Vegan Lasagna

I fell in love with Italy when I started studying the language in college and studied abroad in Florence for one summer. I love Italy’s wine, food, opera, espresso, art, architecture, needless pampering of domestic pets, pop music, and extravagant postal stamps (one of which is a current tattoo—yeah, I might have made a little mistake there). Since I became a vegan though, my love affair has suffered. I can’t find a decent substitute for parmesan cheese, aged to perfection. I can’t bake my specialty, melanzane parmigiano. And when something doesn’t turn out right, I can’t smother it in mozzarella to save it. It’s been a long time since I dressed myself in something slinky and black and sat down with a glass of Chianti and La Boheme in the background to a plate of steaming lasagna…until I found a way to make vegan lasagna!

Vegan Lasagna

Lasagna noodles
Sliced mushrooms
Sliced zucchini
Spinach
Tomato Sauce
Ricotta Cheese:
8 ounces (half a packet, usually) of extra firm tofu
¼ cup of miso (yellow, brown barley—I’ve used both)
½ large white onion
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon vinegar (I’ve used rice vinegar and balsamic)
2 teaspoons or more to taste of dried oregano

The ingredients are pretty self-explanatory except the vegan ricotta cheese. Vegan ricotta cheese?! Yes! It’s really good. Slice the white onion and cut it into pieces, and put that along with olive oil into a blender or food processor. Then drain the tofu and cut it into cubes and place in the blender. Choose the lowest level to mix; mine is called “Blend.” Now, depending on whether you have a blender that is designed mostly for making fruit smoothies, or a food processor appropriately designed for this sort of utilitarian method, you may have to constantly start and stop the process, using your spatula ever so often to make sure everything is mixed. Oh, and one more thing: make sure the black ring that holds the blender’s blade assembly in place doesn’t have a very large crack in it. If it does, and you don’t notice it, upon pressing the “Blend” button you will hear a loud, sinister sound, smell burnt rubber (because your rubber washer will get mutilated), and be required not only to deal with a huge mess, but also to improvise another way to make vegan ricotta cheese which may or may not involve the use of hammers—don’t ask me how I know this.

Assuming everything is intact, next add miso and vinegar and mix. Lastly, add walnuts and oregano and mix well. You will probably have more delicious vegan ricotta cheese than you need for this meal (which is good because, seriously, that was a big production). Save for later.

I don’t need to tell you how to put together lasagna layers, but let me just give you some helpful hits: remember to preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Unless otherwise noted, you must boil lasagna noodles before you layer them with goodies and bake, especially most whole wheat lasagna noodles. Do not assume that if you increase the temperature by 10 degrees, you can shave 10 minutes off your cooking time (which should be about 25 minutes). If you want to add more garlic or basil or hot pepper to your tomato sauce, do so in a separate pan over the stove. Lastly, remember to cover your dish with aluminum foil when you bake. If you don’t, the lasagna will be dry, and if you try to substitute aluminum foil with something like, say, clear plastic wrap, it will soon melt and your dish will be dry anyway, not only paving the way for dangerous chemicals to enter your body, but also making you look like a complete fool as you explain to your guests why melted plastic wrap is bonded to the sides of your casserole dish. Buon’ appetito!
The first poem is by contemporary Italian poet, Patrizia Cavalli:

The Moroccans with the carpets

The Moroccans with the carpets
seem like saints
but they’re salesmen.

The second poem is by Heather McHugh:

What He Thought

We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious
"cheap date" (no explanation lessened
this one's mystery). Among Italian writers we

could recognize our counterparts: the academic,
the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib. And there was one
administrator (The Conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone
narrated sights and histories
the hired van hauled us past.
Of all he was most politic--
and least poetic-- so
it seemed. Our last
few days in Rome
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?) to whom
he had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn't
read Italian either, so I put the book
back in the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were due to leave
tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant,
and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till,
sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked

"What's poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables
and marketplace at Campo dei Fiori

or the statue there?" Because I was
the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn't have to think-- "The truth
is both, it's both!" I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest
to say. What followed taught me something
about difficulty,

for our underestimated host spoke out
all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents
Giordano Bruno, brought
to be burned in the public square
because of his offence against authority, which was to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government
but rather is poured in waves, through
all things: all things
move. "If God is not the soul itself,
he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world." Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.
That is how he died,
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry--

(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly)-- poetry

is what he thought, but did not say.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

After numerous pitches for a column series for VegNews and being ignored, I am starting a blog that will account my haphazard cooking methods that have only become more haphazard since I became a vegan in February 2008, since we all know that vegans live on another planet and I am still adjusting to the atmosphere here. Plus, my methods were never that great to begin with. I’m going to start by listing a recipe--it may or may not be an accurate one but it is the one I used. Most of my recipes will be inspired by international dishes, as my experiences in the Peace Corps and other travels abroad have made me aware that most of the planet eats a vegan diet without any planning. Then I’m going to recount my method, which again, may or may not be a correct method. Then I’m going to tell you the result, and you can alter the recipe according to your reason. Lastly, a poem to compliment the featured dish.

First, back story: I learned to cook when I was 19. I was a care attendant for a woman with muscular dystrophy, and as part of my job, I was required to cook meals. I always burnt the meals, the Taco Bell bailed me out, etc...I wasn’t immediately fired because, well, I’m pretty nice, but my client threatened me with the ultimatum that I would be fired in the near future if I didn’t shape up. To make a long story short, I rose to the occasion. I got better but never entirely perfect, and hence my cooking pursuits began, always marked by the kind of low comedy you would expect to find in an I Love Lucy episode. Here it goes. I start with a recipe close to home, because this just happened last week. Exotic dishes soon to come:

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter substitute (I use soy spread)
¾ cups cane sugar
¾ cups brown sugar
2 egg substitutes (for one egg, I use ¼ cup applesauce)
1 cup vegan chocolate chips (they exist, really)
1 cup walnuts

First, I only had one mixing bowl. I could have washed another one so that I'd have two, but I thought it easier to slip into the “Peace Corps Adaption Mode.” One of the many things you discover in the Peace Corps is that Americans do things the hard way: sifting flour, using an electric mixer, combining wet and dry ingredients separately. If you only have one bowl, naturally, you should use the one bowl, right? I threw all the above into the mix, minus the walnuts and chips, including soy spread that had not softened. So it was a little difficult at first to mix with a fork, but, lucky me, I had encountered this difficulty before and I knew what to do. I used my (clean!) hands, clenching and unclenching my fists, watching the butter ooze out through my knuckles. After 20 minutes--Success! I had already set my oven at 375 long before. When I added the nuts and chips, the chips melted slightly in the dough because the dough was hot due to my hot hands molding it due to my hot body doing calisthenics in a warm kitchen. I tasted the dough (one of the good things about eating vegan cookie dough is you don’t risk contracting salmonella). It tasted funny. I thought I should add more brown sugar, so I did. I tasted it again. Still not right. Then I realized that I usually added some cinnamon even though the recipe doesn’t call for cinnamon—where did I get the recipe anyway? Maybe I created it, so I say you should add cinnamon: shake as much as you’d like on top of the dough. I’ve discovered that if you add cinnamon late in the process, around the same time as you add the chocolate chips and nuts, the cookies tasted a little like graham-crackers—mmmmm. I tasted them again.

That’s weird, I thought, maybe they’ll taste better after they bake.

I rolled them into balls and put them on my sheet. I stuck them in the oven and set the timer for ten minutes (where would I be without timers, right?).

About a minute after they were in the oven, I realized I forgot:

1 tsp vanilla

So I took out the sheet out, threw the balls of slightly baked dough into the bowl, added about a generous 1 and ½ tsp of vanilla before mixing the dough with my hands, reforming them into balls, and putting them into the oven again for ten minutes.

You think I’m kidding? They were still pretty tasty, but not as good as some I’ve made in the past. Unfortunately though, my precise methods can never be replicated, which is probably a good thing.

Here’s a poem by Susan Rich:

A Poem for Will, Baking

Each night he stands before
the kitchen island, begins again
from scratch: chocolate, cinnamon, nutmeg,
he beats, he folds;
keeps faith in what happens
when you combine known quantities,
bake twelve minutes at a certain heat.
The other rabbis, the scholars,
teenagers idling by the beach,
they receive his offerings,
in the early hours, share his grief.
It’s enough now, they say.
Each day more baked goods to friends,
and friends of friends, even
the neighborhood cops. He can’t stop,
holds on to the rhythmic opening
and closing of the oven,
the timer’s expectant ring.
I was just baking, he says if
someone comes by. Again and again,
evenings winter into spring,
he creates the most fragile
of confections: madelines
and pinwheels, pomegranate crisps
and blue florentines;
each crumb to reincarnate
a woman – a savoring
of what the living once could bring.

I'm using the three pillars of idealism in this blog: poetry, Peace Corps, and veganism to try to encourage others to eat a vegan diet one day in the week. No other lifestyle choice has been proven to have a more positive impact on health, animal rights, and the environment than the vegan lifestyle. You don't have to be vegan everyday--leave that job to the weirdos like me. You can make a positive impact just by eating as a vegan for one day in the week. It's fun. It's cheap. And it's easy, unless, of course, you happen to do things like I do.