ZUPPA!

So, I have had some people (for whom I've made soup of varying shades and flavors) ask that I give them a recipe for vegetable soups, to which I say, there is no recipe for my soups. The way in which I make soup is to first check the fridge and pantry, extricating the vegetables that most urgently need cooking or that I most would like to use (as decided by the interface between those numerous taste nubs and my sensitive head organ). There are some things I always do, such as sauté copious onion and garlic. Mostly from there it is intuition. Today, though, I happened upon another Mark Bittman article, which much more eloquently (and with prettier pictures) illustrates the simplicity of this intuitive kitchen maneuver. He splits it into four categories: creamy, brothy, earthy and hearty. Here are the corresponding pictures for those categories (three soups per):

 
Hungry anyone?
Check out the article.

Sunchokes, Who Knew?

So, I have done this twice now. Sunchokes, AKA Jerusalem artichoke, AKA Helianthus tuberosus. It looks like if tumors and babies were combined, then dug up from the ground, but much more delicious. It is a tuber, a root. Specifically, it is the root of a certain species of sunflower. And, as the Israel-themed nomination indicates, it tastes like its above-ground namesake, the artichoke. If you like artichokes, but hate the dedicated defense system, I would defer to this ugly cousin (they are actually unrelated).

What do I do with it? Well, wash them first. Then slice them up a little and put them in a bowl. Olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic. And mix.

Put it all on a baking sheet and spread them out. We want to roast them, not steam them. If they are bunched up they will steam and not get crunchy and beautiful. Then, at 375 degrees, cook for some time. Maybe twenty minutes or longer. Check it every once in awhile and take them out when they look ready, soft and caramelized. 







What you end up with will be great. You can thank me later.

An Unfortunate Journey

I am beginning a trial-run of a gluten-free diet today, to resume for three months' time. I am not very energetic about this. Nor do I enjoy the amount of research it is taking to do it right. If it is that I have Celiac's (which given my Irish and German roots, is a good genetic possibility) then, I am told, even a thimble-full of something containing that special protein would set me back 6-8 weeks. It is a sparse possibility in my case that I do have this, but a possibility all the same. I won't see a change for at least 4 to 8 weeks apparently, if there is no accidental hiccups in my ingestion schedule. Damnit.

If anyone has any tips, give them to me. I want them. I love bread and beer and they can't have me for at least three months. I am looking towards sake and wine for respite. Maybe brown rice pasta, corn and potato chips and corn tortillas. That's all I got for now. Thanks for your ear.

Nature's Newest Horror Flick

Creme Brulee, For Real This Time

Alright. The Burnt Cream post is finished on Sir Lucas' blog. I promised it before and gave little pictures of joy and hope. But, now, it is real.

Link to it here. And enjoy.

Beyond The Hunger

P.S. He actually isn't knighted.

DOSA!

Indian food can be delineated by the region from which it is born. Northern Indian, I think, is what is usually seen. Cream is used more often in this Punjabi or Kashmiri cuisine. Very good cream dishes. A lot more meat is used as well. I love Northern Indian but have an especially fond place in my heart for Southern. The cuisine of this region, also called Dravidian, is known as the spiciest of India. Overall it is a much more Vegetarian-friendly India. One of the items made and used most exclusively is the dosa, a spiced crepe made from lentils and rice. Incredibly nutritious and fabulously tasty, the dosa is eaten with a variety of different foods at all times of the day. It is usually stuffed with a sort of curry or masala (the one I get at the place around the corner is a potato masala), but can also be used to dip in chutneys or lentil soups. The possibilities are nearly endless. While I still had the Wild Fermentation book on loan from the library, I noticed a recipe for dosa. This is how I did it.

First, your ingredients:
- Two Cups Rice (brown works nicely)
- One Cup Lentils (any kind you want, I used red)
- One Cup Yogurt, Kefir or Water (I used yogurt)
- Some Cilantro and Fresh Ginger (for later)

The first step is easy. You put the rice and lentils into a big bowl with water to soak. You will want to put a bit more water in than rice and lentils because they will expand. Let this soak for eight hours or overnight. It will sour a little. This is good and natural.

After this soaking, grind or process into a batter with the yogurt, kefir or water. It should be smooth, not chunky, and barely pourable. Put this into a big bowl, if it isn't already, with room to expand. The fermentation begins. This can be left to ferment on your counter or out of the way somewhere for one to two days or more (if you like it more sour). Forget about it. Set an alarm on your phone. Whatever. It will smell more and more sour as it goes. That is wonderful.

This is what my batter looks like after two days of fermenting. At this point, after the waiting, you can add spices. The recipe called for cilantro, grated ginger and salt (teaspoon or so). You could also add fenugreek, cumin, curry leaves, curry powder, asofoetida (hing), cayenne powder, fresh peppers, turmeric, etc. It is your dosa, do what you want. But, ginger and cilantro are definitely good. I added a small bunch of chopped cilantro and about an inch of grated fresh ginger. You want FRESH ginger. Also, add enough water to thin out the batter. We are making crepes, not pancakes. Mix this through and find a good ladle. You got it? Great.

Heat the skillet or pan (cast iron works great, or a good non-stick pan) and add some oil or butter. I used butter because it is good. On the topic of butter, buy Irish butter. Kerrygold is good. It has a better stronger flavor and it is squeezed from grass-fed cows, which is healthier. Here is a site I found talking about the benefits of eating from pastured animals: http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm. Anyway, heat the pan with butter or vegetable oil and let it get hot. Keep it around medium heat. Then ladle your beautiful batter right in there, spreading it out with the bottom of the ladle until it is nice and thin. It will act like a pancake, bubbling up through the top and giving you some idea as to when to flip it. Flip it. Cook it until it is golden brown and make some more.

You may want to test it before you flip it to make sure it is holding up and cooked enough. If you are successful, it will look like this.

Yum. After you have cooked them all and turned off that hot burner, what will you do? Enjoy it with yogurt? Stuff it with some savory Indian fare that you either made yourself or obtained through a local Indian restaurant? Dip in chutneys? Fill it with eggs and potatoes and have a breakfast burrito? For my meal, I enlisted my friend, Lucas Cain, White-Boy-Indian-Food-Extraordinaire, to help with a decent accompaniment. This is the result.

I made the whitish potato dish (Potato and Spinach Coconut Curry) and Lucas made the reddish Paneer dish (Mutter Paneer in Tomato Curry Sauce). The dosa is located under the fork. Try this recipe if you dare. The hardest part is the wait. Really. Do it.

And now, some food poetry.

Ode To The Onion
by Pablo Neruda

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

Make Bread

OK, this will be quick. The post and the bread you are about to make. Your effort will be minimal and the bread will be amazing. The most straining thing you might have to do is wait. Which I am doing now. This is a no-knead bread. When done it is airy and beautiful. The bread I am now making (and by now making, I mean waiting for it to bubble and rise) is going to be entirely made of whole wheat. I am letting it sit for two days so it can ferment a bit and maybe impart a sourness that will subsequently please me and make me smile. I will just post the link for this super easy bread.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/kitchen-hack-one-minute-ciabatta-bread.html

When I get some more time, I will blog the cheese I recently made. It is also easy, but not nearly as easy as this bread. Enjoy.

San Francisco Pt. 3

Today will concern the our initial day in San Francisco. It will be briefer than other posts. We were tired and it was a bit of a gray day. It seemed as if the landmarks of Seattle had merely changed for the sky looked exactly the same. Regardless we had a good time. Our hosts, Jill and her boyfriend Jade, gave us a walking tour of their neighborhood (near Golden Gate Park and the famed and drug-addled Haight-Ashbury) after a wonderful breakfast of homemade (Jade-made) crepes, which were delicious. We had been to SF before but didn't make it to Golden Gate Park and only saw a little bit of the Haight. The Haight itself is known for its Beat and Hippie constituency back in their heyday, the 50's and 60's. Now, though, it seems it has partly gentrified and partly become a sad advertisement for its famed anti-consumerist former inhabitants (a store covered in one too many peace signs and selling bad crepes comes to mind). Despite the bad, it still houses some great bookstores and boutiques as well as an amazing plant culture. I became quite taken with the plants that took over this part of the city. Jades and other Succulents flourished on sidewalks and porches. It was, for me, truly beautiful.

We ended up heading towards de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. The building itself was a work of art on its own, as you will see. Anne and I, being Bank of America users, got in free by some great luck. The museum's tower looks out over the whole city, which despite being clouded over was beautiful. Then we perused the art downstairs, including an exhibition of Amish quilts that I found very cool in their own right. There was a good deal of great art, most interesting of which, in my opinion, was the work by the artists of the Bay area such as Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff and David Park. This was the highlight of our day. Plus, the sun began to peek its head from the clouds and the clouds gave way to blue. This was nice.

The highlight of our night was a restaurant that I had been dreaming of since my last SF experience, three years before. The restaurant is called Dosa, located in the Mission District of San Francisco. Indian food varies greatly from region to region. A lot of Indian food hails from the Northern Indian tradition. This restaurant was of the Southern tradition, which is mostly vegetarian and uses dosa (rice and lentil flour crepes) as a vehicle for tastiness. In my mind, this is the best region for Indian food. It was delicious but I have no pictures. Also not pictured is our full-bellied stroll to a bar in the "deep Mission" (i.e. part of the Mission less subjected to gentrification than other parts and therefore covered in neon-lit nail parlors and authentically and prominently Mexican bars) where we drank a few beers and couldn't keep from watching the muted cheesy horror flicks on the TV in the corner. Then sleep. A long day, well-spent.

 

So many plants.

More after the jump~

The Best Shucking Time

Oysters. Sake. Three men. The Waterfront. I could think of nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon. I was accompanied by the Cains, a motley pair born from the same woman, for a leisurely and, in part, aimless stroll about the avenues of Downtown Seattle on this somewhat sunny and absolutely perfect day. We found our way, as is customary, to a wonderful place of Asian delights called Uwajimaya in the International District south of Downtown. For seafood, there is no better place I know of. Further, their sake diversity is unmatched. While there we picked up a dozen Olympia oysters and a dozen Quilcene oysters (from the upper Hood Canal fjord). In addition we each picked up a personal sized sake, all of different brands, and a jar of MSG-less kimchi. Plus one lemon and some hot sauce begged from a food stand in Uwajimaya. Then we set off and found a perfectly empty pier with benches and a great view of the partly clouded Olympic mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula. It was a beautiful time. Simple. Sating. Cheap.

 

Train tracks. 

The notorious Cain brothers.

 

Olympic Peninsula from our sweet little benches on the waterfront.

More after the jump~

BORSCHT!

 

I cut vegetables, however I wanted. Carrots, Celery, Onion, Garlic, Orange Bell Pepper, Potato.

 

With the scraps from the vegetables, I made broth, later scooping out all the solids with a sieve.

 

Beets.

 

Lots of onion cooked up with Kerrygold Irish Butter, then adding all the other vegetables excepting the potato, which just went into the hot broth. After sauteing these veggies, I added some of the broth, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, some beer that happened to be in my hand and lots of dill.

 

Everything was then amassed together and set to simmer. This happened until the potato was soft. I then added the remainder of my homemade sauerkraut including all the juices.

 

Next up, the immersion blender took everything to pieces, nice and consistent.

 

No more chunks here. 

Then cream was added.

And it was good.

 

Supplemented here with a baguette of fine sourdough.

Delicious.

Maybe the Most Romantic Film I Have Ever Seen

Bar none.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1zmfTr2d4c

At least it isn't ants.

From Russia, With Love

Pirozhki! The Russians may be unfortunately endowed with an 11 time-zone hunk of cold and lonely landmass, but their food is excellent. And they drink much vodka. That helps, I am sure. These amazing little pastries are filled with a variety of different hunger-sating items, from the sweet to the savory. I tend to lean to the savory side. Luckily, that is the side of much multiplicity. You may even make up your own, if you were so bold. I made three. One which I enjoyed very greatly, and which was very simple, was sauerkraut sauteed with onion and garlic, with a little bit of nutmeg. This nutmeg twist really makes it. Also, It was the homemade sauerkraut that I just previously posted about. Perfect pirozhki! My second favorite was a stinky one. Think of the most umami egg salad you can imagine. It was mushrooms (fresh buttons and mixed dried) sauteed with garlic and onion, and mixed with hard-boiled eggs and dried dill. Tremendously tasty. If only we would have included the cottage cheese. The third was a little blander, but not bad anyway. It was potato and spinach with onion, garlic, thyme and dill. All of these fillings were carefully deposited into folds of dough and baked on my baking stone at somewhere like 425 degrees. To accompany these little buns, I baked some beets, beautiful red things they are. All in all, a very visually stunning and sumptuous meal. Take a look.

Don't Be So Sauer!

      Sauerkraut, the wonderful German condiment, consists very basically of salt, cabbage and water. Through fermentation, these ingredients are joined by various lactic acid bacteria, including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. This fermentation gives the shredded cabbage its distinct sour flavor.
      Beyond being extremely tasty and German, sauerkraut is very very healthy. Cabbage itself consists of isothiocyanates, amazing anti-cancer agents. Further than that, the bacteria which are wrought from the ferment are the same or similar to those within yogurt, which are good for your gut, promoting an active flora within your insides (and that is a good thing). One study suggests that sauerkraut is as effective as Viagra in stimulating the nether regions of one's self. Lastly, sauerkraut is high in vitamin C.
      To do this, I merely sliced cabbage (5 heads, various colors), salted it as I went, and tamped it down into a gallon jar. When I reached the top, I placed a clean ramekin in to push the solids beneath the brine (created almost solely by the cabbage itself). My friend and I modified the lid to make way for a grommet and airlock (conveniently obtained from the homebrew store). Then, I waited. In two weeks, after much bubbling, the kraut was finished, and appropriately sour. And here is the result:

Happy New Year!

Tempeh-tations

Tempeh is fermented bean stuff, covered in a fuzzy colonization of mycelia, and it is beautiful and I made it. Me and my friend Lucas. This first image is what the bean cakes look like when they aren't bean cakes, bean cakes unbinded, before incubation. Prior to this picture, the soybeans were soaked, dehulled, skimmed of skins, and skimmed of more skins, and more, and then inoculated with spores from the Rhizopus oligosporus. The ziplock bags are poked with a fork or needle or something every half inch or so, in order that contact is made with air, and they are stuffed with the bean and spore mixture, packed tightly and about one inch thick.
    In the bedroom I rigged up an incubator system with a digital thermometer and a heating pad, with an oven rack and blankets. I got the temperature up within the range of 80 to 93 degrees F and put those little puppies in to sit for 24 to 36 hours, which they did, hence the next few pictures, where the cakes are now white with mycelium, the fungus fully winding its way through the crowded beans and partially digesting them. In this form they are solid and easily sliced.

Two Down, Six To Go

I have now successfully completed two applications for graduate school. University of Massachusetts - Amherst, and San Francisco State University. Left are: Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Washington, University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and Naropa University. What work this is! Yet, each one does feel like a small victory. But, why does applying to school, to put yourself in a better financial situation, cost so damn much money?

Thanksgiving Redux

OK, thanksgiving was nearly a week ago, but I am now only writing about it. We went over to our friend, Stephen's, house. He had an elegant dinner setting out for us. How wonderful it is to be a guest. For this event, I made two dishes, both having come from a book at my work, surreptitiously photocopied and not bought. The book, Cooking With Pumpkins and Squash, has many amazing recipes in it. Thus, I photocopied the recipes for a Pumpkin Gnocchi and a Roasted Squash Soup. The soup was the star, but the gnocchi was amazing itself, buttery and decadent and time-consuming as all hell. The soup was vegan and the gnocchi was rich and vegetarian. The way in which they recommended to make the soup was something I had never imagined. The gnocchi would have been easier if I would have had a potato ricer, which I just got today. Anyway, just look at these images of these recipes. They're pretty.
P.S. I did not take these pictures, but they would be almost as pretty.

HOWL

The following poem, Howl, was subject, in 1957, to obscenity trials on the basis of its contents, including illicit drug use and sexual references, both homo- and heterosexual. These claims were brought to an end on October 3rd, 1957 with Judge Clayton W. Horn's ruling that it was not, in fact, obscene but actually had "redeeming social importance," as verified by the testimonies of nine literary experts. The poem gained extreme popularity and helped spawn an era in which people became less afraid of their natural bodies and more worried about their own encroaching egos. It didn't take long, though, for people to once again couch themselves comfortably inside their egos again and rally against the blasphemy of their own tainted nakedness. Anyway, the poem is long, and as I said, it contains words and ideas that some have considered "obscene." Close your eyes and enjoy hearing it straight from the poet's mouth.

HOWL by Allen Ginsberg

Pizza Again?

Surely.

Here it is. I am making dough. I think they refer to it as a "ass-load" of dough on the streets. The dough is cornmeal and semolina riddled. I found that this makes for a delightfully crispy crust. It is not a wheaty sort of dough, but you can't be good and fiberful all the time. I am also making sauces. A red, some form of a white, and probably a garlicky nutritional yeast and oil number as well. Whoever is coming over will be bringing toppings for a pizza of their choice. We are thinking that maybe between eight and fifteen people will find their way here. a lot of pizza for a lot of people.

I will post the (possible) pictures and results later on.

Until then, in the tradition of Garrison Keillor and the Writer's Almanac, here's a poem by Jorge Luis Borges:

Camden, 1892

The smell of coffee and the newspapers.

Sunday and its lassitudes. The morning,

and on the adjoining page, that vanity---

the publication of allegorical verses

by a fortunate fellow poet. The old man

lies on a white bed in his sober room, 

a poor man's habitation. Languidly

he gazes at his face in the worn mirror.

He thinks, beyond astonishment now: that man

is me, and absentmindedly his hand

touches the unkempt beard and the worn-out mouth.

The end is close. He mutters to himself:

I am almost dead, but still my poems retain

life and its wonders. I was once Walt Whitman.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.


--------------------------------------------

I didn't have a camera proper, so I just used the little built-in camera on the laptop. We made eleven pizzas, one of which was sent across the street to the wonderful proprietor of our favorite coffee shop, Wings. I made an alfredo sauce, a red sauce and a peanut sauce. All three were stars in their own right. Here is a couple:

And here are the pizza-eaters:

It was all very enjoyable. The aftermath though, not so fun. 

It's Pizza!

I even made a pizza with apples, almonds, spinach, roasted garlic, onion, veggie sausage and swiss cheese (fig. 2)! It was delicious.

A Menu of Sorts and the Smell of Italy's Delightful Halitosis

Today, as with every Thursday, we received our CSA box. That's Community Supported Agriculture, for any of those not in the sustainable know. Anyway, it is great. Every week, we get several vegetables and fruits, anything from potatoes, cabbage, avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, apples, mangoes, pears, squash, etc. A list of this week's array is included with your order as well as a vegetable specific recipe list. I have included a scan of this week's recipes, which all seem particularly delicious. Many of the delectables we get are from the farm (Full Circle Farm, to be precise) but they supplement from other farms for what they may lack, hence the availability of avocados and mangoes.
But, I am creating none of these things tonight, but rather a series of pizzas made atop semolina and cornmeal laced dough (I also snuck [sneaked? really?] some wheat bran in there). The dough is rising, as we speak, towards pillowy mountainous proportions. It smells of yeast, ferment. Soon enough my home will be thick with the smell of roasted garlic, the kind which you can squeeze from the papery outsides like toothpaste.
Until that time, I will speak to the merits of one of my newly found internet joys. BookMooch is a site through which, when signed up, one can give and get books based upon a system that resembles the westernized idea of Karma. You create an inventory list. This is a list of books that you have which you are willing to send randomly across the country (or further). For simply putting these titles on your list, you receive one/tenth of a point per book. Further, when said books are sent, you get one point per volume (unless sending to another country, in which case you get two points). Your other list will be your wishlist. Mine is rather long. When a book on your wishlist becomes available, you will be notified and you can request it sent to you for the charge of one point (or two if out of country). See? Easy. I have sent and received several books. The only money involved is that which you spend to send the books, and media mail is cheap. All my books have come in good condition. Go here for this:
BOOK MOOCH!

OK, hope all enjoy the recipes.