nimono from just bento

I've used recipes from Just Bento in this blog before (like my post about the peanut-curry furikake recipe), and I also love the sister site (run by the same person, Makiko Itoh), Just Hungry. Itoh always marks when a recipe is vegan, and many of the non-vegan recipes on the site can be adapted easily.

This week I used her guide on how to make Nimono (Japanese "simmered dish"), and to go with it, used her guide on pickling sauces for quick-pickled veggies to pickle some radish and cucumbers on the side.

The nimono contains basically what I veggies I had to use up: sweet potatoes, black soy beans, radish greens, some celery, and the last of last year's yield of butternut squash. It was not very traditional (I pretty much think that being vegan means you go off-book when it comes to traditional Japanese food anyway), but was delicious! And, for the record, I chose the ama-zu sauce for the pickled veggies, which was ama-zing!

I just groaned out loud at my own pun, which is probably a bad sign.

there are always pickles in my fridge

No regular reader of this blog will be surprised by the fact that I love pickles. Our CSA gave us a ridiculous amount of cucumbers this year, and the vast majority of them went straight into brine, just so I could have pickles throughout the year month week. (The husband and I eat pickles at an alarming rate.) There were so many pickles to be had that even now, more than a month after cucumber season has ended, we still even have some pickles left!

In the big jar on the left, Bread and Butter Pickles from Recipe Girl. These were so good this is half of a double batch--and this double batch was the second time I'd made them this summer! The first time I made them, they were good, but felt like they were missing something: cloves. I added about 1/2 tsp of cloves to the recipe the second time I made it. If you make these pickles, DO THAT. It really adds an extra "oomph" to the tastiness. Thinly sliced onions make such a great addition to pickles, I can't believe more recipes don't include them.

In the middle, Garlic-Dill pickles from the Kitchn. I had enough to make 3 jars of this, and gave away one as a gift. These were a little saltier than I would have liked, but the garlic flavor is nice and strong. I'd make them again, but next time I might cut down on the salt.

Finally, on the far right is something to do with leftover pickle brine: use it to pickle more things! Like... Pickled Carrots! The jar is cloudy from condensation; the brine is the same clear yellow as the Bread and Butter pickles. I simply julienned some carrots and stuck them in the brine. They needed to soak longer than if I'd blanched them first, and they were always quite crispy, but they absorbed just the right amount of flavor.

For the record, I only ever make refrigerator pickles; I never can them. But I've been thinking of trying my hand at canning this fall, in preparation for making edible holiday gifts. I've been doing some preliminary research, but are there any canners out there with advice for someone new to canning (who doesn't want to buy a whole huge set of equpiment)?

Hershey Park!

The fiance and some friends and I like to travel to one theme park per summer for some prime rollercoaster riding. This year, the trip was to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania.

I'm not a big fan of candy, so it wasn't a magical wonderland of sweets for me, but I was surprised by how much of Hershey Park is doable for vegans. In the candy category, Jolly Ranchers and Twizzlers and I think a couple other iconic Hershey candies are vegan, so they've got you covered if you're into the whole candy thing.

Beyond candy, the biggest reason to go to Hershey Park for me is the ROLLER COASTERS! They have eleven. The fiance and I made it to ten of them, but opted out of the one where people can squirt you with water jets as you go.

Any sort of trip leaves me anxiously wondering "What will I eat?" Hershey Park has a strict "no outside food" policy, so I was a little worried about finding actual food for myself there at first. But the Hershey Park website is a vegan/allergic person's dream come true. On their "Food" page, they list the ingredients for all of the food served in the park. Which meant, from a brief visit to the website, that I knew exactly what I would be able to eat, from meals to snacks to vending carts. (Especially exciting: chocolate-dipped bananas, pretzels, sugar-glazed nuts, and kettlecorn.)

With the help of their website, eating vegan at Hershey Park is pretty easy-- you'll end up with a decent selection of places to eat. Being vegan and nightshade-free, however, you have pretty limited options. Koshermart is your best bet--it's a kosher food stand that serves falafel and some other vegan (as well as non-vegan) fare. It looked okay on the website, with the exception of "spices" in some of the foods, which can contain nightshades. I emailed Hershey Park's to ask about it, very quickly received an email from the food concessions manager promising to look into the "spices" for me! Within a few days, he had talked to the vendor that provides that food and could assure me that there are no nightshades in the "spices" I'd asked about. But the vendor didn't tell him what the spices were exactly, and he was concerned it might not be a good enough answer for me, so he offered to write me a letter of exemption allowing me to bring food into the park. He was so nice! I told him I would be fine the falafel, thanks. The next day he emailed me back because he remembered I said I'd be there "on the weekend," and wanted to make sure I knew Koshermart is closed on Saturdays--he was worried I would go on Saturday and end up with nothing to eat. (My friends and I went to the park on Sunday to avoid lines, so no problem.) The level of attention, concern, and willingness to work with me that I received from Hershey Park staff members even before my arrival made for really safe and happy eating when I did get there.

Falafel! They give you a lot of litle ones--one of my friends on the trip called them "falafel tots." The pita bread was vaguely sweet, which made it unexpectedly delicious. The tahini "sauce" is actually almost as firm as hummus--that's the ball on top of the pickle slices. It was tastier than it looked. It wasn't a gourmet meal or anything, but it was good. And I knew I wouldn't be poisoned by my meal!

The menu claimed they only sold half-pickles, but they gave me A HUGE WHOLE ONE. Yessss.

So, the moral of this story is that with a small amount of advance research on the Hershey Park website, a vegan, even one with unusual food allergies, can eat there easily. And if you have any questions or concerns about the food, the employees seem really committed to helping you work something out.

Also, the rollercoasters are great.

"Food from Literature" is on summer break. Here are some pickles!

Last month I promised you two "Food From Literature" posts in June... and I have not followed through. While I've been doing a lot of reading, the heat has meant that i haven't been as interested in trying new, long-cooking recipes. I've felt so guilty about falling behind on that, though, that I got stressed out and stayed away from my blog altogether.

And then I realized: it's summer! There is no reason to be stressed, nor is there any strong argument for sitting in front of my computer typing blog entries when I could be enjoying the weather! Plus, this time of year is when students take breaks from academics--so I am declaring a summer hiatus of "Food From Literature." We will resume in the fall! In the meantime, I won't feel guilty for post content/lack thereof.

I think I write about pickled vegetables a lot, but I love them. I love them so much that when my parents accidentally ordered a case of half-gallon jars of dill pickles for their natural food store, they gave two to me and the boyfriend, and it took us surprisingly little time to go through them.

One half-gallon jar of pickles.

Once, when I was making the Beer Battered Tofu recipe from Vegan Brunch,, I had some leftover batter. I don't like throwing away food if I can help it, so I looked around the kitchen for what else I could batter and fry. And then it hit me: PICKLES.

They're on the left; the tofu is on the right. Deep-fried pickles are a special treat, obviously, but ohhhhhh man if you have the opportunity to try them, you should.

I love summer, and I love almost everything that comes with it. (The one exception being how hot our apartment gets. But I'd rather be hot than cold, so it's tolerable.) One thing I'm really looking forward to this summer is when the farmer's market starts selling local watermelons! I love watermelon, and I recently ran out of my stash of Citrus-and-Spice Pickled Watermelon Rind. I made them two summers ago, and as you can see, I had quite a few:

And this was after I halved the recipe! I got the recipe from Bryant Terry's Vegan Soul Kitchen, and I LOVED it. The pickles don't taste like watermelon, but the syrupy, spicy brine (spiced with cloves) does taste like sweet, down-home pickles my elderly Scottish and Irish great-aunts used to make and bring to family events. Basically, they taste like summer, and like childhood. I love Bryant Terry's book, but if you can't get it, you can find the recipe here.

Whew, and now onto July! Maybe our hot apartment isn't the one thing I dislike about summer; I also dislike how quickly it goes by!

nightshade-free kimchi

I really love Korean food. Let me rephrase that: I really loved Korean food before I developed an intolerance for nightshades and could no longer eat many of my favorite Korean dishes. It's possible (and easy) to find nightshade-free vegan Korean food (like tofu bi bim bap, my favorite dish to order at Korean places), but I really miss the pungent, spicy hot sauces and condiments characteristic of Korean cuisine. In particular, I miss kimchi.

If you've had kimchi before, I don't need to explain; you understand how sad it is not to be able to have it. If you haven't had kimchi before, it's a standard--no, the standard Korean condiment or side dish. It is very spicy fermented/pickled cabbage, with other vegetables and seasonings thrown in. While many restaurants' kimchi has fish ingredients in it, all the Korean places I've been to have also had fish-free kimchi if you ask for it specifically. However, the point of kimchi is to be spicy, so while it can be easy to get vegan kimchi, nightshade-free kimchi has been a longtime unfulfilled fantasy of mine.

Well, readers, it is a fantasy NO LONGER! It is A REALITY. I am seriously excited about this, if you can't tell from all those capital letters. This recipe has been years in the making. Over the last three (almost four!) years, I've scoured cookbooks and the internet for dozens of kimchi recipes, and took a little from here, a little from there, picked and chose the methods I thought would work best, experimented with fermenting and pickling other foods, and brainstormed. When a big old napa cabbage came in my CSA order a couple weeks ago, I knew it was time.

Kimchi is very easy to make, but it sounds intimidating because 1.) it takes a lot of time, and 2.) you ferment stuff. Do not let this intimidate you! (It intimidated me, which is part of why it took me years to actually make some.) If you can have nightshades, feel free to add a diced hot pepper or two. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how spicy my nightshade-free version is, though! Raw garlic, ginger, scallions, and generous sprinklings of sichuan and black pepper give this version enough heat that even my pour-hot-sauce-on-everything boyfriend thought it had a good kick. We had some with dinner last night and my mouth burned a little and I was halfway through a spontaneous happy dance before I even registered I was dancing. That's how good kimchi is. And it's BACK IN MY LIFE.

Blog readers, I present to you my baby. Some notes before you get started:

1. You don't need to have a large mason jar to make it, but you do want a large glass sealable container of some sort.
2. Because you're fermenting things here, you're going to want to sterilizer said glass container. You can do this by submerging it in boiling water for 10 seconds.
3. Use the freshest ingredients you can. Your tastebuds and stomach will thank you.
4. Making the kimchi is a two-day process, then you store it for 4 days, so if you want a meal with kimchi, you'll have to plan ahead!

Vegan Nightshade-Free Kimchi
Makes a lot of servings.

1 large napa cabbage
salt
4-5 scallions (I used a whole bunch but found this to be too many; I'd say half a bunch, which I estimate to be 4-5, will be best)
6 cloves of garlic
2-inch chunk or a little larger of ginger
2 (small) carrots or 1 large one
black pepper, and sichuan pepper, if you can get it, ground

Get a large bowl and fill it with very salty water--I'd say 1/2 cup of salt for 4-6 cups of water. Dissolve the salt in the water.

Wash your cabbage well, then chop into 2-inch chunks. Put the cabbage into the salt water. To stop it from floating, put a plate on top of it in the bowl,, then put something heavy on top of the plate. Like so:

Let this sit at room temperature for at least 12 hours. (I did it in the evening, then came back to it the next day after work.) Then drain the cabbage, but save some of the brine.

Rinse the cabbage really well under cold water.

If you're like me, you'll be shocked at how much it reduced. Now get all your other ingredients.

Grate the carrots into a large bowl, preferably glass. Then chop up the garlic and ginger as tiny as you can. A garlic crusher might be good in this situation if you have one (I don't), as would a ginger grater. Chop the scallions however you like; I did inch-long segments, split down the middle, but I think I'll do smaller next time.

To these ingredients, generously add freshly-ground black and sichuan pepper. Then add the napa cabbage, and mix it all up really well. It's easiest to do with your hands. This is kimchi! Or it's going to be soon. Put it into your glass container.

REALLY pack it in there. It's going to seem like it can't fit, but it can! There will be some juice in the jar; if it isn't enough to cover the top of the kimchi, add enough brine just to cover the top.

Now this part that sounds tricky, but isn't really. Because everything's fermenting, any bits of vegetable that are floating above the liquid could end up with mold on them, so you want everything to be submerged. Easier said than done though, right? A simple way to keep things from being exposed to air is to stuff a ziplock bag in on top of the kimchi. Fill the ziplock bag with water until the water-filled ziplock bag fills the empty space in the kimchi jar. Fold the sides of the plastic bag over the sides of the glass container, and close the lid, around the plastic bag.

Voila! Refrigerate for 4-6 days. If your place is cool, you can leave it in a cool, dark place out for a day first, to speed along fermentation, but since it's June in Boston, that was not an option for me.

After 4-6 days, remove the zip lock bag and enjoy!

Kimchi with tofu fishsticks (the boyfriend says I make this dish more often than any other. If this is a bad thing, I don't want to be good), wasabi sauce, greens, and miso-sesame mashed sweet potatoes.

Kimchi is good as a side for many Asian-themed meals. It is also delicious as a topping for plain rice, a last minute stir-in for stir-fries, over noodles, and in soups and stews.

spring is here! and so are radishes

It finally feels like spring in Boston! The weather is warm, we've been seeing the sun almost every day, and trees and gardens are bursting with beautiful, fragrant flowers. My allergies have started acting up, but it is WORTH IT. This weekend, for example, the boyfriend and I just sat in the park. Without coats! I love being able to see the sun again.

Fritz loves it too! He spends quite a while each morning basking in the sun, rolling around to soak up as much as he can. The other cats like it okay, but they are not as sun-obsessed as me and Fritz.

As if the sun, flowers, and allergies weren't enough of a sign of spring's arrival, radishes have been showing up at our co-op! Until a year or two ago, I thought I didn't care about radishes. I had only ever had them sliced over salads, and they always seemed fine, but not anything to seek out or take much interest in. But at the first hint of spring they show up in the markets, and they are so cute and fresh and vibrant at a time when most of the world is gray that I cannot help but think there's something special about them!

The trick with radishes is to get them fresh; they are crisp and moist and have a delicate, peppery flavor. The older they get, the "woodier" they get--and, I JUST discovered, they get spicier as they get older, too. So try to use the freshest possible radishes for the following recipes.

First, the classic French snack: Radish and butter sandwiches!

I made a compound butter by mixing a stick of Earth Balance with a couple Tbsps of chopped tarragon, which I think of as being a very French herb; the tarragon plays off the flavor of the radishes well. Anyway, a layer of compound butter, a layer of pea shoots (also something widely available in spring), and a layer of thinly sliced radishes. For bread, you don't want something with too hearty a flavor, since you're working with delicate flavors and textures. While I normally try to eat mostly whole grains, a white bread is probably better here. (I think I used a sourdough bread above.)

The sandwich recipe works best with very fresh radishes. But if you accidentally leave your radishes in the fridge too long and they start to get a little spicy, or you're worried they might be getting old, you can always pickle them!

I got this recipe for pickled radishes here, and I love it! It's called "Bread-and-Butter Radishes," but they aren't quite as sweet as the bread-and-butter pickles you might buy to put on sandwiches. In a good way! I went a little scant on the sugar, too. The recipe is best with fresh radishes, but it is very forgiving.

The brine wasn't quite enough to cover the radishes, at least in the jar I used, so I watered it down a little, but I wish I hadn't--the brine breaks down the radishes enough that they would've fit fine after a little while.

A warning: these smell TERRIBLE. They smell like septic. You will open the jar and think something died in there, or worse. But they don't taste like that! It's just something that happens with radishes when they break down a little. (My friend Michael, who runs the dazed and infused blog, has experienced the same thing when he's done radish infusions [like the daikon-infused vodka here].) So if you go to open your pickled radishes and you think you smell a dumpster, BRAVE ON, FRIENDS. Because the radishes themselves taste amazing, and so does the brine--I've been mixing it with nutritional yeast and vegenaise for a quick, tasty salad dressing.

The pickles are good as sides for any meal, or as toppings for salads, or on top of sandwiches, like below:

This is a sweet-potato-and-bulgur veggie burger recipe I adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe. Note the delicious and pretty pink pickles! Also the honking dill pickle on the side. I kind of love pickles.

The boyfriend's burger, with hot sauce.

So those are my two favorite radish recipes, but there are a couple others I plan to try, all from Martha Stewart (I am aware this should embarrass me, but I am not ashamed):
Sauteed Radishes.
Radish butter.
Glazed Radishes.
If you try any of them first, let me know how they are!

gasp!

I just realized that as of yesterday I have had this blog for a year. Man, I missed my own anniversary! if I'd thought ahead I could've done a commemorative post, but now, on the spot, I can't think of something to post that is representative of my first year's attempts at vegan blogging.

What represents this blog, I thought? Something pretty and classy? Something innovative and interesting? Something complex? Something bizarre and/or frightening? Something with chickens or carved, glowing turnips?

No, I thought. This will have to be a pictureless post. And then suddenly, it hit me. They're a little weird. They're a little sweet, a little salty. They are interesting. And I love them! They are... PICKLES.
But not just any pickles! Exciting pickles from the nearby Babushka Deli. The jar on the left is pickled celery (which is just celery, salt, sugar, and vinegar), and on the right, pickled summer squash (patty pans), pictured in front.

So happy 1 year, everyone. Thank you very much for reading my blog, and I hope you continue to do so!