Book Recommendation: Vegan Richa’s Indian Kitchen

Indian food! Delicious, complex, labor intensive… I adore it. Indian restaurants are among the few I still frequent, because it is difficult to replicate the textures and tastes at home. But Richa Hingle’s wonderful book and its companion website are true game changers.

With crystal-clear, detailed explanations, careful seasoning, and creative ingredient list, Vegan Richa’s Indian Kitchen is an invaluable contribution to our cookbook shelf. It occupies the necessary gap between vanity vegan books, which show pretty but unrealistic concoctions, and basic vegan books, with recipes I already know how to make.

Yesterday we made two of her recipes – palak paneer, which features homemade almond paneer in a rich spinach sauce, and malai kofta, in which the lovely dumpling balls are made of cabbage, cashew, and chickpea flour and cooked in savory tomato sauce. What an incredible meal! Making the paneer and the kofta is very labor intensive, but also intriguing, and the result is impeccable in taste and texture.

Geared toward folks who are not proficient in traditional Indian cooking, and yet not oversimplified, the book empowers us to venture beyond our comfort zone and dare to cook authentic meals with authentic spices. I highly recommend it!

Lentil Pâté – Faux Gras

 Ahoy there! I have a new version of vegan pâté that will knock your socks off. It is packed with protein and has no added oils beyond what’s in the walnuts and lentils. Most importantly, it’s delicious with fresh vegetables for a nice snack. We served it for holiday dinner and our guest christened it as “faux gras”, and so it shall henceforth be known!

2 cups lentils
1 cup walnuts
6 large mushrooms, crimini or similar
1 yellow onion
about 1/3 cup vegetable broth
1 tsp tomato paste
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp Kala Namak salt, or to taste

Soak lentils overnight until they soften – it’ll improve the nutritional content of the dish. The next day, cover with water and cook until soft.

While the lentils are cooking, slice the onion thinly and cut mushrooms into little pieces. place two pans on the stove. In one of them, dry roast the walnuts for about 10 minutes, until they develop deep brown spots. In the other, place about 1 tbsp of vegetable broth and saute the onions for about 10 minutes or until translucent and brownish. Add more broth to prevent sticking to the pan. When onions are soft, add mushrooms and continue cooking until the onion is an appealing shade of brown. Place walnuts and onion-mushroom mixture in food processor and pulse-process until smooth. Add the lentils and pulse until everything is mixed to your desired consistency. Add tomato paste, cumin, and Kala Namak salt to taste and pulse until everything is to your taste. Serve with wedges and sticks of  vegetables, like cucumbers, radishes, carrots, celery sticks, or bell peppers, or use as an unusual and delicious sandwich filling.

Thoughts about Green Smoothies

When I visited my friend Yael in Israel, she made us a green smoothie in an effort to recreate something delicious she’d had at a joint called rebar. It was very tasty and very green, and also, I thought, better than the original.

I like drinking smoothies in the morning, and come up with all kinds of awesome recipes for them, but last night’s correspondence with my friend Tzili Paz-Wolk, who has amazing and awesome knowledge about food, made me think about it. Tzili’s approach to nutrition is very compassionate and intuitive, and she pushes me to figure out my deep needs and how my food choices address them (effectively or less so). One thing she pointed out yesterday was that my shakes tend to rely on ready-made plant milks, like soy and almond. And she’s right: making almond milk from scratch is very easy, especially with my mighty Vitamix, but I seldom do it. The reason for that is that the ready-made stuff is already fortified with vitamins, especially B12, which I always worry about (even though I supplement almost daily with a sublingual spray.) Also, I tend to prefer soymilk or artificially boosted protein milks because I worry that a breakfast with insufficient protein won’t sustain me for the rest of my day.

So this morning I’m doing an experiment: I’m having a shake based only on unprocessed ingredients (well, processed in my own blender). The ingredients are:

1/3 of a large cucumber (one Persian cucumber’s worth)
2 large celery stalks
handful of cilantro
1 cup spinach leaves
1/4 cup cashews
1 tangerine
1 pear

It’s much less sweet than what I’m used to, but that can be cured with a banana or some berries next time. The flavor is fresh and tasty. Maybe I’ll make it a point to greenify my shakes more than I have before. Look, even Inti seems to dig it (and took a few sips!)

_____ of Broccoli Soup

I’m a fairly moderate fan of cream of broccoli soup, but being under the weather today I decided to make a lighter version, with no plant milk or tofu. This one is pureed (hence the creaminess) but includes only vegetables and a few chickpeas. It’s a slight variation on the Forks Over Knives recipe.

4 cups broccoli, stems and florets
1/2 cup chickpeas, cooked
2 carrots, sliced
1/2 onion, diced
3 celery stalks, sliced
1/3 a big sweet potato, diced
1 tsp garlic powder
2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup hot water
juice from 1 lemon

Separate broccoli stems from florets. Place onion, carrots, celery, sweet potato, and garlic in a pot and add a splash of the vegetable broth. Saute until onion is translucent. Then, add the rest of the broth and the water, lower the heat, and cook for 10 mins.

Add the florets and the chickpeas and cook for another 15 mins, or until the florets are very soft.

Scoop out the solids in batches and puree in the blender with some of the liquid. Return to the pot. Add a bit of hot water if necessary for a soupier consistency. Drizzle the lemon juice in.

Pasta with Roasted Vegetables

It’s been a quiet solstice here, and I’ve been using new recipes. For some reason, I’m more attracted to simple ingredients these days, as close as possible to their original form, so there are lots of salads and soups and not a lot of mock animal things. In this recipe, too, I resisted adding meat or cheese analogues of any kind, and I think you’ll find the simplicity refreshing.

The recipe is adapted from this Forks Over Knives recipe, which, in its turn, comes from Thug Kitchen. I had winter vegetables, rather than the summer ones in the recipe, so I used those, and I added a half-cup of garbanzo beans. I’d love to try the original sometime, but I worked with the bounty I had and the result was spectacular.

1 cup brown rice pasta spirals
15 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup small broccoli florets
4 asparagus stems, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 leek, sliced into rings
1 red pepper, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 cup cooked garbanzo beans
juice from 1 lemon
1 tsp marjoram
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Start the water for the pasta. In the meantime, heat the oven to 350 degrees and place a silicone mat on a baking sheet. Place the vegetables, the garlic, and the garbanzos on the sheet in one layer. Drizzle with the lemon juice and sprinkle the marjoram. Mix a bit with your hands to make sure the lemon is everywhere. Place in oven for 20-25 mins.

In the meantime, cook the pasta, drain it, and return to the pot. When the vegetables are done, add them to the pasta and drizzle balsamic vinegar. Mix and eat to your heart’s content.

Spelt Banana Bread

This evening I tried a new recipe for banana bread, and this one was a huge success. It’s sweetened only with the bananas, doesn’t have cinnamon or nutmeg, and has chia seeds in lieu of flax. The process was so simple and mess-free, partly because of our new and wonderful hand mixer. Here goes:

Wet Ingredients

4 bananas, mashed
1/3 cup nut milk (I used unsweetened soy)
1/3 cup coconut oil, melted
2 tbsp chia seeds
2 tbsp vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients

2 cups whole spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
handful of walnut halves

Heat oven to 350 Farhenheit. Mash bananas well. Add nut milk, coconut oil, chia seeds, and vanilla extract, and whisk or mix well. The chia will absorb some of the liquids and make the whole thing a bit more gel-like. Then, add the dry ingredients and whisk/mix until just combined. Pour into loaf pan and decorate the top with walnut halves. Bake for about 45-50 mins or until pick/fork comes out dry. Let cool for about 30 mins, then take out of pan and place on cooling rack.

Edited to add: You can replace the banana with 1 1/3 cup apple sauce, add a bit of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, and decorate the top with small apple chunks or slices in lieu of walnuts. Comes out fantastic!

Vegan Salade Niçoise

It’s been a month of bad news on every possible level: personal losses, professional disappointments, you name it. To keep our spirits up, we’re trying to eat healthy and well, and today I was inspired to put a little French elegance into our dinner with this simple version of a salade niçoise. The components of this nice composed salad are easy to make and a breeze to assemble.

I’m not particularly in love with the pre-made fake tuna product we used, Vegan Toona, and next time I make this recipe I’ll make a chickpea substitute from scratch (this recipe looks intriguing.) But let’s discuss the different components.

Ready-made stuff you’ll need include cherry tomatoes (colorful ones are especially fun,) Persian cucumbers, tiny radishes, and good olives (not the nasty canned stuff.)

You’ll also need tiny waxy potatoes–we used red and purple–which you can bake for about 20 mins. at 350 degrees, and green beans, which you’ll steam or pressure-cook (I do it for 1 minute in the Instant Pot on high pressure) and, when still crunchy, drop immediately into ice water.

Another component is my beloved tofu eggless salad, which I made this time with olives in lieu of pickles, lots of green onion and parsley, and some kala namak salt for extra egginess.

And finally, Toona is sorta good if drenched in fresh lemon juice and mixed with some thinly minced green onions.

After organizing all the components on the plate, drizzle them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Herbs de Provence.

Green Chai Latte

One of the perks and perils of San Francisco is the stream of culinary novelties. A few weeks ago I set aside my skepticism about our continuous chase after “the cool” and went with a colleague to the David Rio chai bar, where I had a lovely cup of steaming chai. Only one of their recipes is vegan (why, when easily all of them could be, and just as tasty?) but they do have a really nice assortment of nut milks, including soy, almond, hazelnut, and macadamia.

Last time I was there, they had some bottled chai for sale, including an intriguing blend of their green tea chai with chia seeds. I’ve been ruminating on how to make a homemade version, and today’s blended treat came out delicious.

I put all the following in the blender:

2 cups vegan milk (this time I used unsweetened Ripple, which has a very bland and forgiving taste, but any nut milk would work just fine)
1 heaping teaspoon Matcha green tea
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp vanilla extract
a drizzle of maple syrup, or pitted dates to taste)

After blending and pouring into a tall glass, I mixed in a few chia seeds and waited a few moments for them to expand and absorb the liquid. It was delicious: a creamy-but-refreshing afternoon beverage.

Tropical Pudding

It’s been a difficult few weeks for us. A couple of weeks ago we lost our beloved cat, Spade, to a car accident, and we are wrecked with grief. Our grief is, of course,  compounded by the results of the recent U.S. election and our concerns about fascism, bigotry, and authoritarianism on the rise. The most healing thing we’ve done was spend time at home with Spade’s brother, Archer, and newcomer kitten Inti. At first they were a bit suspicious of each other, and so we separated them, but gradually we increased their face time and now they are best buds.

Several lovely friends came to visit us, to alleviate our grief over the loss of Spade and to meet little Inti and see how well he and Archer are getting along. And so, we served vegan fruit pie from Mission Pie, as well as a delectable pumpkin pie which we made based on Minimalist Baker’s recipe. We also served a nice tropical pudding, which was exceedingly easy to make: 
1 ripe mango
1 cup pineapple chunks
1 cup silken tofu
1 handful cashews
1 tsp vanilla extract
blueberries for garnish
Pop first four ingredients in the blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Pour into little ramekins or cups and refrigerate for a couple of hours – the pudding’s consistency will improve. Then, decorate with blueberries and serve in the little cups.

Trumpland: Worse Than Nixon

The Trump Administration has published its 100-day plan. Read carefully: it includes mass deportations, as well as a Nixonian plan for federal funding of the police. The cycle continues.

The similarities are striking (especially the noxious racial undertones of both punitive turns,) but this is not merely a re-run of the late sixties: Trumpland is much worse than the early days of Nixonland in several ways.

First, when Nixon ran a campaign of aggressive criminal justice, there was at least partial justification for the public’s support of him. He had data in hand showing that crime rates were rising. Whether or not the public felt it on an everyday basis or it was governmental manipulation, it wasn’t complete distortion. It’s true, as Steven Raphael tells us, that the rise in crime may not have been as dramatic as we think, because crime rates seem to have been considerably underreported until the 1970s because of incomplete FBI data collection (not all counties were included.) But this means that, even if crime wasn’t rising that dramatically, there was plenty more of it than there is now.

By contrast, we are now experiencing the lowest crime rates in forty years (and, if the inacuracies from the 1970s are big, even in longer.) Trump’s capitalizing on a one-year rise in murder rates is simple deception. And, again by contrast to Nixon, there isn’t even a horrible redball crime in the form of the Manson murders to sway public opinion to the cause of oppressive crime control. The basis for this return to Nixonian policies is based on pure fabrication.

Second, when Nixon’s policies started fueling arrests and convictions, we didn’t already have so many people in prison. The arc of growth was enormous, but it grew from a much lower place. Even with recession-era reductions, prison population has only started to decline. An increase in prosecutions and incarcerations means enhancing an already grotesquely bloated criminal justice apparatus.

Third, after years of Nixonian growth, states already know all the tricks of prison construction: rather than taxing voters (who might like prisons, but don’t like paying for them) they’ll use lease-revenue bonds to house people.

And fourth, privatization is already well fused into the wheels of the penal machine. By that I don’t mean private prisons – I mean mostly the pervasive privatization of the insides of public prisons. In a hypercapitalist America, headed by the epitome of hypercapitalism, this industry is already well-positioned to take advantage of a further increase in incarceration.

I don’t think all of this is happening because the economy is better, but that certainly isn’t helping. Don’t get me wrong: of course I’m happy that the economy has improved. But one of the effects of this will be that a neo-Nixonian influx of money into policing and sentencing is going to create the same cycle I talked about in Cheap on Crime: we can afford to, so let’s arrest and charge lots of people, and let the states worry about how to pay for incarcerating them.

We’re looking at some dark times ahead. On many fronts.