Quick Collard Greens without PORK

Right now I'm living in the South, enjoying Southern delicacies like biscuits, grits, iced tea, and crowder peas. Mm mmm gobble gobble. But as a vegetarian I can see No Trespassing signs everywhere I look. BBQ place? Yeah, I'll take the hush puppies and fried okra.

And slow-cooked collards? I don't even have to ask what those collards were slow-cooked with. It's PORK. Pork pork pork pork pork. Southern food is filled with pigs, even though I haven't seen any swine anywhere. I do not know where these doomed Wilburs are kept while awaiting their demise.

And do you know why collards are cooked with salted pork? It's because by the time those collards are done cookin', there's barely any life left in 'em. Slow-cooked collards are silky but on the point of a taste collapse.

I have a whole lot of vegetarian cookbooks and I get the distinct impression from them that collards are a tough nut for vegetarian cooks to crack. One cookbook suggests I cook the leaves with dulse and pickled plums. I did that, and the result tasted like weird sea collards. Another suggested just cooking the stems, chopped into confetti. Finally, I read in a book that collard greens belong to the mustard greens family, so first you oughtta blanch them in salted water without the lid on to leech out the sulferous bitterness. Then drain them and sauté them with other stuff until tender.

That sounded like a plan to me. I tried it and I loved my new, chewy collards with the bright, acidic flavor. They weren't silky like slow-cooked collards but alive and bursting with happy nutritious feelings. I composed a song on the spot:

Collards, collards,
I am eating you.
Collards, collards,
You're so good.
Yum yum yum,
I want some more.

I have submitted it for a Pulitzer. But the Pulitzer committee is notoriously bizarre in its tastes, so I am also submitting it for a Grawemeyer Award through the University of Louisville. They are Southern. They will understand.

Quick Collard Greens

1 ridiculously large bunch collards
juice of 3 1/2 lemons (or a mix of lemons and oranges if you want it a little sweet)
olive oil
salt

1. Strip the leaves off the stems and tear into pieces. Wash them thoroughly.
2. Blanch in salted, boiling water for 2 to 4 minutes. You might have to do this batches.
   
3. Drain. (At this point you can store for later use).
   
4. Heat up some olive oil on slow heat. Add collards to cover the surface. Stir and cook until tender and chewy. You might have to do this in batches too.
5. Remove collard greens and place in a bowl. Pour on lemon juice and combine thoroughly. Serve hot, room temperature, or cold. Keeps for days in the refrigerator. Goes well with music.
   

Sally's Vanilla Egg Creams

I was an extremely rude American yesterday. It was 105º and I practically ordered my neighbor Sally to make one of her famous vanilla egg creams.

Vanilla Egg Creams

cold seltzer
cold milk
vanilla syrup (like the kind at cafés they use to put flavor shots in your coffee) *

Put seltzer in the bottom, then syrup, then milk, then top with seltzer. Serve immediately.

*Torani's "Sugar Free French Vanilla" flavored syrup is not gluten-free, but DaVinci and Monin brands are.

Eggplant Parmesan, or How to Make Bread Crumbs

After harvesting 5 juicy, glossy purple Japanese eggplants, I realized I needed a new eggplant recipe. Last summer I made eggplant dish after eggplant dish, and all firmly failed except for the Patlican. So this summer I abandoned my faithless Japanese cookbooks and decided to go Old School with Mollie Katzen's Eggplant Parmesan recipe. The truth is, I don't adore eggplant parmesan, but when I was in college I slavered over eggplant parmesan subs from my local pizza establishment. So I bought some po' boy bread and got to work.

Katzen's recipe optimistically timed the total cooking time at 1 hour 15 minutes. Yeah, right. That recipe moseyed on for 4 hours and I still faced a clean-up battlefield at the end. The first time snag happened when I decided to make my own bread crumbs. You know, whiz stale bread in your food processor and voìla, homemade cheap bread crumbs. This part took me an entire hour! Months ago I had cubed some multigrain loafs and frozen them. These I poured confidently into the Cuisinart and pressed ON. After a minute, I still had frozen cubes and no bread crumbs. Also the machine was emitting that burning rubber smell that means you've been using it more than you would have to if YOU KNEW WHAT YOU WERE DOING. Which clearly I didn't, because if I had the whirling blade wouldn't have flown upwards like a UFO. That had never happened to me before.

Panicked, my next move was to remove all but a small handful of the cubes and rhythmically pulse the food processor on them, trying to jostle it into a good mood. This worked. Sort of. After 5 minutes I managed to spoon out about 1/8 Cup from the bottom. How many breadcrumbs did I need? Two full cups! My patience was the stuff of legends. I continued on for about a half hour until I had 3/4 Cup. There was no way I was going to return all the way to Kroger for a box of breadcrumbs. But I was running out of energy, and I had the sinking feeling that I was approaching this problem in a dollop-headed manner.

Suddenly I experienced a Brain Storm, a downpour of clarity. Bread crumbs come from hard stale bread, right? So what if I had some dried-out room temperature stale bread instead of cubed frozen bread? I couldn't toast those cubes so I went to the freezer and took out some sliced bread. I toasted it lightly, tore it into chunks, and then food-processed it. In a few seconds, all the bread had transformed into bona fide bread crumbs. Tears of gratitude sprang to my eyes.

That problem solved, I began dipping eggplant slices into soymilk and then tossing them with the bread crumbs. Katzen did not ask for egg as part of the dip, and I wondered how the crumbs would stick to the eggplant slices. It turned out, they wouldn't. Not unless I personally pressed the crumbs onto both sides of each slice with my fingers. Did that take 5 times longer than it should have? As Sarah Palin would say, You betcha.

Once that ordeal was over, I slid the eggplant slices into the oven. They turned out fine. While they were cooking, I should have washed dishes and begun making the Tomato Sauce to go over them. But I was dead exhausted. So instead I sat down and rested. And wished I had bought premade bread crumbs and prepared marinara sauce instead of going the from-scratch route.

After the eggplant came out, I returned to my self-imposed slavery. You won't believe this, but I actually gave myself more than double the work the recipe called for, first by making my own bread crumbs, and second by using fresh tomatoes instead of canned tomatoes. To prepare the fresh tomatoes, first I blanched them in boiling water. You do this by cutting an X in the bottom of each tomato and sticking the whole thing in boiling water for 30 seconds. Immediately remove the tomato, let it cool a little, and easily peel off the skin. Then cut the tomato in half and squeeze out the juice and seeds into a cup. That last is the hard part, because the peeled tomatoes are slippery as minnows and the juice often squirts out the back instead of the cut side. But I managed.

The directions for the sauce weren't difficult, and I managed to follow them without trouble. The final part of eggplant parmesan is just like lasagna: layer, layer, layer. A layer of tomato sauce. A layer of eggplant. Another layer of tomato sauce. A layer of grated mozzarella. Another layer of eggplant... uh-oh. I had only enough eggplant for 1 1/2 layers! And it turned out, I only had enough tomato sauce for 2 1/4 layers. Cheese? I had enough for about 5 layers. So my eggplant parmesan looked really weird. But it baked up just fine and tasted good, as if someone had slaved in a kitchen for 4 hours. And no one can tell how ugly it is when it's in a sandwich.

The following version is easier.

Eggplant Parmesan Sub Sandwich

3 large juicy eggplants, sliced into 1/2 inch rounds

2 Cups bread crumbs

2 tsp. basil

1 tsp. oregano

1 tsp. thyme

1 Cup soymilk

1 egg, beaten

2 jars prepared marinara sauce. Or make your own tomato sauce. It's your funeral.

some tomatoes, blanched, peeled, juice squeezed out, and chopped

1 lb. grated mozzarella

1/2 Cup grated Parmesan cheese

sub sandwich bread

lettuce

mayo

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Also spray oil to grease a 9x13 glass baking pan.
3. Mix bread crumbs with dried herbs. In another bowl, mix soymilk and egg.
4. Dip eggplant slices into wet bowl, then the bread crumb bowl. Lay on baking sheet and in baking pan.
5. Bake 20-25 minutes, until tender. Keep the oven on.
6. Meanwhile, wash your dishes, prepare those tomatoes, and grate the cheese.
7. Mix the tomatoes into your sauce for that pseudo homemade touch.
8. Take the eggplant out of the baking pan and layer them onto the baking sheet. Without washing the pan, spoon in a layer of sauce. Add a layer of eggplant. Spoon on another layer of sauce. Sprinkle on a layer of mozzarella cheese. Repeat until you get to the top of the pan or run out of something. Generously sprinkle parmesan over the top.
9. Bake at 375º for 40 minutes, uncovered.
10. Toast some sub bread. Lather on a little mayo (or mustard), and several crisp, juicy slices of lettuce. Transfer some eggplant parmesan into that. Get a thick napkin. Yum de yum yum.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Smoothie

Today I tried to recreate my first ever smoothie, the Funky Monkey. My 17-year old self could barely order it in front of my friends because the name sounded so dumb. But all the smoothies had cutesy names like that at Bananarama, a lovely place that taught me bananas + soymilk = tasty smoothie base. The original Funky Monkey was a simple chocolate smoothie. Today I also added peanut butter because, as scores of Reese's Pieces fans know, chocolate and peanut butter are tasty soulmates. This smoothie turned out to be very easy to make and very very satisfying. Next time you get one milkshake craving too many, try making this instead. It's actually sort of healthy; it has a lot of protein, manganese, vitamin E, folate, calcium, potassium, vitamin B12, and monounsaturated fat (the good kind).

Serves 3-4 people

2 bananas, ripe

1/4 Cup peanut butter (the less oily and sugary, the better)

1 heaping teaspoon cocoa powder

1 Cup plain chilled soymilk (I like Silk brand)

Puree all in a blender for about 20 seconds. Serve the silken, refreshing treat immediately.

No-Knead Dinner Rolls

But you will need a food processor. Total time should be 2 hours: from pantry to hot from the oven. Makes about 12 rolls.

Fluffy and tender but substantial, convenient and easy but completely made from scratch, impressive to guests but the nine-year old next door could do it while watching cartoons.

Ingredients:

1 Cup whole wheat flour

2 1/2 Cups bread flour

2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 teaspoon rapid rise (bread machine) yeast

roughly 1 to 2 Cups lukewarm water

Directions:

1. Add dry ingredients to food processor.

2. Turn it on. Through the feed tube pour water in a slow stream until all the flour has gathered into a moist ball of dough wadding around the blade. If the dough sticks to the side of the food processor, add a teaspoon of bread flour at a time to dry it out a little.

3. Dump dough into a bowl, cover with a damp towel, and leave in the warmest, most humid place you can find for an hour.

4. Line a baking sheet or two with parchment paper.

5. Pull half-fist sized pieces of dough from the ball, roll them into a sphere, and space them an inch apart on the baking sheet. When you finish, cover the dough balls with a damp towel. Let them rise until the oven is hot.

6. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. When it hits 400 degrees, stick the baking sheet in and turn the heat down to 375 degrees. Bake 18-22 minutes, until gently browned.

Wrap the fresh hot rolls in a clean dry towel in a basket. Serve with budder, zham, or hunny.

Sad Food News, or How to Fail at Everyday Tasks

1. Deer ate all 30 of our lettuce heads in one night.
2. Deer ate most of our cucumber leaves that night too.
3. Dear ate a lot of our bean leaves as well. Yup, same night.
   
4. I saw rabbits in the yard yesterday. Adorable little munching machines.
5. Although central NC has seen a lot of frightening lightning or wind storms lately, it has not rained in forever. It is quite hot.
6. The only vegetable producing its heart out in our garden is summer squash, which is the sole vegetable I hate.
   
7. I failed to make an appetizing pasta sauce with a tomato sauce base, even though I used a recipe that always works when George makes it.
8. I have a dentist appointment in a few days, the fear of which inhibits me from drowning my sorrows in chocolate chocolate chip ice cream.
   

Almond Butter Cookies

I used to be a pretty horrible cook, but I'm proud to announce that through careful effort I've grown into a blazingly mediocre cook. Back when I was truly contemptible, I received a peanut butter version of this cookie recipe from a friend. After making the recipe, I found the cookies dry, crumbly, and requiring large quantities of milk to push them down my esophagus. Of course, there's no way of knowing if the disastrous results were the recipe's fault or mine.

George, an excellent cookie concocter, never had this problem. First he created a pretty delicious peanut butter cookie recipe that I enjoyed. Then he took his mastery to the next level by substituting peanut butter with its moister, subtle sibling: almond butter.

But he wasn't satisfied with just a great-tasting cookie, oh no. He took great care in forming the dough into perfect rounds. First he put a portion of the dough on a piece of wax paper and rolled it into a cylinder 1 1/2 – 2 inches in diameter. He froze the dough like that, and when he was ready to make cookies, he unwrapped the wax paper and sliced the dough into 1/4 – 3/8 inch thick rounds.

At this point he pressed a whole pecan into the center of each round. The pecans were just a shade darker than the actual cookie dough. To make sure the rounds cooked into perfect shapes, he spaced the rounds an inch apart from each other on the baking sheet, and after rescuing them from the oven's fiery embrace, cooled them on a wire rack.

The result: beautiful, chewy cookies with a crunchy center (the pecan) and sophisticated flavor. Why don't you treat your guests to these cookies as well? They're so simple to make that it seems wasteful not to make them. I mean, how lazy can you get?

Almond Butter Cookies

1 Cup almond butter

1/2 Cup unsalted butter

3/8 Cup white sugar

3/8 Cup brown sugar

1 egg

3 Tablespoons plain soy milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 and 1/4 Cup unbleached all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Cream together almond butter, butter, and sugar.
3. Mix in egg, soy milk, and vanilla.
4. Mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Then mix all the ingredients together.
5. Make rounds as described above, or Alternatively, make golf-ball sized spheres of dough and press them down on the cookie sheet with a fork. Use either an ungreased baking sheet or a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
6. Bake for 8 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
7. Serve with a suggestive wink.

Vegetarian Kimchi Dumplings

Kimchi dumplings are one of those no-brainer vegetarian snacks. Do you like steamed dumplings? Yes. Do you like them a little juicy and with a bit of a kick? Absolutely. Would you like to pay about $4 for a large bag of them? Definitely.

At my local Asian grocer of choice, Oriental Supermarket Food and Gift, the freezer section teems with vegetarian dumpling options. Unfortunately, my favorite dumplings, the pumpkin buns, have vanished. When I demanded Why why whyyyyyy? of the owner, her English and my Korean were mutually not up to the task of an explanation. An unsolved mystery for the ages, no doubt.

I have enjoyed several of the korean dumplings I've tried, but only kimchi dumplings deserve their own post. The brand: Yissine. The ingredients: all vegetables and seasonings I understand and am willing to funnel into my body (Thank God I don't have MSG sensitivity). A surprisingly large amount of soybean curd translates into a hefty protein kick, and along with the gentle presence of the cabbage offers quite a lot of iron.

It takes about 8 minutes from freezer to steamer to mouth. Sheer tasty convenience.

If you cannot find kimchi dumplings (also called kimchi mandu), you can make your own. Lately I've encountered a string of kimchi dumpling recipes, which I will collect here for your edification.

Korean Napa Cabbage Kimchi Recipe (Mak Kimchi) from Asian Dumpling Tips

Try her vegetarian fish sauce recipe with the dumplings.

Kimchi Dumplings with Mushrooms and Bean Sprouts at a page on Vegetarian Dim Sum

Jaylene's Kimchi Mandu with Lemon-Chili Sauce

Cindy's Simple Kimchi Sesame Mandu (uses grams instead of ounces)

Serious Eats Kimchi dumpling recipe with vermicelli noodles

Lettuce Wrap or How to Use Garlic Scapes

Tangy, savory, springy, and fresh. As I bit into my hastily thrown-together lettuce wrap, I blinked in surprise. I didn't expect something so delicious. I paused and wondered where I had gone right.

George tried to grow maybe 30 garlic plants in our vegetable garden this summer. It turns out that garlic is a sturdy plant that is easy to grow and matures quite late in the season. Our garden now brims with garden plants, taking up space once occupied by vegetables you could eat sooner. That's why I was super relieved when George discovered that garlic plants make garlic scapes, which we can harvest and eat now.

Garlic scapes are like chives or green onions married to garlic. Raw, they offer a fresh tanginess with a bit of a burn at the back of your throat. My previous experience with garlic scapes was at Motorino, a fancy pizza place in NYC. I ordered a seasonal pizza with garlic scapes and just figured garlic scapes were some chic little-known herb-of-the-month for hipsters. Little did I know that garlic scapes are simply a by-product of garlic farming. Everyone should know about them! But I looked at them every day without a thought in my mind until George brought some into the kitchen and told me what they were.

Well, we didn't know what to do with them at first, except cook them on pizza. So we went and bought a frozen pizza, sprinkled chopped garlic scapes and sliced mushrooms on top, and baked. They were good that way. Real good. After that we had a bunch of leftover chopped scapes. So I mixed some with grated daikon radish and wasabi and put them in our somen noodle dipping sauce. They tasted fine in that, but kind of too hard for a dipping sauce.

Yesterday I felt a gaping abyss of Hungry open in my stomach so I ran to the refrigerator and made a quick snack. This is the recipe, and let me say, it was REAL GOOD. Garlic scapes and lime mayonnaise should get married and have lime-garlic-mayo babies.

Lettuce Wrap

1 flatbread or whole wheat wrap, microwaved or toasted until warm and flexible

1/2 tsp. McCormick's lime mayonesa or mayo whipped with a little fresh lime juice

a handful of garlic scapes, chopped

2 handfuls fresh springy lettuce

On the flatbread, spread the mayonnaise. Sprinkle with garlic scapes, top with lettuce, roll up tightly, and take a big bite. Chew.

Peanut Butter My Way

Suddenly I realized that I no longer enjoyed commercial brand peanut butter: too sweet, too salty, too oily. I switched over to natural peanut butter, the kind where the oil separates and floats to the top. That oil didn't look too tasty, did it? I didn't want to eat it. I didn't want to put it into my body.

So for years I tried to pour the oil off the top. This method was absurdly messy and inevitably lost some real peanutty goodness as well. Frustrated, last year I hit on the method of simply storing the peanut butter jar upside-down. That way the oil floats to the bottom, and I can scoop off the butter from the top, no problem.

Except there is a problem. That peanut butter is STIFF, no question. How are you supposed to spread peanut butter rocks? I've finally solved this last hurdle, and because you are my faithful readers, I will share my genius with you:

Scoop out the peanut butter with a spoon, and put it into a little bowl. Heat it up in the microwave on high for 15 seconds. Suddenly it's spreadable and oozy, just the way you like it, but not oily.

I take my bow.