biryani improv

It all started last night, coincidentally while I was cooking dinner.  My cell phone rang, and although I usually ignore it, I decided to see who it was.

"Hey Natalie, I'm sorry to disturb you on a Sunday night, but blah-blah-blah-building-up-to Can you work tomorrow even though you're scheduled off?"

"Uh...yeah.  Can I be off on Friday in exchange?"

"Uh.... I can probably make that work.  Does this throw a huge wrench in the works for you?"

"No, not really, but it would be great to have Friday off."

"What about an allen wrench?"

"Yes.  It throws an allen wrench in the works.  Can I have off Friday if I come in tomorrow?"

"Yes.  Thank you so much.  I owe you. At least a caffeinated beverage."

"Friday off will do just fine.  I'll see you tomorrow."

And that's the story of why I was working today, instead of sleeping in and drinking coffee and eventually going food shopping, but mostly, having enough energy to properly prepare the Vegetable Biryani from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant.

I didn't get a very good picture, but rest assured, it tasted much better than it looks.  Authentic?  Probably not - I skipped a few steps and improvised a few others (ghee is not exactly vegan), but it came out just fine and finished cooking much sooner than it wanted to.

I made an excessive amount of rice because I was supposed to layer it with a veggie filling before baking it for a half hour.  I'm sure it would have been even more mouth-wateringly delicious if I had done that, as I have in the past, but tonight, after working due to a big street festival right outside our store encouraging higher-than-average foot traffic, I just didn't have the energy to go through the entire process, so instead, I just heaped the rich veggie curry on top of brown basmati rice.

It was delicious and  hit the hungry spot just fine.

I did construct the "rest" of my incomplete menu last night.  Mind you, the only reason it was incomplete is because I meant to be off today and then not again for a week.  Now I'm just trying to make it through Wednesday (I work later on Thursday, so Mister's on his own).

1. Pineapple Curry Tofu from the most recent issue of Clean Eating magazine.  I used to buy these every time they hit the newsstand, then contemplate whether to subscribe, then end up not subscribing because of how meat-centric most recipes are and how illogically protein-focused the magazine can be sometimes.  Nevertheless, I agree with its most basic tenets so I always end up buying it again.  It's probably been about a year, though, so I figured I'd look again and this issue had a decent number of "safe" recipes.

2.  Southwest Meatballs with Warm Corn-Black Bean Salsa, also from Clean Eating.  The recipe in the magazine includes instructions on constructing the ground turkey-based meatballs, but I'm just going to buy some Nate's at Whole Foods tomorrow.

3. Vegetable Chili Bowl from The Low GI Cookbook, contributed by one of Australia's National Treasures.  I've made this once before and remember being pretty impressed with how it came out.

bet you can't have just one

There are a few things I take for granted, living in Pennsylvania, and specifically this area of Pennsylvania.  I normally don't realize other parts of the world don't have Tastycakes and Herr's potato chips and Wawas until I find myself on the opposite coast asking where the nearest Wawa is...and then having to give the best explanation my 19-year-old self could.

What I mean is, I'll bet I could eat just one Lay's potato chip because I was raised on Herr's and although I don't eat potato chips nearly as frequently now as I did as a teenager, I will always prefer them as a brand.

But this post isn't really about potato chips at all.  Despite the newest issue of Vegetarian Times showing up in my mailbox today with a sweet potato chip-topped galette on the cover to make me drool a little.  No, friends, this post is about Pasta e Fagioli, specifically the one from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, and generally, how darn many recipes I have for this Italian treasure.

Actually, this is a picture of my second helping, since I was too busy trying to match Mister's voracity to take a picture of the first bowl.

I have at least three "go-to" recipes for Pasta e Fagioli and I've even matched them up against each other to see who would come out on top.  You might think a person in that position would not need another recipe for the same dish.  You'd be wrong.  Pasta e Fagioli is like the Italian version of the latino favorite, Rice 'n' Beans.  I also have way too many recipes for that.

Like Rice 'n' Beans, Pasta e Fagioli is one of those meals that is so good that when you see yet another recipe, you feel compelled to try it - not because you're looking for a new "champion" but rather, because there's so little chance it will suck.  It's kind of fail-safe, which is a nice quality for a sometimes work-intensive food to be.  I will admit, though, I'm forever on the hunt for a Pasta e Fagioli that can truly be considered a soup and I have not found that yet.

For this recipe, I got wheel-shaped pasta for two reasons.  First, the recipe was not specific - it just said "short pasta."  Second, and more importantly, the last few times I've made a Pasta e Fagioli recipe, I've somehow overcooked the pasta, causing it to fall apart a little.  In an effort to not wrestle the pieces of broken rotini toward one another again, I decided to try a sturdier pasta.

Normally, Pasta e Fagioli is exactly that - pasta, beans, tomatoes....that's about it.  Basil.  Yes, normally, there's basil.  This one was a little more detailed - we had pasta, beans, tomatoes, and basil, of course, but also zucchini, carrots, and celery.  I had some mixed feelings about this "complication," but as you can tell from my second serving, I got over any ill-will within a few bites.

With that, I'm off to harvest some more recipes from the three magazines I haven't had a chance to pick through yet...

red october

October in Philadelphia is special for a lot of reasons.  We don't really have that whole beautiful leaves-changing-color thing they do out in the suburbs.  We do have one of the most delightfully gradual descents from warm to cold I've ever experienced - sometimes it is literally one degree colder each day.  One thing that we have had for the last few years is what we call Red October.  It's nothing we're hunting for, and unfortunately, it does lack Sean Connery's intensity, but only slightly.

I'm talking about post-season Phillies.

Oh, yeah, and all the crazy, loud, half-delusional drunks stumbling around center city and leading...themselves alone... in their ridiculous "Let's Go, Phillies" chants (because they might have just figured out that "let's go" and "phillies" both have two syllables).  There is nothing sadder than one dude with a backwards cap and a beer gut singing out "let's go, phillies" as though any minute now all the other drunks are going to join in.  They never do.

You might think nothing else (of any import, anyway) happens in October.  I would argue against that point of view, but let's focus on something I truly love about Philadelphia.

On Tuesday, we hosted a gathering at one of the stores for a local real estate agency to demonstrate and promote their new technological application with the assistance of our knowledgeable employees.  To show their appreciation, that same agency sent a basket of goodies over to the store today - sandwiches and cookies from a relatively new Italian restaurant in Rittenhouse Square - Serafina.  I keep meaning to make Mister take me there for dinner, but then I keep having trouble trying to explain why we should cross the city for pizza and pasta, especially living so close to the Italian Market.  These sandwiches might help me in that endeavor.

It was nice of them to send the goodies, but that isn't what I love about Philadelphia.  What I love about Philadelphia, as compared to my previous place of employment and colleagues out in the rural reaches of Montgomery County, is that when the food was unpacked, not only did the givers of the gift ensure there were non-animal options, but my colleagues didn't say "Oh, hey, a grilled veggie sandwich - that's different - I want to try that!"  No, they said, "Oh, Natalie, you don't eat meat, right?  Why don't you pick your sandwich first."

I realize this seems like common sense, but outside of Philadelphia (or whatever metropolis you choose), it is not.  It just represented another moment of happiness over my decision to leave one place and come to another.

What's a great partner to sandwiches?  Well, besides chocolate chip cookies?  Soup!  Or, notably, Harira from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant.

Granted, several hours separated the sandwich from the soup (like, you know, the distance between lunch and dinner), but it was the best segue I could come up with.  It's Friday.  Anyway, I used to make this soup fairly frequently when I first started cooking.  I haven't made it in years, but I can honestly say, I don't remember it tasting the way it did tonight.

I think the main difference was the freshly squeezed lemon juice.  I'm pretty sure I never included that previously.  Also, I used what was left of the Garlic Broth and made up the missing liquid with V8 Spicy Hot.  I always sub garlic for onions, which got me to thinking if there was some conversion I could make:  this much garlic = this much onion.  I suppose I could just use onions when the recipe asks for them, but that would take all the fun out of guesswork.  I'm pretty sure this is the first time I used fresh tomatoes, which could have something to do with the bright acidity.

An hour or so after dinner, though, I realized why Mister doesn't like soup dinners.  I was hungry again. He might have something there, so unless a soup is really substantial, you'll probably see it retired to side dish status on future menus.

a [sur]prize in every box!

I had a revelation this morning as I was getting out of the shower.

Angst always sits in the bathroom to keep me company while I shower in the morning (or afternoon, on days off sometimes).  As I was stepping out of the shower, I asked him if it was bad that I was already actively anticipating the end of the work day I had not yet begun, purely because I have tomorrow off?  See, I just started my job a month ago and I am very happy there.  However, here is the discovery Angst and I made this morning:

No matter how much you enjoy your job, you still prefer your days off.


I could be wrong.  Some people find their jobs positively completing and I know there are folks the uninitiated refer to as "workaholics" who find their job so fulfilling (or inescapable) that they would be perfectly happy to just take a dinner break and keep working into the night.  I enjoy my job enough to work on things far into the night, but I prefer to do so in the comfort of my own home, until Mister tears me away from my computer and reminds me we have a bed, too.  Nevertheless, I was very happy to finish up this evening a little after 6 and once again, magically get home before the sun fully set.

I love how much time my new schedule/shorter commute allows Mister and I to spend lingering over dinner or hanging out before I even start heating a pot.  I love that even though we had a nice little conversation and then I talked to my sister for about 20 minutes while emptying the dishwasher and putting various other things where they belong, I could still take my time and make dinner at my pace - no need to rush.  After dinner, Mister made decaf coffee and we sat and talked about my sister's new boyfriend and people getting pregnant and trapping themselves in a situation that looks like "mandatory marriage" - and by the way, those two things are unrelated - Breathe, Mom!  Anyway, we just kind of babbled at each other about the obscure things we find interesting and when we excused ourselves, it wasn't even 10!

We had the last meal on the last menu, Warm Chickpea Ragout with Swiss Chard, Carrots and Harissa from Vegetarian Times Fast & Easy.

We've had this several times before, but Mister had absolutely no recollection of it.  It did taste a little different - a little more savory, which added the benefit of controlling Harissa's heat.  The only thing I could think of that I did differently was that I used a half cup of the leftover garlic broth, which is pretty pungent.  I also added a generous amount of salt and I can't remember if I've done that in the past, since I usually only mess with things that have a specified quantity, rather than the disgruntling "to taste."

It was very tasty and I love how harissa allows me to eat spicy things without my entire face burning off in the process.

Anyway, completely by coincidence, my menu ran out the night before my day off (I wasn't originally supposed to be off tomorrow), so let me share a short menu with you - a mini-menu, if you will.  Full-sized version will be introduced over the weekend.  A recent comment reminded me just how well loved my Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook has been over the years - in fact, I'm pretty sure that was a primary guide for me as I learned how to cook.  Pages are dog-eared and stained, some stick together a little at the yellowing edges, and favorites have been marked along with "someday I have to try this" recipes.  I've been neglecting the book for years, so I decided to pull it out for this week's menu. I had thought that I'd been neglecting it because a lot of the recipes take a while to cook, but I discovered two other things that have probably been deterring me unconsciously.

First, the recipes are built for a restaurant, and are therefore, huge.  I don't need that much food and I don't feel like figuring out how to divide everything to only make enough for me and Mister and Leftover Lunch.  Second, and probably more importantly, there are very few vegan recipes and the tweaks required would probably strip away the charm of the original recipe.

"Hey! I veganized a recipe that someone converted from a meal full of meat into a vegetarian recipe."  Wow.  That's great.  That sounds like cousins who can legally marry, barely, to me.  So, with all that in mind, I chose the following three irresistible recipes, all from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant.

1. Vegetable Biryani - I have not had many moments in my culinary "career" as proud as the moment I made this the first time.  After years of spaghetti and veggie burgers, this was a gourmet achievement of the highest order.  It's actually really easy, but I haven't made it in a while because I have an even easier recipe with fewer steps (and fewer pots).

2. Pasta e Fagioli because hey, what's one more Pasta e Fagioli recipe when you're keeping a secret tally of how many Pasta e Fagioli recipes you have to how many Beans 'n' Rice recipes you have?

3. Harira, which is a huge pot of African soup which Muslims traditionally eat to break the fast of Ramadan.  We are neither African nor Muslim and if we were fasting, Mister would need a lot more than soup to break the fast, but this was one of the first soups I ever made that did not involve a can-opener, so you can consider this a little prideful trip down Memory Lane.

My fingers are cold.  I think it's time for a Cosmo.  See you tomorrow!

autumn minestrone = awesome sauce

This is truly one of my favorite times of year.  I love each "first" of fall - the first cool day, the first time you pull on a long-neglected jacket, the first scarf draped loosely around your neck.  I love the first nip in the air and the first time it is truly justified and not just paranoia to button/zip up your jacket and maybe hunch up a little against the wind.

I love the smells - the crisp scent of firewood set ablaze in someone's cozy fireplace, the smoke wafting from their chimney and filling the air with an unmistakably autumnal feel and smell; the first emergence of cinnamon brooms and pine cones in the supermarkets, and the syrupy aroma of freshly baked apple cobbler in your own kitchen.

Yours.  Not mine.  I'm not baking until Wednesday at the earliest.  But you can share your smushy, cinnamon-y, warm apple-y cobblerness with me if you'd like.

Today was the first day the sunlit temperatures couldn't find their way out of the 50s, which meant it was also the first day we didn't have the a/c on at work, which meant it was the first day I was actually warm.  Regardless, the walk home was all the chilliness I needed to be perfectly provoked to make Autumn Minestrone from the Moosewood Restaurant Soups & Stews Deck.

To a soundtrack of Apoptygma Berzerk, I lovingly made the broth myself last night, following a recipe from the same deck for Garlic Broth.  Believe me, anything involving 3 heads of garlic is okay in my book.  I expected the resulting soup to be a bit brothier, since it called for 6 cups of the broth I painstakingly simmered while playing on facebook,  but I guess I underestimated the sheer volume of veggies that would be going into it.  Believe me - I'm not complaining about the veggies.  Every time I eat something this full of veggies, especially lovely, dark green, Tuscan kale and Vitamin C-rich cauliflower, I can just about feel the health flowing into me.

I could use a little boost right now.  But hey, when I can breath without tightness in my chest, I'll appreciate breathing all the more, right?  This is just another opportunity for gratitude.

Nevertheless, I did anticipate the soup would be, well....soupier, so I asked Mister to pick up special rustic Italian bread for us to dip in the broth and make our soup dinner a little more substantial.  Turns out I needn't have worried, but the seeded spelt bread he picked up was still a delightful addition to our light Mediterranean feast, which I topped off with a generous bowl of mixed olives.

One final thing of note, merely because I'm making such a concerted effort to improvise more: somehow, in a moment of brain malfunction, I used up the zucchini I meant to add to this soup.  After a thorough interrogation of the cat, I remembered what I had done with the zucchini and moved on to being grateful I was too lazy to make the roasted cauliflower appetizer I had intended for a few nights ago (when I used up the zucchini without realizing), so I subbed the cauliflower for the squash.  Mister loves cauliflower and merely tolerates zucchini because it's a part of so many recipes there would be nothing left for me to cook if he outlawed that ingredient, too (along with eggplant, mushrooms, tempeh, quinoa, and "squishy wheat").  Mister and I agreed, though, that this soup was far better completed by the cauliflower than it would have been with zucchini.  The texture it leant was perfect, as was the subtle flavor and the barely perceptible way it soaked up the garlic broth.

sunny saturday love

Happy October!  Happy VeganMOFO!  Happy World Vegetarian Day!  happy happy happy

I love this month.  There are so many great things - anniversaries, birthdays, CDs I've been waiting for for 5 years, new cookbooks, and the return of the Vegan Month of Food!  MoFo Blogging is the best kind of blogging - it's kind of like the New Year because I think it helps all of us get back on our feet.  This time of year, dozens of blogs are remembered and reformed, dozens of writers recommit themselves to posting more frequently.  More serious questions are asked and answered.

This is my third Vegan MoFo.  The first year, my goal was simple: I'd just started the blog a couple of months earlier and I wanted people to read it, goshdarnit!  Here I was, pouring my heart and soul into writing recipes and then composing awesome recaps of our dinner adventures, but what good was it, other than an online "Dear Diary" if no one was reading.  So, my goal for the first year, starting out anyway, was simply to gain readership.  I accomplished that, but I also came away empowered, enriched, and ready to think more critically about things about which I'd let myself become complacent.  I gave my mind a hearty chunk to chew on by examining my feelings about the ethics of honey and wool - two forms of animal consumption in which the animal continues to live, making it seem less cruel.

The second year, last year, I don't know that I had any actual goals.  I just really enjoyed MoFo the year before, found a ton of new blogs to read and managed to convince at least a few people that mine was worth reading, so I did it again.  Again, I was enriched and inspired.  The best part about last year's MoFo was that because it was in November, everyone got to share their Thanksgiving adventures.

This year, I do have goals.  My posting has been falling off lately, which is something I've noticed on blogs I've followed for a while.  You start out all full of vim and vigor and you're going to be the best, most conscientious blogger ever...until you realize that there's a whole big world out there full of life waiting to be lived.  I'm not a "short" blogger - I don't jot down a couple of sentences and attach them to a picture just to be able to say "I blogged today."  If I don't have something to say, I just don't blog.  Unfortunately, that can result in days or even a week going by with nothing from me but silence resulting in Facebook rumors that I died.

I go into a little more detail here, but the short story is this: my goal for Vegan MoFo 2011 is to get back to basics.  I started this blog to expand my ability to actually create my own recipes and learn the puzzle of flavors and textures in such a way that I can just grab some ingredients and turn it into a delightful meal without having to consult a page of a cookbook between each step.  The problem I keep running into is how many fabulous cookbooks there are and how I want to try every recipe, but I really just want to be able to say "I'm a cook."  I want to make dinner without help from Isa or Nava or Sarah or even Dynise - not all the time, but I want to know I can do it without second guessing myself.

This couldn't come at a better time - I've cooked myself bored from my current cookbook collection and the release of the cookbook I am most looking forward to has been pushed out to November.  This means I am perfectly in a place to force myself to be creative and stretch my wings a little.  I construct a weekly menu, but my intention for this month is to always be at least one meal short of a complete week (and I don't mean that in the "euphemism for crazy" way).  I will share any great recipes I do come up with, but if you want a teaser to convince you to stick around, try this: September Lentil Soup.

Now for a little dinner recap: tonight I made Mediterranean Stew from the Moosewood Restaurant Soups and Stews Deck.

Right now, Mister and I can't get enough veggies and this stew is packed with them.  Two large bell peppers, a bunch of asparagus (roughly 1 lb) and two medium zucchini along with plenty of garlic, a can of tomatoes and a can of beans.  I caught something like the lovechild of pneumonia and tuberculosis at the beginning of the week and it appears I've passed it on to my dear husband, so we've been guzzling green juice and eating our veggies like they're going out of style.  Or like it's autumn and we're afraid of being confined to canned tomatoes and frozen broccoli for the next few months.  Either one.

It's attractive in almost a provencal kind of way, wouldn't you say?  One of the things that stood out the most to me was the very pungent taste of the fresh oregano I used.  I've never cooked with fresh oregano, even though I knew it would greatly improve my opinion of oregano as an herb, so this was a treat.  I thought the proportions of fresh herbs was somewhat comical, as the prescribed amount of basil was 1/2 cup but they only wanted me to add 2 teaspoons of chopped oregano.  Once I tasted the stew, served over bulgur, I understood why.

There was one bizarre-ish kind of thing that stood out to me in this recipe.  You could add clams as an option.  I own two other Moosewood cookbooks, so I am aware that they sometimes include fish recipes, but I just don't get that - fish-eaters consider themselves "pescatarians" rather than vegetarians, who eat vegetables :)  On their website, the folks at Moosewood claim the restaurant is vegetarian, but states that they serve fish and seafood as well.  The Collective gives the impression that their main dietary concern is the health of those eating the food, so that might explain their notion that fish fit into a vegetarian diet.  That is, if they are not "ethical" vegetarians, but merely trying to eat in the most healthful way, they would do right by putting the emphasis on grains and vegetables and tofu and beans as primary sources of protein (which they do), with the occasional consumption of "healthy" seafood.

For my purposes, though, to be vegetarian means to eat no meat and to be vegan, well, that's usually pretty indisputable, isn't it?  If not, feel free to navigate (via the right sidebar) to my October 2009 posts, in which I explored what going vegan meant for me.

Well, it's time to wrap up.  If you're new, Welcome! I hope you enjoy my snarky little posts and witty recaps of the sometimes strange but almost always delicious things my family of 2.5 eats for dinner.  If you've been around for a while, Thank you from the bottom of my heart.  I love knowing you're out there and counting on your sweet, encouraging, and sometimes challenging responses to my posts.

bring on October!

October is my favorite month for so many reasons.  I think it may also be Amy Lee's favorite month, because she released the second Evanescence album in October 2006 and now, after an agonizing 5-year hiatus, she is releasing a new Evanescence album with an almost completely new line-up on October 11, and yes, I have it pre-ordered through iTunes.

That's only part of the reason I can't wait for October to start.  Yes, I've been eagerly awaiting this album while covering my ears with my hands and singing "LA LA LA LA LA" any time someone gossiped about the band breaking up for the last 5 years or so, and the rumors were not helped by the fact that we actually know one of the former band members and were aware that he had moved on to another band.  However, I refused to believe a talent like Amy Lee's could be squandered, so I'm glad I was right.

There are a few other reasons I'm psyched for October - two can be found on amazon.com, one will remain a surprise a little longer.  I mentioned before that Isa has a new book, Vegan Pie in the Sky, and I couldn't be more on the edge of my seat waiting for Dynise's book, tested in part by yours truly, Celebrate Vegan.  It was due to come out the week after the new Evanescence album, but when I visited Amazon, they're saying it isn't being released until November now and that makes me a little sad.

The point of all that really is this: tonight we ate the last meal on the menu, which meant I had to construct the new menu tonight.  Did you catch that?  I had to construct the menu?  Isn't this something I have raved about in the past as one of my favorite parts of each week?  Haven't I reveled in flipping through pages of countless cookbooks to find the perfect combination of meals to get through this next week?  Had to?


I realized after dinner that I was not at all excited about menu-planning this week and wasn't terribly psyched for it last week either.  It shouldn't take a brain surgeon to figure out why - I'm bored of my current cookbook collection.  To my credit, I've been a very good (=frugal = freakishly cheap) girl this year and I haven't bought a new cookbook all year.  Considering we're nearing the tenth month of the year, I'd say I'm doing pretty good.  Yet, it couldn't last forever.  I had a little help with variety in the beginning of the year, when I had just gotten Appetite for Reduction and had a constantly renewing source of recipes I actually had to cook for recipe-testing for Dynise.  I've been slowly stagnating since then, and just recently I've realized that I've been through my cookbooks so many times, I can't even look at them with fresh eyes anymore.

Lucky for all of us, there's a surprise ending, but let's talk about dinner first:

I will probably always think it's funny to call this "Hooker Dinner," but that doesn't change my love for the sweet-salty blend of flavors and textures that makes up Pasta Puttanesca from Vegan Express.  I served it with garlic bread so we could scoop up the leftover tomatoes and olives from our bowls after the pasta was in our bellies.

Mister has been kindly picking up the Superfresh leg of my usual shopping adventures ever since I've been hitting up Trader Joe's on the way home from work.  As you can imagine, some interesting things have been finding their way into our home.  He's been shopping with me enough times to know that the goal is almost always to find the lowest price on a product, unless to do so would compromise its quality.  I can only imagine that some kind of pang of pride for his adolescent home, New Jersey, pulled the jar of New Jersey tomato sauce into the basket by his heart strings.

It wasn't very good.  I shouldn't say that.  It was clearly very fresh and made from real ingredients.  I would liken it to making a batch of homemade tomato sauce, from the dicing of the tomatoes...to the part where you make a kind of weak, watery gazpacho with them, rather than a thick, chunky sauce.  I had to let the sauce simmer a little more lively and longer than the recipe said to allow it to reduce acceptably, and I also felt inclined to add some savory flavors to complement the olives.

It worked out well enough - both our bowls went into the sink pretty clean.

Now for the happy part of menu planning.  When I went over to my bookshelf, half-heartedly looking to see if there was a book from which I haven't cooked in a while and which interested my palate, I noticed something I've been keeping in the corner of my eye for months:

When Mister and I moved in February, we got rid of a ton of stuff - we moved just as much to have a good reason to purge as to get away from that apartment.  We ended up taking a bunch of books to a used book dealer who was happy to write up a credit slip for us to use to buy "new" books from them.  We started out with nearly $100 worth of credit (which means we gave them a lot of books and that they are generous with their appraisals).  One afternoon I went browsing in there and found the gem pictured above.

I already had two Moosewood cookbooks and one of the things I like to make the most from them are the slow-cooking stews and soups, so I scooped this up.  Unfortunately, it was not soup weather, so I just put it aside on the shelf to wait for cooler times.  Well, Saturday greets October with a chilly, chilly day and even the rest of this week isn't supposed to see temperatures out of the low to mid 70s, so I think I'm safe to start investigating that new treasure.  And so, my first adventures will be....

1. Autumn Minestrone from Moosewood Restaurant Soups & Stews Deck.  I plan to serve it with a long, crusty loaf of Italian bread and a bowl of olives.  (Would anyone have found it completely offensive had I written "a long, hard loaf" of bread?  Sorry, too much Anne Rice - she gets a little carried away sometimes.)

2. Mediterranean Stew, also from the card deck.  This chunky pottage will be accompanied by Roasted Cauliflower and Olives from Vegetarian Times Fast & Easy, because I figure Mister will respond better to the first week with not just one but two soup dinners on the menu if cauliflower is involved.

3. Warm Chickpea Ragout with Swiss Chard, Carrots and Harissa, also from Vegetarian Times Fast & Easy because hey, I had the book open!

4. Hoisin-Braised Tempeh Tofu and Chinese Vegetables, also from VTF&E, but the twist here is that I've never actually made this one before.  The reason is because I usually employ this book when I'm either anticipating being brain-dead or already am brain-dead.  As such, I've managed to complete avoid the logic that would make a person say, "well, yes, my husband is deathly allergic to tempeh, but I can substitute tofu."  I'm kind of excited about this one so I'll let you know how it turns out.

5. Vegetable and "Sausage" Skillet from an old issue of Eating Well magazine.

6. Seitan and Broccoli with Pantry BBQ Sauce from theppk.com.  I had an incredible experience with the recipe here, so I thought it was worth another go.

breath-freshener or dinner?

Sometimes I run on auto-pilot when I start cooking.  Even if it's a recipe I've never made before, sometimes I just gather the ingredients and engage in the chopping, skinning, dicing, scooping, measuring, mixing, saute-ing or baking without pausing to examine the melange of ingredients I'm assembling and manipulating.  Sometimes I forget to be mindful of what I'm eating until I'm halfway through it and wondering exactly what it is that is causing this or that taste to stand above the rest. 

Sometimes.

Then, some other times, I pay very close attention to every detail, somehow just knowing that I will want to remember this later.  Sometimes I sniff or taste the ingredients as I add them, savoring my self-education and the opportunity to reflect on why this flavor goes with this one or why that scent is so enticing (or nauseating).

Sometimes, just as I stir in the last ingredient, a small handful of dried mint, and its scent wafts upwards into my increasingly sensitive and observant nostrils, I remember that one of the first ingredients was cinnamon and I think to myself:

"Really?  Cinnamon and mint?  Is this a good idea?  Is dinner going to taste and smell like I just gargled with Scope and then popped a piece of Big Red in my mouth?"

Tonight I made Vegetable Biryani from La Dolce Vegan.  It was almost nothing like my other recipe.  It was far faster, since it cooks on the stovetop, not in the oven.  It was a little more integrated and a little creamier - my Moosewood recipe doesn't have red lentils and the rice is cooked separately, and then a little rice-vegetable-rice Oreo situation occurs in the construction.  There is also no mint in my other recipe.  I had really mixed feelings about adding it, but in the end, I wanted to be faithful to the recipe.

Although mint and cinnamon co-existing in this recipe still strikes me as bizarre, and although I still have a little trouble smelling mint as I draw the forkful of savory Biryani to my mouth, it was actually quite outstanding.  I will absolutely make this again, but I will add a little more variety (and nutrition) to the table by serving a side dish or two.