Vegan Poet in the Kitchen

Koshary

2009-08-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

This is an unbelievably tasty Egyptian dish, and its preparation definitely tested my pot-juggling abilities. I had to make: rice, pasta, lentils, tomato sauce and fried onions (meaning four pots and pans, one washed and reused). Luckily, my husband, who grew up making the stuff, helped me, meaning of course that this post is going to be slightly less entertaining.

Rice, Pasta, and Lentils

1 cup rice
1 cup penne pasta
1 cup brown lentils

Make one cup of rice, pasta, and lentils. I read that I had to boil 5 cups of water to every one cup of lentils, but that seemed to be a dirty rumor. I had to drain at least a cup and a half of water after 45 minutes of cooking, so I don't really know what instruction to give, but ultimately you want to have 1 cup each of pasta, rice and lentils.

Tomato Sauce

1 can tomato sauce
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon coriander

Cook the tomato sauce on the stovetop at medium heat. Add one teaspoon of paprika and 1/2 teaspoon coriander. Mix well.

Fried Onions

one onion
lots of oil
salt

My husband took over after I nearly chopped off my finger while cutting the onions (which need to be finely chopped), so this is what I observed: he didn't measure anything, but to me he put way too much oil in the pan. He cooked them until brown. Then he put them on the plate and added way too much salt. But I guess that's okay, because the onions only decorate the top of koshary.

Presentation

1/4 cup rice goes on the plate first, followed by 1/4 cup lentils and 1/4 cup pasta. Spread sauce over the mix and finally top it with fried onions.

POEM

Forgive me as I only found one unlineated poem by the Egyptian poet Salah Jaheen in English. I am working on some translations.

Corn is not like gold
Corn is like the fallaheen.
Thin stems, their roots feeding from mud.
Like Ismaeen... and Mohamadeen
And Hussein Abou Oweida, who suffered and was beaten
when he requested a handful of corn he had watered with sweat.

Cooking...

2009-07-18T13:52:00.000-07:00

I think cooking is hard. Long ago, when I was recovering in a rehab hospital from a serious accident, one of my occupational therapy exercises consisted of cooking a meal. I had wanted to make spaghetti--that was my favorite food besides cold cereal--and because my therapist said that spaghetti was pretty simple, I had to add chicken. Now, at that point, I had never cooked in my life; I was 18 and lived my high school years with my bachelor dad, so I was pretty nervous about the event. My therapist drove me to the store and gave me $10 with which I was to buy the ingredients: chicken breast, spaghetti noodles and Prego sauce. I negotiated the purchase without incident, and later, miraculously, the meal as well.

Cooking, for my entire adult life, has been a challenge, and of course, when I became a vegan, it got harder. Many of my meals these days rely heavily on the use of canned black beans, but yesterday, I did something a little different. I made..."burgers."

"Burgers"

4 Portobello mushroom caps
4 hamburger buns (check the ingredients)
sliced tomato, onions, avocado
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Margarine to "butter" the buns, then broil on "High" for four minutes

Add the Portobello mushroom caps face down to a skillet with olive oil. Heat on medium high for five minutes on each side. Lower the heat to low. With the mushrooms face-down, slowly add balsamic vinegar, about 1/4 tablespoon for each cap. Make sure you remember to reduce the heat, or else you won’t be able to appreciate whatever music it is that you're listening to (maybe it's La Boheme, Act III, where Rodolfo confesses that Mimi is dying) as you will be distracted by the chaos of a splattering brown mess all over the kitchen cabinets.

Take the buns out of the oven (which you set on "High Broil" and of course you also set the timer for 4 minutes--didn't you?). Dress your burger as you like, avocado, tomato, onion, ketchup, mustard. Hopefully you'll be eating with two of your best girlfriends in all the world and you can chat about poetry as you eat.

The Orange
by Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange--
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave--
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time left over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist.

Funk

2009-07-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

Summers with their weighty quiet...
(will write a new post soon)

Wow! Let's go to South Africa

2009-06-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, seriously, I just made the most awesome dish, completely out of my comfort zone, within which I have cowardly been hiding (I’ve made vegan osh about 3 times, vegan lasagna twice). Sorry it’s been a while, but here I go.

First of all, I would like to thank a publisher from Peace Corps Writers, Marian Beil, who sent me an African cookbook from her Peace Corps Service. It served as a guiding force, although of course I made some changes (and incidentally some mistakes).

I made a meal combining 3 South African dishes: yellow rice, greens and peanuts, garnished with apricot blatjang (chutney). I made the apricot chutney first, as it does not need to be served hot, and then set it aside.

Apricot Blatjang

1 ¼ cups dried apricots, quartered
¼ cup onion, diced
¼ cup raisins
½ white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons cane sugar
1 tablespoon fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
¼ sliced almonds

Put the apricots, onion, raisins and vinegar into a saucepan. Add one cup of water, enough until all the ingredients are covered. Bring to a boil, but don’t start getting busy with anything else or otherwise spacing out, because you need to keep stirring the mixture. Reduce heat to medium. Now, this is where it gets tricky: you need to pound the garlic, ginger and cayenne with a mortar and pestle—at first I thought that was a joke. I saw a mortar and pestle at Crate and Barrel the other day and laughed at the thing, but those aren’t just for apothecaries. I think I could have used it today. What I did was stick the garlic, ginger and cayenne into a coffee cup and mash it with the end of a spoon, but that was a little frustrating. After that’s mixed decently well, add the salt and coriander (ah-hm, first time I’ve EVER cooked with that spice and it blows me away). Keep stirring your apricot mixture. Once the fruit is soft and the liquid looks like honey (about 15 minutes later), remove it from the heat. Combine the spices. Mix well and put in a serving dish.

Geel Rys

3 tablespoons butter substitute
2 cups long grain rice
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp salt
1 tsp turmeric
½ cup raisins
½ sliced almonds

Melt the butter in a large pot first. Then add the salt and turmeric. Add the rice and make sure to coat each grain before you add 2 cups water. Add your cinnamon sticks and cover, stirring every few minutes. In 20-30 minutes, your rice should be tender, but mine wasn’t. I had to add at least another 1/3 cup of water. I remembered to rinse my rice this time too.

UM’Bido

1 ½ packages or spinach
1 cup coarsely ground peanuts
1 tablespoon butter substitute
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper

Place one package of spinach in a pot with about 2 cups of water—I know, I said 1 ½ packages, that’s because I had to add more spinach to soak up all the water. Maybe you should start with 1 cup water. Heat on medium high. Now the peanuts gave me trouble. I didn’t have pre-ground peanuts and my blender’s broken. I got the bright idea to fix it with duck tape (the ring at the base was cracked), but that only made a HUGE mess and God-awful sounds that I’ll leave to your imagination. I thought about sticking the peanuts in the coffee grinder but even after I washed it, the scent of coffee was just too overwhelming. So I stuck the peanuts in a baggie—I even double-bagged it—and started beating the peanuts with a wooden spoon (it kind of reminded me of the way I used to beat Russian chocolate bars to make chocolate chips in Uzbekistan). That worked reasonably well, and after 20 minutes, the spinach was ready. I added my butter substitute and peanuts and mixed well.

South African poet Dennis Brutus was imprisoned and tortured by the authorities because of his anti-apartheid activities. After his release, he emigrated to the US.

At Night

At night
on the smooth grey concrete of my cell
I heard the enormous roar of the surf
and saw in my mind’s eye
the great white wall of spray rising
like a sheet of shattering glass
where the surge broke
on the shore and rocks and barbed wire
and going to the shed
in hope of a visitor
I greeted the great cypresses
green and black
dreaming of their poised serenity
in the limpid stillness of the brilliant afternoon
gracious as an Umbrian Raphael landscape
but more brilliant and more sharp.

-by Dennis Brutus

Vegan Osh

2009-06-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

Osh is the national dish of Uzbekistan traditionally made with rice, carrots, onions, flavored with cumin and topped with goat meat. I liked it so much that I even served it at my wedding (Stateside), but my version is even better. I learned how to make it extra delicious (and vegan friendly!) with my own extra entertaining method.

1 cup rice
1 cup shredded carrots
1 sliced medium onion
2 tsp cumin
8 ounces of tempeh (I’ve always used three-grain)
Special tempeh sauce
½ cup dry red wine
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
¼ cup hot sauce OR 1 tsp cayenne OR both
Juice from 1 lemon
3 or 4 large crushed cloves of garlic
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano

You will need three separate pots/pans: one medium-size pot to boil one cup of rice, and one pan to sauté the carrots and onion in the cumin, one small pan to cook the tempeh in the special tempeh sauce. That’s how I’m going to organize this post.

one medium-size pot to boil one cup of rice

You know how to make rice don’t you? I’m pretty sure it’s one part rice to 2 parts water with a tablespoon of butter substitute. You supposed to bring it to a boil and then simmer for 35 minutes, but for some reason it never takes that long for me. Oh, and seriously, I just made this: You need to rinse the rice before you cook it. Mmmm…earthy!

one pan to sauté the carrots and onion in the cumin

Drop two tablespoons of olive oil onto the middle of the pan and add the cumin (yes, 1 tsp is a little much, but I barely discovered the spice when I lived in Uzbekistan and I love it—you might want to try ½ tsp). Add the carrots (and if you don’t have whole carrots and decide to peel baby carrots, be warned—that is extra hard. Lay the carrot lengthwise on a cutting board and go to it. This is time consuming though). Add the onions (slice your onion, but then remember to cut it in half so that you’re dealing with semi-rings rather than inflexible, cumbersome rings). Cook for about ten minutes and then add the raisins. Cook until your good sense tells you to stop.

one small pan to cook the tempeh in the special tempeh sauce

Combine the special tempeh sauce ingredients into to pan and mix well with a spatula. Turn your burner to low while you cut the tempeh.
Most tempeh comes in an eight by four block of grain, a little less than an inch thick. Once you manage to get the tempeh out of its double-layer of plastic wrap without cutting yourself, cursing or otherwise destroying your composure, cut the tempeh in half so that you have two eight by four blocks of grain a little less than ½ inch thick. This description is going to get a little weird, but bear with me—I don’t read many recipes, so I probably don’t have the recipe jargon down, but ultimately what you want are a bunch of little tempeh right triangles. Cut the width in halves and the length in fourths. Cut these rectangles into two right triangles along the hypotenuse (but I do remember math jargon it seems).

Add the tempeh right triangles into the special tempeh sauce, assuring that all triangles are all or partially submerged. You shouldn’t have to stack them on top of each other. If they’re not all adequately covered in the special tempeh sauce, sometimes I add more wine. Cover. Cook for 20 minutes on medium to low heat . I usually (and unintentionally) start out cooking at a medium to high heat because I think nothing’s happening on a low heat, but then I quickly reduce to a very low heat, all the while I’m checking my tempeh right triangles and turning them over to make sure the pieces all get their share of the special sauce—did I mention how good it makes the tempeh? SO GOOD! Don’t let the hot sauce or cayenne scare you away. You could always skip one or the other. I wouldn’t skip both because one or the other gives it a nice kick. I haven’t had meat for over two years, but I am pretty sure this is full of meaty animal goodness! AH! Can a vegan say that? Homer-Simpson-esque growl and drool: Ohhh…vegan right triangles…yum-yum-yum. I hope other vegans don’t disown me when I say that I love meat (I just don’t love eating it). I have fond memories of meat. Fond, fond memories, and I have not so fond memories—rotten, spoiled, dysentery-inducing memories, but that’s beside the point because this tempeh is so good! And it’s really good for you, too.

Now the presentation of osh. Hopefully, you didn’t burn the rice—which is no small feat because you have had to tend to 3 (three!) separate pots! Put the rice evenly on a serving platter. Now hopefully you didn’t burn the onions and the carrots either, which again would be pretty incredible (yes it would be, if I didn’t do it—but it’s still good. My tempeh is perfect!). Put the mixture in a cookbook-photo fashion on the rice. Then add tempeh in the same stylish fashion. Enjoy, with a poem of course.

Now, you can’t enjoy the good without first acknowledging the bad. Poet Yousuf Juma is from Bukhara, Uzbekistan. He is openly critical of Islam Karimov’s oppressive regime, and hence he and his family endure constant police harassment and brutality, and he is banned from publication in his country. He wrote the following poem about the massacre in Andijon which precipitated the Peace Corps’ evacuation. The ghazal form beautifully embodies this theme.

The best men of the people were shot in Andijan.
Elders like Dukchi-ishan, were shot in Andijan.

People were shot in Namangana, shot in Fergana,
the very best lions were shot in Andijan.

The blind are alive, the jackals are alive,
Sharifjan Shokurovs were shot in Andijan.

Future Babarakhin Mashrabs were killed,
tigers like Babur were shot in Andijan.

In their hearts they were wild activists, endurers of the right way,
let their graves be full of light, they were shot in Andijan.

They went off faithful to their faith, they went off with open eyes,
the earth was left without men, they were shot at Andijan.

Vegan Lasagna

2009-05-25T08:07:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

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.