Sweet potato greens!

A new kind of greens! New to me, at least. But that doesn't exactly happen every day. I came across these at the farmer's market, and had to get them. Aren't they pretty?



I sauteed some of them simply, with salt, pepper, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil - the usual greens treatment. They're really good - kind of like a mix of spinach and beet greens - more substantial than spinach, but less bitter than a lot of greens and a tiny bit sweet.

Then the rest I wilted with sauteed actual sweet potatoes, and seasoned it with salt, pepper, and a little maple syrup. Have you ever heard that Paul Simon's song Mother and Child Reunion was inspired by a chicken omelet? I don't know if it's true, but this was sort of like the vegan version of that.



If you come across these I recommend picking some up, if only because new vegetables are exciting.

Mushroom-Onion Tart

I wanted to make something special with the chanterelles and hedgehogs I brought back from Mt. Hood (I figure tofu scramble is not exactly their best and highest use), so I made this tart.



I used a cornmeal crust, and got the recipe from here, with earth balance in place of the butter, and it turned out well even though my cornmeal:flour ratio was a bit off (I was running low on cornmeal). It was just the tiniest bit crumbly.

For the filling, first I caramelized one medium-large yellow onion and about half a red onion, sliced thin with a mix of olive oil and EB and a teaspoon or so raw sugar.

Then I sauteed about a cup and a half of mushrooms (chopped pretty small) with probably 6 cloves of chopped garlic for 15 minutes or so, added thyme, salt, pepper, and a couple splashes of white wine and a couple of handfuls of spinach once it was all cooked.

Once the spinach was wilted and the wine cooked off, I mixed about half the onions in, spread this over the par-baked crust (baked acc to the crust recipe linked above), then added the rest of the onions on top. Baked for about 30 minutes at 350.



So good! Would also have been good with tomatoes, other greens, etc. Next time I plan to try a creamy layer - seasoned silken tofu or something with beans - under the vegetables.

I miss Oregon!

You can take the girl out of Oregon, but you can't take the Oregon out of my carry-ons.





I'm amazed at how much beer I crammed into my backpack at the airport without totally destroying the chanterelles and hedgehogs I brought back from Mt. Hood. We had a really successful mushroom hunt, and Jane made amazing duxelles with a lot of the haul.



I made something pretty darn good with some of the ones I brought home, too - next post!

Lazy Saturdays

The last couple weekends I've done some fun cooking and baking with local fruits and veggies. I made some cute tiny blueberry-peach pies in muffin tins, but didn't take a picture. I also made this tart with the same filling and crust. The peaches were from the farmers market, and the blueberries were frozen from picking a couple months ago.





The other weekend I made a really good tempeh scramble for breakfast. I steamed the tempeh to make it less dry and take away the bitterness, and steamed some chopped potatoes along with. Then I browned the potatoes in a little oil, added the tempeh, garlic, and onion, seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme, and sesame oil. Then I added zucchini, tomatoes, and scallions, and when they were cooked and the potatoes and tempeh were brown, I added some soy sauce and nutritional yeast. I ate it with some salsa and spinach salad. And probably coffee.

Okra and Risotto

I've never really known what to do with okra, and always worry it'll turn out slimy. But I had a few pieces of it in a CSA share my roommates couldn't use, so I thought when in doubt, fry. I dipped it in soymilk, then a mix of flour, cornmeal, chickpea flour, salt, and pepper. I pan-fried it and seasoned with more salt and pepper. It didn't turn out slimy at all! But it definitely could have used a little more oil in the pan.





So that was last week.

Today I bought some oyster mushrooms at Eastern Market, as well as a couple of shallots and a bunch of fresh thyme, because I've been wanting to make some risotto. I rehydrated some dried morels and chanterelles in veggies broth, then strained them and added them to sauteing oysters. In a separate pan I sauteed shallots and garlic in a mix of EB and olive oil, then added arborio rice, stirred a couple minutes, added about a cup of white wine, stirred til it was absorbed, repeated with veggie broth, and so on, until risotto was born.

I added the mushrooms fairly early on, once they were cooked, and periodically added some thyme. Then at the end a little nutritional yeast. Chef roommate said it was good, especially because it didn't have any [insert long list of dairy products here].

Sushi!

Usually when I bother to make sushi it's a big production - I'm having people over, or going to a potluck or something, and I make 4 cups of rice and end up doing something like 20 rolls. It almost always involves a shopping trip, because if I'm going to all that trouble, gosh darn it, it will have exactly everything I want in it. I'm usually not motivated to just make a couple rolls for myself, but I'd been craving it for a long time so it finally happened.

Unfortunately it happened on a Saturday, when I was almost out of vegetables (my favorite farmers market here is on Sunday - weird, right?). But I had an avocado, and that's really the only thing I insist on having before I'll make sushi. Usually I'll want some tofu and carrots, but didn't have either and it was just fine. Actually it was super.



I also didn't have sushi rice, but I did have arborio. I've used sushi rice to make risotto before and it worked great, so I figured the reverse was probably true, and it definitely is. I recommend it to everyone who has limited cupboard space and can't just go keeping all kinds of different short grain rice varieties laying around all the time.

I won't go into a whole tutorial on sushi rolling, I'll just say (1) wet your fingers before you spread out the rice, because it's sticky, (2) spread it all the way to the sides of the nori but not all the way to the top or bottom, (3) put the filling in a line, don't cover all of the rice, and (4) look up a real tutorial if you haven't rolled sushi before, so you don't squeeze all your vegetables out or otherwise end up with a big mess.



I didn't have many vegetables but I did have kale, and I sauteed it with a lot of garlic and ginger, then seasoned it with sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce. One roll was just avocado and vegenaise (trust me, it's good); the other two were avocado and kale and yes, more vegenaise. I have it on good authority that in Japan apparently they put mayonnaise in almost all the sushi, so I didn't make it up. I just made it better.

The rice: I love the recipe I use; 4 C water, 3.5 C rice, cook 15 min, then leave on the stove with the heat off 15 more. Mix then add 5 T rice vinegar, 5 T sugar, 4 t salt.

Oh, and I add a little rice vinegar, garlic, sesame oil, and ginger to my soy sauce. It's worth the trouble.



Sushi is worth the trouble in general. Next time maybe I'll bother to make some with rice on the outside. We'll see.

Ratatouille

Not really! Because, well, it's not so much that I hate eggplant, I just don't see myself ever buying it. But I did buy a ton of tomato seconds at the farmers market (cheap, but don't last long) and needed to use them up. I also had a bunch of squash.

I sauteed a red onion and half a white onion (diced), with two zucchini and two summer squash (medium sized, sliced into half moons), then added salt, pepper, a few cloves of chopped garlic, veggie broth, and lots of chopped and seeded tomatoes. Cook this til the tomatoes break down and the sauce thickens, taste for seasoning, and add fresh thyme.

I also didn't bake this, which I gather is one aspect of many "traditional" old worldy ratatouille recipes. Meh. It was good and kept me from wasting vegetables.

Here's some on quinoa. I added white beans after I took the picture because I had a ton and thought it would go well together. It did.



Tastes like summer.

Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins

No recipe with this post, because I used the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe and didn't make much in the way of changes. After a second round of blueberry picking, I wasn't motivated to bake a pie so I made these, ate a ton of berries, and froze a huge ziplock bag of them. I'll probably bake a pie with some of those later.

I'd like to try these with some whole grain flour, but don't know if they'd be too heavy considering they're already half cornmeal. Has anyone out there tried baking with a combination of cornmeal and whole wheat flour?

Brief gripe: I like all the muffin and cupcake recipes I've tried in Vegan with a Vengeance and that whole line of books, but the proportions for the recipes as a whole are almost always way off. This didn't really make 12 muffins. It made 12 really short muffins that aren't really muffin shaped. I should have made it into 8 or 10. This sort of nonsense is ok with cupcakes, cause you can frost them and make them look more normal, but really. Just scale up the recipes ladies.

Summer Salads

I continue to be a lousy blogger, because it continues to be ridiculously hot out and the food I've been eating is (a) boring and (b) redundant. I did go berry picking in Maryland a couple weeks ago - blueberries, raspberries, black raspberries, and sour cherries. Most went straight into the freezer though, because I was heading out of town. I'll hopefully go pick a lot more blueberries soon.

Here are a couple of slightly more interesting (not lettuce) summery salads I've made recently.

This was roasted beets (I picked them at the U-pick berry farm!) with olive oil, garlic, onion, salt, and pepper. I let them cool then added red wine vinegar and fresh thyme.



Also in that picture was a really easy salad of brown rice, split peas, and homemade barbecue sauce. Would have been better with black-eyed peas or maybe white beans, but I didn't have time to cook them. I like this cold or at room temperature.

It would have been good with fresh oregano and scallions and maybe some cooked kale or fresh spinach. I'd missed the farmers markets the weekend before and was out of almost everything, unfortunately. For a dinner of desperation this turned out pretty well.

Last, a really easy tomato, basil, and corn salad. Just core, seed and chop a few tomatoes, add the kernels from one or two cooked ears of corn, add olive oil, a clove of minced garlic, maybe one finely chopped scallion, 10-15 leaves thinly sliced basil, salt, pepper, and either balsamic or red wine vinegar. I added some cooked white beans and chopped avocado at the end.



Bonus picture for reading to the end - check out this massive morel I found this spring! My weirdly short fingers make it look even bigger.

Salad Rolls

D.C. is hot. Hot and humid (for the record, it is definitely both the heat and the humidity). Cooking is not that fun when you could accidentally touch a hot stove and barely notice. So I've been doing a lot of green salads, grain and bean salads, and things like salad rolls that are mostly raw, can be made ahead, and are made to eat cold.

Here are my tips on good salad rolls:

1) Pass on the cilantro. It's a vile weed that takes up space where basil is meant to be. Leave it for its best and highest use, which is soil remediation, because it takes up arsenic. Yeah, think about *that* for a minute.

2) Season your vegetables. I shred cabbage with carrots and season them with sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and a little garlic. Sometimes I add finely chopped scallions, and sometimes I cut those in thin strips and add them separately for more color.

3) Make them pretty. I use purple cabbage and make sure to add some green stuff - basil, scallions, and sometimes spinach as well. Shred them finely or else the whole thing will look messy.

4) Have a good vegetable/noodle ratio. A lot of salad rolls just taste like rice noodles inside of rice paper. I mean, I like peanut sauce a lot, even on a sub-par vehicle, but we can all do better than that. That said, the noodles help keep everything from falling all over the place, so don't expect them to hold together if there aren't enough noodles. Along those lines, don't overfill them or they'll be a mess to eat and won't stay rolled up.

5) Some kind of sauce is obviously important. I prefer peanut, and use peanut butter, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, lime juice, coconut milk, and a little chile oil. But there are really good vinegar/chili sauce recipes out there if that's your thing.

6) Saute your tofu with a little soy sauce, even if it's hot out and you don't feel like it. It adds flavor and texture. Or use seitan. Just put something in that adds a little more substance.

Scones and muffins

It's been a long time since my last post - I moved to D.C. and started my new job! That's been keeping me pretty busy, and I didn't have any of my cooking stuff for a while. I didn't think posting about how I was eating off-brand grape nuts, carrots, store-bought hummus, and bananas every day would make for good reading.

So here's some baking I did a while back. These scones were a variation on the glazed scones in Vegan with a Vengeance - it's my go-to scone recipe, but I don't always bother with the glaze. Sometimes that's just a little too messy and a little too sweet. I also switch up a few of the other ingredients depending on what I have and how healthy I want to make them.



These were date-orange. I chopped up medjool dates, which are one of my new favorite things, and also added some orange zest and chopped candied orange peel.

1 1/4 C almond or soy milk, or mix of creamer and non-milk
1 T apple cider vinegar
3 C flour - I mixed about 1 C all-purpose with 2 C whole wheat pastry
1/3 C sugar
2 T baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/3 C vegetable oil
a few medjool dates, chopped small
1/4 C or so chopped candied orange peel. Candied ginger, cherries, or berries would be good if you don't have orange peel
orange zest - lemon would work too

Preheat oven to 400 and lightly oil a cookie sheet
- mix milk and vinegar, set aside
- sift flour(s), sugar, baking powder, and salt in large bowl
- add milk mixture, oil, dates, and zest until just mixed; don't worry about clumps and don't over-mix
- divide dough in two
- put half on the cookie sheet, pat into a 6-inch disk as well as you can, and cut it into six wedges. It'll probably be too sticky to really separate them, but they'll still be sort of separate once baked.
- repeat with other half of the dough
- bake 12-15 minutes, until slightly browned on the bottom, and not yet browned but firm on top
- let cool a bit then cut apart

If you're really into glaze, I guess just mix some orange or lemon juice into some powdered sugar and do it up. Be sure to let the scones cool before glazing though, or it'll just run all over the place. These scones end up pretty huge, so sometimes I split the dough into 3 pieces instead, and make 18 smaller ones.



These muffins are based on another recipe in VWAV, but I can't remember which...I can tell you that I used dried/reconstituted rainier and bing cherries and almond extract.

Using up food and a lot of cabbage

So, I'm moving to D.C. in less than a week! I'm pretty excited about starting my Dream Job, even though the food scene there is pretty bleak compared with Minneapolis or Portland. I've been spoiled by coops, farmers markets, CSAs, and socially responsible, affordable restaurants with vegan options and organic ingredients. Expect griping on future posts.

Regardless, moving across the country (again) means using up food and making meals out of odds and ends.

I used a box of silken tofu, brown basmati rice, a bunch of seasonings, gluten flour, and chickpea flour to make these baked rice balls. I ate them with coleslaw seasoned with rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, etc. They were good, but if I make them again I'll use slightly more flour and less tofu.



Before I knew I was moving, I made a big trip to my local Asian grocery store, United Noodles, and got some yam noodles (shirataki), seaweed, and other fun stuff. I made a noodle stir fry with cabbage, garlic, onions, carrots, the noodles, soy sauce, sesame oil, black vinegar, and ginger.



If you haven't tried yam noodles, I recommend them. They're the nutritional equivalent of chewy water, but still. I like the texture a lot and they absorb flavors well. I made this even better by eating it with the best chopsticks ever.

Finally, last week I made some really simple wontons with a tofu, red onion, garlic, purple cabbage, and carrot filling. Just put about a tablespoon of filling on a wrapper, wet the edges, and press together. Don't overfill them, or they won't stay sealed.



I browned them in a pan rather than frying them.



I won't be doing a lot of cooking in the next few days, since I have to pack up my kitchen for the move. I can't wait to have a gas stove again!

Farro Risotto with MORELS!

Morels! It's still early in their short season up here in Minnesota, but today I went with my friend Anna to her parents' woods to hunt for morels, and we found some! Not a lot, but enough to make some amazing farro risotto. It was so good. This was actually the first time I've eaten a morel, and it kind of blew my mind.

Farro Risotto with Morels

- 1 C farro
- 1 onion, diced (we used half a red and half a yellow - shallots might have been even better)
- Several cloves garlic, minced
- 2/3 C dry red wine
- A few tablespoons olive oil and/or earth balance, divided between two 10" or so saute pans
- 1/2 C - 1 C morel mushrooms, rinsed and chopped
- 1/3 C oyster mushrooms (I just had some I really needed to use up)
- 2 C vegetable broth
- Fresh or dried thyme, oregano, chives, or other herbs to taste - we used dried thyme and fresh chives and oregano, because that's what we had
- A little bit of dried chopped chanterelle or other mushrooms dissolved in your hot vegetable broth (I just had these from some fall picking, and thought why not make it as wild-mushroomy as possible. They added a lot.)
- 8 or so kale leaves, chopped with tough stems saved for later
- 2 T or so nutritional yeast
- Truffle oil

Here's a not very good picture of farro:


1. Soak the farro in water for 20 min, then drain and rinse
2. Simmer the farro in water with a bit of olive oil for 20 min, then drain and rinse
3. Heat a couple T of the olive oil/earth balance (I recommend a mixture) in one nonstick wide, shallow pan
4. Add the diced onion and minced garlic to the pan, stir on medium-low for a few minutes with a little salt and pepper
5. If using dried mushrooms, heat veggie broth and add them to rehydrate
6. In second pan, heat another T or so of oil/EB and when hot, add chopped morels (and oysters, if using) and season with salt and pepper
7. Cook the mushrooms on medium or so heat until they're a little browned and smell amazing
8. When the onions are cooked, add the farro and wine, cooking and stirring on medium until almost all the liquid is gone.
9. Add the broth one cup at a time when the liquid is almost gone, stirring frequently. Add the kale at this point too.
10. When the mushrooms are cooked, add them to the risotto as soon as possible so their flavor is infused into the whole dish.
11. When the second cup of broth is almost absorbed, add the nutritional yeast and take it off the heat.
12. Drizzle with truffle oil to make it an over the top intense four-mushroom experience.



This isn't like a traditional arborio rice risotto - the farro doesn't make a creamy starchy sauce while you stir it, but it does get tender and delicious. It's a chewy, hearty grain that goes incredibly well with earthy, rich mushrooms, red wine, and kale. It was like eating a forest (in a good way).

One more unnecessary mushroom shot. Cute, right?



We ate this with a mixed green salad with carrots, oregano, and a pumpkin seed oil/red wine vinaigrette. Also really good.



I'm already so excited to go morel hunting again next weekend - I want enough to cook some and dry a lot. We'll see!

Nettle Curry

I used most of the nettles I picked last week in a quick cauliflower curry.



- Saute chopped onions and garlic in a little olive oil until soft
- Add turmeric, mustard seed, coriander, cumin, and salt and saute a few more minutes
- Add chopped cauliflower and tomatoes or tomato sauce (I used some that I'd frozen from last Summer) and cook until the cauliflower is tender - might need to add a little water
- Add chopped nettles, spinach, or other greens, and cook another couple minutes
- Taste for seasoning

I ate this with chickpea crepes - also really quick and easy. It would have been good with potatoes and/or chickpeas in it, but I didn't have any on hand.

I was hoping to have some morels to post about this weekend, but it looks like they need a little more rain and a little more time. Maybe next week!

Down by the river

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, so I went to the hardware store down the street to buy some decently protective work gloves. Then I went down to the woods on the river bank, just a few blocks from my house, to look for nettles. And I found some!

I also picked some dandelion greens, violets, and mint, just because it was there and off the beaten path enough that I think it's all pretty clean. I saw a lot of yarrow, but since I'm not sure what to do with it other than make some tea I doubt I'd like, I left it alone.



The dandelion greens will probably end up in a salad with the violets, and the mint will end up in tea and/or mint juleps, depending on where the weekend goes. The nettles might be made into pesto, or maybe just braised, put in soup, or sauteed like spinach. I blanched them for a couple minutes to take the sting off and make them friendlier to handle when I'm cooking them.



Most people treat this stuff as weeds, but I love eating foods I know weren't cultivated for size, color, shelf life...pretty much anything but taste and nutrient value. Wild foods are good for you! I mean, so long as you're sure about what you're picking.

I was hoping to find some fiddleheads or ramps, but no such luck. I'll try someplace a little less disturbed in the next couple weeks.

Brunch off! (Part 2)

Time for brunch reviews from a little closer to home, and I even managed to fit in a third spot. It wouldn't have been right to do a Minneapolis brunch review without including the Seward Cafe, particularly since I get free coffee there forever.

So here's the run down: Hard Times Cafe, Birchwood Cafe, and the Seward Cafe.

Hard Times and the Seward are really similar, and both cater to old hippies and punk kids. Seward has a better ambiance, and Hard Times has longer hours, wireless, and a full menu all the time, so which one I go to depends on what I need to do there. Seward uses way more local and organic ingredients, gets a CSA share in summer, and has its own community garden in back, so that tips the scale quite a bit for me. Both are collectively owned and run, which is rad if you're not into table service.

The Birchwood is pretty different - the food is significantly more expensive (but not crazy expensive), they put more effort into plating and presentation, and there are far fewer vegan options. They also emphasize local and organic ingredients though, and they're only a few blocks from my house, so I still make my way there on occasion.

Hard Times

Vegan Helter Skelter (a bunch of veggies and potatoes and tofu and toast)



I don't remember what this was called - but it was corn tortillas, tofu, veggies, and salsa. It was kind of bland, really, and I wasn't wild about their salsa. I prefer their non-brunch stuff I think. Good falafel.



I don't recommend Hard Times if you're, say, looking for somewhere to take your grandparents.

Birchwood Cafe

Tofu scramble with toast and potatoes



Sometimes the one vegan brunch option (pretty much always a tofu scramble) comes with organic greens instead of toast, and I prefer that. The thin roasted potatoes are great, and the tofu is seasoned nicely though never browned. Usually it involves a combination of seasonal/local veggies. Once at the Birchwood I was sitting right next to Scarlet Johansen (sp?) and Josh Hartnett, and didn't even notice.

Seward Cafe

"Tofu scramble"



I like the tofu/tempeh stir fries (basically broccoli and carrots) at the Seward, even though they don't really put any kind of sauce on them. Just tamari. But I wish they wouldn't call them scrambles. It's not true, and it's confusing. They do come with tahini toast though, and you can dump on all the nutritional yeast you like.

Beans and Rice



Beans and rice at the Seward are only $3.00! Both are organic, you can choose between black beans and pinto, and it's always brown rice. They also have a huge list of sides you can add to your dishes, so beans and rice with kale, onions, rancheros sauce, or whatever you want is still really cheap. Caveat: they're supposed to come with sprouts, but every cook in the place seems to have a chronic sprout-forgetting problem.

I wish I had some Seward hash browns to post - they're made fresh from yukon gold potatoes, and they're usually great. Definitely a nice change of pace from oven roasted potatoes and immeasurably better than any frozen hash brown nonsense you find at most breakfast places. It's also a great spot for gluten free/wheat free options.

The verdict?

Vegan options: Portland
Righteousness and rejection of hierarchy in the workplace: Minneapolis
Creativity: Portland
Free coffee for me: Minneapolis
Brunch spots with full bars: Portland
Cheap options: Minneapolis
Most bikes outside the cafe: anyone's guess