More Dinner Theater, or Why I Shouldn’t Experiment When Starving

Ah, brave, new year, which doth clutch me to its thin, ascetic breast!

All hail the month of diets! Success to Maki, a most excellent food writer who is now going to make an awe-inspiring attempt to stop food obsessing and lose weight. With such inspiration, we lesser mortals surely cannot fail. Since we still have to eat, though, I’ve decided it’s soup time, and in honor of the god Janus, and his apparent amused affection for the devotion of starving, cranky people, I’m going to try to make broccoli soup — sans eggs, parmesan, Gruyère, butter, and cream — and still make it tasty. (Isn’t it sad that the list of ingredients I’m leaving OUT sound so tasty!? Bring on the white wine and mustard, and we can just have some kind of pasta. Oooh, yum.)

First, may I just say that broccoli is world’s nastiest vegetable when it’s overcooked!? Which, sadly probably happens every fifteen seconds in our fair state, not to mention around the world. To get around the idea of gross-green-soup-of-overcooked-veg, I’ve thought to roast the broccoli first. It’s not that novel an idea – it’s just laziness, really, calling me. I’m reading Diana Wynn Jones. I’m having a lovely old escapist, childhood time. I don’t want to be bothered. That’s why God made oven timers…

So, here’s the plan: I chop up two heads of broccoli, peel the stems (there’s good stuff in there, according to my Food Boyfriend Jacques, and anyway it’s wasteful to not use such hugely menacing stalks when I won’t even have to look at them or even chew.) add some garlic, some shallots and/or garlic cloves, spritz lightly with oil, and let them go in a 400° oven for twenty minutes, then stir, and let them go another ten. After that, it’s a small and simple matter to put the limp veg into the blender and beat them to death, while boiling up your soup base. My soups tend to be non cream-based, and since I’m making a creamy broccoli soup, not cream of broccoli, I will just use a bouillon cube, 1/4 cup of wine, 1 c. water, and 1 tsp. of diluted cornstarch or arrowroot powder.

My only slight concern is the color… I have to admit some squeamishness regarding baby-poo colored broccoli soup, and since I used a leftover purple cauliflower, we’re already having some color, erm, issues… I have a feeling that in the end the soup will oxidize slightly once cooked and whizzed down. I don’t know where I get this idea; broccoli seems to be entirely impervious to anything else like, oh, bugs and things in the garden — it’s tough as nails, generally, so I don’t know why I think it will fall apart and go brown on me, but I’m sure I’m just repressing some awful vegan-childhood experience… at any rate, I am hoping that the wine will help keep the color intact, but just to be in the safe side, I’ll squeeze a couple of limes into the whole thing, garnish with chili flakes and then a few dry-fried shallots on top. I can top it with plain yogurt or cottage cheese and feel virtuous.

Unless I thaw out one of those fabulous rosemary flatbreads Mac made and top it with cheese and veg and for all intents and purposes turn my ascetic soup meal into soup with PIZZA…

Ahem. Not that that’s going to happen. For another hour or so…

Cheers!

Bad Movie … Decade

OK, just a quick note to the world of role playing gamers: no matter how many hit-points your characters have, how many cool swords or potions or amulets … don’t be tempted to use them as a movie character, ‘kay? Despite the positive reviews, Dragon was not one of the better movies of the decade. We believe that it ended up on the “new release” wall instead of the “special interest” section solely because the guys behind the counter may be frequently heard discussing “hit points.”

Add to this the fact that we checked out 8 Women (rated ‘R’ here in the U.S. because there’s some really poorly done lesbian kissing) and Nautilus (just don’t even go there) in the same batch and you’ve got to question either our sanity or the sanity of the universe.

It could be worse, I suppose: there’s a Murder She Wrote marathon playing on the Biography Channel today.

Let’s hope that this isn’t the beginning of a trend

Knit Things

Shown here is a hat, looking all funky and gnarly. I took this shot because a) I hadn’t taken any shots of this hat, and b) I had the film to burn because I finally finished up the shawl I’ve been working on for the past six months. The effect here was obtained by increasing crazily – by doing a reverse yarn-over after every fifth stitch for maybe 20 rows. This gave me simply too many stitches to sit flat, so it gives me the baubles. I particularly like it, even though it doesn’t get worn out anywhere.

Shown here is the beginnings of a hat (yarn I purchased in a fit of celebration for having finished the shawl). I’m doing what the Readers’ Digest Complete Guide to Needlework calls a “herringbone” stitch, I think. It amounts to knitting through the back loops of two stitches & only pulling off one stitch. So, you end up going through each stitch twice, and almost end up with a double-knit feel. It’s quite thick & will make a nice baby hat for friends who live in the cold.

And here, on the “wrong” side you get a real picture for how many stitches, as you can see the spiraling as I work my way out. Even though this is the wrong side, I suspect that the hat will be worn with this side out, as it shows such a nice spiral pattern. Keep the number of stitches you see here in mind, though, and look at the following picture.

Yes, this is the same hat, but shown upon the sea of the blocked-out shawl. The finished shawl ended up being 66 inches long x 48 inches wide. (168cm x 122cm) Knitted on US#6 (4mm) needles. The pattern is described in other places on this blog if you’re interested.

And here’s a good closeup of the stitching.

All of these link out to higher-resolution pics, if you’re interested.

Surviving Nasty Soup

Soup: one of those dishes that seems so easy… and can be so good. And then it can totally, fully, thoroughly screw up on you. It’s the alchemical thing, methinks. Some of us want to just throw everything and the kitchen sink in there. Consider mi papí, with his penchant for flinging fleshy huge mushrooms in EVERYTHING, or mi mama, with that unholy Creole trinity of green bell peppers, onions and celery — and I loathe bitter green bells and celery cooked. Shudder. Those were the soups of my childhood — limp, overcooked vegetables in a watery broth; or horrible broccoli soups with garish flavors all competing; soups layered with some floaty unidentifiable green stuff with a green bitterness undergirding it all. Long ago I determined that these are not the soups I will spend my adult life eating.

One of the best things I’ve discovered with soups is that it’s not too hard to tell what things go together, and what things don’t. Summer soups are easy — chuck fresh veggies in a clear broth, and serve with tortilla strips and a sprinkling of cheese or croûtons, and you’re good to go. Corn soup, fresh tomato gazpacho — yum. In the autumn, it becomes only slightly more complex: beans generally go with other beans, and tomatoes. (The Italians do that well with minestrone, or Pasta y fagioli.) Root vegetables go with root vegetables — carrots and potatoes go nicely with onions, and the Germans have even been known to add apples to that mix. (Or sweet potatoes and chestnuts! Mmmm!) It may not be to your particular taste, but they go well together, or well enough, anyway. Winter squashes make great creamy soups into which you can add pears or apples, and dried tomatoes make a great creamy soup all alone. It’s just when you start mixing things like broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, mushrooms and beans that you run into trouble. Just add huge mushrooms, and you’re living my father’s dream, and my personal culinary nightmare

You know, the best fix for a bad soup? The stick blender, that model of culinary helpfulness, and a block of plain, pale, creamy, silken tofu. Theoretically you could fix a blended soup with mashed potatoes, but the consistency wouldn’t be quite as velvety. Ditto white cheeses or rice. The glutinous nature of these things means that eventually your soup would either break, and you’d have watery/creamy divisions, or it’d clump into something truly vile looking, or after blending it, you could be left with a grainy consistency like you get when you blend certain kinds of lentils (and note to the universe? Lentils? NOT meant to be pulverize-blended, okay? Let’s just all — stop that. Unless you’re going to add crème fraîche or curry powder, please don’t fully blend lentils into some hideous paste. Just. Don’t. Lentil soups deserve some chunks.). Tofu and a stick blender has turned out to be the ultimate soup saver for me. Too many veggies and hideously vying tastes? No worries. Just add plain tofu and blend. Funny colors, weird consistencies, and odd textures from limp, overcooked veg vanish magically when blended. I add a pinch of salt, a little wine, a dash of curry, and all is well. Because it’s not dairy based, the acid doesn’t curdle the tofu, and really, the soy protein in your soups means your meal will just stick with you a bit longer.

Since it really and truly is freezing for this part of the world — it was 22°F this morning (5.5°C for those Fahrenheit impaired), I am inspired to make a soup a day as the cold weather ramps up. I have a monster head of Nappa Cabbage in the fridge, so this is what I will try this afternoon:

Baechu Gook, As Adapted from Dok Suni, A Korean Cookbook

  • Ingredients:
  • 12 ounces Nappa cabbage
  • 4 ounces white radish
  • 4 ounces beef short ribs – or some vegetarian equivalent
  • 4 ounces scallions
  • 2 tablespoons soybean paste
  • 6 cups water
  • 1 teaspoon red pepper sauce
  • 2 teaspoons crushed garlic

Instructions:

Clean the cabbage and shred with hands as desired, but in a wringing motion that will help soften the cabbage. Thinly slice the radish. Thinly slice the beef (or for me, it will be Quorn Naked Cutlets, which hold up well, and have scared some vegetarians into thinking I was feeing them chicken. Hee!) Cut the scallions (or leeks or onions, what have you) into 1-inch lengths. In a pot, dissolve soybean paste in the water (I think just adding a little silken tofu for smoothness will also work). For a smooth consistency, use a fine-mesh strainer with handle to remove the chunks of soybean paste floating in the soup and discard. Add the red pepper paste (Which I actually have! I knew I bought that for some reason), cabbage, beef, radish, scallion, and garlic and cook for 7 minutes over a high flame, then for 3 more minutes over a medium flame. Serve hot with white rice, kimchi, and sautéed anchovy (Um, again – an adaptation… no anchovies for me! And I’m amused at serving cabbage soup with kimchi, which is yet more cabbage, but… hey – this way I’ll use it up, right?).

I believe I’ll rummage around in the freezer and see if we have any frozen egg rolls left, steam a basket of rice, and voilá… dinner. I’ll let you know how it all goes.

Pics from the Aquarium

OK, you all, this is just a preliminary, to get the pictures out there so you can enjoy them. These are just a selection of some of the best, but since these were from Thanksgiving and it’s almost Christmas, I figured I’d better take the time to get them off of CD and onto the computer. These are only the ones which were actual film … yes, sad sad, that film makes it onto digital faster than I can be bothered to unload the digital camera. In any event, here’re some pics from Monterey Bay Aquarium.

This is a lovely, pale pink sea polyp of some sort, which is basically a variation on an anemone – basic anchoring foot, big mouth, lots of little feeler-y things to help it feed. We saw a lot of this type of thing.

Another marvelous little anemone, snuggled down in the midst of a bunch of other, um, things…

More of the little buggers.

This is a lion’s mane jelly, I think.

Since they hardly stayed still for us to catalog, I have to go by guess… but the fringed edges resemble a lion’s mane, thus the name. Either that, or it’s one of the purple striped jellies.

This is a blue jelly, though it looks kind of green…

And this one just seemed to kind of twitch against the bottom of its tank. I think it was sleeping, or something. It’s an upside down jelly, and it is described to look like a bouquet of flowers… apparently these scientists don’t get a lot of flowers…

These next jellies are black sea nettle jellies, with the looong tentacles.

Might I add the looong, stinging tentacles…

These are called Mediterranean jellies, or fried egg jellies, since they have flat tops that sort of …vaguely… resemble an egg. Again – the scientists just don’t get out that much. And ugh — would you eat this!?

These have got an underside only a biologist could love.

Okay — I think they’re pretty, too. This is a juvenile purple striped jelly, from the flipside.

Right side up, their stubby little underskirts are pretty striking.

There were a half ton of jellies that we saw that simply wouldn’t photograph well, including the luminous moon jellies, box jellies, and the comb jellies, which looked like they had electric current running through them. We moved on, though, to the dramatically overcrowded, and full-of-evil-parents-and-their-bratified-children otter gallery… these shots were taken as a reward for standing still for about fifteen minutes with umpteemillion people pressed against the back of us.

Have to admit, though, the blighters are worth it. They look like undersized bears. Or something scary you find rummaging in the trash when you’re camping. Half raccoon, half… something else, they really have large yellow teeth you wouldn’t want to see in person. No, really wouldn’t want to see. They’re cute, but a bit random.

And so, the otter looks for someone to play with, after a lovely bath…

(…and hanging onto its surrogate shellfish, which is much nicer than a real shellfish, since it has a ready-made spot for hiding treats, yet floats, which gives the trainers some relief…)

(and it’s also nicer, ’cause, you know, if you give an otter a real shellfish with a shell…well, it bangs it against the glass to open it, until the glass is so mightily scratched that you can’t see the otters anymore!)

They’re quite pitiful, really; you should see the agonized looks they give the trainers as they beg for just a tidbit — not that they’re not fed something like four times a day, but nonetheless, they beg…

…and when there’s no food forthcoming, they zip back into the water in great disgust, then nose up to the glass as if we’re going to feed them.

Meanwhile, this is an exhibit that smelled… well, like bird guano.
I felt like I was at the zoo, or in my parent’s backyard with the menagerie.

Good old penguins. Yay. Of course, our Mac spotted the happy couple in the back.

We found a small, quiet bird sanctuary just about the time we were exhausted and ready to drop from the crowds and the whinging of other people’s kids.

There are curlews and stilts in this little area, and the occasional wee sandpiper, which are skittish and shy and really cute.

However, the sharp beak doesn’t encourage really cuddling them.
The colors we saw were just great. The tidepool exhibit takes you back to the fun of scrambling round the rocks at low tide, getting your pantlegs all cold and soppy, turning over rocks to find out what’s underneath.

Believe it or not, this is called a sea pen, and when it’s standing upright, it looks like a plumed “pen” from back in the olden days when people wrote with… feathers.

The marvels of using a polarizing lense mean that I can see through water without any of the pesky reflections. Fab!

Soy Heresy

So, the heresy here is that we only make tofu when we run low on okara. Don’t get me wrong: we enjoy homemade tofu quite a bit, but we can buy high quality tofu in the grocery store and truly can’t tell much of a difference. Yes, the homemade tastes a bit better when you eat it by itself … but who does that? Okara, now, that’s the stuff which can’t be obtained anyplace that I’ve been able to find, and it adds so much to quickbreads and cookies that I don’t think I’ll ever be without it again.

We get about 3 times the volume of okara as we do tofu, by the way, so in a typical batch we’ll end up with probably 3 cups of tofu, but easily 8 or 9 cups of okara. We take that and dry it out either in the oven or in our dehydrator, depending on how lazy we’re feeling (the dehydrator lives down in the garage, and requires carrying trays of steaming Okara down the outside stairs). After it’s dry, we put it into an airtight bin and it keeps just fine for months (see, if you cook cookies and quickbreads, you eat cookies and quickbreads … hence the shelf-life here).

Coconut Macaroons aren’t the only things you can make with okara, but they’re the only thing I’ve found which absolutely requires okara. Everything else you can swap in some oat bran, some extra flax seeds, whatever, but the Coconut Macaroons require that you take the time to make okara, primarily because the okara’s texture matches better with the coconut, and the okara doesn’t add any more gelatinousness as flax seeds would. They’re worth making, and the extra protein & fiber are a great addition to anything else you might want to make.

Besides, you get the added bonus of people thinking you’re strange and cool for making your own tofu, and you get recipes that most other people have no hope of duplicating.

Season of Soup

It’s ridiculous, the lengths some people will go to, to be holiday-esque.

The thought was: “Ooh! Chestnuts! Let’s roast them on our Thanksgiving beach bonfire!” The reality was: “The coast in November is bloody cold, and the windchill is making it below forty, and what were we thinking, bring a post-surgical child out here in the dark, not to mention trying to lug firewood and marshmallows out here while keeping track of irresponsible teen-aged pyromaniacs?!” So, no chestnuts roasted on an open fire (but marshmallows roasted over candles: good fun. Except for that bit with the sooty wax. And the skewers on fire. Look, I said pyromaniacs…) At any rate, post-holiday, we were left with a great bag of beautifully smooth nuts which look gorgeous, but which are just too …something for my taste. Sweet? Starchy? Something. Really, I’m just not that big on nuts, and I don’t care for even things like pecans and macadamia nuts, which most people are wild about, but I try to eat some nuts every once in a bit, because they’re supposed to be full of copper and trace elements Americans don’t get, unless they’re combined with sports and beer — which aren’t two of my big interests either. But I digress. Me, with bag of glossy brown nuts, rapidly rotting (NEVER have I run across any nut that decomposes so fast. Ugh!). So, my idea was an autumnal soup. I came up with one that combined a chestnut soup from a Vegan Lunchbox recipe with leftover roasted butternut squash and pureéd the whole thing. That cut the cloying sweetness/richness of the chestnuts, to good effect, but the fact is that peeling/shelling the rotten things was a huge pain in the neck — and in the thumbs. Tasty though it was, I am not surprisingly more fond of soups that take less work.

Now that the cool, wet weather has come in to stay for a bit, the farm is churning out those cool, wet weather veggies, most notably leeks and carrots, broccoli, cauli, and soon, peas. Apparently myriad other cultures have long regarded the whole carrot — as well as the tops of radishes, beets, and other greens part of the usual culinary circus, but most Californians I know don’t know what to do with any part of a carrot that isn’t orange. Admittedly, I used to put carrot tops in a vase and admire them for the fifteen seconds they would stay pretty, and my chiropop chick juices them — but then, she juices everything. (She also gives her sweater-wearing dog filtered water and B vitamins, so I’m going to reserve judgment on her input here.) I decided, since I have an abundance of carrots and leeks from the farm box this week, to see if they’d make a decent soup. I tasted a piece of the top, and determined that it was a flavor close enough to celery to work well.

I began by sauteéing onions and leeks, adding dry-leaf sage and then the chopped and cleaned carrot tops and six cups of stock. I finished with some mung bean noodles, just for fun, and it was really tasty. Mac suggested quinoa for next time, and I think carrot tops might also go well with barley. This is what I’m going to try next for my Carrot Top Soup:

  • 1 ½ cup chopped carrot tops – and any carrots that go with them, diced *You can make this without adding the carrots; I did.
  • 2 tblspns olive oil
  • ½ cup short grain rice or quinoa
  • 2 large leeks, white part only
  • a clove of garlic, smashed, or 1 tsp. garlic paste
  • one stalk of celery, diced
  • 2 pinches of rubbed sage
  • 2 tblspns chopped dill or parsley
  • 6 cups vegetable stock, plus ½c. white wine
  • Salt and pepper to taste

After sauteèing the leeks, garlic, carrots and celery in your olive oil for about five minutes, pour on the white wine, give it another minute or so, then add your broth and bring to bubbling stage. Once your broth and veggies are boiling, add in your rice or quinoa, and your sage, then simmer for fifteen minutes until tender. Add the chopped carrot tops and cook for 5 more minutes, mixing well. The Italians serve a soup much like this over garlic-rubbed bread and sprinkled with parmesan. You could also add cubed potatoes in lieu of quinoa or rice. One of the best things about soup is that you can hardly mess it up, so I always enjoy making whatever variations on a theme I can come up with. It combats the rain and fog fug, makes the house smell wonderful, and fills me up so I don’t overdose on the lovely cranberry muffins being churned out of the oven.

It may not be exactly ‘holiday-esque,’ but it’s seasonal, which lasts longer.

A note about the booze, Julia… After another email to my collegiate friend in Spain, I realized I have a habit of coming up with all of these great recipes where one can just drop in a bit of white wine or rum, and all will be well… This is to disprove the Booze As Food thing I seem to have going: For the under 21 set, lemon juice, vinegar, vegetable stock or possibly even V8 will work as well as the other libations I’ve suggested. Don’t let me get you into trouble, Julia… it would be a shame to get kicked out of your university just for cooking, after everything else…

Cheers!

Coconut Macaroons

Coconut Macaroons

  • 4 C Shredded Coconut (unsweetened)
  • 1 C Okara
  • 1/4 C Xylitol
  • 3/4 C Sugar
  • 6 Tbsp Flour
  • 2 Tbsp Coconut Cream Powder
  • 3 C Boiling Water
  • 1 C Shredded Marshmallow Root
  • 1/4 C Candied Ginger, chopped
  • 3 Tbsp Flax Seeds
  • 1 Tbsp Baking Powder
  • 1/4 tsp Salt
  • 1/4 tsp Almond Extract
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Add marshmallow root to boiling water and boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Strain out the resulting green goo and discard fibrous remains. Grind flax seeds and add them to the green goo, along with the remainder of the wet ingredients plus the coconut cream powder. Add sugars if you haven’t already, followed by the remainder of the ingredients. Order isn’t important so much as getting in the baking powder towards the end. There’s no gluten formation here, so don’t worry about overmixing.

Form into spoon-shaped cookies using spoons. Forming is important, as these won’t melt or smooth out at all, but will retain their shape, just puffed up a bit.

Bake at 425°F for 20 minutes on a silicone baking sheet, until very slightly browned.

If you don’t have Okara … well, modify. For those of you who don’t know, Okara is the fiber-filled left-overs from making tofu, and is fabulous stuff. We wrote it up Here, but Makiko is where you’ll get the real info on the process.

Despite having no fat and being completely vegan, these cookies are tender and chewy, largely due to the marshmallow root, we think. They take a bit of chewing, due to all of the fiber, but as you chew you get more and more of the marshmallow flavor. They’re truly unique.

Now, this recipe is our own, so go ahead and make it but … well, understand that our feelings of proprietary greed have been at war with our desire to share, and the spirit of the season has caused this lapse, so don’t abuse it.

White Whole Wheat?

Just a quick note to say that “White” Whole Wheat (King Arthur) is truly odd, and caused me a strange couple of hours waiting for it to rise. I don’t know what the deal is with it, but I used a mixture of about 1/2 regular whole wheat and half “white,” both from King Arthur, and followed my standard, can make it without thinking recipe … and it wouldn’t rise. Just plain wouldn’t.

Finally I took it out of the oven, where I had it stashed with the light on to keep it a bit warmer than the 68ºF of the room, and added a whopping 2 Tablespoons of commercial yeast & sent it for another knead. This added another 1/2 Cup of warm water, and which I soaked up with more of the white stuff. Back into the oven and an HOUR later it’d risen enough to bake.

Nothing different about the water, the yeast, the sourness of the starter. Nothing different in the amounts of fiber, the size of the batch, nor the added yeast. I even shorted the salt, as I usually do. Just the flour was different.

I will continue to try this flour, but something about it just doesn’t seem right, in the acidity or something. It felt more like working with Rye or Spelt than Wheat. Strange.

In any event, it turned out nicely, with a perfect balance between sourdough and sweet dough (honey and molasses), so it can go either way. I’m quite pleased with the consistency, although it truly is a dense loaf. We’re down half a loaf by way of tasting … so it’s up early in the morning to slice up the remaining three and carry them off to friends, lest we eat them ourselves.

Conjoined Sock Knitting

Thank you Isobel for the pointer to Conjoined Twin Sock Instructions, as I’d seen it in a book at the knit shop but hadn’t really had the time to sit down & look through it all. I’m with you, that at least it’ll give me identical socks … and maybe it’d be a good technique for sweater sleeves, too!

That’s it … now back to work for me.