Poppyseed Mustard
October 26, 2004
It tastes just like it looks, dark and musty. Even though I mixed this batch with a roasted garlic clove I still think it would taste great with chocolate! Poppyseed 'mustard' makes me long for strudel and as soon as I am done with this juice fast I'll develop a savoury strudel with poppy seeds and mushrooms.
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Autumnal fasting has begun
Today I started the Autumnal Fast. I'll be recording my menus and recipes (!) here. If you always thought fasting was a torture read here to see that the opposite is the case. SO far it is the first day and I'm not interested in juicing, very interested in cooking - so I made some cashew cheese and poppyseed mustard.
Day 1 (of 6)
- coffee (don't say it...)
- sauerkraut juice (Brother Aaron and I used to fight eachother to drink this.)
- fresh orange juice
- apple mint juice
- miso soup with roasted garlic (see nature's garlic entry)
- mushroom bouillion with roasted garlic (idem ditto)
- pear ginger juice with jogi tea
- sleepytime tea
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Cook 'em with Dirt and All
October 18, 2004
A Norgwegian harpsichordist once taught me an easy way to peel potatoes, a way that preserved precious vitamines. You dump them in a pot, dirt and all and boil them up good. When they're soft enough, you drain them (and the mud) and plunge them into cold water and let them sit a bit. They'll stay hot, don't worry. In the cold water you can easily peel the potatoes with your fingers - the outer skin just falls away. Saves a bunch of time and is a satisfying job in a pick your scab sort of way.
Pictured above are my art students (from the Dutch Art Institute) helping me prepare dinner after a long day's work. Clockwise from 2 o 'clock are students from: Tracey; Jamaica/Canada, Viktor; Bulgaria, Ruth; Germany/Nederland, Ju Hie; South Korea. Not pictured and therfore not peeling are Macha; Kazachstan/Israel, Mu Xe; PRChina, TsuiLun; Taiwan, and Anne; Germany/Nederland.
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Learning through your Ass: The Return of Laurel's Kitchen
October 08, 2004
When I became a vegetarian at the tender age of 13, my parents, fearing that I would stunt my own growth gave me what was considered at the time to be a good introduction to vegetarian nutrition, amino acid chains and global food politics. It was my first cookbook ever and its pictureless recipes for soy-milk, cashew cheese and other 'technically advanced' foodstuffs threw me completely for a loop.
It was California in the 70's but my Mom wasn't about to go foodshopping in a store filled with goat-knitting long-hairs smelling like garbanzo farts, and I didn't know that you could simply go to an Asian supermarket and BUY a ready-made block of tempeh. So when one of Laurel's recipes called for say, soy milk and said, (see recipe page 138) I would actually make the soy milk - often with unsavoury results.
Due to a series of 'intrusive kitchen disasters' my mother decided that I could only do the big preparations for the week's food on Sunday. (Not the fresh things, just the... legume-rich things.) Considering that I had turned the family kitchen into a soybean laboratory it wasn't entirely the cruel thing to do. I would prepare my vegetarian food for the week ahead and microwave it warm each day. For an experienced cook, preparing food in advance wouldn't have posed much of a problem but I had very little PRACTICAL cooking experience. I couldn't tell beforehand if a recipe was difficult and mistakes I made on Sunday were the grits on the table the livelong week. This educational technique is known in some cultures as 'learning through your ass'.
I was cooking outside the repetoire of my family and Laurel wasn't helping. Laurel's Kitchen, although an amazing source of 1970's California anthropology was absolutely a crap book for an inexperienced cook.
But yesterday when I brought home Roxanne Klein and Charlie Trotter's R A W, the first thing I did was pull Laurel from my shelf for one more read.
Please read more... "Learning through your Ass: The Return of Laurel's Kitchen"
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Ik lust je R A W
October 07, 2004
Wing flapping all around! Today I indulged myself and bought a cookbook that I have wanted to own for quite some time. R A W by Roxanne Klein (a culinary approach to vegan and raw food cooking) with Charlie Trotter, one of the US's most innovative chefs. Regular readers know that porkatarians like me can't also be vegans but I am still so very excited by this pairing of the minds.
A browsiebrowse through and so far there are lots of recipes that look like watermelon spit-up (maybe she took Trotter's 'froth thing' a little bit too literally) and I think that bit about preserving the enzymes is a load of halookie. If you put a blended something in a dehydrator for 5 hrs I doubt very seriously that there will be any 'living' quality left in the foodstuff. TEST: Put yourself in a sauna for 5 hrs and see how you feel. Now imagine yourself to be a carrot!
B U T
The book is brimming with beauty, love of a rich variety of ingredients and new techniques (new since *Laurel's Kitchen) and I swear I'm going to take cashew cheese seriously this time.
* You're going to have to wait until tomorrow's entry about Laurel's Kitchen, written in 1976 it was THE quintessential bible of Californian hardcore vegetarianism.
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It's not easy being green
October 06, 2004
We asked ourselves if Absinth was legal in the Netherlands and without waiting for the answer popped that screwcap right off the bottle. It was a first for me to have actual manufactured absinth instead of the bitter homemade wormwood brews we used to make back in the day. This stuff was almost too delicious to be real so once the kid was in bed we did the natural thing and started lighting it on fire.
HM and KL cooked an excellent dinner (mostly HM) and their 4-year old son EM cheerfully explained to me that I was the guest and that he was the host. Now that's child-rearin'!
Please read more... "It's not easy being green"
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Possible Epiphany
October 05, 2004
She's going to try one of my recipes. And I'm scared.
What if she doesn't understand and makes a dog's breakfast of the thing. She might stop trying my recipes forever.
Although I have cooked since I was a child, I am new at writing recipes for other people. I am new at explaining cooking to people that have a different experience level or culinary background than I. What if I use too few words? Too many words are confusing. I don't know if someone will understand, 'the shoulders of the cabbage', or not. I want to convey my enthusiasm for cooking but I know that folks that don't make a sport of expanding their cooking repetoire also don't have the sticktoitiveness of someone who does. (stick-to-it-ive-ness - it's a real word).
I was thinking about this this morning, when she told me she had bought some ingredients to try the chalupsies when I realised, most cooking is taught by example. Most often you have seen and tasted the dish before you try to make it. You have watched it being prepared, seen the in-between stages. You build upon the techniques you learned at home when you try to copy something you have eaten in a restaurant or when you follow a recipe.
I learned how to cook because my father, who loves cooking, fried omelets every Saturday morning using daring combinations of food. My Aunties and Grams used to 'practically' compete with one another to see who could make the most delicious, most beautiful dinners. My Mom, a self-admitted non-cook, learned how to make her excellent tomato sauce based dishes from my Dad's friend Campinella.
Reading a recipe, even with explicit imagery will not bring ease into the kitchen. Ease comes from practice, ease comes from enjoying every moment of touching, smelling and looking at the marvels of the food. Ease comes when folks hang out in the kitchen and start 'yakkin' (that has nothing to do with yaks or the 'Y' word). Like with anything, ease comes when you make 'it' your own.
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Changes
October 04, 2004
This recipe for Chalupsie has been hybridised to the hilt. Pronounce it however you like, it's just Stuffed Cabbage or Chou Farci and up here in the Polar Circle we need hearty winter fare like this.
C H A N G E S :
It was my Gramma's recipe from the 'old country', from HER mother, but Grams used minutemaid frozen lemon juice concentrate ? something the 'old country' never had. I dropped 'that ingredient' like a load of so much cement over Tchernobyl and replaced it with a spoonful of thai green curry paste plus every single part of a fresh lime.
Some other changes that I have made include fractalising the prep time from 2hrs to 20 minutes. Now instead of reminiscing about chalupsies we can actually eat them. I also replaced the old country hamburger helper and changed the kind of cabbage to one that can be denuded of its leaves in one fell swoop.
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Fashion Food
October 03, 2004
And indeed, what is UNfashionable about a fake black lacquer bowl filled with instant Tom Yum noodles? Especially if you recycle the fake lacquer bowl and use it again and again for your own stylish soup lunches.
I came across this product researching what I will do for my contribution to Museum N8. J.P. of Mediamatic has asked me to come up with something for the theme pret a porter. Unlikely that I'll do something related to the noodles (because I'm leaning towards fruit leather) but I am amused by the product design.
Please read more... "Fashion Food"
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Google Recipe Finder
October 02, 2004
The fabulous R.vT. came up with this Google Recipe Search link.
http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/recipe.html
Forget typing in turkey, or wild boar. It's just a search engine, go crazy and try tofurkey + lemon curd or monkey + banana + camenbert! Suddenly nothing seems wierd anymore. (Does this mean that I miss China?) Anyway, it's Sukkah, a Jewish harvest holiday conveniently scheduled each Autumn when 'God wants you to try eating something new'. Yeah.
Which reminds me, my brother Aaron made up a game when we were little in which the sole aim was to make the other person barf. The rule was that you had to concoct a mixture of edible substances (no poison allowed) and dish it up to your sibling � and they had to eat or drink it. Yes. Try it sometime, it's much harder than it sounds.
In this game we discovered that toothpaste is surprisingly versatile as an ingredient. Aaron came up with a toothpaste-orange juice and tabasco sauce smoothie that was fairly effective in getting me to gag and I came up with a peanutbutter and toothpaste sandwich which was impossible to swallow. Toothpaste, who would've thunk it?
R.vT. offered to shop for me since my ankle was sprained Wednesday in a bike accident. It's difficult for me to accept graciously because I am able to stand and walk. Even so, he was a right sweetie today and helped me do my shopping at the hippy market. This is what it's going to be like being an old lady. Carrying a shopping bag with the aid of a friend.
(Respect also to the super lief MM, who cooked and shopped and was a rock of gezelligheid when I couldn't walk, as well as neighbours GS and BK who brought packs of frozen beans to discourage swelling.)
Please read more... "Google Recipe Finder"
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