vegan supper club 2: indian edition

VSC2: after months of preparation and a trial run, VSC2 finally transpired and what came with it was delicious!

We had only 6 guests and therefore fewer courses than first imagined, but all the right ones appeared. First up, vegan samosas with homemade dough, stuffed with potatoes and peas and carrots, and accompanied by a homemade tamarind sauce. Wowza!










Next course was mine: sweet potato koftas and indian salad. Here's how it went: GREEN GRAVY, first off. Wha? That's a "gravy" made of peas and cilantro and green pepper and garlic.

Last time I made it, peppercorns were accidentally substituted for mustard seeds. Oops! Mustard seeds are a lot different, let me tell you! The cool thing about mustard seeds is that they blow up; you need to keep a lid on it, or you can have a little shower of boiling hot oil seeds hit your face... But if performed correctly, toasting mustard seeds is go00000od. Then there were the koftas: sweet potatoes and peas and lots and lots of garlic.The way they work is that you cook the sweet potatoes and you mash them and then you mix in the mixins and some flour. Then you put little balls of them on your cookie tray and cook them and they puff up. The first time, they really puffed up like little sweet potato dough balls. This time, they really didn't puff up; but they were still garlicky and potatoey and sweety and peay. They were really good. Like this:
I also made the standard Indian salad with raita: tomatoes, cucumber, onion, and raita, which is a yogurt sauce. I used soy yogurt (soygurt?). The weirdest thing is that soygurt is yogurty! Really, you'd never know! There are cultures and everything! I would have expected soygurt as compared to yogurt to taste like silk as compared to milk (i.e. nothing alike). But other than the fact that it's that telltale tan hue, soygurt is really quite yogurty. What I'd like to know is where those cultures come from.... something about "natural flora" makes me a little ill. But I digress: bacteria are our friends, and soygurt is the vegan alternative to infesting our intestines. Yum!


The hosts (the vegan cupcacke hosts, who are so darned talented!) made nan. Who makes nan? They do!









The first time I experienced the nan, they made it at my house and it smoked up like crazy. It was delicious, but my house smelled like a bonfire for days. Which is totally OK--I mean, as long as you are into that whole woodlands thing (whatevs). This time, however, they figured out the smoke factor and made it perfectly. O god it's good. It's heavy, and salty, and doughy, but also has this incredible crisp edge. The iron skillet is the key, so they say, so they say.

The entree was korma. You can never go wrong with korma. But here's the amazing thing: the korma cooks just made it up! Some of this and a little of that and voila--ten tons of veggie korma. Complete with mushrooms and tomatos and beans and peppers and potatoes and almonds and I don't even know what else. I don't even know. And the basmati rice was cooked with cinnamon sticks and peppercorns (avoid those because they pack some flava!). That makes it so much more special; who knew rice could be so much more than rice?
After all this, of course, we weren't hungry. But we had ( WE HAD ) to stuff ourselves, if only in honor of all the little piggies and cows that didn't die or get their teats squeezed on our account, so we ate the dessert, too. The chefs called it padawakana or something, which turns out not to be Indian, but rather just some sort of cobbler made with with mango. It was delicious! Who cares about themes anyway?! As long as it's vegan, we're not picky.

That's the food story. But here's the back story: wait, I can't tell you. It's against VSC rules to share the ins goings on of these events. So just enjoy the food and pictures and stay tuned for another adve[gan]ture!!

It's Saturday!!!

Yum! Asparagus!!!

vegan supper club: inaugural dinner

Vegan Supper Club began many moons ago when the cows were crying and the lambs were screaming and we were hungry. Something like that. Well, rather, the real story is that vegan cupcake friends wanted like minded individuals to dine with them, but also to do some of the cooking so they didn't have so much work to do. I think that's how it went. You'll have to ask them.

So the theme was "fall" and the hosts were serving butternut squash ravioli. I of course chimed in with "BRUSSELS SPROUTS!!!" and the others claimed soup and salad. Being the vegan cupcake friends, the hosts also provided dessert.

The first course came with spicy pumpkin peanut soup cooked by some friends (who also have a blog!!!). It was delicious!!!!!! The soup was not thick like you might think, but rather a nice, light, pumpkiny, peanuty, spicy, delicious soupy treat. They call it Thai; I called it Yum.

It was paired with host's famous bread:


Breadmaking seems so "old world." But it's so worth it; this ain't no Wonder bread. (I mean that in the best possible way!). (My brother also makes his own bread and pizza crust too.)

Next course was this amazing fall salad. It included greens, of course, but also apples, figs, candied walnuts, pepitas, radishes or turnips or something little and white (from their garden!) and I don't even know what else. Each bite revealed some new secret, rendering this salad something from the category 'delicious'; it's not hard to find a 'fall greens' salad, especially when it's fall. But this one was unusually delightful.

And then came the most fantastic raviolis you've ever experienced: they were not too soft and not too rubbery, but rather the perfect noodle consistency. I'm fairly well-versed at ravioli-making in particular and noodle-making in general, but these raviolis were so well crafted that I contemplated selling them. I mean, we're only blocks from the Hill!!


But here's the thing: the topping. You can't put a cream sauce on a vegan ravioli, and a red sauce will mask the delicious squashiness... so what's a girl to do?

It wasn't so so long ago that I tried my own hand at butternut squash raviolis. They were not for a vegan crowd, however, so when the recipe called for a "brown butter glaze, I delivered (actually, it was the butter crowd of my parents and co. so it was perfect). But the raviolis, as delicious and successful as I could have hoped, in the end, tasted like butter to me.














Vegan Supperclub Friends' raviolis, being vegan, were not coated in a thick butter sauce. On the contrary, they were topped only with a small dollop of caramelized onions. Wha? Who'd a thought? It was perfection. The sweetness and creaminess and tanginess of a caramelized onion complemented the sweet-yet-savory squash-filled little pasta pockets. I still dig the idea of a sage-brown-butter glaze, mostly on account of the sage, and the word glaze, which sounds so delicate, but next time maybe I'll try it with more sage, some Earth Balance, and a little caramelized onion action.

Anyway, I digress. this entree was accompanied by my first attempt at BS and the meal was completed with S'mores Vegan Cupcakes. I'm telling you this today, because VSC2 is forthcoming!!! Yum! Indian Delight!!!!

Beer bread let down

So I went back to my favorite work lunch place, Schlafly Bottleworks, specifically to eat the yummy beer bread. I know, right? It doesn’t sound like my cup of tea. But this bread is fresh, it’s a wonderful texture, nice and heavy, and has a really good bread flavor. It’s brown, so you think you’re eating whole grains, which makes a body happy. (I don’t know if you are or not.) The accompanying butters are no joke, either: chive butter and some sort of white cheese. Wow! I first experienced this a couple of months ago with a pal visiting from New York (this was another meal I ate consisting completely of sides).

Suffice it to say we were wowed. I mean, we were wowed enough that when she returned months later, our phone conversation went something like this:

Friend: “Meg, beer bread.”

Me: “Yeah. Wednesday.”

So we go and before we order we’re like, “Listen, Tim; whatever about your specials. Can we get some beer bread?”

It was so good! Warm, crumbly, heavy yet light, and oh so flavorful. Can’t wait! Yay yay yayayayayay beeeeeeeeer bread!

But, uh, this was not the same. First, it was greasy. It seemed deep-fat-fried. I doubt it was (that’s just weird), but maybe they used a lot of oil? Then the butters. Oh the butters. If I’m going to violate my no-butter clause, then it had better be for a good reason. These butters were not good reasons. The chive butter looked the same, but the flavor was very blah. And the white one they said was a blue cheese cream cheese, which I KNOW can’t be the same, because I’m allergic to blue. We asked, they said for sure it was the same, no way, they hadn’t changed recipes in all the years the waiter’d been working there, but maybe a different sous-chef cooked it? Eh, whatevs.

So we let Tim tell us the specials. He says they have a salad special with locally grown mushrooms and some other stuff, and I cut him off and say, “OK I”ll take that.” I figure, I heart the vanilla vinaigrette salad, I’ve ordered it millions of times, it’s always good, so I trust Schalfly’s salads. And I figure, if they have the produce to create a salad on special, it’s got to be good!

But no again! Jeez! Bad day for the Bottleworks. The salad was greens, mushrooms (albeit locally grown shitakes), cheddar cheese (?!?!), lots of red onion, and what they said was a honey mustard dressing (but which tasted like Ireland’s version of “salad dressing” which is mayonnaise). It was so very so. Not even a so, actually, just an s, in my ranking system (so so/so/s). Boo.

Conversation: check

Iced tea: pretty good

Ambiance: like it.

But food today:_________________

I’ll leave that blank. So sad. I guess you shouldn’t knock a solid goat/green salad; at least you know what you’re getting.

Anyway, I'm not out for blood. Everyone gets a free pass for mediocrity. Just one, though...!

Sad tale of the wine bar or 11 wrongs don't make a red

Last night I met a friend for a drink. We went to Erato, my formerly-favorite wine bar in STL. I loved this place because it’s dark, non-smoking, brick-walled, and because they have scads of wine (literally, the wine is shipped in scads. No I’m kidding. But there’s a lot). And there used to be knowledgeable bartenders and servers. I would think that’s a prerequisite. But I went in last night and it was a very different wine bar indeed.

Here’s my list of wrongs:

1. I sat at the bar for 10 minutes before the bartender even looked at me. I mean, so I wasn’t wearing a low-cut blouse. But sheesh. I was one of maybe 4 people at the bar and the place wasn’t even ¼ full.
2. Finally, I sat at the table with my pal, thinking that the server on the floor would help me.
3. He did not.
4. I returned to the bar and waited; the bartender finally asked me what I wanted, and I said: “I like a dry red. I don’t mind it big, and I don’t mind some fruit, but the drier the better. Cabs, sometimes pinots, an occasional zin or malbec. What do you recommend?” His answer: “I like sweet red wine, so I don’t know.”
5. He got the other guy and told him to help me. This guy kindly poured me a big fruity, sweet red shiraz (I loathe shiraz). I loathed it.
6. He then poured me a Merlot. Ick.
7. He then poured me a zin, which I suppose was OK for a zin, but was about as fruity and sweet as you could imagine; it packed a raspberry wallop like you wouldn’t believe. Here’s my thought about zins: I love them with food. Paired correctly, they can totally bring out the flavors of good food and vice versa. But alone, they tend to be a little overwhelming. I find myself looking for cheese.
8. So I’m a little embarrassed, people are commenting, “jeez, are you getting a personal wine tasting here?” and I’m like, “um, I just want a cab!” But I’m also thinking, “Uh, if I’m going to shell out $50 for a bottle of wine, I had better like it.” But that’s not even the worst of it. I digress; what is the 8^th wrong you ask? The short man in the purple shirt. He sidles up to me and breathes on my arm, screeching, “pick the last one!” and I say, thinking maybe he knows something about it, “which one?” “well how the heck do I know what you’re drinking?!” and I mumble “Ew. Leave me alone.” And he says, what are you drinking?” and for some god forsaken reason I say, “well this last one was a zin.” And he says, “what the heck’s a zin?” Wait, I’m sure I’m on wrong 9 by now…
9. Meanwhile, back at the table, this tall fellow in blue is breathing on my friend. He comes up to me and says, “your friend wants to know what’s taking you so long.” And I mutter, “Ew. Yuck Gross. No.” and then he buys a white zin (A WHITE ZIN, AT A WINE BAR?!?!) and offers it to me. I ignored him.
10. So I return to the table. Flag the stupid bartender over, and just order the standard Wild Horse Cabernet for $48. But do you know what? They were out. So my friend, the genius she is, says, “let’s go to Mangia.”
11. We get up to leave and short and tall say, “Did we scare you off?” Friend and I answer, “yes.” Then short tries to follow us but I turn around and say, again, “Ew. No.”

We went to Mangia, the bartender soothed our woes, let us sample a nice Malbec and Montelpuciano, we ordered a lovely bottle for a mere $28, enjoyed our evening, and vowed to hire someone to blow up Erato.

I had a bad food day! But not every day can be a food winner day, I suppose. Because then I'd be a much rounder person. At least I can still say, "good times, good times," and make a date for tomorrow. (which I have, so I'll be sure to keep you posted!)

The thing about mushroom stuffing

Yum. I don’t think you can ever go wrong with stuffing, because it’s pretty much bread, and who doesn’t heart bread? But here’s why this one was so spectacular: vegetarian, mushrooms, celery, toasted hazelnuts, good, yum, yes!

It was for Thanksgiving, the meat holiday that is always a challenge to the unmeaters among us, especially when you’re contending with relatives’ oyster stuffing family recipe. Ick.

I found this one on Epicurious. It's my favorite resource for recipes, since you can limit the search to Gourmet Magazine (which I find superior to all other magazines with recipes). It’s called Hazelnut, Sage, and Mushroom Stuffing. The description is as follows: “it tastes like a gift from the forest”; I’m not sure I’d use those words myself, but I’ll put them here in quotes, so you know that it's not me who ventured into the world of cheesy. (Although I’ll gladly take a tour through the land of cheese, if that’s available…!)

Anyway, here’s what it called for (with my modifications):

• White bread (I used rye—whoah!)
• Shallots
• Baby bellas
• Butter (Earth Balance)
• Celery (added extra)
• Fresh thyme and sage
• White wine (I used a good one)
• Parsley
• Toasted hazelnuts
• Turkey stock (Veggie stock)
• Eggs (yes I used those, you need a binding agent)

Making it was time-consuming. Partly chopping, partly assembling, partly toasting hazelnuts, which isn’t so difficult in and of itself, but using the towel to rub off the skins is a real pain in the butt. Oh, and the nuts got a little burned so I had to cut off the burned sides, too. I’d recommend buying extras, in case of emergency. Or you could keep a very tiny knife on hand for cutting out burned hazelnut corners.

But oh my the stuffing was fabulous!! It was nutty, moist (I hate that word, so you know I really liked it if I’m using it!), sagey, mushroomy, toasty, ryey (good call!), and so much better than what you remember from childhood with the sausages and the onion soup mix. This was no stove-top! Yummers. Even the die-hard oysters and sausages agreed!

The mushroom gravy, on the other hand:

My advice: don’t blend it. Mushrooms like to be chunky, not smooth. So they tell me.

Turkish Delish

Dinner with the family. On a typical Sunday, this is a challenge: traditional Irish carnivores (i.e. meat and potatoes) + me (near vegan) = Mom cooks extra vegetables and I watch like a hawk to make sure no more than one pat of butter coats them (seriously, I've seen a stick of butter lumped onto a pot of green beans!). But add in brother (world traveler) from out of town and we have the unique task of eating American Ethnic. Whatever that is. Well actually, it doesn't exist.

What ensues is a conversation about "what to eat for dinner" that can last literally hours. First off, we're all "easy." None of us want to offend, and none of us want the others' eating to suffer (I mean we're all food-sensitive in the emotional sense). Second, inevitably, Mom and Dad want to go to their standard, the Missouri Athletic Club, which is a men's club with nice traditional upscale food (but whose chefs have a hard time remembering not to put the ham in the pasta primavera). And the rest of us want something ethnic (Nepalese? Vietnamese? Afghan?). So the conversations go something like this:

Brother: "how about Govinda's, that Hari Krishna restaurant?"
Sister (trying to mediate): "um, Dad can't eat curry; how about Vietnamese? Mom, it's almost like Chinese. You can order chicken!"
Mom: "Well, I'm easy, but we were thinking of the MAC. But I guess you can't eat there [because of my near-veganness]"
Sister: "Well, I'm sure they'll cook me something off the menu. I'm easy. Mmmm.... how about Greek? Dad, you can eat Greek, right?"
Dad: "I'm easy."
Sister-in-law: "Ooohhh... Thai!"
Brother: "Yeah! Thai!"
Mom: "Well, we're easy (whispering: but your father doesn't like that stuff)"
Dad: "I'm easy!"

and so on. Forever. People joke that our family starts planning what to eat for dinner over lunch. And it's really not an exaggeration.
But anyway, brother's in town, the kids decide we want Mediterranean, and I select one of my FAVORITE restaurants, Aya Sofia. Holy couscous this place is yummy. Mom isn't sure about the menu, and Dad can only eat the swordfish because of it being a religious holiday, but we are feeling middle eastern and they are feeling obliging. More or less. So we go.

Wine: I start with a really lovely Montepulciano. They were late arriving so I sat at the bar and enjoyed it solo. I felt so New York! It had obviously been refrigerated all night, which I know is acceptable nowadays, but I have to say, I like my reds at the standard room temp. It took almost an hour to warm up, but it was good anyway. It was fruity but not sweet at all, and it was nice and bold, with a little zing, but not overly acidic.

Then when the family arrived, Dad ordered a bottle of Malbec; I liked it too. It oddly had no end flavor, but rather stopped short, just after a big initial burst of raspberry and what I usually call rubber eraser. I'm no wine expert; I just call it like I taste it.

They brought warmed pita and a kalamata olive tapenade, which typically I would avoid because of my love-hate relationship with olives (I want to love them, but I secretly hate them) (and I secretly hate people who love them), but this stuff's good. It's really salty and somehow that kalamata twang is subdued by garlic? oil? Something. Oh, I hope there aren't anchovies in there! Yikes! Crap. Anyway, I ate it and I loved it.

Then we ordered the appetizer platter with humus, biber ezme (roasted red pepper puree), and babaganouj. I was going to order humus for dinner with a salad, but the table wanted to share, and "I'm easy," so I ordered something else. Now this is good: the humus is really garlicky and chickpeay, but it's also nice and textured. I've had humuses all across the country (Here are the rankings: 1. the former Blackberry Cafe in St. Louis that wouldn't tell me the secret to their recipe and then shut down. I like to think I hexed them. 2. The Hummus Place in NYC, which is actually just hummus. Oh holy hummus, oh holy hummus. 3. Probably this humus. Truly, it's that good.) and this one is tasty. Then the red pepper puree: I likey; my Dad described it as a mild salsa, and I wouldn't disagree. It's sweet, tangy, fruity; it's spready, it goes well on pita. Then the winner, actually, however, was the babaganouj. I'm not a huge eggplant fan (jeez, all these confessions of vegetable insecurities coming out in one post!), but I try. Part of why I don't heart eggplant is that it's hard to cook with. It's SO eggplanty, and the texture is often so tough. And another reason is that so often eggplant parm is the sole "veggie" item on menus. That's irritating.
Anyway, this one rocked. It is nice and cold, first of all, but also creamy, but not creamy in a half-and-half way, rather it was blended nicely, and it was eggplanty, but also garlicky, and salty, and almost nutty? Is that what it was? I was two wines in at that point, so that's my best recollection.

Next: salad. This was a very standard chopped salad (a wonderful reprieve from the goat and green salad week I just had) but the flavors were freaking amazing. It was simple: diced tomatoes (good fresh, meaty ones), diced green peppers, and diced cucumbers. But here are the hidden gems of this salad: lots of green onion, sliced into an equivalent size as the diced veggies. And lots of parsley. And a lemon and olive oil vinaigrette. This was so good, it tasted in color--yellow from the lemon and green from the parsley (although it looked rather red). It was the reason why you eat veggies. It was like Turkish Delight, but a salad, rather than a nougat.

Finally, the entree: I ordered the falafel since we'd already had hummus, but I wasn't really hungry at that point, so the less-than-exciting balls that appeared didn't disappoint, they merely intrigued. Here's why they intrigued: first, the texture was totally smooth. I guess I know you can grind up chick peas into a smooth consistency, but why? Especially since the hummus is so nice and lumpy. And second, the balls were perfectly round and totally solid. I've had baked falafel, fried falafel, patty falafel, ball falafel, chunk falafel packed in oil (or in yogurt sauce), but never smooth, round, shooter-marble falafel. And it was very so so. Actually, I'd give it just a so. Again, 3 wines in, full of humus and salad, but still, this was, eh, meh. Next time I'll stick with the sides, as I had planned from the get go.

My mom ordered the Turkish equivalent of fried mozzarella sticks, which
were phyllo-dough-wrapped feta cheese sticks. They were hot and fried
and melty, and even accompanied by a red tomato-based sauce, but the surprise was the dill weed in them. That made them tasty. Odd, but tasty.

In sum, yum. Salads, spreads, and red wine = wow. Balls and sticks = eh. But I still love this place. I'll go back. Especially since the belly dancers won't bug you if you don't make eye contact. Now that's just respectful.

West County Dining

My pal is visiting from New York and staying with family way way way out in the suburbs. Rather than drive another 30 minutes back into "civilization," where you can most certainly find a locally owned restaurant with lots of heart and good food, we decided not to burn gas unnecessarily and instead stayed in strip mall restaurant territory. Her in-laws recommended Annie Gunn's, which isn't bad, really; it's like a dressed-up Applebees with more upscale food. The only thing about it is it's a smokehouse; but whatever. I'm easy, right? Plus I know they'll cook me something vegetarian off the menu. So we go even further west (which I have to say was difficult... my car kept veering to the right as if to turn around back towards the city) and went to the land of 45 restaurants. (Seriously: Applebees, Olive Garden, IHOP, O'Charley's, Longhorn Steakhouse, the Original House of Pancakes, Mimi's, uh, there were more. I know it).

At Annie Gunn's I asked and they said they'd accommodate a vegetarian, but the gracious friend that she is refused to make me eat at a smoke house (I mean, there was a giant statue of a pig wielding a butcher knife at the front door). (Now that I think about it, the implications of that are so profound.) (And also I have to say that once I spied "sausage platter" on the menu, I was relieved to go.) So we left and headed towards the remaining 44 restaurants and picked one randomly, Mimi's. It had flags on the roof.

I ordered an egg-white omelet (it's Saturday) and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice (not bad for a chain!) and that was pretty OK. Nothing thrilling (and not nearly as good as m'eggs).


My pal spied the chocolate chip pecan pie on the menu (she has a thing for chocolate-and-pecan-combos) and insisted we share dessert. I obliged.

Holy crap: this was an actual pie. AN ACTUAL PIE. Topped with caramel sauce, fudge sauce, ice cream, extra chocolate chips, just for good measure, it was terrifying. Priced at $4.99 on the menu, I would have assumed it was for one; but this thing could feed a family of 5, no problem. Was it good? Well, as good as a transfat diabetes fest can be, I suppose. I mean your brain recognizes "good! goood!" when you take a bite, but I wouldn't say your body actually enjoys it. It's like picking a scab.

Then we started thinking: how much fat is in this thing? I mean, I'm a health-conscious person, and I'm very careful with what I ingest, but I'm no calorie-counter. This pie, this crime against nutrition, it HAD to be 100 grams of fat, easy. We shuddered to think of the people that eat this thing alone.

My pal ingeniously asked the waitress for the nutritional breakdown; I didn't know that restaurants were required by law to have that info available. Apparently, they aren't, but anyway, the waitress informed us that it can be located on their website.

It's certainly not front-and-center on the site, but you can find it, if you poke around. Here's the horrifying truth:

Chocolate Chip Pecan Pie

Calories	1879
Total Fat	111g
Saturated Fat	29g
Trans Fat	6g
Cholesterol	231mg
Sodium	1064mg
Carbohydrate	220g
Dietary Fiber	12g
Protein	21g

AAACK! EEEGADS! I've never seen calories from a century later than the dark ages! I mean, we joked about it being 100 grams of fat, but to see it in print is pretty eye-opening.

I know that vegan doesn't equal healthy, and that organic isn't necessarily fat free, but I like it back in the city.... ah, the city, where people don't celebrate phrases like "death by chocolate" and where indulgence comes in the form of a fancy cheese plate. Do I sound like a snob? Eh, whatevs.

M'eggs

After a long workout, I always crave protein. Eggs were the last animal product I quit in the process of becoming a "near vegan" (first bacon, then chicken, then all meat, then fish, then milk, then butter, then most cheese, then eggs). It's not that I thought they were the least offensive, but rather than I just rarely ate them, so it didn't matter much. When I started thinking about what they were, however, I quit them cold turkey (eggy?) (sorry), and never looked back. Ew, right? Leaky food = gross.

Until the B12 scare.

Then I thought that even a small risk of mild retardation wasn't worth it, so if I was craving eggs, I'd go for it. Now I eat them about once weekly after my long Saturday visits to the Y. Here's what I do:

1. baby bellas, sliced, sauted in olive oil and balsamic
2. tomatoes (fresh or canned and diced)
3. handfuls of baby spinach
4. optional add-ins: diced red pepper, onion, artichoke hearts, asparagus
5. once that's mostly cooked, crack two eggs on the other side of the skillet and cook over easy
6. toast whole grain bread (preferably Seeduction bread from Whole Foods!), "butter" with Earth Balance, top all on to bread, top that with a little feta


mmmmmm..... m'eggs....

and a glass of fresh-squeezed grapefruit/orange juice and a banana and a DECAF SOY MOCHA!

Happy Saturday!

BS

The search for the great plate of BS (Brussels sprouts) all began at a dinner party at my friend’s house. His fiancé’s sister replicates the family recipe of roasted Brussels sprouts in a white wine vinaigrette with pecans. This was my first experience.

Here’s what she does:
1. cuts in half
2. roasts 20 mins
3. stirs in pecans
4. tosses with mustard/white wine vinaigrette

Ok at least that’s what I remember of her recipe.

Here’s what I thought:
1. wow
2. hmmm…
3. mmmm….
4. that’s not bad
5. in fact, I like it. Yes, I like it.

Here’s what I thought in the days following:
1. I gotta get me some BRUSSLES SPROUTS
2. Mmmmm……… Brussels sprouts!
3. Wha? Huh? Brussels sprouts!

They are a slow burn, I guess.

So when I went to 1111 Mississippi (freaking phenomenal) and BS were on the menu, I jumped at the chance. (I also ate a meal consisting totally of sides). (see the back corner)

Here’s what they were like:
1. small
2. overcooked
3. lacking all seasoning

Here’s what I thought:
1. hm…
2. mmm…
3. that’s about it

But again, in the days following:
1. I gotta get me some BRUSSLES SPROUTS
2. Mmmmm……… Brussels sprouts!
3. Wha? Huh? Brussels sprouts!

So I decided to make my own, and this coincided with my fall-themed first ever Vegan Supper Club Dinner Party at my friends’ house (the cupcake ones).

I winged it. Here’s what I did:
1. cut off ends, cut X into base, boil
2. meanwhile, toast pecans in dry skillet; add brown sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon
3. whisk Dijon, white wine vinegar, olive oil
4. toss

Here’s what I thought:
Honey!

Here’s what I did:
1. stir in honey
2. taste: ohmygod, they are nutty, and sweet, and tangy, and crunchy, and tender, and green, and spicy, and oliveoily, and wow, and ohmy, and dang I’m good, and…
3. OH SHIT!!! These are vegans!!!! They don’t eat HONEY!!!
4. decide not to tell them
5. call my sister to make sure it’s OK not to tell them
6. get advised to tell them
7. decide still not to tell them (I’m really sorry if you’re reading this! Keep in mind it spanned only a few seconds…)
8. become overwrought with fear and worry that one of them is a vegan because of a secret honey allergy
9. remember the chicken stock incident
10. despair
11. admit defeat

So I went to VSC, confessed my wrongs, and as it turns out, they all were willing to eat honey, this one time. The only problem was I overcooked them in the end. Ugh.


Still good, just a little mushy.

Try again: Thanksgiving dinner for 25. Same recipe, but this time I remember NOT to overcook them. But when reheating, again, a little overdone. Dang. But still fabulous nonetheless.

Lard-free Brunch

Two things you should know: growing up, Sunday brunch followed Sunday Mass. Pancakes came after penance, waffles after worship, eggs after Ecclesiastes (sorry.) (you get it.) Second, the family priest had the thickest St. Louis accent ever to be articulated, rendering our “most holy Lord” into a very very sacred lard. This has humored me for years. Often, today is “the lard’s day” at my house, and we’re always so grateful for the fact that “the lard provides.”

Last Sunday, I had brunch with friends. Probably because of the ever-present lard associated with brunch and my overly controlling healthy food-choice lifestyle that just doesn’t allow for that in my diet, brunch has never done it for me. But friends invited (vegan ones, too!), and so I went. (At lest the lard wouldn’t be partially hydrogenated!) (sorry again)

I of course wanted to put my new cookbook VEGAN WITH A VENGEANCE to use, and I was extra excited because I got to crack open those breakfast pages that I never ever look at (who cooks muffins?).

I choose the asparagus sundried-tomato “egg” frittata. Now again, being a near-vegan, I usually avoid eggs (my auto-response is set for “dead baby chickens”), but when I go to the gym frequently, I usually crave serious protein. Plus I still have a lingering fear of over-soying myself. So I’d have been inclined to just cook the eggs, it’s Sunday brunch after all, and thus, the day of lard. But these are my vegan friends.

So I do it—buy the tofu, nutritional yeast, etc. and set to work making fake eggs. Here’s the weird part (it’s so weird): you crumble firm tofu with your fingers, mix in a few drips of soy sauce, a tablespoon of mustard, and some nutritional yeast, and you are suddenly facing a bowl of scrambled eggs. It looks like eggs, it smells like eggs, and yes, even though cold and uncooked, its tastes like eggs! Again I say, wha? huh?

Sauté onion and asparagus, stir in sundried tomatoes, mix, bake, done: frittata. And it was pretty good, I have to say. The end product tasted a heck of a lot less like eggs than pre-cooking, but it still registered “brunch” on my radar. Not bad. I like that Isa Chandra.

The rest of the brunch, though, is what wowed. These two are true Isa Chandra junkies, having baked and consumed probably literally 75-100 batches of her cupcakes (god, I mean lard, it could be triple that, truly), they make recipes like the sweet potato crepes on a regular old week night, and research her other publications just for fun. These are some serious PPK cooks. Here’s what they provided: banana-walnut waffles (ohmygod who knew that bananas CARAMELIZE when waffle-ironed??), grits from heirloom corn plants in North Carolina, and homemade seitan sausage (OK satan’s sausage on the lard’s day…. now this is coming full circle.). It was surreal. To relive Sunday Brunch, on the lard’s day, with the balls of seitan present, in full veganese. Now that’s something. I love this life. Praise jebus!

Work Lunch

Work lunch; ugh. How do you find a place that satisfies everyone’s food preferences, when everyone comes from such different life stages and styles? (READ: how do I psychologically, physically, and emotionally survive the trans-fats burger joint? Eeegads!).

We had a meeting today to discuss work-related activities and I recommended SCHLAFLY BOTTLEWORKS. Schlafly is a favorite of mine, partly because they boast the same philosophy that NTPH does—all fresh, locally-grown produce. In fact, I think Schlafly grows their own out back. Sweet! But the beauty is, it still looks like a “pub,” it smells like a brew house, and it has “burgers” on the menu (albeit organic, free-range, grass-fed bison burgers). So it’s a good choice for us.

My favorite thing about it, besides the philosophy, is the menu. The food here is so so good. Unfortunately, they deleted the black soy bean hummus from the menu a couple years ago, which was the clear winner. But its replacement, a regular chick-pea hummus with feta, kalamata olives, and red onions on top, is still quite good. Even better, however are the accompanying breads (in fact, this little bowl of hummus for $4.99 totally beats the baldy-patch $12 cheese plate from NTPH!).

The pita is fresh and very light, house made probably, but fresh-baked definitely. It’s not so much toasted as warmed, and it’s topped with some herbs that include dill weed (so underused in the bread world!). It’s nice and salty, too, so it goes well with the creamy/garlicy hummus. Then there is the real winner (and another food enigma that’s just so darn enticing)—a type of dried out flatbread or cracker, seemingly homemade, that has this delightful mystery flavor (cloves? nutmeg?) behind the grains, salt, and garlic. I’ve eaten this at least 10 times, and still, I can’t place it. Gosh it’s good. Ok so it’s a secret, and I’ve learned my lesson about food secrets, but I don’t think this one is chicken stock. (Oh god, is it chicken stock?!).

Anyway, suffice it to say that I’m a fan, my mother’s a fan, my friends are fans, I mean everyone who is anyone is a fan. It’s hummus, dang it, and a good one at that!

But my 3 coworkers (from different “life styles and stages”), had never had hummus. Beans, yuck. What’s feta? And olives?????? (Ok I admit I’m still waging the olive battle with myself… winner TBD). Noses were upturned when the waitress delivered it. I encouraged one to dig in, and she did, like a sport, taking the least threatening pita wedge, spreading a thin layer of the hummus across the surface. (I, on the other hand, figure this is my protein for the day, so I glob whole tablespoonfuls on it and chow down). (OK and it’s also because I heart it!) She kept it down and sort of admitted to it being “OK” and “pretty mild.” The other two were much more skeptical, and I really had to explain to them that it’s simply beans, garlic, cheese, salt; but again, beans, yuck, right?! One gave in, tried a little, conceded that it was “OK,” and left it at that. But the third made some serious faces at it. It was like a child physically rejecting the taste and texture of liver—and she hadn’t even tasted it yet! She barely choked down a mouse bite before refusing altogether. Whatever. More fore me. Jeez.

In the mean time, I got my salad. First, I should say, it’s the standard greens/goat combo: greens are greens (although locally grown), goat is goat, toasted almonds are unusual only because people have been so into walnuts lately, and then the totally unnecessary croutons. But this one also boasts two phenomenal additions. First, the dressing is a vanilla vinaigrette; Oh my! It’s like cookies in my salad! Plus, the vinaigrette is nice and oily (I’d say they err on the side of olive oil like me) and coats the leaves really well. And then there are the wild mushrooms, an addition you can choose. I SO love this! Often you get the choice of grilled chicken, or maybe, maybe, salmon, but this is great—locally farmed wild mushrooms, roasted on site, TOSSED IN VANILLA VINAIGRETTE! The nerve! I would never have had the guts to mix a cookie with a fungus, but they do, and they rock it.

This is one restaurant that really has succeeded in all respects: it’s been going strong for several years, it gets the beer crowd, the organic foodie vegetarian crowd, the family crowd, the happy hour crowd, your crowd, my crowd, everyone we know’s crowd. But also they have a huge menu with such unusually diverse options as bison burgers, pistachio raviolis, beer bread, calzones, ahi tuna BLTs, I mean, wha? huh? It’s impressive. Again, foodie = yes. Restaurant reviewer = I have to say a 10. I have no complaints. It’s big and warehousey, so if you’re with someone with hearing aids it’s hard to converse, but besides that, they do it, without a doubt.

Beets!

I woke up with a hankering for beets. I'm not sure where these hankerings come from, especially when I've never really had beets. But when our pals called us for a dinner party, I nevertheless texted back, "we'll bring beets!"

So I emailed my neighbor, knowing he'd have the perfect recipe for such a thing. His response, at 3am, came as such:

• Buy beets, last time I mixed yellow and red.
• Preheat oven to say 400F
• Wash vigorously - the beets not the oven.
• Trim the greens but keep about 1" of stalk attached.
  
• Prick the beets if they are large
• Salt the beets a lot but not too much - salt to taste later
  
• Put the beets on a large piece of foil
• Coat the beets generously with oil
• Seal tightly the foil around the beets.
• Put the beats in the oven for about 30 minutes
• It's a good idea to put a cookie sheet under them to catch oil drips.
  
• Open the foil and continue to cook until you can pierce easily with a fork but not until they are mushy.
  
• Cool the beets overnight - I just leave them in the oven - don't spill the juice!!!
  
• Peel/Skin the beets with a veggie peeler if the skin is tough
  
• Slice the beets
• Add feta first then salt to taste. Add black pepper.
  

So we set to work, scrubbing, salting, roasting, leaving, shaving, slicing, rosemarying, reroasting, and finally, fetaing. Oh boy. Amazing.


They were the perfect texture of soft, yet toothsome, chewy, yet not underdone. Although not akin to the texture of the seemingly perfect gnocchi, it was equally perfect.

I feared our dinner friends wouldn't enjoy them, knowing full well that not everyone shares my passion for all things garden, but they tore into them; only a few small rounds were left after dinner. But I should have known better; these were the exact crew that introduced me to Brussels sprouts and initiated the quest for BS that reigned my fall of '07.

Pesto Gnocchi

Last summer, I went to Chicago for the Pitchfork Music Festival.
After dancing wildly, singing outrageously, and generally
just getting down in 90-degree heat (which is better than the previous year’s 104 degree temperatures), and after eating festival food (funnel cakes, beers, stir fry, ice cream), on the way back to the hotel, my pal and I passed this restaurant—VOLARE.

It was a little corner of Italy or so it seemed, given the circumstances of sweat, beer, and exhaustion. People laughing, clinking glasses, surely they were speaking in foreign languages, definitely they were having the time of their lives, all packed into this corner patio in downtown Chicago. We raced back to the hotel to sponge off some of the sweat and returned, eager to expand our vacation into something much more continental. On the menu were pages and pages of options: vodka sauce, orecchiette, hand-made spinach ravioli, and on and on. Our eyes simultaneously located the “gnocchi” and then scanned the list of possible sauces: pesto indeed. We weren’t hungry at all, so whatever we ordered HAD to be special. Pesto gnocchi: the candy of pastas. The waiter, Nicholas, complete with Italian accent and effervescence, brought crusty bread and very dramatically swirled olive oil with Parmesan cheese on individual plates. We tore into it with our Chianti, of course, and we listened to the couples at surrounding tables ooh and aah over their spaghetti and tortellini and tiramisu. This place was amazing.

The pesto gnocchi arrived and Nicholas took his time, lovingly dividing it between two plates and presenting it to each of us. The first bite: ohmygod. This wasn’t food; this wasn’t even candy. This was the stuff that tears were made of. We savored it, bite by bite, and with each little potato puff, we become more and more engulfed in the haze of this Italian mirage on East Grand Ave. Are those clouds over there? Yes they are! The heavens, are they opening? Uh huh! Am I effervescing? Sure sounds like it! Truly, I had never experienced a taste like this, a texture both chewy yet tender, soft, yet toothsome. And the pesto—the brightest green you’ve ever seen. It’s as if it had never been processed, ground, mixed with heavy substances, sprayed with pesticides: just minuscule bits of basil just aching to be paired with the finest olive oil and pinoli. We loved it; we laughed, we very nearly cried; we were very full.

This, of course, commenced the quest for the perfect pesto gnocchi in St. Louis. We tried it ourselves, bragging of our ability to puff out little bits of equally tender potato at a friend’s dinner party. We failed. That’s another story.

But just a few weeks ago, I had business in Chicago and stayed over with a friend. We walked around downtown, visiting Millennium Park and reveling in the energy of Michigan Ave. We enjoyed a cheese plate at the Ralph Lauren restaurant. Hours later, however, after a failed attempt to find that perfect family-owned Italian bistro that had existed for generations on Rush Street that my friend was certain was the perfect place to complete the evening, I remembered VOLARE. We googled it on his Blackberry, took a taxi, and there it was, the mirage still wavering it its luminescence. No people crowded the patio singing in Italian, but then again, it was 30 degrees and raining. But inside, yes, inside, the same essence seemed to linger in the air, a faint buzz of the continent, albeit dulled, but still present nonetheless.

Of course, pesto gnocchi was in order. I had raved about this stuff to my friend; I practically cried over my cheese plate when remembering the way the puffs melted in my mouth. So we ordered a bottle of Nebbiolo and enjoyed the bread and olive oil mixture that Nicholas (the same waiter!) carefully prepared for us, but I held back. I didn’t want to fill up on bread and become another statistic.

The pesto gnocchi arrived. I slowly, carefully, stuck in my fork. The air seemed to ripple as I moved it towards my mouth. Finally, that flavor, that texture, arrived; it was as I remembered. Angels singing? Check. Rays from heaven? Indeed. It was magic. We toasted, we shared bites with our neighbors at the next table, and merriment ensued. Nicholas came by to check on us and I asked him what the secret was: “I have tried and tried, but I can’t replicate this. It’s amazing. What is the secret?"

As he opened his mouth to answer and his lips began forming the words, my friend knew, he KNEW, exactly what was coming out. A slow motion, “n o o o o” emitted from his lips right as Nicholas said, “it’s the chicken stock.”

The horror. The disappointment. The betrayal!

Needless to say, I was done. I pushed it aside. I ordered dessert. I gave up the dream.