Actually, this is more like when three great things come together — my CSA, pho, and kimchi.

My CSA started up again three weeks ago, and it’s even better than last year. So many great veggies! This week alone I picked up turnips, radishes, snowpeas, kohlrabi, spinach, mesclun, green onions (only they were purple!), herbs, and…ummm…I think I’ve forgotten a few things.

For the first couple weeks I got a lot of bok choy, though. Enough that I couldn’t possibly eat it all before it went bad. There are only so many stir fries a girl can eat! So I started trying to figure out other ways of using bok choy, and that’s when I had brain storm #1 — kimchi. Could I make bok choy kimchi, rather than nappa cabbage kimchi?

Why yes, yes I could.

Having lost my original kimchi recipe (which was a little underwhelming anyway), I did some research and decided to make this one instead, which is from a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook. I replaced the cabbage with kimchi, the daikon with cabbage, and doubled the red pepper.

I also made one other substitution, and that’s brainstorm #2. My last kimchi was okay, but not as rich as I’d have liked. I want kimchi like I get at HoSu Bistro in Toronto — it’s rich and slightly fiery. It occurred to me that star anise might add a nice flavour, and considered adding a few stars to the soaking brine.  Then I realized I was missing an obvious resource. Just two days earlier I had made veggie pho from scratch, and still had some yummy, yummy pho broth — a heady mix of ginger, garlic, and star anise flavours. (This is my favourite broth recipe of all time, by the way; just page down to find it.) Why not use this as part of my brine?

So I did. I replaced two cups of the water used for the brine with pho (which I boiled first just in case, though I wasn’t sure this was necessary).

Five days of countertop fermentation later, I had kimchi ready for capping and refrigerating. Nom nom nom! It’s much better than the last recipe I tried, and the pho definitely adds a lovely complementary taste. The bok choy holds up well, and the turnips are actually quite nice this way. Next time I will slice them much thinner, though, and use all pho broth for the brine. I’ll also likely double the red pepper too — did I mention I like spicy kimchi? =)

So there ya go, Korean kimchi with a Vietnamese flair, using mostly local ingredients. Yum!

Wow, it’s been a quiet few weeks. It’s my own fault really — I managed to bruise the tendons in my wrist while canoe camping, and it’s only just getting solid enough to type with. Trust me — bruised tendons are a pain in more than just the hand.

Hopefully it’ll recover quickly, because with any luck August will be all about camping. I have tentative plans for no less than three trips of varying lengths, including a solo trip in just a couple weeks time. In anticipation I’ve started looking at lightweight vegan camp foods — the kind of thing you can carry for a week without throwing out your back, and still find tasty and filling after a long day.

There are lots of backpacker meals on the market, but not all that many good vegan ones. They also tend to be pricey. Last year I invested in a Harmony House Backpacker Kit, which is basically a collection of dried beans and vegetables. These proved useful for an extended multi-person trip — we could pretend we had a fridge full of veggies at our disposal, reduced to a dozen or so little packages of the dried stuff. For solo tripping, though, where I’m carrying everything myself, I decided this wasn’t the way to go. Premade meals are more efficient — I only want to carry what I need.

So back to those prepackaged meals. A couple years ago I tried some Mary Janes Farm meals for bike camping trips. They were decent, with the exception of their instant salsa, which was exceptional. (Sadly they seem to no longer seem to sell this.) The serving sizes are not huge, but you can buy individual servings (which is great for solo trippers). The pasta dishes they offer are veg but not vegan, but the couscous dishes are a major score — all are vegan except the Northwest Garden Couscous. Similarly we can satisfy ourselves with all their ‘ethnic ‘dishes (those seem everyday to me!) except the polenta, which puts falafel and hummus and suchlike on the menu. That’s by no means all, there are soups and rice dishes and more too. Compared to other instant meal manufacturers, MJF offers quite a lot of vegan options.

This week I discovered that Harvest Foodworks also offers quite a few vegan entrees — over a half dozen, with additional variations on things like their veggie burgers. (Though why on earth do they list beef burgers on their vegetarian entree page?!) Whether you can find them in a local store is another question. Mine only had one, the Cajun Beans & Rice. A taste test surprised me. I’m used to bland meals, but these were quite tasty (if a bit salty). It was good straight out of the pan, and downright satisfying after stirring in a small packet of hot sauce scavenged from a local fast food restaurant. My only complaint is that the smallest packages contain enough for two very hearty servings, which means solo trippers will need to carefully measure and split the contents to create individual servings. Also, even after allowing the full recommended cooking and sitting time, the rice and beans were more stew-like than I’d expected. They made a yummy stew, but didn’t soak up all the extra moisture for a good hour or more (the leftovers were perfect in the morning). All told I’d certainly give them another try, especially their more unique offerings like insta-bannock, as well as powdered shortening and apple sauce. (Nifty!)

Not all the options out there are good though. Scavenging for options last fall, I found Hothuck’s Bombay Curry. Admittedly it’s meant to be ‘enhanced’ by adding some veggies or rice, but it was still a huge disappointment — tasteless, with an unpleasant texture. I actually threw mine out.

So what am I planning to pack for upcoming trips? Probably none of the above, because last night I found an even better resource — Bulk Barn. This is a Canadian chain, concentrated mostly in Ontario and along the east coast. I’m sure there are equivalents elsewhere though. Basically it’s a bulk food store, with bins and bins of baking supplies and dried fruit and nuts and beans and the like. I gave myself five minutes there last night, and walked out with pea soup, thai soup, chili, tabbouleh, and mixed grain mix. All vegan, all of the just-add-water variety. For around $10 I emerged with around 10 individual servings — definitely the cheapest option. They may not be as well-rounded nutritionally as dedicated backpacker meals, but I suspect they’ll do very well indeed after adding some dried veggies and seasonings, and maybe instant rice or quinoa. Certainly the pea soup was tasty and filling. I just combined 1/2 cup of the mix with 3T quinoa flakes, 1/2T dried chives, 1T fake bacon bits, and 1/4 tsp smoked paprika.

Camp mix: Instant pea soup

Also on the list of things to try and come up with in the next couple weeks: Instant salsa, instant congee, good granola bars, and tasty ‘energy balls’ (a yummy raw treat). Life won’t be dull.

For some strange reason there’s a conspiracy of lentils this week. I certainly didn’t set out to make an all-lentil dinner, but that’s what I ended up with. How can you go wrong with lentils, though?

First there was lentil soup. Lemony lentil soup. I had a small heap of lemons in the crisper, and a shiny new bag of beluga lentils (which at 24% apparently boast the highest amount of protein of all the lentils). I figured these had to go together. The results? Zingy! Fabulously zingy. I won’t be getting scurvy anytime soon. Served with sweet potato fries, it was very hearty. This might be my new favourite soup; the recipe’s below.

And after dinner? Lentil cookies. As soon as I knew such a thing existed, I had to make them. And omg, yum! Fresh from the oven they were light and crispy on the outside, and full of cranberry-cherry tastiness. Instant love. The original recipe is easily veganized (sub Earth Balance for butter, egg replacer for the egg). For extra flavour I simmered my lentils in light coconut milk with a goodly pinch of nutmeg and maybe a half teaspoon of mace. (Vanilla rice milk would probably be equally good.) I also toasted my oats in the toaster oven while doing other things. (325F, stirred twice, maybe 6 minutes?) For some reason my cookies took an extra couple minutes to bake, but that might just be an oven variation. Regardless, these are fabulous, particularly when toasted for a few minutes to crisp them up. I suspect they’ll make my top-3 list of cookies long before I finish eating them all. Besides, they have protein and fruit in them, so they’re healthy, right?

Lemony lentil soup

• oil
• 1 cup beluga lentils
• 1 large red onion, chopped small
• 1 large carrot, diced
• 1/2 large yam, diced (mine was massive, probably equal to one normal sized yam)
• 3 cloves garlic
• 3 bay leaves
• 4 to 5 cups water (depending on how thin or thick you like your soup)
• 2 1/2 cubes bouillon, to taste*
• 3/4 to 1 cup fresh lemon juice (I used three lemons, and had just under a cup)
• 2 T dill (dry)
• 3 cups kale, destemmed and chopped small-ish
• white pepper, freshly ground, to taste

* Don’t add salt (including in bouillon cubes) until the lentils are done or it may interfere with their cooking, making them crunchy and nasty instead of soft and tasty.

How to:

1. Start onions and garlic in a large pot — sautee in a little oil until they start to soften.
2. Add the carrot and yam, continue until they’re also starting to soften.
3. Add the dill, rubbing to bring out the flavour more. Stir well.
4. Pick over the lentils for stones or twigs, then rinse well in a sieve. Add to the pot.
5. Stir for a couple minutes, then add the water and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then cover and lower to a simmer. Let simmer for 30 to 45 minutes, or until the lentils are soft.
6. Add the bouillon cubes, lemon juice, and a healthy dose of freshly ground white pepper.
7. Using an immersion blender, blend for ten or fifteen seconds. Stir well, leave for 5 minutes or so to let flavours mingle and get to know each other.
8. Add the kale, cover, leave for another 10 minutes, or until the kale is just wilted but still bright green. Taste, and amend seasonings as necessary.
9. Serve & enjoy!

In the beginning, there was the snowstorm. We’ve had 37cm of snow since yesterday evening, and the whole world is white. I did manage to get as far as the market, though, and staggered home looking like a vegetable-laden snowman. Errr, snowwoman.

Cold weather calls for hot soup. Well, hot chocolate, then hot soup. I decided to fight the chill with Isa’s Ancho Lentil Soup, because it sounded tasty and I had some leftover pineapple kicking around for once (and let’s be honest, I was eager to try out the new cast iron grilling pan I found during my rambles).

Thus began a bit of an adventure. See, I had no ancho chilies with which to make the spice mixture. Nor, for that matter, a seranno pepper. I did have chipotle peppers, though, and what I thought looked like a hungarian pepper, and even a bag of evil-looking dried red chili peppers. And if worst came to worst, I had a box of White Death (aka White Chilli Powder, which is actually made from dried green chillies — it’s spicy as all hell). Surely some of these would serve as workable substitutes?

To be safe, I did some research, and thus became Edumicated about hot peppers, their chemistry, and the Scoville heat scale. Aha, a non-subjective means of comparing different hot peppers! Excellent! Comparing Wikipedia’s chart with a variety of other charts, I deduced that my chipotles were roughly twice as spicy as the ancho chillies called for in the recipe. Okay, thought I, I’ll just use one instead of two, and the spice levels will balance out. Right? And my hungarian pepper promised to be roughly equal in spiciness to a seranno, so that left me all set for soupy goodness.

Oh, I was so very, very wrong.

I made my spice mixture (homemade chili powder, yum!) and started my soup. I added a few extra veggies, because why not? Eventually I took a taste, and *poof!*, my taste buds combusted.

*gasp gasp wheeze* Egads, the spice! And I hadn’t even added the hungarian pepper yet! I can’t explain it, but my single tiny chipotle pepper was a veritable dynamo of fiery spice. Too much spice.

Thus began education effort #2: How to neutralize spiciness in an over-spiced dish. *sigh* But hey, the internet is my friend, and I discovered some good tips:

• Add honey. Doing so definitely took an edge off the heat without actually adding any sweetness.
• Increase the volume of ingredients. Add ‘neutral’ ingredients to mitigate the spice. Hmmm. Sadly I needed to thicken my soup, and most of the ‘neutral’ ingredients these sites mentioned were dairy products. Still, I had some cooked rice kicking around, and that struck me as a potential solution. I pureed it with some water and soup, added the mixture, and the spice level dropped a few notches.
• Add a potato. Peel it, cut it in half, and drop it in. Remove it once it’s cooked. I tried it, and the potato absorbed a small amount of the spiciness.
• Add lemon juice. This I didn’t do, because the original recipe called for adding lime juice at the very end, and I figured that would serve.

The resulting soup? Still spicy, but finally edibly spicy. Even more so once I added the lime juice the recipe called for — it added a lovely burst of flavour, and took the spice down one last notch. Ha!

Then came the grilling of the pineapple, which was easily the best part. Fun, pretty, and tasty. Et voila, a very unusual twist on lentil soup — all yummy, spicy, tropical flavours.

I think I’d try it again, but hopefully with fewer spice issues. And possibly with a bit of coconut milk…mmmmm…

The version I made:

• spices:
  1 T cumin seeds
  1 T coriander seeds
  1 dried chipotle pepper, chopped finely
• 1/2 T mexican chili powder
• oil
• large onion, diced
• 1 sweet potato, diced
• 1 large carrot, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• handful of small dried chinese mushrooms
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 cans lentils, well rinsed
• 3/4 cup chickpeas, mashed
• 7 to 8 cups vegetable broth
• 3+ T fresh lime juice (to taste)
• pineapple rings (one for each dish)
• [optional!]
  ~2 cups cooked rice
  honey

Made almost exactly as in the original recipe…

1. Toast the spices over low-medium heat, stirring often, 3 to 5 minutes. Grind in a coffee grinder/food processor.
2. Saute the onions in oil until they start to soften. Add the garlic, sweet potato, and carrots. Cook for a couple minutes more.
3. Add the spices and stir. Add the bay leaves, mushrooms, lentils, chickpeas, and water.
4. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and let simmer for half an hour, stirring occasionally.
5. Taste the soup. If it’s too spicy, try adding honey a bit at a time to take the edge off. If it’s still too spicy, puree rice with some of the soup stock and then add it to the soup. (If the soup becomes too thick, add a bit of water to thin it.) Adjust seasonings to taste.
6. When the soup’s almost ready, heat up your grill pan on high heat or preheat a broiler. Lightly oil the grill pan and grill pineapple slices on each side until grill lines appear.
7. Add the lime juice to the soup, and stir. Adjust seasonings if necessary. Remove bay leaves and mushrooms, puree some of the soup if you want it thicker.
8. Serve each bowl topped with a grilled pineapple ring.

I have a confession to make: I don’t really like kale very much.

*gasp*

I know, I know. Somehow this makes me feel like a Bad Vegan. If I was ‘real,’ if I was ’serious,’ then surely I’d like the stuff, right? All my hardcore vegan friends seem to love it; they eat it raw or just plain steamed. I’ve tried to like it that way, but no such luck. Kale and I just didn’t seem made for each other.

Tonight, I changed my mind. This recipe piqued my interest, because it uses arame — a type of seaweed that’s stringy, with a nutty taste. I luuuuuurv arame. There’s also garlic and ginger, and what’s not to like there? So tonight I wandered into the kitchen, eyed my kale somewhat dubiously, and had at it.

My version turned out both similar to and different from the original recipe, because I wanted a single portion with a lot more veggies. And hey, it also produced Surprise Soup! (It was a suprise because I didn’t plan to make any.) The results were tasty. Hear that? I dubbed kale tasty. Ha! Success! I are teh hardcore vegan now!

Warm kale-seaweed salad

1/2 T minced garlic (1 clove)
1/2 T minced ginger
1/2 T sesame oil
? garlic oil
1/2 to 1 T Braggs (start light, add more if it needs it)
1 1/2 cups kale, destemmed and chopped small
1/4 to 1/2 cup arame (it’s hard to measure, given its wiriness)
2 baby carrots, sliced into very fine matchsticks
1/4 small red pepper, also julienned
half dozen dried chinese mushrooms, destemmed
hot water (1 to 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cube of vegetable bouillon

[I was going to add a 1/4 tsp of chili paste, but I completely forgot.]

Boil your water, pour into a small mixing bowl, and dissolve the bouillon cube. Add the arame and chinese mushrooms, let rehydrate for around 15 minutes while you clean and prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Put a little garlic oil in a frying pan and heat up over medium heat. Add the kale and the Braggs, toss to coat, then cover and reduce to minimum heat. Leave for 5 minutes or so.

When the kale’s almost ready, fish out your mushrooms and slice them into thin strips. Also fish out your arame, squeezing most of the moisture out. (Save the soaking broth for surprise soup!)

Add the arame, mushrooms, carrots, red pepper, garlic, and ginger. Put the lid back on, and leave it for a minute.

Remove the lid, stir well for another minute while any remaining moisture evaporates.

Serve and enjoy!

[I topped mine with the very last tiny bit of my fake tuna, cut into short strips. 'Twas very very good.]

Surprise soup

I didn’t intend to make soup, but when I tasted the stock I’d used for soaking the arame and mushrooms, I decided it was too tasty to waste. Et voila, glorified miso soup…

• Broth from above (~ 3/4 cup when done)
• 1 to 1 1/2 tsp miso paste
• green parts from one green onion, sliced into itty bitty rounds

Reheat the broth, then slowly mix in the miso paste (so that it doesn’t form lumps). Top with green onions, and serve.

Thoughts: If I made this again, I think I’d add a couple extra dried mushrooms when preparing the salad, and then slice those into the soup for a nice addition. A few little cubes of tofu would add a bit of protein and make this more like restaurant miso soup, but I don’t think they’re really necessary.