An Elegant, Vegan Dessert

This is a somewhat elaborate dessert recipe, but a good one nonetheless. And if you use dark chocolate, it's vegan.

Recipe: Raw Ginger and Dark Chocolate Sandwich

Ingredients:

2 small squares of dark, fairly traded, organic, communist chocolate
1 thick slice of raw ginger root, peel on

1. Carefully snap the pieces of chocolate from the bar. Snap another and eat that one too.

2. Slice off a thick slab of raw ginger root. Stick your nose in the freshly cut root and deeply inhale.

3. Place the ginger between the slices of chocolate, pinching between your fingers to keep in place.

4. Garnish with nothing, serve by putting in your mouth.

Inadvertent Kitchari Cake

While it happened by accident, from now I'll be making kitchari cakes like this one on purpose.

The kitchari was intentional, but the lovely little cake was just dumb luck. It happened when I reheated some leftover kitchari in a small skillet in the oven. When I opened the door, I expected to find a fragrant mush of grains and spices not unlike the one I had put in, the only difference being the temperature. Instead I found this gorgeous little thing, the sides crisp and brown, the interior still moist and fragrant.

For those who don't know, kitchari, aka khitchari or kedgeree, is a combination of spiced grains cooked together. Probably one of the oldest recipes on the planet, it's typically made with mung dahl and rice, though I used green lentils, and the possibilities for other substitutions are endless.

Kitchari has seen a recent spike in popularity with the renewed interest in Ayurveda, though for every one person who is serious about "the science of life," there are a thousand poseurs. You'll know them by the yoga mats sticking out of their backpacks, advertising their higher consciousness and serving as blue, foam lightening rods for good vibes.

If you're going to make kitchari, I suggest experimenting with your own spice blend rather than reaching for that dubious shaker of "curry." I associate curry powder, which is in fact a blend of spices (and sometimes food moths), with a seemingly well stocked but unused spice rack. You'll find it next to the impotent cinnamon and the two containers of cream of tartar with their foil seal intact.

Use fresh spices when they're in season, and when they're not, buy small amounts of whole spices from the bulk section of your local natural foods shop. That way you'll never have so much of something that it will lose its umph, and you can experiment with things you'd never buy an entire canister of. Like fenugreek.

For my kitchari, I just used whatever I had on hand, though I admit that I was well prepared to do so. The blend included whole star anise and dried chiles, cardamom pods, fennel and cumin seed, bay leaves, a small cinnamon stick, and a nub of fresh, minced turmeric.

Since I've only made the cake by accident, I can't give the specifics, but if you mess around I'm sure you could figure it out. Essentially you make kitchari, then bake it.

There are several lessons to take from this experience. They are:

-kitchari is good
-buy small amounts of whole, bulk spices
-good things happen when you don't use a microwave

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Recipe: Kitchari

Serves 2.

1/2 cup brown rice
1/2 cup green lentils (or whatever)
1 can coconut milk
2 tbsp neutral (or coconut) oil
your own spice blend
salt to taste

1. "Bloom" the spices in the hot oil.

2. Add the rice, stir until toasty.

3. Add the lentils, and cover with the coconut milk.

4. Simmer until tender, about a half hour, adding water if necessary. Remove any spices such as cinammon sticks, whole chiles, or bay leaves, or leave them in as surprises.

Again, Silk Oolong Formosa

The last time I wrote about the silk oolong formosa I picked up at Red Blossom, I marveled at its milky quality despite the absence of actual milk. I was wrong. Vegans beware, this tea is not for you.

Some s.o.f. actually does contain dairy. Apparently a "milk oolong" can fall into one of two camps. The milk flavor can occur naturally, from a combination of the variety of tea, climate and conditions, or it can be literally infused with milk. Like from a cow, which is what gives Red Blossom's version its warm, caramel aroma and flavor.

I can't tell if that makes me like this tea more or less. It reminds me of my dad's search for the perfect stereo equipment. When surround sound debuted, he saw it as cheating, and wanted a pair of traditional speakers made so well that they could achieve a similar effect. He wanted naturally milk scented sound.

My hunch is that the milk-infused variety has taken the place of the more rare (and expensive) original, in much the same way that "liquid smoke"-infused lapsang souchong has largely replaced tea that has actually been cured over a fire.

Using milk instead of a balletic synthesis of natural elements does seem like cheating, and it is, but if it produces a better result that more people can enjoy, then why not? Because it also threatens a time honored tradition and the livelihood of those who practice it.

But do I enjoy my silky, milky tea? God, yes.

Miso in the Morning

Continuing on the theme of savory breakfasts, this dish fits into my miso+1 theory. The variable in this instance was millet.

I very nearly OD'd on millet a few years back while suffering through a highly constrictive diet for health reasons. The way I ate in those days is why the thought of slightly steamed kale still makes me shudder, and the only way I can choke it down is cooked to death in soups with lots of sausage. But I just couldn't stay angry at millet. After all, there's nothing to be angry about.

Millet is a plain, inoffensive grain. There aren't many reasons to eat it, but there are even fewer not to. If nothing else, it will help you escape from the rice-is-the-only-grain-on-earth paradigm.

The first time I had millet was probably when I was kid, sampling birdseed. But now I like to pair it with miso for a breakfast that somehow feels both light and substantial. Simply boil millet as you would any grain, add a little miso slurry (this time I used red), and slurp. Millet can be nice and fluffy, but for some reason I'm liking it best when soupy.

Why? Why not?

Finally, Something That Does Grow on Trees

As I pulled into the driveway last night, I caught two interesting objects in my headlights. One was my dog Oli, chewing a stick twice his size while on a walk with Elise. The other was a plastic gallon jug that clung to the trunk of our neighbor's maple. If you're from New England, you probably know what that means: syrup season.

Turns out that our neighbor, a retired engineer, started tapping all the sugar maples on the block about two years ago. When I inquired about the presence of the many floating milk jugs, he gave me a tour of the trees and explained the process, which he kept describing as "really easy" and "so simple!"

Though legally blind, he can still make out the sugar maples by their bark. He drills two to three inches into them, inserts a short metal tube, and sticks a milk jug on it. The sap flows when you've got freezing nights and warm days, and on a good day he might get a gallon of sap from a single tree. Of course this has be cooked down to about one fortieth its volume, but the (clean) plastic trash can in which he stores the sap already has about 30 gallons in it, and the season has just begun.

When I came home last night, I was hot, tired and cranky after an eight hour cooking shift. I parked the car, saw the jug on the tree, and didn't think twice. I walked over to the maple, lifted the jug off the tap, and took a swig. The tree filtered sap tasted like the cleanest water I'd ever had, with an unmistakable maple flavor. It was ice cold, it was delicious, and it was straight out of the tree.

Of course that's one-fortieth of a mouthful of syrup we won't get, but it was worth it.

I Made Corn Stock. Now What?

All summer and fall, Elise and I added our corn cobs to a bag in the freezer with the hopes of making a stock come winter. (Okay, we both added the cobs, but only I had the hopes.) But now that I've done so, I don't know what to do with it. Suggestions?

For months the cobs lay dormant beside goat kidneys, the tougher bits of chicken of the woods mushrooms, and other such ingredients I had not yet figured out what to do with. Yesterday, while working from home, I finally freed the cobs from their icy slumber and filled up the stock pot I had originally found on the curb in Somerville.

I let it simmer with nothing else but a fat pinch of salt for a few hours until the amount of liquid had reduced by half, the other half now clinging to the insides of the windows as condensation (corndensation?).

The stock was thick, rich and golden in color, and it tasted as sweet and grassy as you'd hope it would. But such a summer flavor now seems out of place, and I can't quite think of what to pair it with.

Ideally I would use it with actual corn to accentuate the flavor, but I didn't save the corn, just the cobs. I like wringing flavor and nutrition from something I've already finished, and would just as soon make stock out of something I could eat as I would support growing edible crops for biodiesel. In other words, I wouldn't.

Egg drop soup? Grain-on-grain risotto? Take a corn stock bath? Your thoughts are most appreciated.

No Cheese Pizza

A good relationship has countless advantages. Among them is pizza.

By now some of you know that Elise often delights me by whipping up several pizzas, of course from scratch. Last night's batch included a butternut and an anchovy-tapenade pie, both featured above. (Her halves also had cheese, a dab of which you can see on the slice above right, but more on that in a moment.)

She'll be working diligently from our home office and then suddenly peer over the screen of her laptop to declare "I'm going to make pizza tonight," as though possessed by some other power.

I'm an ardent feminist, but that doesn't stop me from observing that there's something about women and baking. Sure it might be the result of thousands of years of patriarchal oppression, with men demanding that women stick close to the oven for fear of them voting. On the other hand, maybe they just like it.

Among several modern, feminist-leaning, liberal couples that I know, the old gender divides often play out in the kitchen, if nowhere else. The men man the stove top (and of course the grill, fiery phallus that it is), the women the oven. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but there does seem to be a trend.

Perhaps on some subconscious, symbolic level, women relate to the womb-like quality of the oven, a warm chamber from which life sustaining offspring are born. Then, like a male lion, the man eats those offspring.

Regardless, Elise likes to make pizza. And lately she's been indulging my shockingly effective sabbatical from dairy (so long, allergy induced asthma!) and making no cheese pizzas, aka tomato pies. While that might sound as unfulfilling as abstinence, I've actually come to prefer them over the standard, cow secretion covered alternative.

Sure I've had great pizza with cheese, but there's something clean and elemental in the simplicity of just crust and sauce. Without the rubbery, fatty cloak of cheese, it's just you, a little sauce, and the crust. There's nowhere to hide: the sauce has to be good, the crust has to be great.

Now if only a man could figure out how to do it.

More On Palm Oil

I received a rather lengthy and well informed comment on my recent Smart Balance post, so I thought I'd give it a little more exposure. This thread really encapsulates what many of us are trying to figure out in a post-modern food world: what the f*ck should we eat?

There are several points here that I really enjoy. One is the lesser of evils approach when it comes to the environmental impact of food production. Perfection is great, but elusive. I also like the idea of replacing an animal fat with real food, like macadamia oil, instead a food product (like Smart Balance). Our ancestors didn't need text-heavy plastic tubs to tell them what to eat, so why should we?

Thanks to Adam for sending this in:

1) Oil palms yield more oil per acre than any other oil plant. Greater productivity = greater environmental efficiency = more land left untouched by modern agriculture.

2) Oil palms aren't an annual crop, like soy, canola (rapeseed), etc., so less violence is done to the land with the constant tearing-up of the soil to plant and yearly re-plant. Less aggressive (chemical) fertilization is used and less pesticide since it's a tree crop growing in its natural habitat.

3) Yes, oil palm plantations take habitat away from orangutans and the like (although a lot more wildlife can survive in a tree plantation than a monocultured field full of annuals). But let's not throw that stone in our glass house. Until we tear up our wheat fields to let the bison back in, let's not get on our high horse about a poor, poor country trying to make some money off their own agriculture. Almost all large-scale agriculture is inherently, ecologically violent. Oil palm plantations much less so that the alternatives.

4) On a nutritional basis, a distinction ought to be made between palm kernel and palm fruit oil. The kernel oil ain't great for you -- but it's not nearly bad as you've been told. The palm fruit oil -- brilliant red -- is actually one of our healthiest, most heat-stable fats. Like other fruit oils (olive, avocado), it's very rich in antioxidants, and can stand up to long storage and high-heat cooking without a whole lot of lipid peroxidation.

5) CSPI are a bunch of scare-mongers. That "Dying for a Cookie" ad they ran full-page in the NYT was kind of bullshit. I wrote them to tell them as much. They wrote me back to (mostly) agree with me -- or at least, to agree with my individual points, not the final assessment...

6) Finally, if you want vegan "vegan" butter for pancake frying, may I suggest straight-up red palm fruit oil, avocado oil, or macadamia oil.

Pacman or Flatbread?

Answer: flatbread.

A few months ago, Bittman wrote of the wonders of socca, a chickpea flatbread that is both versatile and facile. I believed he called it "instant starch." He and Conan (the food writer) then revisited the dish, and since then I've been hooked. Incidentally, the titles of both pieces are extremely pleasant to say: "The Saga of Skillet Flatbread" and "A Street Treat from Nice."

Thanks to their plug, socca has become an absolute staple in my kitchen. And why wouldn't it? It meets all of my criteria for perfect food: quick, easy, cheap, nourishing, and kind of weird.

I throw one together anytime I've got a meal that feels like it's missing something. I've baked, baked and then broiled, and simply broiled, and all are perfectly acceptable. If you're really going for speed, I suggest broiling and flipping. In my mind, the perfect socca is crispy on the outside and still moist and somewhat hummusy on the inside.

Luckily, the flavor of chickpea flour is generally more sweet and pea-like than with a canned garbanzo, so you've got that going for you too. I eat most of my socca straight up, but of course you can add anything you like to the batter or on top during or after baking. I imagine grated cheese would look nice and help ensure a good crunch.



By far the best socca I've made was one topped with the tomato sauce we put up at the end of the season. Each jar is a time capsule of summer, an explosion of flavor from a forgotten temperature.

So don't be a suckah; make a socca. And if you want to go all out, eat it in a sukkah.

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Recipe: Socca (aka Farinata aka Chickpea Flatbread)
-adapted from Mark Bittman

1 cup chickpea flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
4 to 6 tablespoons olive oil

Put a skillet under the broiler and set oven to "broil."

Mix chickpea flour with equal parts water, then add the salt and pepper. Whisk until smooth. Stir in 2 tablespoons olive oil. Cover, and let sit while oven heats, or as long as 12 hours. Batter should be about the consistency of heavy cream.

Pour 2 tablespoons oil into heated pan, and swirl to cover pan evenly. Pour in batter, and broil about 5 minutes on each side. If it looks dry, brush the top with more oil.

Cut it into wedges and serve hot.

Homemade Granola

I can't remember the first time I had granola, but shortly afterwards I wrote it off. As a kid, it was too healthy. As an adult, it wasn't healthy enough. What began as a wholesome, grain based snack had at some point morphed into candy for rich hippies. Until I made it myself.

Ah, the power of "homemade." After years of eating a food dictated by popular consensus, in your own kitchen you finally gain the satisfaction of unchecked creative control. Want a salty granola? It's your call. Granola dotted with marrow croutons? Yes, we can.



Making your own version of a commercially available food is deeply satisfying for any home cook on a budget, especially if you have control issues. When I made my first batch of granola, and I've made more since, it finally tasted how I've always wanted it to and it cost what I've always wanted to pay: next to nothing.

While it might seem like a specialty snack, I didn't even have to buy anything to make it. If you feel the need to load it with acai and gogi you'll have to make a trip to the obnoxious store, but otherwise you can make do.

I adapted Bittman's recipe to what I had on hand, combined with observations from having watched others make it in the past. My version is not candy, but I do eat it as though it were. And it makes the house smell like winter should.

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Recipe: Tons of Great, Cheap Granola

6 cups (real) oats
2 cup sunflower seeds (or whatever)
1 cup dried currants (or whatever)
1 cup dried coconut
1 cup honey
2 tbsp canola oil
pinch of salt
dash of cinnamon

Pre-heat the oven to 325. Combine everything but the currants and oil and mix well.

Spread the oil on two baking sheets, divide the granola between them, and toss lightly.

Bake until brown but not burnt, stirring as often as necessary (about 4 times, about half an hour.)

Let cool. Feel cool.

Smart Balance or Stupid Balance?

I recently, and mistakenly, bought a tub of Smart Balance to use in pancakes for some vegan friends. While its cousin Earth Balance is indeed suitable for vegans, it seems Smart Balance is not, as it contains whey. Clearly the distributor thinks that people who don't eat dairy are more earthy than they are smart.

Though both Balances have been widely embraced as healthy stuff, they violate several of Pollan's rules for good eating laid out in the climax of In Defense of Food. For instance:

-Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

-Avoid products that make health claims.

-Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar, B) unpronounceable, C) more than five in number.

In looking over Smart Balance's ingredients, which are both numerous and alien, I paused when I came to palm oil. I had just read an article in Nat Geo about deforestation in Borneo, caused in large part by supplying the growing demand for, you guessed it, palm oil. (For a rebuke of the article, see the very suspiciously named Palm Oil Truth Foundation, which seems like something out of communist Russia. It also calls the article's style "meandering" and states that "there has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming." Red flag!)

Without seriously researching the subject, I can't say that the palm oil in Smart or Earth Balance comes from Borneo, though the odds seem good, since most of the world's supply does come from there. Palm fruit plantations now cover much of the island, replacing habitat for the local indigenous people and the orangutans and pygmy elephants they share it with.

The deforestation necessary to create the plantations also helps Indonesia to rank third for greenhouse gas emissions, just behind the U.S. and China (!). I don't know about you, but that's not something I want to spread on my pancakes.

Again, I can't comment on how direct the link is (unless any editors out there want to pay me to), but here's something I can say.

It sure seems a lot more simple to just buy butter from your local dairy farm. It has one (two if there's salt) ingredients, and your great grandmother would definitely know what to do with it.

The Best French Fries I've Ever Had

Until now, the best fries I'd ever had were in Ithaca, NY. It's no secret that I have a soft spot for the town, but it's with good reason.

A friend of mine who is also a former Chez Panisse employee is considering moving from the Bay Area, and Ithaca is near the top of her list. Partly because she's interested in a grad program there, but partly because it's one of the few towns in America that won't make a former Bay Area foodie feel like they live in the desert outside of the house in Beetlejuice.

So it was no surprise that I had great fries there, especially because the region is also known for something called salt potatoes. But yesterday, all that changed. Elise had a rare free night now that her new show is up, and there was only one thing on her mind: making fries.

They were the perfect fry, with crisp skin and light and creamy guts. She admittedly has a heavy hand with salt, but in this case it was just right, going toe to toe with the surprisingly sweet taste of the taters. Crispy, fluffy, sweet, salty - may my epitaph be so kind.

We have three guesses as to why they were so ethereal. First was her general skill, including the decision to steam and then fry. Then there was our luck of having the right potatoes chilling in the hallway thanks to our winter CSA. But the third and most unusual reason was the choice of fat, or fats, rather.

We just so happened to be low on all oils, so she made a blend of peanut, canola, and olive. We wouldn't have done so for any other reason but necessity, but it just might have been the killing stroke that made these the best fries of my life.

Now who's gorges?

Roasted Rotating Root Veggies

If you aren't doing so already, start eating this.

This year roasted root veggies are making up a large part of my winter diet. Partly because we're getting a lot from our CSA, and partly because they seem like the most perfect cold weather food. There's something about this season that just makes me want to eat things that grow underground.

A hearty portion of veggies like these goes a long way. I'm finding that a big dose of tubers and bulbs takes the place of both the starch and vegetable in a given meal, thereby compromising about 80% of what I feel the need to eat. A plate of these plus a drumstick or a slab of tofu and you're in business. A slice of bread and some salad? Superfluous.

I used to think of this dish as a specialty item, but I recommend that everyone bump it up to staple status. The key to not getting bored with it is to keep things in rotation. Thanks to the CSA, I have turnips, sweet potatoes, unsweet potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, parsnips, and some stuff I can't identify but which looks great. Any three of those will do, so you can imagine the possibilities and varying degrees of sweetness.

My advice is to buy a bunch of different kinds of root veggies and then make them in different combinations. They'll last forever, plus you don't need much of any one of them at once. When you take a little from each root, your pan is often too full. And like the price of olives at an olive bar, the roasting temp for all of these is roughly the same, so mix and match with abandon.

Filling veggies may sound like an oxymoron to anyone who hasn't experienced them, but I could almost live on these alone.

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Recipe: Roasted Root Veggies

1 tbsp coarse salt
3/4 tbsp rosemary (more if fresh)
3 twists of a pepper grinder
oil to coat
Equal parts of any of the following: beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots, onion, parsnip

Pre-heat the oven to 400.

Cut the veggies into bite sized pieces - they smaller they are, the faster they cook.

Note: I only peel the parsnip and beets.

Toss well with the remaining ingredients.

Roast at 400 for 45 minutes to an hour, tossing three times to ensure equal oil coverage. Toss gently, with two metal spoons, to avoid breakdown.

They're done when a fork meets little resistance from each variety of veggie.

The Roasted Beet

I'm not a big beet fan. When a rash of raw beet salads made their way through the food blogosphere earlier this season, I was still thinking of them as suitable compost. So it was with great hesitation that I prepared my first beet in years. The motivation was simply frugal: we had beets, they were getting limp, and I needed to eat.

The beets came in the most recent installment of our winter CSA. Ironically, it was a CSA that first turned me off to these most queer vegetables. Back then I had no problem with the occasional maroon cube mixed in with other, less weird root veggies. But the monstrous creatures I used to get week after week were just too much. Plus, they made me pee pink.

This time around I decided to keep it simple and confront the beet head on. I wasn't going to sneak them into a melange of turnips and potatoes, nor was I going to dissolve them into borscht. I took my beets straight up.

I peeled and quartered four beets, tossed them in oil with salt, pepper, and rosemary, and roasted at 400 degrees, stirring several times. How were they? Beety. If you like beets, you'd like them. If you don't, you wouldn't.

My favorite part of these beets were the parts that were the least beet-like. I liked the edges of the wedges, where the oil and salt created a slightly dried up, crisp skin.

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Recipe: Roasted Beets

2 (peeled) beets per person
olive oil, enough to coat
1/2 tbsp dried rosemary (more if fresh)
salt
black pepper

Grudgingly toss all ingredients together and roast at 400 degrees. Stir at least four times.

Eat, making a face.

Daikon Miso

I made this simple miso from the enormous daikon we got with the first installment of our Belmont Farm winter CSA. After two weeks in the fridge it was getting a little floppy, so I diced it and soaked it in water, at which point it hardened like the heart of a racist on November 5th.

One of the (few) criticisms I have with Bittman is that a truly minimalist recipe can't have oodles of ingredients. This miso, which was exotic, nourishing, and flavorful, had two.

Many miso recipes cram the soup with ingredients that unnecessarily complicate this elegant and simple dish. While you can make a meal out of it with noodles, egg, fishcakes or tofu, in the case of miso I think less is more.

For this version I simmered daikon hunks in water until they were whatever the Japanese word for al dente is. (Anyone?) Then I turned off the gas, made a miso slurry with a little of the water, reintroduced it, and slurped away.

The broth created by cooking the daikon created a particularly sweet and mineral base. Too much paste and you loose it, but that tastes good, too. If nothing else this dish is a celebration of texture.

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Recipe: Daikon Miso

Note: This could easily be ________ (edible noun) miso, too.

daikon radish (about 3/4 cup per bowl)
miso paste (to taste, about 1 tbsp)

Simmer the cubed daikon until mostly tender. Turn off the heat, create a smooth slurry with some of the daikon water and the miso paste. Add slurry to the pot, stir, and enjoy.

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Etymology for Karen:

daikon: from dai "large" + "kon" root (Japanese)

Review: The Ipanema Cafe

I'll cut to the chase: the Ipanema Cafe in Richmond, VA is great. Really that's all I need to say, but since you're still reading, I'll continue.

One of the reasons I like the I.C. so much is that nothing like it does, or could, exist in Boston. This isn't to rag on Beantown so much as it's to say that the Ipanema effortlessly reflects the cool of its home turf. There's a lot of talk these days about terrior, and not everything on the menu is locally grown, in fact I don't remember if any of it was, but the Ipanema has a sort of atmospheric connection to its soil, or asphalt.

And who doesn't love a menu like this?



It's unlikely that the food at the Ipanema will blow you away, but it will surprise and satisfy you, especially for the price. I had a hefty grilled tofu sandwich on their fantastic (homemade?) focaccia, slathered with black olive tapenade and served with sweet potatoes fries and a salad that you actually want to eat, all for about six bucks. It's enough to make a carnivore at least an omnivore.

The Ipanema is also incredibly vegetarian and vegan friendly with a few meat options for those who can't miss a fix. They have an ample beer and wine list, and local offerings do crop up here. Its only achilles heel is a weak tea selection, or rather a weak selection of tea, but what else is new?

Go there. You'll like it.

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Ipanema Cafe
917 W. Grace St. Richmond VA 23219
PH: (804) 213-0190

Tastes Like Chicken (of the Woods)

Continuing on the theme of foraging, last night I had this chicken of the woods mushroom, not to be confused with the hen of the woods or chicken of the sea. One of the "foolproof four," not to be confused with the "fatal five," this fungi is popular with entry level mycophiles for its easily identifiable characteristics (huge, yellow) and lack of poisonous look-alikes.

This was a gift to me from a more established forager, though I'm beginning to think I'd trust myself to identify it as well. Not quite sure if this was the kind of fungi that releases it's flavor best in water or fat, I split the difference and prepared it with a short simmer in salt water, then a sauté in olive oil and a splash of broth. The tender outer edges of the shelf were superb, the rest of it a little tough but still flavorful and fun to chew. In fact I can't think of another vegetable so meaty in it's mouth feel. After trimming the choice cuts, I was left with a fist sized hunk of shroom too tough to eat, though I'm betting it will make a killer stock.



I've taken a break from homemade stock after feeling anxious about fuel costs while watching the stove's gas flame burn and burn, but as a Vermonter friend of mine said, "When you got wood heat, you get your stock for free." This Sunday I plan to make a small fire in the new pit with deadwood from the forest behind the house, have a great stock, and roll around in the pile of money I'll be saving.

For more of the c.o.w. in the blogosphere, check out BirdChick's post here.

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Recipe: Sautéed Chicken of the Woods

Ingredients:

Chicken of the woods mushroom, aka "sulphur shelf," one handful per person
Sea Salt
Olive oil or butter

1. Forage for a chicken of the woods mushroom. DON'T pick something deadly.

2. Soak the mushroom in warm water to remove debris. If you aren't going to use it immediately, store somewhere damp and cool (it is a mushroom, after all).

3. Blanche in salted water for five minutes, remove, press out excess water and cut into strips.

4. Sauté in olive oil or butter. Goes well with eggs or in an omelette though it is excellent on its own.

Vegan Venison

Finally.

Okara "Soysage"

One way you can look at the last era of American food is a test of the effects of bounty. What happened when we, a thrifty, pioneering people, were suddenly given never ending supplies of food and water and garbage that magically disappeared when placed on the curb? The answer: all hell broke loose.

Just in the past six months, fuel costs have soared to record highs and the price of wheat has tripled. The global food crisis is no longer a matter of sympathy, as we can now empathize with all those peoples around the world who we've so thoroughly screwed in procuring the cheapest, most consequence free food in human history. Of course this has been happening for decades, but it wasn't until my access to affordable fuel and bread came into question that I realized how hard we've socked ourselves in the gut.

However, hope remains. I stayed over with some friends in Maine last night, and for breakfast they served up a hot batch of okara soy "sausage," aka soysage. This hearty, flavorful and highly nutritional meal was made entirely from the by-product of their new soy milk maker. They put in the beans, out comes soy milk, and from the remaining solids they're able to make a whole other food.

While soy is a relatively new crop to our shores, their thrifty use of it is nothing fresh. Not only has okara been a staple in many Asian countries for centuries, but their making it in the U.S. represents a return to the way we've always done things, here and everywhere, for all of history. In a way, it's a good thing that we're losing our magical ability to consume whatever we want, whenever we want it, turning up the air conditioner on those increasingly common record temperature days. God is finally taking away our toys, so we're going to have stop playing with our food.

Fortunately, unlike other revolutions (ie: the French one), the food revolution promises to be delicious. It was tough convincing racists to adopt Civil Rights, but it shouldn't be as hard to convince people to eat food that happens to taste a whole lot better.

Save us, soysage.

Comfort Food

You know you like to cook when you find yourself using a hotel ice bucket for mixing pancake batter.

My last hotel room, at a Comfort Inn in Vermont, featured a kitchenette. Apparently that's French for "kitchen that isn't actually functional." Still, my traveling companions were excited by the prospect of me making them breakfast the next day. Since one is vegan and the other vegetarian, and since they were going to pay me, I accepted the challenge

When starting from zero, you realize just how many little supplies you're used to having on hand at home, like salt, or white truffle oil. I solved this problem by shopping in the bulk section of a natural foods store, where I could buy as much or as little buckwheat flour and maple syrup as I wanted. I also pared down the pancake to a lumber-jack style of simplicity, minus the beaver tail fat (not vegan). The other major challenge is adapting to an unfamiliar mis-en-place. Hence the ice bucket.

I must say that, despite these hurdles, I turned out a perfectly good and entirely vegan pancake breakfast from scratch. Sure the sausage tasted like sawdust, but that's Tofurky's fault, not mine.