edgy veggie

Summer Surprised Us

2011-09-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

“Summer surprised us,” writes T.S. Eliot. The phrase comes early in “The Wasteland’ and it surprises the reader, too, already so lost in the poem’s rich layers as to be startled by these five simple syllables that come in the seventh line.

Summer always surprises me, especially September, which I still associate with fall, with going back to school and the whole gestalt of it, from the new dress my mother always got me for the first day of class in grade school, to college in Bennington, where leaves were starting to change color. So I trot out my limited autumnal wardrobe. Only I’m in Miami and it’s in the 90s, hotter, even, than August. Even though it happens every year, the end of summer catches me by surprise. I always call Labor Day Memorial Day, the other holiday that brackets the summer, the one that comes in the beginning, in May. Labor Day means summer over, game over.

That may not be such a bad thing. This summer in particular has been a time of surprises, but not the sort where you get flowers from a secret admirer or run into a long-lost friend on the street. This summer, the surprises have been more on the Biblical order — hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, drought, wildfires, the ten year anniversary of 9/11. Closer to home, our neighbor was arrested (I always suspected he was up to something) and my father-in-law died. It all coincided as summer turned to fall, a fairly grim harvest, a modern-day equivalent of the plagues, a reason to stock up on NSAIDs. What I call a visit from the Crap Fairy.

For me, putting wry words to a bad situation helps rob it of some of its malevolent power. But nomenclature only gets you so far when the ground you’ve been sure of shifts beneath your feet. For one friend, it meant losing his health and his job and with it, his income and his sense of self. For another, the ground shifted literally when her farm flooded, leaving it three feet under water. On a good day, I am edgy enough to envision Armageddon, I don’t need any help.

What do you do in times like these? My friend with the flooded farm did not lie down on the floor and have a tantrum, although God knows, I wouldn't have blamed her. She cooked up the tomatoes her husband had harvested — all 700 pounds of them.

If we can’t change the course of nature, at least we can make dinner. The very act of cooking means taking one step then another. There are tomatoes to can, dull physical acts that impel us towards life. Cooking walks the thin line between sacrament and faking it till you make it. It does not make everything better, but it engages us, it fills the emptiness. And we get dinner, too.

Summer Surprise Stew

"The harvest has passed, the summer has ended, and yet we are not saved."

Jeremiah 8:20.

Not so fast, big boy. Quick and easy to make, nourishing and soothing to eat, this stew is surprisingly full of the flavors of summer. Serve over quinoa or other whole grain.

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced

1 zucchini, chopped

1 jalapeno

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon coriander

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 bunch greens, such as kale or spinach (roughly 3 to 4 cups)

1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Heat oil in a soup pot over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion, garlic and ginger and jalapeno. Saute, stirring occasionally, until vegetables soften, about 8 minutes.

Add cumin, coriander and turmeric. Add greens a handful at a time. Toss until greens are coated and start to wilt, about 3 minutes.

Add garbanzos and tomatoes. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, or until vegetables are tender and flavors have blended.

Season with sea salt and pepper.

Serves 4.

The World on a Plate

2011-06-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

I’ve been at work on a book called Feeding the Hungry Ghost, which while peppered with recipes is not quite a cookbook, it’s like this blog -- it talks about food but it also talks about faith. It’s not driven by nutritional information, it’s driven by narrative, by story. A literary agent initially interested in the book came back to me with a pinched expression. “Well, it’s not quite a cookbook, is it?” And my first reaction was to cringe and whinge and apologize.

My heart goes out to literary agents these days. Old-school publishing is eroding out from under our toes the way the ocean shifts the shoreline. What will it become? E-books? No books? Nobody knows. But agents, editors everybody in the industry’s running scared. Fear makes our brains small. And the thing is, what I’m going for is big.

I’d never meant Feeding the Hungry Ghost to be just a cookbook. Between the sheer number of cookbooks out there and the internet’s stash of recipes, we don’t need another one (no, not even mine). We watch Food Network and Food Channel obsessively, but most of my friends don’t cook. We chase after today’s most Tweeted nutrient but one in three of us is obese. We’re incredibly hungry, but not just for food, and that’s what Feeding the Hungry Ghost is about. It takes its title from the Tao concept of restless souls still hungry, still seeking even beyond the grave.

“For all our food processors and fancy food stores, our connection with food is very low,” as big-hearted novelist and food writer Laurie Colwin wrote. “We eat breakfast on the run. Our children’s lunch boxes are filled with instant pudding, instant soup, peanut butter and jelly on packaged bread. I do not believe that delicious food is a frill. Food is not fuel. It is not nutrition. It is fun, educational, horizon expanding, delightful. It is consoling, transporting and a comfort.”

To which I thought, yes.

Since Colwin wrote that -- almost 20 years go -- we’ve grown even more disconnected from our food even as we Tweet about mindful eating. Frankly, mindful eating sounds like a chore. But what if it felt like hanging with a friend, one who feeds you terrific things, too, maybe even popping a bit of chocolate cake in your mouth, which is forward as hell, but the cake is moist and velvety and winningly dark and your friend explains hand-feeding is an Ethiopian custom of friendship/kinship known as gursha. That’s what I want Feeding the Hungry Ghost to be.

My alluding to a Greek myth or The Good Soldier or a Strokes song may not have direct bearing on a recipe, but it can illuminate, enlarge, awaken. Like saffron and harissa and cinnamon, it makes the writing taste better, it makes life taste better, it feeds us. So I will not apologize for not quite writing a cookbook.

To discuss food without discussing our relationship to it, be it ties to a recipe, the culture, place or time it comes from or even the delight of sourcing, preparing and sharing food itself is to miss the bigger picture. M. F. K. Fisher, America’s premier food writer, showed us this, writing, “Our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it. . . and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied. . . .and it is all one.”

For Hungry Ghost, I had to go back to Fisher, Colwin and other writers who’ve inspired me, who make me feel not alone in the universe. They do for me what chocolate seems to do for others. Their writing is delicious, yes, but sustaining, too.

Why settle for life served up in bytes, when you can get a feast cooked with love and with you in mind, to enjoy with wine and friends, with laughter and pleasure and meaning and connection?

Look, food Tweets and blogs and channels rock, but what feeds us isn’t just what goes in our mouths, it’s what enters our souls. Yeah, I get to say stuff like that now and again, and so does Terry Theise, wine guy extraordinaire and author of the slim but transformative Reading Between the Wines. If we slow down and allow ourselves to surrender to the pleasure of a wine -- okay, a really good wine, “we hear a kind of divinity,” he writes. “And loveliest of all, you don’t have to attain this by dint of some tremendous effort of ‘spiritual practice,’ you don’t have to meditate or hold seances or even do yoga. You just have to be willing to relax and step out of your damned life for a few minutes.”

And that is what I want for Feeding the Hungry Ghost, that is what I want for you -- a book that offers recipes you’re hungry to try but also gives you the world on a plate.

Vegan Chocolate Cake

I was testing plant-based milks for an Edgy Veggie column and thinking what recipe to make for it. Smoothie? Boring. Baked thing? Very boring. Sauce? Also boring. Plant-based milks, by the way, do not great custard bases make.

I took a mental health break to look through Laurie Colwin’s wonderful book More Home Cooking. I love her cozy way of giving you a recipe for something simple and comforting, something you want to eat right now and happily, you can, because it’s made with things you have on hand. Combined, though, these ingredients become greater than the sum of their parts. This not only yields you something worth eating, it makes you feel like you’ve executed a magic trick.

I came upon her chocolate cake chapter. I thought, hmmm. Some vegan chocolate cakes are good, some decidedly not, but most comprise arcane ingredients like xanthan gum. I’m sorry, I still don’t know what that is. And I’m a professional food writer. So I did some swapping for Colwin’s recipe and voila, came up with a cake that quick, easy, pantry-friendly and vegan and still provides a mind-blowing chocolate experience.

1-3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup soy milk (not lite)

2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup canola oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

powdered sugar for garnish

Preheat oven to 350.

Lightly oil a 9-inch round cake pan.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, cocoa and baking soda. Stir in sugar.

In a small bowl, mix together soy milk and vinegar. It will curdle. Don’t sweat it, this is good. Stir in oil and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients gently into dry ones, stirring until just combined and it all coalesces into a dark, thick batter.

Spoon batter into prepared cake pan. Bake for 30 minutes, or until fragrant and the cake springs back when touched.

Needs just a dusting of powdered sugar.

Keeps wrapped and refrigerated for several days.

Serves 8 to 10.

Nourishment

2011-06-08T12:21:00.001-07:00

I am just back from Austin, where I attended my first-ever IACP conference. This is not, as a friend thought, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, but the International Association of Culinary Professionals. I am a card-carrying member. I am a professional. But I also know I could be doing more to forward my career, pretty up this blog, bump up my SEO (search engine optimization -- all the hot bloggers know this term -- I, of course, did not). I'd braced myself for lots of You're-doing-everything-wrong-and-here's-what-you-need-to-do-if-you-want-to-be-super-successful-like-us talk. And yes, there was that.

What surprised, pleased and resonated most for me, though, was how I kept hearing about the power of narrative, from agro-activist Jim Hightower to Perennial Plate's Daniel Klein, from Gluten-Free Girl Shauna Ahern to fab food culture photog Penny de los Santos. It gives a girl hope. Because I believe plant-based food nourishes the body but narrative -- story -- nourishes the soul in a way a text message can’t touch.

Believe me, I have nothing against money and market share. But I’m in service to something bigger, and the way I can do it has less to do with SEO and more to do with telling stories, with getting the word out about the power of a plant-based diet.

Apparently, I need to keep on message. There were a couple of conference cocktail parties where there was absolutely nothing for My Kind to eat. This is wrong. But happily, right near our hotel is Koriente, where I was quickly restored by the easy, warm staff and amazing Asian eats.

IACP takeaway -- look for exciting new changes to Edgy Veggie. I promise, they’ll happen (and not just this mania for live links, either). But first I must catch up on work and sleep. Yeah, I came back from the conference strung out and exhausted (quel surprise). But also nourished. Nourished by story, nourished by meeting all the wonderful people at IACP including its small but ardent veg femme contingent Kim O’Donnel, Real Food Daily’s Ann Gentry, Robin Asbell and the Veggie Queen herself Jill Nussinow. I'm nourished by meeting for real some people I’d only e-mailed or spoken to on the phone, from Moosewood goddess Mollie Katzen to Mirra Fine.

Also nourishing -- very nourishing was seeing my Austin BFF after too many years apart and spending an entire afternoon talking and drinking and laughing together (and being treated to a fabulous vegan meal at Casa de Luz). Because a girl’s gotta eat. And this one’s gotta eat veggies.

So tell me -- what nourishes you?

Nourishing Noodles -- Japchae

Since Austin, I’ve been craving Koriente’s japchae, a glorious Korean mix of shirataki and vegetables. Shirataki are those weird glutinous Asian noodles made from sweet potato starch that magically have no calories and are loaded with gluten-free goodness. Up till now, they’ve left me underwhelmed. Koriente’s japchae made me a true believer, hallelujah.

I endeavored to recreate it in the privacy of my own home and am thrilled to discover it’s doable and easy and delicious. The key to the recipe -- and perhaps the key to everything -- gutsiness. In my first iteration, I used almost no oil, low-sodium soy sauce and button mushrooms. It was meh. Ramped it up with more sesame oil, real nama shoyu (good, aged fermenty soy sauce) and shiitakes. Delish. Lovely and refreshing chilled or at room temperature. And what could be more nourishing?

3 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons mirin

2 tablespoons sesame oil, divided use

2 teaspoons fresh ginger, minced

8 ounces shirataki noodles, rinsed and drained

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 carrots, chopped into matchsticks

1 red pepper, chopped

2 ribs celery, chopped

3 cups Napa cabbage, shredded

1 bunch scallions, chopped fine

8 ounces shiitakes, sliced

4 ounces tofu, cut ito bite-sized cubes

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Parboil shirataki according to package directions. Drain and rinse.

In a medium bowl, whisk together soy, mirin, 1 tablespoon of the sesame oil and minced ginger. Add the shirataki and toss to coat. Set aside.

Heat a large dry skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic, carrots, pepper and celery. Cook, stirring for about 3 minutes or until vegetables start to soften. Add one tablespoon of soy-mirin mixture to flavor and moisten and continue cooking.

Add the scallions, shiitakes and cabbage. Cook another 3 minutes, or until vegetables are tender. Add the tofu and gently mix in the noodles and all remaining sauce.

Drizzle remaining sesame oil on top and mix again.

Divide into bowls and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

Serves 3 to 4.

Dogged

2011-05-17T12:44:00.001-07:00

Oh, dear. This is not the post I wanted to write. At all. But I would be pulling a major punch if I didn’t mark the death of Darcy, our beloved dog. She was fifteen and a half, so, okay, not a puppy, not spry by a long shot even when I took this picture two years ago. She hated having her picture taken, something, I think, about the camera getting in the way of your face. She liked to watch faces. . . back when she could see.

She also used to like to dance on the mail when it came spilling onto the floor through the mail chute. She liked grapes, their cool, juicy sweetness, and popcorn, their satisfying, salty crunch -- (we spilled them by mistake, she ate them with delight).

I could go on. . . and on. . . about missing her, about the Last Days of Darcy, but she was not about being a downer of a dog. I am not yet, however, quite up to dancing, or even eating, myself. So I’m turning to you. In memory of a sweet and soulful dog, eat popcorn, eat grapes and do a dance for Darcy.

Killer Chocolate

2011-04-21T14:59:00.000-07:00

I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just saying it exists.

The Eating of the Green

2011-03-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

I am always hungry for Ireland and love all things Irish -- the Pogues, U2 back when they didn’t take themselves so seriously, almost any Irish author, and I am fortunate beyond words to know Darina Allen and Tamasin Day-Lewis, two of Ireland’s culinary muses.

Darina Allen who runs the splendid Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, is the no-nonsense preserver of auld ways, who believes in “sourcing really good, naturally produced ingredients,” as she writes in Ballymaloe Seasons. She wouldn’t recall, but we met once when I stayed at Ballymaloe House, the bed and breakfast run by her mother-in-law Myrtle Allen. Before dinner, I sat gazing out the window into the garden --relaxed, for once -- drinking in the sheep-dotted fields, when a woman with a low, flutey voice asked what I’d like to drink. I looked up and there was Darina herself, smiling and wearing her trademark red round glasses. I couldn't have been more surprised if Martin McDonagh had been acting as bartender. In retrospect this to me typifies how Darina is -- she can be the Irish Julia Child and still show some visiting American girl some hospitality, too.

Tamasin Day-Lewis is technically, English. I found out later, only after her book West of Ireland Summers convinced me of her Gaelic nature. I was sold by the title, the photographs of a good many cows and of the windswept landscape that’s my favorite place in the world, her stories of her home in the west. The fact that her brother is the brooding actor doesn’t hurt, either. Turns out her recipes are pleasing, too, and more so is her sensibility. She is of the freewheeling school, but like Darina, Tamasin starts with fresh, simple ingredients, which she pairs with an abundant sensibility.

Both women are more into elemental than ornate. So am I. There’s never been anything in molecular cuisine that resonates for me, that makes me say, “Yes -- sous vide and foam and celery gelee” the way I can swoon over a bowl of soup made with love and the freshest of vegetables.

Both women write about cooking with a big-heartedness, and both were kind enough to participate in a story I did about wild mushrooms story I wrote for Every Day WIth Rachael Ray. They have a generous way in the kitchen and on the page, writing about cooking the way I feel about it -- as an act of giving that’s simple, personal, profound.

So Darina, Tamasin, thank you for feeding what my soul longs for, for providing a sense of companionship even without being in the same room with me. But I hope sometime you will be. If you’re ever in Miami, please come to dinner, c’ead mille failte.

Low and Slow CSA Gumbo Z’herbes

About that swoon-worthy soup -- for St. Patrick’s day, here’s one as green as Ireland and filled with vegetables fresh from my local farmers. Gumbo z’herbes, also known as green gumbo is a traditional Cajun pot of Lenten goodness. It’s a time investment -- you don’t want to rush a roux -- but a great way to make the most of a mess of greens. There’s something leisurely, expansive, luxurious about making gumbo z’herbs. If you’ve got a food processor, you’ve got it made. Most of the work happens in the pot without your help, and the result is amazing. It’s a labor of love with a big flavor payoff -- just what you’d want to make for people you care about.

Ladle over cooked brown rice, keep your favorite hot sauce handy.

Erin go bragh, laissez le bon temps roule -- Ireland forever and let the good times role.

1/3 cup olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

4 pounds of greens -- your choice -- I used what came in my community shared agriculture box this weekend -- escarole, collards, tatsoi and beet greens

6 cloves garlic

2 onions

4 stalks celery plus leaves

2 red peppers

a handful of thyme

1 bay leaf

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

6 cups vegetable broth

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Wash your greens really, really well. Best way I’ve found to do this is to plop the the armloaf of them down in your sink, start with a thorough rinse, then pick them over, getting rid of grit and odd stemmy bits. Then shake in table salt and rinse again. The salt seems to help rid the greens of stubburn sand and such. Give a final rinse and gently blot dry.

The old school method for cooking gumbo greens is to blanch or boil them, but I prefer steaming, which keeps all their lovely nutrients intact. Steam greens in batches -- it may take several batches, but the steaming itself should go quickly, no more than 8 to 10 minutes a pop, so the greens are tender but still vivid green.

Place greens in a colander with a pot beneath to catch all the good veggie broth.

In a large soup pot, make your roux. Pour in 1/3 cup olive oil and heat over very low heat. Whisk in the whole wheat flour so the two form a smooth, thick paste. Continue cooking, whisking occasionally, for a really long time, maybe 45 minutes, or until the roux starts to give off a toasty scent and turns chocolately in color.

Meanwhile, heat remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.

In a food processor, pulse onion and garlic so they’re well-chopped, not mushy. Add to the skillet and stir.

In batches, pulse celery, peppers, and finally, the greens. Add each batch to skillet and stir. Once vegetables start to soften, about 5 to 7 minutes, reduce heat to low, cover and continue cooking for another 20 minutes.

Pour in tomato puree. Cover and cook for another 20 minutes or so, giving the thing an occasional stir.

Your roux and vegetables are now ready to meet each other. Gently stir in vegetable-tomato mixture into roux, so everything is well-combined. Bring heat up to medium-high. Add vegetable broth plus any good juices from the drained greens. Add thyme, bay leaf and cayenne.

When mixture starts to come to a low boil, cover, reduce heat to medium-low and cook for another hour, stirring occasionally. Oh, don’t complain, be generous of spirit. Call a friend, check your e-mail. Pour yourself a glass of wine, if it helps.

Splash in the vinegar, season with sea salt and pepper, serve over rice.

Serves 8 to 10. Covered and chilled, it keeps for several days.

The (Almond) Joy of (Home) Cooking

2011-02-10T08:49:00.000-08:00

When from the distant past nothing remains, after the beings have died, after the things are destroyed and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, yet more vital, more insubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of everything else; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the immense architecture of memory.

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Time Forgotten

A Google search of food and memory brings up an easy two dozen articles about foods that allegedly help prevent memory loss. Eat more walnuts! Eat more salmon! I’m more interested in the food that conjures up a world of memory on its own.

Bring your finger to the bridge of your nose. Right there on the other side of the nasal bone is your amygdala, the almond-shaped part of the brain conveniently close to your center of smell. This part of the brain houses memory. It also plays a role in the way we process emotion. That’s why food is such a trigger for powerful feelings and recollections from the past.

With his trusty amygdala, Proust spent the last three years of his life within the confines of his cork-lined bedroom evoking a world of sensory riches, an expansive past, all sparked, at least on the page, by a tea-soaked madeleine.

You, too, store a whole ocean of memory in that little nut-shaped part of your brain. It’s why a Colombian friend, inspecting my vegetable garden, stopped cold at the sight of my monster collard greens and started to tear. “My mami used to make these for breakfast, scrambled with eggs.” It’s peasant food, she shrugged, but. . . But it came with warm rush of memories -- of the rural community where she grew up, of the sun-baked heat, the bright mineral smell of the soil, the clothes strung on the line. We’re talking more than breakfast. I clipped her two dozen leaves, each as big as an elephant ear, so she can make collards and eggs and give her children a taste of her own past.

I think Proust was lucky. Likewise my Colombian friend. The foods that so trigger memory or longing may not be as elegant as a teacake or as pure and earnest as greens and eggs. A Bavarian baker turns rhapsodic over the cheap mustard buns he’d get at festivals. Imagine a hot dog or sausage roll split, slathered with mustard and pickles -- everything but the sausage, which he couldn’t afford. Mustard buns, he says, were crunchy and divine eaten at once, greasy and leaden if you waited too long. For his Alabama wife, a professional chef, home is her mother’s salmon croquettes, “canned salmon and bechamel, pretty nasty, actually.” An English friend who lives in Paris, the culinary mecca of the world, occasionally yearns for that Brit standard, beans on toast. Preferably not even heated (he has other issues). For another friend, home is the midwest and the taste of Sara Lee chocolate cake, that thick brown block which her family served -- sometimes frozen -- at every birthday when she was growing up. She knows more sophisticated chocolate desserts, she knows processed food isn’t good for you. It’s still her favorite for food for celebration, because it evokes a lifetime of happy memories.

We don’t get to choose the foods of home. I wish mine was a fiery Bengali curry, a healthful, soulful collard and egg scramble or a sweet, buttery teacake. It is, instead, egg salad. Specifically, egg salad with olives on challah, made by my maternal grandmother. It is something I haven’t eaten in years, and being vegan, could never eat again (and don’t tell me about tofu “egg” salad. I love tofu but do not eat “food” in quotation marks).

I still recall with a fullness at the back my throat and an immense sense of longing the creaminess of the eggs. My grandmother knew just how much to mash them, just how much mayonnaise to add. I remember their gentle pale yellow, the little sparks of salt from the sliced green olives, the tender bread cut into four neat triangles. She somehow intuited my passionate though unarticulated preference for sandwiches cut into triangles, rather than squares. In the same way, she always knew the right temperature to serve it -- cool, not shockingly cold.

And remembering that, I remember everything -- her smell, sweet and rosy from Jergen’s lotion, her bathing me with a hard bar of Ivory soap in her white enamel kitchen sink, the shag carpet in the living room, which seemed, at least to my little girl eyes, to spring up as tall and wild as kudzu.

I do not long to eat egg salad again. What I long for is that absolutely crystalline time and place and sense of being loved.

We are all looking for return, for that place we thought of as home. Sometimes we spend our lives searching for it. Sometimes, we can find it in the memory of a simple sandwich. Food is sustenance, but it is also what connects us to each other, to the planet and to what Proust called “the imminent joy of going home.”

Almond Rice

No egg salad recipe here, I decided instead, to go for the amygdala/almond metaphor and provide an almond recipe. But what? I’ve already done almond cookies. And I thought it was interesting that other than Proust and my Sara Lee-loving friend, the other seminal foods of the past are savory, not sweet.

Left to my own devices, I would do a spicy Romesco, that fabulous sauce of ground almonds and roasted red peppers, or an elaborate biryani, but for the dish to work, it must be child-appropriate and simple. Yet not boring for adults, either. Huh.

The biryani got me on the right track. I remembered the rice with toasted slivered almonds we ate one evening in the desert in Morocco, miles from civilization. One lone cinnamon stick seemed to perfume the utterly comforting dish. Even my slightly tarted up version seems something a child would willingly eat and perhaps years later be a small part of “the immense architecture of memory.”

Being me, I suggest of course, you make it with brown rice. It’s not only healthier, it plays up the nuttiness nicely.

1 cup brown rice

3 cups vegetable broth or water, divided use

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, sliced

1 pinch saffron

1 cinnamon stick

1 teaspoon allspice

1/2 cup red lentils

3 Medjool dates, chopped

1/2 cup slivered almonds

Bring 2 cups vegetable broth or water to boil in a medium-sized saucepan. Add brown rice. Cover and reduce heat to low. Cook for 30 minutes, or just until the rice absorbs the liquid and leans towards tenderness. It will continue cooking later. Set rice aside and let cool. May be prepared a day ahead, covered and refrigerated overnight.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add sliced onion, stir until coated in oil. Cover and reduce heat to low, letting onion cook for about 20 minutes. The onion will still be pale and will have thrown off quite a lot of liquid. This is good. Add pinch of saffron and raise heat to medium.

Add red lentils to the onions. Stir to combine then add remaining 1 cup of water or broth. Cover again and cook. Red lentils are speedy and should be rosy and tender after 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, toast almonds at 375 for about 8 to 10 minutes, until golden and fragrant.

Add the cinnamon stick to the lentils. Stir in allspice, rice and chopped dates. Season with sea salt to taste.

Heat through at medium heat. Stir in toasted almonds just before serving.

Serves 4 to 6.

The Holiday Spirit

2010-12-21T12:27:00.000-08:00

The drinking started at nine. A.M. The singing started around noon. Both continued for another twelve hours. Our neighbor and his friends assemble in his back yard almost every weekend, but last Saturday’s festivity was particularly impressive. It was as though they were in training for the holidays.

There were no women in sight -- there never are. The men were, as usual, shirtless, but the only sixpacks in sight was the beer they consumed (I believe this accounts for the lack of women). The guys sat drinking and laughing in the pouring rain, under a jury-rigged tarp -- one rigged by an inebriated, impaired jury.

The rain was as noteworthy as the revelry. It was a deluge in the midst of our dry season, it lasted all day, and no tarp was going to keep the rain out. It flooded our street, soaked my garden but did nothing to dampen their spirits.

Sunday was. . . quiet, and for them, probably painful. By late afternoon, the party host, his complexion gray, delicately picked his way outside to the muddy swamp that had been his party playground, and began collecting all the empties.

No doubt, the party will start anew and afresh on Friday, noche buena, the night Latinos celebrate Christmas (and in this case, celebrate and celebrate and celebrate).

I could gladly pass on their lustily warbled but tuneless canciones. I wish they’d put on shirts. I worry about their unhealthy lifestyle (their two food groups appear to be beer and pig). But I admire their spirit. And fortitude.

Wishing you great spirit and fortitude in the new year and all delicious things, including:

Wild Rice with Winter Greens, Lemon, Pine Nuts and Raisins

An old Sicilian trick, balancing the bitterness of winter greens with rich pine nuts and sweet raisins, yields a dish that’s fortifying and fabulous. You could add some cannellini and have a very rad but delicious version of hopping john -- excellent at the new year (and healthier than pig and beer).

1 cup wild rice

4 cups vegetable broth or water

2 lemons

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 bunch winter greens -- kale, collards, dandelions, what you will, tough center ribs

removed, leaves sliced into skinny ribbons

1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted

1/4 cup raisins

1 good pinch red pepper flakes

sea salt to taste

Rinse wild rice in a strainer or colander.

In a large pot, bring water or broth to boil over high heat. Add wild rice. Cover and reduce heat to low and simmer for half an hour. Turn off heat, leave the pot on the burner for another half hour or so, until all the liquid is absorbed. May be done the day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Bring back to room temperature before proceeding.

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion and saute, stirring until it softens, about 5 minutes. Add chopped winter greens, which will shrink in the heat to a fraction of their volume. Continue cooking until greens are just wilted -- another 3 to 5 minutes.

Tip in cooked rice and stir mixture gently to combine. Grate in the zest of both lemons, squeeze in lemon juice, stir in sea salt and pepper flakes. Add pine nuts and raisins just before serving.

Serves 4 to 6.

Episode 2 : Autumnal Chard and Roasted Beets

2010-11-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

Garbo Speaks: My First Video

2010-11-24T08:56:00.000-08:00

Tell Me What You Eat and I Will Tell You What You Are

2010-10-31T14:23:00.000-07:00

Those of my ilk were once considered Pythagoreans, as in Pythagorus. Best known as ancient Greece’s math geek extraordinaire, Pythagorus was also into music and philosophy. It’s believed his own personal ethos abjured killing and eating animals, a practice followed by vegetarians for generations to come.

The word vegetarian itself had to wait until the mid-1800s for someone to come up with it. The term vegan wasn’t coined until 1944. More commonly, though, if you didn’t eat meat, you were just weird. Or a weirdo hippie freak. Or a tree-hugger. The term herbivore never caught on, not the way omnivore has. Of course there’s variations of omnivore, too. You can be flexitarian, which basically means you’re vegetarian when the mood strikes you. You can be fishaterian (okay, I came up with that one -- my own wry terminology for those who don’t eat meat but do eat fish) and less-meatarian (that one comes from the estimable Mark Bittman, Food Matters Cookbook author and all- around great less-meatarian guy). Meat-eater, though popular, sounds barbaric and a little too like Harry Potter’s Death Eaters.

There’s so many ways we explain how we eat, French gastronome Brillat-Savarin (“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,”) would never have believed it.

Lately, I’ve even been thinking about what I call myself. Being the Edgy Veggie suits me. I’m edgy by nature, especially when I write about food -- a cheeky part of me comes out. Sometimes I think my wonderful editor at the Miami Herald just wanted to throw the paper’s meatless readers a (meatless) bone. What she got is someone who’s come to see how food -- Pythagorean or otherwise -- connects us to the planet, to our community, to the past, to each other, and has ramifications in politics, environment, nutrition, education and more.

The term veggie, though, is quaint, especially compared to the newer, more assertive term meatless (or as Brillat-Savarin would put it, sans viande). I would never have anticipated the success of in-your-face Skinny Bitch. (which is perhaps, alas, why I’ve struggled with publishing). Nor would I have guessed the likes of Bill Clinton and Oprah would get on the vegan bandwagon (Oprah, good on you for trying. Bill, stick with it, honey -- you look terrific). When I was the lone vegan in my teens, I never dreamed there’d be a Meatless Monday movement, let alone that it would gain traction. It does my vegan heart good.

Call us Pythagoreans, call us meatless, the only difference is spin. I hope I’ll always be the Edgy Veggie. But perhaps if I were starting out now, I’d be even edgier. I’d be the Meatless Marauder. With a mask and cape. And vegan superpowers.

Mushroom Risotto

The classic rice dish requires no superpowers, vegan or otherwise, just the time you spend stirring at the stove. Having friends in the kitchen and/or a glass of wine makes the time go faster.

1/2 cup white wine

a handful of dried mushrooms (8 to 12) (optional but flavor-enhancing)

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion, chopped fine

1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms (regular button mushrooms work, too), sliced

1 cup rice -- Arborio is the risotto rice of choice, but really, any rice will work

4-1/2 cups vegetable broth

1 sprig fresh rosemary, stem removed, leaves chopped fine (about 2 teaspoons)

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Over medium heat, bring white wine to simmer in a medium saucepan. Add dried mushrooms. Turn off heat and let mushrooms infuse the wine for half an hour.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion. Reduce heat to medium and saute until onions turn translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add sliced mushrooms and continue cooking for another 5 minutes, or until mushrooms become tender. Stir occasionally.

Add the rice and stir, coating each grain with oil Keep stirring another few minutes, until rice looks luminous.

Chop the wine-infused mushrooms. Add to the rice, along with the warmed wine.

Pour the vegetable stock or water into the medium saucepan and heat over medium-high heat. When stock reaches simmer, reduce heat to low but keep on burner.

Meanwhile, stir the rice until it absorbs the wine.

Add warmed stock to rice a ladleful (or 1/2 cup) at a time, stirring constantly. It’ll take about half an hour to work in all the liquid, by which time the rice will have turned creamy and luscious from slow cooking.

Stir in finely chopped rosemary and nutritional yeast. Season with sea salt and fresh pepper.

Serves 4.

Imagine the Real Food Project

2010-10-01T13:51:00.000-07:00

Crackerman is a German baker with an expansive soul and a soft spot for sausage. I am a nervous American vegan. This is not the stuff of bad sitcom but a true, strange and beautiful friendship. We get together and talk about literature, family, travel, ghosts, but mostly about food and the way we wish everyone could eat -- real food, food without processing, preservatives or genetic modification, food that sustains and is sustainable, food that’s seasonal, local and cause for joy.

These talks sustain me, but Crackerman decided to take things further. He came up with what we’re calling the Real Food Project, a nonprofit call to arms, a grass roots demand for greater care and awareness in what we eat. We hammered out the language and with the mighty Khim, launched a website and forum. Crackerman thinks if we band together and speak out in favor of real food, we can make it happen. We can change the world. I hope he’s right and I hope you’ll be part of it. It’s free and all you gotta do to join is sign up.

What happens from here on out is up to you.

You might say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.

Sweet Potato Salad With Tahini and Ginger

Sweet potatoes, in season now are real, rich in vitamin A and roasted like this, reveal their own sweetness without (guuh) pineapple or marshmallow. This is a significant salad, but to make it more of main course, add 1-1/2 cups cooked whole grain, like quinoa or millet.

2 sweet potatoes, chopped into bite-sized cubes

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 pinch sea salt

1 pinch red pepper flakes

1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

3 cups fresh spinach, watercress, arugula or a combination of all three

juice and zest of 1 orange (about 1/3 cup juice)

2 tablespoons fresh ginger, chopped

2 tablespoons tahini

Preheat oven to 400.

Spread sweet potato bites on a rimmed baking sheet. Add olive oil, sea salt and pepper flakes. Toss to coat sweet potatoes and roast for 25 minutes, stirring once to make sure sweet potatoes roast evenly and don’t stick to the pan.

Meanwhile, make the dressing. Using a blender or food processor, blitz together ginger, orange juice and tahini for 1 minute or until smooth. Makes about 1/2 cup dressing, enough for the salad plus leftovers. Dressing keeps covered and refrigerated for up to a week.

Keeping the oven at 400, toast chopped nuts in the oven for 5 to 7 minutes, or until golden brown and fragrant.

To assemble salad: Place greens in a large bowl or arrange on a platter. Scatter with chopped celery, chopped sweet potatoes and chopped nuts. Drizzle dressing on top or serve separately.

Serves 4.

The Real Food Project

What : An appeal for real food -- food without additives, preservatives,

antibiotics, mystery chemicals or genetic modification.

Who: You and everyone else who wants real food.

Where: Everywhere around the globe.

When: Now.

How: Become a fan. Choose food made without additives. Read labels.

Join us and speak out in favor of real food.

Why: Because everyone deserves access to real food.

Our food is contaminated. It’s processed with chemical preservatives and additives, genetically modified products and laced with salt, fat and sugar.

Our seas are overfished and polluted, killiing off 90% of our oceans’ fisheries.

Our national productivity, creativity, economy and health are crippled by obesity-related illness.

At Real Food Project, we’re into:

Families who cook together.

Families who eat together.

Teaching basic cooking, sourcing and nutrition in all schools.

Serving real food in our school lunchrooms.

Meat produced ethically.

Fish caught sustainably.

Eating less meat.

Farm and garden initiatives that reintroduce heirloom varietals.

Bringing local foods directly to consumers.

School gardens that bring real food to communities, starting with our children.

Home and community gardens.

Preventative health

Companies that feed employees real food.

Fresh sustainable and organic foods.

We’re anti:

Multinational food conglomerates

Industrialized food distribution systems

Factory farming

Genetically modified food

Artificial preservative

Chemicals and additives

Misleading food labels

Obese, unhappy children

Obese, unhappy adults

We deserve a change and so does our planet.

We ask our readers to pay attention to what’s in our food and to who makes it.

We encourage vendors to provide fresh, local, unprocessed food.

We ask the USDA to step up oversight on corporate food production.

We want companies to reward employees who make real food a priority.

We demand food made without additives.

We want a choice in what we eat. We choose real food.

Join our Project.

Working together, we can make companies, institutions and government listen. We can make the move, make the change to real food. Become a fan now.

Post links, comments, photos and videos. Introduce your project, coop, company, community and even post jobs here.

Network with others and profit from an ever-growing web of real food supporters.

Live better, eat better. Welcome to the Real Food Project.

Ramadan, Harira and True Religion

2010-08-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

Ramadan has begun and I have a pot of harira, the traditional Moroccan soup to break fast, simmering away on the stove. I do not fast at Ramadan, I fast at Yom Kippur (one day, get it over with). So what’s a nice lapsed Jewish girl doing with harira?

Harira and I have a history. I made it years before I visited Morocco, made it from a recipe in Erica Rozin’s Ethnic Cuisine, a book so old and battered now, my copy is in pieces. I keep it as a talisman because it was, in its own way, the book that launched my food writing career.

I had been writing for BookPage and Ann my wonderful editor asked if I ever reviewed cookbooks. I hadn’t but sure, I could, why not. She suggested kitchen-testing some recipes. I chose harira because it was winter and I had a wretched cold. It looked comforting. It looked easy. And it looked odd. I’d never seen a soup recipe that called for yeast. I've since learned this is traditional for harira, giving it some oomph and thickness and a mild fermenty kick.

I was then as I am now, a vegetarian but for professional reasons, a closeted one. A food writer with a limited diet can result in a limited career. So I quietly went about substituting the chicken in the recipe for vegetables. The result was something greater than the sum of its parts. I loved harira and wrote about it so rapturously, other editors approached me about doing food writing.

Even if they hadn’t, I’d still love this soup. I have since learned every family makes their own version of harira, and over time, I’ve changed up my own version even more. Harira is entirely forgiving, allowing you to add more of this or that. You can make it elegant with a pinch of saffron or ras el hanout, a blend of up to two dozen spices and botanicals, you can make it simple and straightforward. I’ve since seen recipes with lamb, with chicken, with eggs. I haven’t seen many plant-based versions like mine, though.

By the time I discovered harira’s link to Ramadan, I was already besotted with all things Moroccan. On a bad day, or sometimes even a good one, I dream of running away to Marrekesh. I can imagine living (somehow) within the medina, in a riadh with a blue-and-white zelig-tiled interior courtyard and a small burbling fountain that makes watery music. Every day, I’d shop in the souks for dinner. I’d gossip with my neighbors over mint tea poured out boiling hot from a battered silver pot. I’d ride a camel. I mean, if you’re going to fantasize, there’s no point in half-measures.

At the very least, I can make harira. It sustains the body because its made with ingredients that are humble but whole, nutritious and recognizable. It sustains the soul because it has a rich cultural and culinary history, a history that goes back centuries before my first taste of it. It connects me to the past and to others. As I make harira here, women in Morocco are probably making their own for their families to eat at Iftar (the Ramadan break fast at sunset).

I will serve it to those I love the way they will, with dates, bread and coffee or tea. Harira makes me feel I’m not alone in the universe. If that’s not true religion, what is?

True Religion Harira

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 teaspoon turmeric

3 zucchini or yellow squash or a combination, chopped

2 red peppers, chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 28-ounce box diced tomatoes or 2 pounds gorgeous ripe tomatoes

1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

6 cups vegetable broth

1 pinch saffron or ras en hanout (optional but very nice)

1 small handful whole wheat vermicelli or angel hair, broken into pieces

1 tablespoon yeast dissolved in 1/4 cup warm vegetable broth or water

juice of 1 lemon

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

1 handful fresh cilantro, chopped

extra lemon wedges for serving, if desired

In a large stock pot, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and turmeric. Saute a few minutes, until onion softens and turns golden. Add chopped squash, red pepper and celery.

Continue cooking, stirring often, for another 5 minutes.

Stir in tomatoes, chickpeas and broth. Reduce heat to medium-low and let harira simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes to an hour.

Add broken noodles and dissolved yeast. Squeeze in the lemon juice. Season with sea salt and pepper. Stir in chopped cilantro just before serving.

Serve with extra lemon wedges if desired.

Serves 8.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

2010-06-11T08:09:00.000-07:00

I am not a vegansexual. This is a vegan who won’t have sex with nonvegans. I sleep with the enemy. I’m married to a meat-eater. He was such when I married him, I was a vegetarian who has since gone vegan. Call it crazy love.

Occasionally, we have differences of opinion. We work it out. This seems revolutionary for some to grasp. Based on reader response from my Huffington Post piece “Anger Management,” there are some very angry carnivores out there. And some tediously self-righteous vegans.

I know some vegans who take the approach of a former national leader and say we as a plant-based people do not negotiate with terrorists, by which we mean everyone who is not us. But then you run the risk, as he did, of being all alone on your moral high ground and losing the fight. As well as your audience.

Nonvegans may think we’re insane -- and I’ve heard from a vociferous lot of them who say as much. But nonvegans are not fussy. They’ll have sex with vegans, nonvegans, anyone who’s willing.

This shows an openness us plant-based folk should take to heart. Gentle readers, dialogue is good. Even when it seems like there’s a line in the sand between meat-eaters and vegans, Republicans and Democrats. We may not always agree with each other, but frankly, we don’t have anywhere else to go. The fact is, whatever you eat or believe, we’re all on this planet together.

Veganism is all about compassionate choices. It means a commitment to protecting the environment and being kind to our animal friends. That should include all sentient beings, even those that can sometimes be hard to like -- humans. You don’t bash some meat-eating someone over the head because he’s an idiot -- um, because he does not share your world view. Enlightened you may be, but when you take that approach, compassionate you are not.

That’s why I prefer the carrot -- or in this case, brightly spiced Moroccan carrot salad -- to the stick. Food itself can convince where rhetoric cannot. Cooking vegan lets me make and share food aligned with what I believe in -- more compassion, less carbon. It lets me be the change I want to see in the world, to quote Gandhi (a vegetarian). When I feed others, it encourages them to be that way, too. It provides pleasure, besides, both to them and to me.

Vegansexuals may consider me a traitor to the cause, but I’m not going to divorce my husband because we have different ideas of what’s right for dinner. It is nice to have someone who’ll pull your ass out of the fire. Even if he does eat the occasional burger.

Sometimes reaching out, whether it’s across the aisle, across the table or across the bed, can be a revolutionary act. Vegans, locavores, green advocates and activitists, we have an important message and like John Lennon once sang, “We all want to change the world,” but we like to party, too -- I do, anyway. And I want to invite everybody.

Revolutionary Moroccan Carrot Salad

Eleven months of the year, I forget about this recipe entirely, but come the hottest days of the year, I crave the bright colors and bracing yin-yang of this Moroccan carrot salad. It’s refreshing to eat, beautiful to look at and absurdly easy to make.

1 pound of carrots

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon paprika (smoked is particularly nice)

generous pinch cayenne pepper or, if you have it, Aleppo pepper

2 teaspoons agave or honey

4 teaspoons lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

a good handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped

Coarsely shred carrots in a food processor or chop into 1/4-inch matchsticks, your call.

Dump into a good-sized bowl and set aside.

Heat oil and spices in a small skillet over low heat, stirring until spices darken and the whole thing turns fragrant, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Add oil and spice mixture to carrots and toss to coat. Add honey or agave, lemon juice, and sea salt.

May be made a day ahead and chilled in an airtight container.

Before serving, gently mix in parsley and enjoy slightly chilled.

Serves 6 to 8.

Mono Mania

2010-05-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

You know, I'd been wondering if there's something wrong with me. I haven’t been able to gain purchase on my life. I've had a month of being low of spirit, run down of bod, fuzzy of brain, nothing at all fun. At first, I ignored it -- denial has always been my favored coping mechanism. To distract myself, I bought these terrific tea towels. This stiff-upper-lip message was part of an abandoned World War II propaganda campaign created by the British government.

You can see my penchant for distraction and denial.

But my boring symptoms went on so long, even I had to pay attention. I bowed to fate and last week went to the doctor who said, for starters, I have low blood pressure. This was made lower by her tapping a vein and getting a few more vials of it. She called a few days ago and said, “Sweetie, you’ve got mono.” It took half an hour for me to stop laughing.

Others in my life have not been equally amused, not my doctor, who urges me to take this seriously, not my folks, who are worrying about me with a laserlike intensity I haven’t seen since the last time I had mono. I was 18, a freshman at Bennington and unable to understand why my body wouldn’t do what it was supposed to do. I managed to get so run down, I couldn’t even walk to the clinic and was carried there by Bennington’s only burly guy student who slung me over a shoulder like a bag of spuds. My talent for denial, it seems, goes back as long as my great fortune to have wonderful friends.

Back then, I was young and stupid. Now for good or for bad, I am neither. At least I don’t think I’m stupid. I am having trouble, though, wrapping my brain around having physical limitations screamingly obvious even to myself. I don't feel too badly until I push it, which is, alas, my general tendency. My body is making it plain this is not tolerable -- my appetite’s off, I’m beset by rotten headaches, gargantuan glands, I ache and just run out of gas. Yesterday, I did not have the energy to paint my toenails. This admission is so pathetic, I can barely stand it. I did paint my toes this morning, though, a cheery blue they are, a few watts brighter than my blue tea towel.

Mono is officially known as mononeucleosis. It is unofficially known as the kissing disease, because it’s transmittable by saliva. This makes it sound more fun than it is. It can last for weeks or months -- months -- there is no pill, no shot, no cure other than rest.

The trick will be pacing, resting, martialing my energy for a bit. This seems easy enough but I want to live my normal life. That is to say, I want to do everything. My friend C says this is a karmic lesson to teach me to bend, to be patient. I hate that. But I may have to surrender the case, throw in the tea towel. I will keep calm and carry on.

But first I’ll make dinner.

Nourishing Quinoa

I do a dozen of versions of this dish, changing up the vegetables, spices and whole grain to suit my mood and the season. In any guise, it’s fresh vegetably, whole grainy, madly nutritious, high in protein and fiber, quick and easy, rich in flavor, delish now, reheating like a dream later. The leftover bit is another plus at present, when cooking, normally my pleasure and passion, can seem a Herculean task.

3/4 cup quinoa

2 cups water or vegetable broth, divided use

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 ribs celery, chopped

4 ounces mushrooms, sliced

2 teaspoons cumin

1-1/2 teaspoons turmeric

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast (optional but adds nice cheesy flavor and vitamin B-12, crucial even if you don’t have mono)

a dozen or so grape tomatoes

a handful cilantro, chopped

Rinse quinoa to rid it of saponins, a natural but bitter protective coating.

In a medium-size saucepan, bring 1-1/2 cups water or broth to boil over high heat. Add quinoa, cover and reduce heat to low. Cook for 20 minutes, or until quinoa has expanded and absorbed all liquid. Allow to cool. Take a nap if you’re able to.

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion, carrot and garlic. Saute, stirring occasionally, until vegetables soften, about 5 to 7 minutes.

Add celery and mushrooms and continue cooking for another 5 minutes.

Add cumin, turmeric and optional nutritional yeast, stirring gently until vegetables are coasted with spices and mixture is fragrant.

Fluff cooked quinoa so it’s airy and free of clumps. Add quinoa and, if neded, some or all of the remaining half-cup of water or broth to moisten.

Toss in tomatoes and chopped cilantro. Season with sea salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 4.

A Hill of Beans

2010-04-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

Moroccans don’t go to supermarkets, they go to the souks. They haggle with the vendors, they study the wares -- barrows full of thistly wild artichokes, bins of lustrous purple eggplants, baskets of fresh, fragrant mint, pyramids of dried apricots and figs, pillar-sized jars of spices, piles of grains and dried beans.

People cook together – friends and extended family. In the kitchen of my Marrekesh riad, I chopped carrots, onion and zucchini for a vegetable tagine – Morocco’s famed slow-simmering stew – while Latifa the cook steamed and fluffed couscous and her friend Fatima flipped semolina griddle bread. We chopped, stirred, danced and ululated (well, they did) along to their favorite song. The pleasure of working together, the easy intimacy it inspires overcame our lack of common language, creating a richly flavored day and meal.

I was thinking about all this as I peeled favas, or broad beans, here in Miami. I was thinking how far I am from Morocco in almost every sense.

Peeling a dried fava bean is not so hard. Soak your beans in water overnight -- this is a must -- rinse and drain. Take a pre-soaked bean between your fingers. It’s not a single unit but comes in two halves, like an almond. Manipulate it a bit and you can feel the two halves give within their skin. Then the fava will pop out, like a butterfly freed from its chrysalis. This takes less than a minute. For one bean.

If you have a pound of them, it’s a daunting task, made more so by the fact for every bean that comes along quietly, there’s three that won’t give. These you must nick with a knife and then wiggle until they’ve been freed from their shells. Favas are not papery-skinned things, but have sturdy carapaces like thick plastic.

The first time I made fava dip, I did so in the hope of cheating. Bigilla, the classic Maltese dip, is a no-peel deal, traditionally made with favas cooked in their skin. Having attempted it, I wonder why or how. Mashed, liberally dosed with garlic, lemon and olive oil, the favas were still too tough and dense, even for a fiber fan like me. Plus, in their shells, they take forever to cook.

Solo fava-shelling is not a task for the right-minded. But I’d already soaked the beans overnight and had to deal with a pot of them. So there they were and there I was, feeling not unlike Psyche, the Greek girl of myth forced to sort a cellar’s worth of seeds and grain if she expects to see her lover Cupid again.

Shelling favas is a bit like a yoga practice -- you might like to rush through it and get home and back to your life, but slipping the skins off favas keeps you in the moment and frankly, you ain’t going anywhere. I made a pot of tea and set about the task.

I imagined being a nun and making this a lesson in humility and mindfulness and finding the holy in all things, approaching menial work as prayer. That lost its luster after a while. I thought how we as a species used to put a lot more time and effort into putting food on the table, growing our own crops, chasing down animals for dinner and whatnot. Meanwhile, the thumb of my right hand, the hand at which I’m better at peeling, had begun to swell.

A hater of waste and time, I contemplated tossing any uncooperative favas and started to resent the little brown buggers for playing so hard to get. I begin to think like George W. Bush -- you’re either with me or against me. I threw a few favas in the food processor and gave them a whirl. It sped up the process a bit but the beans could not be tortured into submission and I’d come very far from the saintly attitude I’d started with.

There was no Latifa, no Fatima, no one to help make the work go faster or make it fun. Kitchen community has been in my mind since Morocco and also since I’ve been thinking of kitchen community since participating in a food bloggers panel this past weekend. I know many of our local farmers and producers, chefs and food artisans, but no so many other local food bloggers, and there’s a healthy crop of us. While we’re all writing about food, we approach it with our own unique passions:

www.mangoandlime.net

www.tinkeringwithdinner.blogspot.com

www.redlandrambles.com

www.miamidish.net

www.occasionalomnivore.com

We’d made a good panel and would be good in the kitchen together, too. Had they been here, we would sit and gossip or ululate, eat, drink and the work would be done before you know it -- a fava shelling party. But I had not planned ahead, had invited no one and in a drenching rain, no one would have made it, anyway. There was only my dog, made cranky by the bad weather and anyway, lacking an opposible thumb.

The takeaway -- there’s power in numbers, whether it’s building community or peeling dried favas, and though shedding your skin -- becoming vulnerable -- is risky, it’s part of how we grow.

Community Peel and Eat Fava Bean Dip

Oh, and as if peeling favas weren’t enough of a pain in the ass, for some people, favas are toxic. Please God may it not be you.

1 pound dried favas, soaked in water overnight, rinsed and drained

1 carrot

1 onion

1 jalapeno

2 cloves garlic

1 bunch flat-leaf parsley

1 bunch cilantro

2 lemons

2 teaspoons olive oil plus more for drizzling

sea salt and ground pepper to taste

Invite many friends over to help you peel the buggers.

Place beans, carrot, onion, jalapeno and garlic cloves in large pot with about an inch of cold water to cover. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for about an hour, until beans are tender.

Drain.

Process everything in a food processor, mouli or blender. Alternately, mash by hand like a fiend.

Add chopped parsley and cilantro, lemon juice and olive oil. Season with sea salt and pepper.

Chill covered at least two hours before serving.

Nice on flatbread or as a dredge for crudite including carrots, celery and radishes.

Keeps for three days in the fridge.

Serves 6 to 8, enough for a modest fava shelling party.

Market Economy

2010-04-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

What brings together the mayor of Miami, Miami’s greatest chef, Homestead farmers, Haitian refugees, tatted hipsters, Overtown residents and guys in suits? Jewel-like heirloom tomatoes. And fresh, locally grown collards, carrots, eggplants, green beans, loquats and more. It all happens at Roots in the City, Miami’s newest farmers market and magical convergence of cultures.

Well, you know how skeptical I am about magic. I’d like to have faith in the universe’s benevolence and all that, but usually I find we’ve got to help it along. Roots in the City has had some serious magical muscle behind it, including Daniella Levine and the folks at Miami-Dade’s Human Services Coaltion, our community shared agriculture maven Margie Pikarsky, Michael’s Genuine chef Michael Schwartz, whom I have long worshipped and Michel Nischan, new to my pantheon but ensconed there evermore. Chef and author of Sustainably Delicious, Michel is also founder of Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit working to make fresh food accesible to everyone. Wholesome Wave has sponsored over a hundred farmers markets in 12 states, the latest being right here.

Roots in the City not only brings fresh produce to an underserved part of Miami, it offers double value on food stamps. A dollar’s worth of food stamps gets you two dollars’ worth of veggies, and lifetime Overtown resident Sarah Wallace was going for it. In the past, getting fresh produce had been too much struggle -- too much money and too much travel, because Overtown, like many of America’s food deserts, has convenience stores and liquor stores, but nowhere selling anything fresh.

When Roots in the City opened, Sarah didn’t have to take a bus or three across town, just leave her apartment and cross the street. She was the first person at the market when it opened, buying up bags of vegetables, hugging Michel, sampling some of Michael Schwartz’s braised collards and politely listening as the mayor gave her an earful about how important Roots in the City is. Like she doesn’t know. Still, she posed next to him for a photo op, her arms full of fresh collard greens, carrots and tomatoes.

This is the Miami I’ve always hoped for, one in which we all come together, whoever we are. Because we all gotta eat. And we all deserve to eat well. So it's in everyone's best interest to make the magic happen.

Roots in the City Farmers Market Scramble

Feel free to switch out the veggies for whatever’s fresh at your local farmers market. Lacto-ovo lovers may likewise swap eggs for tofu and cheese for nutritional yeast, but honeys, tofu, unlike eggs, adds little fat and no cholesterol, and nutritional yeast tastes cheesily fabulous without the fat and gives you a hit of mighty vitamin B-12, besides. Open yourself up to possibility. I’m just saying.

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion or 3 scallions, chopped

1 jalapeno, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

1 small zucchini or yellow squash, chopped

OR 1 cup greens, fresh spinach, chopped or blanched collards, sliced into ribbons

1 teaspoon cumin powder

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

1 tomato, chopped

12 ounces firm tofu, drained and squeezed to get rid of extra water

1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped fine

sea salt and fresh pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add chopped onion, jalapeno, red pepper and zucchini, if using. Continue to saute, stirring, until vegetables soften, about 7 to 10 minutes.

Stir in cumin, turmeric, nutritional yeast, chopped tomato and optional chopped greens. Stir together until fragrant and golden, about 3 minutes.

Crumble tofu into skillet. You may mash with a wooden spoon or have a wonderfully tactile experience smooshing it with your fingers. Scramble together in merry fashion, breaking up any odd tofu clumps. Cook until combined and heated through, another minute or 2. Add chopped cilantro, season with sea salt and pepper to taste and tip onto two plates.

Serves 2 generously, 3 people if you’re adding rice and beans or cornbread or something additional. Recipes doubles, even triples but is best eaten hot, fresh and at once.

Mon Petit Chou

2010-03-23T06:13:00.000-07:00

photoshop magic courtesy of Philip Brooker

The weekend a friend stopped breastfeeding, she and her husband celebrated by taking a cruise. They relaxed, they laughed, and, because she could, they had a few drinks. All should have been well. But her breasts didn’t get the memo about the no breasteeding order and kept producing milk, as they will, thus becoming enormous and sore. This is known in the breastfeeding biz as engorgement.

The recommended cure is to breastfeed. However, my friend was, for the weekend, sans baby, sans breast pump. She is a tough girl. But the body has a humbling way of showing us who’s really in charge. Sometime around midnight, she stumbled down to the infirmary and said, hey, any chance you guys have a spare breast pump around?

No.

She became aware of their disapproving gazes right around the time she became aware of the daiquiri fumes coming off her in waves. She refrained from asking if there were any infants aboard who might be feeling like a snack. She did ask the clinic staff if they might have any suggestions for breast engorgement.

A nurse suggested she nip around to the kitchen to see if there were any cabbage leaves to be had.

To eat?

No, to wear. A cabbage bra, as it were.

This was a new one for my friend. And though she’s intrepid enough to stare down the cruise chef and ask he hand over his brassica, it just seemed too old-wives’-tale wacky, She said thanks very much, sorry to trouble you, have a nice evening. She soldiered on and perhaps had another daiquiri or three. Because really, how is slapping cole slaw on your breasts going to relieve pain and swelling?

We had a good laugh about it -- and a little wine. Then I Googled cabbage and breastfeeding and discovered it’s a remedy going back at least 200 years and probably further. Who knew? You, probably, but not my friend and not me.

Ever looking for ways to give vegetables good p.r., I found the idea of a cabbage remedy enchanting. The science behind it says cabbage contains sulpher and magnesium, both of which antiobiotic and antiinflammatory properties. Cabbage is also considered a potent inhibitor of breast cancer in women, helping the body metabolize estrogen.

But cabbage leaves and breasts do not go together the way figs leaves and genitalia seem to. And the idea of something vegetal there, well, how comforting could it be? Well, speaking as a curious person rather than a nursing mom in need, it’s rather nicer than you’d think. And if you’re engorged, I bet it’s terrific.

Engorgement isn’t the only reason to admire the cabbage. You can do more than wear it, you can eat it. And what else can offer you so much nutrition for so little money and so few calories? Sky-high in vitamins K and C, rich in fiber and folate, it also has calcium for sturdy bones, antioxidants to keep cancer far away, it even contains protein. It’s easy to grow, endures extreme temps and can go in recipes as simple as slaw and as decadently comforting as pizzocheri.

An Italian dish traditionally made with broad buckwheat noodles, you can use any kind of sturdy whole grain pasta. I made it with whole wheat farfalle and offer both vegan and traditional versions. Either way, it’s cheap and easy to make, rewarding to soul and stomach and maybe breasts.

Pizzocheri

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion

6 cloves garlic

1 handful fresh sage leaves

1 small head Savoy cabbage, trimmed and thinly sliced

1 medium potato, thinly sliced

8 ounces broad buckwheat or whole grain noodles

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

1 cup fontina or other mild semisoft cheese, grated (traditional option)

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast plus an additional drizzle of olive oil (vegan option)

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, reduce heat to low, cover and let onion carmalize and cook for 20 minutes. Raise heat back to medium, add garlic, sage and shredded cabbage. Cook, stirring for about 10 minutes, until cabbage turns pale and tender and garlic is soft and fragrant.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add sliced potato and pasta and cook 8 to 10 minutes or until both are just tender. Drain and rinse.

Toss cabbage with the potatoes and pasta. Add a generous amount of sea salt and fresh ground pepper.

If you’re vegan, stir in the nutritional yeast and perhaps another drizzle of olive oil.

Nonvegans can add shredded cheese at this point.

Pizzocheri can be enjoyed just fine out of the pot, but traditionally it’s poured into a lightly oiled casserole and baked for about 10 minutes, or until top is golden-brown and cheese has melted.

Serves 4.

When Irish Eyes are Crossed

2010-03-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I made Irish soda bread. Sort of.

When I went from vegetarian from vegan some years back, what I missed and thought of wistfully were the big overstuffed omelets I used to make on Sundays and my Irish soda bread, which I made all the time. I'd adapted my recipe from Myrtle Allen, maven of County Cork's famed Ballymaloe House, who seemed both amused and exasperated by this untraditional American girl trying to translate an Irish tradition. I had to mess with the recipe quite a bit to get it to taste as earthy here as it is there, but when I had it, man, I had it. Oaty, grainy, it's honest and nourishing and was the one thing I knew I could do well. It was also full of yogurt and butter. So when I went vegan, I said good-bye.

Then recently it occured to me I could try baking a vegan version, because I have just made my peace with vegan margarine. I use it but rarely, and only in baking. Not all baked goods can be fudged by swapping butter for apple sauce and coconut oil. Coconut oil soda bread? Yetch. And yet here I am using almond milk and vegan marg, so perhaps in a few months, I’ll present you with a soda bread recipe by way of the tropics. My classic soda bread appears back in June of last year -- on Bloomsday, June 16 -- but here’s a lightly sweet one with fruit. I added chopped dried figs, yet another heterodox twist. If you want to stay more faithful to the true, use raisins.

If you think I'm heretical here, wait till you see what I do with greens and white beans, which skew not towards Italy but Morocco. Unconventional but majorly yummy. Coming up next -- unless I do the cabbage and boobs post first. So much to do.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, y’all.

Vegan Irish Soda Bread

1-1/4 cups spelt flour

1/2 cup oatmeal

1/4 cup wheat germ

4 tablespoons vegan margarine like Earth Balance, softened

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon cinnamon

6 dried figs, chopped (or 1/2 cup raisins)

3 tablespoons sugar

1-1/4 cup almond milk

Preheat oven to 425.

In a large bowl, combine spelt flour, oatmeal, wheat germ and baking soda. Work in vegan margarine until mixture forms crumbs. Mix in cinnamon and sugar and almond milk. When you have a nice, thick batter, stir in chopped figs or raisins.

Pour into a lightly oiled pie or loaf pan.

Bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool before slicing, or bread may be crumbly. Even crumbly, it’s good.

Wringing Wet

2010-02-23T07:12:00.000-08:00

Our new washing machine overloaded and dumped water all over the utility room floor. This necessitated a major bail and mop. Then our antique dishwasher decided to call it a day and did the same thing, so within a couple of days, there I was again, cursing and mopping up buckets of water.

I’d just stopped feeling like the sorcerer’s apprentice when my husband and I attended an outdoor party at which the heavens opened up. They opened wide, with torrential, driving rain that turned the place to mud and drenched everyone to the skin because the squall gusts caused the party tent to buckle and blow away.

Clearly, God/Life/the universe was throwing an awful lot of water at me. The question is, why?

A friend, altered by drink, theorized that while we think we’re big and important, we’re really just water bearers. We exist to do water’s bidding. We spend our days taking it in, moving it to other places, releasing it. Water, not man, is Earth’s real intelligent life source. It would explain a lot about our current political system.

My feeling, though, is that this water was a personal message. Prior to the deluge, I had not been feeling in the flow. In fact, I felt like a dried legume rattling around in a jar, not like an inspired let alone inspiring creator. I kept getting myself into a tight little knot, writing and rewriting the same paragraph without making it any better. I was not doing myself much good, either.

I do not know why these dry spells happen but I hate when they do. I feel so fallow and purposeless and not how I perceive myself at all. I beat myself up in frustration -- not that it helps.

I am not especially comfortable talking about faith, since I have so little of it, and yet I’m fascinated by those who believe. Faith is intrinic to who they are and trying to get them to parse or discuss it is like trying to get someone to imagine being without a limb -- academic and arcane.

It must be nice. I come at faith like the Little Match Girl, ever on the outside, nose pressed to the glass. Instead of faith, I have perseverence. It’s not nearly as fun. I’d rather have faith, but maybe doggedness is just as good. It’s all part of what Chang-rae Lee calls “that pumping, thriving nature of life,” which, like water, keeps seeping in.

While working on his powerful new novel The Surrendered, Lee said, “I felt completely lost. There were many points in which I felt overwhelmed and overmatched. I learned I have a reserve of faith i didn’t know I had. I’m not a religious person, a going-to-church- type person, but I must say I drew upon some kind of idea, a sense I can do this, if I keep trying and quell these thoughts of desperation, if I can keep going, maybe it’ll work out. I was surprised by how I endured those moments.”

It was all I could do to muzzle the desire to say, “Oh, honey, you, too?” But I was interviewing him, so instead we talked about literature. And silicon boobs, golf, food and wine. But that’s another story.

These past few days, I’ve felt like something has budged, shifted, given way. I’ve been singing as I set about my work, a sign the gloom is lifting. It is one of the great unsung pleasures -- the release when a headache or heartache vanish, when a fever or funk break. It is the rediscovery of the simplest sensory delights like the delicious feeling of sun on your skin or sipping silky broth or really seeing the person you live with. It is being here now, being grateful for where you are without overthinking or trying to hold it too tightly (this part’s the killer for me).

I am -- at the moment, anyway -- more focused, more engaged, more grateful, more tolerant. I’ve been feeling a generosity of spirit, not faith but -- oh, let’s say it -- love -- bubbling up in me like a spring.

It’s raining now. And I’m enjoying it. And accepting it. And opening myself up to it and all that. But I’ve mopped up enough, wasted enough water, paid off enough repairmen, no more appliances need malfunction. It’s okay, universe -- I get it already.

Acquacotta

It sounds fancy and Italian, it means a soup of vegetables cooked in water. Left to my own devices, I’d add white beans or quinoa or enhance it with wine or vegetable broth. I am, however, honoring it for what it is. Acquacotta is peasanty, unpretentious and comforting, greater than the sum of its parts. It’s sort of like stone soup without the rocks -- a nice illustration of faith and a cheap and green meal, too.

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 habanero or 1 jalapeno, chopped

4 carrots, chopped

3 ribs celery, chopped

8 ounces mushrooms, sliced

8 ounces green beans, chopped into bite-sized pieces

1 bunch chard or other greens, chopped

1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes

5 cups water

1 bay leaf

1 big bunch of basil, chopped

1 small handful fresh thyme leaves

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

For serving:

6 slices whole-grain bread, toasted

extra olive oil for drizzling

Options for lacto-ovo-types:

poached eggs

grated Parmesan

Heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add minced garlic, chopped onions, carrots, celery and habanero or jalapeno. Saute stirring occaionally until vegetables soften and turn fragrant, about 5 minutes.

Add chopped greens, mushrooms, green beans and diced tomatoes. Continue cooking another 5 minutes.

Stir in water, bay, basil and thyme and cover pot. Reduce heat to medium-low and let the soup simmer for half an hour.

To serve: Place one slice of toasted bread at the bottom of each bowl. Ladle soup over toast, add an extra drizzle of olive oil for gilding and enjoy.

Egg and cheese eaters can add one poached egg per bowl and a generous grating of Parmesan.

Serves 6.

Mardi Gras Memory

2010-02-14T12:28:00.000-08:00

One summer many years ago, my father had some work around New Orleans and not much money, so he brought my mother and me along and turned it into a holiday. We stayed in what must have been the French Quarter, in a smallish room with wood-slatted shuttered windows opening out onto a narrow balcony.

The street smelled of dust and August heat -- a heat that stunned, turning me alternately soporific and whiny. We walked to a bakery where my father took me and said I could have anything I wanted. Heat-wilted, all I wanted was a lemonade.

We went to Brennan’s -- my parents’ big splurge. My mother fell in love with oysters rockefeller. I fell asleep at the table. I was six and the concept of fine dining was lost on me. We came back to find a maid had come for turndown service, leaving chocolates on the pillows, which were squishily soft by the time I ate them.

The next day, my parents decided to ditch me. In what seemed the worst kind of betrayal, they casually announced they were going out that evening. They took off for a good time, leaving me in the care of a woman I’m sure had an enormous heart. She had an enormous everything, spilling out of the armchair, filling the room, sending me to retreat to my rollaway cot by the window. She had thick glasses with greasy fingerprint smudges on the lenses and a plastic Barbie-colored hearing aid. I’d never seen one before and it frightened me. The two of us smiled at each other or bared our teeth the way our sparring Paleolithic forebears were said to do, to show we were evenly matched and needn’t try to dominate each other. We attempted neither play nor conversation.

I went to sleep before my bedtime, wishing this woman away. By morning, my wish had come to pass -- she was gone and my parents were back from Bourbon Street. What’s there, I asked.

My mother, who’d patiently explained sex to me the year before, now smiled showing all her teeth, the way she did when she wanted to convince me of something, the same way the babysitter and I’d smiled at each other. Men like to watch naked ladies dance, she said. My mother had never lied before but I couldn’t see the truth or wisdom in this. Until later that night.

We walked by a bar and honest to God, there was music blaring and up on a stage, a hoochie mama wearing an inch or two of something green and sparkly, danced, pranced, strutted. Her boobs bounced.

I don’t think my parents rushed me past the door -- they were progressive and cool and all that. But I was only six. I was too embarrassed to stare -- blushingly embarrassed for the girl, mortified for myself. New Orleans seemed a place of betrayal and depravity and I was finished with it.

Fast-forward a few decades and my husband, a Tulane alum, took me back to New Orleans for homecoming. It was May, it was muddy -- the city a sea of mud. I promptly ruined a new pair of shoes I’d gotten just to beguile my husband’s fraternity brothers whom I’d never met and withstand the scrutiny of their wives.

The shoes didn’t matter. My husband’s old college friends took me in, as did their wives, as New Orleans naturally does. They would have done regardless of footwear. They could have thrown me a parade and I wouldn’t have felt more welcome than I did by this. Yes, New Orleans is all about laissez les bon temps rouller, letting the good times roll, but it’s also about laissez faire, letting things be. New Orleans happily take you as you are, however that is (see April 27 ’09 post).

The things most people love about the city -- the bars, beignets, Bourbon Street -- they’re all there, but it is to me other delights -- the lacy wrought iron balconies on the Victorian homes and the strangers who toast me from them, the mule-drawn caleches. Mules endure New Orleans' heat and humidity better than horses and don’t object to me petting and cooing over them, either.

I am amazed by the Jazz and Heritage Festival, accommodating 40,000 people with five stages spread out on a race track. Somehow, there is room for everyone, the sound from the Elvis Costello stage doesn’t carry over into the Gospel Tent, and for every band you’ve come to hear, there’s another one you stumble upon and fall in love with. You can't get fast food burgers in the food court, but there's oyster po' boys, crowder peas and okra and dirty rice, with bottles of Tabasco at every kiosk.

We go back at least once a year now and I ruin a pair of heels every time. Sometimes the mud does it, sometimes it’s from walking the French Quarter’s cobblestone streets. The sensible thing would be to wear sensible shoes, but New Orleans is tolerant of your pleasures. If you want to wreck your shoes, go ahead. It indulges everything, including your own brand of madness.

As a child, I was a harsh judge of New Orleans. New Orleans never judged me. I, so intolerant of my own weird quirks, am utterly disarmed by this place that says, hey, you’re fine, we love you like you are. This wisdom comes from age and is not a lesson I could fathom as a little girl.

New Orleans has had to learn its own hard lesson. After the wreckage by Hurricane Katrina, it set about doing what it did not want to do -- resurrecting itself, but settling into the task with a grim determination. It is still recovering, but Mardi Gras beads keep the city shiny. So does hope. The Saints' Superbowl victory wasn’t just about football, it was about the joy of winning by being who you are. Happy Mardi Gras.

Down and Dirty Rice

Traditionally what makes dirty rice dirty is the addition of fowl gizzards. Um, no thanks. Chopped eggplant, a Louisiana crop, takes the place of organ meat in this super-satisfying veggie version Not spicy in itself, but you can make it that way. That’s what Tabasco is for.

1-1/2 cup rice (white or brown)

5 cups water or vegetable broth, divided use

1 bay leaf

1 tablespoon olive oil

6 cloves garlic, chopped

1 large onion, chopped

1 medium eggplant, chopped

2 ribs celery, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 tomato, chopped (or 1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes)

2 teaspoons paprika

1 handful fresh thyme leaves (or 1 teaspoon dried)

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

juice of 1 lemon

1 bunch fresh parsley, chopped

optional -- 1 cup edamame

Pour 3 cups of water or broth into a large pot. Place over high heat and bring liquid to boil. Add rice and bay leaf and give a quick stir. Cover and reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes (brown rice may need an additional 10 minutes) or until rice is tender and all liquid is absorbed. Remove bay leaf and set aside.

May be done a day or two ahead and stored well-covered in refrigerator. Bring to room temperature before proceeding.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chopped garlic, onion and eggplant. Saute, stirring for 5 minutes, or until vegetables soften. Add chopped celery, green pepper, tomato, paprika and thyme. Continue cooking another 5 to 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in rice and remaining 2 cups of water or broth.

Reduce heat to medium and cook another 10 minutes until mixture is moist but all liquid is absorbed.

Stir in salt, pepper, lemon juice and chopped parsley, and for a pop of protein and bright green color, fold in optional edamame.

Serves 6 to 8. Keeps several days in the fridge, flavor improves over time.

Soupe Joumou: Sunshine in the Midst of Darkness

2010-01-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

art courtesy of Philip Brooker

When a man pours you his soup, he pours you his soul, even when it’s soup cooked up on a hot plate. Maybe especially then. My friend Marcel celebrated New Year’s Day by making soupe joumou, the beloved soup with which Haitians start the new year. For Marcel, it was not enough to make soup -- he had to feed everyone he knew.

When I arrived, his tiny apartment was flooded with afternoon light and was so jammed, I couldn’t see the host for all the guests clustered around, cradling soup bowls, talking, eating, laughing.

Finally, I found Marcel his makeshift kitchen, holding court and presiding over the soup pot.

I gave him a kiss and picked up a bowl.

“It has meat,” he warned, remembering I’m a meat-free kind of girl.

“I’ll eat around it.”

We looked at each other. He beamed and ladled it up from a battered aluminum pot, rich and golden, like liquid sunshine.

Soupe joumou is the triumph of spirit over tyranny, heart over privation and a damn fine way to warm body and soul. This is a soup tapping into the collective unconscious of a people, evoking stronger feelings than Proust’s madeleine. I wasn’t going to let some bits of beef get in the way of that.

We all love to ring in the new year with its promise of new beginnings, but in Haiti, it’s especially cause for joy. New Year’s Day is Independence Day, the celebration of that New Year’s Day in 1804, when Haitians ended over a century of bloody rule by the French and were no longer colonial slaves but a free people in their own homeland.

Haitians celebrated by eating what had been forbidden them -- meat, cabbage and squash, the latter two grown on their own island. Haitian slaves had cooked these foods for their French masters, while they themselves had survived solely on rations of salt cod and lemonade.

Like hopping john, the new year’s dish invented by slaves in the south, soupe joumou is a dish that sustains and is sustainable. It’s made from what is local and available. The Haitians adapted the soup from their French masters, heating it up with habaneros and ginger and making their own. Like hopping john, some eat it on New Year’s Day for good luck. Others, like Marcel, eat and serve it knowing -- and honoring -- its history. And as with all things Haitian, there is some myth. The soup is said to honor Papa Loko, the Vodou god of the ancient African spirit. Yellow is the color that honors him. In any case, soupe joumou is belly-filling and soul-lifting all at once.

Since Haiti’s earthquake, Marcel, our gracious host of just a few weeks ago, looks crumpled, hollowed out. Most of us in Miami do. Haiti is but 700 miles away. Or it is literally next door. Haitians make up a rich part of our community and though we may not personally have lost family, as Marcel has, we all have Haitian friends, Haitian ties. People burst into tears on the street. Coworkers who once barely got past, ”Hi, how’s it going?” now embrace. There has been an outpouring of relief effort here, along with an outpouring of grief. Those efforts will be all the more important in the coming weeks and months, when the rest of the world might be inclined to forget or suffer compassion fatigue. As if caring could ever tire you.

Soupe joumou epitomizes for me Marcel and all the people of Haiti, who take what little they have, make it delicious and offer it to you with all their heart. It’s time for us, who have so much, to do the same.

At this time of crisis, as President Obama said, "We are reminded of our common humanity." Please donate to Partners in Health (www.pih.org),

the American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders or whatever relief

organization moves you.

Vegan Soupe Joumou

I have taken the meat out of Marcel’s soupe joumou but not, I hope, the heart. Great by itself or ladled over cooked brown rice.

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1 onion, chopped

1/4 cup garlic, chopped (yeah, a 1/4 cup. Got a problem?)

1/4 cup ginger, chopped

1 jalapeno (or 1/4 habanero),chopped

1 large winter squash, diced

2 carrots, chopped

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1-1/2 teaspoons allspice

4 cups vegetable broth

1 bunch collards or callalloo, chopped into bite-sized bits, or about 3 cups shredded cabbage

juice of 1 lime

1 bay leaf

Heat oil in a soup pot over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion, garlic and ginger and jalapeno. Saute, stirring occasionally, until vegetables soften, about 8 minutes.

Add allspice, chopped squash and chopped carrots. Add greens a handful at a time. Stir until greens just wilt, about 3 minutes.

Add broth and bring heat to high. When broth comes to a boil, add thyme leaves and bay leaf.

Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for half an hour, or until vegetables are tender.

Squeeze in lime juice and season with sea salt and pepper.

Serves 4.

Here's Looking At You, Kid

2009-12-15T14:52:00.000-08:00

Call me a bit of a rebel, I’m not a big on holiday traditions. For obvious reasons, I’m fine with a turkeyless Thanksgiving. I’m likewise fine with a treeless Christmas, a menorahless Chanukah. I do like New Year’s though, with champagne on New Year’s Eve and hopping john New Year’s Day. There is nothing glamorous about a plate of hopping john -- it's rice, black-eyed peas and collards. It’s cheapish to make and plainish to eat, but I love it for being rich in fiber, folklore and mystique. What other dish promises good luck, fortune and romance?

Some say black-eyed peas look like coins and collards or other greens represent paper money, therefore you’ll make as much money as the hopping john you eat.

Black-eyed peas also fit an old superstition that if a dark-eyed man is your first visitor on New Year’s Day, love and good luck will be yours.

Who knows where such stories started? One version has hopping john originating with the slaves who brought black-eyed peas and rice from west Africa. Some say the dish got its name from a child dancing around the stove, eager for supper. What started as a slave dish, livened with a lttle pepper and pork made its way into plantation kitchens.

It could be hopping john got its start even earlier, from our Celtic forebears who lighted fires on New Year’s Eve and danced around them all night. The Anglo-Saxon word hoppan means religious dance.

In either case, dancing seems as much a part of hopping john as black-eyed peas. I'm a great believer in dancing and a big fan of good luck, great fortune and hot romance. Do I believe a plate of rice and beans will make that happen? Not so much, but just enough -- that's why I’ll start the year the way I have for the past decade, with a pot of hopping john ready for New Year’s Day. Call it the victory of hop over experience (sorry).

Hopping John

Traditionally, hopping john is made with everything going into one pot. Traditionally, it is also made with pork. I -- surprise -- have broken with tradition and make this in two pots and sans pig.

Make it New Year’s Eve or even the day before. Flavor improves over time and hopping john reheats like a dream. You’ll have a nourishing, cheap meal ready to go on a day when some of us are too tired and bleary-eyed to cook. And there’s a bonus -- the sturdy rice and beans dish sops up any hangover.

Happy New Year.

1 cup black eyed peas

3 cups of water

6 cloves garlic

1 dried hot pepper

1 bay leaf

2 cups vegetable broth

1 cup brown rice

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 jalapeno, chopped

3 ribs celery, chopped

1 big bunch collard greens, sliced into thin ribbons

juice of 1 lemon

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

In a large pot, bring 3 cups of water to boil over high heat. Add black-eyed peas, 2 cloves of garlic (whole), pepper and bay leaf. Skim off any beans that float. They’re duds.

Reduce heat to low. Simmer beans uncovered for an hour and a half until beans are tender, not mushy.

Add brown rice and the vegetable broth. Cover and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes. Don’t lift that lid. Turn off the heat, leave pot on the burner and let hopping john sit.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion, jalapeno, celery and the remaining 4 garlic cloves, chopped. Saute for about 5 minutes, stirring, until the vegetables soften.

Reduce heat to medium. Add greens by the handful, and cook until wilted, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes.

Fluff rice and beans, fold in collard mixture. Squeeze in lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Splash with hot sauce.

Serves 6.