Post-disaster cooking

This dinner got onto the table after a series of disasters. The fridge stopped working (but started immediately after I called the guy we bought it off to complain); we had an ant invasion; my battles with the electric stove continued, as evidenced by my ability to burn something with the element turned to the lowest setting.

These are both from 660 Curries: on the left is Cumin-scented Split Green Lentils and on the right is a very adapted version of Cabbage and Peas with Roasted Mustard Seeds and Lentils. (My first attempt involved burnt mustard seeds. I tried to cool the pan by throwing in almost all of the cabbage, which resulted, as you might expect, in burnt-mustard-tasting cabbage. My second attempt bolstered the small amount of remaining cabbage with potatoes and cauliflower.)

Two firsts tonight: my first use of asafetida powder (in the dal) and toasted urad dal (in the cabbage and peas).

Latkes and guacamole

So good.

(Inspired by this Mexican Hanukkah menu from Bon Appetit.)

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving at the new house:

Clockwise from the top: maple glazed brussels sprouts, mashed potato, vegie roast, pumpkin,  stuffing with mushrooms and pecans. The vegie roast was pretty good, and made for nice sandwiches the next day. (R commented that it was probably the best fake turkey he'd ever had -- surprising, since I think the manufacturers were aiming for roast lamb.)

 

Okra

Good to know. Perhaps the NOLAites should take note for next summer.

What we've been eating

This blog has been pretty quiet of late. We've been busy finding our way in our new city, not to mention dealing with some pretty flaky internet service at our hotel. But now I bring you some food highlights of the past couple of weeks:

1. Indo Mie brand mi goreng. There was something of a mania for these instant noodles in my family a few years ago. We were all addicted, and I guess I still am: when I saw this packet I think I started to drool a little bit. Inside there's five little packets of things to season the noodles, one of which the packaging calls 'seasoning powder', but which is obviously crack.

2. Surprisingly vegan dim sum treats we found in Northbridge: these are Chinese doughnuts (deep fried dough wrapped in rice noodle).

3.  Laksa and Malaysian/Nyonya-style food generally. We enjoyed the laksa at Utopia, and yesterday had a great lunch at Sri Melaka. Today I made this laksa-ish soup for lunch (curry paste from a packet, coconut milk, water, carrot, mushroom, napa cabbage, fried tofu, sprouts, yellow mee).

Being vegetarian in Perth is like being vegan in New England

Ouch

Frazzled

What can't a dinner of pizza and ice cream fix?

Three small clean-out-the-fridge pizzas (dough is whole wheat from the freezer at Whole Foods; cheese is Follow Your Heart mozzarella):

1. Sauerkraut, caramelized onions, ajvar. (This was my first time trying sauerkraut on a pizza and it won't be the last. This particular pizza could've done with a little something extra, though.)

2. Salsa, caramelized onions, cilantro.

3. Kalamatas, basil (from the freezer -- I threw in a bunch and it held up surprisingly well), caramelized onions.

Then almond and pecan ice cream (just so-so by itself, but much better with chocolate and peanut butter ganache and plantains).

Righting injustice

Today we found ourselves dogless*, sodden**, and hungry in NYC. I had the bright idea to go to Pukk, a vegetarian Thai place I've heard some good things about. But could we find Pukk? We could not. (I blame the rain falling in our eyes -- Google maps says it's right here.)

Anyway, we tried to console ourselves with lunch at nearby Kate's Joint, but it ended up sucking for two reasons:

1. Given the startling advances in vegan cheese of recent (Teese and Daiya, for instance) what kind of vegetarian/vegan place serves "non-dairy" cheese that's not vegan?
2. I ordered their reuben***. It was not good. I hate wasting food and I couldn't eat it. (I think the main problems were that I was really craving a tempeh reuben, while this sandwich had fake deli meat like this, and that the thousand island dressing tasted weird -- I think it had BBQ sauce in it.)

So, I had to right some wrongs:

Baked tempeh along these lines, sauerkraut, mozzarella, thousand island dressing (vegan mayo, ketchup, plus some ajvar****) on a light rye bread. Yum.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*He left for Australia today.
**It was raining, and waking at 5am to take one's dog to the airport does not incline one to remember things like umbrellas.
***On the menu it's called the Monte Mount Cisco. The sandwich that they call the Not Reuben has mustard rather than thousand island dressing.
****An untraditional but good addition.

Sympathy for the chef-testants

A while back, on Top Chef, there was a challenge involving nopales (cactus). A lot of the chefs seemed bewildered by this ingredient, which I thought was inexcusable. I mean, it's not that obscure. I'd never cooked with it myself, but still...

Today I finally understood. Cleaning nopales is tricky. It takes a while to scrape off all the needles and the little nodules, plus the whole time in the back of your mind there's this voice saying "I really really don't want to eat a cactus spine".

Apparently cactus is often boiled, but I used a technique from Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen: you roast the cactus at 375 F for about 20 minutes. Cactus is like okra: it gets slimy when wet, but this roasting technique eliminates the slime. Here's the cooked cactus:

I roughly followed the recipe in Bayless's book for roasted cactus salad (basically the roasted cactus is added to a tomato-chile-onion-cilantro salsa).

I think if you like okra, there's a good chance you might like cactus. It has a tart, citrus-like flavour, but it also resembles okra or maybe green pepper. (Hey, you should try it. Our lovely host here on LI, who has never even tried avocado or pumpkin (and has no plans to!), got up the nerve to try a piece and declared it quite delicious.)

Pride

Last month I had my biggest ever cooking disaster. We were invited to a barbecue, and I decided to make my old faithful: curried chickpea tart. There were a few hiccups -- for instance, the kitchen here on LI has no blender of any kind, so I had to use an antique eggbeater to mix the batter, and in addition there are no tart or pie plates, so I had to send our lovely host to the supermarket to buy a disposable aluminium one. Anyway, long story short, when we got there I went to cut the tart and it hadn't set up right. I served the first piece/dollop to the host of the party, who assured me it was delicious. And then I tried some... oh my god it was way way oversalted and overspiced. (Maybe it reduced down too much while I waited for the disposable tin? But then why didn't it set up? Maybe the salt in the LI kitchen is superpowered?)

I was mortified.

It was lucky, after all, that the tart was in a disposable tin. It meant I could slink out of the party at the end of the night without having to claim my leftovers.

Anyway, tonight we are going back to those same people's house for a dinner party -- I had to redeem myself. Hence: peanut butter filled chocolate cookies (with the usual vegan subs, and egg replacer). They are tooth-rottingly sweet (like giant peanut butter cups) and I will be walking into that place with my head held high.

Potassium

I've not had good hearing (or much at all) in one ear for more than a week. Doctor man gave me many several prescriptions... Basically, it's a nerve. Not helped by prescriptions. What can be helped is an immune boost, and support for depleted adrenals (they handle stress, and the tooth-grinding - stress - doesn't help with the nerve). Foods high in potassium are adrenal/kidney-friendly, and raisins are near the top of the list. So breakfast (usually whole groat oats in the rice cooker) involved raisins this morning.
"What?" "Jason is mourning?" "Why?" "And who's Jason?"

lunch again...

Here they are again: little glass containers full of lunch. The sweet potatoes were purchased along with persimmons (!) from the same farmers who grow the baby eggplants (Thai eggplants) that look like mushrooms in the upper round bowl. Carrots and cabbage are from Wholefoods, due to lack of imagination.

Dressing on the mung bean and eggplant salad was better than the eggplants. Bummer. (They were bitter.) I’ll read something about those vegetables before I buy them again. And here’s the recipe for that dressing:

2 cloves garlic

3T balsamic

1T rice vinegar

2T toasted sesame oil

1T barley miso (I used brown rice miso)

Pumpkin cinnamon rolls

I know I promised green vegetables in my next post, but I figured that the pumpkin-deprived NOLA-ites deserved some pumpkin foodporn: pumpkin cinnamon rolls (recipe from the zine Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk).

My copy of the zine is currently on a ship bound for Singapore, so luckily the author has posted the recipe online. (I made half the recipe, and used half whole wheat flour, and added some pecans to the filling. Yum! I like how the filling worked out -- the recipe has you add some flour to the usual mixture of sugar, cinnamon and butter and I think it really helped to keep the filling from oozing out too much.)

At least the NOLA-ites have access to canned pumpkin. No such luck for the Aussie contingent.

No surprise

Porcini stock cubes obviously lead to mushroom risotto. This one involved a tiny amount of chanterelles, a lot of cheap white mushrooms plus the stock cubes -- lots of mushroomy goodness.

(I promise that the next photo I post will involve a green vegetable -- enough with the orange and brown!)

Breakfast for dinner -- sort of

When I was a kid and my dad was out of town (which was a lot) we sometimes had breakfast for dinner. I thought it was so weird, and promised I'd never do it when I was an adult. Right... note that the cornbread was from the freezer, and the beans from a can.

De-Stressed Baking

I woke up on Saturday at 4.30, ran starting at 5, and finished work at 4.30pm. I came home ready to relax. This is what I did. The cake is the Cook's Illustrated chocolate snack cake (fudged because I ran out of vegan mayo -- I used some old sour cream, which probably wasn't a great idea -- too dense). The cookies are from 101 Cookbooks, thanks to David Lebovitz. Really super tasty.

Gluttony

I spent about 10 hours wandering all over Manhattan today. Sustaining me in my travels were many wonderful bread products:

• a sesame bagel from Absolute Bagels (So good! Crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside -- light textured and substantial at the same time.)
• pizza patate from Sullivan Street Bakery (Imagine pizza and potato chips had a love child. Crisp, rich dough topped with thin sliced potato (crisp and brown at the edges), rosemary and lots of olive oil.)
• vanilla bomboloni from Sullivan Street Bakery (This prompted fond memories of my Polish grandmother's homemade doughnuts, but was many times more amazing than they were, and they were good!)
• pizza at Motorino East Village (I had the filetti: mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and thyme. It was excellent. I will never be a restaurant blogger, because taking photos of food is embarrassing, but here's a review with some nice photos.)

I also went food shopping at Zabar's and Fairway. I really liked Fairway. Here's what I bought there:

Noho lunch

Back in Noho for a lightning visit, we had a perfect lunch of baked beans (a Deals & Steals score: two cans for 99c) and rosemary bread from the Hungry Ghost (still warm!) plus a mini (vegan) apple pie also from the Hungry Ghost. Yum.

Salads

I'm not actually a very good cook. I'm nervous, I'm anxious, I'm cheap... and after a long day of trying (read: merely but mightily trying) to be creative, my meals are less-than-inspiring. But I have a few tricks for lunch. I always pack, and because it is the highlight of my day, I try to pack something good. Here's today's sampling, posing for you from the bench where I ate it.
Bottom left: carrot slaw, dressed with miso-sesame. Bottom right: navy bean and tuna salad with great chunks of pickle; center (upper): broiled eggplant, pepper, local goat feta, and greens, dressed with balsamic.
It's true... in my laziness, and in the summer heat, I've opened more than a few tins of tuna. It started (?) in Australia/NZ, where I spent most of my days working or walking, and needed something easy to prepare but full of protein during the day or before bed. Excuses, excuses.

Back

This is what I've been eating, and mostly how I've been eating it, for the summer in New Orleans.

Boring but good

Here you see veggie 'meatloaf', roasted butternut, mashed cauliflower and mushroom gravy. Luckily the plates in this kitchen are colourful, because otherwise this was just a plateful of orange and brown.

 

The loaf is an Adventist style dinner loaf made with beans and rice (unfortunately the magical loaf studio seems to be down at the moment, but you can find the basics of the recipe there). This was my first attempt at mashed cauliflower and it was pretty good, but I think a stick blender might do a better job at making a creamy puree. The potato masher left it a bit chunky.

I'm really missing my electrical kitchen gadgets. There's no blender here, or food processor, or hand mixer, or anything like that. I hadn't realized how often I used those things. Needless to say I was very pleased to find the potato masher buried in a drawer.

Knifeworthy

This was a meal worth buying a knife for.

Today I had a craving for butternut pumpkin. I bought one, and then realized that there was no way in hell that I could cut that thing with the blunt knife in the kitchen here. Hence, new knife.

Here you see roasted fennel and butternut, and pasta with a simple bechamel (or mornay, I guess) of roux, soymilk, water, nutritional yeast, fake parmesan, salt and pepper. (Clearly I am still a fan of the fennel + butternut + bechamel combination.)

Emergency pho

Pho is the answer to a tough day.

The local supermarket is, shall we say, a bit inadequate. Here is pho made with ramen noodles, mushrooms and broccoli, and my usual recipe for the broth.
Did you know this product existed?
Me neither. (As I'm sure you can guess, canned bean sprouts have a very soft texture, and they really don't work very well in pho.)

No wood pulp!

In case you can't make it out, the first sentence of the second paragraph reads: Light buns are made with oat fiber, and no wood pulp!

Roughing it in Westhampton

There's no camera, and no internet, and not much in the way of kitchen tools here at the beach. But I made sure to pack my spices and my copy of 660 Curries, and so we're eating well. Here's a crappy snapshot (taken with my computer's camera) of last night's dinner: Eggplant and Okra with Fenugreek and Mustard (left) and Chana Saag (right). I also made Malabar Parantha, which ended up kind of like a cross between naan and paratha.
All three recipes are from 660 Curries (though I made a few changes to the Chana Saag (no ginger or onion paste on hand, and I used diced turnips and turnip greens rather than spinach)). I had to roll the bread out using a jar!

Here's a bonus non-food shot of the view from the balcony:

Postcard from Long Island

I had to vigorously refuse a ride to the grocery store today. The grocery store is a five minute walk away.

The kitchen here is not often (never?) used for cooking. The one knife is dull, and the pots and pans were dusty. If you ever find yourself in this situation, and you're tired and hungry, I recommend Japanese curry mix. You throw a random assortment of veggies in a pot with some water, bring to a boil and then simmer until they're cooked. (Today's mixture: onions, sweet potato, green beans, broccoli, zucchini, chickpeas). Then take it off the heat, and stir in the curry cubes. Done!
For the full experience, eat on a glass table with white faux bois legs while reading Star magazine.

Paper plates and smoked salt

After a strenuous day of watching the movers pack our stuff, we retreated to the couch for a dinner of ramen noodles followed by ice cream. The ice cream was burnt caramel flavoured No Moo from Herrells, and it was just okay.

Actually, I didn't really like it much at all -- although it smelled good, the flavour was pretty weak. That is, until I added some smoked salt. I thought it might be good, but I was amazed at how it punched up the flavour.
Oh Japanese smoked salt, is there anything you don't improve?

Last days in the Noho kitchen

For dinner tonight we had something I've been meaning to try for at least a year, ever since I borrowed Greg Malouf and Lucy Malouf's book Artichoke to Za'atar from the library: Portobello Mushrooms Baked Between Vine Leaves.
You wrap the mushrooms up in the grape leaves like a parcel, and the leaves keep all the tasty juices in as the mushrooms bake/steam. (Apparently Elizabeth David also has a recipe like this: she recommends grape leaves as a way of improving the flavour of cultivated mushrooms (or as this link puts it, providing them 'a tasty bosky pedigree').) This worked out very nice -- I cooked it for a bit longer than the recipe suggests because it seems to be written with smaller mushrooms in mind. I had expected to discard the baked grape leaves, but they tasted good (almost like kale chips).

We also had okra cooked in a style I learned from 660 Curries: the okra is blistered on a hot pan and then removed, then you cook your spices (in this case, cumin seeds and chile flakes) and onions, then add the okra back to the pan with some tomato and water, cover and simmer until the okra is tender.

In the background of this photo you can make out an office chair. We sold all our other chairs!

Corn, basil and coconut soup

Hot soup on a hot day... sometimes it seems like the right way to deal with the heat. I found this soup while randomly googling for uses for corn stock. Mine included corn stock, coconut milk, lime zest, ginger, jalapeno, veggies (zucchini, chard, carrots, corn, onions), yuba knots, and ramen noodles, plus basil and lime juice.

Grilled peaches

Peaches, vanilla sugar, basil, cashew cream.
(The cashew cream came together surprisingly well: ground cashews, 'coconut milk', sugar and vanilla extract. Usually when I make something like this I blend silken tofu with the cashews. I doubt that soy milk would work well, but I think the coconut milk has some special properties (guar gum, perhaps) -- the texture immediately became quite creamy once I started blending it.)

Corn chowder meets leek and potato soup

This was good. The soup started with sauteed leeks, some corn stock (corn cobs, leek tops, onion, carrot tops) and a diced potato, cooked until the potato was soft. I added a little bit of mimiccreme and pureed it, then added 3 ears worth of corn kernels, another diced potato, and a cup of this unsweetened coconut milk beverage (which tastes better than you might expect something labeled a 'beverage' to taste) and simmered until the veggies were done. Yum!

Please pass the almond butter of wisdom

I know, I know, making fun of the little ads in the back of the New Yorker is like shooting fish in a barrel, but really: the almond butter of wisdom!

Market haul

Finally, tomatoes! (Though I must admit I'm most excited about the fresh beans.)

New Orleans / New England

For dinner tonight we had gumbo z'herbes, made with kohlrabi greens, carrot greens, kale, callaloo (amaranth) and beet greens. I used this (apparently inauthentic) recipe. I liked it, but I think the spices were a bit off, or it was missing something. Still, pretty good. We had it with Chesapeake tempeh cakes from Vegan Brunch, which I thought were just okay (but I made a few substitutions -- for instance, I didn't have enough panko -- so they deserve another try, I think).
For dessert we had grape nuts ice cream. It was really good! Apparently grape nuts desserts are a New England thing. I used this recipe, though I didn't add cinnamon and did add a caramel swirl (inspired by what I read about the brown bread ice cream at a shop called Scoops in LA).
I used one cup of mimiccreme, and two cups of oat milk. Since the recipe called for all cream, I added a bit of xanthan gum to thicken the mixture up slightly. I added more sugar than the recipe called for, because I wanted more of a contrast with the slightly bitter caramel, but it ended up a bit too sweet. (The caramel sauce recipe is from The Perfect Scoop. I made 1/3 of the salted caramel sauce recipe, replacing the cream with mimiccreme.)

Cans save the day

I threw this soup together using various canned goods from the pantry, and it was good. Tomato, hearts of palm, okra and field peas, plus some leftover brown rice. We had it with soda bread, made with a mixture of flours (mainly spelt and oat). (I'm trying to empty out the pantry before our upcoming move -- all the little bits of random grains are getting ground up in the spice grinder.)
In the soup there was also some corn stock that was made in the pressure cooker (6 corn cobs, about 4 cups water, 20 minutes on high pressure, natural release). I had been intending to make high intensity polenta with the corn stock... that'll have to wait for next time we have a bunch of corn cobs.

I got the canned okra and field peas from the local discount shop, and they were brands I'd never seen before (maybe they're from the south?). I'd never had field peas before, and it looks like the name can refer to any number of peas. These ones were tiny and red, and I liked them.

Summer pizza

I don't know what possessed me to make pizza on the hottest, muggiest day in recent memory, but I did, and it was good. Prepare yourself: this pizza had corn on it. (Weird for an American pizza, but apparently not so in Asia.)

The pizza was inspired by this one, which used a recipe originally from this book. The toppings were mozzarella, thinly sliced onion, zucchini, fresh corn, red pepper flakes, black pepper, almond feta, a little more mozzarella, and after it cooked: cilantro and some lemon juice. This combination tasted very fresh and light, perfect for the hot weather.
The crust was wonderful: a great combination of crispness and puffy chewiness. I used my old favourite olive oil dough, from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I used AP flour, and added some vital wheat gluten. It was baked at 500 for about 8 minutes. These are roughly the measurements I used to make two pizzas: 168 ml water, 3/4 t yeast, 1 t salt, less than 1 t sugar, 1 T olive oil, 1.6 c AP flour (170 - 200g? I eyeballed it. Bad baker!), 1 T vital wheat gluten.

Corn soup

Last summer we went to a dinner at a local restaurant that was offering a menu based on Charlie Trotter's book Raw. One of the highlights was a raw corn soup, garnished with hearts of palm and curry oil. (I don't own the book, but luckily this recipe is available in the Google books preview.)
My little stick blender wasn't quite up to the task of pulverizing the corn completely, so I strained the soup and used the leftover corn to make corn oysters. Yum!