Week of Blogging: Food Glam!

Sometimes you all must just think that I eat nothing but King Cakes. Here are some lovely meals I never got around to blogging about - until now!

Millenium Cookbook: Vegan Paella with Garlic Tofu Aioli served over a bed of kale
delicious! really packed a punch of strong flavors, and the simplicity of steamed, earthy kale under it all was a great balance. Plus, the kale was from our garden, which was a special treat!

Voluptuous Vegan: Pumpkin-Sage-Pecan Ravioli ... ready to be cooked
I love these, and had made them once before. It's a lot of work, but if you've got a hankering to be in the kitchen, you can guarantee you'll be happy with the results. I love that beautiful orange pasta dough! You can see that I went with an assortment of shapes... you gotta keep it interesting!

All cooked up and served with accompanying white bean sauce. Mmmm!

Beautiful Watermelon Radishes, from the farmers market. A special shout out to my yoga student Suzanne, who tipped me off to these tasty beauties. On the outside, they look like small white turnips with green skin at the top... but inside they're just gorgeous! I'm not generally a radish fan, but I love these. They are crisp and mild - only a hint of the peppery spice of some more aggressive radishes.

The Real Food Daily Cookbook: Grilled Herb Tofu
I.love.this.tofu. mmmm. Look at those grill marks! I was very pleased indeed. These went on to become Grilled Herb Tofu Sandwiches with caramelized onions and sundried tomato pesto, also from the RFD book. But I"ll admit to sneaking a few pieces to munch on their own.

Veganomicon: Chewy Chocolate Raspberry Cookies
Sooooooo gooooood.

A free-form apricot galette with a marzipan base... a delicious dessert for our most recent Sunday Night Family Dinner. I used a big bag of fresh-frozen apricot halves from last summer's farmers' market as the main filling. Underneath, I rolled out some marzipan and used that as the base layer. When I was defrosting the apricots, I drained them off and reserved the liquid. That cooked down with a tablespoon or two of sugar, a dash of vanilla, and some arrowroot, and became a glaze. Simple, but totally delicious! This elegant shot is staged on my much beloved silpat... and you can see the warm marzipan oozing out. Yum-o!

Week of Blogging: Bananas & Banana Slugs

I declare this week The Week of Blogging!

Here at VE&T, I have a week's worth of blog posts, stored up in my brain, and I am eager to get them out! Do some spring cleaning in my brain, y'know?

So first, we begin with my Banana post. A while back, maybe sometime last year, I stopped buying bananas. I learned more about how they are grown, and also became more passionate about eating locally and seasonally. Here in Santa Cruz, we are so lucky to have two wonderful year-round farmers' markets, and I have no problem finding delicious, organic, local fruits all year long.

Still, from time to time, a girl wants a banana. So, last week, I bought a bunch of organic fair trade bananas for a special treat. Yum! My new banana policy is strictly limited to organic, fair trade nanners. Mr. VE&Ts buys regular bananas, which I like to derisively refer to as "blood bananas." As in, "How's your blood banana?" Luckily, he has recently discovered that his favorite gas station/pit stop actually sells organic bananas. !?

Anyhow, I put one of these bananas to use in a delicious and extremely rich dessert smoothie: 1 frozen banana, 1 Tbsp cocoa powder, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, 1 date (not pictured!), and a bunch of almond milk. Mmmmm. At first pass it was CRAZY rich, so I diluted it with more almond milk and enjoyed it very much!

While we are on the subject of bananas, I have been wanting to blog about my special friends the banana slugs for a while now. We have lots of banana slugs here in Santa Cruz, and they are even the official mascot of our local university. They are pretty big - this one was probably about 7 inches long - and they are so beautiful! Usually they are more like 5 inches long.

I really love banana slugs. Every time I see one it feels exciting and special. Walking in the woods, you don't usually see deer or bobcats or squirrels... all animals that we know are there, but are good at hiding from us. But the sweet little banana slugs are out sliming around, and reminding me that the forest is home to many unique critters. I feel very protective of the banana slugs, and always make sure that none of my dogs step on them. I also like to count them as I walk along. They like the moist forest floor, and the other day was some sort of peak banana slug condition - I saw 26 banana slugs in a 40 minute walk! Usually it's more like 2 or 3. Anyhow, I just wanted you to know about the giant yellow beauty that is Banana Slug!

Happy New Year! A Persian Feast

Today was the first day of Spring, and therefore, it was also Persian New Year! Persian New Year, also known as NoRooz, is my favorite holiday of the year. Every year, I have a small party for family and a few friends. I spend all day cooking up various veganized versions of traditional Iranian dishes... a small party, but a huge feast.

The whole spread: In the big pot was our main dish, which I somehow neglected to photograph this year - Ash-e Resteh, a wonderful, wonderful vegetable noodle soup. It takes forever to make, but it's totally delicious and gorgeous. Seriously - it's got everything in it: onions, garlic, beets, 3 kinds of beans, beets, lentils, noodles, spinach, mountains of fresh herbs, lemon juice... it's amazing. My recipe is online here from last year's party.

Here is our HaftSin Table, which goes up before NoRooz, and stays up for all 13 days of the holiday. All the objects here are symbolic - meant to call in good tidings for the coming year: Coins for prosperity, apple for health, garlic for medicine, eggs for fertility (I use vegan glass "eggs"), mirror for reflection... and so on. It's all very beauitful. I love the process of assembling the table each year, and seeing all the symbols of spring in my home...

Here's my Sabzi Polo - herbed rice. Persian Rice is very special and wonderful - fluffy and light. It is most prized for the tah digh (sp?) - the crunchy, buttery rice "crust" at the bottom of the pot. Despite reading countless recipes, despite reading pictorials, despite dating an Iranian fellow for 3 years who was a rice master, I personally have never successfully created a tah digh. This year was no exception. I used this recipe. Of course, I followed these directions, instead of Bazu's, which was a mistake. Bazu says to cook the soaked rice for 20 minutes. The recipe I used says to cook the soaked rice for 1 1/2 hours. Big Difference! So, I split the difference, and I should have just listened to Bazu! Foolish me.

Here's the recipe I used, with the changes I made to it:

3 cups basmati rice
water
3 tablespoons salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 cups finely chopped herbs, approximately
1 bunch fresh parsley, stemmed and rinsed
1 bunch chives, rinsed or 2 bunches if they are small
1 bunch fresh cilantro, stemmed and rinsed
1 bunch fresh dill weed, stemmed and rinsed
½ tsp. ground cumin
½ tsp. ground cinnamon

Rinse the rice thoroughly in water. In a large bowl, combine the rice and salt and let soak in water (cover about 1 inch above the rice) for 6 to 8 hours. Drain the water.

Bring a 6 quart pot, three-fourths full of water, to a boil over high heat. Add the rice. Reduce the heat to medium and boil gently, stirring a few times, until most of the rice comes to the surface (tender but slightly firm to the bite). This doesn't take very long at all. Drain well and rinse with warm water.

Spread the vegetable oil on the bottom of the pot. To start the layering process, cover the vegetable oil with one-third of the rice in a single layer. Spread one-third of the herb mix over the rice and fluff with hand to mix. Sprinkle 1/4 tsp cumin and 1/4 tsp cinnamon between the first and second layer. Repeat this process twice. Cover tightly, reduce the heat to medium and steam the rice for approximately twenty to twenty-five minutes. (Do as I say, and not as I do!) The way I learned it is to put a dish towel between the pot and the lid, and close the lid super tight. Then fold the edges of the towel up on top on the lid (so they don't burn or touch the hot sides of the pot).

Here is my "tah digh" - believe me when I tell you that this picture looks better than the actual facts on the ground. I seriously burnt the heck out that poor pot of rice! Anyhow, I"m not totally discouraged, because the rice that did survive was fluffy and delicious. And, even a burnt tah digh is the closest I've ever come. Next year, just don't burn it... and I"ll be there! If you follow my directions about, and only steam the rice for twenty minutes, it will not burn.

Fresh salad: cherry tomatos, cucumber, parsely, fresh mint, red onion. With a pomegranate molasses & olive oil dressing.

Not a great picture, but a GREAT freaking dish. Traditionally, Kookoo Sabzi is a omlette, and every year I've tried a slightly different approach. This year's was definitely the best! I'll call it Kookoo Sabzi 3.0.

I used Susan V's Omlette recipe as the base (just a little generous on the turmeric), but then made up a kookoo sabzi filling based on this recipe. I had some frozen Persian Greens from the Persian grocer - cilantro, green onions, parsely, spinach, and fenugreek greens. I added in a whole nother bunch of parsely, and an entire bunch of dill as well. In total I had about 4 cups of greens. You must chop and chop and chop your herbs until they are totally obliterated. Chop and chop and chop! Then I added in 2/3 c. barberries rehydrated (thanks Bazu! You RULE!), 2/3 c chopped red pepper, 1 cup chopped walnuts, and 6 cloves of pressed garlic. Mix it all together, and you've got your Persian filling for Susan's omlette. In the end, I made a 6x batch of Susan's recipe, but ended up making only 4 omlettes instead of 6. So, lucky us!, I'll make the rest tomorrow! The omlettes were a little messy, but luckily I only invite people who will forgive me for such things, and we all devored up the Kookoo Sabzi. Definitely the most delicious yet. I think those greens from the Persian Grocer might just have made all the difference...

Here's my plate, from the top left: Kookoo Sabzi 3.0, Sabzi Polo, Khorest Fesenjan, and salad. The Khorest Fesenjan really isn't the world's most photogenic dish, but let me assure you that it's totally freaking delicious. Here's my recipe. It's seitan and onions with a thick walnut-pomegranate juice gravy. Unique, and super super tasty.

In case you were unsure, mini key lime pies are not traditional Persian New Year treats. However, they are my dad's favorite dessert, and tomorrow happens to be my dad's birthday (Happy Birthday Dad!!), so of course his favorite just had to be on the table! I used Isa's recipe, which is now officially my go-to Key Lime Pie recipe. It's great.

A beautiful platter of giant dates from the Farmer's Market.

MMM! Freak out! This was our big dessert: Pistachio Ice Cream with Orange Blossom Water & Saffron - with chunks of dates and chopped roasted pistachios mixed in. The Pistachio Ice Cream was Musty's idea, and then I Persianified it! I used my Vitamix to make PISTACHIO MILK, which was incredible. I soaked the nuts in water and orange blossom water, to infuse a floral quality. The Pistachio Milk base gave the ice cream incredible richness and a lovely light green color. I used Bryana Clark Grogan's Vanilla Gelato recipe as a starting point (from "Nonna's Italian Kitchen"), so a big shout out to her! It was freaky crazy good! Very rich, and just the right amount of pistachio intensity. The aromatics of the orange blossom water and the saffron were perfectly present, without overwhelming.

You can see that I staged this photo shoot of my ice cream on the Haft Sin Table... with my veganized version of the goldfish (in Iran, you would use an actual fish in a bowl, representing life), and a small bowl of jujubees...

Here's my pistachio milk. I don't know if you can see the beautiful light green hue, but it really is gorgeous.

Sohan As-Ali candies: almond brittle candies with saffron and rosewater, pistachios sprinkled on top. Totally delicious. This was the first Persian food I learned to cook, and I make them every year. This year's batch was by far the best ever... just a lucky combination of timing it right. Candy is a bit tricky, but these had perfect flavor and perfect crispness. I ate way too many! Here's the recipe I use.

Aren't they beautiful?

Hope you had a great first day of spring. Happy New Year!

Veganomicon Week! aka Kale Week!

Last week, I made a few yummy dishes from Veganomicon - all of which had the world's most mighty vegetable: Super Kale!

Potato-Kale Enchiladas. OMG! Have you made these yet? Well, first of all, you better have you some free time, because these babies take a long while. But they are most definitely worth it! Mmmm... roasting the peppers, making the enchilada sauce, the crunchy pepitas in the filling... totally delish. I made these for Family Dinner, and they were a huge hit. Ya know, it was hard for me to get a very lovely photo, but I can assure you, these enchiladas are superb!

Baked Potato & Kale Soup. Another potato-kale combo! But with a very different flair. Most of all I freaked out over the garlicky potato wedge croutons. I liked the soup - warm and filling and healthy... but the baked potato croutons really "kicked it up a notch," as some would say. Next time I will make an extra batch of the croutons.

Lastly, Brussel Sprouts and Quinoa with Seitan (or something like that!). This tasty dish has brussels, kale, shallots, sundried tomatoes... I served it over rice instead of quinoa because Musty is a fool for rice, and every once in a while I feel like being nice to him. I used Julie Hasson sausages for the seitan, and that was a great idea. Last time I made this, the seitan was a little mooshy, so this time, I stir fried the seitan at the very end and added it. Much better!

King Cake Extraveganza!!

Update! I added ONE MORE King Cake!

Thank you all for your loving comments about my sweet grandpa, I really appreciate them. This blog won't quite be the same without our weekly "cooking for grandpa" meals. My cousin & her husband made a really great website for him if you're interested. But you can rest assured, I always find solace in the kitchen, so there's still plenty of cooking going on. Plus, I think I'll have a few more memorial food posts down the way!

First, I have some important bizness to get out of the way. Yes, I know Mardi Gras has long since come and gone. Still, I never had a chance to blog about all the different king cakes I've made in the last month. I've been testing for Kittee, and she's been pumping out countless variations of King Cakes. Each time I think I've made my last king cake, she puts out another tempting variation. These recipes aren't available yet, but if you've got a passion for Cajun/Creole cooking, drop by her blog and let her know you're interested in being a tester too. Or, you can use the recipe she DOES have up on her blog, found here.

First one I made, was the Original. You've just gotta start with the classics and work from there.

Here's the inside - a cinnamon-sugar filling. This cake didn't quite get a super-star rise, but still it was delicious and totally devoured. Suffice it to say, no one complained.


Cake 2: Apple-Pecan Praline Cinnamon King Cake. Now this cake dough rose and rose and rose. Perfect and chubby!
The filling here is pralined pecans, cooked apples, and cinnamon sugar. Gorgeous and delicious. Prolly my favorite so far. I loved the moist addition of the cinnamon-y apples, which were perfectly balanced between tender & crispy.

Topless King Cake! Throw this cake some beads!

Cake 3: ChocoCoco Zulu King Cake. Whoa! I don't know about you, but when I am presented with the option to bake something called a "ChocoCoco Zulu King Cake," it no longer becomes optional. I simply must make it. As you can see, this cake is decorated with sprinkled colored coconut, rather than colored sugar, for extra coconutty goodness.

The filling here is a coconut-cream cheeze filling. Then, the whole thing is topped with a chocolate ganache and more coconut. It was very, very good. I committed a Mardi Gras faux-pas (that rhymes!), and made this cake AFTER Mardi Gras day. So far, I'm happy to report, no bad luck has come my way as a result....yet!

This very delicious King Cake was the (take a deep breath) "Apple Praline Pecan Cheezecake King Cake." Yes, all those tasty and scrumptious flavors in one place. Very, very good.

Here's a cut away. You can't really see the pecans in this pic, but you can see some apples in the bottom there, and also you can see the giant Bean Baby poking out! Whoever gets this slice has to make everyone the next king cake! Not that I need any more King Cake at this point...

Memorial Breakfast

Well, dear readers, I have some sad news. My beloved grandpa died this weekend. Any of you who are regular readers will know how close he and I were. In the last year and a half or so, since my grandmother died, and Musty and I have had dinner with him two nights a week, which was especially wonderful. We always looked forward to those evenings with my grandpa.

My Grandpa was truly one of the most remarkable, amazing, and beloved people ever. Truly, I do not have one single negative memory of him. I never saw him act with malice or superiority or greed or judgment. He was genuinely curious about everyone he met, and loved to strike up conversations with anyone and everyone. In fact, pretty much everyone who ever met him was instantly a fan - he had such grace and charm and sweetness. He was totally earnest and kind, with no need for irony or snarkiness. He was a man of action, who formed relationships and experiences that enriched the world. He and my grandma were both very involved with local environmental causes - state parks, natural history museum, trails, Sierra Club... They loved to back pack, and especially they shared their love for Yosemite with all of us. Around the time that I was born, they served two years in the Peace Corps in Ghana, which was a very meaningful experience for both of them. They also had a huge garden - and you've all probably read many posts where I blogged about the figs, raspberries, butternut squash, concord grapes, apples, greens, tomatoes, plums, apples, and persimmons from their garden. A simple search on the word "grandpa" on my blog yeilds so many results! He really was such a joy to cook for - perpetually enthusiastic and grateful. "Oh wow, delicious dinner, honeybunch!" "A girl of many talents!" I'll really miss cooking for him, and all his sweet little expressions of appreciation.

He had such a peaceful and dignified death, which is just what he wanted. After falling and breaking his hip, he developed pneumonia, and was having a really tough time breathing. He made a conscious choice that he had lived "92 wonderful years" and that "it's time to cash in my chips" and make a "graceful exit". We were all there with him, touching him and being with him as his breath got slower and slower, and finally stopped. It was beautiful and amazing and sad too. I really miss him a lot already, but I am also so happy for him that he was able to go out on his own gentle terms.

Well, my first inheritance was a box of his most beloved cereal, Super Nutty Toffee Clusters, from Trader Joes, along with a bag of Costco brand Dried Blueberries. He loved to have a stockpile of his favorite items on hand, so that he'd never run out. So, after he died, my aunt gave me these two goodies. Of course, I remembered him by having a big bowl of cereal with a handful of the blueberries on top, just the way he liked it. Whoa! The cereal is pretty darned good, but those blueberries are sweetened and they pop a major sugar punch. It's crazy to think of my sweet grandpa getting such a major sugar blast every morning!

ps. this great photo of the two of us was taking by r.r.jones, a local photographer. I met him when we both had our artwork in a local exhibit, and when my grandpa came to see the show, it turns out that Ron knew him from the gym! Until the day he fell, my grandpa had been going to the gym 3 days a week. He was quite a super star at the gym, and Ron took a cute picture of us two together at the exhibit. Then, unfortunately, he lost the file. So, he brought us into his studio and took some real "studio shots" of us together. I"m so happy to have these beautiful photos. You can really see my grandpa's huge, warm, sparkly spirit.