Tonight's feast

Mom created a glorious meal tonight: squash + purple onions from Ottolenghi's Jerusalem; greens maison; and Brussels sprouts with garlicked panko, tahini, and pomegranate. The hors d'oeuvre? Smoked butterfish, smoked salmon, and salmon roe. I'm still smiling!

Salsa Verde or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Anchovies

Tamar inspires again. "Once you have it, you'll start spooning it on everything in sight," she says of her salsa verde, introduced in the first chapter as (if memory serves) the first bona fide recipe in An Everlasting Meal. I initially read the ingredient list down to "1 anchovy fillet" and moved on: I've never had mom's taste for those oily little suckers. But several chapters later, I've learned to trust Tamar, so I went back to p. 15 and gave salsa verde a shot.

As it turns out, the shallot, garlic, and parsley give a pleasant (if predictable) boost to beef and chicken, but the capers and anchovies add a whisper of something strange and extraordinary. (And I think that's the most you'd want from a salsa.) Plus it's dead easy to make and costs nothing. So, welcome, salsa verde, to the permanent rotation!

1 shallot, finely chopped and soaked for 10-15 minutes in red or white wine vinegar
1 bunch parsley, roughly chopped
1 garlic glove, minced and smashed into paste-like consistency
1 tsp. capers, finely chopped
1 anchovy fillet, finely chopped
~1/3 cup olive oil (more or less depending on the volume of your parsley bunch)

Seen here atop grilled sirloin steaks, themselves resting on a bed of sautéed purple cabbage and onions

Valentine's Day!

We had a multi-day Valentine's extravaganza this year.  Snowmageddon 2015 continued, with Mother Nature dropping another 20 inches on top of the 6.5 ft we already had on the ground.  Cecyl was so worried that we wouldn't be able to make it out for dinner that he came up with a back-up menu and went to Whole Foods to get all the ingredients!

Luckily we made it out for an amazing meal at Study.  Cecyl arranged for a 7-course tasting menu to delight both vegans and omnivores.  Such a treat!

On Sunday night, Cecyl made me an incredible meal - a yummy salad with spinach, portobello mushrooms, tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, green goddess dressing, toasted quinoa with hazelnuts; followed by acorn squash stuffed with red quinoa, mushrooms, and pepitas; finished with sweet lavender and chocolate (vegan) ice cream from FOMU!

Tonight, I created an encore version of last night's dinner.  I took the leftover tomatoes, tossed them in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and garlic, and roasted them in the oven for 30 minutes at 400 degrees.  I also re-roasted the quinoa and hazelnuts and put them on top of the spinach and alfalfa sprouts with some vinaigrette.  For the entree, I wilted some greens (collards, rainbow chard, and kale) with soy sauce, garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil to create a bed.  I used the rest of the acorn squash, sprinkled it with cinnamon, sprayed it with coconut oil, and filled it with leftover cauliflower rice pilaf, and stuck it back in the oven at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes and put it on top of the greens.

Superbowl food!

I love buffalo wings.  I discovered this love at some point during college, which means I missed out on all the tasty buffalo wings to be found in my hometown of Kettering, Ohio, but better late than never.  Then I became vegan.  And now I love vegan buffalo wings, which are a little tougher to come by.

For this year's SuperBowl, I was determined that Tom Brady wanted me to have vegan buffalo wings.  So I bought some vegan chicken nuggets from Whole Foods, a bottle of buffalo sauce, and found myself a recipe for vegan ranch dip.  There's a lot of recipes out there for vegan ranch dip, and they all involve vegan mayonnaise (made from tofu), apple cider vinegar, and not much else.  I had no dill so used cilantro instead.  I later found a recipe involving cashews that I'll have to try next time when I have time to soak the cashews in advanced.  Those nuggets were goooooooood!  I will definitely be getting them again.  Even some of the non-vegetarians at our SuperBowl party pronounced them delicious!

I also made a white bean rosemary hummus, which also turned out well, once I remembered to put the vinegar in (it needs some acidity!)  3 cups of white beans, 1/4 cup of tahini, 1/4 cup veg broth, 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar (i used white balsamic), 2 cloves of garlic mined, and some rosemary.  Great on crackers, baguette, veggies, and especially good as a spread on the sweet potato sandwich I made later on!

Best sandwich ever

Flour has always been a favorite lunch spot for me for their breadth of vegan and non-vegan options.  They recently introduced a sandwich that blew my mind: roasted sweet potato, walnut pesto, green apple, kale, blue cheese (which I omit) on ciabatta (I sub wheat bread and ask them to grill it).  After weeks of having this sandwich for a post-church treat, I decided to make my own.

I found a recipe for walnut pesto and used the leftover sweet potatoes from the Hoppin' John recipe.  I used Ezekial bread.  I used spinach instead of kale because, well, it was closer to the top of the veggie drawer.  And I had made a lot of white bean rosemary dip, as in 3x what I needed for the weekend, so decided to spread some on there.  And then I grilled it on the stovetop like how we made grilled cheese sandwiches when I was a kid: one skillet on the bottom, the other on top to weight it down.

Amazing.  Best sandwich ever.

 

Hoppin' John

Building on Cecyl's affinity for beans and rice, and hopefully to curb the carnage in the energy markets, I attempted Hoppin' John the other night.  The recipe I used was from the Thug Kitchen cook book so was slightly different - instead of using rice, it used sweet potatoes.

I learned several things:
1) Dried japaleno peppers are insanely hot.  The recipe called for 3-4 adobo peppers, we had dried jalapeno peppers and I put in 3 of them, and thinking I was all Tamar Adler and stuff, I dumped in the water that I'd soaked them in as well.  Hooooolllyyyy ****.  I like spicy food, but that was intense.  You know how Asian restaurants have one, two, or three chili peppers on the menu when something is expected to be spicy?  In Thailand, they actually ask you if you want one, two, or three peppers in it.  I learned early on that one pepper was plenty of spice for an American!
2) There are many options to make a dish less spicy - and they kinda work.  You want to increase acidity or sugar, so I added some lemon juice, a can of diced tomatoes, and a couple of carrots.
3) Roasted whole sweet potatoes are a great thing to just have in the fridge.  As are wilted greens, which the Thug Kitchen recipe also calls for.  The wilted greens recipe is very simple: 6 cups of greens (ie kale, chard, collards), 1/2 tsp of olive oil, 1 Tbsp of water, 2 cloves minced garlic, 2 tsp lemon juice, 1 tsp soy sauce.  Yumminess ensues.

Cecyl came home and pronounced the dish delicious.  The spiciness mellows out after a few days and we've been enjoying them since.