Basic Mushroom Gravy with Herbs

Who doesn't need gravy?  Savory sauciness is dear to the hearts of all, vegans included.  Think about all those naked grains, pastas, baked potatoes, stir fries just crying out for flavor-enhancing, moist blankets. Dinner would be a dull affair indeed without accessorizing with gravy.

Be well comforted with my new discovery.  Let your plain Jane meals ascend to their rightful place in the ranks of stellar meals adorned with...

Basic Mushroom Gravy with Herbs
from Big Vegan by Robin Asbell

Worth the chopping!

2 tbs. canola oil or Earth Balance margarine
4 oz. fresh button mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1/4 c. chopped onion
3 tbs. unbleached all-purpose/plain flour (I used white whole wheat flour.)
1 c. plain rice milk (Subbed plain, unsweetened almond milk here.)
1 c. basic vegetable stock or mushroom stock (Recipes for these stocks also appear in Big Vegan.  I used veggie stock I had on hand.)
3 tbs. nutritional yeast
1 tbs. tamari or soy sauce
1 tsp. crumbled dried sage leaves
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1/4 tsp. dried marjoram
1/4 tsp. salt
Freshly cracked black pepper

Makes about 2 1/4 cups

The saute begins.

In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, warm the oil, then add the mushrooms and onion.  Saute until the mushrooms are shrunken and wet.  Sprinkle on the flour, then stir to make a paste.  Keep cooking and stirring until the mixture starts sticking to the pan.  In a large measuring cup, combine the milk, stock, yeast, tamari, sage, thyme and marjoram.  Whisk to combine.

Over medium heat, continue to stir the mushroom mixture constantly, scraping the pan with the spatula, until the mixture bubbles and turns a shade darker and the mushrooms brown.  Take the pan off the heat, add a little of the milk mixture, and work it into a paste with the spatula.  Keep adding the liquid a little at a time and working it in, switching to a whisk as it gets incorporated.

With milk mixture, thickening.

Put the pan back over medium-high heat.  Whisk constantly until the gravy boils, then immediately reduce the heat to low and cook for a couple of minutes, until thickened.  Add the salt and season with pepper and take the gravy off the heat.  Serve warm or let cool and refrigerate for up to 1 week.  Reheat gently over low  heat.   

Basic Mushroom Gravy with Herbs over baked russet potatoes, with steamed broccoli.  Dinner is served!

I've made this gravy twice in the past two weeks because there was something wrong with it the first time around:  there just wasn't enough of it!  I had to reprise my quality time in the kitchen with mushrooms, knives and spatulas to make this savory sauce.  It's hearty, not heavy, and full of herbs that comfort and sustain.  Truthfully, I simply needed more of it, and soon!  

One of my cooking stumbling blocks is the perennial need for sauce to bind together a starch and vegetables.  Knowing that Robin Asbell's gravy would keep for a week, I decided to triple this recipe and have been happily marrying it with the above pictured potatoes, as well as whole wheat spaghetti with vegetables and as a side dish with brown rice.  As long as you're a fan of mushrooms, this versatile gravy will repay your culinary efforts many times over.  In fact, I took a measure of liberties with the instructions and the result was near-perfection, so don't be put off by a list of steps that may seem a little long or fussy.  The recipe is pretty forgiving.

At 544 pages, Big Vegan is certainly aptly named.  This door-stop of a book was published in 2011 and covers every genre from pantry staples to desserts, with a welcome presence from world cuisines.  I wish I could try every recipe, but I'm afraid I would have to quit my day job.  Well, maybe someday...but until then, I'll return to this sturdy volume from time to time and share the deliciousness with you.

Christmas Lima Bean Stew

Fast forward almost three years since July 10, 2010...so many cookbooks consulted, so many plants made into dinner, so many successes (and ok, I admit it - some flops, too) in the kitchen...and nothing but vast silence here. So much for lamenting lost posts.  A new beginning has begun!

For Christmas, I received an intriguing one pound bag of beans, aptly named Christmas Lima, which to other Yuletide celebrants may have been the equivalent of coal in the stocking, but I was delighted with the challenge of cooking a bean I'd never heard of.  I've recently been trying to rely less on canned beans, even lovely organic varieties, and go for the soak, boil and simmer of dried beans.  Some kind of kitchen karma was surely operating to unite my new passion with a novel bean.  Rather than sifting through my cookbook collection for recipes containing this oddball variety, I searched the old reliable Internet and discovered the following perfect recipe at www.101cookbooks.com.  

Christmas Lima Bean Stew

1 lb. dried Christmas Lima Beans or equivalent cooked beans
16 tbs. evoo
2 large heads of celery, preferably with leaves, trimmed and sliced into 3/4" chunks
3 bunches of scallions, green part included or 12 spring onions, sliced into 1/3" rounds
8 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
scant 2 tsp. caraway seeds, lightly crushed
fine grain sea salt
1 28 oz. can whole plum tomatoes, drained, rinsed, cored and roughly chopped
2 to 4 tsp. celery salt**
5 1/2 c. water or broth or combo
oily black olives, pitted and roughly chopped
1 lemon, cut into 1/8ths

If you haven't already cooked the beans, do so.*

Heat 12 tbs. (scant 2/3 cup) of the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.  When the oil is hot, add the celery and stir until coated with olive oil.  Cook for ten minutes, stirring often.  Add 2/3 of the scallions, the garlic, caraway and a couple big pinches of salt.  Cook for another 10 to 15 minutes or until everything softens and begins to caramelize a bit.

Add the tomatoes and 2 tsp. of the celery salt and cook for another few minutes.  Add the beans along with 5 1/2 c. liquid (for example, 2 cups bean liquid/broth and 3 1/2 cups water) and remaining 4 tablespoons of olive oil.

Bring to a simmer, taste, and season with more salt or celery salt if needed.  Let sit for a couple minutes and serve each bowl topped with a spoonful of chopped olives and a squeeze of lemon.  You might also like to serve the soup sprinkled with the remaining scallions/spring onions.

Serves 8 to 10. (I halved this recipe and used the juice from the canned tomatoes, so the result was a brothy soup rather than a chunky stew, which was really what I wanted.)

Inspired and adapted from Hassan's Celery and White Bean Soup with Tomato and Caraway in Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark.

*To prepare dried beans: Soak beans overnight in water to cover plus a few extra inches.  Drain and rinse.  Place beans in a large saucepan  and cover with an inch or two of water.  Bring to a boil and simmer until the beans are cooked through and tender.  This can take anywhere from an hour to two hours (potentially more) depending on your beans, but do your best to avoid overcooking.  Remove from heat, salt the beans (still in broth) - enough that the bean liquid is tasty.  Let the beans sit like this for ten minutes or so before draining - reserving a couple cups of the bean broth.  Set the beans aside.  At this point you can use the beans, referigerate for later use, or bag and freeze.

**To make celery salt: Pick leaves from celery stalks.  Make sure they're as dry as possible or they'll steam rather than crisp. Bake on a baking sheet in a 250 degree oven for 15 to 25 minutes.  Toss once or twice along the way, until dried out.  Alternatively, toast in  a large skillet over low heat, tossing regularly, for 30 minutes or so.  Either way, crumble the dried celery leaves with equal parts flaky salt.

Aside from Christmas lima beans, which are big and beautiful, the most endearing part of this recipe for me  is making your own celery salt.  Why of COURSE people made their own in the days before wanting a spice blend came to mean grabbing a pre-fab little bottle of industrial spice-o-matic.  In days of yore, you followed grandma's tried and true directions and behold!  A new flavor is born.

Nostalgia aside, this soup was hearty and filling for these cold March days, and smelled wonderfully of caraway.  Having associated these seeds with rye bread all my life, I did feel a bit like I was eating liquid toast - but in a good way - trust me! One precautionary tale in case you're tempted to try this soup at home...the limas cooked rather unevenly, so that many were soft and melty while others were tough and chew-resistant.  I believe I would rather have proceeded contrary to the recipe author's advice and risked overcooking some beans so that none would be underdone.  With that caveat, though, this stew was different, fragrant and fun and taught me how to make celery salt!  Win!   

Seasonless Asparagus

Somehow, when I wasn't paying attention, one season has sloughed into another.  The three Hs of summer - hazy, hot and humid - have replaced finicky April and May weather, which merely toyed with the theory of sweat-inducing dew points.  It's indeed yickily sticky this summer, but enough about the weather.  That's what weather.com is for!

On to two recipes for asparagus, which was a uniquely spring vegetable back when dinosaurs daintily cropped its tender spears come antediluvian April.  Available virtually year-round now, I can never get enough of the stuff; hence, the heavily asparagus-happy content of Plants For Dinner!

Bistro Asparagus Twists
from American Vegan Kitchen, Delicious Comfort Food from Blue Plate Specials to Homestyle Favorites by Tamasin Noyes

DIPPING SAUCE:
2 tbs. vegan mayonnaise
2 tbs. vegan sour creeam
1 tbs. fresh lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. prepared hot mustard

TWISTS:
16 asparagus spears, tough ends trimmed
1 sheet frozen vegan puff pastry, thawed (A cheap supermarket variety is in fact vegan.)
1 tbs. prepared hot mustard

Sauce:
In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix until blended.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Twists:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Steam the asparagus over a pot of boiling water for 5 minutes. Transfer immediately to a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process.  Pat dry.  (I actually took this cold-water bath step, which shows some pretty solid determination to make this recipe work!)

Unroll the pastry sheet on a lightly floured work surface.  Cut and remove one third of the pastry and rewrap and refrigerate the unused portion for another use.  You should have a 6 x 9 inch pastry rectangle remaining. (In reality, you should cut the pastry according to the length of your asparagus.)

Spread the mustard evenly over the puff pastry.  Cut into 16 strips about 1/2 inch wide across the short side of the pastry.

Using one strip of pastry and one stalk of asparagus, beginning at the stem end, wrap the pastry diagonally around the asparagus, leaving space in between the pastry. (This sounds more complicated that it is.  Think:  candy cane stripes.)

Arrange on the baking sheet and repeat, placing them about one inch apart, until the asparagus and pastry are used up.  Bake 18 to 20 minues, or until golden.  Serve hot with dipping sauce on the side.

I'm not much of an appetizer-maker.  My mother's two stock hors d'oeuvres were celery stuffed with cream cheese and tomato juice.  Oh, and maybe some canned olives in a dish.  Now that I've analyzed the deep psychological reasons why I'm perpetually at a loss when it comes to appetizers, I can revel in the beauty and twisty charm of this dish.  At first, the method of spiraling the dough around the asparagus spears (especially when they are slick with mustard) was a messy challenge, but I got the hang of it after a couple of goofy attempts - which were still completely edible, if not quite as pretty as subsequent twists.  The dipping sauce underscored the mustardy flavors in a creamy counterpoint.  Well done!  I brought these spears to a gathering where they were appreciated with gusto.  Not that I would make these everyday...I wouldn't even stuff celery with vegan cream cheese every day...but for a special occasion, they're very impressive and delicious!

Cream of Asparagus Soup
from The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook by Neal Barnard, MD and Robyn Webb

3 c. sliced asparagus, about 1 lb.
2 c. vegetable broth (use 1 1/2 c. for a thicker soup)
3/4 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tbs. whole wheat pastry flour
2 c. plain soy milk
pinch of ground nutmeg
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. grated lemon zest
1/2 tbs. lemon juice
freshly ground black pepper to taste
hot sauce to taste

Combine asparagus, broth, 1/2 tsp. thyme, bay leaf and garlic in a large saucepan over medium high heat. (I first grilled the asparagus because we happened to have our ancient but adorable charcoal grill fired up for veggie burgers.)  Bring to a boil.  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 10 minutes. Discard the bay leaf.  Place the aspaagus mixture in a blender, cover, and puree until smooth.
 
Place the flour in a large saucepan over medium heat.  Gradually add the soy milk, stirring with a whisk until blended.  Add the pureed asparagus mixture and nutmeg and stir to combine.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.  Remove from heat and strain.  Add the remaining 1/4 tsp. thyme, salt, lemon zest, lemon juice, and black pepper.  Add hot sauce to taste.

The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook was published this year in the hope of helping interested parties "jump start weight loss and help you feel great!" Truthfully, one major hurdle in this pursuit is to overcome the incredibly silly cover picture of (it must be) Dr. Barnard holding a large burger which appears to be formed from compressed salsa.  The good doctor is positively BEAMING with delight over his healthy non-animal-derived sandwich, which he delicately suspends above a generous red cloth napkin.  If you can somehow rise above the embarrassment of bringing this way-too-happy volume to the book store cashier for purchase or to your librarian for check-out, you'll actually find some pretty good recipes within.  While still reeling from laughter over the unfortunate cover, I found this very serviceable recipe for vegan cream of asparagus soup, so it was well worth enduring a few sniggers from the book store clerk.
 
By its nature, every cream of asparagus soup is subtle, and this recipe is no exception.  Even after the extra grilling step, the result was satisfying, but in a gentle way.  Perhaps a heavier shot of hot sauce?  A bit more lemon zest?  If you want to rock the classic mild flavor of cream of asparagus soup, feel free to experiment with some additions.  I enjoyed the recipe as written:  smooth, with the feel of decadence and none of the sat fat, animal products and big time calories.  Now that's something to grin about, isn't it, Dr. Barnard?

Two Sides to Every (Dinner) Story

Devra Gartenstein's Local Bounty:  Seasonal Vegan Recipes has knocked about my cookbook shelves for some time.  Published in 2008, I was quick to judge the book as, perhaps, too "simple," and it languished, neglected, for these two years.  I should have known better.  Food is not delicious only in proportion to the amount of time, effort, expense and advanced kitchen gadgetry involved in preparing it.  Start with healthy, fresh ingredients and you don't need to suffer over dinner at all.  Witness:

Asparagus with Ginger Sauce
1 tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tbs. peeled and grated fresh ginger (I peel and chop the daylights out of it:  good therapy.)
2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch asparagus (about 1 pound), trimmed and chopped (The best you can find.)
2 tbs. soy sauce
1 tbs. rice vinegar
1 tsp. toasted sesame oil
1/2 tsp. unrefined cane sugar (I use vulgar white sugar.)

1.  Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan.  Add the onion, ginger, and garlic.  Cook on medium-low heat for about 5 minutes, or until the onion is translucent.
2.  Add the asparagus and soy sauce and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 to 10 minutes or until the asparagus are tender.
3.  Add the vinegar, sesame oil, and sugar and cook for 2 minutes longer.

I'm usually a purist about asparagus - to the point of being boring.  I roast it with a little olive oil, lemon zest and salt and pepper.  With that always-serviceable preparation in the forefront of my mind, I wondered if the traditional Chinese flavors in this recipe would overpower the asparagus.  Au contraire!  I loved the sauciness of this dish, which is such a change from the naked asparagus I'm used to serving.  In fact, most vegetables would love this sauce, too:  toasty, a wee bit salty, spicy and sweet, it could be the plant's everyman.  One caution:  try as I might, I tend often to miss that perfectly-done, tight-wire moment between tender/crisp and mushy/flabby.  I confess I slightly overcooked the asparagus this time; next time, I'll pay close attention to walk the wire flawlessly.

Afghani Spinach
(I wasn't able to find any bunched spinach yet in stores - used organic rainbow swiss chard instead.)
1 tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 bunches spinach (about 1 pound), cleaned and chopped
1 tbs. chopped fresh cilantro (In retrospect, would have used more.)
1 ts. dried dill weed
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp. salt (Don't do it! Too much salt! Try 1/8 tsp. first and add more if need  be.)
juice of 1/2 lemon

1.  Heat the oil in a medium saucepan.  Add the onion and garlic.  Cook on medium-low heat for about 5 minutes, or until the onion is translucent.
2.  Add the spinach, cilantro, dill weed, cumin, cardamom, and salt.  Cook for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring often.
3.  Stir in the lemon juice and serve.

Breathe new life into greens the Afghani way. The "uns" drew me in here:  unexpected and unusual, especially the combination of herbs and spices.  Any recipe that invites intrigue earns an A+ in my grade book.  One reiterated note of warning:  1/2 tsp. of salt really is too much.  Perhaps I'm a non-salt freak, but this amount bordered on overpowering.  Go the lesser route.  You can always add more if you like.

The Root of Spring

Soup for spring?  You bet!

Just when you think warm weather might be sticking around, and you're about to retire your soup pot for a few months, along comes the comedienne of Nature, the Phyllis Diller of atmospherics, a classic cold and rainy spell.  Before you get too comfortable with balmy temperatures, before you let Nature pull a fast one on you, arm yourself with a lovely soup recipe that will buffer you against the chill one last time while fickle spring makes up her mind.

Spicy Gingered Carrot Soup

From The Best of Bloodroot*, Volume Two,Vegan Recipes
by Selma Miriam & Noel Furie with Lagusta Yearwood

*Bloodroot is a feminist restaurant which opened its doors in 1977.  It's located in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where it serves a diverse community and addresses a host of feminist issues. 

8 Servings

1.  Coarsely dice 1 Spanish onion and 2 small seeded jalapeno peppers. Peel and slice 1/3 c. fresh ginger.  Peel and slice 6 cloves garlic.

2.  Heat 3 tbs. grapeseed oil in a soup pot.  Add 1 tsp. turmeric and saute all vegetables, stirring until they begin to brown. (I used olive oil.)

3.  Peel 2 large potatoes and cut into large dice.  Peel 2 sweet potatoes and do the same.  Coarsely cut up 2 celery stalks, and 6 peeled carrots.  Add all vegetables to soup pot together with 8 cups water and 1/2 c. red lentils (picked over first to remove any small stones).  Bring to a boil over high heat, then turn fire lower and cover pot.  Cook over low heat until vegetables are tender.  Let cool 20 minutes.

4.  Puree soup in batches in a blender.  Return to soup pot.  Finish with the juice of 3 to 4 limes, 1 1/2 tbs. Bragg's Liquid Aminos, salt, pepper, and tamari to taste. (I used an immersion blender to puree, which typically leaves a bit more texture than using a blender or food processor.  I also cut back on the limes to 2 healthy specimens.)

I've reproduced Bloodroot's recipe format, which does not provide a list of ingredients at the beginning of the recipe but rather incorporates them into the body of the directions.  At first, I was somewhat put off by having to canvass the recipe to see if I had the ingredients I needed.  (In the interest of full disclosure, the ingredients are in blue in the cookbook, so they do stand out.)  I realized, though, that this format forces the lazy would-be chef (that's ME) to read the whole recipe before starting to cook.  That's rule number one in the course titled, COOKING FROM RECIPES, 101.  I admit to being slap-dash in following this basic, even though I've suffered ill consequences from doing so.  Smart move, women of Bloodroot!  You most likely saved some kitchen frustration for your readers!

Spicy Gingered Carrot Soup was easy to make as long as you've reconciled yourself to chopping.  It happens, and you just have to deal with it.  I love the addition of red lentils, which reinforces the appealing carroty-orange of this puree, and also adds a shot of protein.  

At first taste, I thought the soup was on the "thin" side in the flavor department, and may have benefited from homemade vegetable stock in place of the water.  I try not to rely on salt to augment taste, but I found I needed to use both tamari and salt to bring this soup around.  As often happens with soup, it was perfect the next day. My advice:  don't oversalt, give it a day to commingle, and you'll have a winner in your soup repertoire.

I also added some chopped, toasted walnuts as a garnish, and a swirl of maple syrup.  Just because I wanted to.   

Flavors that Spring Eternal

My next foray into Juliette Spertus's Learning to Eat Locally yielded three successful and popular dishes, which means I'll be sure to revisit this work again as the seasons unfold.  I can be unforgiving if a cookbook fails to deliver the goods, but this one's a keeper.

The sparkling flavors of rhubarb and ginger star in two recipes, while classic spring veggies -peas and lettuce (or in my case, spinach) - take center stage in the main course salad.  Try 'em, you'll like 'em!

Rhubarb Ginger Chutney
Total Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 1 1/2 cups

1 2/3 c. rhubarb, cut in 1/2 inch pieces
1/2 c. brown sugar, packed
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. white wine vinegar (I used a combination of champagne and white vinegar.)
1/2 tbs. grated fresh ginger (Poetic license:  minced!)
juice and pulp from 1 lemon or 2 tbs. lemon juice (Just juice was easier.)
1/4 tsp. lemon rind, minced (Used one of my fav kitchen gadgets, a microplane.)
5 dried apricots, sliced

Put rhubarb pieces, sugar, salt, vinegar, ginger and half of the lemon juice into a small heavy saucepan.  Stew the mixture over medium heat, stirring frequently, until rhubarb begins to steam.  Reduce heat to low and cook until rhubarb pieces begin to fall apart, about 10 minutes.  Add the rest of the lemon juice, lemon rind and apricots. Continue to stew the mixture, stirring frequently until chutney has thickened to the consistency of a jam, about 30 minutes.

Why, oh why, don't I make chutney more often?  It's the concentrated essence of fruit, made sweet and tart at the same time.  Talk about punch!  In other words, this chutney was unbelievably flavorful, studded by pieces of fruit, unobtrusive in their tenderness, held in a suspension of silken, spicy sauce.  Delightful!  A perfect foil for crispy, slightly salty rice crackers.  Highly recommended.

A note about the directions:  Given that my apricots were stiff enough to just about require a chain saw to parse them, I threw them in at the beginning of the recipe for additional cook time and while I was at it, put all the lemon juice in at once.  The chutney was none the worse for my deviation.  I love it when I get away with something!

Cracked Wheat and Couscous Salad on Beautiful Lettuce (In my case, beautiful spinach.)
Total Time:  45 minutes
Yield:  8 servings 

Lime Ginger Dressing: 
1/2 c. lime juice
1/3 c. olive oil (I used a scant 1/3 c. and substituted some water.)
1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp. grated fresh ginger (Sorry, minced again!)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp. ground ginger, or to taste
freshly ground pepper to taste
salt to taste (add salt after salad is tossed with dressing - capers are salty)

1 c. bulghur (cracked wheat)
1/2 c. walnuts
1 c. couscous (I usually have whole wheat on hand, but used white this time.)
1 c. peas (fresh or frozen) (Frozen for me.)
1/2 c. chopped fresh parsley, packed
1/3 c. red onion, minced
3 whole scallions, sliced
1/4 c. capers, drained
3/4 c. raisins
1 fresh lettuce with large rounded leaves (green, red, bibb and butter lettuces are nice)
(I substituted spinach, which is one of the first greens to be harvested in spring.)

In a small bowl, combine all dressing ingredients and mix well.  Set aside.

Rinse bulghur well and drain.  Put bulghur in a medium saucepan and add plenty of water (at least 2 cups). Boil until bulghur is tender and chewy, 10 to 15 minutes.  Drain, rinse with cold water, and drain again.  Set aside.

Place walnuts on a tray and toast in a preheated 350 degree oven or toaster oven until walnuts produce a toasted-nut aroma and begin to brown, 5 to 8 minutes.  Set aside to cool.
In a small bowl, pour 1 cup boiling water over couscous and cover with a plate for 5 minutes.  Set aside.


If peas are fresh, boil until bright green and just tender, about 3 minutes.  If frozen, place in strainer under hot running water to thaw.

Empty bulghur and couscous into a large bowl.  Use a fork to fluff grains together. Chop walnuts.  Add chopped walnuts, peas, parsley, red onion , sliced scalllions, capers and raisins to grains.  Pour Lime Ginger Dressing over salad and toss. Serve each portion on top of a large lettuce leaf.


Have I told you how much I love cumin?  This bold salad spoke to my cumin-adoring heart, and most certainly did not disappoint!  Earthily cumin scented, yes, and much more:  a wild ride of disparate textures - chewy, crunchy, pop-in-your mouth - and across the board flavors - sweet, savory, spicy, punctuated by salty bursts of capers.  Juliette, your salad is a gypsy caravan of the colorful and unexpected, thrown together capriciously, with such good results.  Bravo!

A note about the directions:  my recipe for tabouli tells me to cover bulghur with boiling water and let rest for 30 minutes.  A lot easier than rinse, drain, boil, drain, and rinse, and the end product is identically chewy yet tender. 

Rhubarb Carrot Cake
Total Time:  1 hour
Yield: two 9-inch layers

2 c. rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 c. brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour (I used 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour.)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 eggs (I used Ener-g egg replacer.)
2/3 vegetable oil (I substituted 1/2 applesauce.)
2 tsp. vanilla
3 medium carrots, grated (about 1 1/2 c.)
3/4 c. unsweetened shredded coconut
3/4 c. raisins (optional) (Love 'em, used 'em.)
1 batch Lemon Neufchatel Frosting


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease two 9 inch pans, lining bottoms with parchment paper; or grease one 10 inch Bundt pan.


In a medium saucepan, stir together 1/4 c. of the brown sugar and rhubarb pieces. Simmer over medium heat until rhubarb is just tender, 3 minutes.  Remove rhubarb mixture from heat and set aside.


In a large bowl, mix together flour, salt, soda, cinnamon and remaining brown sugar.  In a smaller bowl, beat eggs and mix in oil and vanilla. Add combined liquids to flour mixture and stir to make a very thick battter.  Stir in carrots, rhubarb, coconut and raisins and spread batter into pans.


In 9-inch pans, bake cakes for 20 to 25 minutes, or until sides pull away from pan and a knife inserted comes out clean.  In a Bundt pan, cook for 40 minutes. Bring a knife around edges of pans and allow cakes to cool in their pans for 10 minutes.  Invert on cooling racks and allow to cool completely before frosting


Lemon Neufchatel Frosting
Total Time: 5 minutes
Yield:  enough for a 2 layer cake


1 tsp. vanilla
8 ounces Neufchatel cheese or cream cheese (I use soy cream cheese, which is delish, trust me.)
1 tsp. lemon zest (optional) (Lemon zest is my friend.  I use it always.)
1/2 c. sugar or 1/3 c. honey (Confectioner's sugar for me.)
2 to 4 tbs. lemon juice


In a medium bowl, combine vanilla, cheese, and lemon zest.  Using a whisk or an electric beater, whip until smooth. Set. aside.


Pour lemon juice into a small bowl, using 2 tbs. for a spreadable frosting and 4 tbs. for a glaze.  Slowly add sugar to lemon juice, stirring to dissolve and tasting periodically to check sweetness.  Pour sugared lemon juice over cheese mixture and blend well.  Adjust sugar and lemon juice as needed.  The frosting  is just right when it tastes lemony and not too sweet.

I have a confession to make.  I have never made a carrot cake in all my years of baking.  Perhaps my reluctance has something to do with my wedding cake, which I ordered from a hippie bakery.  The "fresh flowers" which were supposed to festoon the (you guessed it) carrot cake turned out to be dusty weeds from the parking lot.  Even if they had been roses from the White House garden, not much could have helped the general profile of the cake, which resembled closely the doomed U.S.S. Monitor, gun turrets and all.  Oh, dear.

So baking this carrot cake was therapeutic.  Besides, it's not just carrot cake, it's rhubarb carrot cake, which somehow divorced this confection from its distant cousin, the dreaded wedding carrot cake. Hey, at least that stolid mass went down in family history.  Well, as I was saying, I conquered my psychological problem with orange-flecked cakes and WOW, was it a happy turn of events for me not only head-wise, but in a gustatory way as well.  Sweet, of course, yet not cloying thanks to tart rhubarb, rather dense, as a (non-military) carrot cake should be, and pleasantly chewy with raisins and coconut.  Bingo!  I've been cured!

I have to admit to going rogue with the frosting, doing my own thing.  Perhaps I should have followed the directions, because my naughty version was much sweeter than lemony.  I suffer from an incurable sweet tooth, so I didn't find my minor "failure" a hindrance to enjoying this luscious, moist cake.  Many stars!

A note on presentation:  I toasted and chopped walnuts to garnish the top of the cake.  I chose the 9 inch layer cake option, which took just about exactly 25 minutes to bake to perfection.  Juliette's times, both for making and baking, are very accurate, which is a great boon! 





 
  

 

Tastes Like Spring!

Double whammy!  I plucked my first test 'n' taste recipes from the spring section of a local cookbook, Learning to Eat Locally, Berkshire Recipes for All Seasons by Juliette Spertus.  This Berkshires-specific volume was published, appropriately enough, in the spring of 1998 by the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  I have to admit, this is one cookbook which has languished on my shelf.  Back in '98, I loved the local factor, but I had to put a few more notches in my culinary belt before I could appreciate Juliette's earthy ingredients and her artful combining of flavors which yield a yum sum much greater than expected.  I'm completely ready now for this plant-centric, quirky collection! Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Juliette Spertus via J.A. Nelson:


Miki's Miso Soup (Miso-shiru)
Total Time:  15 minutes
Yield:  2 Servings
1 small onion, thinly sliced
5 c. water
wakame seaweed (optional) (I omitted the seaweed.)
2 tbs. red miso, or other variety, to taste
2 tsp. powdered dashi (optional) (I omitted this ingredient, which may contain fish.)
1 scallion, sliced lengthwise and cut into 3 inch strips


Put onion and potato in a medium saucepan, cover with 5 cups water and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until potato is just tender, about 10 minutes.  Add strips of wakame if desired.  Add miso and dashi to a ladle full of cooking water from the vegetables, mixing to make a paste.  Stir miso paste back into the soup.  Remove soup from heat just before it begins to boil.  Float scallions slices on top and serve.


Variations:
Try cooking potato with cubes of tofu and any combination of thin slices of carrot, daikon (or radish), garlic and golden beet. In summer, add pieces of eggplant and hot chili pepper, sauteed together in sesame oil, before adding the miso paste.

I followed the habit of most home cooks, using what I had on hand in this delicate soup: a Yukon gold potato, tofu, garlic and carrots.  The miso in my refrigerator was red pepper/garlic, so I expected a more intense flavor than I received; yet, a light, brothy soup is a welcome change from winter's heartier purees, chilies and stews.  Read on, though, for the ultimate reinvention of Miki's Miso Soup!

Sesame Beet Greens
Total Time:   20 minutes
Yield:  6 small servings
greens of 4 to 6 beets, cut off 1 inch from the root
1 tbs. sesame oil (I used olive oil.)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 c. sesame seeds
1 tbs. soy sauce (Tamari, for me.)

Rinse and dry beet greens.  Slice them across the stem into 1 inch strips.  Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat, tilting pan to coat.  Stirring constantly with a spatula, toss in garlic, sesame seeds, and about half of the sliced beet greens. Shake on soy sauce and add remaining greens.  Continue stirring until all greens have wilted and stems are tender, 3 to 4 minutes.  Move greens to a serving bowl and serve hot or at room temperature.

I love greens, which is why I landed on this recipe like a duck on a June bug.  I only wish I had read the yield because six SMALL servings is not enough for my household (four active people, including two young adult men who definitely have healthy appetites).  The crunch of sesame seeds interspersed with the wilted beet greens was a spot-on counterpoint; however, one tablespoon of tamari made this dish too salty - and I use a lower-salt tamari.

And now for the creative! On the table:  a soup that needed some body and some greens that were salt-heavy plus, a side dish of plain brown rice.  Hmmm...how about putting the three
together and calling it Perfect Dinner?  Which was exactly what happened, with the addition of a judicious sprinkle of hot sauce.

No long ago, a neophyte in the kitchen asked me how to tinker with recipes to make them, "taste good."  I threw out a few practical suggestions, but the main idea is that you need to know what flavors you like and season accordingly.  (It took me a long time to figure out that it was tarragon I couldn't stand, and cumin I adored.)  It's also a matter of experimentation.  The individual parts of the spring dinner I chose could have stood alone and been satisfactory, but they came together, literally, to make a stellar meal.  Leftovers were sparse, and disappeared fast.  The mark of a winner dinner!


Next up:  a chutney, a grain salad and a dessert!  Be on the lookout.