taro root!

My conference went well, and March disappeared without another blog post. April is also looking busy, what with a gig last weekend (maybe if you're lucky, I'll post a picture of me playing!) and approximately a MILLION pages' worth of papers due by the first week of May... But I will try to post at least twice this month. As usual (the trying, not the post count).

I mostly know taro root as one of two things: a crossword puzzle answer for "Hawaiian vegetable" or as a purply chip in a bag of terra chips. But I see them (and purple-colored taro flavored desserts) whenever I go to the Super 88 Market (Asian market), and I always think "Someday I am going to buy one." I actually bought one once and then didn't use it in time... it molded in my fridge. Ashamed at wasting a taro root, the next time I bought one, I brought it home and used it RIGHT AWAY.

I washed it, peeled it and chopped it into chunks. It has a sort of sticky, creamy starchiness to it, as you can see from the knife. And it smelled a little weirder than I thought it would.

But I pressed bravely on! I boiled the chunks for 30ish minutes until soft, drained them and mashed them with some garlic powder and olive oil. The resulting mashed taro root was DELICIOUS, gorgeous (lavender!) and surprisingly similar to my mother's garlic mashed potatoes.
I served half of it mashed, just like that (though when reheating leftovers, I ended up adding a bit of soymilk), and used the rest to make:
TARO PATTIES

1 large adult taro root (about the size of a coconut), or several (6?) baby taro roots
1 clove garlic, or 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
4-5 Tbsp olive oil (divided)
1 tsp dried herb(s) of your choice (optional, for additional flavor, but the taro and garlic are good enough on their own)
cornmeal or flour for dredging (optional, but gives patties a crunchier outside)

Peel taro root, chop it into chunks, and boil in lightly salted water until soft (20-30 mins, depending on size of chunks). Drain, then mash with the salt, garlic powder, 2 Tbsp of the olive oil, and herbs if using. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Shape the taro root into patties. If using the cornmeal or flour, dredge each side of each patty in it before placing it into the skillet. If NOT using cornmeal or flour, make sure the oil is hot before you put the patties in the pan, or they will stick. Cook 3-5 minutes on each side, adding a bit of extra oil for each batch (the patties, particularly if they have a coating, will soak up oil). A large taro root makes 8-12 patties, depending on how big you shape them.

Serve on buns or by themselves, with ketchup or chutney.

a garden entry (aka a couple ideas for a glut of zucchini)

This is my garden:
It is a basil plant whom I have named Gary Snyder (I name food plants after literary figures). Gary and I have been cooking together for a while now, and I find him to be quite impressive.

But I was lucky to be able to visit my family's homestead in Upstate NY, where my father has raised a much fuller, organic, composte-fed garden:
Parsley, Basil (don't be jealous Gary Snyder), Chard!
Tomatoes!
Potatoes!
Butternut squash!
Buttercup squash!
Broccoli
Wheat!
And oh, wait, what's below all this green stuff...?
Yellow Squash!
And of course, zucchini. That's my father, holding his biggest find yet. His garden makes me wish I had a lawn. Carrying any/all of these things on the train home to boston would've been impossible, but the thought of that zucchini made me decide to work (store-bought) zucchini into every recipe I've made lately, from
a simple chick pea pasta
to (even simpler) veggies covered in peanut sauce (my default "healthy" snack [I make an approximate 2:1 ratio of sauce to veggies])
to Heidi Swanson's Lemon Chick Pea Stir Fry (can you tell I've also had quite a bit of chick peas around lately?).

BUT the [vegan]creme-de-la-creme of zucchini-containing recipes I made lately were my Veggie Gyoza - aka Potstickers!
30-40 dumpling wrappers (thanks, Super 88 Market!)

1 box silken tofu (Mori-Nu, for example)
1 small zucchini, grated
1 small carrot, grated
2-3 scallions, finely chopped
1/2 cup spinach, chopped or shredded (optional)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1-inch knob ginger, minced
2-3 Tbsp sesame oil
2 Tbsp rice vinegar or 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 Cup say sauce/tamari
salt and pepper
In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients (except the wrappers) and stir savagely until it is one big mush.
Take a wrapper.
Put on 1-2 Tbsp of the filling.
Wet the edges of the wrapper with a bit of water. Crease one side of the wrapper so it bunches nicely. Repeat until you run out of filling. At this point, you have three options: 1.) freeze the potstickers for later use. 2.) Steam the potstickers for 10 minutes, or 3.) the more-work-but-more-tasty way: lightly oil a pan and fry the postickers, flat side down, no stirring, on medium-high heat for 5-10 minutes, or until slightly browned. Pour 1/4 cup water into the pan, cover it quickly, and cook for 5 minutes, until all the liquid has turned to steam. Serve with a 2:1 mixture of soy sauce and vinegar, with a touch of mirin/sugar (if you like).

I froze about a bazillion of these when I made them, so I'm sure you'll see them again.

And let's be honest, you are all just reading this far because you were hoping for a chicken update. Fear not! The chickens are doing well. The pullets are now full grown, grumpy hens:
And the rooster and old chickens are doing well, though apparently the rooster may have some chickeny version of pneumonia. Poor fellow!
I'll be visiting NY again sometime this month; I'll try to refrain from too much chicken news, but I'll let you know if Rooster's pneumonia clears up.

ALSO, in good news, this whole "quitting the 9-5 to go back to school" thing means I will probably have a little more time to update this blog! Hopefully we'll be back to once a week starting this month.

adventure food!

Most of the food I eat is organic. Most of my shopping, therefore, is done at places like Whole Foods (or my parents' natural food store in upstate NY). But once in a while I can't resist checking out the pakistani or the mexican or the turkish or the brazilian grocery stores in my area. We never had so many food options in upstate NY! One of my favorite places to get groceries from other countries is super 88 market. Their produce section is exciting - where else will I see bitter melons or fresh sugar cane or young coconut? - and their refrigerated section features soy products I never knew existed. A lot of them I don't buy because they have MSG, but the MSG-free ones sometimes make it home with me:
Soy sausage, which is actually just oddly-shaped tofu with no flavor (pictured here with a spice rub, but more attractive in the previous entry as a roasted ham).
Soy steak, which was mildly flavored with five spice powder and soy sauce (good in salad).
And Soy Chew, which I had to buy for its name.

There was also the sweet-and-sour soy chew, which I bought and did not photograph because it was 1.) ugly (just brown) and 2.) gross. I wanted to like it. It didn't work. And they have fried tofu, which is just deep-fried tofu. It's a little too oily to eat straight (I have to wring it out in a few napkins first), but it has a great texture. The nicest thing is that this brand says their soy is non-gmo. So not organic, but not the worst option.

Anyway, one of my most exciting produce finds there was Lotus Root! I've used dried lotus root, but I wanted to work with the real thing:
It's adorable, no? It's quite chewy, and boiling it, the smell reminded me of corn. The taste was sorta like a cross between water chestnuts and bamboo shoots. Maybe a little corn-esque, too. I liked it.

Christina Pirello has a recipe for stuffed lotus root in her Cooking with Whole Foods. I tried making it and I failed. Stuffing a lotus root is hard, messy work, because there are so many chambers. So for those of us who would like lotus root in a simpler, potato-salady form:

Unstuffed Lotus Root Salad
(serves 4 as a side)
1 pound lotus root (two lotus roots)
1/3 Cup frozen corn
1/3 Cup peas
2 Tbsp almond butter (or other nut butter. not peanut, though)
2 Tbsp miso (milder's better)

Peel the lotus root. Half it lengthwise, then slice fairly thinly (1/4 inch pieces). Heat a medium-sized pot with of water to a boil, then add the lotus root. Boil for 15 minutes, until tender. Add the corn and peas in the last few minutes of cooking.

While the lotus root is boiling away, stir the almond butter and miso together in a large bowl. Add 1/4-1/3 cup of the boiling water from the lotus-root pot to the miso mixture and stir some more until it makes a nice sauce.

Drain the lotus root and veggies. Add to miso mixture, stir until all of the lotus root is coated. Chill in fridge for 30 minutes (stir occasionally to make sure the sauce doesn't sink back to the bottom) to a day for the flavors to set.

Salty but delicious! Very good with or on greens.

(These are not halved or sliced, so they took longer than 15 minutes. But you get the idea.)

Finally, these have nothing to do with exciting food purchases, but I took this picture of organic plums from my parents' store months ago, and only just found it while transferring some pictures from my old computer.
They're so pretty they're practicaly obscene. For some reason I never remember liking plums, nectarines, or peaches, but then I eat one and remember THEY ARE DELICIOUS.

monochrome meals

AND WE'RE BACK! I have a shiny new laptop, a mac (yay for apples! now my computer reminds me of produce!), and I will be back to posting twice a week. Thanks for sticking with me!

how do I love parsnips? let me count the ways.
one... two... three.

What you are looking at above is my fondness for bizarre-looking produce. Organic Parsnips. I went to reach for one (they are supposed to look like the little guy on the right; he is my "control" parsnip) in the parsnip basket at whole foods - and there was that strange pants-looking one! And directly underneath him: THE MONSTER. I couldn't just leave them in the basket: the next person to buy parsnips might not appreciate them! so they came home.
That's about a quarter of the monster, there, MAYBE half, pan-fried in a small amount of earth balance, for saturday's brunch:
with a banana wheat germ muffin (from veganomicon), and peanut butter and pineapples. An intentionally monochrome morning.

As you may have guessed from my entirely green entry back there, I love playing with colors and food. I've been on an orange-and-yellow kick lately:
cauliflower pakora (battered and fried cauliflower, with a homemade peanut sauce), recipe from vegan planet.

pumpkin ziti bake with homemade sage breadcrumbs and cashew ricotta from the veganomicon. This was realllly tasty, especiall the cashew ricotta, a lot of which I ate before putting it into the recipe because I wanted to taste it... and couldn't stop tasting. I didn't actually have a can of pumpkin, but I didn't know that until I had put together most of the other ingredients, so I used a can of butternut squash puree (another weirdness... who has a can of squash puree but not pumpkin?! me, apparently).

Roasted butternut squash risotto. With brown rice. I made it up, but I'm not sharing a recipe because I'm not entirely content with it yet.

and a roasted tofu "ham" with carrots, pineapple and corn.

It is round because I bought a tube of tofu (I know, weird, that's why I had to do it) at super 88 market a while ago, Yours won't look exactly like this (I was also a bit short on pineapple because I kept snacking on it while I was cooking), but the recipe bears repeating!

Roasted Tofu Ham
(technically should serve 3-4 people, if you follow a package of tofu's serving size, but who does that? So it serves two.)

1 block extra-firm tofu
2 Tbsp nut butter (NO PEANUT! the taste would be too distinctive. I used macadamia, but cashew, tahini, or almond butter would work)
2 Tbsp tamari (or more to taste. ham is supposed to be salty!)
1/4 cup pineapple juice
4 slices pineapple
3-4 cloves (optional)

chopped carrots or other veggies (optional)

Preheat the oven to 425. Drain and press the tofu to get out all excess water. Cut diagonal lines across the top of the tofu in a criss-cross pattern, cuting at least halfway into the block (but not all the way to the bottom). Place the tofu in a baking dish.

Stir together the nut butter, tamari and pineapple juice. Once well mixed, spoon over the tofu, making SURE to get it into all the crevices from the criss-crossing (you can pretend you're giada and grope your food [almost] inappropriately to make sure you're really getting it into the tofu). There should be some extra liquid in the bottom of the baking dish: if not, add a splash more pineapple juice and tamari.

Overlap pineapple rings on top of the tofu, and stick optional cloves in the center of the pineapple circles. Place optional chopped veggies around the sides of the roast.

COVER with foil/a lid and bake for half an hour. Remove from oven, take off cover, use a spoon to stir the veggies/spoon some of the liquid over the tofu. Return to oven, bake uncovered for another half hour, until golden brown.

I've never had liquid smoke but I think a drop or two of it in the tamari/nut butter would be really effective.

less strange fruit

for breakfast yesterday, I had a dragonfruit!

These BRIGHT PINK, user-friendly fruits are so photogenic!

I'd never had a dragonfruit before - this little guy was another adventure in super 88 produce. The texture and taste resemble kiwi. I should've let it ripen longer - some parts weren't as sweet as others- but I couldn't resist.

And for lunch, some tasty leftovers - cold sesame noodle salad. I improvised a big batch of it for a boston vegan association get-together the night before.

The purple noodles are actually cooked black rice noodles:



Cold Sesame Noodle Salad

Enough Rice Noodles for 4 people
4 Tbsp Toast Sesame oil, divided
1 carrot, cut into matchsticks
2 Tbsp Tamari or soy sauce (more to taste)
1/2 cup Edamame, shelled
1 cup Bean Sprouts
1 Tbsp Toasted Sesame Seeds*
1-2 Tbsp green onion, chopped

Cook Rice Noodles in boiling water until al dente. Drain, rinse with cold water, stir in 1 Tbsp sesame oil to prevent sticking.

In a small pan, saute carrots in 1 Tbsp sesame oil over medium until just tender.

In a large bowl, combine noodles, carrots, edamame, tamari, and the remaining 1 Tbsp sesame oil. Add bean sprouts only if/when everything else has cooled, then garnish with sesame seeds and green onion. Stick in the fridge until cooled.

*To toast Sesame Seeds:
Put sesame seeds, dry, in a pan over low heat. Shake it around from time to time to make sure they turn over. Remove from heat when VERY LIGHTLY browned. Pale is better than dark - they continue toasting after you've removed them from the heat due to the oils inside. ***WATCH THEM CAREFULLY: they burn really easily, and once they've burned - ew.

and in durian-related news: the majority of things in the freezer either have a faint taste or smell like durian. Some, both. It's the fruit that keeps on giving.

Culinary Adventures

If you remember from my last post, roomie michele and I picked up a bunch of random things from super 88 market. One of which was a Durian:

We saw some in the frozen section and, after a too-friendly guy came up and told us all about how durians taste and smell like a sort of soft cheese, and that they were an acquired taste, we decided to take this five-pound, spiky (painfully so!) monster home with us.

As it was frozen, we left it on the coffee table overnight. When we woke, the whole apartment had a sort of odd, trash-like smell. Like a rotten melon. Our durian had thawed!

We brought it to the kitchen, laid down some newspapers, and took turns attacking it with a large knife.

It's surprisingly easy to cut, once you can get a grip on it. And we laid it upen to find the edible parts looking remarkably like fetuses, or livers, or something I definitely don't eat:

And I haven't mentioned the smell. The once tolerable trash/rotten melon smell had grown stronger. It's a rather indescribable odor, but I'll put my creative-writing-major skills to work here: imagine, if you will, hollowing out a honey dew, stuffing it with sliced onions, then leaving it to rot for a week. Sprinkle with sulphur and you have the smell of durian. The edible part is the fleshy seed coating, so you have to pick around the seed.

This fruit is obscene. The texture is appalling, too. Websites that list it as a delicacy call it "custardy." I would say it's closer to thick snot.

We had two bowls full of durian. We tasted it. IT WAS DISGUSTING. Apparently, there are a few different varieties, and only one can be shipped out of Southeast Asia, home of the durian. And since they smell so terrible when thawed, super 88 market sells them frozen. So there's no way of knowing whether you're getting a good durian or not - some websites I read just now mentioned that there are some unsavory sulphury ones that make you burp a lot - that'd be our little darling here!

Maybe there are tasty durians out there, but even under the sulphury taste, the flavor was still reminiscent of onion-stuffed honeydew. Michele and I realized we couldn't possibly eat this thing, so we removed the seeds and scooped what was left into tupperware to freeze.

EW. But we both believe this terrible thing can be saved. I, for example, was thinking that if we blend it with other vegetables and use it as a sandwich spread, it would not be very unlike a "veggie and chive"-flavored cream cheese. Michele was not convinced.

Anyway it'll be a while before we take it out of the freezer - it took 2-3 hours with our windows wide open to get that terrible stench out of our apartment.

After a long walk outside the stinky apartment, I got my appetite back, so I made myself a thai dinner (in honor of the durian... but durian-free):

baked rama tofu and fresh spring rolls! (with dipping sauce)

I made my own sauces, but next time I'm going to just use peanut sauce (for the tofu) from a jar. Faster. The dipping sauce is mirin, rice vinegar, and tamari.

Spring roll ingredients: snap peas, bean sprouts, basil, grated carrots and daikon radish.

The daikon was a little overpowering, but enough sauce helped drown it.

Moral of this story: durians are gross.