I know, I’ve been irresponsible to you, my readers. I haven’t been terribly inspired lately about creating new recipes. I’ve been consuming a book that’s 550 pages of dense reading: Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present
When we think of thickeners, classic French cooking comes to mind with a mixture called roux. Roux involves butter and flour. The butter is melted and the flour added to the butter and then cooked until the flour loses its pasty taste. This roux is then added to soups and sauces to thicken them. Roux is a large component in Country Gravy, and Alfredo Sauce. And alongside veal stock, it is the backbone of Classic French Cuisine
It’s not so surprising that there is more than one kind of thickener in the world. Arrowroot, cornstarch, tapioca starch, potato starch, kudzo, and others can be used in various ways to thicken sauces, soups, and other mixes. Arrowroot is my favorite. It is flavorless and gives a glossy sheen to a soup or sauce.
There is still time to register for my next class at Luci's Healthy Marketplace: Vegan Holiday Cooking Class with the Kitchen Shaman.
Please register today for fun learning about tofurkey and pumpkin bread. There will be Chocolate Avocado Pie, and Tofurkey cooked in a classic style. There will be cranberries as well.
One of my favorite tools in the kitchen is the microplane. They come in a couple of different forms, and whatever variety you use, they are great to have. Microplanes can grate ginger, and whole nutmeg, zest lemons, limes and oranges, and mince garlic. Once you grasp how to use this little gem to grate fresh nutmeg, you’ll never buy ground nutmeg again.
My next favorite handy tool is a mini food processor, or mini food chopper. I laughed at it when I first saw it. This handy Food Chopper Plus by Black & Decker makes quick work of mincing garlic, chopping cilantro, mincing onions, or any other chopping job too small for the regular sized food processor.
If you are a fan of eggplant, like I am, this traditional Indian dish will satisfy the cravings on any given day. Easy to make, it is a winner at the table every time. Make sure to check your pantry for the essential spices, turmeric, cumin, asefoetida (hing), and coriander.
Was it ambitious of me to take on writing five days a week through the month of October? I have so much to write about yet I sit here, looking for a topic, trying to find a subject on food, and the best I can come up with is that I am not as inspired as I want to be about food. Maybe it’s because I am tired, and maybe it’s because I’m not cooking as much. Still, I love to write, and am excited at the prospect of keeping this up through the rest of the month.
If any of you have ideas for topics, or something you would like to learn about food, please let me know. I’ll research the subject and write about it. Hopefully tomorrow I can sit down and block out some topics for the next two weeks. That’s only 12 more posts. I’m sure a seasoned and informed chef like myself can come up with 12 topics that you, the reader, would want to read.
1) How do you get nutrients in a vegan/vegetarian diet?
2) Why don’t vegans eat honey?
3) Isn’t being vegan just like being a vegetarian?
These are the tops questions that come up in discussions about vegan cuisine. It is getting almost as old as the top three questions about being a lesbian (people don’t ask me these questions any more, we are a little more educated as a population).
1) How do you get nutrients in a vegan/vegetarian diet?
Nutrients are easy. Eat legumes, lentils, beans, split peas, dahl, fava beans. All these foods have high amounts of protein. Eat vegetables. Vegetables have loads of minerals that your body needs to function. Folic acid, potassium, calcium, manganese, and some I can’t quite pronounce. Eating a solid stream of plant matter keeps the body balanced and healthy. Fruits and nuts also help the body. Nuts have loads of protein and other minerals and vitamins. Fruit is loaded with Vitamin C, sugars, and fiber that the system needs to keep going. Some people say fruit has bad sugars. Not true. The body can process these sugars easier than the sugar produced by corn.
Turmeric is called the Golden Spice. It is a root, a rhizome of a plant in the ginger family. Turmeric is used as a spice, a coloring, and an healing herb. Its uses date back at least 4,000 years.
Turmeric needs rainy, wet places to grow. Once harvested, it is boiled, dried in ovens, and then pounded into a powder. Once in powder form, it is used in the process of dying fabrics, and in the kitchen as a main ingredient in most curries, and subzies (vegetables).
The health benefits of the active ingredient curcumin are numerous. Its main function is an anti-inflammatory. It also aids in digestion, and is used as an anti-oxidant, destroying free radicals in the system. More research is being done on the benefits of turmeric.
There are days I am not cooking and on those days we get to eat out. There's a favorite restaurant of ours, Green New American Vegetarian, located in Tempe, AZ. Tempe is a college town, and the restaurant reflects the image. It's artsy, open, and in a strip mall. The clientele are college students and professors, and college dropouts who like to hang with the crowd. There's a little mix of other types, but mainly that's it.
To get to Green one has to know the football and baseball schedules of the University to avoid the traffic. And it is 15-20 minutes away from our house, depending on traffic and time of day. Early this summer we got wind that Chef Damon was going to open a Phoenix location. Phoenix is a big town, we could only hope it would be close to us. As the plans progressed we kept a watch on Facebook for any news. I actually figured out where the location was. I frequently drive down 7th st , and I kept noticing this same area under construction.
This month I'll be talking all about chilies in my cooking class at Luci's. Where they are from, how to use them, and tips on how not to burn yourself while preparing chilis.
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