Zhen Kailian Won Ton Soup: A Forty Day Invention Test, Episode Six

March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 / cziemke / 1 Comment

Last Wednesday, I woke up with a bit of a throat. Nothing big, just one of those fizzy, back of the throat tickles that could be allergies or could be the beginning of a cold. The kind of sore throat that makes you crave chicken noodle soup, or a vegetarian equivalent. Fortunately, I had some homemade, Saturday morning after the Market vegetable broth in the freezer. That could stand in for chicken stock, but what about the noodles? That’s when I hit upon won tons. I’d had dumplings on the brain since I made pot stickers for Chinese New Year. Some yummy won tons in a slightly Asian-ised vegetable broth with a few fresh veggies and lots of tummy-settling ginger would satisfy my desire for throat-and-soul-soothing, brothy soup while constituting a sufficiently hearty meal for my hardworking sweetie.

What, you might ask, qualifies me — an ageing white chick from the Deep South of the US living in New Zealand — to improvise Chinese soup? Well, first of all, I had a poster of Mao Zedong tacked to the ceiling over my bed throughout my teenage years. Why, you ask? Probably for the same reason I wore a dog collar all through High School: to annoy my parents, to get attention without actually DOING anything. My rebellion was pretty wimpy. I also own and have actually read The Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, relics of my Ph.D. studies. Mao

Second, I took — and survived — two semesters of Chinese History at the University of Georgia. The professor, Dr. Thomas Ganschow, was recognised as one of the very best teachers at the University of Georgia. He was also renowned for his marathon exams, the undergraduate equivalent of the Mandarin Eight-Legged Essays, for which the questions were sort of : write down all human knowledge. Be specific and include dates. Tom was the main reason I finally realised resistance was futile: I would be an historian. He also launched me on my lifelong quest to understand how other cultures work. My Dad continued to hold out for accounting in the hope that I might, someday, be gainfully employed.

Tom and his lovely Taiwanese bride, Lisa, became good family friends over the years. Lisa was the manager of the Athens Area Community Food Bank, where my mother volunteered as a board member and Thank You Note writer. Really, everyone who donated food or money to the Food Bank got a handwritten Thank You from my Mum. The Thank You Note is a lost art, leaving the world a less gracious place. Lisa is also a fabulous cook. Before my first wedding, some of Mum’s friends threw me a Recipe Shower. Lisa gave me her recipe for Chinese Egg Rolls. I cherished it. I still have it. In fact, I think I will dig it out and work on a vegetarian version. Watch this space!

I have been to China twice, both times for work. Because I was not allowed to take any technology — no smart phone, no laptop — into China, I actually got out and did things instead of staying in my hotel catching up on work, which was too often what I ended up doing on work trips. On my first trip I visited the Great Wall and the Forbidden City and met Helmut Kohl, despite my falling victim to fairly paralysing food poisoning. I was at the Great Wall on the hottest day in human history. It was 114F/45C. Honestly! I was the only person insane enough to be up there in such weather. It was so hot my hair turned bright orange! Between sweat and food poisoning, I lost about 5 kilos on that trip!

On my second trip, I had the unique “pleasure” of being stuck in a parked aircraft on the ground while Beijing had a rare, early November blizzard. The snow plows were still in dry dock. But the snow did, temporarily, sweep away Beijing’s legendary air pollution, so I woke up the next morning to the truly once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of Beijing under clear, sparkling blue skies!

My adopted Elder Sister, Kongdan Oh Hassig, a Korean China expert and linguistic whiz kid, gave me a Chinese name for my 50th birthday. Zhen Kailian means “triumph” and “lotus flower.” CCI22032016 I love that. Triumph means so much to me, given my lifelong war of attrition with depression and anxiety. And the lotus flower symbolises, according to buddhist.org, “rising and blooming above the murk to achieve enlightenment.” My next tattoo will be a lotus flower.

Note to Katy: my reputation is in your hands. If Zhen Kailian actually means “Old Lady with Baggy Knickers,” it’s on you!

Katy and I traveled together a lot. She is fearless and up for just about anything. Sadly, we have never been to China together, although we did drink civet poop coffee in Bali. 299900_10150433922303410_1665493123_n

Finally, some of the most interesting foods I find at the Riverbank Farmers’ Market are Asian: the beautiful Asian greens, giant daikons, strange and wonderful bitter melons, snake beans, and snow peas. Then there is the Thai herb lady who sells all kinds of Asian flavour makers: Thai basil, lemongrass, galangal, and turmeric root. And the Chinese gentleman with his handmade tofu and fresh Chinese noodles.

And last but not least, the “I Love Dumplings” ladies serve up the most delicious vegan potstickers ever. My last stop every Saturday morning is at their stall, where I buy a dozen dumplings for $5. Sometimes they are so busy, I have to wait. And I do. Because the dumplings are just that good. Simon and I arm-wrestle for them for the rest of the day. I could get 25 dumplings for $10. Every week I consider this option, only to conclude that there can be too much of a good thing. But I don’t believe that. Some Saturday in the future, I’ll probably give in to temptation. But not this week. Their dumplings provided the inspiration for my won tons.

So, armed with these questionable qualifications, I set out to invent a delicious and healing won ton soup that would be 1) edible, 2) not insulting to Chinese cuisine, and 3) worthy of the name Zhen Kailian. What I came up with was pretty darned tasty, if I may say so myself.

Zhen Kailian Won Ton Soup

Ingredients: For the Won Tons

200g / 7 oz extra firm tofu

1/2 small napa cabbage, finely chopped, (about 1 lb / 450g)

1 TBSP grated fresh ginger

3 shallots, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced or put through a press

1/2 0z / 15 g dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in 1 cup / 700 ml) boiling water

2 TBSP / 3 ml white sesame seeds

2 TBSP / 3ml soy sauce

24 fresh wonton or gyoza wrappers

1 egg white, beaten to soft peak stage (optional)

For the Broth:

6 cups / 1 1/2 liters vegetable broth, preferably homemade, definitely low-salt

2 pieces dried kombu (optional, but nice)

a thumb-sized bulb of fresh ginger

2 cloves garlic, peeled and cut in half

leftover mushroom soaking water

2 glugs (about 1/4c / 60ml) low-sodium soy sauce

1 glug (about a TBSP) toasted sesame oil

For the Soup:

Broth

1 large carrot, thinly sliced on the diagonal

1 stalk celery, also thinly sliced on the diagonal

a handful of greens, I used thin ribbons of kale, but baby bok choy would be nice, too

Steamed Jasmine Rice, optional

thinly sliced scallions for garnish

Let’s Make Soup:

Set the broth on to simmer at very low heat with the kombu, ginger, garlic and mushroom water. Give it at least 30 mins, but an hour plus would be OK, too.

To make the wonton filling:

Toss the finely grated cabbage with some salt (a big pinch) in a colander and let sit for an hour or so to drain. If you are careful with the salt, you shouldn’t need to rinse the cabbage, but taste it just in case, to ensure that it isn’t too salty.
Squeeze out as much liquid from the cabbage as you can, then roll it up in a tea towel and squeeze out even more. The cabbage should be really dry.
Drain and finely chop the mushrooms.
Chop the scallions and garlic and grate the ginger.
Either dice the tofu (I used sesame marinated tofu) or chop it in a food processor.
Heat about a tablespoon of neutral oil, preferably peanut oil, in a medium skillet and sauté the shallots until they are getting brown and crispy.
Add the garlic, ginger, and chopped mushrooms and sauté for a couple of minutes.
Then, add the diced/chopped tofu and sauté until it starts to get brown and crispy.
Add the cabbage and sauté until it is wilted and dry.
Take the filling off the heat and add the soy sauce and sesame seeds.
When the filling is cool, fold in the beaten egg white. If you want your won tons to be vegan, you can leave this out. The egg white sort of puffs up when the won tons cook, so they are fluffy, but this is a purely aesthetic thing. If you don’t mind dumpy dumplings, leave out the eggs!
Lay out your dumpling wrappers. Put a generous tablespoon of filling on each one, then brush the edges with water to seal them.
You have a choice of dumpling shapes: if you have square wrappers, you can make flat triangles (just fold them over once and seal), “nurses caps” (pull the two tips of the triangle on the folded edge together and seal, or “purses” (dampen all four sides, bring them together and twist to seal). If you have round wrappers and you are a showoff, you can make pleated dumplings. I didn’t have round wrappers, so I couldn’t make those. Which shape you chose is just a matter of personal preference. Simon and I were divided. He preferred the purses. I thought the bunchy part was a bit too stodgy. I preferred the nurses caps. The flat triangles turned out to be a bit tricky to eat.

Now, put it all together!

Bring your yummy broth to a simmer and add the sliced carrots, celery, greens. Let them simmer for a couple of minutes, add the soy sauce and sesame oil, then
Add your won tons — yes, you are going to cook them right in the broth. Let them simmer for 2-3 minutes.
If this is dinner, you can bulk things up a bit by putting a scoop of jasmine rice in the bowl. This also adds a little textural interest.
Lay the cooked wontons on the rice, then ladle over the broth and vegetables.
You can garnish the whole thing with some thinly-sliced scallions and/or bean sprouts.

Carries’ French Apple Pie: A Forty Day Invention Test, Episode Five

March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 / cziemke / 1 Comment

More years ago than I care to mention, I was named for my two grandmothers: Frieda Matthaie Ziemke and Caroline Ketz Saltenberger. Frieda died too young and many many years before I was born. I never knew her. I have a few photos of her. She was very beautiful, and very young. Sadly, I will never be able to share any of her recipes. We have none. No written memories of her at all. At least none that I have seen. All I have of her are a few photos and her name, which I cherish. She always looks a little sad.

Frieda with Dad as a baby, 1923

Frieda and Otto Ziemke, newlyweds, 1920

Frieda Matthaie, 1920

Caroline lived into her 80s, but she was damaged by a series of strokes, also too young, a few years before I was born. I knew her, but the Carrie Saltenberger I knew was frail, largely confined to her armchair (and later a wheelchair). She was felled by the hypertension that runs in my family and that was, sadly, untreated in her case. She was feisty, though, and had a wicked sense of humour. Woe be on any little kid that thought they could pull something over on Grandma because she couldn’t move very fast. She was a demon with her fly swatter.

For the first fifty years of her life, Grandma Saltenberger was a hard working farm girl.

Carrie Saltenberger with her three eldest children, Idamae, Billy, and baby Anita, c. 1936

Along with my Grandfather and his maiden sister, Ida — known to us as Tanta — Grandma worked their little farm in far Northern Wisconsin, raising dairy cows, chickens, occasional turkeys (which she hated), growing vegetables, and sustaining the family through the Depression and the War years on very little in the way of cash.

As the years went by, Grandma became less and less rooted in the present, but her command of the past was astonishing. I remember her teaching me to make biscuits by reciting the recipe, step by step, as I measured, sifted, blended, cut and baked. Much of what I know about the Saltenberger family’s (occasionally colourful) history came from Grandma. Usually on the sly, while my Grandpa was napping. Like many other families, the Saltenbergers have two histories, the official one and the “interesting” one. Grandpa was the keeper of the official history. You went to Grandma for the interesting bits.

Portrait of Carrie Saltenberger in 1975

She was always called Carrie. In our family, I have always been called Carrie. In my mind, I have always been Carrie. I am proud to be Carrie, because I am proud of my Grandma and what she achieved and endured. So, no, “Carries’ French Apple Pie” is not a typo. Instead, it is my take on her long cherished recipe. Two Carries. One pie.

Strictly speaking, this is not a pie at all, but a cobbler or, perhaps, a crumble. I found the recipe tucked among the correspondence between my Mum and her aunt, our Tanta. Tanta would have written the recipe after Grandma’s illness made it difficult for her to write. But Tanta made the provenance of the recipe clear, this was Carrie Saltenberger’s recipe, her favourite recipe. “Many years old.” Part of my family’s past. CCI21032016

As is often the case with Tanta’s recipes, the directions are a bit notional. I’m not sure what makes it French. Perhaps they called it “French” to distinguish it from Dutch Apple Pie, with custard, and German Apfel torte. “Put in a baking pan.” What kind? Glass? Metal? What size? Does the baking pan go in the oven while I’m making the crust? How long? These were all questions I set about to answer, through trial and error.

I did make a few changes to “modernise” the recipe a little, but nothing that changed the fundamental simplicity and homeyness of Carrie’s original. I’m not a huge fan of nutmeg, at least not in large quantities. So, I stepped up the cinnamon, cut the nutmeg, and added another dimension with allspice and black pepper. I love black pepper with fruit. It makes it taste fruitier, somehow. It is a must on flabby tasting supermarket strawberries. The Italians use black pepper on fruit a lot, so perhaps I transformed Grandma’s French Pie to an Italian one.

Grandma would have used apples from their apple tree (which was still going when I visited as a child). The apples would have been harder and more tart and probably would not have produced as much liquid as my New Zealand-grown Farmers’ Market apples would. So, I also added cornflour to the fruit as a thickener (which is entirely optional), and dotted the fruit with 2 TBS / 1 oz / 25g of well chilled unsalted butter, cut in smallish chunks, also to thicken it a bit. I also cut back on the sugar and added a bit of salt to the crust.

As it turns out, the experiment was a thundering success. The result was everything I’d hoped: homey, delicious, and as Tanta wrote, “very good easy to make, too.” Not too sweet, either. The crust tastes pleasantly eggy, something between a cake and a meringue. When warm, the spicy apples cry out for a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but all I had was cream, which was also pretty darn yum. No wonder Tanta encouraged Mum to try it, adding it was “my favourite recipe and also your Ma’s.” Ladies, you had good taste!

Carries’ French Apple Pie

Ingredients:

For the Fruit:

2 1/2 lbs / 1 kilo mixed apples (I used Braeburn and Galas),

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper

1/2 cup / 100g sugar (I think raw sugar would be nice here, but I used granulated)

1 TBSP cornflour (cornstarch)

1/2 cup water (120ml)

Juice of 1 lemon

For the Crust:

3/4 cup / 105 g all-purpose flour

1/2 cup / 100g sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375F / 190C

Butter a glass 9×12 or similar sized baking pan. I used an oblong gratin dish.

Peel, core, and slice the apples.

Stir together the sugar, cinnamon, allspice, black pepper, and cornstarch in a small bowl, then combine it with the sliced apples.

Arrange the apple slices in the baking dish, sprinkle the water and lemon juice over them, and put them in the preheated oven for 20 minutes.

See, Auntie J: I tried to arrange the slices in sort of rows! But my soul resists order.

While the apples are baking, sift together the flour, sugar, baking power, and salt. Lightly beat the egg in a separate bowl.

Combine the beaten eggs with the dry ingredients and crumble together like pie crust, just like Tanta says. It will feel softer and crumblier than a short crust dough, but not as dry as a crumble topping.

Take the apples out of the oven, dot with the butter, and spread the dough over the apples.

Return to apples to the oven and bake for another 45 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.

Serve warm or room temperature with cream, custard, ice cream — whatever you fancy!

Northeast Georgia Barbecue, Sort of: A Forty Day Invention Test, Episode Four

March 8, 2016March 8, 2016 / cziemke / 1 Comment

We are having our first rainy day in. . . oh. . . ever so long, so it is a good time to catch up on my adventure in improvisational cooking.

Of the foods I miss most since adopting the vegetarian lifestyle — bacon, sausage, and really juicy, rare burger — pulled pork barbecue is right at the top of the heap. Actually, I started missing proper pulled pork pretty much as soon as I left North Georgia. True, pulled pork has become a foodie “thing” in recent years, but, to my mind, nothing matches the pulled pork I grew up on in Northeast Georgia. I learned to tolerate other regional versions, but none of them lived up to my tangy, vinegary memories.

Pulled pork reaches its Platonic Ideal at Zeb Dean Barbecue in Danielsville, Georgia. Before I was a vegetarian — and, OK, once or twice since, mea culpa — whenever I went home for a visit, a pilgrimage to Zeb’s was a must. I’ve written before about Zeb’s, in the context of Sweet Tea. In the context of pulled pork, Zeb’s is nirvana. The. Best. Pulled Pork. In. The. Universe.

The key to Zeb’s deliciousness is the sauce. As you can see in the photo above, Zeb’s sauce is fairly thin, with lots of vinegar, pepper, and paprika and little or no tomato. Now, for Southerners, barbecue is a very personal thing. If you travel around the Southern United States eating barbecue, you’ll realise that the preferred meat (pork, goat, beef, or chicken) and the sauce ingredients vary widely from one county to the next. In low country North Carolina, they like mustard-based sauce. In Kansas City, Missouri, where they also pride themselves on barbecue, the sauce is sweet-and-sour, brown sugar and tomato-based. I hear they make barbecue in Texas. Out of cow. I’d say I’m skeptical, but then, I am about to tell you how to make barbecue out of tofu. Glass houses, and all that.

At Red, Hot, and Blue — which was co-founded by Bush 41 hit man, Lee Atwater — the original Memphis sauce was heavy on Worcester Sauce and ketchup. Red Hot Blue Now they are a national franchise and they have wandered from their Memphis roots. RH&B now offers five different sauces, <gasp> Barbecue Brisket, and <double gasp> pulled chicken. The original, homey, hole-in-the-wall location in Arlington has, sadly, closed.

Fairlington United Methodist Church, in Arlington, Virginia, had a chicken barbecue every spring and served absolutely melt-in-your mouth half chickens, cooked over hardwood and mopped with a tangy, sweet-and-sour barbecue sauce. My mouth waters just thinking about it. I haven’t been for years. I hope they still do it.

The Annual Chicken Barbecue and Fun Fair at Fairlington United Methodist Church

The sauce I grew up with was a little bit greasy, a little bit hot, very vinery, and very black peppery (which is different from hot). My original exposure to this North Georgia sauce was at PTA fund-raising barbecue dinners that my elementary school had at the beginning of each school year. You’d get one of those plastic, divided plastic school lunch plates with pulled pork, stew (scraps and burnt end of pulled pork that were chopped and stewed with sweet corn, onion and other stuff), coleslaw, and a slice or two of squishy white bread. The sauce looked like a vinaigrette with lots of pepper and paprika.

Charlie Williams’ Pinecrest Lodge was most famous for its all-you-can-eat catfish fry — complete with deep fried dill pickle chips and fried okra — but their barbecue was great, too. Vinegary. Peppery. Smoky. Yumminess. Tragically, Charlie William’s is now gone, too. Sometimes progress sucks.

Charlie William’s Pinecrest Lodge on Whitehall Road

Pulled pork, barbecued chicken, and catfish fries are all in my past now. But was it possible that I could develop a formula for a barbecue sauce that might at least pay homage to those childhood memories? I’ve tried various versions over the years. But my Forty-Day Invention Test provided the motivation, finally, to knock the barbecue sauce challenge on the head.

There are some obvious challenges to creating a vegetarian version of something as decidedly carnivorous as pulled pork. If it strikes you as odd that a vegetarian food blogger spends so much time reminiscing about meat, just remember, I’m not doing this because I hate meat. I’m doing it because I love my husband, animals, and the planet, pretty much in that order.

For a sauce that will go on vegetables and/or tofu, the flavour needs to be a little subtler and a good bit more complex. There is also the problem of smoke. I smoked my tofu (I’ve been making smoked tofu “bacon” for several years), but because tofu is essentially fat-free, the smoke taste can be a bit harsh. You have to take care not to overdo it. Smoking the tofu also cooks it, which comes at some price concerning texture. I want to get my hands on a cold smoker, which would eliminate that problem and could enable me to smoke things like cheese. In the meantime, getting some smoke in the sauce gives you options. I added a bit of smokey flavour to the sauce by using smoked paprika instead of the regular paprika that you would typically find in a North Georgia sauce. Smoked paprika is sort of wood-neutral, that is, it isn’t obviously hickory, apple, or mesquite smoked. You could also use Liquid Smoke, which comes in hickory flavour. The only smoke essence I can get here is manuka smoke-flavored, which is lovely, but isn’t North Georgia. I wouldn’t use mesquite smoke, either, but you can do what you want. I’ll never know!

Mouth feel, at least in the tofu version, was a bigger challenge than flavour. Let’s be honest. The thing that makes pulled pork barbecue taste awesome is the fat. Perfectly slow-cooked pork is oleaginous, almost creamy, with crunchy bits of skin and burnt bits of meat. So, all the sauce needs to do is complement the flavour of the meat and balance out the fat. That’s what the vinegar does — it emulsifies with the fat to transform grease into deliciousness.

There is no grease in tofu, so my sauce was going to need more added fat than I might want to put in a sauce for meat. I used butter, but margarine would work just as well, here. Maybe even better.

In general, I disapprove of ketchup in barbecue sauce. In this case, though, it was necessary in order to hold the sauce together and make it, well, saucy. It gave the sauce the substance it needed to coat the tofu bits.

Another challenge for vegetarian barbecue is Worcester Sauce. The best-ever-and-really-only-acceptable Worcester Sauce, Lea and Perrins, contains anchovy and is not, hence, vegetarian. Some of us choose to look the other way, or pretend we didn’t read the ingredients. My ultra-principled partner will have none of that. Here, however, New Zealand came to the rescue with HP (Brown) Sauce, which is a bit like A1 Sauce, but, again, without the anchovy. It also adds a bit of saucy texture. If you can’t find HP Sauce, Pick-a-Peppa (my go-to vegetarian Worcester replacement) would work just as well, but I haven’t found Pick-a-Peppa here in New Zealand. I’ve tried a couple of vegetarian Worcester sauces, but they lack a certain zing.

Kechup is much sweeter here in New Zealand than I’m used to, so I didn’t add any sugar. You can add some, to taste, depending on the sweetness of your ketchup. You know what you like.

I’m pretty sure Zeb’s doesn’t put lemon juice in their sauce, but I like it here.

I’m happy with what I’ve come up with, even though Zeb wouldn’t recognise it. I hope you are, too!

Northeast Georgia Barbecue Sauce, Sort Of

1 cup (250ml) ketchup

1/2 cup (60ml) cider vinegar

1/2 cup water (60ml)

1/4 HP Sauce (60ml)

2 ounces (50g / 4TBS) unsalted butter or margarine

1 TBS smoked paprika

1 tsp garlic powder

Lots of finely ground black pepper (something between 1 tsp and 1 TBSP)

1 tsp Sriracha Sauce (or 1/4-1/2 tsp Tabasco)

1 bay leaf

juice of 1 lemon

Combine all the ingredients in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.

The sauce is best if you let it rest for a day or two so the flavours can marry-up.

Pulled Tofu

There is a Chinese gentleman at the Riverbank Market who sells lovely, very compressed tofu. It is the consistency of cheddar cheese and doesn’t need draining. If you use the extra-firm, water-packed tofu commonly available in supermarkets, you’ll want to drain it very well.

1 lb (450g) extra firm tofu

kosher salt

1/2 recipe of Northeast Georgia Barbecue Sauce, Sort of — more to taste

Optional: your favourite spice rub.

Drain the tofu by putting on a plate and weighing it down with a couple of heavy cans or a bag of flour.

Next, you need to “cure” the tofu. Rub it well with kosher or sea salt, a 50/50 mix of salt and finely ground black pepper, or salt and your favourite spice rub. Penzy's Ozark I used Penzy’s Ozark Blend, which is very black peppery. Think Col. Sanders secret herbs and spices. If you don’t live in the United States and can’t get Penzy’s excellent spice blends, use whatever spices you like. And next time you are in the US, find a Penzy’s store and stock up! You can mail order, too.

Wrap the tofu with its salt and spice coat in cling film and put it in the fridge overnight.

Next, you have two options.

Option 1: take the tofu out of the fridge wipe off the excess salt, and grate it on the coarse side of a box grater. This gives it that “pulled” look. Sauté it briefly in a neutral oil, like peanut or canola, then add the sauce and let it simmer for a few minutes so the sauce can soak into the tofu.

Option 2: smoke and chop the tofu: I smoked my tofu over hickory wood for about 20 minutes in my handy-dandy Cameron’s stove top smoker. My extra-firm tofu developed a bit of a crust in the smoker, so instead of grating it, I chopped it very fine. The smoker added a nice, smokey verisimilitude, but aesthetically, I would have liked to have had some grated tofu, too. Next time, I think I will go half and half.

Serve the pulled tofu on a toasted bun topped with cole slaw. I used my favourite North Carolina Pickle Slaw, recipe below.

North Carolina Pickle Slaw

I don’t know what makes this North Carolina, except I based it on a recipe from Nava Atlas’ American Harvest: Regional Recipes for the Vegetarian Kitchen (Ballentine, 1987) that she called North Carolina Slaw. Sadly, American Harvest is out of print. I think of this as my one-third slaw, since all the dressing ingredients are 1/3 cup. I guess the metric version would be 75ml Slaw.

I don’t think the celery seed is authentic. But I like celery seed in my slaw. Potato salad, too.

For the Dressing:

1/3 cup (75ml) mayonnaise

1/3 cup (75ml) American-style yellow mustard (don’t use your fancy Dijon for this)

1/3 cup (75ml) vinegar, I used malt, but cider would be more authentic

1/3 cup (66g) sugar

1 tsp celery seed

Whisk all this stuff together to form a smooth dressing

For the Slaw:

1/2 small green cabbage (about 1 lb / 450g), shredded

1/2 small red cabbage, shredded

3 or 4 scallions, chopped fine

1/4 c / 60ml chopped pickles or cornichon

1 large or 2 smallish carrots, grated

a handful of parsley, finely chopped

First, sprinkle the shredded cabbage with a bit of salt and let it drain in a colander for about an hour. Unless you’ve gone overboard with the salt, no need to rinse it. (That’s why I don’t add salt to the dressing)

Second, run the cabbage through a salad spinner to drain out as much water as possible. If you don’t have a salad spinner, wrap the cabbage in a kitchen towel as squeeze it as dry as you can. (These steps ensure that your cabbage will not weep and make the dressing all watery. Don’t worry, the cabbage will stay nice and crisp.)

Third, combine the dressing and the slaw ingredients in a big bowl and mix it well. Let it stand for at least an hour before eating.

Your delicious pulled tofu sandwiches will look something like this. Although, with luck, you won’t burn your sandwich buns!

Not-Quite-Tanta’s Peach Kuchen: A Forty Day Invention Test, Episode Two

February 26, 2016February 26, 2016 / cziemke / 2 Comments

“A Georgia peach, a real Georgia peach, a backyard great-grandmother’s orchard peach, is as thickly furred as a sweater, and so fluent and sweet that once you bite through the flannel, it brings tears to your eyes.”

Melissa Fay Greene, ‘Praying for Sheetrock’

I grew up in the Peach State. I’ve lived many places, but in my heart, I will always be a “funny talkin’ honky-tonkin’ Georgia Peach.” Georgia is no longer the United States’ top peach producer, but it still has the best peaches. My High School sweetheart was somehow related to the owners of the local orchard, Thomas’ in the thriving metropolis of Bishop, Georgia. He could get us in early, before they opened to the general public and — more importantly in Georgia in July — before the temperature and humidity rose into the mid-80s. Still, peach picking was hot, humid work. After an hour or two Thomas’, I’d be sweaty, thirsty, sticky and covered with peach fuzz and the occasional bee sting. But nothing can match the joy of standing on a step ladder in the middle of a peach orchard and biting into a warm, perfectly tree-ripened peach.

Peaches are my absolute, all-time favourite fruit. I came by my love of peaches early. Long before we moved to Georgia. You see, my Great Aunt, Tanta Ida, made the absolutely most delicious peach coffee cake ever.

Tanta Ida (2nd from the left) with Dad, Mum, Grandma, Janice, Grandpa, and the budgie (circa 1955)

My Aunties tell me she would make huge pans of küchen for all the various boyfriends who visited the foxy Saltenberger girls over the years. She made some for my Dad when we visited Eagle River every summer, and I happily embraced the peachy deliciousness windfall. [The family lore says Dad hated Eagle River — he didn’t — because he was bored without any libraries to hand. I think it was more a matter of vanity: people were constantly feeding him and, as you can see in this vintage photo, he got a bit chubby. And then there were Grandpa’s Scotch and Root Beers.]

All my life, I’ve tried to find that special peach deliciousness. A few weeks ago, while I was going through some of Mum’s old recipes, I found a very old, stained recipe for Tanta’s Peach Küchen. Joy! My next invention test was born.

New Zealand produces peaches. They are tasty, but they are delicate wee things. In the effort to minimise the fuzz, the varieties of peaches they grow here have very thin skins. It’s almost impossible to get them home from the market unscathed. Fortunately, the nectarines are fairly robust. Peaches have fuzz to protect the fruit from water and keep it from rotting. It’s like a little peach raincoat. Nectarines are just peaches without their raincoats. As far as this recipe is concerned, they are interchangeable.

I was, however, determined to work with the real thing. Tanta didn’t use nectarines, so I wouldn’t either. As it turns out, getting the peaches home safely was only the first of my challenges. When I started this Lenten journey of recipe invention, I said I would share the successes as well as the less-then-successes. In this case, there were a couple of false starts before I finally settled on formula that works.

The challenge, in this case, was translating a shorthand recipe from another era on another continent into something that I could recreate in my kitchen in New Zealand. The directions were fairly general, but, obviously, 3 cakes of yeast and 7 1/2 cups (1,065g) of flour was going to make one honking big cake. But how big? “Spread in pan (greased well)” wasn’t much help. And what is the modern, dry yeast equivalent of 3 cakes of yeast?

For some help, I turned to my trusty copy of The Food Substitutions Bible (see “The Third Cookbook of Christmas”). It suggested that one cake of fresh yeast is equivalent to one package, or 2 1/4 tsp (8g) of active dry yeast. Great. That means I would need over 2 Tablespoons (24g) of yeast for 7 1/2 cups of flour! Argh! An oven explosion was sure to ensue.

I decided I would cut the recipe by a third(ish), since there was only me and Simon to eat it, so I trusted my baking experience and estimated how much yeast I would need. So, for 4 cups (568g) of flour, I would use the equivalent of one package of dry yeast, 2 1/4 tsp (8g). And 3 tsp of salt seemed like an awful lot, so I cut that back to 1 tsp.

The next hurdle was the liquid. Tanta, at least before my Grandfather burned the farm down (long story for another post), would have used whole, raw milk and eggs straight from the chicken. My concern was that our supermarket milk, even whole milk, might lack the right balance of fat and natural sugar. We don’t buy whole milk, but I keep a bag of New Zealand’s #1 export commodity, whole milk powder, on hand for baking. That’s what I ended up using.

I reckon the butter we get here in New Zealand is probably closer to what Tanta would have had than the processed butter we used to get in the States. The fresh (unsalted) butter here is incredibly dense, with very little added water. So no worries there.

Her farm eggs were probably as unpredictable as our farm eggs, so I held back one of the yolks, just in case everything ended up too gooey. It didn’t and I ended up using the whole egg.

The biggest question mark turned out to be the fruit-to-cake ratio. The recipe just says “arrange the peach slices on the dough.” How many peach slices? How many peaches?

In the end, I decided, the first time around, to base the number of peaches on the size of the cake. I guessed that Tanta would have made her küchen in a lasagne-sized pan (9×13 inches). I had inherited a marvellous lasagne-sized pan from the farm that Mum told me was Grandma’s coffee cake pan. Coffee Cake? Küchen? Same pan? I decided to use my 8×8 inch glass cake pan. Based on the reduced amount of dough I had, it seemed a reasonable assumption.

Tanta’s recipe called for 3 cups of sugar and 4 1/2 tsp of cinnamon for the topping. Yikes! Another hint that she was making big, sheet cakes. I cut that back to 1/2 cup (100g) sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon — you can always add more if you like your streusel really cinnamony.

So, my first effort was OK, but not right. Why? It came down to two miscalculations: too much yeast, not enough pan. So my first küchen rose too much and threw most of the fruit and topping out of the pan and on to the pizza stone that lives at the bottom of my oven. Smelly burning sugar mess.

The good news is that two weeks later I tried again, adjusting the yeast, using a larger pan, and, just to put my own spin on things, adding oatmeal and brown sugar to Tanta’s sugar-butter-flour-cinnamon topping. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the final result.

Not-Quite-Tanta’s Peach Küchen

This is not an extravagantly sweet coffee cake. It is an old-fashioned, gather around the kitchen table for elevenses coffee cake. You can eat this for breakfast and not feel guilty. After all, it’s basically peaches and oatmeal. Right? My theory is that my Tanta and Grandmother developed their recipes during the Great Depression, when money was scarce, especially on farms, and the sweetness in food came, as much as possible, from the natural sugars in the milk and fruit.

Ingredients:

1 cup (250ml) whole milk (reconstituted dry works well)

1/3 cup (65g) granulated sugar

6 TBSP (85g) unsalted butter

1 1/2 tsp (7ml) active dry yeast (NOT quick rise or bread machine yeast)

2 large eggs

4 cups (568g) all-purpose / standard grade flour

1 tsp (5ml) kosher or sea salt

Topping:

7 peaches (or more, if you like)

Juice of 1 lemon

3 TBSP brown sugar

1/2 cup (100g)2 granulated sugar

1/3 cup (70g) standard grade flour

1/3 cup rolled oats

2 TBSP butter, melted

1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375F/190C. Butter a 9 x 13 pan. To make removing the cake from the pan easier, you can line the bottom and two sides with parchment to form a sort of sling. Don’t forget to butter the parchment.

Scald the milk. This makes the milk taste sweeter and, well, milkier. You can do this on the stove by putting the milk in a small saucepan and heating it until it has a skin on top, but short of a simmer. It will just be beginning to form tiny bubbles around the edges. The easier way is to put the milk, butter, and sugar in a glass container and microwave the whole works for about 3-4 minutes at high. Just to be on the safe side, I zap it for two minutes, check the temperature, and zap it for another minute or two.
Let the milk/butter/sugar cool to lukewarm (skin temperature), then add the yeast and let it proof for five minutes or so. If your liquid is too hot, you’ll kill the yeast. If your yeast is good, it will go to town and end up looking like this
Gently beat the eggs and add them to the wet ingredients.
Sift the flour and salt together in your mixing bowl. If you are using a standing mixer, using the flat paddle, add the wet ingredients to the flour. If you are mixing by hand, make a well in the flour and add the wet ingredients.
Mix everything just until it comes together into a ball. This doesn’t want a lot of kneading.
Cover the dough and let it rise for at least an hour.
While the dough is rising, peel, pit, and slice your peaches. To peel the peaches, drop them, one or two at a time, into a pot of boiling water for 20-30 seconds then into a bowl of ice water to stop them cooking. Then you can just rub the peel off with a paper towel. Be careful. They are very slippery.
Toss the peaches with the juice of 1 lemon (to stop them turning brown). You can add a little sugar here, but I don’t
Roll out the risen dough into a rough rectangle slightly bigger than your pan, then press the dough into the pan with the dough going up the sides. Like this:
Arrange the peach slices over the dough in one or two layers. I thought seven peaches were enough, but Simon wanted more. Use your judgement here. Or, you can throw in a handful of blueberries. The photo on the right is my first attempt — the one that exploded all over the oven — you can sort of see the signs already. But the combination of yellow and white peaches and blueberries was pretty, and tasty.
To make the topping, sift together the dry ingredients, then stir in the melted butter with a fork. Mix it all up until the butter is well distributed.
Spread the topping evenly over the peaches, then cover with a towel and let rise for another 30 minutes. This is a good time to preheat the oven, if you haven’t already.
Bake the küchen in the 375/190 oven for about 40 minutes. The toothpick test is tricky, with all the gooey fruit. It should be done when the crust around the edges is nice and golden brown. If you did the sling thing, you can try pulling it up. If the whole thing sort of slumps in the middle, you might need a little more baking time.
This is delicious hot, so you only need to cool it on a wire rack for a few minutes before you grab your fork, brew and cuppa, and eat Not-Quite-Tanta’s Peach Küchen.

Smoked Tomato Bisque with Roasted Corn and Zucchini: A Forty Day Invention Test, Episode One

February 16, 2016February 16, 2016 / cziemke / Leave a comment

I love smoke. I’m not advocating smoking. Don’t do it.Cigarette smoke is nasty. But, I have to confess an appreciation for the fragrance of good pipe tobacco or a fine cigar. My Uncle Chuck, though, smoked tobacco that smelled wonderful. A whiff of lovely pipe tobacco still makes my heart squeeze and I think of him. And miss him. The smell of a wood fire always smells like winter, and home. Here in New Zealand, lots of households still supplement their heating systems and hot water with wood-burning fireplaces. At the first cold snap, the air smells like hardwood smoke.

A mini Kale Whisperer with Uncle Chuck and his sweet-smelling pipe, circa 1958

I had a wood-burning fireplace in the basement of my house on Mt. Airey lane, but the chimney was three stories high (it was a row house) and didn’t pull very well. Every time I lit a fire, the house filled up with smoke, setting off all the smoke alarms, even the one the top floor — turns out the interior of the house pulled better than the chimney! I also discovered that wood smoke in large amounts gives me migraines. So the WBFP was replaced with a less evocative, but healthier gas fireplace.

Not only do I love the smell of smoke, I love the flavour of smoke. Smoked salmon, smoked cheese . . . smoked anything, really. Smoke is a boon to vegetarians. It is one of the ways to impart a rich, umami flavour to vegetables. I use smoke often in my cooking. I have a Camerons stovetop smoker that my Auntie Janice gave me for Christmas years ago. If you don’t have an outdoor smoker or a stovetop smoker, though, there are lots of videos on You Tube that show you how to improvise one.

Whichever method you use, it is well worth adding smoking to your vegetarian cooking repertoire. In my first invention test, smoke lifted tomato soup to a new level.

Smoked Tomato Bisque with Roasted Corn and Zucchini

I started out with a kilo or so of tomatoes, half Roma sauce tomatoes (which they call “low acid” tomatoes here in New Zealand) and half regular old slicing tomatoes. The first step was to smoke the Romas. I smoke the Romas because they are meatier and seem to soak up the smoke better. I just sliced them in half, lengthwise, put them in the smoker, drizzled them with a little olive oil and tucked five cloves of garlic in amongst the tomatoes. The garlic smokes nicely and comes out sweet, not at all “garlicky”. These smoked over applewood chips for about half and hour and came out looking like this:

In the interest of not overpowering all the other flavours with smoke, I roasted the slicing tomatoes, along with the kernels from two large ears of sweetcorn.

If you don’t have a stovetop smoker and can’t be bothered to improvise one, you can approximate the deliciousness by adding a teaspoon or so of liquid smoke. Then, you will roast all the tomatoes with the garlic.

Cut the raw kernels off the sweet corn. Don’t worry about getting every last little bit, because you are going to make a broth with the corn cobs. Just break the cobs in half and plunk them into a saucepan, add a little salt and sugar (which enhances the corniness of the corn, but is optional if you are really concerned about added sugar), cover with water and boil those puppies for twenty minutes or so. You can give the cooked cobs to your chickens. We have learned the hard way, however, NOT to give them to your dogs, no matter how much they promise not to yack them all up on your carpet!

Line the baking sheet with foil so you can catch all the sweet roasting juices. Drizzle the tomatoes and corn with some olive oil and smoosh everything around to coat the veggies, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, and roast in a 425F (220C) oven for 15 minutes, stir things around a bit and roast for 10-15 minutes more till it looks like this:

The smoked and roasted tomatoes will slip right out of their skin. If you are sensitive to tomato seeds, you can also deglop them. I don’t mind the seeds, but I do like to remove the woody bit of the core that is right next to the stem. It’s not very nice. Put the tomato innards into a medium soup pot in which you have sweated two large chopped shallots or a small chopped onion with a Tablespoon of olive oil, along with the smoked garlic, a few kernels of the roasted corn, and the corn cob broth and simmer over low heat for a while. I like to keep it long and low, say 45 minutes, to really let the flavours combine.

While the tomatoes and broth are simmering, clean a couple of medium zucchini and halve them lengthwise. Remove about 2/3 of the roasted corn from the baking sheet. Smoosh the zucchini halves around in the oil and baking juices, put them cut side down on the sheet along with the rest of the corn kernels. Roast them in the same 425/220 oven for about 10 minutes, flip the zucchini over and roast for another 10-15 minutes, until the zucchini has started to brown. The corn kernels should be brown and crunchy. Cut the zucchini into chunks and set aside with the roasted (but not the crunchy) corn.

Let the tomatoes cool a bit, add a handful of chopped herbs (basil, parsley, tarragon, mint, or dill — whatever you like) then puree everything in a blender, or in the pot with an immersion blender. If you want a creamier soup, you can add 1/4 cup or so of half-and-half or milk. To make a vegan soup, just throw a handful of the roasted corn in when you blend the soup to thicken it a bit.

Now, add the zucchini and the rest of the roasted corn and reheat everything gently (especially if you have added dairy). Stir in a Tablespoon or so of lemon or lime juice or white wine vinegar and garnish each bowl with some of the crispy roasted corn and some more fresh herbs — I used basil.

This is not your mother’s Campbells tomato soup, but it is just as yummy with a grilled cheese sandwich.

Ingredients:

This makes four main course servings, unless you’ve invited Simon over for dinner. Then it makes three. If you want more soup, just start with more tomatoes, zucchini, and corn.

1 1/2 kilos (or a little over 2 pounds) of ripe tomatoes, a mix of Romas and slicing tomatoes is nice

2 large shallots or 1 smallish onion

4 cloves of garlic, peeled but not chopped

2 large ears of sweet corn

2 medium zucchini

2 limes, 1 lemon, or white wine vinegar

Extra virgin olive oil

Fresh herbs of your choice (basil, tarragon, mint, dill, parsley)

kosher or sea salt and black pepper to taste

Liquid Smoke (optional)

Snow Soup for You!

January 27, 2016January 27, 2016 / cziemke / Leave a comment

I hate snow. I hate shovelling snow. I hate it when I have to get up at 0-dark-thirty to shovel out a spot of grass so the dogs can answer the call of nature. I hate scraping ice off my car. And I really hate it when the snow on the roof turns into ice dams and water leaks into the rafters to come out. . . oh, anywhere. 009 When the hundred-year blizzard hit DC in 1996, I was attending a conference at Wilton Park in the UK. I came home to find all my upstairs window wells an inch deep in water. I hated that. I hate that people put salt on the sidewalk that irritates my dogs’ feet so I have to wash their paws whenever we come in from a walk. I hate people who think that just because there is snow on the ground, they don’t have to pick up after their dogs, as though the poop will disappear with the spring thaw. I hate leaky snow boots. Snow ice cream? Yuck. Snowmen? Depressing when they melt. And they always melt. I, ladies and gentlemen, am a snow Scrooge.

So why, whenever there is a big snowstorm on the east coast of the United States like the one this past weekend, do I get homesick? After all, one of the things I like best about living in Wellington, New Zealand, is that it never snows. So why, when CNN started warning, mid-last week, that a huge, hundred-year blizzard was headed toward Washington, DC, did I feel the urge to run to Countdown and stock up on toilet paper, white bread, and milk?

Why do I feel this longing to get my hands on a snow shovel? Why do I keep checking on washingtonpost.com to see if the Federal Government is closed? Why do I want to Scotty to beam me back to DC?

The truth is, while I hate the snow, I love the magic of a snowstorm. It isn’t just the old cliche of waking up to a wonderland dusted with icing sugar. It isn’t just that the sky is never bluer than on the morning after a massive snow dump. 008 I love what a snowstorm brings out in people. Some of my best memories of my old neighbourhood in Annandale, Virginia, involved snowstorms, when everyone came together to dig out the parking lot and make sure our neighbours who were unable to shovel themselves would have clean and safe stoops and sidewalks. We built an iceberg in the cul-de-sac from the snow we cleared from our parking spots. It was a kid magnet. We were all in the same boat, and it was, for the time being, a boat that wasn’t going anywhere. You might just as well sit back and enjoy the ride. So we went to each others’ houses for supper; we shared snow shovels; we traded videos. We were neighbours, at least for a few days.

And the dogs. Every dog I’ve ever lived with got in touch with their inner wolf when it snowed. This wasn’t a surprise in the case of our two Samoyeds — Nikita and Piroshki. They were never far from their inner wolf. But Miss Peanut, Crackerjack, Shakespeare, and Cully all got a far away look in their eyes when it snowed, as if they were ready to hitch up the sled and go mushing.

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Even crabby old Cindy Dog got her inner puppy on when it snowed. Granted, in his last couple of winters, Crackerjack, at 16, had decided that he was over snow. But, for the most part, my canine family always went just the teensiest bit feral when the snow began to fly.

I was born in a mini ice-age, between two historic nor’easters that hit the DC area in February and March 1958. I remember there being one or two big dumps of snow each winter in the 1960s. The biggest was in January 1966. CCI26012016_3 I got a sled for Christmas the year before — a blue plastic toboggan that looked like a space ship. It was one of those Christmases — much like Christmas of 2015 — when the temperature hit 70F on Christmas Day. My ever amazing Dad pulled me around the yard on the toboggan, on the grass. So, when the snow hit, the sled had grass stains. Jeannie et. al.2 Our house was on a steep hill — excellent for sledding and snow fort building. Not so excellent for shovelling out the driveway. And since we lived on a dead end street with only three houses, Dad had to shovel all the way up to Sharon Chapel Road. Dad — a son of Milwaukee and lake effect snow — didn’t love snow.

Perhaps that’s why he decided, a year later, to move us to Georgia, where he could be assured that there would be no blizzards. Now, it’s true there aren’t blizzards in Georgia, but there are ice-storms, which can be much worse, really. All the the cold and wet without the fun and, often, without electricity and cable. Once in a blue moon it would “snow” — which wasn’t really snow but accumulated sleet. And we did have snow days. My freshman year in High School we got an extra week of Christmas vacation because it “snowed.” CCI26012016_2 My friend Andrea broke her leg sledding and spent the next several months in a full-leg cast. Usually, though, snow in Georgia meant some version of ice. Any Yankees who are tempted to make fun of how we Southerners panic at the first sight of snow, I defy you, or anyone, to drive on the sheets of ice that form on untreated roads in a Georgia ice storm. One year, during a particularly bad ice storm, one of the pine trees in our yard came down under the weight and took down our electrical lines. It was so cold in the house that our budgerigar and my Siamese fighting fish died. Dad, not one to take chances, and in revenge for the lost, cut down all the rest of the trees in the yard. Overkill? Maybe.

When the first wave of Snowmageddon hit DC in January 2010, I was in the UK, at a conference at Wilton Park. Sound familiar? Spooky, huh? Anyway, I managed to get on the first flight back from London — when we landed at Dulles, we sat on the plane for about an hour because no one who knew how to drive the gate had managed to get to work. Then we waited for another hour in customs. None of the baggage handlers had made it to work, either. That was nothing compared to Simon’s ordeal. My adorable new husband, bless his cotton socks, made what had to be a harrowing drive to the airport to meet me, and we slipped, spun, and slid home in his trusty RAV4. The experience was so shattering, Simon was never able to drive on the Beltway again.

As a newcomer to DC, Simon wasn’t up on the culture of panic pre-snow shopping, so for the next week or so, while the Federal Government — and hence my place of employment — remained stubbornly closed and our neighbourhood roads remained stubbornly unplowed, I became a pantry cook.

I always keep a sizeable stash of dried beans, flour, and canned things, so there was plenty to work with. I channelled my homesteading ancestors. OK, I didn’t have any homesteading ancestors, but my grandparents lives in Eagle River, Wisconsin during the Great Depression were challenging enough. I baked bread. I made long, slow cooking soups. I baked dog cookies. We shovelled snow. We watched a lot of videos because the snow had blocked the satellite dish — leading Simon to insist we get cable. They were golden days.

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One of my blizzard rituals is to make a big pot of stock. This goes back to my carnivorous past, when chicken stock was a pantry staple. The store bought stuff is never as good as homemade, but making large amounts of stock presents a challenge when it comes time to cool it. It isn’t really safe to leave a pot of meat stock at room temperature for the hours it would take to cool down. But put in in your fridge and you run the risk of warming up the cold food faster than you cool down the hot stock. During a blizzard, you can bury your hot stock in a snow bank. It’s the next best thing to a blast chiller.

I don’t make chicken stock anymore, but snow — even snow ten thousand miles away — still triggers in me the urge to get out the stock pot. Instead of chicken bits, I gather up excess veggie bits — the tops of the enormous leeks, green onions and celery I buy at the market, onions, slightly dry mushrooms, carrots, a couple of waxy potatoes, the odd apple or pear, a parsnip, maybe a bulb or two of fennel, and garlic, always lots and lots of garlic. If I’m feeling industrious, I chop everything. If not, I just leave it in chunks. Add enough water to cover the lot, throw in a couple of bay leaves, a few black peppercorns, a handful of whatever herbs you have around, and some kosher or sea salt and bring it all to a simmer. If you want a dark stock that looks and tastes more like beef stock, you can caramelise some of the vegetables (carrots, onions, celery, potatoes) in a very hot oven until they are good and brown. Don’t let them burn, though. Brown is good, but burnt just tastes like burnt.

Caught in a blizzard without a fridge full of vegetable bits? Peel a couple of heads of garlic (yes, the whole thing), add a bay leaf, a spring of fresh thyme (or a teaspoon or so of dried), some black peppercorns, a bay leaf, a teaspoon of salt, a glug of olive oil, and two quarts of water. Simmer that. It smells heavenly and tastes just like chicken stock. I kid you not.

So, next time it snows, forget the white bread and Doritos. Gather up your veggies, add water, and just let the whole delicious mess simmer, and simmer, and simmer. Long and slow. Go outside and shovel snow. Build a snowman. Make a snow angel. Come inside. There’s soup for you!

The Eleventh Cookbook of Christmas: The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook

December 24, 2015December 24, 2015 / cziemke / Leave a comment

I am a simple soul. I wear jeans and t-shirts. I prefer Chucks to heels. I don’t wear make-up. And my favourite ice cream flavour is vanilla. Less is more. When watching Masterchef, I am frustrated when the judges and contestants yammer on about “technique” and “plating.” And what is the point of foam? My cooking mantra is “Let the food be the food.” My favourite foods are simple: mashed potatoes with butter, salt, and pepper; tomato sandwiches with tarragon mayonnaise; pasta with sautéed vegetables and a little parmesan; pizza margarita with sweet tomatoes, basil from the garden, and milky, fresh mozzarella cheese. I am also a great believer in cooking what’s in season. There is nothing more delicious than a perfectly sun-ripened tomato; and there are few things less appealing than a pale, flavourless winter hot-house tomato — no amount of technique will make it taste good. I defy anyone to come up with anything more exquisite than an ear of sweet corn straight off the stalk with a bit of butter, salt, and pepper.

I prefer food that is only one degree of separation from the soil. I’ve dined at three-Michelin-starred restaurants, but too often the experience left me cold. I appreciate the art and science behind modernist cuisine, but I cannot warm to a dining experience that puts so much technology between me and the food. I’m suspicious of “fusion” cooking that confuses me with too many moving parts. Dining in the dark? Spare me. If a recipe has forty steps, I reckon that is about 35 steps too many. I don’t have a single squeeze bottle in my kitchen, unless you count the ones Simon’s HP Sauce comes in. As my adorable partner put it, I have no time for precious food.

A few years ago, I spent a month in Sancerre, a picture book medieval walled city in the Loire valley. 1929893_15495843409_3121_n I was immersing myself in French at the Coeur de France Ecole des Langues. Every morning, I walked into town and bought my food for the day. A croissant or petit pan au chocolate for petit dejeuner. A baguette at the boulangerie, a handful of haricot verts and champignons at the greengrocer, a wedge of cheese here, a bottle of wine there. We went on a field trip to a chèvre farm where I milked my first goat. Most days, I lunched at the Cafe des artes, where the friendly staff would patiently suffer my feeble French (I’m sure I saw their ears bleed). Once, I had a long and spirited argument with the veg vender from the market about George W. Bush. He loved him. I didn’t. I rarely ate dinner out. My evenings were given over to homework and working on my vocabulary by watching badly dubbed episodes of NCIS and CSI. And I cooked, simply, and with whatever looked good at the market on the day. It was spring, so the market was teeming with some of my favourite things: asparagus, tiny artichokes, and haricot verts.

The Bubbles were pretty nice, too!

My neighbour, Anita, and I spent a long weekend in Paris in 2011. I think she would agree that one of the best meals we had there was a simple omelette, salad, and a glass of house red wine at a corner cafe near our hotel. I had a similarly memorable meal in Giverny, just outside Monet’s house. In Lisbon, sardines grill over open wood fires all over the city, and the aroma is tantalising. My favourite meal in Brussels was pommel frites with mayonnaise.

I visited Venice briefly in 2013, and spent much of my time wandering around side streets and exploring the fruit and vegetable markets. I got lost. I got hungry. I stopped for a plate of linguine con vongole and a glass of Orvieto at a cafe at the edge of the vegetable and seafood market. I walked more. I got lost again. I met a lovely man who made carnival masks. I chatted with another artist selling his watercolours outside one of Venice’s ancient churches. I bought two. I walked more.

Got lost more. Ate lemon gelato. Finally, having managed to find my way back to the train station, hot, footsore, and happy, I drank the best mug of beer I’ve ever had. The most expensive, too, but that didn’t matter. It was a golden day.

The Kale Whisperer’s Eleventh Cookbook of Christmas, Jack Bishop’s The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook, honours the beauty of simple food. This book is full of the kind of simple, fresh food that I love: polenta, pasta, and rice with seasonable vegetables; frittatas, tortas, and pizza; salads and bruschetta. Bishop is an editor at America’s Test Kitchen, and he provides plenty of good, practical advice. His step-by-step instructions mean the recipes here are manageable by even a beginner. I particularly appreciate the serving suggestions that follow each recipe. None of these recipes require any special equipment. Not a foam canister in sight.

I probably cook from The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook more than any other single book on my cookbook shelf. I especially enjoy it in the summertime, when no one wants to eat hot, heavy food. Packing a picnic for an outdoor concert? This is your cookbook. One of my favourite picnics consists of a vegetable frittata (my favourite is the Zucchini Frittata with Parmesan and mint), the Roasted Potato Salad with Herbs and Red Wine Vinegar, and a loaf of crusty country bread. I am a huge fan of pasta e fagioli, and Bishop’s version, with lots of garlic and rosemary, is among my favourites. I also love the Chickpea Soup with Fennel and Orange Zest. I have borrowed that flavour combination — chickpea, fennel, and orange — as a pizza topping, too.

Jack Bishop wrote another excellent cookbook, Pasta e Verdure (Morrow, 1994). Sadly, it is out of print, but there are used copies for sale on Amazon. In it, Bishop presents 250 recipes for simple pasta and vegetables. The books has chapters for 27 different vegetables, so if you come him from the farmers’ market with fresh, spring favas, or all you have for dinner one winter night is some pasta and cauliflower, you can find something delicious to cook. I often use Bishop’s flavour combinations as pizza toppings. If you can put it on pasta, why not pizza? Each chapter opens with advice on how to choose, clean, and store each vegetable. Many of the combinations he presents here have become standards for me: the hot pink sauces (tomato + red pepper flakes + a little cream) is a particular favourite. My mother used to make what we called “crummy spaghetti”, which was simply spaghetti tossed with bread crumbs toasted in a little butter. Bishop has several scrummy variations on that theme: Spaghetti with Wilted Spinach and Breadcrumbs and Linguine with Asparagus, Toasted Breadcrumbs, Lemon, and Garlic. My biggest deliciousness surprise was the Fusilli with Shredded Brussels Sprouts, Orange, and Almonds. Think you hate Brussels’ Sprouts? You won’t if you try this!

Let me finish by mourning another much-loved but tragically out-of-print cookbook: Marlena Spieler’s The Vegetarian Bistro (Chronicle Books, 1997). Spieler does for simple French cooking what Bishop does for Italian Vegetarian cooking. I haven’t even bothered to flag the “to cook” recipes here, because I can literally open the book to any random page and happily cook whatever I find there, knowing it will be delicious. If you can track down a used copy (they are available on Amazon, too), buy it. Then cook the Lentilles “Dom Perignon” (Lentils cooked in Champagne — don’t worry if you don’t have left over bubbles, it works with any dry white wine). Just lentils, shallots, garlic and white wine.

Simply. Delicious. Food.

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The Eighth Cookbook of Christmas: Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant

December 20, 2015December 20, 2015 / cziemke / Leave a comment

Sundays at Moosewood

I first made rumpledethumps for Christmas dinner in 1990. I made rumpledethumps for every subsequent Christmas dinner for at least 16 years at the request of my father. I’ve also made them for the occasional Thanksgiving dinner as well as for countless cold winter nights curled up in my jimjams after particularly stressful days. Before I met the love of my life, Rumpledethumps nursed me through several broken hearts and other singleton tragedies. Rumpledethumps are my chicken soup. Rumpledethumps have the advantage of being both fun to say (really, try to say rumpledethumps without smiling) and delicious to eat. And they combine two of my favourite foods: mashed potatoes and brassicas. My rumpledethumps recipe comes from the Kale Whisperer’s Eighth Cookbook of Christmas, Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, by the Moosewood Collective (Fireside/Simon and Schuster, 1990).

As I sit here on the last Sunday afternoon before Christmas, waiting for Paul and Oliver to come shear the alpacas (our new pre-Christmas tradition), I’m paging through Sundays at Moosewood and being reminded of meals I’ve cooked and countries I’ve visited. This book is a compilation of recipes from the Moosewood Restaurant’s Sunday “ethnic nights.” Sunday is pizza night here, but if it weren’t, I could prepare a meal honouring the alpacas with Chilean Garlic Soup, Torta de Papas, Ensalada Olimipica, and Pan de Navidad. Maybe I’ll do that next year, if the shearing isn’t on a Sunday. Rules are rules. Or perhaps I’d try to recreate the delicious Apfel Kuchen Simon and I ate when we visited the German settlement of Fruitillar during our too-brief visit to Chile in 2012.

When I first bought this book, in 1990, I hadn’t yet discovered the joys of those handy little, bright coloured Post-it flags for tagging recipes to try in a new cookbook.

Sometimes I colour code my flags: say, pink for must try immediately, green for ways to cook things I can never find recipes for. Trouble is, I usually forget the code.

In those days, I folded down the corners. I can hear all you bibliophiles groaning, but folded corners are far from the worst abuses my cookbooks suffer, what with all the drips, splashes, and the occasional dog attack. As I look at my copy of Sundays, it seems like every other page is turned down. I’ve tried many of those recipes. Others, I’ve yet to get around to making. But I don’t remember a clunker from this collection, and that it saying something.

Sundays at Moosewood is organised into 18 regional chapters, that include countries or regions from every continent except Antarctica, plus a few very useful appendices. Now that my consciousness has been raised, I note the absence of a Pacific Islands chapter. But this is likely to reflect the fact that Moosewood never had a Pacifika chef. Chile, China, Finland, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico and France (Provence) all get their own chapters. Africa is divided into sub-Saharan and North African chapters. The British Isles, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia are treated regionally. The Jewish diaspora gets its own chapter, separated again into Ashkenazi and Sephardic recipes. And from the United States, New England and the Southern US are singled out for special attention. I’ve relied heavily on the Southern US chapter over the years.

Cocola salad traditionally involves cherry Jello, canned cherries, crushed pineapple, chopped pecans, and cream cheese. I live in horror of jelled anything, but try it if you feel brave.

It includes a vegetarian version of that beloved (said with a touch of irony) Southern Christmas favourite, Cocola Salad. That’s how Southern it is.

In addition to rumpledethumps, among the pages in my copy that are either curly or to which the book opens on its own are: Yellowman’s Banana Lime Bread, Mu Shu Vegetables with Mandarin Pancakes, Buddha’s Garden (with my favourite vegetarian stir-fry sauce), Hernerakkaa (Finish Yellow Split Pea Soup), Dal and Tomato Kachumber (a sort of Indian salsa), Mother Wolff Soup (a Jewish paprikash), Sopa de Lima (Mexican Tomato, Lime, and Tortilla Soup), New England Corn Bisque, My Favorite Philippine Breakfast (a sort of fried rice concoction with vinegar, pickled peppers, and a fried egg that is also excellent for dinner on a night when you need comfort food and all you have in the pantry is rice, eggs, and a jar of jalapeño peppers). I wonder if that last has a proper name in Tagalog. Maybe one of my Fillipino readers will tell us.

The appendices are useful, too. The menu planning section, in addition to a nice collection of suggested menus, includes a page of Related Cuisines so you can mix and match on your own. It also includes a few examples of how to build interesting menus combining divergent cuisines. There is a Guide to Ingredients, Techniques, and Equipment and my all-time-favourite-ever-in-a-cookbook appendix, What We Mean When We Say, “One Medium Onion. . ..”

New Zealand produces enormous leeks. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in the high season, the leeks here approach the size of a baseball bat (but not a cricket bat). When I come across a recipe that calls for “4 leeks, white and light green parts only,” that could easily amount to about a ton of chopped leeks. Okay, maybe not a ton, but a lot more than you’d get from your standard, American, grocery store leek. What We Mean helpfully tells you that 1 medium leek = 3/4 cup chopped or 3 ounces (85 grams).

Do you ever find yourself, wanting to throw your arms in the air and cry “what the hell constitutes a medium zucchini?” as you cope with summer zucchini ranging from wee ones with the flower attached to a giant suitable for Wallace and Grommit’s Giant Vegetable contest? Wallace and Gromit Here’s your answer: 1 medium zucchini weighs 10 oz (285 grams). The most useful thing I’ve learned from What We Mean: a medium bunch of spinach leaves, 10 ounces (285 grams) of fresh spinach by weight will turn into 1 cup (236 ml) of cooked, squeezed dry spinach. There are also weight equivalents of various cheeses and nuts by volume and a handy customary / metric conversion chart.

If you love to travel, but don’t always have the money or the time, Sundays at Moosewood is a good way to wander the globe in your own kitchen. Or just to explore new cuisines without having to buy a new cookbook. All the Moosewood Collective books are good, but this one remains my favourite.

Now, off to Chile to shear the alpacas, then back to Naples to eat some pizza.

Our happy, newly sheared herd

And post-shearing pizza

The Seventh Cookbook of Christmas: The Vegetarian Flavor Bible

December 20, 2015December 20, 2015 / cziemke / Leave a comment

flavor bible

I want to be Australia’s next Masterchef. This is highly unlikely for at least two reasons. First, I don’t live in Australia. Second, the Masterchef competition is extremely vegetarian unfriendly. Last week, the contestants were required to essentially butcher a lamb carcass. One of my favourite Masterchef moments occurred in the 2014 competition when nearly-vegetarian Renae Smith reacted the way I have would when she discovered a whole eel in her mystery box — tears, panic attack, and horror. It was clear she wasn’t going to be able to go through with her cook when my favourite contestant of the seasons, Colin Sheppard rode to the rescue and offered to give up some of his cook time to clean and filet the horrifying primal beast. Filleted, the meat didn’t trigger her phobia, and Renae was able to cook. I was heartbroken when Colin went home.

Which points, perhaps, to a third reason I’ll never be Australia’s (or anyone else’s) next Masterchef: Colin, 51, was referred to as “Pappa”. A similarly gentle male contestant, Richard Harris, 55, chose eel for an invention challenge because he reckoned the other contestants might find it intimidating. Richard was eliminated from 2015’s New Zealand Masterchef to questions about why he waited until it was too late in his life to pursue his dream. <sound of gnashing teeth and forehead pounding on desk> Colin and Richard: You are Masterchefs in my heart!

Colin Sheppard

Richard Harris

Masterchef New Zealand has been cancelled; so, it looks like I must settle for being an armchair master chef. When the contestants are set invention tests or mystery boxes, Simon and I play “what would you cook?” This works out nicely for me, of course, because my imagined masterpiece is always tastier and more spectacularly beautiful than anything the contestants put up.

OK. Today’s mystery box ingredient is: KALE. What would you cook?

The Kale Whisperer’s Seventh Cookbook of Christmas will help you figure that out, whether you are practicing for Masterchef, or not. Although, if you are, I would advise studying this book front-to-back and side-to-side. Karen Page’s The Vegetarian Flavor Bible (Little Brown, 2015) is subtitled “the essential guide to culinary creativity.” And it is all that. This is my second non-cookbook Cookbook of Christmas, but if I had to pick a desert island cookbook, this would be it. With this cookbook, you don’t need cookbooks at all, really.

Page’s goal in compiling this guide, which is both informative and simple to use, was to provide useful nutritional and health information for those seeking to either to become vegetarians or shift to a whole-foods, plant-based diet, with our without occasional meat. Her first two chapters — For the Love of Plants, and Maximizing Flavor — make the case for a plant-based diet and chronicle the shift of vegetarian cuisine from the counter-culture to the mainstream. Of particular interest to me were the comments from some of America’s top chefs who, increasingly, are shifting toward culinary styles that depend more and more heavily on vegetables as the focus rather than the background.

Page’s discussion of the key elements of flavour in vegetarian cooking is eye opening, even for the most experienced cook, and has vastly increased my confidence as an improvisational cook. The formula? Flavor = Taste + Mouthfeel + Aroma + The X-Factor (senses + heart, mind, spirit). She even has a handy “craving” table. Vegetarian? Craving crab dip? Add some kelp and Old Bay Seasoning to your favourite white bean dip. Miss that magic zing of anchovy paste? I know I do. Use dark miso paste. I’m not a fan of play meat, so her suggestions of tofurkey and Soyrizo leave me cold. But most of the suggestions here are at least worth a think.

All this information is fascinating, and important to know, but the part of The Vegetarian Flavor Bible that you will use often — in my case, daily — is the “A to Z Listings.” It is truly exhaustive. You won’t find some local specialties here. No feijoas but you will find their cousin, guava. So far, I haven’t stumped this list. And I’ve tried. Each listing starts with some general information: nutrient concentration, season, flavour, volume (flavour loudness), what it is, nutritional profile, cooking techniques, tips, and botanical relatives. Look up Kale, and here is some of what you will learn: kale is a leafy, green vegetable, it has an extremely high nutrient content, it’s bitter but can be sweet in winter, it’s 72% carbs / 16% protein / 12% fat, and 1 cup of raw, chopped kale has 35 calories and 2 grams of protein. Kale likes to be blanched, boiled, braised, grilled, slow cooked, marinated, pureed, eaten raw (but I’m not a fan, unless its very young and tender), sautéed, stewed, steamed and stir fried. Kale’s cousins include broccoli, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, radishes, and watercress.

What you will also learn is anything and everything that matches well with kale. Page built her flavour suggestions through an exhaustive compilation of recommendations and wisdom of hundreds of American cooks and chefs specialising in cuisines from around the world. There is a ranking system for the flavour matches. Flavour matches recommended by at least one expert appear in normal type. BOLD CAPS indicate recommendations made by a larger number of experts. BOLD CAPS with an asterisk (*) are what Page calls “Holy Grail” pairings — most highly recommended by the largest number of experts. Particular types of preparations (soups, casseroles) and cuisines use of an ingredient appear in italics. Those in bold italics or BOLD ITALIC CAPS are those most highly recommended for the particular ingredient.

What will I cook with my Kale? Were it winter, I might make a hearty soup or my favourite lentil and kale spag bol. But it is early summer here in New Zealand, so I’m thinking a frittata or stir-fry. Maybe a salad. I look up kale and find that some of its strongest flavour partners are beans, chilli, garlic, lemon, olive oil, and red onions. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t care for raw kale, no matter how long you massage it. But if it is young and fairly tender, all it needs is a quick blanch. I’m thinking a salad of blanched kale tossed with a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, some thinly sliced new season garlic, a pinch of dried chilli to give it some bite, salt and pepper. I’ll marinate some white beans in the same vinaigrette (minus the chilli) and some chopped fresh oregano from my garden and a thinly sliced red onion. Then I’ll make a composed salad of the dark green kale, the white beans and red onions, with some crispy parmesan croutons made with the end of the loaf of sourdough bread I baked last week.

I’ll let you know if the judges like it!

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The Sixth Cookbook of Christmas: Twelve Months of Monastery Soups

December 17, 2015December 17, 2015 / cziemke / 1 Comment

monastery soups

I am a spiritual seeker. My mother always called me her “otherworldly child.” My favourite movie, for a while, was “The Song of Bernadette.” I read St. Augustine’s Confessions and Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain as a teenager. The interfaith nature of Merton’s spirituality has shaped my own spiritual journey to this day. In the spring of 1977, Dr. John Granrose took our Honors Ethics class on a field trip to visit the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, a Trappist monastery near Conyers, Georgia. That day has stayed with me all these years. Ever since, I’ve felt drawn to a quiet life of contemplation. That appeal of that lifestyle was, I remember, exemplified in the meal the brothers served us at their guest house — vegetable potage, monastery cheese, and rustic bread. While my faith in organised religion has evaporated over the decades, my yearning for the quiet contemplative life has not. Many years later, now that I’ve stepped away from the noise of my career as a defense analyst, I am beginning to live a quiet life of contemplation. Thinking and writing about food is bringing me the peace and happiness that organised religion or proximity to power never did.

The Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Conyers, Georgia

In cooking, as in life, sometimes the greatest beauty is found in simplicity. For me, the simple meal of soup, cheese, and bread is restorative in a way that no other meal can be. When loved ones are sick, or sad, we make them soup. When I’m sick and sad, I want someone to make me soup. Before she died, my mother was sick and sad — for too long — and our friends Kline and Carolyn brought her matzo ball soup. I will never forget that soup. It might not have cured all that ailed Mom, but it restored me and my Dad and was, quite simply, my most unforgettable soup. It tasted like love. Thank you, Kline and Carolyn.

Alex and her fairy godmother making matzo balls

A few years later my Goddaughter Alex borrowed a book from the library called How Many Matzos Make a Soup? She loved it. I haven’t been able to track it down, but I remember the punch line was that what makes a good soup isn’t the number or size of the matzos, but the love that goes into making them. Inspired by the story, and my duties as fairy godmother, Alex and I made our own matzo soup. It was delicious.

As a child, I loved Marcia Brown’s classic children’s book Stone Soup. I was captivated by the notion that with an onion here, a carrot there, it was possible to create food for a village. It’s not that different from my frequent Saturday morning ritual combining trimmings from this week’s purchases (leek and green inion tops, celery leaves, a carrot or two) with the things that didn’t make into last week’s dinners (slightly past their prime mushrooms, the other halves of onions, pea pods, a lonely potato) in the stock pot to simmer away. In its way, soup is the secular equivalent to the feeding of the five thousand. With a handful of beans, a potato, and onion, a carrot, and some garlic, I can make a warm, tasty, satisfying meal.

As I’ve traveled over the years, my most memorable meals have involved simple soups: Portugal’s Caldo Verde (just potatoes, kale, and linguica), Thailand’s gorgeous Tom Yom soups, Pho from Vietnam, miso soup from Japan, and the hearty bean and vegetable soups of Italy. Singapore’s Night Market offers too many options to name, as do the Bistros of Paris and the Pubs of England. I’ve loved nettle soup in Scotland and seafood chowder on Stewart Island. I can’t say I loved the goat neck soup in Ghana, but I certainly loved the generous spirit in which it was offered. And the simple bean and vegetable soups prepared by out Masai cook at Freeman’s Safaris in Kenya were the perfect end to hard day on the Mara.

The Kale Whisperer’s Sixth Cookbook of Christmas, Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourette’s Twelve Months of Monastery Soups (Triumph Books, 1996), encompasses both my fascination with the contemplative life and my love for soup in a unique and tasty way. This is not strictly vegetarian, there are a few recipes that include a bit of meat or seafood, but most of those can be easily adapted to vegetarian versions. Obviously, you probably won’t want to make the Shrimp Soup de Luxe without shrimp. On the other hand, one of my favourite recipes here is the French Cream of Lentil Soup, calls for two strips of bacon, but it is just as delicious without the pig. I’ve cooked it both ways, I can personally vouch for that. The book is peppered with notes and quotes about soup, things that go into soup, people who make soup, and people who eat soup. If you aren’t Catholic, you will still love this book. If you aren’t Christian, you’ll love this book. If you love soup, you’ll love this book. This is another cookbook you’ll want to read, cover to cover.

Monastery Soups consists of twelve chapters: one for each month of the year. If you live in the northern hemisphere, you could probably cook right through the book chronologically. Down here in the antipodes, you’ll have to work inside out. Brother Antoine took care to match ingredients to availability. And as the gardener at Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery in upstate New York, he understands locavore cooking. Ever wondered what you could do with those gorgeous greens attached to your bright red radishes you couldn’t resist at the market? Brother Antoine has a soup for that: Soupe Pelou. It’s delicious. Is your garden overrun by sorrel? He has five soups for that. The recipes are simple and come from all around the world. Adapted from the monastery kitchen, they don’t require fancy equipment or exotic ingredients. These are weekday soups, not simmer on the back of the stove all day soups. Some vegetables, some herbs, broth, wine, garlic and a pinch of salt. And love; lots of love.

Some of my earliest childhood memories involve soup: chicken noodle with oyster crackers, cream of tomato with cheese toast, potato soup with lots of celery from the German restaurant I only remember as “the potato soup place.” I’m sure the very last meals I’ll enjoy will also be soups. And so many soups — humble and glorious — along the way. To paraphrase T.S. Elliot, I will measure out my life in soup spoons.

stone soup

Zhen Kailian Won Ton Soup

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Carries’ French Apple Pie

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Northeast Georgia Barbecue Sauce, Sort Of

Pulled Tofu

North Carolina Pickle Slaw

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Not-Quite-Tanta’s Peach Küchen

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Smoked Tomato Bisque with Roasted Corn and Zucchini

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