Another Mac Plate

We often have variations of the traditional macrobiotic plate - beans/rice/sea vegetable/squash. Yesterday was some cannellini beans cooked with sage and some other herbs, steamed red kale with lemon juice, sweet potato and quinoa. I'm very fond of quinoa - it's quick and easy to cook and has a wonderful flavor. In the summer I grow red kale - I'm partial to the variety Red Russian - and like it best of all the kales. One thing I really like about this plate is all the beautiful colors. This meal also makes a great leftover.

Neeps and Tatties Soup

We had a wonderful soup yesterday - another success from Love Soup by Anna Thomas. This was Neeps and Tatties Soup - those of you from Scotland will get the reference - it stands for turnips and potatoes. This is a leek/potato/turnip soup. We did the "rustic" version, that isn't pureed and doesn't have cream, but adds chopped parsley and dill, dill seed, crumbled feta cheese and some olive oil. It was outstanding - fresh and light but satisfying. The combination of flavors made all the difference. It was great on a cold winter day!

Fermentation: Gulden Draak Beer and Yoghurt

A few days ago I had a wonderful Gulden Draak beer, from Belgium. We're fortunate to have a great pub nearby that has an ever-changing selection of draft beers from around the world - often beers that are only available seasonally or for a short period of time. Gulden Draak (which means golden dragon) is a dark triple "live" beer - not pasteurized. It was really outstanding - I've since read that it's won a number of awards.

This got me to thinking about fermented foods. There's a long human history of using fermentation processes to change and preserve foods, and there's apparently increasing evidence of the health benefits of naturally fermented foods - sourdough bread, yoghurt, kafir, tempeh, miso and also wine and beer. I didn't know much about how beer is produced - we've never gone in for home-brewing - so I looked it up. It's a fairly complex process - here's a good article. One thing I didn't know (among many) was that different species of yeast are used to produce different types of beer.

This reminded me that I needed to make some yoghurt. I like making my own yoghurt - it's easy and I know exactly what I want to be in it. I also like really tart European-style yoghurt, which isn't that easy to find. I use my handy Yogourmet yoghurt maker. The process is simple - you heat the milk slowly, stirring frequently, to just over 180 degrees (F) to kill off other bacteria, cool the milk to just under 100F, then add the starter culture (I need to order more, as mine is a bit old - it still works), and put the milk into the inner container of the yoghurt maker, which is surrounded by a water bath. I use 1% milk - the higher the fat content the firmer the yoghurt - it's a bit runny but it works for me. On goes the lid and it's plugged in and left alone for 24 hours. Then there's yoghurt, which keeps for a long time in the refrigerator. I love it on cereal, particularly on muesli.

Mung Beans and Rice With Spicy Tomatoes

We just had a wonderful lunch of Mung Beans and Rice with Spicy Tomatoes from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. This recipe took some time - there was some chopping, some pasting of spices/ginger/galic/cilantro and a quick saute of tomatoes with jalapeno pepper and spices at the end for a garnish. I used canola oil, rather than ghee, as canola oil is a variety of the mustard oil that was an alternate suggestion. This was my experiment with mung beans - these were the whole ones, tiny and green. They cook quickly and would make a good substitute in any recipe calling for lentils, I think. This was an Indian-spiced recipe with garam masala, onion, cumin and an ingredient I don't associate with Indian cooking - dill seed. I started out trying to make my own garam masala, but the seeding of the cardamon pods defeated me - the pods are small and tough and the seeds are smaller - tiny black things arranged in two rows on either side of a papery septum. I'll follow up on that later, but for this recipe I used a garam masala mix. The outcome was excellent, and I'd make it again although it was some trouble.

Soba Noodles With Chard and Garlic

Last night we had a wonderful new dish - continuing the theme of Adventure - Soba Noodles With Chard and Garlic from Jack Bishop's A Year In a Vegetarian Kitchen. This dish uses soba noodles for a southern Italian preparation of chard leaves and stems with garlic, red pepper flakes, raisins and green olives, garnished with toasted pine nuts. It was outstanding, and will make a good leftover for lunch!

The Problem With Eating Out

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to eat out, and it's not just because I'm a vegetarian, although that can present its own challenges. The problem I have is the contrast between the quality of the ingredients and the quality of recipes and preparation that we have at home - which is pretty high, although we do have our share of recipe failures - and the generally mediocre to poor quality of ingredients and preparation that we find in most sit-down restaurants.

An example - yesterday we went for a drive in the countryside and ended up in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. We had lunch at a randomly selected restaurant in the tourist area - it wasn't a chain restaurant. I had a grilled cheese sandwich. It wasn't even mediocre, it was lousy. The cheese clearly wasn't real cheese - it was gooey "processed cheese food" - and had no flavor to speak of. The tomato on the sandwich was tasteless (it is winter so I can excuse that) - the only spark of interest was the red onion on the sandwich. My husband's fries had clearly gone straight from the factory where they were pre-cut to the freezer to the deep fryer. The ice tea was clearly made from a mix.

I'd say that this was an aberration, but it really isn't. We increasingly find most sit-down restaurant food close to inedible - and that's without even considering the fast food places. Our best bets are ethnic restaurants, although that's not always a guarantee - there are plenty of appallingly bad Chinese restaurants - Middle Eastern, Indian, Thai and Japanese can do the trick. The more cooking at home we do with quality ingredients, the less acceptable most restaurant food has become. We've decided that from now on when we take a day trip, that we're going to pack a lunch or stop at a supermarket that has a salad bar and some decent fresh fruit.