Provence in Austin, to the best of my abilities

The south of France is my favorite part of the world that I've never visited. When I lived in Paris, the money and the time off from work never seemed to work out in my favor, but there was this one Provencal restaurant that I loved in the 6th arrondissement. They served kirs made with rose liqueur instead of chambord, and the aromas and flavors of lavender, thyme, goat cheese, and olive oil made me forget the cold and rainy weather. Provencal cooking is much more Mediterranean than Northern French cooking, and relies more on fresh veggies and less on cream sauces and meats. The perfect compromise for a vegetarian Francophile.

photo by Andrew Lee Dolan

A couple of weeks ago I was strolling around Whole Foods (it was a Friday, so no market) with no idea of what I wanted to eat besides "seasonal." I came home with some heirloom tomatoes, a couple of eggplants, a bunch of basil, some goat cheese, and a loaf of French bread. What I came up with was this:

Provencal Gratin

2 heirloom tomatoes, thinly sliced
2 Chinese eggplants, thinly sliced (I prefer using these to the more common Italian eggplants. Their smaller size makes them so much more... buttery.)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup goat cheese
1 1/2 cups French bread, cut into cubes
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup sliced basil, reserve some for garnish

Preheat the oven to 375.
Layer the tomato and eggplant in concentric circles around a 9 inch round baking dish.
Drizzle the olive oil and sprinkle the garlic over the vegetables.
Cover and bake for 25 minutes.
Remove from the oven. Add about half the bread cubes and the basil, then bake for 10 min. longer, uncovered.
Remove it again, then add the rest of the bread crumbs and the goat cheese. Bake for another 1o min., or until the cheese browns.
Remove one last time. Once the gratin is cool, serve it topped with basil.

I found this to be a pretty complete meal in itself... we just enjoyed it with a bottle of dry rose!

A late summer's meal

I am an early riser. Ok, not really these days, but I'd like to be. One sizzling late August morning, we luxuriously slept til 10:30 before going to the farmer's market. By the time we got there, most farmers were out of the heirloom tomatoes I'd thought of buying, due to the hour or the weather, and Taco Deli was (gasp) out of tacos.

What most stalls did have in abundance, however, was okra. Now, it's easy to go a long time without having it any way but fried. And while I occasionally do get a craving for something greasy and breaded, I've pretty much weaned myself off fried foods (with the notable exception of fried avocado tacos... sigh).

That's where this recipe comes in. The okra was delicately crunchy and bright accompanied by stewed cherry tomatoes, and was a perfect side for Andy's cashew and sesame-crusted homemade tofu.Okra with Tomatoes (adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian):

1/4 c peanut oil
1 /2 lb okra
20 cherry tomatoes
2 minced garlic cloves
2 tbsp lime juice
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
optional pinch or two of cayenne (I left this out, since the tofu crust was already spicy)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Cut the tails and tops off the okra and slice it into thin rounds.2. Heat the oil over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the okra and saute for about 10 minutes, until it begins to brown.
3. Turn the heat down to medium-low, add the cherry tomatoes and saute for another 3 minutes or so. Be careful not to let brown turn into burnt.
4. Add the spices and gently cook for another 4-5 minutes, until the tomatoes release their juices a bit.
5. Reclaim your chair from the contented cat, and enjoy!

New house, new kitchen

Hi! My name is Meadow.
Let me introduce you to my new kitchen.
It's so much bigger than the old one! More than one person can stand in it! And it has a dishwasher!
Ok. I've got too much to do, between napping, destroying blinds, and fighting with the other cat in the house. Gotta go!
***
Now that we're more or less settled in the new house, I can finally cook again (and blog again.)
Aren't these peppers gorgeous?
I like bell peppers just fine, but I never found them all that inspiring until last Saturday. At the downtown market right now, every stall has an abundance, in colors and varieties I've never seen before. I sampled one, and the taste was a revelation. It was a little spicy, very juicy, and not at all like what you typically find at the supermarket.
I also decided to try a new kind of pepper. This is a cubanelle pepper. It's a little sweeter than your typical bell pepper, and its skin is a lovely bright orange.
I'd been wanting to figure out ways to use tempeh for a while. I've been a vegetarian for the last decade or so, but I've tended to focus on fresh vegetables and ok, cheese, rather than the products some of my friends swear by, i.e. tempeh, seitan, Bragg's, TVP, etc. I'd bought a package of tempeh at the small, independent grocery store across the street from our house (love this neighborhood!), so I decided to make a tempeh curry with my fresh farmer's market peppers.

Tempeh curry with bell peppers

1 8 oz package tempeh, cubed
1/4 cup olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
4–5 peppers (I used a blend of cubanelle and bell), cut into thin strips
1 14 oz can coconut milk (I used lite, and it was still pretty creamy)
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp turmeric
pinch cayenne
rice for serving
1. Heat the oil over medium heat. Brown the tempeh in oil, about 3 min. per side. Set the tempeh aside on a plate covered in paper towels. Make sure you get all sides of the tempeh browned.

2. Add the onions and peppers to the oil. Saute until softened, about 4 min.

3. Add the coconut milk and spices. Simmer covered for 5 min. covered and 5 min. uncovered, until the sauce thickens.

4. Add the tempeh back in and simmer for 5 min. more.

Just for fun: a super-70s photo of our dining room!

gourmet veggie hot dog toppings

Today I delivered some stiff competition to the likes of Giada de Laurentiis and Rachael Ray! I was filmed doing a short segment on gourmet vegan hot dog toppings as a promo for ilovemikelitt.com's annual Fourth of July Veggie Hot Dog Eating Contest. I'll be on vacation in Minnesota this year, but it's always a great time!I uttered the line, "Hey, y'all! Sick of that boring old ketchup-mustard-veganaise?" about twenty times, nearly burned my chili every time Argentina scored, and came up with three original toppings for your next vegan cookout: sour cherry relish with soy yogurt amd mint, fried olives with romesco sauce, and black bean-espresso chili. Recipes below!

Sour Cherry Relish (adapted from Madhur Jaffery's World Vegetarian):1 cup pitted dried sour cherries (available at Wheatsville)
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 dried red chile
2 tbsp water
1 tsp salt

This is the easiest one of all, and the collective favorite. It's inspired by Iranian and Afghani cooking. Just puree the hell out of it in a food processor, and serve with soy (or regular) yogurt and fresh chopped mint.

Fried olives:1 cup flour
1 egg (I left this out to veganize it, but were I making it for non-vegans I would include it, to facilitate binding the batter to the olives)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp smoked sea salt
40 pitted olives (I used a blend of kalamata and Spanish green)
olive oil

Blend flour, egg, baking powder, and salt. Coat olives in the mixture.
Fill a saucepan about 1 inch with olive oil, heat.
Fry for about 4 minutes, until olives get puffy and golden.Serve with romesco sauce, below:

Easy romesco sauce (loosely adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's recipe):
1 dried ancho chile
4 roasted red peppers
1/3 cup slivered almonds
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/3 cup olive oilStem chile and boil it in 3/4 cup water for 5 minutes. Reserve 2 tbsp cooking liquid.
Another job for the food processor. Mix all ingredients together (including reserved ancho liquid.) Also great over tofu or grilled veggies!

And this is what I'll be eating for lunch over the next few days-- Black Bean and Espresso Chili!3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 roasted red peppers, chopped
2 cloves garlic
2 tsp chili powder
2 1/2 tbsp espresso powder
30 oz black beans
30 oz canned diced tomatoes
1 bag Boca crumbles
salt and pepper to taste

Saute onions, peppers, garlic, chili powder, and espresso powder in olive oil over medium heat for 10 minutes.
Add remaining ingredients, simmer for 20 minutes more.

Enjoy, and don't forget to go to the Tiniest Bar in Texas on Sunday for the event!

This is what you make when...

... you have soccer and work on the brain and all you want to do is relax.

It was a Sunday night, and I was wiped out from watching Brazil beat Cote d'Ivoire, complete with live vuvuzela! (They sound much better when there are fewer of them. The vuvuzela is definitely a case of less is more.) Lounging on the couch, I came up with an idea for a meal I've never cooked before. It was fresh, it was inventive, it was...labor intensive.

So what's a lazy cook to do?
This:It's whole wheat pasta tossed with pan-roasted cherry tomatoes from the market, eggplant, fresh mozzarella, and basil. Pan-roasted tomatoes sound fancy, but are super simple. All you do is saute some garlic in olive oil, then add the tomatoes. Stew them over a fairly low heat until they start to release their juices. Maybe one or two will burst, but you want them to remain fairly intact. Add some crushed red pepper and fresh basil towards the end of cooking, and there you have it!

Even Meadow the gourmand cat wanted some!

Squash and fresh thyme pizza: just like Totino's!

No matter how committed you may be to a vegetarian, vegan, seasonal, organic, macro, you-name-it diet, you've got at least one guilty pleasure. And don't tell me it's brown rice. For me, it's mac and cheese. Not homemade. Not whole wheat. Not organic. The radioactive-orange/ made-with-twenty-ingredients-I-can't-pronounce Kraft kind. There's something oddly comforting about squeezing that orange goo all over those noodles, however revolting that might sound. Although I'm pretty successful at not eating anything straight from a box these days, I just love the stuff.

For my boyfriend, Andy, it's Totino's pizza. When he's had a rough day/night of work, he's wont to pick it up at the Snappy Mart up the street from his house. Although I've never tasted it myself, from what I hear, it's pure greasy gas station goodness. Totino's wikipedia page provides further enlightenment: in 2006, Totino's phased out the use of 100% real cheese on its pizzas, replacing it with a "combination of real and imitation cheeses," which led to criticism by the FDA over the new, doubled amount of saturated fat. We sure do love our processed cheese!
One Saturday a few weeks ago, I picked up whatever looked good at the farmer's market with the intention of figuring it out later: some baby yellow squashes, some fresh thyme, and some brussels sprouts. What I figured out was pizza: sauteed squash with a fresh thyme/lemon pesto and oozy, pungent Italian robiola cheese. I'm a bad blogger: I don't remember exactly what went in to the thyme pesto. I will tell you, though, that the lemon was key. It really brightened up the flavor.And, somehow, I made a pizza that Andy swore tasted uncannily like Totino's (except with real cheese.) Becuase Robiola is such a flavorful cheese, a little really went a long way. Apparently, thyme is the secret ingredient in their recipe and satisfied (at least for now) the gas station pizza craving. Success! We served it with some of Andy's seared brussels sprouts and some nice Spanish white wine. The minerality of this Velarde Blanco really complemented the herbal flavor of the thyme and brought out a nuttiness in the Robiola cheese that wasn't immediately apparent.

Strawberry muffins

Strawberry season in the Austin area has just begun, and how gloriously sweet they are! Saturday morning started off cloudy and cool, and I picked up a pint of strawberries before heading to the lake for some canoeing. They had just been picked that morning, and were still coated with a thin layer of field.

Sunday morning, I woke up to a sunny, warm day and wanted to fill my apartment with warm baking smells. Hence the strawberry muffins:1 pint strawberries
1/3 c brown sugar
1 3/4 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 c low fat buttermilk (or soy milk, or regular milk)
1/4 c vegetable oil
1 egg
3/4 c walnuts (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners.

2. Slice strawberries and mash slightly with the sugar, using either a potato masher or the back of a spatula. Set aside. (Do this first to give the juice and sugar time to blend.)
3. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl.
4. Whisk together buttermilk, vegetable oil, and the egg.
5. Fold the buttermilk mixture and the strawberries into the flour mixture until just combined. Add the walnuts.
6. Bake for 15-17 minutes.Good morning! These were delicious - the mashed strawberry tasted like fresh jam and made them oh so moist. I didn't think the walnuts added all that much to the flavor. I'd leave them out next time.