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

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.

sprouts and mangoes and kale, oh my!

As promised... here's a fast sprout salad, ready to come to work with me. It's hardly a recipe at all, but it is one of my favorite way to eat sprouted chickpeas. Any orange fruit (or even grated carrots, or apples if you want) can stand in for the mango. The idea is to get something that's sweet in there to offset all the other crunchy, slightly bitter ingredients.

Kale and sprouts, blanched and cooled (you can blanch it the night before and put it in the fridge, or just run it under cold water if you're making this in the morning. 1 small mango, chopped and half an endive (uh, I just had half an endive lying around and it had to be used), I scallion, also chopped. Lime juice, roasted and ground cumin, sweet chili sauce, salt.

note: you don't have to blanch the sprouts and kale, but I sometimes prefer them this way. Sometimes not.

Must get to work on time music: Manic Monday, by the Bangles. Yes. I listen to the Bangles. I keep hoping someone will remake/remix walk like an egyptian (keeping the lovely grindy chords).

sprouts

I has a green thumb.

Look!!!! GREEN CHICKPEAS! How extremely super-exciting! I found them (dried) while I was out on an epic search for black beluga lentils (which is a long and somewhat boring story, which I will spare you).

Now I will tell you the top secret method of "How to sprout things without having a sprouter", because sprouters are stupid devices that stand as a testament to people's ability to sell (and willingness to buy) useless crap. Remember when you were 7 and you grew a bean at school, probably starting it off between layers of moist paper towel? Well? See? You know how to sprout. This is merely revision, in case you can't read your notes from grade 2, or have misplaced them sometime in the past few decades:

1) Find some beautiful dried legumes that you want to sprout. Buy them. Find a nice big bowl. Deposit legumes into bowl. The dried legumes should only cover the bottom of the bowl (when they double in size, they shouldn't take up more than 1/4 of volume of the bowl). This is because you will need some air circulation or things will get gross. A large plastic flat bottomed bowl is best.
2) rinse them, and soak them for 24 hours (big legumes, like chickpeas) or overnight (small legumes, like lentils). If you're unsure of how long to soak, because your legumes are annoying intermediate-sized but so adorable-looking that you just love them to bits (aduki beans), arbitrarily assign them to the "large" category.
3) after the soaking period is up, drain the water.
4) rinse the legumes thoroughly a few times with cool water and drain completely. cover the bowl with a clean cloth and put it somewhere dark. I just wrap my bowl in a dark tea towel and leave it near the couch in the kitchen. You may not want to follow this example of a "good place to sprout things" if you have pets or children or are prone to kicking things over. The important thing is that it be dark and cool.
5) repeat step 4 every 24 hours for 2-5 days, depending on the size of your legume and the temperature of your sprouting environment. You don't have to change the cloth unless it gets wet or dirty. When the tails are more than twice as long (go for thrice as long) as the legume (see photo), they're done (you can pop one in your mouth and check). Give 'em one last rinse and refrigerate in a loosely covered container. Eat them however you want. Feel smug that you just made a whack of sprouts for about 1/100th of the cost of buying them already sprouted, PLUS you got to watch them sprout, which is very grade-2-science-project-satisfying, and fun, and very, very cool. Trust me, in 2009, all the cool kids will be sprouting green chickpeas. Start now so that you can say you were doing it before it was trendy.

Note: if your sprouted legumes smell or look funny DON'T EAT THEM. I've never had legumes go "off" while I was sprouting them, but it's probably not impossible.

Now, go get started. I'll post a sprouted chickpea recipe soon.

inspirational green music: It's not easy being green, sung (but not composed) by Kermit the frog.

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.

roasty toasty smoky parsnips

This was perfect for a dark rainy night...approaching the darkest of the year, in fact. I made chipotle parsnips using the recipe for carrot oven fries from Tofu for Two, doubling the chipotle and adding a squeeze of lime at the end. I topped that with blended firm silken tofu with lemon, salt, a bit of agave, espazote, nutritional yeast. The rice is brown basmati rice cooked with puy lentils and dark tvp (about 1.5 c rice, 1/2 c lentils and 1/2 c tvp...just throw it all in the pot together with some water) and then 2 chopped caramelized onions + toasted cumin seeds + salt mixed in at the end. The salad is mixed bitter greens + pears + a dressing of miso mustard, maple syrup, vinegar, salt and pepper. I love this salad dressing. I make it all the time. It takes about ten seconds, and tastes like heaven. Before I discovered miso mustard, I just used whatever mustard I had around, usually just plain non-dijon (because the greens are bitter enough without the added heat of the dijon, though go for it on a milder salad). The dinner was a wonderful blend of spicy, sweet, salty, vinagery and starchy. There are lots and lots of leftovers, which is good, because we need lunches for work, and lentil rice is wonderful cold. Just add some chopped raw bell peppers or carrots or whatever other veg you have lying around, and a squeeze of lemon (maybe some chopped cilantro or parsely if you have it on hand...I don't, and I'm not going out in the rain to get it) and it's magically lentil salad.

I filed this under quickie even though it takes a while to cook, because really, you don't actually have to do anything while the parsnips bake and the rice cooks. Read a book. Have a wee dram of whiskey. Listen to music.

cold nights, warm soup

We spent day outside in the uncharacteristically sunny (but very cold) weather...until the sun set around 4. Then we came home and had this warming mushroom soup. I had some black eyed beans soaking, so I put them on to boil with two finely chopped onions and some bay leaves. When they were just about ready, I threw in a few cloves chopped garlic, some marmite, some white wine, sage and thyme and a whack of dried wild mushrooms, along with a bunch of leftover cooked brown rice. Then, just before serving it, I added a dash of tamari and a few drops of truffle oil. That's it. We ate it with salad (mustard greens, cabbage, fennel, pear in maple syrup/mustard/wine vinegar and pepper). This is really easy. You can use pretty much any combo of white bean and cooked grain you have lying around (wheat berries or barley are yum too). The only thing that you really *need* are dried mushrooms, or if you're lucky, a whole lot of fresh wild mushrooms. You don't actually need truffle oil, but if you're lucky enough to have some, use it for crying out loud. There is a special place in culinary hell for those who let truffle oil go rancid because they're continually "saving it for something special". What the hell are you waiting for? Oh, and go easy on the marmite/tamari, you don't want it to ovewhelm the other tastes...you can always add more at the end of cooking, along with some black pepper if your mushrooms aren't *ahem* very good. If you have some fresh parsely lying around, I'd strongly suggest stiring a good handful of chopped parsley in at the end, but I didn't have any and it was just delish anyways, thank you very much.

warm, comforting music: jazz lounge

Also, from a few days ago when I was far too stressed to post (or make anything requiring more than about 10 minutes of cooking), a superquick dinner. You see, I have a pumpkin problem. I love pumpkin. LOVE IT. And I accidentally bought one that was too big. I couldn't stop myself. It was just so... orange. So I baked it up (along with a few potatoes and some onions, cuz it never hurts to have those around) on the weekend and put in in the fridge and ate pumpkin stuff all week, which turned out to be a great thing, since I hardly had time to eat this week, let alone cook, I was so damn busy. This is from the last day of pumpkin. This is buckwheat crepes (buckwheat flour, ground flaxseeds, soured soy milk, water, salt) filled with mashed pumpkin, baked onion, nutmeg, pepper and nooch. Side of greens with *lots* of garlic and lemon.

music: guten tag. wir sind helden.

just yummy

It's pretty rare that I post my lunch, but this one is two of my favorite lunch things. Potato salad: spuds and greens (though spuds and tomatoes also works), fresh coriander. Dressing: toasted and then ground cumin, salt, chilli, sugar, a whole lemon worth of lemon juice. The yum. Fun with okara: all in a food processor: 1.5 soy milk batches of okara, a small onion, a carrot, half a bell pepper, a few chives, a sheet of nori, two tbs or so of dry wakame, some capers, about a tbs of miso, a sprinkle of oregano, some lemon zest. When I have celery, I add a bit of celery too. Then when that was all blended, I added smoked paprika and some rice flour. The amount of rice flour depends on how wet the other ingredients are. Them made them into little patties and baked them. And I eat them with either ketchup or lime pickle, depending on how classy I'm feeling. I've heard these compared to crab cakes, and they are wicked good with sweet chili dipping sauce, but I've never had a crab cake, so I have no idea if they taste anything like them.

morning music: CBC radio 2.

simple

I got my veg box this week, and immediately got excited. There was a bag of mixed bitter greens, a huge daikon, and perfect carrots (and 5 avocados, but they're still ripening). The vegetables were so perfect, it would have been silly to do too much to them. And I've been having quite a few fancy dinners lately, so I was ready for a night of rice and vegetables. It was cold today, and I went running. Then I had a shower with this fabulous luxurious almond stuff that a friend sent me. It's one of those lovely nights in where everything is cozy and quiet. Here we have rice, seaweed and carrot salad (wakame, carrot, vinegar, soy sauce, agave) daikon in miso sauce (daikon simmered in the seaweed water then tossed with miso and white wine) and steamed mixed greens topped with soy sauce, crushed sesame seeds, vinegar and a few drops of sesame oil.

slow dancing to: marlene dietrich.

happy bogle day

Today is Bogle day. A friend of mine, who we will call the Mad Mathematician, decided to revive (or rather to vive) the Scottish "tradition" of a Bogle party. The nice thing about making up a tradition is that you get to do it however you want. So, a Bogle Day party goes thusly: The host makes Bogle cakes (which we decided should, traditionally be vegan) and provides gin, tonic and whiskey. The guests bring savoury Bogle-themed dishes. Plus, everyone is accompanied by their own personal Bogle for the evening. I thought that for my Bogle dish, I'd make something spud based, in celebration of (or to appease) Tatie Bogles, who hide in potato fields, which is good, because I don't think Bogles are the kind of thing I'd like to run into in a dark alley or a city park or a bike path. Also, since Edinburgh is on the coast, I thought seaweed would be nice, plus spuds and seaweed are a wonderful combination. Below is traditional Bogle day salad, when tradition gets to be defined by a Canadian vegan food-lover who misses the Japanese restaurants in New York and lives in Scotland. Bogle salad: spuds, onions and carrots simmered in water, soy sauce and sugar, cooled and mixed with wakame and some other random kelp and a few edamame (because the discovery of an asian grocery store today led to edamame. yay!). My Bogle was Animal, who has been my own personal scarecrow since I was a kid, plus there were Bogle puppets in Canada when I was in school. I didn't have one, but trust me, Animal is much, much cooler. Here, Animal is exasperated with my singing along Bogle bop music and/or just generally being un petit garcon niaiseux at the world today.

Boggle bop: Rum, Sodomy and the Lash