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Oscar Menu 2009: Spiced Popcorn

In lieu of dessert for my Academy Awards-themed dinner, I opted for making Indian-spiced popcorn, which could be enjoyed during the 4 or so hours of the show. The flavors, of course, were inspired by the Bombay-set Slumdog Millionaire. It fits the bill when you want a simple, light snack, that also feels a little special. (And it makes your kitchen smell wonderful!)

Spiced Popcorn
(serves 2, by my standards!)
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
10 cups plain popcorn (I use Bearitos Organic No Oil Microwave Popcorn, 2 bags)
cooking spray

Mix spices together in a small bowl.

Spread a layer of the popcorn on a cookie sheet or piece of parchment/wax paper. Give a light coating of cooking spray, and sprinkle spices over popcorn. (I did this in three shifts, transferring the popcorn to a plastic bag afterward.)

Serve and enjoy.

Oscar Menu 2009: Sausage and Turkey Gumbo

As part of my Oscar-themed dinner, I prepared sausage and turkey gumbo, in honor of New Orleans (setting of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.) Gumbo does take some time, but much of it is unattended. And, the results are delicious, healthy, and highly freezable. Below is my recipe (which has evolved over time, and is based on a Cooking Light version from several years back.)

"Sausage" and "Turkey" Gumbo

(Makes 8-10 generous servings)

Cooking spray

3  tablespoons  canola oil, divided

1 pound  vegan chicken or turkey (or, substitute firm tofu, roasted or pan-fried until browned)

1  pound  vegan sausage (I use Yves breakfast patties, cut into quarters)

2  cups  chopped onion

1  cup  chopped green bell pepper

1/2  cup  chopped celery

1  tablespoon  minced fresh garlic

1  teaspoon  chopped fresh thyme

1/2  teaspoon  ground red pepper

1/3  cup  all-purpose flour

5  cups  fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth

1  (14.5-ounce) can no salt-added diced tomatoes, undrained (I love Muir Glen's Fire-Roasted tomatoes)

3  cups  (1-inch) slices fresh okra

2  bay leaves

rice 

Wash and chop vegetables (pepper, onion, celery, garlic, okra) and set aside.

Heat a large Dutch oven or stock pot over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add 1 teaspoon oil and sausage; sauté for 3 minutes or until browned.

Remove from pan. Add onion, bell pepper, and celery to pan; sauté 4 minutes. (Add additional 1 t oil here if needed.) Add garlic, thyme, and red pepper; sauté 4 minutes or until onion is tender and garlic is fragrant.

Remove from pan.

Add remaining oil to pan. Add flour to pan, stirring constantly with a whisk. Cook 10 minutes or until roux is light brown, stirring constantly with a whisk.

Gradually add broth, stirring constantly with a whisk.

Add chopped turkey/chicken/tofu and sausage, onion mixture, tomatoes, okra, and bay leaves.

Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until gumbo is thickened and vegetables have cooked down.

Discard bay leaves, and serve with rice.

And the Oscar goes to... a vegan, Academy Awards-themed menu!

I have always loved the Oscars. Even when I haven't seen any of the movies, even when the show is long and boring, even when the stars are painfully self-indulgent, even when the host is awkward and unlikable. I still love them. 

And, every year since being old enough to have my own kitchen, I have either hosted a full-on Oscar party, or at least prepared a special meal. Always with a theme (obviously.) This year, I crafted a menu inspired by the setting of each best picture nominee:

Mixed greens with avocado, walnuts, dried figs, and lemon-olive oil vinaigrette

Frost/Nixon (Monarch Bay, California)

Sausage and turkey gumbo

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (New Orleans, Louisiana)

Sourdough bread

Milk (San Francisco, California)

Reisling

The Reader (Heidelberg, Germany)

Spiced popcorn

Slumdog Millionaire (Mumbai, India)

So as to not overload one post, I'll split the recipes (for the salad, gumbo, and popcorn) and photos into separate posts. I'll begin with the salad.

California Salad Ingredients

(Makes 2 generous portions)

Mixed greens

1 ripe tomato, cut into slices

1 stalk celery, cut on a diagonal

3 dried figs, diced

1 small (or 1/2 large) avocado, cut into chunks

4 button mushrooms, quartered

2 T sunflower seeds (roasted, unsalted)

Handful of sprouts

Handful of chopped walnuts

Dressing

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil 

1 T neutral oil (peanut or canola) 

2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice 

1T red wine vinegar

1 t agave nectar

1/2 t Dijon-style mustard

3/4 t fresh thyme leaves, chopped 

1 clove garlic, minced 

3/4 t coarse salt 

Pinch freshly cracked black pepper

In a jar or bowl, whisk olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, agave nectar, mustard, thyme, garlic, salt, and pepper. Toss with prepared salad. 

I [heart] persimmons! (Who knew?!)

Persimmons are one of those foods that entered my culinary radar screen relatively recently, like say, kohlrabi or chayotes. I certainly don't have any family-favorite persimmon recipes, or heart-warming stories of picking persimmons from the tree in my backyard. To be honest, I generally mistook them for tomatoes.

But last weekend, I went with a friend to a nearby Persian market. Since I was in general paying closer attention to everything than I do when in the regular supermarket, I noticed the persimmons (and realized that they were not, in fact, orange tomatoes.) Having no idea what they tasted like, and equally no idea what to look for in selecting them, I just indiscriminately grabbed one.

I got home, and turned to Wikipedia (the source of all wisdom) to find out what the heck to do with this thing. Naturally, I quickly became overwhelmed, trying to determine if I had bought the intimidating "astringent" variety which is brutally sour if not ripe, or the much friendlier "non-astringent" variety which is sweet and delicious when still firm.

Then, I became a especially wary after noticing that the Wikipedia entry included a "Medical precaution" section. (Pretty sure kohlrabi and chayotes don't come with those.) Here's an excerpt:

"Unripened persimmons contain the soluble tannin shibuol, which, upon contact with a weak acid, polymerizes in the stomach and forms a gluey coagulum that can affix with other stomach matter.^[9]Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy notes that consumption of persimmons has been known to cause bezoars that require surgery in over 90% of cases."

Oh boy. What on earth have I gotten myself into? This is a fruit, for goodness sake! But unfortunately I had already Googled "bezoars" by this point, the image of which motivated me to just put the persimmon away for a while, until I was better prepared to deal with its mysterious dangers.

I'm not sure why, but today I woke with a confidence, a boldness, and I knew. Today would be the day I would eat the persimmon, fearlessly. I spent some time online trying to figure out how to eat it, but most instructions were for either puddings or breads, and only having one, that seemed unlikely. So I finally took the simple route and just cut it into quarters. My friends, it was worth the risk, of gluey coagulum, of bezoar surgery, of everything, because it was delicious. I can only describe it, to those who have not have one, as tasting similar to a cross between a mango and a plum: sweet, juicy, crisp.

So who knows, maybe the polymerization has already taken hold in my abdomen and I'm not long for this world. But if that's so, I have to admit, it isn't a bad way to go. Some die for country, some for glory. And I, for the humble persimmon! (But I'm still hoping not, of course.)

Telecommuting Lunch: Miso-Glazed Tofu & Avocado Sandwich

It's Wednesday, which means I telecommute, which means I can actually prepare a proper lunch at home. Since my attempt at preparing and documenting the experience of throwing together an easy, unplanned meal, using only what I happen to already have on hand went reasonably well last time, I thought I'd give it another go today. (Actually, I'm thinking this might be a fun mini-theme for the blog: Telecommuting Lunches.)

Today's rummage yielded half an avocado, an unopened package of light tofu (which expired, um, recently), and some red miso. I typically use tofu with noodles or rice, and I just didn't feel like boiling water or waiting for the rice cooker. So, I settled on the idea of a sandwich.

First, I wrapped the tofu in a clean dish towel, and placed a couple cookbooks on top to press out the water. (This can sit while the oven is preheating, to 425 F, and you prepare the sauce.) Turning to pantry staples, I mixed equal parts (3 T or so) miso, soy sauce (low-sodium), and lemon juice, and then a half part of brown sugar (you can adjust the sugar to taste). I used a whisk to smooth out all the miso lumps.

After the tofu has sit for at least 10 minutes, unwrap it. Place it on a cutting board and cut it into thin, equal slices, long ways. (I got 12 slices from mine.) Dip each slice in the sauce. Lay the slices on a cookie sheet coated with cooking spray, and baked in the oven for 18-20 minutes.

I layered oat sandwich bread with tofu slices, avocado, and romaine, but I'm sure all sorts of combinations would be good. The sauce is pretty salty, so pairing the tofu with more neutral tastes (in this case, avocado and lettuce) really balanced out the flavor well. I picked up a jicama at the store tonight, and I think it is destined for tomorrow's sandwich, using the leftovers.

You Captured My Heart, Mini Donuts

I regret that this post, initially intended for Valentine's Day itself, is instead going up the day after. Why, you ask? Because it's taken me a good 24 hours to emerge from the sugar-induced coma I was in, the result of a morning spent in sheer mini-donut heaven.

First, I must give huge credit to Lolo over at Vegan Yum Yum, who inspired my mini-donut adventure. Ever since seeing her recipe and gorgeous photos, I have been wanting to give these little beauties a try. (Because, as we all know, miniature versions of regular-sized things are just wonderful.) Not that they are a health food, but they are baked, which is a step up the healthiness ladder from their more traditional brethren, fried donuts. But baking donuts requires a donut pan, which I did not have. I went with this one, and it did a fine job (and for only $9.99).

So first, the recipe, adapted from Vegan Yum Yum:

Baked Mini Donuts
Makes about 20 Donuts

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 c sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 scant tsp nutmeg (The nutmeg gives them a subtle, old-fashioned flavor, but feel free to omit.)
dash of cinnamon

Wet Ingredients:
1/2 c vanilla soymilk
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Ener-G egg replacer, equivalent to 1 egg
4 Tbs Earth Balance

Preheat oven to 350º F. Combine dry ingredients with a whisk in a large mixing bowl, set aside.

Combine wet ingredients in a small sauce pan over low heat, and stir just until Earth Balance is melted. (I let the Earth Balance soften to room temperature first.) Do not let this mixture get too hot, just slightly warm.

Add wet to dry and mix until just combined, making a soft, sticky dough.

You can use a small spoon to scoop the dough into your ungreased nonstick mini-donut pan, but I prefer to put the dough in a Ziploc bag, snip the end, and use this as a makeshift pastry bag to fill the pan. It gives you more precision filling the relatively small rings. Even the top of the dough with your fingers.

Only fill the pan to below the rim, otherwise they will overflow. Bake for 12 minutes. (They will not  brown). Let cool slightly and release donuts onto a cooling rack.

Once donuts are completely cooled, you can proceed with decorating them in any way you see fit. I did three variations:

1) Mix 1/2 c powdered sugar with 1 T vanilla soymilk to form a glaze. (Adjust sugar/milk as necessary to achieve the appropriate consistency.) Dip the rounded side (the side that was down in the pan) in the glaze. For Valentine's Day festiveness, I then sprinkled them with colored sprinkles. Allow these to set on a wire rack, so excess glaze can drip off onto wax paper.

2) Melt chocolate chips over a double-boiler (or, my own preference, the microwave on medium power). Dip the donut in the chocolate. I added chopped toasted almonds.

3) For a super-easy third option, I gave them a good toss in a bowl of powdered sugar.

Other great options would be coconut, cinnamon sugar, or anything else that appeals to you.

I then packaged them up to take to a friend's house, whom I was joining for coffee. My friend declared them even better than my chocolate pie (which is saying quite a lot, actually.)

Produce Postcards

When I was in college, I served as an adviser to an incoming group of freshmen. I was tasked with sending them letters in the weeks before the beginning of the semester, just to make them feel welcome and let them know they could ask me any questions they had.

While I was cleaning out my apartment last weekend, I ran across 4 postcards, leftover from the ones I had purchased years ago to send to those incoming students. And well, whaddya know, they had PRODUCE on them (photographic evidence below.) Surely those students thought I was some kind of weirdo. (Really, I was just someone who would one day write about vegetables.)

Choosing Food Mindfully, Eating Food Mindfully

This past weekend, I participated in another meditation retreat. As we were getting ready to break for lunch on Saturday, the instructor said, "Oh, and we will be practicing functional silence during lunch today. So, everyone should remain silent, so that we may all be mindful of the experience of eating."

At first, my introverted self thought, "Hurray! No awkward small talk with strangers!" My second thought was, "Um, this is going to be weird."

And it was. Weird because the experience stood in such stark contrast to the way I eat almost every other meal. I am either socializing with others, or checking email, or flipping through a magazine, or watching TV. How rare to just sit there, in silence, and only pay attention to the experience of eating.

The instructor said, "The best seasoning for food is mindfulness." And surely that is true. For as hokey as it sounds, simply paying attention did intensify the taste of each bite. (It also made me realize how noisy baby carrots are.)

I have tried in the past to be mindful in this way.

Several years ago, I had a colleague who was a nutritionist. She told me a story about a man who survived the Holocaust. He credits his survival of the death camp to the fact that he chewed each bite of food, no matter how small, fifty times. The extended chewing improved digestion, increased the availability of nutrients for absorption, and extended the satisfaction of eating. He, and his small group of friends who followed this practice, feel it saved their lives.

Fifty bites didn't sound like that big of a deal to me. Until I tried it. That is a lot of times to chew your food. So I then tried twenty five. Twenty five is a lot of times to chew your food.

A few years ago, I picked up the book Eating Mindfully. I remember it went on and on about savoring each individual granule of salt on a potato chip. Feel it dissolve on your tongue, it said. I think my bookmark is still on that page, the one about the salt and the potato chip.

So my earlier attempts to be mindful while eating failed miserably. But this weekend showed me that there is something worthwhile to the idea of eating mindfully, and it is something I can actually do. As a vegan, I feel like I already have a mindfulness about my food that typical omnivores do not. But there is a difference between being mindful about choosing what I eat, and being mindful about actually eating it. 

I don't ever expect myself to become a fifty-time chewer, or a salt-granule savorer. But surely I can slow down, take a breath, and just enjoy the sweet taste (and sound!) of a baby carrot.

Rice and beans, a love story

I have been on a serious rice-and-bean kick lately. Maybe I'm still trying to justify my luxury rice cooker purchase a few months back, who knows. But even though I may tell myself that, perhaps tonight I'll have that last Boca burger in the freezer, or the leftover spinach lasagna, or a bowl of warm tomato soup with a grilled rice cheese sandwich, I know that in the end I will settle on rice and beans, again.

There is just something about rice and beans.

First, there's convenience. Just toss a scoop of rice and handful of beans into the cooker, and an hour later there is a bowlful of hot, fragrant, deliciousness ready for me. Then, there's the versatility.  Basmati with chickpeas and a heavy sprinkling of sumac. Jasmine with aduki beans and a drizzle of sesame oil. Brown rice with black eye peas and freshly cracked black pepper. (And I haven't even mentioned lentils!) No wonder that versions of this staple appear throughout the world. Clean up is a cinch, with a quick wipe-down of the nonstick interior.

During my Latin American Songs of Protest class in college (gotta love a liberal arts education), my professor talked about subsisting on nothing but rice and beans for months when her family was in hiding and fled Chile in the wake of Augusto Pinochet's coup d'etat. (She said this like it was a bad thing.) Granted, rice and beans are often the food of poverty, of deprivation, of mere survival. A Nicauragan man, when asked how his community was getting along after his village had been devastated by Hurricane Mitch, said, “For breakfast, we have beans and rice.  For lunch, we have rice and beans.  For supper, we have rice and beans mixed together.”

Maybe it's a factor of my own belt-tightening during this economic downturn, or my ability to schedule it to finish cooking just as American Idol begins, or perhaps it's just the fact that my rice cooker plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" when the rice is ready, and that makes me smile.

But I can't spend any more time analyzing it now. My rice and beans are ready.

Fun with Wikipedia

As I am prone to do, I was looking at one item on Wikipedia and a dozen hyperlinks (and potentially hours) later, I am reading about the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire or trying to find out the respective ages of Click and Clack of NPR's Car Talk.

Today I wound up reading about henbane (also charmingly known as "stinking nightshade"), a psychoactive and potentially toxic plant (thought to have been the poison poured into the ear of Hamlet's father.)

I was quite tickled, however, to read the following, which appeared under the innocuous-sounding heading of "Misidentification":

"In 2008 celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson recommended Henbane as a 'tasty addition to salads' in the August 2008 issue of Healthy and Organic Living magazine. He subsequently said that he had made an error, confusing the herb with Fat Hen, a member of the spinach family. He apologised, and the magazine sent subscribers an urgent message stating that Henbane 'is a very toxic plant and should never be eaten.'"