Vegetables and Olive Oil and Peace

This post is my contribution to Barbara’s “Fresh and Local Challenge” in Tigers and Strawberries; although all of what I cook comes right out of our Chubeza box, this one has summer vegetables in it, and is therefore very appropriate for this season.

The two dishes I have here feature a common ingredient which may not be exactly a spice, but is a very typical flavor in Middle Eastern cooking: fabulous olive oil from the Gallille. It’s not easy being cheerful in Israel Aviv these days, as many of you probably can guess from following the news; but cooking with olive oil is a reminder of the ancient, bountiful olive trees all over the north of Israel, which produce our superb oil, and which are now under missile attacks. May these dishes remind all warring parties in the world of the goodness in the Earth, and how living off the richness it offers shouldn’t be taken for granted. While many humans are hurt in our current conflict, there are also silent sufferers: plants and animals hit by rockets, forests that die in forest fires. When (if?) this is over, hopefully soon, humans will have to work not only on reconnecting with each other, but also on restoring some of the natural world that is so often harmed by humans fighting with each other. The vegetables, fresh from a field near Latroun, are a reminder of that world.

When you have good ingredients, there’s no need to mess with them more than necessary. The fresh flavors speak for themselves. So, while the two dishes I have here are cooked, they’re both cooked for a very short time and preserve the vegetables’ essence very well. It’s a double feature dish: Green Beans with Garlic and Roasted Peppers. The beans are sauteed in a small amount of light broth and, of coruse, garlic. The peppers are roasted on an old pot lid, then steamed in a plastic bag and served with a tiny bit of olive oil and, possibly, balsamic vinegar. This is proof that very simple things can make very festive dishes.

Green Beans with Garlic

4-5 handfuls of fresh green beans
3 large garlic cloves
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp good quality soy sauce
1/2 cup water or vegetable broth.
1/2 tsp chili flakes
1 inch ginger, thinly sliced
1-2 tsps sesame oil

Prepping green beans is a funny task, because no matter what shortcuts you try to take, you *will* have to chop off their corners. I’ve stopped bothering with lining them up – they are never the same size and it doesn’t simplify things… so just chop their corners, will you? Then, slice the garlic cloves, heat the olive oil in a pan or wok, and add the garlic, the ginger and the chili flakes. When a nice garlicky smell fills the room, add the soy sauce and the beans. Stir gently to mix up , and when they’re all heated, add some water or broth – just enough so nothing sticks to the pan. Then, cook for a few more minutes, stirring occasionally, until beans get as soft as you like them, but retain their character. Remove from pan, drizzle a bit of sesame oil, and voila.

Roasted Red Peppers

4 large red peppers
1 old lid of a large pan
1 plastic bag
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp balsamic vinegar (optional)

This works really well on my stove, which has open fire; folks with electric stoves are welcome to offer ideas on how to do this in other kitchens. Anyway, in my kitchen, I found the best method to do this in Shari Ansky’s fabulous book Vegetables. I changed it a bit, but it’s essentially the same.

Basicaly, what you do, is turn on the stove and place an old metal lid directly on it. Then, you cut the peppers into eight pieces each, lengthwise, and place the pepper slices on top of the lid. Move them around a bit, so they don’t get too burned on one side. You’ll start seeing black burns on the peel, which is absolutely fine.

When the peppers all get soft and burned (doesn’t this sound a bit like an inquisition method?), you turn off the stove, remove the peppers from the lid (careful! they’re hot!) and place them in a plastic bag. tie up the bag and let’em sweat for fifteen minutes (inquisition, indeed). Then, open up the bag: if you want to peel the peppers, this will be very easy now, but you don’t have to. You can eat them as they are. Put the peppers in a bowl, and drizzle some olive oil and, if desired, some balsamic vinegar on top.

It’ll be time to harvest olives soon, and my family will gather to pick them right off our olive tree in September. Then, we’ll be making olives off my grandpa’s secret recipe, and they will be good and bitter; a reminder of life in this region, which can be very good, but very bitter at times, and a reminder of the olive branches that bear this fruit, and a hope for peace.

Anti-Inflammatory Cooking

Cold and flu in the summer are always a strange surprise, though not entirely unexplainable. If you live in a hot area, you’ll notice that offices and homes tend to crank up the air conditioner in the summertime, making our daily journeys in and out of buildings a real challenge for our immune system.

Chinese medicine does not recognize illnesses as “flu”, but categorizes the entire situation of the person by his or her warmth/coldness, dampness/dryness, etc. What Western medicine would call a cold, or a flu, usually falls into one of two categories: wind-cold and wind-heat. Wind cold is a cold which leads one to be sluggish, cold, and inactive; wind heat tends to be accompanied by fever and redness. Both, but particularly the former, are associated with dampness, which manifests itself as phlegm.

Milk and dairy products are generally considered to increase phlegm in the body, and are therefore not recommended at times when one has a cold. Whether one eats cold or hot foods (which would depend on the type of cold one has), drying, anti-inflammatory foods are of essence. When in doubt, the three winning ingredients are garlic, ginger, and lemon.

Here are some things you might want to try next time you have a cold:

* Ginger-lemon tea (affectionately referred to here as “lemon-ginj”)
* Thai curries, preferrably soy-based (coconut milk is a bit rich for ill, sluggish systems, though also good)
* Spicy stir-frys with garlic and ginger
* Tchina with lots of lemon and garlic
* vegetable stock with a bit of grated ginger on top

Be well!

Those Big Purple Things

Our two most recent deliveries from Chubeza contained a beautiful surprise: the season’s first nice, fresh, purple eggplants. What a thrill! Being a Middle Easterner means that I love eggplants a great deal, and have cooked them in many different ways. There aren’t many things that are as local as eggplants; Israelis love them almost as much as they love their tomatoes and eat them in every possible form, from baba ganoush to mousakka to quiches to simply roasted slices with goat cheese and olive oil.

Some people have a hesitant relationship with eggplants. This stems from two main reasons. First, eggplants belong to the nightshade family of vegetables, which has been much maligned in relation to diseases like fibromayalgia. Some nutritionsts recommend avoiding nightshade vegetables altogether, a penalty inconceivable from the perspective of a Mediterranean person: that would mean giving up tomatoes, sweet peppers and potatoes. Ah, the horror! Indeed, nightshades contain a certain amount of poisonous components, but these are, according to most nutritionists, ruined in cooking, and they have several nutritional benefits to offer. Eggplants, for example, contain several vitamins from the B family, as well as manganese, copper, potassium, and folic acid. Not in great amounts, but still, they are all there.

The second reason people fear eggplants is their capacity to absorb unbelievable amounts of oil. Many eggplant dishes are extremely greasy and, while eggplant itself is quite lean, with the oil it can become a bit of a fat trap, albeit a delicious one.

Here’s one pretty basic thing you can do with your eggplants. Eggplant salad is magnificent in sandwiches or as a nice dish garnished with vegetable sticks. Here, one finds it often in two combinations: with mayonnaise, and with the more common tchina as baba ganoush. This recipe is my (successful, hurrah!) attempt to recreate my grandma’s version, which uses neither, and showcases the eggplant in all its glory.

Eggplant Salad

2-3 eggplants
5 garlic cloves
juice from 1 lemon

Cut the eggplants lengthwise. Unlike other eggplant recipes, there is no need to salt the eggplants or let them “sweat” – the bitterness actually makes this better.
Place the eggplant halves, face down, on aluminum foil, and stick in a 200 degree celsius oven for about twenty minutes. You know the eggplants are ready when their peel becomes all brownish-black and charred.

After taking them out of the oven, we grab a nice spoon and scoop the eggplant’s meat into a bowl. This can be a bit tricky, but I urge you to scrape out as much as you can. If you’re crazy, like me, you’ll enjoy munching on the empty baked peels after you’re done.

The eggplant meat goes into the food processor with the lemon juice and the garlic, or, if you like your salad chunkier, you can mash it with a fork.

Excellent stuff.

The Leaning Tower of Pesto


(pic to come)

Yes, we’re still jetlagged. But when has that stopped us from eating?

Meals are still regularly served at Hadar and Chad’s home, even if they consume their breakfast at 3am, their lunch, well at about 8am, and their dinnner anywhere in between. And since our Chubeza delivery included fresh basil, and we were very hungry, something had to be done immediately.

Fortunately, our food processor was up to the task, and we were able to produce two dangerously unbalanced bowls of Tinkyada brown rice pasta with fresh, simple, homemade pesto. I know, not a remarkable feat. And yet, here it is. I wish I could comment on how well this keeps in the fridge, but as I said, we were hungry, and the entire batch was immediately consumed.

Homemade Pesto Sauce

2 cups fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup excellent quality olive oil
3 tablespoons pine nuts
3 large garlic cloves
1 tablespoon salt

Mix in food processor (adding small batches of stuff at a time). Then, mix with pasta. Eat, enjoy, rest in simplicity.

A Tribute to Phyllis Glazer

Hi, everyone; sorry for having disappeared for so long. I was out of the country, and just came back, still jetlagged and without much motivation for cooking beyond salads and omelettes. In such circumstances, the best I can do for us all is to use this opportunity to pay tribute to a wonderful lady – the “first lady” of vegetarian cooking in Israel: Phyllis Glazer.

Originally from Boston, Phyllis Glazer arrived in Israel and worked as an actress, gradually shifting to the world of vegetarianism. She started writing about healthy cuisine, whole grains and beans, and ecological issues, when none of these was anywhere near the Israeli mainstream. Recently, a festive 25th year anniversary edition of her book Vegetarian Feast was issued; she still writes extensively about vegetarian cooking and eating. Since writing this classic, she’s written a second vegetarian book called Phyllis’ Kitchen, which is also very good, and also a book about Jewish festival cooking.

I got acquainted with Glazer’s work in my early twenties, as a student in Jerusalem. I learned to cook from two sources: my neighbor Frida and Glazer’s book. I bought the book somewhere – can’t remember well – and made each and every recipe in it, though I didn’t follow it to the letter (I always like to invent and improve on written recipes). Glazer taught me the importance of combining whole grains and beans, the possibilities in vegetables I wasn’t familiar with, and the secrets of quick breads, an American novelty I hadn’t been exposed to. With her book, I made fruit custards, pureed soups, homemade granola, and bean casseroles. My first Irish soda bread came out of that book, as did my first muffins – real, genuine powerhouses of bran and fruit, not flavorless sweet treats. Much of my enthusiasm about healthy nutrition echoes the excitement conveyed by Glazer’s writings, and her efforts to make vegetarianism more palatable to the Israeli mainstream.

If you read Hebrew, you’d do good to buy yourself a copy of the book. It’s still relevant and useful. And if you don’t, you can always wrap a banana in foil and freeze it (Glazer’s simple and delicious ice-cream substitute) or make the following leftover dish – my take on one of her classics.

Brown Rice Patties

2 cups cooked brown rice
2 eggs
1/2-1 cup grated vegetables, like zuccini or carrots
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon cumin
1/3 cup whole wheat or brown rice flour

Mix all ingredients and make into flattened discs. Fry in olive oil, or, if desired – bake on a baking sheet until brown.

Buckwheat Salad

This is a quick but helpful entry, because this salad is oh-so-easy and good. I served it yesterday to my pal Rosie who stopped over for dinner.

Buckwheat is actually not a grain; it is a fruit seed, akin to rhubarb. But it is cooked and eaten like a grain. Buckwheat is rich in manganese and magnesium and contains plenty of insoluble fiber. A cup of cooked buckwheat has almost six grams of protein.

I made this salad with cooked buckwheat, but if you have uncooked stuff, just cook it and add the vegetables in the very last minute of cooking.

Buckwheat Salad

2 cups cooked buckwheat
1/2 onion
3 garlic cloves
4 carrots, grated
2 zuccini or summer squashes, grated (the food processor is truly a great invention)
2-3 tbsp water or vegetable broth

Heat some oil in a wok. Add onions and garlic and sautee for a while. Add the grated carrots and zuccinis, and sautee for about five minutes, adding broth if stuff sticks to the wok too much. Then, add buckwheat and mix well together in the wok, adding more broth if necessary. Enjoy.

Missing Meat?

My recent post about TVP yielded several emails and conversations about the place of meat substitutes in a vegetarian diet. The comments that most piqued my curiosity were tose of my old-timer vegetarian pals, who questioned the need to eat anything “resembling meat” at all, merely for the sake of how it looks.

They do have a point, there. We all understand the importance of eating enough protein, iron and B12; every responsible vegetarian (well, every responsible person, for that matter) has to take precautions against deficiencies and consume enough protein-rich grains, beans and seeds. As long as this is quality protein, it’s not important what it looks like. Or, as my grandma says sometimes, “it doesn’t stay pretty in your stomach”.

It is, therefore, quite entertaining to see how food industries insist on producing highly-processed, meticulously-designed products which are supposed to be meat substitutes. Tofurkey can be quite funny; it’s made to look like a real turkey. Lightlife produces a series of soy-made salamis and bolognes and turkey slices that look very much like the original (and, if memory serves me right, taste quite like it, too). A short google of “fake meat” or “mock meat” will take you to quite a bunch of links, including restaurant links, which sport realistic-looking “meat” recipes for vegetarians, such as this picture.

This stuff was most likely made from TVP or from seitan, which is textured wheat gluten. Both of these products happen to contain a good amount of good quality protein, but that’s not why they’re there – they’re there to remind vegetarians of meat. The absurd thing is that not all these substitutes have protein, or even are good for you. For example, Tivall, a wildly successful Israeli food manufacturer, produces “wiener schnitzels” made of corn and broccoli. Yes, it has hydrolized vegetable protein (?!?!) and bread crumbs and “flavoring”, but how much actual good protein is in there? Is it just that we need a patty of something on one corner of our plate to feel as if we’ve eaten?

It’s quite obvious – particularly from the Tofurkey example – that the vegetarian search for fake meat is cultural, not nutritional. We miss meat-based dishes of our omnivorous childhood, and want to recreate them in their cruelty-free form. An important corollary follows: it’s not important whether the protein is actually in the fake meat, as long as we get the protein from somewhere. We can therefore have as much Tivall corn schnitzels as we like, we’ll still need beans, and nuts, and perhaps cheese and eggs. This disconnect between how the food looks and what it actually is, is quite disturbing to anyone who wants to eat as close to nature as possible.

But, but but but, let’s not dis our pals who eat these things too soon. For many people who come to vegetarianism, be it for health or conscience reasons, the move is very difficult. This is particularly true for societies in which meat is considered the centerpiece of the meal. Someone who was raised to think of meat as “the meal”, and of rice, and beans, and vegetables, as “those things that come with the meal”, it is very difficult to get used to meals that seem incomplete. Naturally, thinking beyond the traditional plate is to be encouraged; but there is nothing wrong with a little bit of nostalgia, particularly if you can indulge yourself in a healthy, fun way, and not feel deprived.

I don’t miss meat. Really, I don’t. I have no need to eat meat. Haven’t had it for twelve years. There’s one thing in particular I miss, though: my grandma’s chopped liver. It was rich and creamy and nice, and full of fried onions. As I don’t eat chicken innards anymore, I occasionally look for fun vegetarian pates and spreads, and yesterday I made my own in our kitchen. So, here it is, for your eating pleasure.

Vegetarian Chopped Liver

I don’t know exactly what it is, in mock chopped liver recipes, that recreates the alchemy of actual liver. Is it the eggs and the nuts? Is it the aroma of the fried onions? Surely it can’t be the zuccini, because I’ve looked everywhere for recipes, and found recipes that use mushrooms, green beans, and – an Israeli favorite – eggplants. Alas, I had a surplus of zuccini from Chubeza and absolutely had to use it up. I vaguely remembered having eaten something like this in Passover, but could not find the recipe, and my invented one turned out fine. The only problem was that I didn’t add enough salt. We don’t usually add salt, but this recipe is somewhat of an exception, so be generous with the salt shaker.

4-5 large zuccinis or summer squashes
2 large, white onions
1/3 cup good quality olive or canola oil
4 hard-boiled eggs
3/4 cup walnuts
salt and pepper

In a large pan or a wok, heat up the oil. Chop up the onions and fry them until brown. This requires patience: they absolutely must be dark brown for the flavor alchemy to work properly. Once they are nearly there, add up the chopped-up zuccinis. Keep frying, until the zuccini is golden and soft as well, and the onions emit their lovely fried aroma.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we need to take care of the eggs and nuts. Simply stick’em in your food processor bowl and grind them to dust.

Add the fried stuff to the food processor bowl, and keep grinding, until you get a brown, uniform paste. Keep tasting it (“oh, no, do we have to?”) and add salt and pepper until your grandmother’s presence is strongly felt in the kitchen. If you come from a different ethnic background and your grandma never makes chopped liver, you can channel mine – hers is fantastic. Anyway: remove from bowl and refrigerate. Enjoy with crackers, vegetables, and – for those of you who eat wheat – fresh bread.

Party Food : Part II

I was hoping to post about the farm day, when I got to see the organic farm and meet the vegetables, and their growers, face to face; it was a lovely morning. But the camera, with the farm pictures, has gone with Chad to Colorado, so we’re left with stuffed zuccini.

Stuffed Zuccini

4 zuccini or summer squashes
1/2 white onion
5 mushrooms, or 10 mushroom stems (if you’re stuffing the rest of the mushrooms)
1/2 cup crumbled goat feta cheese
3 garlic cloves

Cut each zuccini to about four pieces of equal size. With a small knife, remove some of the inside, leaving a little “cup” with a bottom.

Grate the stuff you took out of the zuccini; chop the mushrooms.

In a pan, sautee chopped garlic cloves and onion; then, add grated zuccini and chopped mushroom. Sautee all this together until soft and aromatic.

Then, mix in a bowl, with cheese. This is the stuffing.

Now, hear your oven to 180 degrees celsius. Scoop some stuffing into each of the zuccini “cups”. Organize in a baking dish and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until the zuccini is cooked but still firm. Enjoy!

Party Food (alas, no pictures): Part I

The other day I had lots of beautiful ladies of all shapes and sizes over here for a clothes swap, and had to serve them something to eat.

The original concept was of finger foods, but then things got complicated; some of the stuff I was planning to make required vegetables which were unavailable from our Chubeza delivery, and some of the ingredients simply called to make them into something else. Eventually I settled on a different, but fun, menu, and it got rave reviews from the ladies.

So here it is, for your cooking pleasure; part I includes recipes for cabbage rolls and stuffed mushrooms. Tune in tomorrow for stuffed zuccini.

Shavuot Cheese Suffles (see below)

Cabbage Rolls with Quinoa

This one, in its meat version, is an old Mennonite favorite, and Chad’s family has been eating it for years. Chad and I have been working on a vegetarian version, and recently we discovered that a combination of quinoa and lentils for the filling works wonders. The following version, however, has only quinoa – but is equally delicious.

1 white cabbage
1 cup quinoa
1 onion
5-6 cloves of garlic
3 tbsp of rosemary, or herbs-de-provence, or any other mixed herb
2 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1-2 cups of your favorite homemade tomato sauce

In a pot, fry up the onion and garlic. Add the quinoa and herbs, and 2 cups vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then lower the temperature, cover pot and cook for about 20 minutes. Drain any excess broth and set aside.

In another pot, place cabbage in water. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes, or until cabbage becomes slightly translucent and leaves are soft. Drain and let cool.

Using a small, sharp knife, remove the core of the cabbage. Then, carefully peel each leaf at a time (this requires practice), and remove the white tough middle of each leaf (so the leaf remains complete, but can be easily bent).

Heat up your oven to 180 degrees celsius. Pick a nice, deep, wide baking dish and oil it lightly with olive oil. Pick up every cabbage leaf, and using a spoon, place a healthy spoonful of the quinoa mix in each leaf. Fold the sides and roll all the way. Place in baking dish. The idea is to put the leaves in the dish quite snugly. When the dish is full and you’ve run out of usable cabbage, mix the tomato sauce with the broth and pour on top of the cabbage. Put in oven and bake for 45 minutes.

Mash-rooms

25 champignon mushrooms
3 large potatoes
1/2 onion
olive oil
black pepper and chili flakes to taste

Carefully remove stems from all mushrooms. Chop up the stems and the onion, and fry in olive oil until brown and fragrant. Meanwhile, bake, boil or microwave the potatoes. Mash’em with the stems and onion. Then, stuff some of the mash into each stemless mushroom, place in a lightly-oiled baking dish, and put into a hot oven (200 degrees celsius would work) for about half an hour (or more, if you really want a crispy top).

Working Class Soy Products

The other day I stumbled upon a health food store I hadn’t seen before; which is quite surprising, because it’s right in the city center, on Dizengoff and Frischmann. The folks who work there are extremely nice and knowledgeable about the lovely stuff the city has to offer, including spices, teas, grains, baking and cooking products from cast iron and silicone, and various mystery items in bins.

It was one of these mystery items that I stumbled upon as I was looking for something nice to eat for dinner; it had strange, dry brown/beige pellets of varying sizes, and was very, very cheap. “What is this?” I asked. “You’ve never seen these before?” said the salesperson. “They are really, really cool; these are soy slices. You cook them like meat, only you have to soak them first”.

Several hours later, I started searching the internet for interesting things to do with the funny pellets, which I now realized were called TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein). Apparenly, TVP has been around for a while, but has not enjoyed the yuppie publicity of tofu and soymilk. Probably because it is much, much cheaper. It’s been served in workplace cafeterias and canteens way before vegetarianism became a lifestyle, rather than a financial necessity. And, yeah, it’s very tasty.

As opposed to tofu and miso, TVP is not fermented. It is made from defatted, ground soy, and textured to look and feel – when wet – like a little sponge, with a texture not dissimilar from that of chewy Chinese beef or chicken bits (haven’t had those for nearly fourteen years, but still got the memories). It is bought dry, then soaked in boiling water for several hours before it can be used. In fact, it’s not dissimilar from seitan (wheat gluten puffs).

TVP seems to be a good alternative for folks transferring to vegetarianism after years of eating typical Western fare. For example, this website provides some ideas on how TVP can be “meat in disguise” in some common North American dishes. Here are some options, too.

These recipes all indicate that TVP serves mostly as “fake meat”. While I find no particular reason to constantly imitate meat in my kitchen, it’s fun, occasionally, to eat something one used to eat as a meat eater and use TVP. I used it, therefore, to prepare a stir-fry “beef” with green beans and mushrooms (this week’s delivery of green beans from the farm was particularly impressive). When Chad came home, he came up with the idea of eating the leftovers in pita, with tchina, as one would in a shewarma stand (see other picture). It was very good both ways.

Stir-Fry TVP “Beef” with Green Beans and Mushrooms

30 pellets of dark TVP
1 cup fresh green beans
1 cup fresh forest mushrooms, or soaked shiitake mushrooms
4 garlic cloves
1/2 cup good quality soy sauce
1/2 inch fresh ginger
1 tsp chili flakes, or hot sauce
(optional) 1/2 tsp honey

STEP I: prepare the TVP. Soak it in lots and lots of boiling water for a good eight hours (leave it soaking when you go to work, it’ll be ready for dinner). It will nearly quadruple its size. Then, discard the water, and gently squeeze the puffed sponges to remove a bit more water (this will leave room for them to soak the sauce).

STEP II: Cut off (scissors are really fun for this) the green bean tips. Slice the mushrooms and garlic cloves. We start off with some oil in the wok, then add the garlic, ginger and chili/hot sauce a nice aroma fills the room. Then, we put the TVP in the wok and just let it absorb and get used to its new situation. Not much stirring (yeah, you, leave it be!). After the TVP begins to warm up and get slightly darker (five minutes is enough), add up the soy sauce, honey (if desired) and any more aromatics, if you so prefer. Then add the vegetables, and stir fry for another five minutes. Voila, “beef”.

My serving suggestion: eat as is, or on brown rice.
Chad’s serving suggestion: stuff into a pita with tchina and raw vegetables.

So, there’s another way to eat some vegetable protein and not go broke. Enjoy!