SLUDGY EGGPLANT KOREAN STYLE

The carnivores are getting Korean Short Ribs for dinner.  Pretty special for a Thursday night, I'd say. But it's hot.  The crockpot recipe I came across in my recipe-shoebox full of treasured newspaper clippings and illegible notes was just what I was looking for to liven up their ribs and my eggplant.  It's all in the sauce.  Theirs was equal amounts of soy sauce and brown sugar (half a cups worth), a couple of tablespoons of sesame oil, same amount of rice vinegar, ditto for the minced fresh ginger, four cloves of minced garlic, and a good helping of red pepper flakes.  Except for the soy  and sesame oil, my sauce was the same although I cheated just a tiny bit by not washing the bowl in which I made "their" sauce.  I reused it for my version just to get a hint of the residual sesame taste and aroma.  A little goes a long way.

Though not fresh-picked, the eggplant was young enough to keep its skin.  After removing the stem, I cut it into eight wedges which I spread on the bamboo steamer tray.  The tray sat in the wok that held about an inch of water.

While the eggplant spears were steaming, I mixed my sauce and got out the chop sticks.

Ten minutes was all it took for the wedges to get nice and sludgy.  Five minutes later I was dipping and munching.  

The ingredients for this delicious dish were

1 eggplant

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons fresh minced ginger

4 garlic cloves, minced

lots of red pepper flakes

SOFRITO BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD SMELL AS SWEET ....

Maybe it was the refrain "quizas quizas quizas" from the song QUIZAS by EL TRIO LOS PANCHOS that refused to let me go hours after I listened to the song on YouTube this morning, or maybe it was telling my son  how I used to fly down to Puerto Rico on winter weekends just for the fun of it.  And for the warmth. And for the food.  Always for the food.

I remember it was my first time on the island.  I was on my way to Luquillo Beach when I spotted the food kiosks on the side of the road and came to a screeching halt.  It was unlike anything I had ever seen or smelled.  Sizzling crabs.  Alcapurrias.  Tostones. Pinones.  Morcillas.  Chicharron.  I was in  Cuchifrito paradise.  Stuffed but happy,  I eventually did make it to the beach.


It's been a few years ... decades in fact ... since my last trip there.  Maybe some weekend this coming winter. Quizas.

And so I was in a Caribbean-nostalgic mood today. What better way to evoke the flavors and aromas of the island cuisine than to start with a sofrito which is a sauce made of onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, herbs and spices.  The base for many dishes, not unlike mirepoix, the traditional French culinary combination of onions, carrots and celery.   But there is a world of difference, like the difference between bland and exciting.

With Tito Puente keeping  me in rhythm, I assembled the vegetables,

and the herbs and spices.

While the minced onions and garlic were cooking, I chopped up the red bell pepper and the three jalapeño peppers ( all ribbed and seeded).

I introduced the peppers to the onion/garlic mixture, added a can of no-sodium-added crushed tomatoes, and let everything cook gently, while I chopped the parsley and a spoonful of capers.  Capers have a lot of sodium, so I rinsed them thoroughly.  I also gave the contents of a can of black beans a long shower under the faucet.

The parsley, capers and beans went into the pot along with an ample helping of ground black pepper, dried cilantro, oregano, and a  tiny bit of Goya's Sazon con Cilantro y Achiote.    After a few stirs, it was done. Ole!

A plate of rice, a healthy helping of beans in sofrito, and lunch was ready.

Tito Puente would have approved.  Quizas.

These were the ingredients:

1 onion, minced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

3 jalapano peppers, ribbed, seeded and chopped

1 red bell pepper, ribbed, seeded and chopped

Handful of parsley, minced

1 can sodium-free crushed tomatoes

1 can black beans, thoroughly rinsed

1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and chopped

l teaspoon dried cilantro

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/8 teaspoon Sazon

Liberal amount of freshly ground black pepper

Cooked rice

CRACKED WHEAT WITH A SIDE OF KELP

I am not sure I  even know what  cracked wheat is  but I would have eaten a double portion of it,  that’s how hungry I was this morning when I realized that I was out  of steel-cut oats.  Just as well because I am pretty sick of oats every morning.   I craved something chewy, warm and savory.  And I wanted it quickly.  A breakfast burrito!!!  Without the egg-ham-and-cheese filling, of course.

No fancy gadgets or ingredients needed.  A bowl, a rolling pin, whole wheat flour, water, cast iron pan, and presto, breakfast hot off the griddle.  To embellish and amuse the unleavened and unseasoned dough, I added a good measure of cayenne pepper and substituted stone ground yellow corn meal for 1/4 cup of the whole wheat flour.

The two spring onions and the jalapeno pepper made such a pretty picture on my glass cutting board.  Not for long though.

Once the dough was finished with its ten minute nap, it was nicely relaxed and let itself be rolled out into a rectangle. 

I scattered the veggies across it, rolled it up jelly roll style, and cut the resulting log into segments.

  

I rolled these little dough pillows into rounds and cooked them for about a minute in the hot cast iron pan.  They looked good enough to eat.   I slathered four of them with onion jam and enjoyed every morsel.

I cut the leftovers into wedges.  Toasted in the oven for a few minutes, they made a fine semi-crunchy snack while I was composing this.

These were my ingredients:

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup stone ground yellow corn meal

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 scallions, chopped

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS

Meatballs are meat balls unless they’re vegetarian and then they’re called koefte or kofta which are very popular in India.  I’ll have to try Lauki Kofta some day.  For now I’ve had enough of koftas after disappointing results with a recipe I found in an old issue of Gourmet Magazine.  The now defunct magazine's kitchen wizards beefed up grated zucchini  with fresh herbs and mashed chickpeas to come up with Zucchini Koefte.  Well, they looked scrumptious, I thought.  Gourmet had always set the standard for expert food photography.

Nick, Greg’s twin brother, and I had just come back from our weekly visit to Tanner’s Farm, one of the best places in Bucks county for fresh dairy and veggies, so I was fully stocked to try  Gourmet Magazine’s spin on “kofta”.

I trimmed the stem and coarsely grated a fairly large zucchini.  It must have weighed about a pound. 

Instead of the salt I tossed the zucchini with a little lemon juice in a colander and let it rest while I chopped three cloves of garlic and a handful of parsley.

As instructed I wrapped the zucchini in a linen kitchen towel. I twisted the towel to wring out as much liquid as possible.

The thoroughly drained and rinsed chickpeas got a good mashing with a fork and were then tossed with the zucchini, garlic, parsley, a  teaspoon of cilantro, a teaspoon of cumin and half a teaspoon of coriander.  A quick taste and it was clear that the mixture needed to be spiked.  I went for lots of freshly ground black pepper and a healthy dash of cayenne.  Instead of the 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs the recipe called for, I added a toasted and crumbled slice of whole wheat bread.

It was impossible to shape the mixture into balls.  There was no cohesion.  But I managed to scoop portions onto a foil-lined  and lightly oil-sprayed baking sheet.

After 45 minutes in a 375-degree oven, I must say they looked rather appetizing. 

The slightly crunchy exterior was nice but the innards were fluffy and extremely bland.  But at this point I was too hungry to care. 

I slathered them with my hot-chile-ginger-garlic sauce and wolfed them down.   Next time I’ll add lots of sauteed onions and use cannellini beans instead of chick peas. 

I wonder what Bill Clinton had for lunch today.

Chuck Hughes' Caribbean Jerk Crab Recipe

Chuck’s Day Off is the only show on the Cooking Channel I can watch in its entirety.  All the rest of the so-called celebrity chefs totally irritate me.  As far as I can tell, the only skills they acquired in cooking school were chopping and rolling their eyes ecstatically after tasting a mouthful of whatever they just concocted.  Boy, they sure can chop and  don’t miss an opportunity nor a beat to show us how well they do it. And there must be a special acting class they have to take to achieve that orgasmic look in the tasting scene. Chuck Hughes is good at it too but he’s also cute and affable and has some pretty good recipes up his  T-shirt sleeve.  If it weren’t for Chuck, I would have gone through life not knowing that POUTINE is a very popular Canadian dish that consists of french fries topped with cheese curds and gravy.   

So Chuck was just getting some crab legs out of his fridge, when my son walked in, looked at the television screen and said “wow, that looks good”. He loves shell fish.  Chuck proceeds to heat a bit of canola oil in a pan, throws in a handful of ginger slices, a rosemary sprig, the crab legs, sprinkles jerk seasoning over everything, shakes the pan a few times while things are heating up.  Then he adds lime juice and a little water.  He puts  the pan into the oven.  Five minutes, he says.  When he takes the pan out,  he adds a little butter, lots of parsley.  A good toss, and .. voila! Jerk Crab Legs a la Chuck.  Greg and I are drooling.

Greg leaves and comes back with a bag of crab legs.  Fifteen minutes later, he pulls the pan out of the oven, adds the butter and the parsley, gives everything a good stir, and while I get my camera, he’s already picking crab meat out of the claws.  I haven’t smelled anything so delicious since the last time I roasted garlic. I can’t even take credit for this heavenly aroma.  But  I did provide the incendiary jerk seasoning which I made from scratch with Spanish smoked paprika, black pepper, cayenne pepper, ground celery seeds, sea salt, onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder and a bit of thyme.*  Greg did all the rest. Holy maple leaf!  Not only is he cute and affable like Chuck, but he can cook like him too.

Here's a close-up of the crab legs:

* Minus the sea salt, this is my favorite mix of herbs and spices.  It is so good, I hardly miss salt. 

Chickpea Hummus with Roasted Red Peppers and Roasted Garlic

I am not ashamed to admit that to the right of this column is a blatant advertisement for my cookbook “Alcapurrias, Klopsenburgers & Purple Salad: Kitchen Memories from A - Z”.  It was written for my sons who asked me for the recipes of their favorite foods so they could prepare them in their own kitchens when the time came.  It is not a vegetarian cookbook.  My sons are carnivores.  I cook for carnivores.  But I also cook for myself.  Separately.  Occasionally they’ll show interest in my salt and fat free creations as they did when I spooned this hummus into a bowl.  “Fantastic!” they agreed after sampling ample portions.

Fresh red peppers are usually very expensive this time of year but our local market had a three-day sale recently and I bought several pounds for less than five dollars.   A quick inventory this morning of the vegetable crisper revealed just two remaining red peppers which would be just the right amount for hummus with roasted red peppers and roasted garlic. 

The oven was set to 400 degrees.  I lined a baking sheet with foil that got a quick spritz of canola oil cooking spray.  The seeded and cored papers joined a foil-wrapped whole head of garlic   that had its top sliced off and into the oven they all went.  After twenty minutes I checked on them, turned the peppers and set the timer for another twenty minutes.  What aroma!  Roasted garlic is definitely a comfort food in a class all by itself.

The squeezed-out garlic, the skinned peppers and the rinsed contents of a can of garbanzo beans took a five-minute spin in the food processor. It was slow going at first without any liquid.  The added lemon juice didn’t help much.  Chipotles in adobo sauce came to the rescue once again,  and the hummus spun to smooth perfection.

With cucumber, carrot and zucchini sticks for dipping, I munched away contentedly while enjoying a rerun of The Bob Newhart Show.

These are the ingredients I used for this recipe:

2 large red peppers, seeded, cored and cut into wide strips

1 whole head of garlic

Canola cooking spray

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Juice of half a large lemon

1 chipotle

Adobo sauce (enough to aid the food processor in processing)

Soup Day

Hanging out in the backyard with our resident groundhog wasn’t an option today. It was cold and rainy here in Bucks County. 

Soup Day!

Pea Soup.  Rich and creamy, with the smoky, salty taste of ham,  served with seasoned croutons browned in butter or olive oil, pea soup is definitely a comfort food favorite for many, especially on a nasty day.

Fortunately, I had all the ingredients including a meaty ham bone that I stuck in the freezer after Easter dinner.  But of course this pea soup was going to be just for me so the ham bone stayed frozen and I assembled and chopped what the celebrity chefs on the food network always call the “holy trinity”: celery, onions and carrots.  Since frying was out, I  emptied the chop block into my well-seasoned cast iron pan that had been heating on medium high while I was chopping.  It took about ten minutes and a lot of spatula use to get the veggies to acquire a toasted look and aroma.  Perfect for that smoky flavor I wanted.

Next came about six cups of water, a cup of yellow split peas, additional carrots and celery, garlic cloves, a couple of bay leaves, a little cayenne pepper, black pepper.  I let     the soup simmer for a while before I gave it a taste test.  It was palatable but very bland.  I considered adding a shot of Tabasco Sauce but decided it would be too vinegary.  But there right above the Tabasco bottle was  a jar of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.  And before I could say EUREKA!, a couple of whole pepper were chopped and in the soup along with a spoonful of adobo sauce.  The pieces of pepper looked like bacon bits.  At this point, a good amount of the liquid was lost to evaporation and not wanting to dilute the soup with plain water, I poured in a cup full of brown rice milk that I had made a few days ago to use on my morning oatmeal.  Now it was way past lunch and I was very hungry, so after letting the soup simmer for five more minutes, I ladled out a bowl full.  Not bad.  Next time I’ll be sure to make croutons to go with the soup.

To recap, here’s the list of ingredients I used

6 cups water

1 cup yellow split peas

5 celery stalks, chopped

5 carrots, scraped and chopped

2 garlic cloves

2 large bay leaves

cayenne pepper

black pepper

2 chipotle peppers, chopped

1 spoonful adobo sauce

My first entry. Hold the fanfare

Ever since I started getting serious about this vegan way of life for health reasons … not necessarily because I want to live to be a hundred but because I would like to watch a few more summer and winter olympics … I must confess that food is on my mind pretty much all of the time.  I miss it.  I miss Fettuccine Alfredo, Wiener Schnitzel, corned beef hash, Brie, shirred eggs, fried eggs, eggs in potato salad, eggs over easy …. I could write a book listing all the foods I'm missing.   But instead I'm focusing my energy on creating dishes that smell, taste and look good.  

With salt and oils permanently banned from my condiment shelf, I have been experimenting with spices and herbs, vinegars and citrus fruit, to give my dishes not just character but  have them taste good too. Occasionally I've come up with a dish that surprises even me with its intense flavors and pleasant texture.  How did I do that?  I was only experimenting, trying a bit of this, a bit of that.  Inevitably I can't remember exactly what went into the pot and this wonderful salt-free, fat-free, totally vegan dish of delicious sauerkraut (yes, salt-free sauerkraut!) with sweet smoky onions, creamy potatoes and carrots will never be recreated.  I tried, really I did, but so far have failed.

But this will never happen again.  This blog will be my recipe holder, whether it's a failed dish or a success.