The Lustful Vegan

Know what I never look at in bookstores? Cooking magazines. At best there are maybe two veg-focused magazines on display, and they rarely excite me. The others…the others are full of things I don’t eat, so why bother?

Or so I thought. Um. I’m an idiot. Yes they’re full of things I don’t eat, but I kinda get a kick out of ‘veganizing’ recipes, so why should that prove an obstacle? And besides, they’re not just full of things I don’t eat…they’re also full of information. *swoon*

I like learning. Nah, I love learning, and cooking is one area where I certainly have a lot to learn. Imagine my delight, then, when yesterday for the first time in many ages I wandered into my local bookstore and checked out the cooking mags. I left with two. The one that got me all excited? Cook’s Illustrated. If you haven’t seen it before, it’s kind of a cross between a normal cooking magazine and Consumer Reports. The people who create it run a test kitchen, and they take a methodical, scientific approach to cooking. They tackle culinary questions like “what’s the best way to cook baby spinach” or “what’s the best chocolate cake recipe,” and try every variation imaginable until they find the answers. (It’s almost exhausting to read the descriptions of their labours.) Then they publish the results, complete with recipes. And yes, a lot of those results apply to vegan cookery just as much as to non-vegan cookery.

A five minute read-through of my copy felt like a three-hour cooking lesson, minus dinner at the end. But lunch…lunch I could do. The best way to learn is to apply lessons while they’re still fresh, right? And I can see myself trying and adapting a lot of the things in this issue.

But back to lunch. There was an article on making the best oven fries, and there were a couple of articles involving baked chicken. I went with those, because yum, fries! And also because I’ve tried making crispy faux chicken a few times in the past few months and haven’t been happy with any of the results — the coating always turns out a bit soggy, and I don’t care how tasty it is — soggy just isn’t acceptable.

Here’s the gist of the oven fries article: For the absolute best results, [1] Cut russet potatoes into wedges, [2] soak the wedges in hot water for 10 minutes and then drain and dry them, [3] in a baking pan season 4T of oil with salt and pepper, [4] spread potatoes evenly, [5] bake covered tightly with foil at 475F for 5 minutes, [6] remove the foil and continue baking 20 to 30 minutes, turning once.

Honestly? I burned mine. My bad — I cut my potato into too many wedges, so that they were too thin and cooked super-fast. Also my baking sheet is thin and crappy and doesn’t heat evenly, so that some fries did okay while others burned. C’est la vie. (Besides, I have thirteen more potatoes to play with!) The soaking and steaming did create a noticably better texture than I’ve managed with my usual oven fries recipe though; there were no ‘hollow’ fries. And seasoning the oil rather than the cut potatoes? Sheer genius. I was skeptical, but it worked perfectly.

Now for the chik’n. I used a PC meatless chik’n breast. It occurred to me that maybe past attempts hadn’t done as well because I hadn’t thawed the faux meat fully before prepping the meal, so this time I let the cut thaw overnight and made sure it was dry to the touch before starting. I think fake meats tend to hold more moisture than real meat, which may add to the challenge of creating a crispy coat. Anyway, I sliced mine in half to create two thinner cutlets, and then I breaded them. To do this I prepared one flax egg (1 T ground flax whisked into 1/4 cup hot water), and dipped both sides of each cutlet. Then I pressed these into panko (japanese breadcrumbs) seasoned with 1 T of nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper. The two tricks I picked up from Cook’s Illustrated were these: [1] Cook the chik’n on a rack set over a baking pan, and [2] spray the breaded cutlets lightly with oil before baking.

The results? Best breaded chik’n so far — crispy and lightly browned. The rack made a big difference in ensuring that both sides crisped up. My only excuse for not thinking this up myself is that my normal baking pans don’t have racks. Fortunately my housemate pointed out that my wee toaster oven pan does have such an insert, so I used that and it worked perfectly. I did forget two things while making these — I didn’t dredge the cutlets with flour before breading them, and I didn’t spray the baking rack. Neither proved major issues, and the finished product tasted wonderful topped with a raw tomato sauce (half a tomato, diced; a few basil leaves, minced; one garlic clove and one teaspoon capers, squeezed through a garlic press; salt and pepper to taste).

As lunches go, yum. As learning experiences go, likewise yum. And I still have a bunch more recipes and techniques eyemarked for trying. Is it dinner time yet?

It’s 26C outside at the moment, sunny, with just a hint of a breeze. In other words, nigh perfect weather. I may need to skive off work an hour early and go enjoy it. There’s some vanilla frozen soy yogurt calling my name, and blueberries to go on top.

In the meantime, my garden is already enjoying the sun. There’s not much to see so far — just a single tray of ‘dirt’ on a trolley we can wheel outside when it’s nice like today. And actually it’s full of coco coir, not dirt. Coco coir is a planting medium made from coconut husks — a renewable resource, woohoo, without the environmentally nasty pricetag of more traditional peat moss. It’s also just plain nifty, because it comes in a small-ish block (6×4x4″), but puffs out to fill a 10×20″ tray when you add water. Poof! Instant garden!

So as I was saying, I have just one of these trays started so far, currently occupied by 150 pre-sprouted spinach seeds. My goal is to grow baby spinach, so these seeds are planted fairly close together. They take up the gridded area of the planter. In a couple weeks I’ll fill half of the remaining area, and the last third will go in two weeks after that. I suspect it won’t produce enough for our needs, but that’s okay, I’ll just start another tray.

We’ve decided that all our balcony and indoor gardening projects for this summer will be experiments, to see what we can and can’t grow in containers, to see what works for us as a composting system, and to see what we actually use. The nice thing about that approach is that it’s guaranteed to succeed, because what we’re after is information. Even if something doesn’t grow, we still learn something. Though I admit, I’d rather learn something and get tasty vegetables too — I’m just greedy that way.

That frozen soy yogurt is calling again. Time for some sun.

Pea soup is proof that I’ve grown up. As a kid I hated the stuff — it tasted just awful to me. (Well, except for canned Habitant pea soup, which was really nothing more than lard and salt. ***shudder***) Fortunately my taste buds matured along with the rest of me, and now it’s a Good Thing. Especially since it’s easy to make in a slow cooker, and I love my slow cooker. It asks for virtually no attention from me while it does its thing, and fills the house with mouth-watering smells. Though I eventually learned not to put things on to cook late at night — those mouth-watering smells literally woke me up in the wee hours, starving!

The secret to this recipe is the broth. Soaking sundried tomatoes and smoked chipotle peppers together with the bouillon creates a wonderfully rich liquid. (Can you say ‘umami‘?) I don’t find much heat from the peppers either, as long as you don’t break them up.

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It’s a wet, grey day outside, and rather cool and dark inside. It might seem bleak if it weren’t harvest day. Yep, today my wee little sprouts became food, and their crisp greenness offered a nice reminder that spring’s lying just beneath that melting snow out there.

The mung beans went into cilantro tabbouleh. Even though I’ve been nibbling those for days and throwing some in everything I’ve cooked, I still had a good two loose cups for the salad. Not bad considering I started with just two tablespoons of seed! They turned out a little bitter, apparently because I didn’t hide them away in the dark while they were sprouting. That’s okay, though — I still found them tasty, and the flavour went well with the salad, so it all worked out well.

The broccoli sprouts I used as a garnish. They’re light and fluffy compared to the mung sprouts, and taste like, well, little fiery broccoli bursts. Go figure. I didn’t touch them until today, and what you see in the photos is the entire ‘crop’ — a single spoonful! From an entire seed pack! (I’m not sure how much the packet contained, but definitely less than 2 T.) Must see if I can find a bulk source of seed so that I can sprout more, because otherwise I just won’t be able to grow enough.

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Today was a blast. I got up too early (any morning hour is too early on a weekend), grabbed a quick shower, and headed downtown to the Kitchener market to meet K. We found each other, and then spent a pleasant hour or so wandering around, restocking on fruits and veggies. Eventually we headed to her place to drop off our things and say hi to their adorable dog Sammy, and then it was off around the corner for our raw food workshop.

The workshop was two hours of numminess, with a side helping of good company. We were joined by around eight others, plus our instructor. She started us off with edamame hummous dip, which was quite fresh tasting. Then we each received a plate of several samples:

Clockwise from the bottom, you’re looking at bean-free refried beans, mango salsa, dairy-free sour cream, corn tortillas, and guacamole.

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My sprouts are sprouting, hurray!

The mung beans have actually been very sprouty for a while — I’ve been nibbling them already, and threw a good half cup into last night’s vegan Kung Pao Chik’n. The broccoli sprouts were proving more reticent, but today they seemed to hit critical mass and I can really see them bursting out of their seeds. Very cool.

On the sprouters themselves, I can see why stacked multi-tiered sprouters are popular. They let you sprout different kinds of seeds simultaneously, and/or stagger your sprouting to get a more regular ‘crop.’ With my two sprouters I can’t start any new seeds until the current ones are ready. Or until I get more mason jars.

The one specially-made sprouter I’m using is a “Tony Hornick’s sprouter.” It’s basically a metal sieve that sits on top of a plastic dish, with a plastic dome to go overtop. You put your seeds into the sieve, and put water in the dish below. Rinse the seeds/sprouts twice daily, and in a few days you get sprouts. This works well for big seeds like my mungs, but the sieve would never work for the broccoli — the seeds are too small and would fall through. Also, a couple spots on the sieve are already starting to rust from the constant moisture! So while I was originally impressed by its ease of use, I don’t think it’ll be an ideal solution in the long run.

At long last, I took a shot at making a beet-mango salsa. It’s pretty tasty for a first try. My only regret is that I used half my mango to make apple-mango crisp last night, so I only made about half as much salsa as I’d actually like to eat.

Regarding the beets — I roasted those rather than boiling or steaming them, in order to bring out their sweetness and preserve their colour. Their skins proved thin and tender enough that I didn’t even bother peeling them.

Beet-mango salsa

• 1/2 mango, chopped smallish (~3/4 cup)
• 2 small roasted beets, cooled to room temperature and chopped similarly smallish (~1 cup)
• 2 green onions, sliced
• 1 small lime, juiced
• 2 T fresh coriander, minced
• 1 tsp brown sugar [optional; you may not need this if your beets and/or mango are particularly sweet]

How to:

1. Chop up the mango, beets, and green onions, then toss together in a glass bowl.
2. Add the coriander and lime juice, toss again.
3. Taste. Add sugar if necessary.
4. Let sit for a little while to let flavours blend, then eat!

Growing up, one of the first signs of spring was always the arrival of our seed catalogs. We’d have snow on the ground, but summer in our daydreams as we covered our fingers in newsprint, thumbing the pages, planning the garden. I didn’t realize how much I missed that until today, when I wandered through the cozy little garden section of our local hardware store. It’s an old-fashioned kinda place, as much a seed store as a hardware store. Wandering the aisles of seed packets made me miss the old excitement of garden planning.

Of course, the whole reason I was there was because I was garden planning. Sort of. Kinda. This winter a lot of factors came together and my housemate and I found ourselves trying to eat more vegetables, more local vegetables, and more organic vegetables. But winter being winter, our options were a bit limited. By some miracle our little indoor cherry tomato plant kept producing all season, but one or two wee tomatoes a week didn’t sate us, and a steadier supply meant buying tomatoes from Mexico or California. Ditto for peppers, and even organic spinach. I think we’ve done pretty well, making some compromises, some dietary changes. But still…I got to dreaming. What if we could have a small, steady supply of fresh greens next winter? Tomatoes might be too much to hope for…but spinach? Basil? Salad greens?

Yeah, I started dreaming of gardening without a garden. Condo gardening. Hydroponics.

I think I’m crazy. It’s probably just a bad case of spring fever. And yet…

The “and yet” was what lured me into the garden area earlier today. I figured I’d try a very small scale experiment, the absolute easiest and cheapest way of dipping my toes in the water — sprouting. So I picked up some mung beans and broccoli seeds (and learned from the helpful Garden Guy to look for “untreated” seeds when sprouting). These promptly went into one premade sprouter (I’ll take a picture later) and one homemade sprouter (like this, but using cheesecloth and an elastic band instead of a premade mesh strainer). In three days I should have sprouts, a veritable garden in a bottle.

I know I have at least 72 hours to wait, but I’ve turned into a five year old. I swear I’ve poked at the sprouts every hour. Sprouted yet? Now? Now? Now? Now?…

I’m in a bit of a work crunch, so photos and food thoughts are backing up. I’ll get to them eventually (I hope).

Today I stole a bit of time to answer a nagging question though. My housemate and I keep debating “eat local” versus “eat organic” in our food choices. Neither of us wants food covered in pesticides, but we also question the environmental cost of eating food that’s travelled more than both of us put together. So how can we balance environmental concerns with health concerns?

The answer I came up with is this [PDF] — a list of the top twelve ‘cleanest’ and ‘dirtiest’ fruits and vegetables. (You can also see the full list of 45 rated items here.) I figure I’ll use these lists as decision makers. Anything on the ‘dirty’ list I’ll buy organic, always, even if that means well-travelled produce. Anything on the ‘clean’ list will be a local purchase whenever possible. (In truth I may do a bit more research and make my own dirty dozen list, specific to the fruits and veggies we buy most often.)

It’s not a perfect solution. Ideally everything we buy would be both local and organic. But when it’s a case of either/or, at least now I have a way of choosing.

…and cabbage is the new kale.

By which I mean, simply, that cabbage is my new challenge. Kale now officially has a thumbs-up from me, as I can list three ways I like to eat it. (Kale-arame salad, in that Sooper-Sekret-soon-to-be-revealed dish, and as a pizza topping), In fact yesterday I bought two bunches at the market, thereby proving that the apocalypse is nigh.

Which brings us back to cabbage, which now takes over kale’s spot in the challenge limelight. The word ‘cabbage’ brings to mind two things: coleslaw, and nasty-smelling cabbage rolls. Ick². But surely there’s a way to make it both edible and tasty? Because wow, the list of ways in which cabbage is supposedly good for us is…impressive.

Attempt #1 at Cabbage Love involved just nibbling on it raw. In moderate amounts, quite tasty. In larger amounts, my gut protested.

Attempt #2 involved shredding a quarter of the Cabbage O’Doom (it’s as big as my head), then adding a grated yam (as sweet as a carrot!), and a goodly amount of grated celery root. All of this I tossed with a maple-balsamic vinaigrette. Verdict? Not bad. Definitely tastier than KFC coleslaw. (How do they make it that unnatural dayglo green?) It was still a little bit too hard to crunch through, though — just a little too ‘raw.’ Maybe a finer shredding of cabbage would have helped with that; I’m not sure.

Attempt #3 — Alton Brown to the rescue. (For those just passing through, I recently acquired pretty much every episode of Good Eats on DVD, which explains my obsession with him as a research tool. ) I took a look at this recipe, hit the market for apples, and had a go. My own tweaked version (see below) proved remarkably tasty, adding cranberry juice for zing and colour, and toasted walnuts to make it more nutritionally complete for a main dish. I’d make it again, and might even serve it to others. It’s certainly pretty.

Attempts #4 and #5 are yet to come, because thus far I’ve eaten cabbage every day for a week, and still have just over half a cabbage left. Egads, and I thought the kale was neverending! But I need to find a way of replicating the yummy marinated cabbage that a local restaurant serves as an appetizer. Also a fabulous orange-cabbage dish that we had in Cuba.

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