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?

world's easiest slooooow and lazy tomato soup

Well, except for the part where you have to wait all year for in-season tomatoes.

6 cups chopped, in-season tomatoes
2 star anise
1 scant tsp of flaked smoked salt, or 1/2 tsp finely-ground salt
1/2 -1 tsp vanilla sugar (normal sugar that you keep a vanilla bean in, NOT the horrible vanilla-flavoured powdered sugar that you can buy) be stingy at first, you can always add more later, but if you oversugar, this will be yucky.
Optional: 1/2 cup dried mushrooms, ripped into small bits.

Combine all this in the morning in a bowl. Let it sit all day. Hell, let it sit 24 hours if you have the time. If you live somewhere hot, let it sit in the fridge. If you live somewhere cool, leave it out. If you use the optional mushrooms, they'll absorb some of the juices.

At dinnertime,remove and discard the anise. Take out half the tomatoes and puree them. Combine blended and non-blended tomatoes. Heat gently if you want to, and then add 1-2 tbs fresh thyme, and a grind of black pepper. Adjust salt to taste.
Optional: add 1c cooked quinoa or millet or other small non-disintegraty grain and a squeeze of lemon juice and garnish with avocado for a more substantial meal.

Serve hot or cold. When tomatoes are in season, I prefer this without the mushrooms, and cold.

slow and lazy music: hymns of the 49th parallel, kd lang

chickpea ravioli and tomato soup

It's raining and I'm feeling all quiet and chill and have time to actually spend on food prep tonight, which is a bit of an anomaly lately. So I indulged.

I've been having way too much fun playing with raw food recipes lately. Here is my latest creation, using what I had around from the veg box. I always think of this kind of thing as "kitchen-ninja" cooking. I mean, my kitchen is very well stocked, but I do make a point to use *everything* in the veg box every week, which leads to some interesting concoctions from time to time. I like this sort of food adventure. Now, let me just start by proclaiming my love of kohlrabi. It's crunchy and delicious and looks vaguely alien, all of which appeal to me. I didn't properly appreciate it until living in Germany for two years... now I squeal with glee when it appears in my veg box, or when I see it at the farmer's market. However, I also have some sprouted chickpeas, and for some reason, I couldn't shake the urge to make them into ravioli filling. Below is what happened

Kohrabi ravioli, raw kitchen-ninja style.

1 smallish kohlrabi, peeled and sliced supa-thin (I used a mandoline)

marinate the slices in juice from 1 lemon and about 1/3 tsp salt while you do everything else.

filling:
2.5 cups sprouted chickpeas (or use cooked ones if you'd rather)
2 tbs sweet white miso
1 tsp ume paste
2 tbs nutritional yeast
1 tsp tahini
1 tbs very finely chopped preserved lemon
1-2 tbs chopped fresh rosemary
salt to taste

Put the chickpeas, miso, ume paste and nooch in a food processor or blender and blend! blend! blend! Add a bit of water if you want! Make it as smooth or chunky as you want. This is all about you and your smooth vs. chunky ravioli filling preferences. Just make sure the paste holds it's shape when you scoop it. Fold in lemon, rosemary, and black pepper. Taste, and then add salt or soy sauce. If you can wait a few minutes before salting, that's even better, as the miso, ume paste and lemon are going to make this pretty salty. Undersalt slightly, as the kohlrabi is also salty.

I made lots of the filling, and also just use it as hummous (it's especially good on pears or with mushrooms), or fold in chopped onions, grated carrots and some kind of grain, and then make it into burgers.

Nibble at one of the kohlrabi slices. Is it ridiculously salty? If no, proceed. If yes, rinse. It's nice if you don't have to rinse, because the lemon tastes good.

Make little raviolis by sandwiching a spoonful of chickpea mixture between two kohlrabi discs. Serve by drizzling with diluted pomegranite molasses and a sprinkling of cocoa nibs. You'd be surprised how well chocolate and rosemary go together. (I diluted with apple vinegar, but those who are less into vinegar than me may want to dilute with apple juice or sauce, or even olive oil, if you are into adding olive oil to things).

I had this with a tomato soup, which I suspect is the bastard love child of harissa and bouillabaisse. And no, I didn't measure any of the spices, so you're left to your own devices in terms of amounts. Add a bit, blend, taste and adjust. Or just use a tsp of ras-el-hanout. The soup was ungodly yum. I wish I had measured the spices for y'all, but I have confidence in your ability to wing it.

5 smallish tomatoes
1 orange worth of juice
1 stalk celery
2 sun dried tomatoes
fennel seeds
aniseed
cinnamon
ground coriander
chili pepper
a tiny nub of fresh ginger
water to the consistency you want
salt to taste
handful sprouted (or cooked) wheatberries.

Blend! Blend! Blend! everything except the wheatberries together. You may need a pinch of agave, depending on the sweetness of your tomatoes and orange. Stir in wheatberries. Top with fresh basil and mint (or coriander, or parsley, but I seem to be out of both of those). You can also leave out the wheatberries and just serve this with bread or crackers. That might be classier. But we don't worry about "classy" here in the kitchendancing cave.

Music to chill out to: leonard cohen. the sisters of mercy.

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.

big bowl of hug

Yup. It's a giant bowl of umami. The culinary equivalent of a hug, if you will.

1/2 cup dry aduki beans
1 large piece konbu
4 dried shitake mushrooms
1 onion, chopped
4 tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup white wine
splash of mirin
1 heaping (and I *do* mean heaping. don't skimp) tbs chopped fresh ginger
1 cup butternut squash bits in cubes
1 leftover baked spud, chopped
1 tbs red miso
sesame seeds to sprinkle on top

Put the dry aduki beans in a pot. Add konbu and shitake mushrooms. Add about 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil. Now, go away and do about half an hour of yoga, or read a book, or whatever. Then, come back, top up the water, fish out the konbu and discard it. Fish out the shitake, chop them up, and throw them back in (discard the stems if they are too tough to eat). Go away for another 15 mins, or until the beans are soft. Add everything up to, but not including the spud. If you don't have leftover baked spuds lying around, add raw chopped one now. It will be almost as good. Almost. But not quite. Simmer until the squash is done. There should be just enough water to cover all the ingredients, but not much more than that. This is a pretty thick stew by the time it's all done. Add spud and miso and warm through. Adjust seasonings. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and eat. Feel better about the world.

Now, you could of course be all fancy and make dashi etc. etc. But I was not feeling fancy. And you know what? It worked out fine. Better than fine. Yummy enough to make again, just like this, all non-fancy like.

Umamusic: naive and simple music, by john adams.

Warm-me-up soup

It's rainy. It's dark. It's most definitely winter. And this soup, my friend, will warm you from your nose down to your toes! I just used the veg that I had lying around, and I imagine that almost any combination of root vegetables would work, along with almost any sturdy green. This isn't a fussy soup. Just throw everything thing in the pot and enjoy the wonderful smell in your kitchen as it simmers.

Warm-me-up soup

1 small red onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 medium turnip, peeled and chopped
about 2 cups of chopped cabbage (whatever kind you have around)
1 tbs fresh ginger, grated
3 cloves garlic, chopped
8 cherry tomatoes or 2 uncherry tomatoes, chopped
handful currants
1/2 cup dried sour apricots, chopped
1 scant tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp allspice
2 tbs cumin
1 bay leaf
as much chopped jalopeno as you want
about 6 cups of water or broth

2-3 tbs pomegranate molasses
salt to taste
at least 1 cup of fresh coriander, chopped
1/2 fresh pomegranate worth of pomegranate seeds

Combine everything up to and including the water in a large pot. Bring to a boil, and simmer until all the veg are done. Then add the pomegranate molassses and salt. Just before serving, stir in the coriander and fresh pomegranate seeds. If you have any greens lying around that need using, throw them in too. Serve with potato-mint quickbread (below) and olives.

Potato-mint quickbread

3 spuds, mashed and salted
1 heaping tsp dried mint
1 heaping tsp dried oregano
2 tbs lemon juice
1-2 cups of flour, depending on how wet your mashed spuds are
1 tsp baking soda

Mash the herbs and lemon juice into the spuds. Mix the baking soda with one cup of the flour, and mix that in. If more flour is needed, add it. The dough should be a little sticky, but you should be able to more or less form it into a round loaf. Place said round loaf in a greased and floured pid dish. Bake at 220C for 20 mins, and then 200C for another 10 mins. Let cool for at least 5 mins before liberating the loaf from the pie pan. Cut into wedges and serve.

An alternate way to warm up: "Gin" by the Kronos Quartet and the Tiger Lilies, on one of the bestest sing-along albums of all time: The Gorey End.

parsnip perfection

You know when after the first bite of something, you immediately think "I will have this every day from here on in, thank you very much. I don't need anything else." ? That was my reaction to this soup. So easy. So wonderful. Parsnips and smoked chilies were made for each other, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It looks like soup. You don't need a photo. Incidentally, that's also my reaction to La Confession. Once I heard it, I swore that it was all the music I needed. Yum.

1 yellow onion, chopped
2 large-ish parsnips, washed and chopped
1 small spud, chopped
lots and lots of fresh ginger (like 3 -4 tbs) chopped
4 whole cloves garlic
1 tbs marmite (I don't actually use marmite, I use some hippie health food store brand not made by kraft... any yeast extract spread will do here)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1-2 tbs cumin seeds, depending on how much you love cumin.
1-3 chipotle chilies, in adobo sauce
salt to taste
juice from one lime
1 cup parsley, chopped


Put everything up to and including the vinegar in a pot, add enough water to cover by an inch or three, and simmer until everything is tender. Meanwhile, dry-toast and grind up your cumin seeds. When the soup is done, remove from heat and add the cumin, chilies, salt and lime juice. If you are not of the heat-loving kind, use smoked paprika instead of the chilis. Puree. Add parsley and serve. Oh. Yum.

smoky music with a touch of heat: la confession, by lhasa de sela

Cleaning out the fridge soup

This soup is a great example of using stuff lying around... I had half a pumpkin left, and had cooked up a big batch of black beans a few days ago for hummous... and I've had a houseguest, so have made more almond and soy milk than usual, and had pulp from that taking up fridge space.. you know how it is. Because this soup just relies on baking everthing, it doesn't take much actual work. I was at home working, and this took about 15 minutes, total, of my time, though it baked for about an hour while I typed and swore. Feel free to apply this method (omitting the typing and swearing, if you wish) to what's in your fridge rather than focusing on what was in mine. The basic flavours (with what I used in parentheses) are:

something dark and smoky (black beans, smoked peppers)
something sweet and dense (pumpkin, baked onions)
something acidic (tomatoes, lemon juice)
something rich (nut butter, almond meal, hummous)
spices

What I did:

I put all this in a roasting pan:

1/2 squash with edible skin, cubed
1 onion, cut in chunks
5 whole cloves of garlic
12 small tomatoes, halved

I poured enough water to the baking dish to come halfway up the tomatoes, and popped it all in the oven, uncovered, at 220C for about an hour. Once it got going, I did the beans.

I had cooked black beans on hand. About 3 cups of them. I put them in a large pot, covered them with water, and added
3 tbs fresh grated ginger
2 tbs roasted cumin
2 tbs roasted coriander
some fresh thyme (because it was there, dammit)
1 tbs chunky peanut butter
some left over almond meal from making almond milk (1/2 cup or so)
some leftover hummous (about 1/4 cup)
salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
a healthy number of chopped chipotle peppers
lemon juice ( I'm out of lime, which would have been my first choice)

I simmered that until the pb dissolved, and then just turned it off and let it sit there until the roasted veg were done, then combined the two things. I almost threw in some cocoa as well, but oddly enough, I didn't feel chocolatey. This is rare, but it does happen from time to time. I'll probably add a few tablespoons of cocoa nibs to the leftovers when I take them for lunch.

We had this with baked corn tortillas, olives, salad, and ginger beer!

Just to get you on your improvisational way, here are some possible subs for the different taste categories. Don't use them all at once (except the spices. They all go together if you want. Use one, two or all of them), and not all combos will work, but play around a little... pick one or two things from each category and go for it! say 1) blackeyed beans, plantain, mangoes, lime and coconut, or 2) lentils, mushrooms, stout, parsnips, tomato paste and chocolate....:

something dark and smoky, including a legume (puy or beluga lentils, blackeyed beans, shiitake mushrooms, smoked paprika, porter, stout or rauchbier, dry-roasted spices in general)
something sweet and dense, when baked (carrots, parsnips, leeks, beets, apples, any winter squash, corn, red peppers, plantain)
something acidic (mangoes, tomato paste, unripe peaches, tamarind, lime juice, cider vinegar)
something rich (tahini, soy/oat cream, coconut or coconut milk, cocoa powder or grated chocolate, leftover hummous or tofu spread)
spices: cumin, coriander, oregano, black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cayenne, jalopenos, chipotle or other smoked chili, sweet chilies, garlic.

You could also add a whack of chopped cilantro or parsley to liven this up... but I didn't have any. Chopped kale or spinach would also be lovely, and add some green. The point of cleaning out the fridge soup is that you *don't* run out to the store for random ingredients. Use what you have on hand.

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"

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.

parsnip pirate soup

Okay, this has nothing to do with pirates, but I have a thing for pirates and alliteration. A friend left me some hand picked and dried sage, and it inspired this: Quick soup: chop up 1 small onion, 1 medium spud, 1 large or 2 medium parsnips. Add water to cover, and set on the stove to simmer. Add a clove or two of garlic. Simmer away! When everything is done, puree, return it to the pot and add a sprinkle of sage, a spoonful of nutritional yeast (the size of the spoon should correspond to your love or hate of nutritional yeast) a dash of liquid smoke (or some smoked paprika), and salt + black pepper to taste. Top with lots of chopped parsley. Drizzle with olive or truffle oil if you want to bring out the muskyness of the parsnips. Easy peasy good, and it doesn't take much time away from other pressing things (like piracy on the high seas, or population genetics). If you want to use this as a starter for a fancy dinner instead of for a quick lunch all in itself, roast the potatoes, parsnips and onion first, instead of boiling them, and then puree them with veg broth or even soy milk, adding the garlic at that point, then continue on adding spices.

beets!

I love beets. I love the way they taste, and I love how beautifully red-purple they make whatever you add them to. So, I give you: Beet-ish dahl-ish soup. About half a cup of red lentils, 3 grated beets, a chopped onion, 4 cloves of garlic, turmeric, a few little chopped up spuds. Boil that up. Then add a whack of grated ginger, some grated garlic, salt, black pepper and lemon juice.

This is easy to make so long as you can keep yourself from accidentally dying the entire kitchen bright purple. I set it a-simmering after my run, and it was pretty much done by the time I had finished showering and getting into my jammies. I wanted something just simple tonight. I've been in London for the week at a conference, and have been fed really oily, rich food. Note: there is such a thing as too many dishes that have been "drizzled with olive oil", no matter how good that olive oil is.

And now, a rant from Ms.Manners to all the omnivores out there who eat lunch (or dinner, or whatever) with a vegan: your snide comments are not clever, nor are they new. I've heard pretty much all of them before. Also, I don't want to hear about your friend/coworker/second cousin who used to be vegan but now isn't. And shockingly, I don't want you to explain in gory detail to me how you butcher your own chickens, or catch and kill fish, especially while I'm eating. Basically, me being vegan does not give you permission to be rude to me. Get that through your brain. If I sat down to lunch with you and launched into mocking your food, followed by a diatribe about how I know omnis who are malnourished (and I do) or who have such horrible eating habits that they are heading straight for a lifetime of diabetes (yup, I see some of my friends doing that as well), and pointed out how this was connected to *your* food, it would be unthinkably rude. It would also be rude of me to detail how slaughterhouses and dairys get that food to your plate. So please, do me the same favour as I'm doing you: Shut up and eat your lunch.

One more thing. Please don't tell me that this will all change *when* I get pregnant, since "my body will tell me it needs meat". That statement is beyond offensive on so many levels. One, you assume that just because I am in possession of a working uterus that I intend to have children. WRONG. Sexist and wrong(and even the assumption that i'm in possession of a working uterus is a bit presumptuous). Second, you assume that vegan pregnancy is impossible. WRONG. Uninformed and wrong. Third, you assume that people eating whatever they want means that they're eating what their body needs. Uh, probably WRONG given the obesity epidemic in most countries where people are rich enough to eat whatever they want. So, on that one, we'll give you blatant denial of available evidence ad wrong.

Sheesh people. Fucking be a bit considerate.

dancing off the anger to: Joan Jett, bad reputation.

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.

try a little priest...

Ahem. We interrupt Ducky's Modern Medieval to bring you: Halloween! My favorite holliday of the year. Why can't we do this every month? My costume this year had a culinary component. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street presents: PIES!

Filling: 2 onions, chopped. 1 cup or so of walnuts, also chopped. About a pound of mushrooms, also chopped (are you seeing a theme with the chopping here?) and tvp (it comes pre-chopped, sadly). Fry everything in your best olive oil except the tvp. Add sage, thyme, a bit of garlic and more black pepper than you really think is advisable. This thing depends on the pepper, so don't be shy. Add tvp and enough soup stock to cover, or water + a good tablespoon of marmite. Make pies. Dress up like Sweeney Todd. Sing. Eat.

If you replace the tvp with cooked puy lentils and then blend it all up, this makes a killer pate. Oh yes.

I used the pastry recipe from Tofu for Two, but I used water instead of soy milk. Usually I hate making pastry, but this was nearly painless.

music: uh... do I really have to tell you?

I also couldn't resist posting this turnip soup. It was fast and oh-so-autumnal and yummy

Onions, turnip, water, garlic, cumin, bay leaf, salt (cook these) and when the turnip is done add: lemon, saffron, chopped bok choy and heat through but don't make the bok choy mushy. Garnish with pomegranite seeds. That's it. Fast and simple.

No aplogies for the short and near-incoherent post. I'm doing NaNoWriMo and still have a job, so all of my grammar is going towards those at the moment. Deal with it. The soup is still the yum. What more do you want?

Pease porridge hot...

Comfort food at it's finest, as people have known for..oh... 5 or 600 years, at least.

Boil split peas, onions, basil, thyme, cinnamon, a smidge of dried ginger, some cloves, and a bay leaf in Rauchbier (smoked beer...which is an excellent way to sub that smoky richness that french canadian pea soup has. I find liquid smoke just doesn't measure up for this one. It's just too... thin... for lack of a better word). Salt. Nothing could be easier. Eat with irish soda bread (whole wheat spelt flour and oat flour at about a 3:1 ratio, baking soda, salt, soured soy milk...ie, soy milk with vinegar). We also had some baked cauliflour with this, both the flower and the big leaves. Just pop it in the oven with a little olive oil and salt while the bread bakes.

dance warmly to something much more modern: musique pour 3 femmes enceintes

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.

never say never

Now, usually I dislike celery. It is, in fact, the *only* vegetable that I'm not happy to see in my vegbox. And this week, there it was, staring at me. Taunting me even. Saying: So Iron Chef, whatcha gonna do now, eh? Also, I have fresh tarragon. Having never used tarragon, I had no idea what to do with that. For some reason, I was feeling too kewl to use teh Googles to figure out what to do with tarragon, and had this sort of "fuck you, celery" attitude going on. In a moment of rash Iron Chef macho-ness, I decided that I would not only *add* celery to the dish, but I would feature it. So I cranked up some very silly music and just went for it.

And... I may actually BUY celery to make this again.

Lemony celery soup: I started with about half a cup of soup stuff (bought as a mix of barley, lentils, legumes of various sorts) that I left soaking before leaving for work this morning. Then I added an onion, 3 giant cloves of garlic, some chopped ginger and a small (but serious) chili pepper and let that simmer while I chopped the celery (stalks only, about 1 small head) and a tomato, which got thrown in. Then I added a lot of toasted cumin and a tsp of marmite. Then, the chopped celery leaves (remember what I said about eating ALL the food?). When the celery appeared suitably disguised by the rest of the soup, I turned off the heat and added about 1/4 c. chopped fresh tarragon, some salt, and a whole lemon worth of juice. Yup. The tarragon manages to taste remarkably like anise here, and the whole soup is best described as what hot and sour soup would taste like if it were made in the middle east. For someone with a severe hangover. Anyways. It took one pot and about 20 minutes of cooking time if you remember to put the barley and legumes on to soak in the morning. Have some bread or a salad (or just a plate of olives, actually...this soup is pretty substantial), and you have a full dinner. See? Everyday food. (worry not, I shall post something fancy-schmancy soon enough) Oh yeah. And the reason I seem to be living on soups lately is because it is fall. I love fall. And for some reason in my head soup makes fall even more fallish.

singing along with the Arrogant Worms. If I still lived in my native Canada, I would want to be a pirate on the river Sas-kat-che-waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

An embarrassment of riches

In keeping with what I said on the last post, here is another simple weekday meal. If you have cooked beans on hand (and one should always have some cooked beans on hand), it's ready very quickly. All you have to do is throw stuff in the pot and simmer it. Thrown in first and simmered for about 10mins: about 2c big white beans (any beans will work, though I think white beans or chickpeas or favas are best here), 3 large tomatoes, 5 cloves garlic, ginger, salt, pepper, saffron. water to cover (I used the bean cooking water). Thrown in second: 1 can artichoke hearts, halved. Thrown in just before eating: some spinach that was left in the fridge. See? Easy peasy. You can eat this with crusty bread. We ate it with wheatberries, olives and fresh dates. Yum.

Now, I wasn't planning on putting spinach in this, but I have a policy of Eating All My Food. The western world throws out about a third (yes, between 30% and 40%) of all our food. Good food, not spoilt. Stuff we produce and maybe buy and then just chuck. Leftovers from restaurants. One of the wonderful things about cooking is that once you get comfy not sticking too closely to a recipe, you don't ever have to throw out edible food again. Throw odds and ends into soups, stews and curries. Robust stews are especially good ways to deal with veg that is past it's prime. Snack on that 1/3 of a bell pepper or random too-small-for-a-real-dinner amount of pasta left on the fridge shelf (it's better for you than potato chips anyways), and don't buy more than you can eat. When you eat out, bring a tupperware container if you're one of those people who can't finish restaurant portions (saving the food by putting it in a disposable styrofoam package is a little counterproductive, wouldn't you say?). Remember that food thrown into landfills doesn't "just decompose". Or at least not quickly, since we throw things out in hefty plastic bags, and the conditions in landfills promote preservation, not decomposition.

Yes. Those are my words of wisdom. If you finish your veggies, next post I will address the age-old question of "how to get other people to give you truffles".

waiting for a miracle with: leonard cohen.

just cook.

I very often hear people complain that they don't have the time or skills to cook. But everyone with an opposable thumb, passable hand-eye coordination and a few basic implements can cook. So I thought I'd take the time to write why I actually enjoy cooking, why I think it's worth the time, and what I do to make it something to look forward to rather than a chore.

First off, when I cooks, I cooks. I don't do a million other things at the same time. I may listen to music or a podcast, but I don't email, read, do work that I've taken home, fix the sink and change my bike tires while I cook dinner. I usually give cooking my full attention when I'm doing it. I don't rush (which means if i only have time to make pasta and chopped tomatoes, that's what I make, rather than trying to fit a dish with a 45 minute prep time into 10 minutes). Studies show that the more you take notice of an activity, the more you enjoy it. Cooking has lovely textures and smells and colours and tastes, and at the end of it, you have food! How satisfying is that? Cooking and eating are incredibly sensual things that offer so much pleasure if you just take a little time to actually notice them. You get to be creative, and with a little practice, you get to make things exactly the way you like them. Besides, what are you going to do with the half hour you would "save" by not cooking for yourself? Watch tv? Text message? Surf the internets?

Second, I have a realistic expectation of what I'm going to eat on a day to day basis. If you eat out all the time, every meal is Christmas-fancy. If you cook, much of the time food is plainer, in that I rarely make more than a single dish at once. Add salad, and you have a dinner. There is a reason things like lasagna, pilaf and biyriani tend to be featured on special-occasion menus in the backs of cookbooks. They take more time (and sometimes more money) than can be invested on most Wednesday nights. In this post, the soup is a weekday dinner. The pilaf (which was followed by cake and homemade sorbet) was a mini-dinner party that I spent about 2 hours cooking for, including making the seitan the night before). Many of the things in this blog are tagged "quickie". Those are simple things, as in they involve little time (though I do have a very well stocked spice cabinet).

Also, I accept and enjoy that there is a learning curve. When I'm just figuring out how to make a particular kind of dish, or working with spices that are new to me, I don't expect perfection right away. Remember when you were a kid and it was fun to see yourself improve? Well, cooking new stuff is like that. I ate a lot of misshapen and oddly-spiced potato roti while I was working out how to make them. Not that they were *bad*. They were fine, though one memorable batch required vast amounts of mango chutney.... and another batch simply got magically transformed into pizza crusts. But now they're better. When I was learning to make truffles, I botched a few batches and ended up with very very very expensive brownies. Some people (like me) are very adventurous cooks who don't really use recipes and don't mind the occasional disaster. Some cooks stick to a few basic techniques that they know well and follow recipes carefully when they deviate from it. Find a style that works for you. But if you want to know how to cook for everyday life, you have to learn to eat for everyday life. I don't know how people have the expectation that every day should be fancy food. Especially if you are just beginning to cook, start simple. Get good ingredients and appreciate everyday food.

Third, cooking lets you eat real food, not processed crap. What could possibly be more important than taking care of your basic health? Is taking half an hour a day to take care of yourself too inconvenient? Hmmmm.... last time I checked, being in bad health and having no energy was also inconvenient. (Plus, need I remind you that more energy and well-being equals better sex?) My health and sanity are non-negotiable. I will not give them up to crappy "food" and a lifestyle that makes exercise and downtime impossible.

Last, we have to eat. And life is short. If you can't take joy in everyday things, than what the hell is the point of life anyway? If there's something that gets done every day, several times a day (eating, moving from place to place, working), I *make* it enjoyable (cooking, riding my bike, having a job I love even though it pays less and is less stable than many other jobs I could have). I absolutely refuse to spend most of my life doing things I dislike, or even things that I'm indifferent to. That would just be a stupid waste. Those of us that are lucky enough to have the means (financial and mental) to be happy should. I have zero sympathy for those who live in self-imposed misery.

Okay, now the food. All I had left in the veg box was parsnips, spuds and a really sad looking carrot. I picked up some spinach on the way home and made this soup, which isn't terribly photogenic, but it was oh-so yummy. I didn't really know what I was going to do with the parsnips, except roast them, because I looooove roasted parsnips and am ambivalent at best about non-roasted parsnips. Soup: parsnips, sad carrot, onions and garlic, all coated with ras-el-hanout and roasted in the oven. Then I dumped the veggies into a pot, deglazed the roasting dish with some water and added that too, blended the whole thing, added some lemon juice and chopped spinach and topped it with pomegranite molasses. Yum. I ate it with potato roti, because I apparently can't get enough potato roti these days.

Also, apple pilaf from a bike-y dyke-y dinner this weekend: wheatberries and spuds boiled with cinnamon, cardamom and bay leaves. Apples (6), caramelized onions(2), toasted and ground cumin and coriander, mexican oregano, zuchinni (1 small), carrot (1 small, happy), maplesmokey seitan crumbles (homemade), toasted walnuts (generous handful). Served with salad.

Radish karhi and a rant about packaging.

Hey! You know that curry-udon taste? Well, here's something very similar: karhi. In fact, it may be the same thing. I have no idea, and I'm not going to fire up the Google and find out right now. Deal. I avoided karhi for years after an unfortunate incident that I refuse to discuss ever again, so gross was it. But this was lovely. Apparently exorcising one's past culinary disasters can yield yum. This is basically a chickpea flour and yogurt soup. Use soy yogurt for a non-death version. Start with a few tbs of chickpea flour (say 3) dissolved in some water, then once you have avoided The Dreaded Lumps, add more water (say 2 cups) and a few tbs of soy yogurt (say 4) or blended silken tofu (I used the yogurt because i had it on hand). Bring to a simmer. Add a few lovely fenugreek seeds and scant half teaspoon of cumin, 6 or so curry leaves, salt, a smidge of sugar, and as much veg as you want/can fit in the pot (I used radish and mixed bitter greens of uncertain name. i wanted something bitter since the sauce is very very mellow. I didn't add the greens until the end, because they're delicate. Peppery and exciting and bite-y, yet delicate. Kind of like me.). While that simmers, fry up a tsp of mustard seeds and a goodly amount of grated ginger and some chillies, and throw that in too. I had an annoying 1/4 cup of chickpeas left over from something, so I threw those in, but I wasn't really planning to until the very last minute. Cook until it doesn't taste like raw chickpea flour anymore (about 20 mins). Throw in some fresh coriander. Garnish with little flower petals. Eat with leftover potato roti, or on rice. Or *evil cackle* on udon noodles. This was a lovely pale pinkish colour from the radishes and the flower petals and greens looked so pretty. Win. Plus, it photographed exceptionally poorly (colour-wise), which amuses me.

I have nothing deep and meaningful to say today. So just a rant. I moved to the U.K. from Germany, and have been constantly shocked by the amount of packaging here. Granted, gratuitous packaging is pretty ubiquitous in the western world, but the U.K. seems particularly bad (from my sample of living in Canada, France, Germany and the U.K., and doing a fair amount of travelling elsewhere). I refuse to buy overpackaged vegetables even when they're cheaper than the free-range ones. Sometimes I just get angry in stores and leave, pepperless. Who the hell decided that bell peppers had to be strapped to a styrofoam plate? Are you people INSANE? Sheesh. And do you really need a different little plastic bag for each and every vegetable? REALLY? When I run the world, disposable packaging is going to cost about $50 per bag (as will plastic water bottles). That'll teach you to "forget" your reusable carrier bags or not use your backpacks. Grrrrrrr. Also, anyone carrying plastic bags will be publicly mocked. I get that we're supposed to be nice to each other, but a little bit of peer pressure to carry reusable bags and not use a million stupid clear veg bags wouldn't be such a bad thing.

ranty ranty ranty ranty: Faith No More (We care a lot)
I think the music inspired the rant tonight, rather than the other way around.