Veeegs: September 2007 Archives

News flash: If it’s cutesy, someone’s done it before. After a recent impulse buy of little round ring pasta, the obvious direction seemed to be simmering up some old-school Spaghettios, just with better ingredients. Not only did we discover we’ve been trumped on this one by another vegetarian blog, they made the same yuck-yuck intro. Fuck.

Regardless, we’re re-activating the playful comfort food section we call “No Drive Thru” to bring you a $5, 10-minute meal with easy to round up ingredients. The tomatoes can even be mealy, won’t matter! We’re gonna make two components of sauce for a little complexity. Watch out mommy!

Spaghettioz

(Serves 2)

2 cups Anelletti pasta
1/4 cup olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 large overripe heirloom tomatoes
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 cups tomato sauce
1 cup vegetable stock
1/4 cup parmesan cheese (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
Basil for garnish

1. Bring a medium pot of water to boil, with a touch of salt and olive oil. Toss in the pasta and let boil to al dente, about 8 minutes. Drain and set aside.

2. In a second pot, start the first sauce component by adding the olive oil, garlic, onion and sautéing for about 2 minutes. Then roughly chop your tomatoes and add. Wait another 2 minutes and pour in the balsamic. Cook it off by cranking the heat and boiling until half the liquid cooks off. Then, using a tea strainer or something, sift out the tomato chunks (save them and set aside) leaving the liquid on high heat.

3. Add tomato sauce and stock and bring to a rolling boil. Then drop in cooked pasta just enough to bring up to piping hot temperature.

4. Toss the vinegary tomato chunks with parmesan (substitute 2 Tbs. nutritional yeast to veeg-ify) and plop on top of the soup. Season and garnish and serve.

Beverage: Yahoo and vodka.
Soundtrack: Pavement’s “No More Kings”

It being mid-September, summer salad season is in its last throes and our salad spinners are ‘bout to be put away. Of course, being produce geeks and living in perpetual sun, we never fully hibernate from the greenery, if anything our kitchens start seeing more salads sans lettuce. Last weekend we messed with a version of the classic Green Goddess dressing (typically dill and parsley and something creamy like avo or tahini) and presented it green leaf-less, more like a tart chutney alongside a buttery brunch meal. The tendril crunch of fava beans and the smooth lick of avocado make it the perfect end of ‘salad days’ salad.

Green God(dess)

1 lbs. fava bean pods
1 avocado
2 Persian cucumbers
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp lime juice
1/4 cup fresh dill, chopped
2 Tbs. walnut oil
1 Tbs. tahini
2 Tbs. champagne vinegar
sea salt and fresh black pepper to taste

1. Start by shelling yo favz. The pods will come apart easily, just make sure to pick out any ill looking beans.

2. Bring a large pot of salted water and the fava beans to a rolling boil; once it boils, they’re are done. Drain and remove and let cool.

3. Peel and slice your avocado — you want thick, firm chunks. Cut your cucumbers into similar sized pieces (peel first if desired) and add to a large mixing bowl with onion, shallots and garlic.

4. In a separate bowl thoroughly mix the lime juice, your fresh dill, oil, tahini, vinegar and seasonings.

5. Peel the casings off the now cooled fava beans and add to the green mess, dress and toss.

Beverage: Champagne Pomme lambic spritzer
Soundtrack: White Rainbow’s Zome

Fruit salad is a rather nefarious term usually referring to some kind of fructose based nightmare suspended in gelatin that you reluctantly shove down your gullet at a friends’ grandparent house, or a typical mish mash of randomly cut fruits and berries that serve as a buffet throwaway or (apparently) an invitation to sex.

For this tail-end-of-summer salad, we went for a more refined version of what will commonly grace the end of your meal. While we are certainly dessert deficient, we are self proclaimed produce pontificators, and we applied the same love and design we would to a basket of sungold tomatoes, a summer squash and a bunch of green garlic, to a few sweeter growths. With a few sauces and accoutrements, some familiar knife cuts and a little bit of flair, we transported the basic aspect of a fruit salad into a full on plate: more than fit for a dessert option for brunch or dinner.

Coriander Simple Syrup:

½ cup organic sugar
½ cup water
1+½ teaspoon ground coriander

1. Place ½ cup water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Mix in the sugar and return to a boil. When the sugar is dissolved, reduce to medium heat, add the coriander and mix thoroughly. Let the syrup bubble for five minutes and then transfer to a bowl and chill in your freezer.

Salad:

½ small jicama
1 Asian pear
¼ cup diced cilantro
2 baby bananas
1 Tsp. Cayenne pepper
1 Tbs. Pomegranate molasses

1. Cut the jicama in half, and make the thinnest slices from the exposed flesh side (the middle) until you reach the butt, which will have skin still attached.
3. Stack ¼ of the slices op top of each other and carefully slice off the skin of jicama. When the skin is off, slice thinly and vertically from the once was center of the root to the edge in a thin julienne: making what would resemble batons or matchsticks.
4. Cut the Asian pear in quarters. Placing an exposed edge of the pear against your cutting board, make a diagonal cut from left to right, which will remove the core and seeds of each quarter. Then slice each quarter lengthwise as thin as you can.
5. Snip the tip of a baby banana and peel it. Cut each banana in half using a broad bias.
6. Pick the leaves off the cilantro and chop.
7. Toss the cilantro, jicama, and ½ of the coriander syrup in a mixing bowl.

To plate:

1. Place a handful of the cilantro-corainder syrup-jicama on one side of a plate.
2. Butt a segment of banana against the stack of jicama.
3. Fan out ¼ of the pear against the banana.
4. Garnish with an extra drizzle of coriander syrup, and Pomegranate Molasses.

Beverage: Lambic Kir Royale, Champagne mixed with Cassis Lambic
Soundtrack: Toots and Maytals “Funky Kingston”

Most our homies don’t need encouragement to eat their leafy greens, but hey, it happens. For those who don’t get salad (and they are out there, even amongst vegans), there is one and only one cure: excellent croutons. They can turn a plate of salad into a big bowl of tasty bread that happens to have some lettuce mixed in.

Yet there’s an even better reason to start making your own croutons: We all eat bread, buy bread, and either toss out or kinda make ourselves eat the heels shit. Don’t do it! Simply save the end of each loaf, keep it in the fridge for up to 3 weeks, and when you have a heel of rye, a couple pieces of stale French bread, a pair of squaw bread slices and a hamburger bun that’s about to mold just cut ‘em up and dress up right! The crew will never notice.

Gang Crewtons

(makes 2 cups)

8-10 heels of bread (various kinds)
1 cup walnut oil
2 Tbs. olive oil
5 cloves garlic
1/2 red onion
2 sprigs rosemary
2 sprigs thyme
2 Tbs. sea salt
1 Tbs. sage
1 tsp cayenne pepper
black pepper to taste

1. Cut the heels of bread into equal-sized pieces, small, about 2 cm by 2 cm. Throw them in a shallow bowl and cover with walnut oil. Let sit (in sun if preferable) for about 30 minutes to soak up oil.

2. Heat a large skillet on high heat, add olive oil and then sauté the garlic, onion and herbs for about 5 minutes. Turn down to medium and add bread pieces.

3. Stir or toss for about 10 minutes: make sure they don’t burn or brown unevenly. Season half way through and keep tossing. Add more oil if absolutely necessary, and turn down heat if it looks too hot.

4. Remove and set on top of paper towels to blot. Cool for at least one hour before serving. Or save for up to one week.

Our great, grad school-bound buddy Aubrey “Bobby Beers” White recently high-tailed it out of town. But before she did, she broke out a box of packaged snacks from Japan, all filled with neon colored pickles, she’d been saving for over a year and we threw a sweet and sour going away party for the old gal. We washed it all down with two bottles of unfiltered sake, tempura-fried mushrooms, eggplant, sweet potato and broccoli, and this sweet, cold soba noodle salad. The oil-slicked noodles are perked with peppery cucumber slivers dunked in vinegar: an improvised recipe. Gobble it with people you like. Bon voyage Bobby Beers!

(Serves 6-8)

Szechuan Pickles

4 Japanese cucumbers
1 small bulb ginger
3 tsp. fresh black pepper
1 tsp. Szechuan pepper
1/8 cup rice vinegar
1 Tbs. soy sauce

1. Slice the thin cukes in half lengthwise, leaving eight pieces, and slice into matchstick-sized slices. Peel ginger and slice into even smaller matchsticks. Place both in a shallow mixing bowl. Toss all other ingredients and let sit 20-30 minutes or longer while you prepare noodles.

Soba Noodle Salad

2 1/2 cups water
4 Tbs. sesame oil
1 tsp sea salt
8-10 oz soba noodles
1/8 sesame seeds

2. In a medium-size pot, bring water to a rolling boil and add salt and 1 Tbs. of sesame oil. Toss in soba noodles and cook 8-10 minutes or until fully cooked, making sure they don’t stick too much.

3. In a small sauté pan, heat sesame seeds up for 2-3 minutes, tossing to keep from toasting too much.

4. Once cooked, cool noodles under cold water and drain well. Place in a large mixing bowl and top with hot sesame seeds and rest of the sesame oil. Then add the freshly Szechuan pickles and toss thoroughly. Serve room temperature or refrigerate for 2 hours and serve coolish. (Add Sriracha as desired!)

Beverage: Unfiltered sake, St. Red Rogue Dry-Hopped
Soundtrack: Elliot Smith’s self-titled