Food blogging will recommence shortly, with a new guest post, and with some extensive musings from me about the legs of pigs. But for now, you may consider this my Christmas card to all of you.
These images are from the interior of the Antoni Gaudí designed Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, in Barcelona. I have seen many pictures, over the years, from the outside. But I was entirely unprepared for this.
I only wish that my pictures could do it justice.
Posted in Holidays, Photography
Tagged barcelona, gaudi, not food, photography, spain
Sharyn is a professor of English, avid runner, and champion napper. When not teaching, running, or under her beloved Slanket, she bakes vegan treats and greedily reads her friends’ blogs. Originally from Massachusetts, Sharyn has lived in southern Indiana for the past 8 years and earned her PhD in December 2011. (She’s wicked proud of it.)
Being vegan or vegetarian (veg*n) during the holidays can present a set of dietary challenges that may be compounded by the already-stressful nature of packing families, food, and quality time into a few short days at the end of the year. Food takes on a powerful connotation during the holiday season—the act of hosting and feeding others becomes an embodiment of Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men. With all of that hanging over the meal, one’s food choices can take on a larger than life significance, as each thing one chooses to not eat disrupts the holiday spirit and leaves you open to accusations of Grinch-like behavior. Despite these potential problems, I’ve found that holidays as a veg*n can still be filled with warmth and fun and lots of sharing; in fact, there may be much more sharing than you ever expected.
Having been vegan for nearly 15 years now, I have had my share of holiday hassles. I’ve heard every joke, every silly question, every criticism of my dietary choices that exists. And often, I hear these comments from people who routinely stop at the McDonald’s drive-through for questionable “food.” By now, fortunately, my family is quite accepting of my lifestyle and choices, and holidays are much less stressful in the food department. Here are some things that have helped make that transition possible:
Learn how to cook or bake, or at least bring someone home with you who can. My husband, Brian, is an excellent cook. So excellent, in fact, that he does all the cooking for the two of us, and it’s all vegan, all the time. I’m the baker, and can put up pretty mean cupcakes and cookies come the holidays. The point is, being able to bring food to the table is a key component of the holiday season—don’t be left out! And it’s better for everyone if you can bring something truly homemade, rather than, say, frozen veggie burgers or something. Trust me, no one will hassle you if you bring them perfectly roasted vegetables or warm mashed potatoes or pecan pie truffles. Those truffles, in particular, are a Sure Thing—be ready to see them disappear, most likely without you even getting one. Which brings me to the next point:
Prepare to Share. Whether it’s out of hunger, politeness, or sheer curiosity, friends and family will want to try your treats. Back in the early days of my veganism, I would often have to say something like, “if you want to taste my dish, fine, but I don’t want to hear any criticism!” That, of course, is not the most friendly or heart-warming introduction to veg*n cooking, so I’ve learned to amend my approach. By bringing enough to share, not only are you participating in the spirit of the holidays, but you are letting others get a taste of veg*n life. Just make sure you get a taste, too!
And getting a taste means not only indulging in your favorite treats, but getting a taste of the holiday cheer, too. So much stress about the holidays comes from having unrealistically high expectations, lots of family and friends in close proximity, and neglecting yourself. Make sure to enjoy your favorite holiday foods and allow others the same courtesy. In other words, beyond introducing folks to the deliciousness of your recipes, save the veg*n evangelizing for another time. No doubt there will be family members teasing, taunting, or questioning, but for the sake of holiday harmony do your best not to take the bait and not to lose your patience. By no means should you shrink from an honest discussion of diet health and ethics, but there’s probably no need to rattle off factory farming statistics to your drunk Uncle Jerry while in the church foyer awaiting the kids’ holiday pageant, for instance. (In fact, that situation might mean problems much bigger than your veg*n diet.) Throughout the years, I’ve found that the sharing and indulgences now go both ways at my family celebrations. My family accommodates my diet now, even getting excited when they find vegan snacks and pastries that I can eat. They also make special requests—this year, I am to make this delectable maple pecan pie for Christmas dessert. (side note: I recommend making and pre-baking Mark Bittman’s pie crust instead of the one in this pie recipe, using 2 TB of Earth Balance shortening and 6 TB of Earth Balance buttery sticks in place of butter. It comes out so perfectly flaky and delicious that no one will realize! Or at least they won’t care!) So, have courage dear veg*ns; the holidays are meant for all to enjoy as they wish, and you are no different. It just means being proactive about your own enjoyment and being prepared with delicious goodies to share.
Remember to be kindly about sharing, as well. Every year I think I might get Brian’s expertly roasted Tofurky all to ourselves; yet sadly, his technique truly makes something special out of what is otherwise an underwhelming meat alternative, and I am always left without seconds. But it’s worth it to see so many happy faces around the dinner table, and to see all of us sharing a meal in the true spirit of the holidays.
Here are Brian’s tips to get the most out of a store-bought Tofurky Roast, should you choose one for your holiday meal:
Posted in Cooking, Guest Posts, Holidays, Savory
Tagged christmas, thanksgiving, tofurky, vegan, vegetarian
I can’t say that I’m much of a C. S. Lewis fan. His writing for adults has never much grabbed me. And being neither a Christian, nor someone who read the books as a child, I have a limited appreciation for The Chronicles of Narnia. At best. But I do owe C. S. Lewis one debt of gratitude for Narnia. It names for me a particular attitude that I have held all my life, but that I have never otherwise been able to adequately articulate: I desire, like the White Witch, for it always to be winter, but never to be Christmas.
Or Hanukkah. Or Kwanzaa. Or most of the other mass-marketed gift-giving holidays at the end of the year.
I am not, as you might suspect, a Grinch. I don’t hate Christmas, or any of the rest of the Holiday Season, per se. Despite the fact that I am not myself religious, I don’t hate religion, either. Nor, under most circumstances, do I hate consumer capitalism. (For most of the year, in fact, I like to shop more than I would willingly admit in public).
The issue for me, I think, is that when we combine religion and explosive shopping with a double scoop of good old American optimism, the mixture is so rich, and so saccharine, that my throat closes, and my stomach churns, and all I want to do is find one of those Santas ringing one of those infernal, piercing bells for the Salvation Army, and throw a shoe at him. I want to wipe those fakey smiles off the faces of the store-clerks who chirp Happy Holidays! at me as they take my money. I want to pour bleach into the base of a Christmas tree, and put lumps of coal in children’s stockings.
I guess, maybe, that I do sound like a Grinch. And I guess, maybe, that I have said once or twice, to one or two people, that I “hate” Christmas. But it’s not like that. Really.
I’m actually a big fan of what I have come to think of as traditional Christmas, and what Sarah has come to call, somewhat mockingly, Dickensian Christmas. I am struck with a wave of nostalgia at the thought of drinking mulled wine while gathered around an old-fashioned fireplace — something I have never actually experienced. I roast chestnuts at every opportunity, while they are in season. Perennially, I offer to cook Sarah’s family a Christmas goose, complete with stuffing, and plum pudding for dessert. (And perennially, they turn me down. Flatly.)
I’m not a big fan of the Christmas songs of the baby-boom generation. But I do spend much of the winter humming some of the more traditional music. “Good King Wenceslas” does it for me. As does “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “I Saw Three Ships,” and even religious music like “Veni, Veni Emmanuel.”
And while I’ve never been quite comfortable with the idea of giving — or receiving — gifts, I do like the idea of reciprocity, of material demonstrations of care for one’s neighbors, of finding opportunities to build tangible community with family, at work, in the neighborhood. I just wish that it actually worked that way.
Which is where, to my mind, Christmas cookies come in. Sarah and I began making Christmas cookies, in bulk, a couple of years ago, as a compromise between my position — no gifts — and her position — wanting to be on speaking terms with our families. Every year now, I make three or four different kinds of cookies. Then Sarah divvies them up, packages them (mostly in take-out containers, re-purposed for the cause), and sends them out to family and friends across the country.
This has a couple of great advantages. On the most practical level, it keeps me out of a situation where I am apt to hit a poor, defenseless mall employee, or challenge kindly Parson Brown to a duel. It keeps us out of the consumerist rat-race — at least a little. And it means one fewer gift that a family member will stick in a closet and only dust off when we come calling. The cookies are consumable, after all.
In a broader sense, though, as you (dear readers!) may have gathered by now, there is little that better captures the essence, for me, of caring for one’s friends and family than cooking for them. It’s why I like to have folks over for Thanksgiving. It’s why my impulse, when we have house guests, is to feed them, continuously and without mercy. If gift-giving is about renewing the bonds of community with people with whom one is close, aren’t home-made consumables orders of magnitude better than something … made of plastic?
Sometimes. Most of the time. Though some people get books, if I’ve found something I think they’ll like.
At any rate, this year, a lot of people got a lot of cookies. I baked about thirty-three dozen, overall: chocolate chip, nutmeg maple butter cookies, speculoos, and orange-cardamom shortbread. Sarah ended up sending out eleven pretty massive packages of them. And if I don’t see another cookie until next December, I must admit, that won’t make me sad.
Nonetheless, I did want to share one of the recipes with all of you here. I can’t share any of the first three — two aren’t mine, and the speculoos are still very much a work in progress. But I did want to offer you the orange-cardamom shortbread. I’ve made it a couple of times, now. It turns out consistently well. And it is, hands-down, my all-time favorite shortbread cookie.
Also, it’s easy. Check it out.
4 cups Unbleached AP White Flour
4 sticks Unsalted Butter at room temperature (the best quality you can manage — it matters)
1 1/2 cup Confectioner’s Sugar (plus a couple of tablespoons of granulated sugar for sprinkling over the cookies)
1 Egg Yolk (plus 1 egg for brushing over the tops of the cookies)
2 tsp Cardamom
1 tsp Orange Flower Extract (or Cointreau)
Zest of 2 Oranges
1 tsp Salt
In your stand mixer (or by hand), cream together the butter and confectioner’s sugar. Add the egg yolk, orange zest, cardamom, and orange water, and mix thoroughly on medium. Add the flour and salt, and mix on low until the dough comes together (you may need to scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple of times). Move the dough into a gallon-sized freezer bag, shape into a log, and chill for about half an hour.
In the mean time, preheat your oven to 350F, position your oven racks near the middle of the oven, and line two cookie sheets with parchment.
At the end of the half hour, remove the dough from the refrigerator, and on a lightly floured pastry board (or clean counter), roll out the dough until it’s about a bit less than a centimeter thick. Using a cookie-cutter, cut the the dough into rounds. Then re-roll, and re-cut, until you’ve used as much of the dough as you can manage. (You might consider rolling the dough out, then folding it up into a rectangle and rolling it again. I find that it adds a nice, flaky, layered-ness to the cookies.)
Arrange the dough rounds evenly on your cookie sheets. Then brush lightly with an egg-wash, sprinkle some granulated sugar over the top, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the cookies are golden brown.
Sarah and I have a grand weekend tradition of eating breakfast out. We’ve been doing it almost as long as we’ve been together. First, it was at the Original Mel’s in Berkeley, then the Runcible Spoon in Bloomington, and now … it’s wherever we can manage here in Philadelphia. We’re fans of restaurant dining, generally — of food made to order, of eating amidst the din and clatter of other groups at other tables. But our breakfast tradition is really less about the experience of the restaurant, per se, than it is about the idea of breakfast being leisurely — of it being a time to talk, sip coffee, eat bacon, and let the world recede around us, if only for a little while.
Circumstances, though, are such that going out to breakfast is sometimes neither plausible nor desirable. Sometimes we awaken too early or too late. Or we feel that we’ve done too much eating out, or that it’s too cold outside, or that the idea of facing mediocre breakfast — the majority of breakfast (alas!) in our neighborhood — is not very appetizing at all.
Sometimes we want to stay in. But cereal for breakfast, on a weekend, is just so very sad.
Today was one of those days. It was a morning when the timing, the weather, everything lined up against the notion of leaving the house. And so I crept downstairs, early but not too early, pre-heated the oven, and put together some scones.
The base recipe for these scones is not mine. It’s a Mark Bittman dealy that appeared in the New York Times a year-and-a-bit ago. But the combination of flavors is mine. And I’ve made some important modifications, especially to cooking time, that take these scones from pasty and slightly raw tasting (a common scone problem) to toasty and delicious.
They’re super easy, at any rate. And they can be done, start to finish, in under 40 minutes. How can you not want to make them for breakfast?
2 cups AP Unbleached Flour
1 Egg
1 Stick of Unsalted Butter, chilled and cubed
1/2 cup Heavy Cream
3 tbsp White Sugar
2 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Dried Rosemary, crushed
1/2 tsp Salt
Zest of 2 Lemons
Preheat your oven to 450F, and line a cookie sheet with parchment.
To the bowl of a food processor, add the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, and pulse a couple of times to mix. Add the lemon zest, rosemary, and butter, and pulse in five-second bursts until there are no more chunks of butter, and the mixture has a texture like sand. In a second bowl, beat the egg and cream together, then add to the food processor, and pulse again, again in five-second bursts, until the dough just barely comes together.
At this point, turn your dough out onto a floured pastry board, shape into a rectangle, and using a floured rolling pin, roll the dough out evenly until it is a half-inch thick. Use a round cookie cutter (or the mouth of a glass) to cut out two-inch disks, spacing them evenly on your lined cookie sheet. Then re-form the left-over dough, re-roll, and cut again. You should get 8-10 rounds in all.
Once the rounds are cut, top each scone with a little bit more cream (to add color and sheen once they are cooked), and a sprinkle of additional white sugar. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the tops are golden brown and just starting to darken around the edges. Then remove from the oven and eat while hot.
I never get tired of these.
**Update, November 24, 2011, 10:25PM: Thanksgiving went off without a hitch. Despite my earlier chafing against holiday orthodoxy, it was, perhaps, the most traditional Thanksgiving I have ever made. And it was tasty. And it was well received. And a good time was had by all.
For those of you who were there — thanks for coming; it was great! And for all the rest of you out there who weren’t — be sorry you missed it.
Now, I know. That picture of a naked turkey (technically proficient as it might be) is a bit hard to look at as the top image on the blog. So, in honor of the holiday spirit, here’s something slightly more appetizing to the eye. Enjoy!
I hope that you all have a great time with turkey, and family, and stuffing, and pie. I know that I will!
What, with Thanksgiving coming up and all that, I’ve been making a lot of ice cream lately. First vanilla (because you can’t properly have pie without vanilla ice cream) and then maple with pan-roasted pecan pieces (because something about that combination screams I’m for Thanksgiving!). I expect that some few of you out there would like the recipes for these luscious, creamy, indulgent delights. And I’d like to give them to you — I would. But I think that I won’t. For two reasons. First, because the recipes belong to David Lebovitz, and clearly, if you want them, you should go buy his book. And second, because I kind of think that ice-cream leftovers is a more interesting topic.
The funny thing about ice cream is that each batch calls for somewhere between four and six egg yolks. Yolks. And that means that for each batch, you end up with a lot of leftover egg whites. Whites. Now, there are a few things you can do with egg whites. You could make egg-white omelets (*shudder*), or you could make an angel-food cake (complicated), or you could make a raft to clarify a consommé (huh?!). But it seems to me that there is only one thing that you might want to do with a bunch of leftover egg whites. You’ve got it right: meringues.
Meringues, French meringues, forgotten cookies, or whatever you want to call them, are addictive. They are crunchy, sweet, flavorful, fat-free (don’t confuse this with good-for-you), and lighter-than-air. They fall somewhere in the spectrum between pastry and candy. If you’re good at piping them, they are like tiny, gorgeous marble statues. And as it turns out, they are super easy to make.
Here’s how.*
4 Egg Whites (at room temperature)
1 cup Confectioner’s Sugar
3/4 cup Granulated Sugar
2 tsp Vanilla Extract (or almond, or Sambuca, or whatever)
3 tbsp Cocoa Powder (optional)
Exciting Food Coloring (optional)
Salt
Preheat your oven to 250F and line two cookie sheets with parchment. Prepare a pastry bag (wide, fluted pastry tips are helpful but unnecessary. A gallon ziplock bag with a hole cut at one end will do just fine) and set aside.
In the bowl of your stand mixer, add the egg whites and a pinch of salt, and with the whisk attachment, beat on high until foamy. Slowly, while the mixer is still going, add your granulated sugar. Then continue to beat until the whites form soft peaks.
At this point, slow the mixer to low-medium, and slowly add the confectioner’s sugar, along with any flavorings (vanilla, chocolate, etc.) and / or food colorings. When all of this is well incorporated, bring the mixer back up to high, and beat until the meringue forms stiff peaks — until it stands straight up on the whisk.
Spoon the finished meringue into your pastry bag, making sure that you leave enough headroom to be able to squeeze from the top of the bag, and then pipe buttons of meringue, at even intervals, onto the lined cookie sheets. It may take refilling the bag a couple of times to dispose of all the meringue. And don’t worry about piping your meringues close together. If you’ve done this right, they won’t really spread.
Place the cookie sheets with the meringues into your 250F oven for one hour and twenty minutes (or a bit longer if you’ve made bigger ones). Then, at the end of that time, turn off the oven and allow the meringues to sit inside, undisturbed, for at least two more hours, so that they can dry out.
At the end of that time, you should have beautiful, statuesque cookies that you will know were easy, but that will be sure to impress your friends.
* This recipe is loosely adapted from one that can be found in Michel Roux’s Eggs.
I didn’t grow up eating a lot of pork. I’m Jewish, yes. But that’s not the reason. My father was in the Navy during World War II, you see. And while he was shipboard, as he described, it, we would eat everything that was good, first. And then, all that would be left were the pork chops. And it would be pork chops and pork chops and pork chops for weeks at a time. And my father learned to loath pork — except for bacon. And so really, we never had a whole lot of pork products in the house when I was a kid — except for bacon.
Living (and cooking) on my own for the first time, pork was kind of a revelation. I was a vegetarian for the first several years of my transition to cooking for myself. But then it was prosciutto. And then it was Italian sausages. Then meatballs. Then the wonders of a pork chop cooked actually to the right temperature. And pork sort of took off for me as the default meat, especially when I want to use just a little meat to give a dish a lot of flavor.
I’m given to understand, from the reading of other blogs, that my attachment to fine swine is hardly uncommon. Others, it seems, may even like the fruit of the cloven hoof more than I. But sometimes, I’ll make something that is, lets say, pork overload. And far from shying away, I am shocked to find myself reminded of that initial piggy revelation.
This is one of those dishes.
2 Small Winter Squash (like sugar pumpkins, or some such) halved and scooped out
1.5 lb Country Sausage, removed from its casing and cut up small (if you’re in the mid-Atlantic, the Amish do this really well)
1 lb Smoked Country Sausage, cut up small (again, Amish time)
1/2 lb Collard Greens (or kale), stemmed and chopped coarsely
4 Cloves of Garlic
1 Onion, Diced
1 cup Cooked Brown Rice (a generous cup)
2 tsp Dried Sage
1 tsp Rosemary
1 tsp Thyme
1 tsp Parsley Flakes
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Preheat your oven to 400F. Arrange the winter squash halves open side up in a roasting pan, rub them with olive oil, and season with a little bit of salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes (until they are about one third of the way cooked), then remove from the oven and set aside.
While the squash are pre-cooking, heat a sauté pan on the stove over a medium flame. Add olive oil, the diced onion, and a little salt, and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic, sage, rosemary, thyme, and parsley, and cook for another two minutes. Add all of the sausage, and cook until the country sausage is about three quarters of the way done (about 10 minutes). Add the chopped collards, and cook with a lid for about ten more minutes (until the collards have wilted). Then add your cooked rice, season with salt and pepper, mix everything well, and spoon as much filling as will fit into each of the four squash halves.
Place the squash back in the oven, and cook until the shells offer no resistance when poked with a knife, and the top of the filling is a medium brown (about an hour).
I can’t say that I have much of a story to tell here. But I will offer a word of unsolicited advice.
Should you ever happen to go to a reputable restaurant, and should you, on the menu, ever happen to have a choice between a tender fillet mignon and an off-cut — a short rib, or an oxtail, or something of that ilk — always choose the off-cut. Steaks are a dime a dozen. But good braised beef, now. That’s a meal to remember.
I’d like to tell you that it’s a matter of opinion. But it’s not. I’d like to tell you to take my advice with a grain of salt. But you shouldn’t. Unless you have (for some inexplicable reason) ended up at a top-flight steakhouse, the off-cut will likely be more flavorful than the steak, and it will definitely be less boring.
Just make sure it’s a reputable restaurant. Bad braises are bad.
4 Beef Short Ribs
3 cups Red Wine
2 Onions, sliced
2 Ribs of Celery, cubed
2 Medium Carrots, cubed
3 Bay Leaves
3 Cloves of Garlic, crushed
1 tbsp Crushed Red Pepper
1 tsp Thyme
1 tsp Thai Fish Sauce (or finely chopped anchovy)
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Preheat your oven to 250F. On the stove, heat a dutch oven over medium-high heat, with a little bit of olive oil. Season the short ribs with salt. When the dutch oven is very hot, carefully place the short ribs inside, browning on every side for about three minutes. Then remove to a plate.
Turn the burner to medium. To the dutch oven, add the onions, celery, carrots, thyme, crushed red pepper, ground black pepper, and a little bit more salt, and cook until the onions start to brown. Then add the bay leaves and garlic, and cook for about two more minutes.
Return the short ribs to the dutch oven, nestling them down among the onions. Add wine (it should come a bit more than three quarters of the way up the sides of the ribs). As soon as it begins to simmer, place the top on the dutch oven, and put it in your pre-heated oven for three hours.
At the end of the three hours, remove the dutch oven from your oven, and remove the short ribs to a serving plate (be careful, they will want to fall apart). Strain the braising liquid into a second saucepan, add the fish sauce, and boil over high heat until the liquid has reduced by more than half.
Pour the liquid (now a sauce) over the short ribs. And serve, accompanied by rice or mashed potatoes.
It turns out, to my great relief, that my mental state in the kitchen does not necessarily reflect what finally comes out of the oven.
Today started out a bit frazzled, and far from the relaxation that baking often provides, it only served to tip me over the edge into crazy. I ended up flitting around the kitchen this afternoon, increasingly frenetic, barely able to muster the coordination to accomplish each cookie-baking task. I banged into counters, dropped spoons, spilled sugar, muttered to myself, and at least once, yelled. And nothing, I was sure, was going to turn out like it should.
It was the cold, I think, that had me all full of nerves. It was the unexpected snow outside, and the unexpected need to turn on the radiators for the first time this season. A full month ahead of schedule.
But today’s experiment was a simple one. Lucky for me. Simple, elegant, flaky, buttery, exquisite. Shortbread. And despite me — I’m absolutely sure — it came out exactly like it should: like a warm, comforting hug on a winter’s day.
Now, as we get to the recipe part of the post, I’m sure that you’re thinking to yourself: shortbread? Really? This hardly gets an A+ for creativity. I’m sure that you’re rifling, in your mind, through your index of a thousand-and-a-half shortbread recipes.
But did I mention that it was cold today? Shortbread, to my California-bred imagination, is real cold-weather comfort food. And so you’re going to get my version as well.
Try it. I’m telling you. You won’t be disappointed.
2 cups All Purpose, Unbleached Flour
1 cup (2 sticks) Unsalted Butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup Confectioner’s sugar
1/2 cup Almond Slivers, toasted and crushed
1 Egg, beaten with a little bit of water
1 tbsp Granulated Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 tsp Salt
In one bowl, cream together the butter, confectioner’s sugar, and vanilla. While in a second, whisk together the flour and salt. Add the latter to the former, and mix until you have a dough that looks something like coarse sand. Move the dough into a ziplock bag, form it into a loose disk (being sure not to compact it too much), and refrigerate for about a half hour until it firms up.
After half an hour, preheat the oven to 350F and line a cookie sheet with parchment. On a lightly floured pastry board (or clean counter), roll out the dough until it’s about a quarter of an inch thick. Using a cookie-cutter, cut the the dough into rounds. Then re-roll, and re-cut, until you’ve used as much of the dough as you can manage (I got fifteen rounds in all). Arrange the disks on the cookie sheet, and refrigerate for fifteen minutes.
After fifteen minutes, remove the cookie sheet from the refrigerator. Brush each cookie with egg wash, sprinkle them with toasted almonds and granulated sugar, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the cookies are just barely golden.
Cool for at least twenty minutes, and remember: don’t eat them all at once.
