July 2004 Archives
The tomato originated in the Andes, was domesticated in Mexico, and was brought to Europe in the 16th century by the conquistadores (along with other vegetables it's hard to imagine doing without like beans, corn, squash, potatoes, and peppers). It belongs to the nightshade family, which also includes potato, bell pepper, tobacco and deadly nightshade. Because of its family links, many people thought that it was poisonous and refused to eat it (except for in Italy where it early caught hold), and in America some folks still refused to trust it until the turn of the 20th century. Today, though, they're second only to the potato in annual consumption in the US.
Botanically speaking, the tomato is a fruit (according to the Oxford English Dictionary, a fruit is "the edible product of a plant or tree, consisting of the seed and its envelope, esp. the latter when it is of a juicy pulpy nature, as in the apple, orange, plum, etc."). In the late 19th century, a clever tomato importer realized that fruits were not subject to the same tariffs that vegetables were and tried to import tomatoes as "fruit." The ensuing case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, who ruled that, though a botanical fruit, the tomato is a culinary vegetable, because it is "usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meat, which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruits, generally as dessert." In other words, it's not sweet.
Here is my very favorite tomato recipe I discovered last year in Alice Water's wonderful cookbook Chez Panisse Vegetables. It's only worth making with fully-ripe garden tomatoes, especially heirloom varieties.
Chilled Tomato Soup4 lbs ripe tomatoes
2 Tb salt
1 small cucumber
2 stalks celery
3 shallots
White wine vinegarCut the tomatoes in quarters, put them in a bowl, add all the salt, and mix well. Peel and seed the cucumber, clean the celery, and peel the shallots. Cut them all into very fine dice. Put the shallots in a small bowl, add just enough of the vinegar to cover, and set aside.
After about half an hour the salt will have softened the tomatoes. Mash them with a wooden spoon and work them through a food mill to obtain a thick tomato juice. Add the shallots, celery, and cucumber. Season to taste with salt and vinegar. (Add balsamic vinegar if the tomatoes need a little sweetness.) Refrigerate over ice and serve well-chilled.
For a richer and spicier soup, add olive oil and mashed garlic to the tomato base and garnish with chopped bell peppers.
Reprinted with permission from Orange Bicycle
As a pretty avowed political vegan, there are many things in life which I have made off limits to myself: Skittles, leather shoes, jello shots, and traveling with ease in a foreign country. However, nothing has been so hard for me to let go of as pizza. My passion (and longing) for pizza has remained unabated during the nearly five years of my veganism. My desire for ice cream, already small, became nonexistent. My need for macaroni and cheese resurfaces less and less often. My intense love affair with peanut butter M&M's now troubles me not at all. But pizza! Ah, pizza. Just thinking about it makes me feel sorrowful and itchy. The smell of it makes my mouth water. If I could pick one thing in this world that would magically no longer be made of animal products, it would be pizza. Tragically (or maybe inevitably), cheese is the one thing they haven't found a good soy substitute for yet. There's great vegan ice cream, hamburgers, skittles and leather shoes. But fake cheese? No way. Forget about it. I'd rather eat a cockroach.
There are many kinds of vegan pizza out there. There are the kinds which try to recreate traditional pizza using soy cheese, which tastes truly terrible. There are the kind that just say "F the cheese," and give you a pizza with veggies and tomato sauce only, sort of like a glorified bruschetta. And there are the kind that seek to reinvent the pizza format by creating a cheeseless pizza that is nontraditional, such as the Bella Faccia vegan pizza, which uses a creamy cashew-butter spread instead of the traditional tomato-based one.
The Bella Faccia vegan pizza is truly hard to beat. It tastes wonderful, with many different layers of flavors bursting into your mouth at different times during the eating experience. Their crust is salty and firm, and their choices of toppings are really beyond the pale. Offering such important standbys as sundried tomatoes, green as opposed to black olives, roasted red peppers, and artichoke hearts, Bella Faccia really takes its vegan pizza seriously, and their efforts pay off.
But sometimes you want a traditional pizza. You want that buttery crust and that tangy tomato sauce. You want the slightly sour, thick undertaste of some really good mozzarella cheese. I'll be the first to admit it: Sometimes even the creamy cashew butter at Bella Faccia doesn't quite fill the gaping, aching void that pizza left in my life when I eschewed animal products in the name of a kinder, gentler lifestyle. Sometimes I just want a good old fashioned pizza that I can eat with a fancy microbrew.
As many of you know, I have recently relocated to Santa Cruz, California, along with my lover, Mr. Peterson. The other day I was cranky and antsy like a little fussy baby, and in response, Mr. Peterson did a search for "vegan pizza" on google. What he found was a listing for a place called "Engfer's," which delighted us not only with its bizarre and hard-to-remember name, but also with its proud boasting about "our 100% vegan pizza!"
Yesterday, after a depressing several hours spent driving to apartments we saw listed in the paper and then finding out that they were vast, sprawling complexes with tiny boxes for windows and that they all cost $1,050 a month, we decided it was a good time to check out this Engfer's.
Upon finding the address, we realized that Engfer's was in the part of town in which we most want to live. We drove there, and found a place with high ceilings, fans, and lots of natural sunlight. Engfer's has pleasant ambience, and their selection of beers really brought the Pacific Northwest to me in full effect, because of all the Sierra Nevada pale ale and what-not. We looked at the menu and discovered a happy surprise: Engfer's approach to vegan pizza is traditional-style, but WITHOUT soy cheese!
They begin by coating their crust with a layer of "tofu spread" which is intended to recreate that tangy undertaste of a fine mozzarella. We were intrigued, to say the least. We ordered a large, with peppers, olives, mushrooms, onions, and sundried tomatoes.
Our total was 20 dollars, which I think is reasonable for a huge, fancy pizza.
When the pizza arrived, we examined it with the eyes of jaded and cynical connoisseurs of the vegan pizza genre. But! Our eyes could find no flaw with the pizza, at least not upon an initial aesthetic review. It was firm, sizzling, the crust crispy in all the right places, the toppings evenly spread. We made eye contact and nodded solemnly to one another.
After our first, exploratory bite, we discovered that the taste of this pizza could not be beat. Crunchy crust, flavorful, delicate tomato sauce, and the exact right approach to the whole "tofu-spread" thing: not too much. They put a thin layer underneath all the toppings, and this definitely recreates the cheese-style vibe that I have been searching for all these years to no avail.
My spirit really was uplifted by this experience. I awoke this morning with a fresh longing for Engfer's vegan pizza, and I plan on availing myself of another visit post-haste. It has truly given me another reason to search for apartments in the Seabright/Live Oak area of Santa Cruz.
Respectfully submitted,
Marianna Ritchey
I have the power to change the course of a frozen waffle product.
Last week, while walking through the Lenox Mall, I was approached by a man with a clipboard who asked me if I had some time. I thought he was some pollster who I could wave off with a "I'm not registered to vote in Georgia," but that was not the case.
He needed a 18-to-34-year-old caucasian male to finish the last of his surveys. Fitting the bill, I obliged. He asked me some questions about my waffle-eating habits, to which I replied according to the responses that had been marked already on the clipboard. Not very scientific, but I wanted to help him out by making this go as smoothly as possible.
After answering the questions, he led me to a small office in the depths of the mall, far from the glitz of retaildom where I signed the form and he got the frozen waffles from the freezer (and $2 for my trouble).
The waffles came in a non-descript white box. On the outside was a sticker labelling the box #2 and a phone number to call to report on the quality (or lack thereof) of the product. Inside the box were eight frozen blueberry waffles.
I had to purchase syrup specially for the occasion, and chose Spring Tree Grade A Dark Amber Maple Syrup purely because of the flask-shaped container.
Since the box didn't provide any instructions, I was left on my own to decide how long they should be toasted. I turned the toaster knob to the middle setting and depressed the lever. The Quizno's tag-line came to mind while I waited: MMMM ... toasty!
After a brief wait, the toaster ejected the waffles and I poured syrup over the top and let the sugary liquid soak into the flaky blueberry surface.
Then I ate them.
They were decent frozen blueberry waffles. I'm no food critic, so I can't wax eloquently about how the flavor created some kind of hallucinegenic euphoria on my pallate, but I can say they tasted pretty much exactly like you'd expect frozen blueberry waffles to taste. I liked how the blueberry flavor wasn't overpowering -- it was just enough to provide a nice fruity accent to the waffle and syrup combo.
I haven't called the number on the box yet. I still have six waffles to go, so maybe I'll be able to provide Bobbie Jones a more thorough review once I've eaten all eight.
Subway is the smartest company in the world. Not only is the name SUBWAY a registered trademark of "Doctor's Associates, Inc.", but they are now launching a massive childhood obesity campaign. Why is this smart? Because everyone is going on and on about how fat our the kids in the US are. Where the rest of the world sees a growing epidemic Subway sees A NEW TARGET MARKET!
Subway Restaurants is taking on the childhood-obesity epidemic with a massive public-awareness campaign that will account for one-fifth of its annual advertising budget. Subway says, "We have a firm belief that we hold a position within the consumers’ consciousness that we can actually change people’s awareness and people’s understanding of eating and exercise habits," but what they really want is a slice of the 15% of people between the ages of 6 and 19 who are overweight to follow the Word of Jared and eat Subway morning, noon, and night.
Subway did their homework, surveying 2,682 children ages 5 to 12 on their attitudes about eating, physical activity and wellness as part of an ongoing study. It found that eight out of ten children said they knew someone who is "very overweight" and that children between the ages of 10 to 12 are more likely to describe themselves as overweight. That is a lot of new customers! And if you can hook 'em as kids, you can get 'em as adults!
Update (10/8/2004): Follow-up article here.
If you think about it, a steamed dumpling is nothing more than wet bread.
Or rather, that's the only real way to describe a bad dumpling, which I'm afraid I recently had at Steamers, a new dumpling lunch spot in downtown Portland. I almost couldn't admit that to myself, though, because in spite of everything, the place made me want to like it.
The decor was sort of that pleasantly "corporate edgy"--all molded faux beechwood and metal and burgundy--and they've done their research well. It had no real personality, but it's still too pleasant to bother hating. We went for the rather deluxe "Dim Sum Tasting," with two each of their dumplings and two steamed buns. It came with rice and edamame. This meal cost $6.45, which is a little steep for a downtown lunch, but it was a good amount of food, and presented fairly well.
The first real bad sign was when you had no "for here" option. Everything comes in paper boxes, with plastic forks and disposable cups, so despite the cute presentation you're still eating out of a box. Then there was the sauce bar, which somehow still charms me, but is always a bad sign. (Or am I wrong? Anyone? A good restaurant with a sauce bar? I guess there's always La Cruda, which is fine, but really not special.)
Up until this point, I was still rooting for Steamers. I liked the variety, and the edamame, as well as a lighter lunch than Honkin' Huge Burritos or pizza ("a few carbs with your fat, ma'am?"), as well as fun dipping action. But when we started eating, I realized that my flirtation with Steamers was all over. Three of the four dumplings had meat in them (ginger pork, chicken & shiitake, and tomato beef), and the meat all tasted frighteningly the same, and was in a scary, homogenous pellet surrounded by dough--and for half of the dumplings the dough was falling off the meat pellet. The one vegetarian dumpling was spinach and glass noodle, and tasted of dry, stale frozen spinach.
The slow-roasted hoisin pork steamed bun was sort of fun, like a mini sandwich, but the pork was, once again, a generic meat flavor that really turned me off. The golden curried vegetable steamed bun was truly awful (especially disappointing, since it was one of only two vegetarian options). The vegetables tasted like overcooked frozen vegetables with a dusting of generic supermarket curry powder. The dessert bun of yellow custard was so forgettable I'm afraid I no longer remember enough to comment.
Oh, and not to forget the smorgasbord of sauces...the worst was the tangy lemongrass, which tasted like lemonade concentrate, if not quite as sweet. Stay away at all costs. The ponzu sauce was fine; I've always liked authentic ponzu, which combines soy sauce with a Japanese citrus called yuzu, and though this was just soy sauce with lemon juice, it was still pleasant if unremarkable. I thought the hoisin peanut was good if too sweet, and the chili garlic was slightly too salty but good too. Those two combined together actually made the best sauce, so if you ever are obliged to eat at Steamers, I recommend some wild mixing action to create your own chili hoisin garlic peanut sauce.
So, Steamers, I'm afraid I won't be coming back. True, you have a fun concept, and I suppose you'll be successful just by being downtown. It takes more than concept and location to be a good lunch place, though, and your meat is too mystery-meaty, vegetables not vegetable-y enough, and overall quality just not high enough. If you get a brand new dumpling factory (and no, there was no doubt in my mind that these were not being turned out by some hunched little Chinese grandma in the back room), let me know and I might try you again. But overall, I have to just say no to wet bread. It's back to the burrito stand for me.
