Guest Post: I Was a Teenage Veggie

By Stephanie Wardrop, author of Snark and Circumstance

Like my heroine, Georgiana Barrett, I was a teenage vegetarian. But I did it back in the 1970s, in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where one starts the day with a plate of scrapple and ends it with some other form of sausage and three different kinds of starch on the plate. I brought a lot of peanut utter and jelly sandwiches in my lunches and kept a much lower profile than Georgia does. Her earlier commitment to her principles makes her a much better cook than I was at her age. It took me a long time to learn to be a good veg*n (vegan or vegetarian) cook.

At first I made a lot of boring stir fries back in the dark days before one could purchase tofu at your neighborhood grocery store. But I learned my way around those precious blocks of soybean curd and discovered that if you freeze it and thaw it, you can crumble up the tofu and it’s now a cruelty-free version of ground beef, so I sautéed it with taco seasonings and made lots of nachos that non-veggies gobbled up at parties.

Cheap and Easy Peanut Noodles

An early creation, designed for the student budget, was this version of peanut noodles using good ole’ ramen packs that often sell four for a dollar! Just throw out that nasty packet of MSG and other flavorings and do this instead:

1. In one pot, boil your ramen noodles in plain water.
2. Meanwhile, in another pan, put about a ¼ cup of peanut butter, ½ cup of water or broth, about 2 T of soy sauce, some sesame oil, some ginger (fresh or powdered), and some garlic in and heat it up. The peanut butter will melt into the sauce.
3. Drain the noodles and mix them into your sauce. Serve with sesame seeds, some cilantro, chopped scallions, and peanuts.

But baking is my favorite culinary activity. Like Georgia, I love the alchemy of it. It feels like alchemy because I do not entirely understand the chemical processes that turn some pretty yucky tasting substances, like baking powder and unsweetened cocoa and whole wheat flour into something amazingly delicious. My favorite recipes at present come from two sources:

• Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s amazing Post Punk Kitchen at http://www.theppk.com/. In Snark, Georgia bakes her way through Moskowitz’s Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and you should do the same.
• Chocolate Covered Katie at http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/ which features vegan treats that are not only delicious but healthy. Her chocolate cake with a secret ingredient will change your world. You will not taste the secret ingredient or even suspect its presence, and I say this as the mother of a boy who has never willingly eaten a vegetable but scarf’s down this cake. Just try it. Trust me.

Discus this post with me on Twitter, FaceBook, or in the comments below.

Weekend Cooking: Less Is More

Sometimes the less work and ingredients you put into something, the better it is.

For example, I like to make croutons out of stale bread because I hate throwing out bread. My dad loves them. All I do is cube the bread, drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and put them in a 325 degree oven until they're crunchy.

Then one day I decided to mix it up a bit and add cheese, thyme, and garlic. I followed this recipe from Rachael Ray:

Image courtesy of Gimme Some Oven

Ingredients:

• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 3 cups cubed sourdough bread
• 1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
• ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme (or 1 1/2 t. dried)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Heat garlic and oil over low heat and melt butter into the oil.
3. Place the bread in a large bowl and toss with garlic oil and butter.
4. Season with pepper, Parmesan and thyme.
5. Spread croutons evenly on baking sheet and bake until crisp and golden. (15 - 25 minutes).

Double the ingredients, double the fun! How can anyone go wrong with cheese and garlic, right? Instead of tasting better, though, the croutons tasted really cheesy--and not in a good way, more in an American-Idol-is-making-me-hate-this-song kind of way.

Another instance where I've found this to be true is with risotto. Usually I make Alton Brown's asparagus and mushroom risotto, because the man's a genius. Here's the recipe:

Image courtesy of AMISTA Vineyards

Ingredients

• 6 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cups Arborio rice
• 5 ounces wild mushrooms, cooked and coarsely chopped, approximately 3/4 cup
• 7 ounces asparagus, cooked and cut into 1-inch pieces, approximately 1 1/2 cups
• 2 ounces grated Parmesan, approximately 1/2 cup
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Directions

1. In an electric kettle or medium saucepan with a lid, combine chicken broth and white wine and heat just to simmering. Keep warm.
2. In a large 3 to 4-quart heavy saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the onions and a pinch of salt and sweat until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the rice and stir. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until the grains are translucent around the edges. Be careful not to allow the grains or the onions to brown.
3. Reduce the heat to low. Add enough of the wine and chicken stock just to cover the top of the rice. Stir or move the pan often, until the liquid is completely absorbed into rice. Once absorbed, add another amount of liquid just to cover the rice and continue stirring or moving as before. There should be just enough liquid left to repeat 1 more time. It should take approximately 35 to 40 minutes for all of the liquid to be absorbed. After the last addition of liquid has been mostly absorbed, add the mushrooms and asparagus and stir until risotto is creamy and asparagus is heated through. Remove from the heat and stir in the Parmesan, lemon zest, and nutmeg. Taste and season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

But last week I wasn't in the mood to mess with asparagus and all that, so I decided to just follow the directions on the back of the Arborio rice bag, which was basically this recipe halved and without the nutmeg, lemon zest, asparagus, and mushrooms.

Let me tell you, it was AMAZING! I've never made a dish of risotto so awesome. It tasted so light and fresh and bright. You don't need lemon zest when you don't add all those other ingredients to weigh down the taste.

This got me thinking, how many other recipes are out there that would taste great if only we added less ingredients to them? Have you ever come across a dish where less is more?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking: Cheese Please!

According to Chuck Hughes from Chuck's Day Off, there is a renaissance of artisan cheese making happening in America right now, and I really have to agree with him. In the '80s it seemed like there were only three kinds of cheese: Velveeta, Kraft, and Philadelphia. Admittedly I was pretty young in the '80s, so my recollection might not be that great, but nowadays you can get so many different specialty cheeses in the grocery store. That definitely wasn't around when I was a kid.

When I was living in Oklahoma, there was a fromagerie--aka cheese shop--in the town I lived in, and I started to become obsessed with all trying all the different types of cheeses that were available. Then, while watching The Big Cheese one night, I started to wonder if there was a way to make cheese in a home kitchen. Although I doubted it (I figured you needed raw milk and specialized equipment I definitely wasn't going to buy), I put the question out on twitter. I probably could have googled it, but sometimes I just like to ask questions on twitter to see what will happen. Sandy from You've Gotta Read This said she'd just gotten a book called Artisan Cheese Making at Home that looked like something I'd be interested in.



My library had it. Yay! This book has absolutely fabulous, delicious-looking photographs that make me crave cheese like a crazy person, and recipes for everything from marscapone cheese to Stilton; as well as yogurt, butter, and recipes for dishes to make with your home-made cheeses. It's also very informative about the types of cheeses you can make and starts out with the easier stuff (ricotta, butter, yogurt, etc.).

That being said, I had the same problem with this book that I did with many of the bread-making books I looked at last year: even though the recipes are scaled-back for home kitchens, they still require a lot of special equipment and ingredients. In other words, it's written by a chef (Mary Karlin, in this case) who is writing what are "simple recipes" from the perspective of a chef, which is still way more time, money, and work than the average person wants to put into it.



Just for example, Karlin's recipes are in what she calls "small batches" of ONE OR TWO POUNDS of cheese. Do you know how long it would take my family to eat a whole pound of cheese, assuming they would even agree to eat it? That is not a practical-sized batch for the average household. Another pet peeve of mine: her butter recipe requires a food processor, which 1. isn't listed in the required equipment chapter, probably because she just assumes EVERYONE must have a food processor; and 2. is something I don't have. Even Karlin's simplest recipes require ingredients I've never heard of. Take the ingredients for her ricotta recipe, one of the first in the book:

1 gallon pasteurized or raw whole cow's milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon citric acid powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt

What the heck is citric acid powder? How many people just have that sitting in their cupboard? The recipe also calls for sterilized equipment, nonreactive-strainers, -bowls, and -pots, and butter muslin instead of cheese cloth. Cuz that's totally necessary.

Fortunately, Sandy also gave me a link to a simpler ricotta recipe she found in Food & Wine magazine by Helm Sinskey; otherwise I never would have attempted to make cheese. By comparison, this recipe uses easily-found ingredients and the batch is 1/2 the size of Karlin's:

Ingredients:
    1.    2 quarts whole milk, preferably organic
    2.    1 cup heavy cream, preferably organic
    3.    3 tablespoons white vinegar
    4.    1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions:
    1.    In a medium pot, warm the milk and cream over moderately high heat until the surface becomes foamy and steamy and an instant-read thermometer inserted in the milk registers 185°; don't let the milk boil [note: at high altitudes, milk will boil at this point. wah-wah]. Remove the pot from the heat. Add the vinegar and stir gently for 30 seconds; the mixture will curdle almost immediately. Add the salt and stir for 30 seconds longer. Cover the pot with a clean towel and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours.

    2.    Line a large colander with several layers of cheesecloth, allowing several inches of overhang. Set the colander in a large bowl. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the curds to the colander. Carefully gather the corners of the cheesecloth and close with a rubber band. Let the ricotta stand for 30 minutes, gently pressing and squeezing the cheesecloth occasionally to drain off the whey. Transfer the ricotta to a bowl and use at once, or cover and refrigerate.

Make Ahead The fresh ricotta can be refrigerated for up to 4 days.

Notice that this recipe also uses less salt and more cream than Karlin's. I followed this recipe (halving it), and it turned out fabulous! Very fluffy and creamy. It takes about three hours to make, but only thirty or so minutes of that requires your attention. Here are some pictures:

Making the cheese:



Of course, once I'd made the ricotta, I had to figure out what to do with it. Here are some of my recipe attempts:



I decided to make this after Memory from Stella Matutina said she liked ricotta with honey. This has honey and pepper sprinkled over it. It was okay, but a little bland, and not very filling.



I got this recipe from Real Simple. It's ricotta, butter, lemon zest, parsley, tarragon, and chives. I added a ton of herbs and pepper, but it was still very bland--okay, but definitely missing something.



This bruschetta was pretty good. I squeezed out the tomato's juices into the bread, then chopped the tomatoes, which made them easier to eat. The basil and prosciutto added a lot of flavor.



This is a pretty similar recipe to the bruschetta, but adapted for pizza. This was by far the best of the snacks I made. The only thing I would change is to add more tomato paste.

I also wanted to try making a dessert with the ricotta, and chose this recipe from Noshtopia for ricotta chocolate pudding. I had my doubts about turning cheese into a chocolate pudding, but it was really good!


So that was my cheese-making experience. It went pretty well (I count any cooking experiment that doesn't end with me in the ER a success at this point), and I am definitely encouraged to try to make different cheeses and butter. However, I don't think I'll be trying the recipes in Artisan Cheese Making at Home any time soon. They probably do taste better than the very basic cheese and butter recipes I've found so far, but I'm looking for easy at this point. It's a great resource if you're an experienced cook ready to put a lot of time, patience, energy, and money into making cheeses; but I think for the average person it's more like a book of food porn than something for practical use.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking Review: THE FOUNDING FOODIES by Dave DeWitt

I was SO excited about Founding Foodies when I first saw it. I heart cultural history of any sort, whether it addresses dance, art, cooking, literature, film--you name it. Not to mention that one of my favorite things to eat is mac & cheese, and one of my favorite things to think about while making it is that Thomas Jefferson served the first dish of macaroni and cheese. How cool is that? In a way it ties me and Thomas Jefferson together. As a result, I've always been curious about Jefferson and his pals, and how their legacy can be found in food as well as politics. Since many of the men involved in the American Revolution were tavern owners and farmers, it stands to reason they knew their food.

Founding Foodies purports to tell us about the beginnings of "America's diverse food culture," as well as give us original Founding Father recipes like George Washington's beer and Martha Washington's fruitcake. How fun is that?! Unfortunately, the answer is not very fun at all, because this book fails on practically every level imaginable.

My high expectations of Founding Foodies started to plummet in the introduction. Perhaps it's just my years of being in school, but I expect the introduction of a non-fiction book to summarize the topic, lay out the central argument or point of the book, and provide a brief run-down of how that point is going to be made. What was in Dave DeWitt's intro? First, he talks about why he likes Jefferson (he went to the University of Virginia), and then he spends the rest of the introduction defining the terms "foodie" and "founding father." This was worrisome because both of these terms are generally understood by the North American public; so either we as readers are being talked down to, or DeWitt does not know what the fridge he is talking about.

Things, shockingly, did not improve from there. The first chapter doesn't start with the Founding Fathers at all, but with Sir Walter Raleigh, and it takes PAGES before food is even mentioned. The timeline jumps all over the place, from 1492 to 1850, and there is no central argument or point to be had anywhere in this book. Take the chapter on Thomas Jefferson, for example (I was sure DeWitt would at least manage a solid on this one, since he was such a self-professed Jeffersonian), which goes something like this: Thomas Jefferson, man of the world and lover of different cultures, founding foodie extraordinaire. Let's talk about him! Wait, let's talk about his slaves. He fed them! What a guy! Wait, let's talk about tomatoes. Now let's talk about ice cream, but let's discuss muffins while we're talking about that. Now let's talk about Jefferson's garden. What was his favorite vegetable? The debate rages. And why didn't we talk about tomatoes in this section? I don't know! UHG.

Even if there had been a point DeWitt was trying to make, the book is way too generalized to make it. Hey, did you know they served food at the White House? And people ate corn? It's true. They ate corn. I did like that DeWitt included a lot of information about what the slaves ate, but like much of the information in The Founding Foodies, it lacked a whole lot of context.

Furthermore, I really don't think DeWitt has any clue to what someone who would pick up a book like this would be looking for. Just as an example, at no point does he address the famous macaroni and cheese dish. If I've heard about it, it's got to be well-known; and it's one of America's favorite meals to this day. Yet there's NOTHING. ABOUT IT. ANYWHERE, other than a small note in the recipe section that Jefferson did serve a pasta dish with Parmesan cheese. No recipe, no date, no discussion. Does DeWitt know anything about his audience? Anything at all?



Frustrated, I flipped to the bibliography (there isn't a conclusion, which is probably for the best), and realized that was what I should have done in the first place, because many of DeWitt's sources are Wikipedia pages. HE LITERALLY CITES WIKIPEDIA AS A MAJOR SOURCE IN HIS BOOK! Not just a few times, but regularly. In the intro to the bibliography, DeWitt tries to excuse himself by saying he fact-checked Wikipedia to make sure it was correct. Oh, really?! You fact-checked Wikipedia? Why didn't you just use the sources you found while making sure Wikipedia was accurate then, hmmmmm?

To make it matters even worse, the writing style is stupefyingly boring. If I wasn't going to be put off by the total lack of logical organization and saddest excuse for research I have ever come across in a published book, the writing would do it. It's like reading the narration to a History Channel special, and I do not mean that in a good way.

So just to summarize: this author wrote a book that he basically researched using Google. And now we know why it sounds like he doesn't know what he's talking about: HE DOESN'T.

There are some books that make me wonder how on earth people get published, and this is one of them. Even the index is a piece of crap, that's how bad this book is. You can do better. Might I suggest Wikipedia?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking: Making a Soufflé

This week, I suddenly became obsessed with making a soufflé. Why? I don't know. I had never actually eaten a soufflé before, but I decided had to make one. (Note: If you can't see the imbedded video, click here. I apologize for the poor sound quality and the watermark; apparently that's what happens when you try to convert wmv files to mpeg4 using freeware. My camera man had the day off. ;)

As we all know from classic movies, soufflés are difficult to make. I decided to try Alton Brown's recipe for a basic cheese soufflé. A soufflé is basically egg yolk batter mixed with egg white foam, to make it fluffy. Because the egg foam is unstable and incompatible with egg yolk (kind of like water and vinegar), making a souffle is technically difficult.

It took me over an hour to make the three mini-soufflés, but I think they turned out pretty well. They were tasty, and actually all that work was kind of worth it. That being said, I think having someone make a soufflé for you is the better part of valor. :)

What's the most difficult thing you've ever tried to cook or bake?

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.

Weekend Cooking: ARTISAN BREAD IN 5 MINUTES A DAY by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois

The Beginning:

Starting last semester, I became obsessed with baking my own bread. I'm one of those people who eats massive amounts of bread, and I spent a ton of money buying baguettes from Panera. Then I thought to myself, "Hey, maybe I could make my own baguettes?!?" I knew I could save a lot of money if I made it myself because flour is cheap, yo. At the same time, though, I wasn't sure I could because it seemed like homemade bread required:

• kneading (I'm a weakling)
• lots of time
• precise measurements and other things that bore me
• special equipment and tools that I don't have and don't have the money to buy

Then I found this book! And I have to say, it does exactly what it claims to: makes baking bread at home very accessible to the average person. There are some caveat emptors to go along with that, but as someone who needs bread in their diet, I feel liberated now knowing that I can make my own bread any time I need or want it. The recipes in this book don't require kneading, have a very reasonable rise time, and are fairly flexible as far as the equipment required.

The Deets:


The first loaf of bread that I successfully made!

The heart of Artisan Bread is Hertzberg and François' French boule recipe. While I definitely wouldn't call it an authentic French boule, it's close enough for a home kitchen. It has the crackly crust and slightly sour dough filled with holes that one associates with French bread. It takes about ten minutes to make up a batch of dough that will last two or three weeks, and you can put leftover dough in the fridge or freezer for when you want it.

Aside from the ingredients for the bread itself, there are only two things you'll need to buy that you probably don't have already: a baking stone and a pizza peel. I found a good baking stone at Target for $15, but the pizza peels tend to be more expensive, starting around $20.

Two things I should mention: one, the authors say the dough is moist, and they are NOT kidding. If you underbake this bread, it feels like you're eating a wet sponge. Not appetizing. Second, I've found that the dough is also really salty, especially if the bread is a few days old. For me, the salt content is way overboard, so I tend to cut back on it.

Don't Do This At Home:

I've been making the boule bread regularly for about four months, and now it seems fairly easy. But when I first started, it was a disaster! Actually, I wound up in the ER. Yes, that's right, only I could wind up in the ER after trying to do something as innocuous as bake bread.

Here's what happened: part of the baking process requires that you pour water into a hot dish that's placed in the oven--this makes the bread rise with the steam and causes all those holes in the dough. Unfortunately, the only oven-proof dish I had was Pyrex. I poured water into the dish and it exploded in my face. I got some glass in my eye, which I didn't realize until later. And since this was at, like, midnight (when do I ever do things at a normal time of day?), I had to go to the ER to get it taken out. To add insult to injury, the bread got hit with most of the water and glass, which meant I had to scrap it and start all over.

Lesson: DO NOT use glass when baking! Only use a metal bowl.

Other Breads:


Brioche rolls I make with chocolate chips.

Artisan Bread has many other bread recipes besides the French boule. Some of them use the same dough as the boule--baguettes and pain d'epi, for example--while other use a different dough. There are whole wheat, flatbread, and pastry dough recipes. Every dough can be used to make several different types of breads--for example, the olive oil dough can be used to make lavash, pizza, focaccia, and other types of flatbreads. The only other type of bread I've made from this book so far is the brioche.

Brioche is an "enriched" bread kind of like challah; it has eggs, honey, and butter in it instead of just flour, water, and yeast. It's said that when Marie Antoinette declared, "Let them eat cake," what she actually said was brioche--which would be a healthy thing for peasants to eat, but it's considerably more expensive than regular bread. Anyway, the reason why I started making this bread was pretty much for the same reason I started baking the boule bread: I love having a pain au chocolate (aka chocolate pastry) from Panera for breakfast, but they are freaking expensive! Again, I wondered to myself if there was a way I could save money by making something similar.

Pain au chocolate is made with puff pastry, something I know I cannot make from scratch, nor would I want to if I could. But I figured brioche was close enough. It's usually made in a loaf, like regular bread, but I baked it in muffin tins so that I could grab one in the morning and take it with me. Then I added chocolate because everything is better with chocolate.

The brioche muffins turned out great, and I highly recommend you try the brioche dough if you get around to buying this book. There are plenty of other types of bread recipes, including beignets, that you can make with it.

Take-away:

If you've ever wanted to bake your own bread, but thought it would be too complicated, you really need to check out Artisan Breads. I was amazed at how simple it made baking bread.

Weekend Cooking is a meme hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Every weekend, you can share your reviews of cookbooks, food writing, foodie novels, and movies that make you hungry.

review, book, baking, bread, jeff hertzberg, zoe francois

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Unseelie Spaghetti

Image from silver marquis

Ingredients:

• olive oil
  
• 2 anchovy fillets
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  
• hot pepper flakes (as much as you like)
  
• 1 cup white wine (or amayl)
  
• 14 oz canned tomatoes
• chopped parsley (amayl)
  
• 1-2 tbsp butter
  
• 1/2 lb spaghetti

Directions:

• Get the pasta going by setting a pot of water to boil; follow package directions.
• Drizzle 4 tablespoons oil into a thick-bottomed pot (I use a wok).
• Set to medium heat and put anchovies in; mash down with wooden spoon until they melt into the oil, all while thinking about how the gray fillets wiggling in the hot oil kind of resemble Unseelie flesh as described in the Fever books by Karen Marie Moning.
  
• After about a minute, hurriedly put in garlic and hot pepper flakes so that you don't get so grossed out you have to scrap dinner and go out. Lower heat to meduim-low.
• Once garlic is soft, add white wine and briefly raise heat so it boils down.
• Add tomatoes, lower heat to medium-low again and stir. Add salt and pepper to taste.
• Once done, drain pasta and put back in pot to mix with butter and most of the parsley. Add a few spoonfuls of sauce and mix with spaghetti, too.
• Put pasta in bowl and spoon over sauce; sprinkle some of the leftover parsley on top. Eat while reading Shadowfever.
  

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