Meatless Mondays: Sushi Night

You can put pretty much anything in a sushi roll.

Like tempura asparagus.

And orange segments.

And Mexican-style salsa.

No, seriously. The Texan and I have eaten all of these things and more in various rolls we've tried, and loved them all.  So we figured fishless sushi would feel like a kind of roll we just hadn't tried yet.

We found a recipe for quinoa maki (the type of roll that is made with rice and filling and wrapped in seaweed, or nori) with avocado and Cajun portobello fillets in The Conscious Cook by Tal Ronnen*. The author argues that quinoa is more nutritious than white rice and has an interesting texture to boot, so is perfect for sushi. I was a little skeptical, so I made some sushi rice just in case, but the Texan and I both really liked the quinoa rolls.

Also just in case, I seared some extra-firm tofu in a bottled teriyaki marinade, because I was a little worried the portobellos would be gross. Which they weren't. At all. I marinated them in a mixture of white wine, Cajun seasoning, white wine vinegar, and some spices, and later seared them so they would dry out a bit and get crispy-ish. Perhaps they were selected for a veggie roll recipe because they tend to have that slightly slimy-chewy-raw texture the way raw fish does, but these were no fish substitute-- these were just good in their own right.
 

A friend sent me a sushi mat and some chopsticks from Japan when she lived there, so our rolling efforts were, you know, authentic and whatnot. 

The Texan's roll of choice: tri-color quinoa, portobello, tofu, avocado, and carrot.

Our rolls were a little messy. We admit it.

Sushi Night #2: Veggie rolls with avocado and spicy mayo

I made some miso soup with little cubes of tofu and sliced scallions, the way they do in some Japanese restaurants.  I used yellow miso, never having used any miso before, and figured I'd try the middle-of-the-road strength for my first time. (Miso comes in three colors: white, the least fermented and mildest, yellow, and red, the most fermented and most intense.) I would be game to try red miso next time, for a little extra flavor.

The recipe calls for a little mayonnaise to be mixed with a tiny bit of sambal oelek (Thai chili-garlic sauce) and then rolled up with the rest of the fillings. I completely forgot to make it, but we have had sushi at restaurants that have drizzled something similar over certain rolls, and we like it a lot. The next time we make sushi we will have to try it. Yes, there will be a next time. Even the Texan said so.


Fishless sushi is ridiculously inexpensive to make. Packs of nori can be gotten for under $2, and contain 10-12 sheets per pack. Each sheet yields 5 or 6 pieces, so one pack makes at least 50 pieces of sushi. Sushi rice is a little more expensive than regular white rice, but not astronomical, and regular rice with some binder ingredients could be used in a pinch. I used only one portobello last night, along with a carrot, an avocado, a few pea sprouts, and half a pack of tofu. That's it. You can use whatever combination of vegetables (or fruit, if you are feeling especially avant garde) you like, but you probably won't spend more than a few dollars on all the fillings. Go Team Vegetables!



* The title makes the book sound like the hokiest bunch of hippie crap on the planet, but it isn't. And it contains recipes for dairy substitutes that don't involve soy milk, so I am all over it. Dairy and I just don't get along.

Meatless Mondays

It's Monday, and the Texan and I are going meatless.

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After reading this article in the latest issue of my UCLA Alumni magazine, I was inspired to go totally meatless a minimum of one day a week. There was only one problem: I knew I had to get the Texan to try it. Otherwise, each Monday I'd be nibbling on tofu and salad greens while he chowed down on a steak, my martyrdom to the planet spilling over onto the table between us. But how was I going to convince a guy to go meatless who owns a t-shirt from a barbecue joint in Texas that says, "Vegetarian: The Indian word for Terrible Hunter"?

I decided to take the direct approach. One evening when I knew we were going out to an area with a large bookstore, I told him I had a proposition for him that involved reading a short article. I figured this would help my cause because a) he is an avid reader, and b) he loves facts. When he finished, I planned to just come out and say that I wanted to do Meatless Mondays and I wanted him to do it with me, please. I sat him on the sofa, handed him the article, and had this conversation:

Me: (silently rehearsing elevator speech)
Texan, finishing article: "You know, we should probably eat less meat. We could do Meatless Mondays or something like that."

Me: (silently) Wait, what?
(out loud) "Yeah, that's what I was thinking. We can stop at the bookstore tonight and look at vegetarian cookbooks."

Texan: (silently) That's EXACTLY how I wanted to spend my evening: perusing tofu and bulgher wheat recipes.
(out loud):  "Great! Let's go!"

As luck would have it, we found not one but two cookbooks we both liked, one of which is appropriately titled The Meat-Free Monday Cookbook and offers three seasonally appropriate meals for each week of the year.

Over dinner that night, we had this conversation:

Texan: "You know, it's really just one day a week. We can totally do it."

Me: "Yeah, and we already eat vegetarian breakfasts, so it's just two more meals that day that have to be veg."

Texan: "But if we like it and find recipes we like, we could make it two nights a week. Or even three."

Me: (silently) The fuck?
(out loud) "That'd be cool. I have to admit, though, I was surprised when you suggested doing Meatless Mondays."

Texan, waving hands evangelist-style: "As I read the article, I was worried you had, like, seen the light and wanted to go totally vegan or something. So that's why I suggested Meatless Mondays before you could say anything: I figured one day a week was better than seven."

Ah, there's my carnivore.

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Tonight's meal? Homemade tamales, salad, and maybe some vegan chocolate cake for dessert.

Fall from Glory

First, there was this:

Then, there was this:

And when I wasn't sure it could get any better there were these:

For vanilla-sea salt caramels in dark chocolate

So I decided to go really big and enter the California State Fair, and instead of entering two items, I figured I'd go for broke and enter three. All of which, of course, I wanted to be as fresh as possible so I waited until the day before the drop-off to make them. And so there was this:

Yep, two second places and a third place. And the most ironic part is, the third place entry won Best Of Show at the previous fair; the espresso-hazelnut truffle that placed second here placed first not once but twice at previous fairs!

The competition wasn't really that much stiffer at the state fair. The system of judging was different, but not necessarily harder. The problem was me: making three totally different products in a single day and expecting all of them to be cosmetically perfect is just plain stupid. Candy is time-consuming to make and chocolate is finicky to work with-- it can't be rushed, no matter how big a fair I enter. And sometimes I get impatient, and then I make tiny mistakes that no one else but me and the judge would notice, and then I don't win.

I would love to be able to say that I never make the same mistake twice, but I can't. Usually I have to make it a few times before I finally learn my lesson.  This isn't the first time I've made cosmetic mistakes on my candy, but I'm hoping that three non-blue ribbons, framed on the wall, will help me make sure it's the last.

Especially next summer, when I enter the state fair again, and WIN.

Taco Night

The Texan loves fish tacos. Like, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if he up and moved to Baja and grew his hair all long and stringy and started wearing board shorts every day.

The first time he suggested we eat them, I wasn't altogether sure I'd like them, much less love them. I admit now that I do love them, but there are three problems with them.

1. Our favorite kind involves fried fish.

2. Fish is loaded with lead.

3. Many popular varieties of fish are overfished, or come from poorly managed fish farms.

On a weekend when the Texan happened to be out of town, my neighbor made fish tacos that offered a compromise to Problem Number 1. She breaded the fish filets in panko-style breadcrumbs, and then baked them in the oven. The breadcrumbs created the textural appeal of fried fish without all the fat and cholesterol. She sliced them into strips to serve, along with cabbage slaw, avocado slices, and lime quarters to squirt on top.

I liked them so much that I made them the next day for my dad, substituting shrimp for the white fish and adding a black bean-corn mixture to the fixings, as well as a little bit of jarred salsa. He seemed to like them, and they were ready in a ridiculously short time.

For a quick dinner before a date at the ballpark this week, I decided to make the fish tacos for the guy who loves them the most. I used shrimp again (I bought the 16-20 size, which I think is a little too big; in the future I'll use the next-smaller size), sauteeing it quickly in a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and a teensy bit of cayenne.

I couldn't remember exactly how my neighbor made the slaw, so I just sliced cabbage very thinly, added some cilantro, and then lemon juice, S & P, and an even teensier bit of cayenne. I think she added either yogurt or sour cream to hers, but I don't use dairy if I can avoid it.

I sauteed some green bell pepper with a bit of onion in some olive oil and S & P, sliced some avocado, and boiled an ear of corn, and put them in individual bowls to be used according to taste. I also had a ripe mango and some peaches just waiting to be used, so I diced those, added some cilantro, onion, lemon juice, S & P, and a teensy bit of cayenne to make a fruit salsa with a little kick.

The fruit salsa adds the perfect amount of moisture to the tacos, without becoming soggy and drippy.

He loved them. What surprised me the most was that he also loved the fruit salsa, because he is not the Number One Fan of either mango or peaches. Granted, I had just found his new favorite chip at Berkeley Bowl -- a blue corn-quinoa-chia-maca salt-free chip -- so he had reason to eat many of them, but he's perfectly happy eating the chips plain so he must have actually, like, liked it. 

                                            
The only way to deal with Problem Number 2 is to eat fish sparingly. This would put a definite cramp in the Texan's Baja style, but while we still live in northern California, this is Just The Way It Is.  And as for Problem Number 3, I screwed up this time around. Not only were the shrimp I bought too big, but they were wild-caught from Mexico, which, according to my Seafood Watch app, is not a well-managed source of seafood. Think tons, literally, of sea turtle and small fish bycatch. Had I bought the smaller ones, I would have purchased US farm-raised shrimp, which is one of the most sustainable options.   See what happens when I get all greedy?

Olive Oyl

My Italian ancestors would be mortified, I'm sure, to know that lately I've kept canola oil in my pantry instead of olive oil. Seriously, I haven't even owned a bottle of olive oil in over a year.

While canola oil is the better choice for baking, which is why I chose it, it doesn't give much flavor to salad dressings or anything that is sauteed. I figured this could be compensated for to a certain degree with seasonings, whereas the density that olive oil gives my baked goods can't. A brick, after all, is still a brick no matter how much sugar I add.

Enter the June 2012 issue of Vegetarian Times where, amidst a series of baking recipes calling specifically for olive oil, there just happened to be a cake recipe with berries, citrus, wine, and olive oil. I screamed silently at the editors of the magazine, "Gawwwwd, twist my arm, why don't you!" Then I ran to the store to buy a bottle.


Despite such terrible pain in my arm, I managed to come up with this:

I take back everything I ever said about baking with olive oil. This cake was light and fluffy, almost sponge-y but in a good way, and the flavor was not overly sweet or olive-y. The citrus zests and wine lent bits of flavor that were perfectly balanced, yet there was plenty of room for a berry compote or maybe a sorbet to accompany the cake.

The editors note that the "recipe calls for a sweet wine to flavor the cake, but you could also use white wine left over from last night's dinner." While several of my regular readers don't ever wonder what to do with last night's wine because there is never any wine left over, those who do might find their own arms twisted just enough to... well, you know.

Figs were tasty, but I suggest a juicier berry to serve with the cake.

Olive Oil-Wine Cake
from Vegetarian Times, June 2012

Serves 10

2/3 C olive oil
1 1/2 C AP flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 C sweet dessert wine, such as Moscato, Marsala, or Muscat
1/3 C orange juice
1 tsp grated orange zest
1 tsp grated lemon zest
4 eggs
1 C sugar
2 TBSP confectioners' sugar
1-2 pints fresh berries

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 9" springform pan with cooking spray or olive oil. Line bottom of pan with a circle of parchment paper, cut to fit.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together olive oil, wine, orange juice, and zests.
3. Beat eggs and sugar in stand mixer or with electric mixer for 4 minutes, or until pale yellow and tripled in volume. Add half of dry ingredients, and mix on low speed until blended. Add half of liquid mixture, and mix to blend. Repeat with remaining dry and liquid mixtures.
4. Pour batter into prepared pan, and set on baking sheet. Bake 50 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes, and then remove sides of pan to cool completely. Dust with confectioners' sugar and serve with berries (or compote).

The Blender Room

A few years ago, I was finishing my Master's program and had to complete an intensive practicum that summer. I was holed up in a room with five or six other candidates, where we provided intensive remediation to students with reading difficulties in the mornings and wrote, debriefed, wrote, attended meetings, and wrote some more in the afternoons. I was fortunate to be assigned to a room with like-minded women who agreed that food was the only way to get us through the demands of practicum. We took turns bringing lunch throughout those weeks, and for my final turn, I thought smoothies would be the perfect light lunch on a hot, humid Chicago summer day.

So I brought a blender.

The news went viral, the old-fashioned way. Maybe it was the whir of the machine, or that we were walking the halls of the building with glasses (like, actually made of glass) of smoothie, but within a few minutes ALL the other candidates heard that we had a blender in our room and were making smoothies. Our professors heard about it from the others. One or two candidates may have asked if they could have some. The smoothies were legendary. Practically.

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L to R: pineapple-orange-banana, sweet potato, blueberry-banana, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, spinach-kale-banana.

I started making smoothies around the same time I rowed crew in high school, and would come home from practice even hungrier than the average teenager. Ever since, I've been drinking them as an easily-digestible energy boost before or after workouts, and for breakfast or lunch along with some toast. They're ridiculously easy to make, relatively cost-effective, and lend themselves to endless combinations. I even know some meat heads who will drink them. But only at the gym.

I make mine with non-dairy milk of some kind: soy, almond, hemp, rice, etc. I almost always use banana as the base for my smoothie, in part because the potassium goes well with workouts, and in part because it helps thicken the smoothie. I throw in whatever fruit I have: fresh or frozen, berries or citrus, tropical or North American.

Lately, though, I've wanted to try something a little different. A friend happened to be making a vibrant green smoothie as I was standing in her kitchen, and while the ingredient list didn't make it sound very appetizing, it turned out to taste pretty good. She put several handfuls of baby spinach in the blender, along with some frozen pineapple, protein powder, flax seed oil, and coconut water. It was definitely one of the prettiest smoothies I'd seen in a long time, so I made my own version, adding some kale after seeing a recipe for a greens smoothie on wholefoodsmarket.com. I took the advice of some of the commenters on that site who suggested using a 3:1 or 4:1 spinach:kale ratio. I threw in a banana, a little frozen pineapple, and soy milk and now have a new favorite smoothie. The spinach and kale flavors aren't masked, exactly, but they somehow blend really well with the sweet fruit flavors. There are two things to keep in mind if you make this smoothie:

1. My friend makes this smoothie at night and puts it in a Thermos-type container in the fridge. She grabs it on her way out the door, and it becomes her breakfast while she drives to work. This is a brilliant strategy to save time in the morning while still eating a healthy meal. However, the beautiful green smoothie becomes seriously un-beautiful by morning, and the first time I saw her drink it in the car, I asked, "What IS that?"

2. Green things can get stuck in your teeth.

A fellow food blogger has several videos on her site in which she demonstrates recipes, cooking show-style. In one (episode 8), she makes a sweet potato pie smoothie with leftover sweet potato and a few spices. While I could do without the mmmmmmmmmmms and ooooooooooohs, I loved the idea, so made my own. I didn't use her exact quantities, but added dashes of this, that, and the other. I love the taste of the smoothie, but I haven't mastered the texture yet. Or maybe it's the temperature that isn't right: both times I've made it, I've cooked the sweet potato for the purpose of the smoothie, and so it was either warm or room temperature. If it were cold, and the soy milk were cold, it would probably taste more like a smoothie and less like baby food.

Even the Texan likes smoothies. A few hours after his workout, he makes a smoothie to fuel him until dinner. He uses plain or vanilla yogurt as his base, adds frozen berries, juice, a berry-flavored greens powder, and sometimes chia seeds (which, unlike flax, don't need to be ground to obtain maximum benefit from). The powder, he says, takes some getting used to, but also packs a solid nutritional punch, so a little grit is worth it.

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Not only did the news of the blender survive that day and become the talk of the hallway that week, it survived the summer. A few weeks into a fall semester class with a different professor, my friend Patti, who was one of my Blender Room mates, was discussing her practicum experience with the professor. As if little else mattered, she announced to the professor, "... and Mia brought a BLENDER!"

The professor's response? "So I heard."

The Clearance Rack

I know, I know-- covetousness is a sin. But I admit I've had my eye on something for a while now.

It's expensive. It's heavy. It's pretty. It's expensive.

Oh and also, it's expensive.

It's a Le Creuset Dutch oven. Or, as they call it, a French oven. It's essential for all those cuts of meat that get cooked for hours until they practically fall off the bone. It can be used on the stove top, the oven, or both for a single meal. Plus, it comes in a dizzying array of colors, nearly all of which I would be happy with, should one just happen to fall in my lap.

Actually, having a Le Creuset fall in my lap might break both my legs. But you know what I mean.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a store brand Dutch oven on sale for 40% off at Sur La Table.  As all mathematicians know, [Totally Ridiculous] x 0.40 = [Still Pretty Ridiculous], but the store brand's original price was Reasonable, not Ridiculous. It was available in only one color, but it happened to be a color I especially love: a deep, dark burgundy. So as not to be impulsive, I made a mental note of the item and kept walking.

I wondered, though, why is the SLT brand so much cheaper than Le Creuset? Its starting price was a mere forty percent of Le Creuset's for the same size, and the only visible differences were a shinier finish on the SLT and a stainless steel lid handle, not a composite handle. The SLT pot's weight was about equal to that of the Le Creuset, so I knew it was cast iron all the way through, not filled with aluminum or steel or some other muck.

China may have something to do with it. As I read the fine print, I noticed the SLT pot was made in China. Le Creuset pots, on the other hand, are still made in France (their bakeware is now made in China, just like everything else).  I would prefer to purchase things that are made just about anywhere but China. But I couldn't force myself to be quite stoic enough to shell out 60% more for the Le Creuset, especially when I returned to Sur La Table about ten days later.

A large sign outside the door of SLT called to me, "TAKE AN EXTRA 20% OFF ALL CLEARANCE PRICES!" Well, ok, if you insist.

The sale brought the price of the Dutch oven down to less than 50% of its original price, and to about twenty percent of the original Le Creuset price.

So far, my Dutch oven seems to perform well. The metal handle does get hot, so I must use a towel or pot holder each time I open the lid, but this is not a major disaster. I'll spare my readership a soap box speech on the downfalls of cheap consumer goods, though it plays in my head often, because for now the pot is a way to cook well, eat well, and be well.