« December 2008 | Main | February 2009 »
The history of growing food at the White House. Example: "1814: A minor British setback"
What to eat: Dirt.
What not to eat: Big blob of fat with bacteria.
Evidence of a CAFO pork superbug. Isn't it nice to have an administration that will investigate things like this?
Finally, a scientific explanation of the "beer goggles" effect:
Are hot liquids really good for a cold? (Yes; try green tea.)
And one more reason to drink green tea, if you're trying to lose abdominal fat.
Disappearing Quinoa Salad
Yesterday I made a quinoa salad for a meeting, which turned out pretty well. In fact, we ate so much of it that by the time I got it home there was little left to photograph. So what you see are the sad remains, the last bits of a filling salad that is surprisingly healthy.
Quinoa is high in protein, and if you're worried about complete proteins (and there's really no reason to worry about that, says the originator of the concept, Francis Moore Lappé) all eight essential amino acids are present in quinoa. And this salad includes soybeans, called edamame, so is particularly high in complete protein. For extra yumm, I've included cherries and orange juice and toasted pecans.
But feel free to experiment. I've offered suggestions for alternatives below, and since I wrote this down for the other people at the meeting, I've also included directions for cooking quinoa and edamame.
If I make it again, I'll take another photo, this time before it disappears.
Not the best photo--but trust me, this tofu quiche was delicious.
Kale keeps finding itself onto my dinner plate. Maybe it's because I love its taste, or maybe because it's so healthy. Or maybe because it's in season this time of year. Winter is a perfect time to add kale to your dinner plate, too.
Kale is one of the sweetest members of the brassica family, especially when combined with red onions, which bring out the sweetness in anything they're cooked with. And this walnut crust, seasoned with herbs, was the perfect base for the tofu filling.
I served the quiche with a side of rocket and blanched asparagus, and some canned pears I had in the cupboard. Quite a filling meal.
Keep reading to see how easy it is to make this egg-less quiche. If you want, you can make the walnut and herb crust ahead of time and refrigerate it until you need it.
Continue reading "Tofu Quiche with Kale and Red Onion and Walnut Crust" »
If you're half frozen, make Kale and White Bean Soup, quick!
During our recent cold snap, I spent a day out in the cold, and after coming home, I thought I'd never be warm again. So of course I made soup. I opened the fridge, saw a bag of kale (kale comes pre-chopped, in bags here) and went from there. Altogether, it took about a half hour to get on the table, and was a filling meal—just what I needed, too.
Now that the U.S. is having a cold snap, I figured I'd download my photos and post a recipe.
But don't do like I did, staying out in the freezing temperatures all day. My fingers were so cold I'm surprised they didn't fall off. Or get chopped off while I chopped veggies with numb fingertips!
Keep reading for directions.
Saf Restaurant, on Curtain Road in Shoreditch
"London's first and finest botanically-focused menu." That's the boast of Saf Restaurant, an all-vegan and half raw restaurant in Shoreditch. No diary, no egg, and no meat is found on the menu, and roughly half the dishes have not been heated above 48 degrees C. There's still plenty to eat for raw-phobes like me, however—and it's the best vegan food I've had in a restaurant in a long time. (Poor France. They just can't figure out why people would prefer to eat plants, and it shows.)
Saf opened last spring, to rave reviews. I learned about it when a review was featured in one of my non-veg cooking magazines. Regular readers will know I like to complain about the lack of vegan food here, both in restaurants and in supermarkets. In fact, my favourite way to describe my experience living here is that it's easy to be a vegetarian, difficult to be vegan. The Brits love their cheese and eggs.
But I may have to eat my words, so to speak. I've now been to two—yes, two—all-vegan restaurants in the last couple of months. Watch out, New York, L.A., and Seattle—you may have to bow to London when it comes to vegan eats. And Paris will just have to sit out this competition. Maybe you could send your chefs across the Channel to learn a thing or two from the chef at Saf—referred to in one article as the "Gordon Ramsay of raw food".
Before I rave about the food, I want to mention the service. Our servers, who had us all to themselves for the first half hour of our meal, were very helpful, especially in trying to decode the ingredients when I asked about the sauce served with the dumplings. I couldn't figure out the source of the deliciousness, so the server asked the chef—turned out it was balsamic vinegar that gave it its sweet tang. I wanted to drink it, it was that good. Here I go, already raving about the food...ohh la la! Yes, definitely send all the French chefs here at once. All of them. The servers too; they could also learn a few lessons from the Saf wait staff.
We started with Winter Dumplings, filled with "carmelised onion, woodear mushrooms, chinese cabbage, tofu, and carrot". The server also mentioned stinging nettles, which I've been dying to try. I think it may have been in the green splash of sauce that I mopped up with my finger after I finished the dumplings. From now on I'll definitely give those prickly botanicals more respect. As I mentioned, the dipping sauce was good enough to drink. After seeing the extensive cocktail menu at Saf, I suggest they include it with a glug of alcohol and call it a mixed drink. Unfortunately, the server told me they were thinking about changing the mixture to make it less sweet—apparently it changes from day to day, according to the chef's whim.
On to the next course: my daughter ordered a ciabatta sandwich, which was slathered with cashew cream cheese and contained capers, cucumbers, rocket, and caramelized onions between two slices of ciabatta bread. Alongside was a quinoa salad. The bites she allowed me to have were scrumptious—in fact, for my next cooking project, I'm going to try to decode the quinoa salad, and maybe try my hand at cashew cheese. If it's this good, it will definitely be worth whatever effort is involved.
For my main, I ordered the pasta special of the day: potato and wild mushroom ravioli, with an eggplant tomato sauce with horseradish and peppers. The ravioli were delicious and filling—and cooked, unlike the raw beet ravioli which are on the menu. I didn't taste the horseradish, which was grated over the top like parmesan cheese. My next choice would have been the "Wild Mushroom Farinata: chick pea crepe with artichoke, mushrooms,roasted tomato and tarragon aioli". I've never had a farinata before—and now I'm convinced my life will not be full until I've tried it.
Yes, there's definitely going to be another trip to Saf in my future. We barely put a dent in the dessert menu, ordering the Pumpkin Pie to share, served with nutmeg cream, candied pecans and espresso syrup. This was the only genuinely raw item we ordered, sort of inadvertently—perhaps I'm not such a raw food hater after all, because it certainly tasted as good as any pumpkin pie I've had.
Saf is easy to find, if you can find the Old Street tube station. From the station, turn left and walk east on Old Street until you come to Curtain Road. Turn right, and the restaurant is just on the left. Upon leaving, toward the south we could see an unmistakable—and raw—landmark: The Gherkin, aka the Swiss Re building.
See? Not only does London now have boasting rights to the best vegan restaurant, they also have buildings named after vegan delicacies.
Paris, the ball's in your court. Let's see you top Saf.
Sushi night
Daughter Number Two and I have had a lot of fun cooking this last week. The other night we made sushi, fish-free of course.
Neither of us like avocados, so we used blanched asparagus instead. And very thinly cut carrots, cucumber and Japanese-style silken tofu (Mori-Nu brand, sold everywhere in aseptic boxes).
Served with already-prepared wasabi paste, these rolls of sushi (we made a lot more than are pictured) were gobbled up—literally. When eating sushi, it's best to put the whole thing in your mouth after dipping it into a soy sauce (or tamari) and wasabi solution. Then sit back and wait for the roller coaster ride that is wasabi.
Sushi is relatively easy to make, if you have all the proper ingredients and a sushi mat.
Cook sushi rice according to directions—I used 1 1/4 cup rice with 1 1/2 cups water, brought to a boil and then simmered like regular rice. This made enough for 4 or 5 nori sheets. (You'll want to use actual sushi rice, or at least a sticky short grain white rice. Don't use basmati, or brown rice.)
Mix the cooked rice with 2 teaspoons salt, 2 tablespoons rice vinegar and 1 tablespoon Japanese mirin —a sweet cooking wine. Add 2 teaspoons of sugar if you wish.
Place a nori sheet on the mat, and cover HALF the nori sheet with a 1/2 inch layer of rice, all the way to the edges. Place vegetables down the center of the rice, a few stalks of whatever you wish to include. (We sliced the fat asparagus stalks into thinner pieces.) Vegan cream cheese (we use Tofutti's Better than Cream Cheese) is a nice way to stick the vegetables together, and cilantro and spinach are also good additions.
Roll up the sushi by firmly grasping the nori and the mat, and lapping it over the vegetables. You'll have overlapping nori to seal to the edge. (Use a little water and rice vinegar to seal the edges.)
Repeat until you run out of rice or nori sheets. Wet a sharp knife with water and slice through the rolls, turning the rolls a quarter turn each time if necessary to ensure the rolls don't get unevenly squished.
Set the pieces of sushi on a plate, and in a small bowl, pour a tablespoon or two of soy sauce or tamari. Squeeze wasabi paste into the soy sauce and mix it around.
Dip the pieces into the mixture and prepare yourself for the horseradish kick: "Oh oh oh ohohohOHOHOHoh. Okay!"
No, that has not been photoshopped
Many Food News-worthy items have come to my attention, but none wackier than Cajun Squirrel Crisps, brought to you by Walkers. It's all about a new flavour competition they're sponsoring. Another idea, a fish-and-chip flavoured crisp, came from a 20-year vegetarian, Jane Hallam, a 45-year-old social worker from Sheffield. You can go here to vote for your favourite. I'm voting for Onion Bhaji.
In other news, wacky and not:
Ben and Jerry's has announced an Obama ice cream, just in time for the inauguration. Yes, Pecan is supposed to rhyme with the O-slogan Yes We Can, but if you pronounce "pecan" correctly, it just sounds odd. Unless you go around saying Yes We Cahn, so maybe this is geared for the British.
The LA Times has a pretty good article on pasta. Read it, but first put a big pot of water on to boil.
In health news, running around like squirrels on treadmills will not help you lose weight. You have to eat right. Which probably isn't welcome news to Walker's Crisps fans.
I loved this English translation of an Indian article on Speculoos: "Belgians love bread new: purée speculaas"
The Economist says there's a new chile, hotter than the habanero, and it's only available at Tesco, where they refuse to sell it to children. I call bullshit. I shop at Tesco all the time and I've never seen it. Plus the till workers are so harried I doubt they care if a twelve-year-old wants a pepper. But read the article anyway; there's some interesting analysis there on how our tastes are getting hotter.
Johann Hari says bananas may no longer exist in 20 years, at least not in their present form. It sounds a little alarmist to me, especially as the fungus killing banana trees has been around for about a hundred years, but who knows? I'll eat more now just to make up for the future.
The former "superfood extraordinaire" pomegranate has sold out, and is now on the menu at Jack-in-the-Box. I guess next they'll be serving the Bono Burger.
A curry your loved ones will love.
I love to experiment with Indian food, especially when I have an appreciative audience. The other night I wanted to make something special for Daughter Number One, plus I had a lot of veg in the bin to use up. So I made this curry, adapted from a Gujarati recipe for undihiyo. Normally, undihiyo is served with fenugreek dumplings (muthiya), but I was fresh out of fenugreek leaves. So I saved myself the bother, and served this with brown basmati rice, naan bread, and samosas.
I don't pretend it's authentic, but I do claim it's delicious.
Daughter Number One thought so too, especially since it was free from the dreaded onions. If you have an Indian food lover or an onion hater at your table, you might find this curry just the trick.
Note: Don't be alarmed by the long list of ingredients. The masala takes a few minutes to prepare, and the vegetables for the stew are chopped in large chunks, and then it's simply a matter of letting the curry do its thing.
For directions, peek below.
Speculaas cookies, like windmill cookies minus the windmills.
If last fall was my Porcini Period, this winter is definitely my Speculaas Season. After buying 7 jars of Speculoos paste in Belgium, and a large package of the Belgian biscuits, I talked my Dutch friend into procuring me some special speculaas spices. She also gave me a couple recipes, which I was easily able to adapt to suit my purposes.
Speculaas cookies are like the windmill cookies that are available almost everywhere. Crisp and spicy, they're named "speculaas" from the Latin word for mirror, because they mirror the shape of the wooden moulds used to form them. I didn't have the moulds, but I'll be sure to look for them before next Christmas, when I intend to bake these in time for St Nicholas Eve (December 5).
If you don't have a Dutch friend, you can mix the spices yourself. I have approximated the blend below. If you can find the moulds or a cookie stamp, all the better. I simply formed the cookies into rectangular logs and baked them like that. You may also want to sprinkle flakes of almonds over the top. You may have seen so-called windmill cookies prepared like that, but I'm more of a purist when it comes to speculaas.
The Belgian biscuits, called Speculoos, are slightly different from the Dutch version. They're carmelized, which gives them a unique taste. Try to find them if you can. Otherwise, I'm not going to get into the Dutch/Belgian differences when it comes to biscuits. Wars have begun over less.
Meanwhile, I think I'll go have another one. Just looking at that photo makes me want to dunk one in my tea.
Recent Comments