Cooking Notes

[pameladean]

The abnormally cool weather and continuing financial anxiety have contributed to my continuing to clear out the larder.

I have made broccoli and tofu with spicy peanut sauce, from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (thanks to Jon Singer, who gave it to David and me as a wedding present). Even without the scallions and crushed raw peanuts for topping, it was quite nice over brown rice.

Yesterday I made tempeh in a more or less standard curry sauce -- sauteed onions, ginger, and garlic, with added tumeric, coriander, cayenne, whole cumin (after Lydy found it in the morass that the spice shelves have become), and garam masala. I added five carrots, julienned, and when the sauce tasted bland I put in about two tablespoons of tamarind and some black pepper. We agreed that it could have used something like raisins, but it was fairly tasty. Eric was here working, which gave me the idea of putting it over the last of the brown basmati rice he had contributed to the household some months back.

Today it's amazingly cool -- seventy degrees at a quarter to four in the afternoon, on July 9th! -- but pretty sticky. I don't feel very much inspired. I thought of pasta, only that's something that David likes, and he's out of town on business, so I should make something he doesn't like.

It would actually be possible to turn on the oven for a while. I can hardly credit it.

Pamela

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

You know, in the instant between seeing the title The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and reading the next line, I knew Singer would be involved.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

The food sounds good. Even healthy :)
I'm proud of myself for actually eating salad today: fresh spinach leaves, with a scattering of cheddar, sunflower seeds and black olives, topped with a little oil and wine-vinegar.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Here too! 25C, and I could use the oven. I made lazy lasagne -- with ravioli instead of flat lasagne noodles -- which is Zorinth's favourite food in the whole world and which we haven't had for what feels like months.

My aunt has the Enchanted Broccoli Forest book, and bread book written by the same people, I think.

[pameladean]

The particularly Singerian thing about that cookbook is that I had some favorite recipes in it when I wasn't vegetarian at all, and then when I went vegan I found a whole bunch I had automatically skipped over.

Pamela

[pameladean]

It's just "person" -- Molly Katzen. She's associated with the Moosewood cookbooks, but she's the only writer on the Broccoli Forest. I didn't realize she had a bread book. I have both the original Broccoli Forest and the revised edition, plus Still Life with Menu and Vegetable Heaven<\i>. Sweet potato and chickpea koftas! Dill pickle potato salad! Whee!

Pamela

[sdn.livejournal.com]

i have made an abbreviated broccoli forest, inspired by the book:

- steam broccoli
- stand it upright in some rice
- laugh hysterically
- eat

the dill pickle potato salad sounds awesome. which book is it in?

[pameladean]

First edition of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Possibly the second too, but I know it's in the first.

My mother has made the entire enchanted broccoli forest, if you allow for substitutions to make it vegan. We laughed too.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Papersky, I forgot to ask about lazy lasagna. Do you use the filled kind of ravioli, thus obviating the need to make layers of meat and cheese and so on?

Pamela