Friday, June 27, 2008

Restaurant favorites at home

Since I don’t have the budget, time or inclination to eat out all the time, I often try to re-create some of my favorite restaurant (and prepared-grocery) dishes. It’s generally cheaper and also usually healthier, because you can control what goes into the dishes, making them less fattening than the originals.

One of the first items I tried my hand at re-creating was a white bean-and-roasted onion dip that Whole Foods used to carry. Even though it didn’t taste quite the same, I was pretty happy with the results. Unfortunately, Whole Foods no longer carries it, and I haven’t actually made it in awhile—I need to dig the recipe out from the morass of clippings in my recipe drawers. (Not only do I have a cookbook problem, I have a recipe problem—the drawers will barely shut anymore!)

One of my favorite breakfasts is a healthier, vegetarian, open-face version of McDonald’s Egg McMuffin. I take a whole-wheat English muffin, layer it with a slice of reduced-fat Swiss cheese and a couple of slices of vegetarian ham, and toast it until the cheese is melted. Then I top with a poached egg. Even though I’ve been having it for breakfast several times a week for a good couple of months, I still haven’t tired of it. It’s yummy and much more filling and energy-sustaining than my previous staple of cereal or a fruit bar. If you wanted, you could make it vegan by substituting soy cheese for the Swiss cheese and a slice of tofu for the egg.

I also enjoy making my own version of the BBQ tofu sandwich from Mary’s Of Course. It’s tasty and very easy. I make some slaw by mixing packaged, already-shredded cole-slaw veggies with a dressing of mayonnaise, mustard, cider vinegar and a bit of sugar. Then I sautee sliced onions until tender, add cubes of tofu and bottled BBQ sauce, and cook until heated through. I put some slaw on a sandwich bun (take it from me, bigger is better, since it’s a messy sandwich!), add some of the tofu and top with a slice of Swiss cheese—voila!

Do any of you have restaurant favorites that you’ve re-created at home?

Friday, June 20, 2008

Vegetable “noodles”

I’m still “mostly” doing the South Beach Diet, although I haven’t been nearly as religious about it as I should be lately (I’ve definitely fallen off the cookie wagon). I’m paying much more attention to the foods I eat and their whole-grain and sugar content, which is definitely a good thing.

Regular pasta is a no-no, and the allowed serving size of whole-grain pasta is so small that most of the time it hardly seems worth the bother. One of the diet’s creative “tricks” is to substitute squash for the pasta—strands of spaghetti squash or thin strips of yellow squash or zucchini. Since I had some squash sitting around, I decided to try this earlier in the week. My mandoline won’t make really thin strips (and my knife skills aren’t up to the challenge), so I did long julienne strips. You could boil the squash “noodles” for a short time, until they’re tender but still a bit crisp, then put the spaghetti sauce on top for a more traditional presentation. I decided to stir-fry them with some onion strips, then added the spaghetti sauce directly to the saucepan until heated (fewer pans to mess with!). Topped with parmesan cheese, it was a great, quick summer meal—and something I think I’ll make fairly often, since we’re about to hit the “everybody has extra squash from their garden” season.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Bees in Peril

Sunday’s episode of the TV show Nature, “Silence of the Bees,” has been haunting me for days. It describes how over the past couple of years, billions of honeybees have disappeared, victims of a mysterious killer called Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists around the world are rushing to try to find the cause, and a cure. But though theories abound, so far the mystery remains.

Beyond the effects on the bees themselves, and on beekeepers, this has the potential to be a major problem for everyone who needs to eat. Honeybees play a vital role in agriculture by pollinating crops - including many fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, even soybeans. If the bees disappear, we could be facing a diet of gruel, varied by gruel, followed by gruel….

So it’s natural to wonder whether there anything ordinary people can do to help the bees. The “Silence of the Bees” Web site has some suggestions here. They include becoming a backyard beekeeper. People interested in this route can get more information from local groups, such as the Forsyth Beekeepers Association. (If you’re not inclined to become a beekeeper, you can help support local beekeepers by buying local honey and beeswax products.)

Other options include planting a bee garden, full of nectar-bearing plants that could help feed local bees. Of course, it’s important to avoid using pesticides in such a garden to avoid poisoning the bees. You can also buy pesticide-free foods at the market (better for you and the bees); and write to federal and state legislators in support of funding for bee research.

The ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs is also concerned about Colony Collapse Disorder and has a Web site, helpthehoneybees.com, where you can learn more and also take such actions as making a direct donation to bee-research centers.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Tomato troubles

My blog entry last week waxing rhapsodic about cucumber and tomato salad was unfortunately timed, considering the recent tomato-salmonella outbreak. According to a U.S. News & World Report article posted today, 228 people in 23 states have become sick from eating tomatoes tainted with salmonella, and, more troubling, the source of the contamination is still unclear. So far, no cases have been reported in North Carolina.

The tomatoes implicated are raw red plum, red Roma and round red tomatoes. Types of tomatoes not linked to any illnesses are cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes and tomatoes with the vine still attached. Tomatoes grown in North Carolina are among those that have been “cleared” of causing the contamination. You can read more about the outbreak at the FDA’s Web site.

Many restaurants and stores have pulled all or some tomatoes from their menus and produce aisle, among them McDonald’s, Burger King, Panera, Taco Bell, Moe’s, Kroger and Winn Dixie.

This is yet another reason for me to want my own tomatoes to hurry up and ripen, because I certainly do love tomatoes. It doesn’t seem like summer to me without fresh local tomatoes. And it’s another reason why it’s a good idea to buy locally and pay attention to where your food is coming from. If you know where that tomato was grown and that it’s from a grower or region you can trust, you can be fairly confident that it’s “safe” to eat.

Readers, has this outbreak kept you from eating tomatoes altogether, or are you fine sticking to the “safe” kinds?

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Inspiration and Adaptation

When it’s about a hundred degrees outside on a Sunday afternoon, I like to park myself on an air-conditioned couch and watch the cooking shows on PBS. Unfortunately, they are often excessively meat-laden - I had to turn off America’s Test Kitchen last weekend when they started using a model cow to show where a certain cut of steak comes from. But often the shows will have some nifty ideas that will work for vegetarians - sometimes as is, and sometimes with a bit of tweaking. With just a few simple substitutions, most recipes can be veganized with good results.

For example, when I ventured to turn the TV back on, Rick Bayless was making brunch on Mexico - One Plate at a Time. The Carmelized Mango Tart hooked me right away. It’s already vegetarian and it would take only a little adaptation (substitute margarine for butter, for example) to make vegan. And his recipe for Chilaquiles for a Crowd definitely had possibilities, in spite of its abundant chicken and dairy elements. Just a few hours later, in fact, I was able to adapt the recipe into supper:

“Chilaquiles for a Couple of Vegans”

2 tsp. olive oil
1 cup chopped onions (divided use)
8 oz. jarred tomatillo salsa
1 cup vegetable broth (one cup water, plus 1 tsp. Vogue Vege Base)
6 oz. tortilla chips
3/4 cup shredded vegan “cheese” (divided use) (I used a mixture of the mozzarella Teese and cheddar Cheezly that I wrote about last week. They worked wonderfully in this dish.)
1 cup shredded vegan “chicken” strips. (Next time, I may use canned black beans to sub for the chicken)
1/4 cup vegan “sour cream” (There are commercial products, but this was a homemade concoction of tofu blended with lemon juice, etc., similar to this recipe.)
About 1/2 cup chopped cilantro (to taste)
Optional garnish:
1/2 tomato, cut into thin wedges
1 small avocado, cut into thin wedges.
Lemon juice
Hot sauce

Measure and chop everything beforehand (except the avocado, since it will brown quickly). Heat the oil in a saucepan big enough to hold all the chips, and saute about 2/3 of the onions until they are browned. Add the salsa and broth, and bring to a rolling boil. Turn off the heat. Add the tortilla chips, and push them gently most of the way down into the liquid, though some will remain on top. Sprinkle on the “chicken” and about 2/3 of the “cheese.” Cover and let stand for three to four minutes. Use the time to peel and slice the avocado, and sprinkle the slices with lemon juice to prevent browning. Gently stir the chilaquiles to mix everything thoroughly.
To plate up, spoon a serving of chilaquiles in the center of a plate. Drizzle on the sour cream, and sprinkle with the remaining “cheese” and onions, and the cilantro. Then make a ring of alternating tomato and avocado slices around the chilaquiles. Season to taste with the hot sauce, admire and enjoy.

Friday, June 06, 2008

A universal salad

It’s not quite time for most of the bounty from local gardens to start pouring in (though I’ve been able to harvest some of my lettuce for salads recently), but I’ve been eagerly awaiting the time when the little green tomatoes on my plants are ready to be sliced into salads and sandwiches and the tiny zucchinis can be stir-fried or stuffed and baked.

Two garden staples in the South are tomatoes and cucumbers. It always seems as if someone at work has more of these than they can eat and brings in bags-full to share/force onto gardenless co-workers. When I was growing up in the North Carolina Foothills, we would often have a very simple, undressed salad of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden as a side dish. Some often-vinegary variation would inevitably show up among the covered dishes for the after-preaching potluck dinner at church on Sundays.

But it’s not just a dish of the American South. It shows up on Indian menus as Kachumber Salad. This is my favorite appetizer at Nawab—light and crisp, savory and sweet, with cilantro and lemon and other herbs I can’t identify. I’ve tried repeatedly to re-create it in my kitchen, using various recipes I’ve found online, but I have yet to really come close to the fabulous taste of Nawab’s.

This past weekend, I made a Persian version—they call it Salad Shiraz or Shirazi—from Robin Robertson’s Carb Conscious Vegetarian cookbook. It was very similar to kachumber salad, but as is usual, each culture often adds its own twist or variation to a dish—for this one, it was the addition of mint. (Of course, individual families can have their own versions, too.) Tomato-cucumber salad is apparently ubiquitous in Russia and can often contain sour cream. The Greek version—Agourodomata—uses oregano. It also shows up in menus in Indonesia (as Acar Ketimun), South Africa and Israel (Pareve), and I’m sure many other countries.

For all the world’s diversity and differences, it’s nice to get a reminder now and then that we also share many things in common—even if it’s just something as simple as salad ingredients.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Getting Cheezy

I spent an alarmingly large portion of my recent gift from Uncle SAM (a.k.a. the stimulus refund) ordering new vegan products to taste-test. I was particularly excited about a couple of vegan cheeses, mozzarella-flavored Teese from the Chicago Soydairy and mature white Cheddar-flavor Cheezly from Redwood Foods.

Teese has some fine qualities – good texture; a nice, mild flavor and an amazing ability to melt at normal oven temperatures. But .…

Many vegan cheeses have an unpleasant undertone – a faint taste and/or smell—which I think of it as “plastic-y.” A friend says he thinks it’s more like varnish; and I’ve also seen it described as being like “melted crayons.” Unfortunately, I detected a whiff of this in Teese. So despite its other good qualities, I wasn’t enthusiastic enough to order it by mail again. It wasn’t better than vegan cheeses available locally, such as Follow Your Heart.

Cheezly, though, is the best vegan cheese I’ve tasted so far. I can imagine eating it on its own, just “a slab or slice or chunk-a” Cheezly for a snack. And it made very good cheese toast one morning, melting and even bubbling a bit under the broiler. I will definitely order this again, and will be eager to try other flavors as they become available in the U.S.