red peppers if you can't (ie- if it's winter) Dress with your best vinegar and some really good olive oil, easy on the oil, okay? For an oil-free option, dress with vinegar, pomegranite molasses, garlic, salt and pepper. I prefer the oil-free version.

Chopped cabbage and lettuce with thinly sliced apples or pears, grated or thinly sliced carrots, grilled fennel (optional) and pomegranite seeds or grapes or even raisins. If you want to make a full meal of this, add some cooked or baked chickpeas. Dressing: a decent dollop of mustard (dijon is fun here, but keep in mind it will be clear-your-sinuses hot), maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, pepper.

Grated beets (baked if you want, raw if you want), cooked puy lentils, chopped walnuts. Dress with balsamic vinegar, lots of black pepper and a tiny bit of grated garlic, and some fresh dill if you can get it. If the beets aren't very sweet, you may want to add some maple syrup, but taste it first, because beets can be surprisingly sweet. If you have truffle oil, feel free to mix a few drops in. Alternately, drizzle some tahini on top. Or add some chopped capers. This is especially good with a few olives on the side. It also makes a kickass stuffing for baked onions or big mushrooms.

Raw kale (rub with salt, rinse, chop) or cooked chopped kale, finely chopped raw onions, a little bit of chopped garlic and/or ginger, cilantro, underripe chopped mango or any other sweet orange fruit that you fancy (I've used persimmons, oranges, guava...whatever/ Basically kale with mango salsa. This is a great way to use the mangoes that are taunting all of us from the shelves right now, if you want to pretend like it's summer....Just add some dry-roasted cumin and salt (if you've cooked rather than salted the kale). In the summer, add chopped tomatoes as well. This is lovely with grilled tofu, by the way.

Finally, something really light. Cucumbers, a whack of chopped fresh mint, lemon juice and either strawberries (in the summer) or ridiculously thin slices of asian pear (in the winter). You can also blend everything together and add vodka or gin for a slightly less healthy approach to this one. Be sure to seed the cucumber first if you do that. I highly recommend using Hendriks and just a tiny dash of rosewater if you go for the gin slush. The slush version can also take advantage of frozen strawberries, even in the dead of winter.

Music for chop-chop-chopping away to: The Gorey End, by the Kronos Quartet and the Tiger Lillies.

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)