crack the plates

This week I delivered my fifth round of meals and celebrated with a big ol’ piece of Southern Sweets strawberry cake and way more-than-usual leftovers, owing to a regular client being out-of-town. Like farmers who take a share of their crops for themselves, a huge perk of the meal delivery is getting to eat the leftovers. Sometimes they’re scant – literally a quarter cup of one side, a few tablespoons of dressing – and sometimes they don’t happen at all, but when they do, it’s always joyful!!! This week, at least, we ate well.

And so did my meal delivery folks! Let’s take a look at what they’re having this week, shall we?

Click “more…” to keep reading this post.

hey blog friends, I know the crack the plates weekly updates are fun and all, but they really don’t tell you much about my life – aside from the fact that I’m keeping busy. But my blog is still a personal blog, so I wanted to take a minute to check in with those who care. Click “More…” for a longish, varied, confessional & mostly thorough general update.

My dear friend Yuki had a birthday last weekend and I brought food as a gift. Yuki and I have known each other for a few years, but since I moved back from Indiana in January we’ve become particularly close. Amid a dismal job market, our long talks inspired me to create Kandai Cakery in February. While she encouraged me to reach out to the community and sell my creations privately, she also invited me to sell them at Nakato, where my petite dorayaki with homemade anko were offered alongside kuro-goma (black sesame) and kinako (toasted soy flour; very dulce de leche) soy-based ice creams by High Road Craft Ice Cream:

organic cake with black sesame seeds, filled with old-fashioned homemade anko (sweet azuki bean paste)

Though I’ve switched gears from sweets to the meal delivery full-time, Yuki has made an indelible impression on my life, giving me strength & confidence in my darkest hours. How better to honor her graciousness and generosity than with a birthday meal? When I asked her about it over brunch a few weeks ago, she specifically requested beets – and then followed up with adjectives like fresh, green, crisp, crunchy. I know she’s followed a mostly raw diet in the past, so I grabbed my Ani Phyo books and got to work.

The menu:

• Love is Love Farm roasted sweet peppers hummus with Crudités
• Vietnamese cabbage salad with mint from my back porch
• Quinoa tabbouleh in organic red cabbage cups
• Rawvioli – fresh cashew cheese sandwiched between mandolined yellow beets, served with raw cherry tomato marinara
• Ani’s rich chocolate cake with fudge frosting

Many of the items were locally sourced all of the ingredients were organic. The chocolate was fair-trade.

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I ran out of fresh basil so I had to sprinkle it with my organic freeze-dried stuff! Not aesthetically pleasing; thankfully it got doused in blushing cherry tomato sauce. Next time I will plan ahead better!

This cake presented an ideological problem for me. I am a very open-minded and excitable cook, but if there’s one type of food I can be slightly blasé about, it’s raw food. It’s not that I don’t love to eat it, it’s that sometimes when I’m reading raw food cookbooks I feel sad because so many of the recipes seem like the palest shadows of traditional recipes that they’re trying to “healthify”. Reading recipes for “pancakes” or “biscuits” that have to sit in a food dehydrator for seven to ten hours or “rice” made out of nuts and turnips seems overly fussy, stretching the idea too far for my taste.

So it was with this attitude that I went into Ani’s “chocolate fudge cake” recipe in Ani’s Raw Food Desserts. Shaking my head, I wrote out the recipe for “cake” made of walnuts, cocoa powder, salt and dates; frosting comprised of dates, agave nectar, avocado and cocoa. Just six ingredients. As I jotted notes and alterations in my cook’s notebook, I was so dubious that I actually continued to write “cake” and “frosting” in quotes. No way this is going to turn into anything delicious. It would take a miracle. This is not cake.

and yet, and yet, and yet. It was tremendous. The frosting was perfectly fudgy; the cake, a bit crumbly at first, tasted rich and incredibly decadent. The fresh, organic raspberries made everything sing. Because of its high fat content, the small cake (and petite servings) happily served all eight of Yuki’s guests, who gushed over all the food to the point of embarrassment. (For serious: it’s one thing to be complimented on a dish you tended for hours, but raw food you threw together in much less? Something else entirely!) If I had another jar of buttery, melty, caramelly medjools I’d make the darn thing again right now.

Being proven wrong feels awesome and tastes even better. Happy birthday, Yuki!!

As I write in this week’s nerdy newsletter, I’m no stranger to new cuisines. I’ve been a fan of Indian food since college (in the first year of seminary I was sadly known as the girl who always brought masoor dal to potlucks), and enjoyed a brief stint selling desserts at Atlanta’s first Japanese restaurant. (My favorite ever concoction? Sweet potato cake studded with roasted chestnuts; sweet shiro miso caramel foiled by a dark, rich, bitter burnt miso drizzle. MMM! And I have all the ingredients on hand right now… ) I also hosted two giant dinners as part of my thesis work at ESR – one with a thai theme and the second, a seven course Middle Eastern mezze bonanza.

Throw me a bundle of tender fresh fenugreek, kala namak, ajwain, orange flower water, or a pound of azukis and I’ll know what to do with them. Apparently I feel the need to cross oceans to have a little fun, because when I embarked on Latina food this past week, I was pretty puzzled! Despite having read and re-read Aunt Clara’s 100 Dominican Recipes, the Ecuador Cookbook, Bloodroot II, and Viva Vegan!, I lacked confidence.

But as with so many other things in life, you just gotta take the plunge and hope things turn out okay. So that’s what I did. I guess if this picture is any indication, I did alright:

Keep on reading to see what Crack the Plates eaters are enjoying during week four!

I’m pleased as punch that another round of meal deliveries found their way to fridges in Atlanta! From midtown to Decatur to East Atlanta and beyond, folks will be eating well this week.

The third round was particularly exciting because I added a new family! For those interested in the business side, I’ve been serving the same three families since delivery one. These folks – the “first week faithfuls” – are incredibly special to me because they took a chance when I was just starting out, and supported me as I worked out all the kinks. I couldn’t have been able to get off my feet without them!

Of course, I am looking for limited expansion, which is why I was thrilled to add someone new this week. I say “limited” because I’m actively discerning the upper bound of my orders and will likely be placing a weekly maximum soon. This is not because I’m not ambitious, or because I don’t care about reaching a wider audience. I do. Just not… now.

For now, I’m totally satisfied serving a handful of my friends. After all, that’s what inspired this whole project: friendship, partnership. Teaming up with innovative, interesting people who already care about food & sustainability but don’t have the luxury of time to make the kind of food they want to eat… because they’re pursuing other passions! From sewing to running small businesses to programming & other web-work, my friends inspire and challenge me, and I’m grateful for our mutually-supportive relationship.

Week three, shall we? Click “more…” to keep reading and see lots of pictures!!

It was such a treat to deliver the second week of meal deliveries! To be greeted by smiling, expectant faces, oohs and aahs – I can’t think of a better self-esteem boost for a hard-workin’ cook.

You might have read, heard, or seen details about the delivery. It’s one thing to read about it – it’s another entirely to see the pictures. Here are the pictures from week two!

All packed up and ready to go. Click “more…” to see what’s inside!

Four is my lucky number and september fourth was my lucky day. three remarkable things happened that I just have to share – with you, for posterity, and just because! (note: these things are pretty special to me, but I realize they might be kind of boring to folks who don’t share my obsession with food. They’re all food related! and fabulous!)

the first: I realized I hadn’t bought enough sweet potatoes for one of this week’s sides, so I trekked over to the Dekalb “Farmer’s Market” (more like a giant international grocery store with googols of produce) to stock up. As often happens on weekends at the market, one finds oneself peering over shoulders and around others to pick out the perfect piece. At the sweet potato stall I observed a dashing fella deep in thought over his organic options – white-fleshed or golden?

He put back the particularly lovely bag he was holding. Just to be certain, I asked if he really didn’t want it before I took it. This launched a conversation in which I learned that he’s 1) passionate about cooking whole foods with organic produce 2) VEGAN 3)… wait for it…

NAMED

ADRIAN.

It was one thing to happen upon a fellow vegan over organic sweet potatoes – it is QUITE ANOTHER to happen upon someone with the same name!

He set me even further off balance by mentioning that he especially wants to learn how to veganise comfort-food favorites like macaroni & cheese (!), pad thai (!!), and tofu chick’n salad (!!!). Oh, you know, just three of the things people freak out when I make.

Anyway he’s awesome (of course) and we traded contact information and now we’re gonna be in touch about foodie stuff. Yay!

the second: I was taking a break between mincing red onions for this week’s Ethiopian menu to check facebook when I saw that my facebook-friend and beloved local chef Asha (of Spice Route Supper Club and Cardamom Hill, forthcoming fall 2011) posted a beautiful album of her family today. I love Asha’s photographs because, unlike me, she has an eye for beauty. But for beautiful things that are actually beautiful, like plants and cups of tea and one’s back porch at dawn.

So, of course, I “liked” several of her photos and commented on one. She responded by inviting me to cook with her once she returns from an upcoming trip! Asha’s not vegan, but like all chefs she has a heart for hospitality and does a tremendous job accommodating us. She’s planning on making Cardamom Hill especially welcoming.

Asha was the only woman to be named in Creative Loafing Atlanta’s “Chefs to Watch Out For 2011” list. Needless to say, I’m a tad bit starstruck to get to hang out with her! If you haven’t already, you should totally visit her blog to see what she did for the most recent supper club – exploring the vegetarian side of Kerala, family style! (I had to miss this meal because it was my mom’s birthday and I love my momma.)

the third: I just received this delivery of perfect local organic produce TO MY HOUSE from a farmer friend AT A DISCOUNT:

Okra, tomatoes, eggplants – the last three things I needed for the meals. He saved me a trip to the farmer’s market this morning, allowing me to do lots of other important meal-delivery related things and spend less money in the process. Oh, and we had a great conversation which involved learning how to use a refractometer. Awesome.

Okay, back to mincing onions.