Restaurant Review

The famous and wonderful Jennifer passed through Portland today, along with her mom, and met Hibi and me for lunch at Veganopolis. I'm so glad Jennifer wanted to go there because I have never been there before, though I keep meaning to. I think that when I'm not fasting for Lent (which entails a vegan diet) I think, eh, vegan food...I want cheese. But I don't think it was just that I've been deprived of cheese for several weeks with no end in sight yet that I absolutely *loved* the food at Veganopolis! It was scrumptious. I had the Mediterranean Sandwich, which was a cashew ricotta blended with sun-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives, basil pesto, artichoke hearts, all inside a ciabbata roll. The ciabatta seemed kind of like a cross between ciabatta and a croissant, as it was full of layers and was very crispy on the outside. I couldn't believe how good it was! Along with it (for a small extra fee) I had roasted potatoes with gravy in one side bowl and garlic ketchup in another. Yum! Now, hours later, I still have a wonderful taste in my mouth. I had a tasty lavender lemonade with it. Jennifer had the lasagna, which was a white lasagna. She said it had some kind of cream sauce, and lots of zucchini and spinach, and that it was very flavorful. Hibi had the Canadian sandwich which she also reported to be good.

A slice of oreo cake was shared by some at our table (I won't tell who!) but it looked awfully good. I had a couple of slurps of a chocolate milkshake that was also very good and chocolatey.

They have a buffet at Veganopolis, and they have a great idea for it. You can take whatever you want from the buffet, and then you pay by the pound. Isn't that a great idea? Then less food is going to be wasted, because if people know they are going to have to pay for it, they're less likely to take food they're not going to eat.

I will definitely be back, and next time I'm taking my whole family!

Late Winter Bruschetta

Tonight it was just the kids and me at dinner, as Paul was in Eugene with the university students from our parish, serving liturgy and having a catch-up time with them. So I chose something easy and tasty that we all like, Bruschetta. That entailed picking up a baguette from Di Prima Dolci, along with greens and jarred roasted red peppers and a can of Great Northern Beans from New Seasons. The little bit of shopping time was offset by the quickness of the recipe--I even had time to run to the library to get Hibi, who had forgotten that we had choir practice tonight and would have been there until 9 pm if I hadn't reminded her to come home.

Late Winter Bruschetta

Cut one baguette into slices or, make long pieces by cutting it in half horizontally and then into pieces with crust on the bottom of each. (Does that make sense?) Toast the pieces in the oven at 450 degrees, or use your broiler. When they are toasted, brush each with olive oil. I didn't rub them with garlic as I do most bruschetta, because there is garlic in the bean paste, which is plenty of garlic.

Meanwhile, process one or two cans (I used one for the three of us) of Great Northern beans or other white beans in a food processor, along with one clove of garlic. Drizzle the juice of one lemon in during processing. Scrape into a bowl.

Saute one bunch of the greens of your choice (I used rapini, also known as broccoli rabe) in a bit of oil.

To serve, make each piece of bruschetta with a smear of bean paste, some roasted red pepper, and greens on top. Enjoy!

Sushi!

My friend Jennifer told me a long time ago that I should try making sushi. She sent me her recipe for it, and I had good intentions of doing so. Now, her cookbook is out and I still hadn't made sushi....along with that, someone on the Patrick's Point campout, a fellow vegetarian, made sushi while camping! And she said to me in astonishment, "you've never made sushi???" So, I knew I had to try it someday. Jennifer had told me it was easy, but I didn't really believe her. :-) Now I know it's easy, though just a tad time-consuming....in the same way as it's time-consuming to cook dried beans, it just takes a while to cook. Well worth the effort, though!

Anyway, I'm not going to try to duplicate her recipe here. It's a process that needs some attention, and Jennifer explains it all in her book. Sadly, I'm not finding a recipe on her website for sushi, but if you like sushi it's well worth the price of the book just for this recipe. (Plus you get all the rest of the recipes included!)

So, in the picture above you see sushi, in the top middle. The fillings I used were avocado slices, grated carrot and fried tofu strips. Clockwise, there's pickled ginger which was recommended with the sushi and it has a very interesting flavor. Next is edamame which you can buy in frozen packages--it just needs a quick boil and then you can pop the beans out into your mouth. Then there is a tiny bit of wasabi, which is spicy enough that you don't need any more than that! I put a tiny dab on my plate and just barely touched the sushi to it before dipping it in soy sauce, which is what's in the bottle and what the empty ramekins are for. Paul liked the wasabi in great smears, though, and I had to mix up extra for him.

I bought the tools I'd need at Uwajimaya. If you live in the Northwest you can get everything you need there. The only thing I'd do differently is that I bought a kit that included the wooden tub for mixing and cooling the rice in, along with three wooden rice paddles and a bamboo mat. Though I already had a mat, the extra one did come in handy, as Hibi helped me roll sushi. The paddles, however, were too small and after much tossing and cooling of rice my hands were ready to call it quits. Before I make sushi again I will buy longer-handled paddles.

Raisin Bread

Yum! The first day of Lent is a good day to make raisin bread. This is one of my two Laurel's Kitchen staple recipes--the other being Buttermilk Bread. When I want totally vegan bread I make this. It's so good that when I went to take a picture of it, I found that *somebody* had pulled raisins right out of the top to eat them, after being told that we must wait until the bread is cooled to cut it. It's really better that way--if you cut more than just the heel off while it's warm, it just flattens the bread. So, the one on the right has no heel on its backside. :-)

Blini

Here's another recipe we make almost every year during Cheesefare Week (see post below for explanation of Cheesefare). It's from the Russian Orthodox tradition. We like to eat blini with sour cream, melted butter, beets and beet greens, cheese, etc. Hibi can eat the veggies, but other than that, she's really on her own this week! That's okay--she's looking forward to next week, when we'll be eating nothing but vegan food. For 7 weeks! She'll love it.

My favorite memory of blini....oh, I have two memories of eating blini. The first was the first time I ever made them. It was with the help of our friend Matthew Duskas (Matthew, are you out there somewhere? Drop me a line!) who had eaten them before and had an interest in cooking but didn't have a kitchen, as he lived in the dorms at Holy Cross seminary. So he came over and we cooked together. We invited other people from our building over to eat blini, and we served it with beets, which I also had not eaten up until that time (mainly because my mother did not like beets. Isn't it crazy the inherited food dislikes we have?). We stuffed ourselves on the delicious food and the great company. I was so full! And then I waited for the fullness to subside and it didn't. Eventually I realized I had the stomach flu. I'll spare you the details. Fortunately for me, I'm not one of those people who associates food so strongly with sickness that I couldn't enjoy the food again. I still love blini!

My second memory was when my step-grandfather, whom I just called Grandpa even though he didn't marry my grandmother until I was 17, and my children called Great Grandpa, died. He was 98, and he lived a wonderful, full, long life. I was there with him when he died--the only person I've ever witnessed pass away, and it was a beautiful, tragic, very poignant experience. Lots of family came for the funeral, including family from my grandmother's second marriage (this was her third). I decided that while everyone was in town I'd like to invite them all over and have a family meal at our house. I always enjoyed cooking.....but I had two strikes against me: one, that it was on short notice, and I was busy with the funeral and all that, and two, we lived way out an hour from Fresno and shopping for food would have taken time away from the actual cooking. So, I decided to not make one unified menu, but just to take all the dinners I'd planned for that week and make them all. It was a lot of delicious, very diverse food and everyone enjoyed learning about the Russian Orthodox tradition of blini, which was one of the things I served. It was so much fun and I'd definitely do it again!

So, with no further ado, here's the recipe for Blini. Oh, one further ado: I have played around with the rising times a lot. It can take a lot. Today, I did the first two steps and then I'm going to leave it all afternoon. I think you could probably shave off some time from one rising and add it to another rising. You can even make it one day and put it in the fridge for the next day.

Buckwheat Blini (for cheesefare week)



Ingredients

2 � teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
� teaspoon salt
1 cup buckwheat flour (note: buckwheat flour, if not available from your supermarket, can be obtained at most natural foods stores)
2 cups lukewarm milk
1� cups all-purpose flour
� cup sour cream
3 eggs, separated
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
� cup heavy cream
Melted butter for cooking
Choice of garnishes (i.e. melted butter, caviar, sour cream, chopped hard boiled eggs, saut�ed mushrooms, onions and scallions, etc. I like them with butter and sugar.)

Mix the yeast, sugar, salt, and buckwheat flour together in a large bowl. Stir in the milk. Cover and leave to rise until bubbly, 1 to 1 � hours.
Stir in the all-purpose flour, the sour cream, egg yolks, and butter, mixing well. Cover again and leave to rise for 2 hours.
Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks. Fold the egg whites and cream into the batter. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.
Heat one or more crepe pans or small skillets. Brush with melted butter. Take about 2 tablespoons of batter and pour in onto a hot pan, swirling with the back of the spoon to make a pancake that�s about 5 inches in diameter. Cook over medium heat until bubbles appear on the surface and the underside is brown, approximately 1 minute. Turn and cook briefly on the other side (the second side should not be as brown). Repeat this procedure for each pancake, greasing the skillet beforehand.
Serve immediately. Right off the griddle is the best way to eat them!

Cheese Soup in Breadbowls

It's Cheesefare week in the Orthodox church once again. That's one of the weeks in preparation for Lent to begin (next Monday) where we have already said goodbye to meat on Sunday (though in this household we said goodbye long ago) and we focus on getting our fill of cheese, milk, eggs, and other goodies that we will not be partaking of during Lent.

I posted this recipe last year on my regular blog, and as I was preparing to make it this week I thought I'd post it again here. It is one of our favorites--all of us except Hibi, who never liked it anyway!

This recipe is one of our traditional Cheese Fare week's recipes. I now use a recipe for bread dough from Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, an all whole wheat bread (I recommend the Buttermilk Bread recipe), and just use about a half a loaf's worth for each bread bowl. Shape into a tight round and place on a greased cookie sheet to rise and bake. After it's baked and cooled, cut off the top and scoop out the inside, being careful not to get too close to the outside wall. But you can, if you wish, use white bread dough, even the store-bought kind. We all think the whole wheat bread stands up nicely to the strong cheesy/beery flavor of the soup.

Here's the soup recipe:

Cheese Soup

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup chopped onions

1/2 cup chopped carrots

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/4 cup flour

2 1/2 cups milk

1 cup beer

2 teaspoons worchestershire sauce (a vegetarian version is available at natural foods stores)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

1/4 teaspoon tabasco sauce

2 cups sharp cheddar cheese

2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt butter and saute vegetables until tender. Add flour, stirring constantly until flour is no longer raw. Reduce heat; stir in beer, worchestershire sauce, salt, mustard, and tabasco. Simmer 10 minutes. Add cheddar and parmesan cheese and stir until melted; do not boil. Ladle into bread bowls and serve.

Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers

Yum! I tried a new recipe today, from last Tuesday's Food section of the Oregonian. They were even Vegan if you use vegan mayo (or don't have any)! I'm trying to write it fast here, because somehow, after we got the burgers in the oven (and before I had the mayo whipped up) the article disappeared. The kids say it's a single-use recipe. :-) I'm assuming it'll eventually turn up, but then we did take out the recycling, and who knows where it ended up? I looked on the Oregonian's website, but alas, the Oregonian doesn't list *all* of it's recipes online. Stupid Oregonian. Oh, yeah, they did bring us a great recipe--I won't complain too much.

So, here's what I can reconstruct:

Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers

2 cups diced garnet sweet potatoes
1 cup rolled oats (I used 1/2 cup oat flour instead)
1/2 cup ground roasted peanuts
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
2 minced cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/2 cup minced onion
1 teaspoon ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the sweet potatoes in a saucepan, covered with water, for about 10 minutes until they are tender. Drain and let cool for 10 minutes or so. Put all ingredients into a bowl and squish the mixture together with your hands. The recipe said to form 4 patties, but we recommend 6--they were too big and squashy. (But awfully tasty!)

I cannot reconstruct the mayo since I didn't make it. Instead, I made homemade mayonnaise and made it into aioli by adding two cloves of garlic that I'd ground in my mortar and pestle.

I served this on homemade whole wheat buns. You don't have to make them homemade....but if you have the desire to, it sure did add to it! I'd definitely use whole wheat even if they are store bought. Oh, and lettuce, and everyone else in my family used ketchup. But I did not.

If I remember any ingredients I forgot to list, I'll add them. I hope this is right! Hey, if anyone has last weeks' Food section, let me know if I got all the ingredients right!