What I Had for Lunch Today: A Taste Explosion in My Mouth

I'm pretty nosy, which is why I probably enjoy being a journalist so much. My job is more or less to travel around, eat new foods, have new experiences, ask personal questions, and get paid for it. At my age, I've seen and done quite a bit, so when I encounter something I haven't seen or tried before, I get excited.

I'm also pretty open to suggestion. I can still picture, clear as day, a tray of muffins in the cafeteria of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, where I was working in 1970. One of the muffins had a little flag stuck in it, saying, "New flavor! Try me!" Guess which muffin I picked? Basically, whenever I get that message--whether it's written on a flag or not--I'm there.

Today I was flipping through a new cookbook (well, "uncookbook" to be precise: it's all raw foods), and I read this sentence:

"Words cannot explain the taste explosion in your mouth when you eat this."

Suddenly I had to try this dish, a.s.a.p.! The book is Love on a Plate: The Gourmet UnCookbook, by Cara Brotman and Markus Rothkranz, and the dish is called simply "Mango blueberry mint." I didn't have all the ingredients, so I immediately went to the store to stock up. Got home, realized I had forgotten one item, went right back out again. The dish itself, fortunately, only took a couple of minutes to throw together once I had all the ingredients. Garlic, ginger, jalapeño pepper, and fresh mint leaves, all chopped up and tossed with mango chunks and blueberries, then a few squirts of fresh lime juice and a sprinkle of salt. "Explosion" is right! This is my new favorite food.

What I Had for Lunch Today: Love on a Plate

I usually have a salad for lunch, and I don't vary the salad much. Romaine always, maybe a little tomato, red pepper or celery, a simple dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. On top, a sprinkle of chopped nuts, fried tofu, chickpeas or some such. I'm happy to report I'm out of my salad rut with the arrival of this interesting new book, Love on a Plate.

Love on a Plate is an "uncookbook"--all the food is raw. That means no ingredient is ever processed at over 118 degrees Fahrenheit. A blender--preferably a powerful VitaMix--and a food dehydrator are frequently called into service. However, nothing more than a cutting board, a sharp knife, and that old Hamilton Beach blender you got for a wedding present in 1986 will get you pretty far along if you're not quite ready to commit to the raw vegan lifestyle full-time.

 The authors, Cara Brotman and Markus Rothkranz, look like they've sprung fully-dressed from somewhere on Rodeo Drive: tanned, blond, healthy, white and gold outfits glittering in the Southern California sun. Cara is a longtime vegan raw foodie, chef and restaurateur. Markus is a movie special effects guy turned health guru. Together they make living a healthy life simple, attractive and fun.

ALL of the food in this book is extremely easy to prepare. Some of the ingredients need a few hours in the dehydrator, but not counting that drying-out time, a recipe might take three minutes to whip up. Today I made a cheese, date pineapple salad with kale, and it was pretty yummy. I love kale, but I never use it raw in salad. I stuck to the recipe, though, mixing it with cut-up pineapple, dates, scallions, cashews and the non-dairy almond cheese. The dressing is olive oil, cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and nutritional yeast (that's the pale yellow powder with the cheesy flavor, not the stuff you use for baking). Again, I'm not a big fan of vinegar, balsamic or otherwise, but I stuck to the recipe. And it was great! All the flavors and textures mixed together perfectly: sweet, sour, salty...creamy, chewy, crunchy: perfection. I even licked the plate.

What I Had for Lunch Today: Vegan Egg Salad

I'm trying to eliminate eggs from my diet, for a variety of reasons. In dishes that traditionally call for eggs, substitutes can be made, with varying results. In pancakes and layer cakes, for example, I dare you to tell the difference. In eggplant parmigiana, on the other hand, making a credible batter is difficult. Egg salad, fortunately for me since that's what I was craving today, is one of those dishes for which excellent alternatives exist.

To make this particularly successful batch, I started with pressed tofu from Trader Joe's. It's quite dry, so it doesn't need to be weighted, drained, or dried off with paper towels. It's also organic, nutritious, and cheap. I mashed it up with a fork in a little bowl, then added a couple of spoonsful of nutritional yeast, a couple of pinches of black salt, and some turmeric cooked in a bit of oil. I then had the equivalent of a hard-boiled egg or two.

To the "egg" mixture, I added a couple of dollops of vegan mayonnaise, some sliced celery, and some chopped-up bread-and-butter pickles (which I had made only yesterday), salt and freshly-ground black pepper. I dumped it on a plate of shredded romaine and garnished it with tomato and parsley. That's a soy mocha latte with it.

Nutritional yeast, by the way, has a cheesy or nutty flavor, which gives a boost to notoriously-tasteless tofu. It's also got 9 grams of protein in every two tablespoons. The tofu itself has 14 grams of protein per serving (one serving = a bit over three ounces), so do the math: the vegan version is actually much higher in protein than real egg salad.

The black salt--which I purchased in a local Asian market--contains a lot of sulphur. It comes in big chunks, so I have to pound it into smaller pieces and then grind them up in a mortar and pestle (at least until I find my salt grinder). Although the big chunks are blackish, the ground-up salt is pink. The sulphur in the black salt adds that totally authentic eggy aroma and taste.

Turmeric is mainly for golden color, though it adds a bit of flavor also. But please: never use turmeric raw! You have to fry it in oil first. NEVER just sprinkle it in at the end, no matter what the recipe says. In most traditional recipes calling for turmeric, frying something is part of the cooking process anyway, so that's when the turmeric goes in. For "egg" salad, it's kind of weird, because it's an otherwise no-cook dish. But if you're like me, you can taste the horrible raw taste of uncooked turmeric, and so you get out your tiny cast-iron skillet and add your pinch of spice to a few drops of oil and fry for a few seconds. The result is a cheap, nutritious, cruelty-free vegan dish that tastes pretty much exactly like the original.

What I Had for Lunch Today: Vegan Sausage and Potato Scramble

If I had to run out of my house with only one item--in the case of some disaster like a fire or flood--it might well be my cast iron skillet. (The family photos are all in the cloud.) These days the skillet rarely makes it back into the cupboard; it's about the only cooking implement I put on my stove. Cooking for the family was a Norman Rockwell-style affair; cooking for myself is usually a one-dish meal.

Today it was onions, red peppers, green peppers, vegan Italian-style sausage, Yukon Gold potatoes and a handful of those little cherry tomatoes, all stir-fried in olive oil with a bit of sweet basil and oregano. A good meal for a rainy day.

Vegan Pancakes à ma façon

All my kids can cook, but they'll never be too old to like Mommy turning out a meal that they don't have to prepare or clean up after. And it's amazing how the two who aren't vegan and who on a regular basis used to declaim vehemently against "that tofu crap" will polish off a whole meal made without meat, eggs, or dairy.

Today I was in the mood for pancakes, and I had two willing customers. These are made in the traditional New England way, from an old Vermont cookbook. Simple substitutions render them vegan. Difference in flavor and texture is negligible.

Original recipe: for about four of these dinner-plate sized pancakes, stir together a cup of flour, a spoonful of sugar, a spoonful of yellow cornmeal, a half teaspoon of baking soda, three-quarters of a teaspoon of baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Add an egg, a cup of buttermilk, and a couple of spoons of melted butter and stir sunwise just barely to mix. (If you mix out all the lumps, you'll have crepes, not pancakes.) Pour onto hot greased skillet, preferably cast iron, and turn once.

Now, I never have buttermilk around, so I just sour some milk by adding a couple of spoonfuls of lemon juice or vinegar. If I'm going the vegan route, I use soymilk instead of cow's milk, souring it the same way. Instead of melted butter, any vegetable oil. Instead of an egg, I add a teaspoon and a half of egg substitute, which looks like baking powder, along with the dry ingredients, and a couple of tablespoons of water or extra soymilk with the wet. Canoleo is a nice butter substitute made out of non-hydrogenated canola oil, good for slathering over the pancakes.

I like maple syrup, but my boys prefer a syrup I made up, and for which I have given a recipe in a previous blog entry. It's sugar and just a couple of spoons of water brought to a boil in a heavy pan. Then some cinnamon and plenty of heavy cream swirled in. Then some vanilla once it's off the heat. Silk coffee creamer from the dairy case is a good vegan substitute for cream...it's the right color and texture, doesn't separate, and doesn't have the disgusting hydrogenated and non-food ingredients of fake coffee creamer.

Et voilà: pancakes à ma façon.

Pani Puri Masala

I'm continuing to document the vegan meals I eat. Here's a simple veggie burger with sautéed mushrooms and onions, spinach and a few home fries. And tea, of course. What makes my mouth water for this meal is the simple addition of pani puri masala sprinkled on the vegetables.

In Urdu, pani is water, puri is a crisp fried bread, and masala is [spice] mixture. Pani puri masala is a combination of white salt, black salt, black pepper, chilis, tamarind, and maybe mint, ginger, caraway, asafaetida, or whatever. It's salty, sour, and spicy hot all at the same time. Traditionally it's added to a bowl of water into which stuffed puris are dipped before eating. You pop the whole dripping business in one bite and get an explosion of flavors and textures inside your mouth.

But of course you can also add this particular masala to anything else you want. When I'm too lazy to cook, I sometimes just microwave a potato and season it with butter and a generous layer of pani puri masala. I have enough Irish and Polish in me to know I could live on potatoes if I had to. And a wide enough acquaintance with spices to make that diet delicious.