crack the plates

Basically, this is the best soup. If you have the Grit cookbook already, you should make it now. If not, I am going to post the recipe anyway, so you can re-create this wonderfulness at home.

This is a (vegan) soup that will satisfy anyone – gourmands, unsophisticated gluttons, beer lovers, lumberjacks, linebackers, petite pastry chefs, children, the elderly, and, I would venture to say, even Gordon Ramsay himself. It won’t quite make a vegan weep at its deliciousness, but it will shut a smug, self-loathing meat enthusiast up in a heartbeat. It’s the kind of recipe you quadruple, put in a crock pot, and take to a family reunion or holiday dinner; sink into that armchair with your arms crossed and suppress a grin as Uncle Tony-Bob goes back for fourths. Make it. Make it now.

The Grit’s Scotch Broth (double recipe with some minor recipe changes & liberal commentary – you’ll thank me)

• 2 medium sized organic white or Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-in cubes
• 7 cups water
• 2/3 cups soy sauce (that’s a lot of soy sauce – use your cheap store-brand here, not that organic small-batch tamari you paid a fortune for)
• 2 teaspoons granulated onion OR onion powder (I’ve only used granulated)
• 1 3/4 – 2 cups dry light TVP pieces (like these or these)
• 2 tablespoons vegan margarine plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 small yellow onions, finely chopped
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
• 2 leeks (white and pale green parts only), finely chopped
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast (NOT Brewer’s yeast; this stuff)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons good-quality dry mustard
• 1 teaspoon crushed sage
• 1/2 cup tomato puree (or canned tomato sauce; we used Kroger’s organic brand)
• 1 cup stout beer – I now swear by New Holland’s The Poet, but am also open to trying Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout or Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout (what we have on hand right now) For heaven’s sake, DON’T USE GUINNESS – IT’S NOT EVEN VEGETARIAN, LET ALONE VEGAN – has fish in it.
• 1 cup frozen peas

Finely chop the onion, carrot, and leek and put in a bowl.

Bring seven cups of water to a boil. Add potatoes, TVP, 2/3 cups soy sauce, and 1 tsp granulated onion; boil til tender. Turn off the heat and set aside.

Melt vegan margarine (Earth Balance), add olive oil in a large pot. Add onion, carrot, leek. It’ll look like a very crowded pan at first, but the veggies will cook down in time. Saute, stirring often, until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Can go 15-20, just keep an eye on the heat and add a little more oil if necessary.

While the veggies are sauteeing, put the flour, nutritional yeast, salt, black pepper, mustard, sage into a bowl together. Mix up. When ready, add this flour mixture to the veggie mixture. Incorporate thoroughly! For those of you who have made a roux before, this is kind of like the adding flour to the melted fat stage (and we’re about to add the potato-water liquid). Cook on LOW, stirring constantly and watching to make sure nothing starts burning, for a few minutes.

Get a friend! (Or just be really strong and patient.) Have you friend hoist the water-potato-TVP pot over the veggie-flour mixture pot. Have friend pour in about a quarter of the liquid. Whisk and thoroughly incorporate. Is it getting creamy and thick, like a roux should? GOOD! Now have friend pour in another quarter. Whisk again, thoroughly incorporating. Another quarter. Ditto. The final quarter. Whisk, whisk. At this point, it should be smooth and creamy like a soup, not thick like a sauce. It will thicken with time and heat.

Add tomato puree, beer, and peas. Simmer, stirring frequently, for 15-20 minutes. Serve immediately! I made it last night and it reheated beautifully today. A perfect spoonful:

Right now I’m most excited about all the Hanukkah goodies I’m going to make tonight and tomorrow, particularly the big Hanukkah Shabbat blow-out dinner at the JCC. I’m thinking sufganiyot, those wonderful fried doughnuts with creme or jelly fillings, dusted with powdered sugar…

I grew up in the country, in a town of just over two hundred. As I child, I sometimes rued the isolation of our rural plot–but now I see how lucky I was. My sense of compassion for the earth and non-human animals was nurtured as I gardened with my parents & made best friends with chickens. I witnessed firsthand the passionate desires of the land and its animals for harmony & stability. These desires resonated; we were easy allies.

I was also lucky because foodwise, my momma went easy on me. If I absolutely refused to eat something, she didn’t press the issue. But she never quite understood why I wouldn’t eat her meatloaf. “Just smother it in ketchup,” she’d urge. An excellent cook, she probably thought meatloaf was one of her tastiest dishes. Everyone raved about it–so why wouldn’t her darn kid eat it?

To start, I hated watching her make it! I remember looking up at her working the ground animal in her rough, wizened hands and thinking, I’m never going to do that. Was I simply grossed out by the texture, the color, the sounds? Did I despair over its origin, a life-loving creature like myself? Honestly, I can’t say. But to this day I’ve never cooked with animals. Going vegetarian at 14 meant I never had to suffer that feeling in my hands: I depended on my mom for meals pre-veg & figured out how to cook for myself afterwards. The closest I came to touching blood & guts was while passing poorly-packaged meat products over my scanner as a grocery cashier.

One of the reasons I LOVE being vegan is because I can make all of the dishes I enjoyed as a non-vegan, except they’re tastier and free of cholesterol, saturated fat, and cruelty! Traditional southern recipes, soul food, I rise to the challenge: I once made a pot of fordhook lima beans that were so flavorful & “authentic”-tasting that my mom couldn’t believe they were vegan. But for obvious reasons, meatloaf was never anything I wanted to veganize. Sure, I saw the recipes in my cookbooks… but the childhood trauma lived on!

‘Til recently, that is. Having made peace with the fact that it’s still going to look disgusting, I tried the recipe from the Grit cookbook. And oh lawdy, it’s a winner. Made with tofu, veggie ground crumbles, walnuts & nutritional yeast, and seasoned well enough to please a roomful of Southern grandparents, I’m glad to add it to my repertoire. Best of all, Nate rechristened the dreaded dish “meetloaf”. Only one letter difference, but I love it because it makes me think of meeting up, hanging out, loafing around–things all mammals, not just we humans, enjoy!

A regular blue-plate special, this one:

I baked it in my big cast-iron skillet (the same that sauteed the veggie ground “beef” and peppers, if you check out the recipe) and served it to Lindsey & Chris for our first Thursday evening co-op dinner. They gobbled it up. Here’s the recipe, with some minor modifications. Thanks, the Grit!

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 small onion, minced
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 or 2 small bell peppers, minced
• 2 cups vegetarian ground “beef” — I re-hydrate the dry stuff from Dixie Diner because it’s more economical than getting Boca Brand (or something similar) frozen at the grocery store.
• 2 tablespoons vegan Worcestershire sauce (Kroger’s is naturally vegan, or you could make your own)
• 1 15-oz block firm tofu, crumbled (the more-common water-packed kind)
• 1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
• 1 cup walnut pieces
• 4 tablespoons ketchup
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/2 cup soy sauce (you can use low-sodium, I suppose)
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon or so freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons rubbed sage
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon celery seed, if you just happen to have it hanging around.

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a large casserole dish OR just plan to use the same large skillet that you prep the “beef” and peppers in, as I did.

Heat the oil in large cast-iron skillet and add onions, garlic, and peppers. Saute five minutes or so, stirring often. Add the vegetarian ground beef (re-hydrated in “beef” or veg broth if you’re using dry) and Worchestershire sauce. Cook on medium heat, stirring often, 5-10 minutes (20 minutes if you used frozen crumbles).

In a food processor (I know, Sorry!), combine remaining ingredients and process til fully blended. Combine ALL ingredients and mid well. Pour and press into your casserole or skillet. Bake 15 minutes, remove from oven, turn in batches, return to oven, bake 15 more minutes. Bake an additional 10 if you think it needs it. Let cool for five minutes or so and then serve to smiles!!!

I found this entry in my drafts section, where there are a number of others like it: all pictures, no text. I might as well post them and just try to re-create the context as best as possible.

It appears that on this particular night I went a little insane. Thinking back, it must have been the very last vegan co-op dinner of Earlham Animal Advocates United faithfuls: Benji, Jenny, Suzanne, Erinn, Hannah, & Tamar. The menu was comfort food; on the eve of summer, the last big heavy meal of the season. Benji & Jenny were the only two to make it, but they ate EVERYTHING.

The main course: no-chick’n pot pies. An original recipe and one of the best things that comes out my kitchen, it’s also super labor intensive.

• First, chop all the (organic organic organic) onions, carrots & celery quite small and saute them in the skillet with oil. Do the onions & celery first, then add the carrots and spices–a mixture of organic marjoram, thyme, oregano and whatever else sounds good. I’m partial to the first two.
• For protein, re-constitute some large-chunk TVP or used cubed extra firm tofu. If using TVP, chop it into bite-sized pieces: this helps it absorb the flavor & is more appealing to your delicate guests. Saute protein of choice in a skillet with a little oil, tamari, black pepper, & nutritional yeast.
• Prepare a vegan brown gravy. Make something easy like Bryanna’s no-fat, or go all out and do the Grit’s: up to half a container of earth balance, full-fat soymilk, lotsa tamari, nutritional yeast–tons of flavor.
• Finally, mix all this together in a big ol’ bowl:

Ta-da! That’s a lot of the recipe, but not everything.

Pour the filling to pie plates or casseroles. I doubled this recipe (because I THOUGHT I was feeding 8), so I had a lot of filling to go around:

Make the biscuit crust. Find a great recipe & go for it. Roll out the dough and use a small glass (not drinking-size, but one down) to cut out pretty little circles. Start from the middle and go outward so you don’t waste as much dough. I suppose if you wanted to be heart-breakingly lazy you could just lay the rolled-out dough over the casserole like a pie crust & do it up that way. But if I recommended that, I probably wouldn’t take so much time cutting up pretty little circles, now would I?

Apply the crust:

It looks about like this when you’re all done:

As is evident, you can use the little pieces of extra biscuit dough to fill in the corners/edges. Or, you know, just eat them.

Bake it! 350 for… half an hour? Twenty minutes? Check & see when your biscuits start to look a done. Because the filling is already cooked, it’s not necessary for it to be in the oven for ages. You’re really just trying to get the biscuits cooked through–crusty on the outside and soft within. Like this:

Ah, the macaroni and cheese…it’s all coming back to me now. This is possibly the best ever macaroni recipe. Forget it Daiya fans–this stuff’s tops, the monarch of Macs. Brian gave me this recipe in 2008 & it’s still my favorite based solely on the number of people (emphasis on PEOPLE-veg & non) it’s made deliriously happy. It’s worth buying the new Farm cookbook just for this recipe, though increase the amount of nutritional yeast from one cup to two. Jenny, take note.

I mean, look at this.

And here’s some boring boring skillet corn. Seriously, scrape the corn off the cob, add some earth balance, add some soy milk, add some white pepper, add some salt, heat. the end.

Cutting into the pot-pie:

Worthy of a deep-south diner, or, as it were, a last meal.

Apart from taking half a day, this meal is super rich–which is why I only make it a few times a year, usually for special events & non-vegetarians. That’s right, flesh-eaters, you betta watch your waist around this bitch. It tastes soooooooo good because it has 60 grams of fat and three days’ worth of calories. But all you’ll hear is my sweet little southern accent: “Go on sugar, have a second helpin’. I got chocolate cake in there for dessert.”

Only a reworking of the first two frames of Dinosaur Comics can adequately express my frustration with myself right now:

T-Rex images owned by Ryan North/Dinosaur Comics/Qwantz.

So there you have it. It’s pretty freaking hard for me stay on top of my blog as of late! It’s probably harder to admit it, which is why I’m saying it with a post, in hopes that this will jar me from my inaction!

It’s mostly frustrating because some interesting things have happened that I want to tell you about. I mean, I only did one day of mid-June’s San Francisco trip, when I ate at so many awesome vegan restaurants! (Donuts with in-house-ground organic flour, for goodness’ sake!!) There was also a drag show a few weeks ago, and a couple recent trips to see my gorgeous BF Jina beena. I want to tell you the exciting bits!

But alas, the non-exciting parts have been dragging me down. As I anticipate yet another move, I once more find myself in that tight “in-between” place. Waiting, waiting, for things to happen, in the meanwhile, hesitant to put down any roots. I’m also languishing in this heat/humidity, but then again, who isn’t? Except for what’s been mentioned previously, not much punctuates these days of languid reading, drinking iced oolong, eating chilled watermelon, and generally assuming a couchant position as much as possible. And when the temperature in your house climbs towards the mid-90s, who in the hell wants to use a laptop as intended?

In the interest of getting you caught up (turning a new leaf? or is that too ambitious at this point? sigh), let’s have a bit of a camera dump from the past couple weeks, with commentary. Deal? Deal.

I made a vegan shepherd’s pie, which was phenomenal. I spread the mashed potatoes over the filling just before putting it in the oven to bake:

There is no recipe, but here’s roughly what I did: re-hydrated large chunk TVP, cooked in tamari, nutritional yeast, and pepper; cooled & roughly chopped the TVP; added it to home-made no-fat gravy; added an assortment of fresh chopped and steamed vegetables; poured it all into a casserole dish, covered with home-made mashed potatoes, baked. Sounds easy, right? It took a couple of hours in one of hell’s hottest rooms: my tiny, poorly ventilated, very dilapidated kitchen (with two working eyes on the stove).

Here’s the finished product:

Oh, cute story about the framing of this photograph. While I was in San Francisco, we dined at Millennium, SF’s chicest (read: simply most expensive) vegan restaurant. I called the waitress (seemingly pretty laid back) over to make a joke about the fact that my apricot-glazed portabella stack looked somewhat cheaply made. I pointed at the familiar threesome of just-so cut carrots, peas, and corn and teased, “This trio comes from a can, and it says VEG-ALL on the side!” Apparently she took herself more seriously than I did, because she didn’t get the joke, insisting the ingredients were harvested at the peak of freshness from local, organic ingredients. But she went one further, claiming that the chef meant the dish to be an “homage” to Southern cooking.

Uhhh…. are you laughing yet? I wish I had a picture of it to share with you, but suffice to say it looked nothing like the above. This desiccated morsel with hardly any of the advertised apricot glaze, sitting dumbly atop stiff, flavorless mashed potatoes and the inspid trio of carrots, peas and corn, was the furthest thing from “Southern cooking”. Just to confirm that she did mean Southern US (rather than Southern CA?) I shared that I was from the South, the deep south, northwest Georgia, in fact. Undeterred, she claimed “the South” as well–Bloomington, Indiana.

Hm.

Sorry, Millennium chefs. That dish was the furthest thing from the cooking I grew up with and loved, and you’d do your otherwise highly competent wait staff a favor by not trying to pass this disaster off as anything but. You know what, just scrap the damn dish. Everything else–appetizers, spirits, main courses, desserts–was superb!

Wow, side-tracked.

On the subject of a proper apricot barbeque glaze, though, here’s the first I made using Isa’s recipe from Veganomicon–and about ten fresh apricots! Thick, hearty, oozy, shiny:

Plated:

Would you believe I’m not a huge broccoli fan? Alas, it’s true. I had to cover mine in extra apricot sauce.

Earlier this month I went to see one of my favorite queens from season two of RuPaul’s Drag Race with Nate & Michael at the famous Union Cafe in Columbus Ohio. We had dinner at Indian Kitchen before the show. Complimentary papadums:

The view from our table.

Greasy snacks.

Michael’s lovely plate.

What is that you say, dear server? Complimentary aloo parathas, as well? Don’t mind if I do!

Sadly, we were the only ones in the place. Highly recommended! Try it next time you’re in Columbus, instead of the Taj Mahal (which is basically across the street).

Fireworks in the sky:

Fireworks on stage.

Gorgeous Columbus gal Nina West chides an extremely drunk Polish man.

Jujubee prepares!

Look at that body!

I am also in possession of an extremely embarrassing shot of Juju, but I’m choosing not to post it out of RESPECT! (E-mail me if desired.)

I made some orange cranberry scones on about three hours of sleep for church brunch. They were great. The best part was when an elderly member of the congregation asked for the recipe and where, exactly, to get soymilk.

I made a couple of dark-chocolate-bottomed peanut butter silk pies (with a couple teaspoons of agar-agar; recipes modded from Vegan with a Vengeance). Here’s one:

Sing with me now, isn’t she lovely?

Sorry if three pictures is overkill. I rarely bake.

Did I mention I have another cat, now? Her name is Perl, but Nate & I have been calling her Perlba recently (Perl+[goom]ba). She’s not much like a cat, actually. She was abandoned as a kitten & very likely orphaned, so she wasn’t socialized by/with other cats til adulthood. She didn’t learn how to drink water properly til a few months after she moved in, & she’s not yet totally clear on cleaning herself or using her claws, either. It’s sad. The upside is that she kind of acts like a dog, lolling on her back, showing her belly, never getting upset like a normal cat. She likes to sit on computers and in her raspberry box. She’s mostly looks up to her “big sister” Unix, but she eats waaaay too much.

I made the quintessential vegan summer food, The Grit’s vegan chicken salad. A hellish recipe, consisting of separately cooked tofu, gravy, home-made vinaigrette, and vegan mayo, apart from the ingredients in the actual chicken salad recipe. In short, the reason I make it once a year. This time I tripled the recipe so it’d last a week & we’d have enough to share.

And finally, a couple trips to see my lovely Jina Beena in Ann Arbor. I spent a fair amount of my mornings getting caffeinated at Zingerman’s:

A view of the cafe.

The best part was our picnic at Pickerel Lake. Jina is the queen of picnics!! We raided the People’s Co-op for our favorites: baba ghanoush, watermelon, peaches, and a new wonder, coconut milk ice cream!

Sorry the photo is a bit blurry. It’s hard to hold still when you’re witnessing such beauty.

A close-up of our Zingerman’s bread and assorted treats.

Okay, that’s enough for now! There’s a blue-tongued skink upstairs that needs a piece of watermelon! (No, really, I’m helping skink-sit.)

NoMoCoFo: an absurdity characterised by the long o, or the new theme for this month’s blogging adventures? If you guessed both, then you are correct–welcome to November, the Month of No-Mo’(re) Costly Food! (Technically NoMoNoMoCoFo, but I’m cutting myself a break.)

My November blogging project concerns itself with reigning in my (and my household’s) food expenditures. Whether this comes as a result of relying more heavily on pantry and freezer stores, or by taking up offers to potlucks more frequently, or by not eating out, or through a combination of these and others, I’m setting out to save money this month and I want to keep you updated re: what I encounter and learn.

As a practical note, we’re closing in on day six now–which means I’ve got a bit of backtracking to do. I’m going to start by describing tonight’s dinner and then move on to writing some new, yet back-dated, entries on what I’ve been up to for the past couple days. (If you’re interested in good vegan eats in Chicago, be sure to scroll down a bit further, as I’ll be highlighting a great Indian buffet as well as panning another place.) This’ll be a slow game of catch-up, but it will happen–so check back.

Tonight I turned to one of my most favorite cookery books, The Grit Restaurant Cookbook, for their “Spicy Thai Noodles” salad. It wasn’t very spicy at all (owing, I think, to subbing chili oil for the chili paste) but it was packed with flavor. Whether they sing in the butterbeans or zing in the collards or ding in the noodle dishes, flavors in Grit recipes hold their own. There’s not a lot of room for subtlety–but then again, I like that. This recipe doesn’t call for it, but I punched up the protienaciousness with a block of tofu and added some peppers for color:

This dish was cheap, in part, because I relied on noodles I bought at the B&D for 80 cents, noodles that were just languishing in the cupboard. I had all the materials for the sauce on hand, too.

Come to think of it, there’s not a cookbook that I’d recommend more highly than The Grit’s. (No, not even VWaV, though it is definitely up there.) Many of my “signature” recipes–for gravy, chocolate cake, southern-style vegetables–have been adapted from the ones in this book. Over half of the recipes are vegan and many of those that aren’t can be easily veganised–think subbing Earth Balance (eBal) for butter. The Mock-Cream of Chicken Soup is a divine wonder of vegan trickery; the “Ted Bread” and Old-time Grit Buns always come out perfect; the “Chicken” Salad will earn you instant celebrity at any Fourth of July picnic.

Not to mention this: the first time my momma (think Steel Magnolias) ever ate the butterbeans (“Baby Lima Beans” in the book, but I use fordhooks), she swore up and down that there must’ve been a hambone in there. Well, perhaps not quite that dramatic–but she was astounded at the depth of rich flavor…and had a second helping. If that doesn’t convince you that you need The Grit’s cookbook, I have no idea what will.

Available at Amazon.com and BetterWorldBooks.com.

Yowzah–today I was thrilled to learn that I actually have some happy, regular readers who are interested in what I have to say! Because I haven’t been picked up by google (yet?) and don’t get a ton of comments, I tend to think that this is just an exercise for myself–to see (especially in VeganMoFo) if I have what it takes discipline-wise to keep a blog. How refreshing and encouraging it is to hear, either through the grapevine or directly, that I’m reaching folks! So whether you’re an occasional reader, a frequent reader, a non-commenter or an avid one, thanks! The thought that you’re there gives blogging zest.

On the flip-side, it makes me feel guilty about not having blogged in a couple days. (Not that you’re out there chewing off your fingers waiting for something new to read, but it does add a measure of responsibility, knowing you’re there.) The disappointing truth is that there wasn’t much extraordinary coming out of our kitchen this weekend. Saturday and Sunday were rather glum because of work we did towards recovering the stolen bike. (It seems very unlikely that we will recover it, but we did the flyer/walking around the neighborhood/talking to the neighborrhood-alliance President thing anyway.) We ate a lot of pre-packaged food: a Kashi pizza, heat-and-eat dumplings, and more veggie patties of various stripes than I care to mention. Sunday I made raspberry muffins for a Process Theology conversation group–muffins, my culinary summit for Sunday. :-/

Tonight, though, was book club! Each month a group a small group of friends gathers for a pot-luck and conversation (with tons of unrelated gossip) around a featured piece of lit. Because October is my favorite month, I claimed it months ago. We read in common Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Since I’m too tired to write my own description, here’s a link to the associated wikipedia page. Basically, Ray interweves a story of South Georgia land, its plants (long-leaf pine & wiregrass) and its creatures (assorted) that is centuries older than she and her people are (the ecological narrative) with her own memoir of growing up in on this radically-altered landscape; specifically, in a junkyard with fundamentalist parents. It is a beautiful story that can be difficult to bear at moments, especially if you have bipolar disorder in your family; nonetheless, as I noted at book club tonight, it was not the tragic moments that coaxed tears from my eyes, but the soaring ones that stole my heart and infused it with rapture.

Appropriately, the theme of the food was “that which evokes your childhood/homeland.” I made my momma’s sweet tea–

• 8 tea bags steeped briefly,
• squeezed and poured over nearly two cups of sugar that waits in the bottom of the gallon jug
• then topped off with water

Sinfully sweet. I also served some good ol’ deep-southern buttermilk cornbread, cooked in the skillet with drippings from my vegan gravy; cabbage a la mamma–

• slice off a half of a big cabbage; core it; cut into bite-sized pieces
• put a little water in your pan
• add some eBal (Earth Balance), salt and white pepper
• add cabbage, stir well; steam til the cabbage is delectable mush!

and finally, a pot of Grit collards. The collards were the only thing that weren’t really like my mom’s at all, because when she makes collards she doesn’t have much “pot likker” (pot liquor; the juice from the cooked collards that lots of folks like to sop up with savoury cornbread). I use a recipe from Athens Georgia’s famous vegetarian restaurant, the Grit, which always renders a ton of tasty pot likker. It went especially well with tonight’s cornbread.

I was grateful that B brought mashed potatoes, H, a gorgeous blueberry cobbler, J, a lentil bake, E, a mashed carrot-and-potato dish that seemed to be infused with dill and chives, and K, a perfectly-pureed pumpkin soup. We ate like queens and gossipped like songbirds. Looking forward to next month!

This just in: the katzerole Unix in a box: