Eat Your Veggies!

Buenos Aires – There’s a myth floating around out there that this city is unfriendly towards vegetarians. Maybe even to just those who LIKE vegetables. (In fact, on a recent local forum during a discussion of vegetarian restaurants I was referred to as “somehow a veggy fan, though not fundamentalist on it.” Somehow? Makes it seem like it’s an effort to like them. Such is life, I’ve always liked vegetables – I admit to there being some I like less than others, and when I was growing up (not that I’ve stopped), there were a few I wouldn’t eat if avoidable – but that was more an issue of canned, frozen, etc., as it turns out. But back to this myth. While I’m sure there are far more than this, I can only think of maybe half a dozen real vegetarian restaurants in New York City. Here, perhaps because it’s a common topic of conversation for tourists headed this way who have come to the conclusion that there’s nothing to eat here but steak, I know of probably two dozen. I haven’t eaten at them all, but eventually I imagine I will.

I also like cooking vegetables, and decided that for one of our Casa dinners, it would be vegetarian. As noted, not fundamentalist – I included dairy and eggs – but that fits the desires of most of the vegetarians I’ve run into here (as opposed to most of the vegetarians I personally know in New York who eat fish and, often, poultry – the common refrain being “anything without a face”… my response always being, “a steak doesn’t have a face”). Without further rambling, last night’s vegetarian dinner…

Trio of vegetable soupsAs anyone who’s been following along knows, I love to start meals with soup. “Of soup and love, the first is best. – old Spanish proverb (though some attribute it to Dr. Thomas Fuller, a late 17th/early 18th century British physician) And what’s better than soup? Three soups! At the 6:00 position, a beet soup, based on the one from James Peterson’s Splendid Soups (very possibly the finest book on soups out there), with my own twists – beets, onion, juniper berries, marjoram, vegetable stock, and sour cream; at 10:00, a radish soup – radishes, butter, milk, parsley, red onion, and lots of nutmeg; and at 2:00, a potato soup based on one that I once heard Diane Kennedy (author of several top drawer Mexican cookbooks) talk about, I normally make with potato and cantaloupe, but the latter aren’t in season – potatoes, asian pears, milk and cream, and chipotle peppers (smoked, dried jalapeños). I paired this with the Champaña Jotados Extra Brut sparkling wine from Mendoza.

CrumpetsI made crumpets. English muffins. They’re really easy. I’ll probably make them again because they were quite good. The recipe I used, not mine, makes about 4-6 crumpets, depending on the size of the ring molds you use. Perfect for a couple of people over breakfast, topped by one of those marmalades I’m experimenting with, or just some good butter. Why, you might ask, did I make crumpets? Go ahead, ask. It was for my McMuffins. Yes, I know that’s a trademarked name, but McDonald’s will just have to get over it.

Mushroom McMuffinsObviously, this is a very loose interpretation of a McMuffin, egg, bacon, sausage, or otherwise. I made something similar to this once before, a few years back, with a stack made of a commercial English muffin, a grilled portobello cap, some Asiago cheese, and a fried egg on top. It was good, but not great, and I wanted to improve on it. So, first, freshly made crumpets, split, with one half on the bottom of each bowl. Top those with a couple of “mock abalone” – made from oyster mushrooms sauteed in herbs – most of you probably weren’t reading this blog when I made those – check them out! Some sprinkled chopped parsley and grated parmesan (no Asiago to be found, though I’d bet that would be even better than this was), and, instead of a fried egg, a classic Japanese egg yolk sauce, tamago-no-moto – essentially a white miso flavored mayonnaise, but beaten with a wooden spoon rather than a whisk, which gives it a creamier texture (no, or few, air bubbles). The Familia Gascon Chardonnay 2004 was a great match with the richness of this dish.

Roasted cauliflower with walnut pestoContinuing in my passion for cauliflower, a much ignored vegetable, I took a page from New York chef Matt Weingarten, who used to make, more or less, this dish at a small restaurant called Porcupine. It’s closed now, I have no idea where he’s moved on to, but his cauliflower lives on! Slow roast portions of cauliflower – wrap them in foil with a little olive oil and salt, and then they spend 1½-2 hours in the oven at 250°F, until they’re tender. The sauce is a simple pesto made with walnuts and marjoram, and a bit of dried fruit reconstituted in simmering red wine vinegar gives a nice contrast on the palate. I may have to write a book about cauliflower… add one more project to the stack. I thought a fresh rosado would work best with this, so a bottle of Weinert Montfleury 2005 made from Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Gamay fit the bill.

Tofu and Batata sausagesVegetarian sausages are difficult. First, you have to decide if you’re trying to come up with a meat substitute, which I wasn’t. That comes with the need to imitate flavors and such, nutritional yeast is often a big component, which I don’t think tastes like meat at all, unless you’ve spent decades not eating meat and don’t really remember what it tastes like. I have a recipe I used to make for chicken and sweet potato sausages, and basically substituted tofu for the chicken and batatas (yams) for the sweet potatoes. The tofu needs to be firmed up a bit, and a trick for that is to freeze it, thaw it, and squeeze the water out of it – the process gives the tofu a sponge-like texture, which is much easier to work with when you want a bit of chew to it. It’s then pureed with the batatas (slow roasted with garlic), salt, a lot of black pepper, and a bit of cayenne pepper – more or less a merguez spice mixture. Then the mixture is wrapped up in plastic wrap to form it, chilled, poached, cooled, and then sauteed to order – click here for the process. The sauce is based on one from Jim Haller’s brilliant Blue Strawberry Cookbook, a rough puree of tomato, orange liqueur, melted butter, lemon juice, parsley, salt, and white pepper. Accompanied this with a medium weight red, the slightly spicy Sur de los Andes Bonarda 2005.

The Ultimate BananaI love banana desserts (also lemon desserts), and this one is something I’ve been making for years. I think it works, and no one has ever objected, including people who don’t normally like banana desserts. It’s a whole wheat and maple syrup banana-walnut bread (I think the original inspiration came from The Deaf Smith Country Cookbook), but rather than in a loaf pan, I make it like it’s a cake. It’s served warm, with a simple banana sorbet (equal parts by volume of water, sugar, and mashed banana), and topped with a sauce made of melted bitter chocolate, butter, and a pinch of habanero chili powder to give it a subtle kick on the finish. With the sweetness of the cake and sorbet, and the temperature differences, most folk don’t pick it up as a spicy chili (in fact, the spiciest chili powder out there – you can also use a chopped fresh habanero and just let it infuse the melted butter for about 10 minutes and then strain it out), but they know there’s something different going on!

So that’s one take on a vegetarian dinner, with more to come in the future!

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6 thoughts on “Eat Your Veggies!

  1. […] One of the things I know about putting together a last minute dinner is that you don’t have time to make sure you have every little item you might need. So the best thing to do, is see what you already have on hand, get those all lined up, and then just run out and shop for the, hopefully, few things that you don’t. I’m a big fan of risottos and pastas, and so is my friend. Initially I was thinking about making the risotto cakes that I made for our Italian dinner, but those take a significant amount of time to prepare, plus we wanted a lighter dinner, so I eliminated the frying and went with just making a risotto on site. That meant prepping everything in advance so that all that was left was the half hour or so to cook the risotto just before dinner. As luck would have it, I was cooking chicken for dinner Monday, and I’d already tossed the carcass into a pot with some vegetables to make chicken stock; I had picked up a bag of shiitake mushrooms in chinatown over the weekend; I had a bag of radish greens left from making radish soup on Friday; and I had a box of Arborio rice. Shiitake and radish greens risotto was, well, obvious! […]

  2. […] Initially I had thought about making cheese soufflés for this course. I had this vision of an elegant presentation, and at the table just breaking the top of the crust of the soufflé and spooning in a sauce. But as the day approached I realized that trying to get a dozen soufflés to come out of the oven all at once, get them served while still puffed, and either having to do the whole breaking and spooning myself or train Henry in how to do something like that, was more than I could envision doing in the middle of everything else. So I changed to a cheese custard, specifically Gruyère cheese – a simple baked custard of grated cheese, milk, whole eggs, salt, paprika, and chopped scallions. I wanted to keep it simple both in the process, but also in flavor, since the idea was to have the sauce’s flavors shine through. I thought, and it turned out rightly so, that it would be a great foil for the tomato and triple sec (orange liqueur) sauce that I’ve experimented with a few times recently as a topping for various fish. For service, I spooned the sauce over the already baked custards and warmed the dishes in the oven, then sprinkled it with a little paprika. Last night’s group included a couple of ravenously hungry folk, and before I got a chance to say anything, as Henry was serving, there were cries of surprise as folks dug in to what they thought was a small bowl of soup. They loved it, and the flavors worked beautifully. […]

  3. […] second night, decided to focus on the radishes – made a cream of radish soup I’ve made before, and then used the radish greens to make a completely different soup – sauteed in butter, […]

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