Spaghetti Squash

From time to time I have seen spaghetti squash in the blogosphere (to be honest I have known of this squash for a long time even before blogging became fashionable), however, I never could get my hands on one. This week my health food market offered spaghetti sqash for the very first time. Of course I couldn't resist. So I bought a nice specimen:

I consulted the internet about how to prepare the squash and decided to use the oven version; I don't use a microwave anyway, so this was not an option. The first problems presented themselves.  The squash was incredibly tough, so I was glad when I heard M's car coming around the corner. I definitely needed some muscles to help me cut the squash in halves.

The rest was quite easy I scraped the seeds and the gooey stuff out with a spoon, oiled it and placed it, cut side down, on a tray.

So far so good. I already knew it would take about an hour for the sqash to soften up, so I pushed some potatoes in the oven and waited. After 75 minutes the squash was still so firm you couldn't push a fork into it :( I waited 15 more minutes but finally got it out. By then  at least the flesh was soft and it was possible to scrape it out. Now the real tragedy started. On all the photos on other blogs you could see wonderful fluffy spaghetti like scrapes. But not with mine :(

I have to admit it resembled short threads, but in no way like spaghettis but rather like exceedingly super extra short vermicelli :(

I used Lori Lange's spaghetti sqash recipe from recipe girl as a kind of template. Of course I didn't use meat but a tofu mince and added some bell pepper to the sauce, but this was roughly how I served it. I especially liked the way she used the toppings to not only make it an eye-candy but also very very yummie. However, I missed the starchy texture other squash has (butternut or hokkaido), so it was no replacement for spaghettis at all. I was only satisfied when I got out the baked potatoes and added them steaming hot to the plate.

The dish was actually vegan, but M and C sprinkled some Montello cheese on it.

But my big question is: has any of my readers used spaghetti squash before? What have I done wrong with mine? What are your experiences with this sort of squash? I would really like to give it a second chance, so I rely on your help :)

Potato-Mash Quiche

Veganblog.it is a project to publish vegan recipes and to promote a vegan lifestyle. More or less it is a vegan blogger's union. People with or without blogs post their vegan recipes here.

It's sister site http://www.promiseland.it/  is a wealth of information about all things concerning an ethical lifestyle, from articles to shopping advice and  current events (mainly in Italy of course).

The foodblog produces so many recipes and ideas that you just can't bookmark them anymore - way too many. But now and then I just have to try one out, so last weekend I made this  'Quiche 3P (panna, patate, and peperone which means cream, potatoes, and bell pepper) from Alice.

You see I had to rename the quiche since '3P' is not working in English and I used some other ingredients anyway; hence I called mine a potato-mash quiche what it in essence is. Thanks for the recipe Alice, it was a wonderful dish which will be on our table more than once, since you can so easily modify it :)

And here comes the recipe in English with my adaptations:

Potatoe-mash quiche (1 pie shell)

Ingredients:

1 package frozen vegan puff pastry sheets

150 ml vegetable cooking cream (I used soy)

3 floury potatoes (like Kind Edward or Desiree)

1 red bell pepper, sliced

1 fennel bulb, cut in slices and blanched

herbal salt, pepper, turmeric to taste

olive oil (optional)

What to do:

• Let thaw the puff pastry, and preheat the oven to 200° C. Arrange pastry sheets in a greased pie shell (you will need an at least 1-2 cm high border)
• Boil and mash the potatoes, add salt and spices and mix in the soy cream.
• Carefully fold in your vegetables.
• Fill into your pie crust and level out.
• Drizzle some olive oil on top and bake for 20-25 minutes.
• Enjoy hot or cold

Tip:

Next time I will add some more veggies like green onions, corn, peas ... whatever you fancy or have in your fridge. You could also experiment a bit with your spices. The mash is a wonderful collecting pond for all kinds of veggies. A very versatile and tasty dish.

Ratatouille Tart with Red Lentil Crust

While you desperately wait for a post with a bit more archaeology in it, I'll show you a recipe I found on http://www.gustoaroma.at/. The crust is heavenly for vegans and gluten free gourmets (or gourmands like us) because it is based on red lentils and oat. Thanks for the recipe bettal!
The original recipe (http://www.gustoaroma.at/2011/05/linsen-tarte-au-ratatouille/) is vegetarian, but readily adaptable into a vegan dish. And that's exactly what I did; I left out the cheese and only put some on top of M's half. The other half got some pine nuts instead.

Although the dough was quite soft and it was a bit difficult to actually cut the tart in nice pieces it was very very yummy.

When I packed up the leftovers, however, the dough had settled and became quite firm. We were just too greedy, again. So I recommend to either put in some more oat meal or wait for about 10 minutes for the dough to rest and firm up. Look at that crust, so nice and red :)

And here is the recipe:

Ratatouille tart with red lentil crust

For the crust:

125 g red lentils

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic

1 tablespoon tomato paste

50 g oat meal

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

salt and pepper to taste

For the topping:

1 small eggplant, diced

1 courgette, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 onion, diced

2 large tomatoes, diced

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons Herbes de Provence

salt and pepper to taste

For the 'egg' glaze:

3 eggs (vegan version: 2 tablespoons of silken tofu and 1 flax egg*)

125 g Crème Fraiche (vegan version: 125 g soy cream)

100 g Cheese (vegan version: roasted pine nuts or vegan cheeze)

What to do:

1. First make the crust. Wash and cook the lentils in plenty of water until they start to become mushy. Strain the lentils and let cool. While lentils cook, fry the onion in olive oil until they are soft but don't let them brown. Add pressed garlic and turn off the heat. Mix all ingredients for the crust. You might need to add some more oat meal. Spread evenly into an oiled pie dish.

2. Heat oven to 190°.

3. Prepare the filling; heat olive oil and fry the onions. Add courgette, bell pepper, and eggplant and roast slightly. Add seasoning and herbs. Finally add tomatoes and let cook until excess water has evaporated. Spread on the lentil base.

4. Prepare the glaze. Mix all the ingredients and spread evenly over the vegetables. Sprinkle with cheeze or pine nuts.

5. Let bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until glaze has settled and gets firm.

* to replace one egg, measure one tablespoon of flax seed and grind in a blender or coffee grinder. Add ground flax seed to a small bowl with 3 tablespoons of water, and whisk. Voila! This will replace one egg in a recipe (excerpt from ehow )

A movie about a 'normal' American guy turning into an animal rights activist

This movie (The witness, 2000) might already be more than ten years old, but sadly it is still of topical interest. This is from the movie synopsis from the official movie site.

At least spend two and a half minutes and watch the trailer. And stop buying fur. For you it's decoration, for the animal it's a question of (miserable) life and death.

"A creature of Manhattan, Eddie is exposed to the fashion industry’s hard-sell of fur as a luxury item, and it troubles him. “I fell in love with a fur bearer,” he reasons, “and I didn’t see any difference between my little fur bearer and another fur bearer traveling the forest.”

Eddie converts one of his work vans into a mobile audio-visual system, an invention he calls “FaunaVision.” When his construction office closes down for the night, he takes to the streets in his van and delivers images of animals on fur farms and trap lines—right to the heart of the city, where the furs are bought and sold. As he pulls over to the curb, crowds gather, people stare..."

One can't get enough of Turkish food

I looked up my old photos and *gosh* did we make bad photos these days. But then there was no such thing as digital cameras then, and mine was a 'permanent loan' from my father. He got shaky and stopped doing photography, which was a pity, because he did astonishingly well (considering the technology he had to use). Here are two photos from Pamukkale. A photo on Acky's blog reminded me of this beautiful place. We either didn' see the colourful algae, or they were not around yet. All I remember are the beautiful calcite terraces:

But back to the food. I had leftovers from the Turkish feast we had and so I kept on cooking Turkish food, well almost...

Today we had Ispanakli Bulgur Corbasi (lentil-bulgur-spinach-soup). The original version is from Binnur's cookbook. I changed it a bit to accustom it to what I had in stock.

Yes, I know, the cup says tomato soup. But don't be tricked, it contained a wonderful and hearty Turkish soup. Here is the recipe (for 3-4 servings)

Ingredients

1/2 cup red lentils, rinsed
1/2 cup bulgur, cooked
1 small onion
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 clove garlic
olive oil for frying
1 cup tomatoes, chopped (or from a can of polpa di tomato)
1 teaspoon harissa
4 cups vegetable stock
1-2 teaspoon cumin
salt, black pepper
mint (optional)
2 cups fresh spinach (or kale or swiss chard greens), chopped
1 organic lemon (because you want to use the peel)

What do do:

Sauté the onion in olive oil for a couple of minutes. Add the chopped garlic. When it smells nicely add the thyme and lentils, stir until the lentils are covered in oil. Add the crushed tomatoes, the harissa paste, cumin, salt and pepper. Stir well, then add the vegetable broth.
Cook until lentils are nearly done. Add bulgur, spinach and heat up well for about 5 minutes.
Put a lemon wedge on top before serving (don't forget this, as it adds immensely to the flavour).

I added a leek-and-silken-tofu pie which was so yummy (you have to ask me for the recipe, typing one is enough, I get easily bored *hehe*)

A culinary tour around the world - third stop: Turkey

So, Joan from Foodalogue is taking us to Turkey this week. As you can imagine, I'm very happy about this stop. She already posted a lovely vegetarian recipe, Imam Bayildi (literally: the imam fainted), go and have a look at it.

I have been to Turkey once, but this has been ages ago and the dishes I can remember are baklava because it was devastatingly sweet, sickly sweet tea and spinach börek which I just loved. There isn't much else; maybe the police razzia into which we ran because some Turkish guy took us to an illustrous night club made me forget profane things like eating. We were young we didn't need to eat ...

Turkey actually became much more meaningful to me during my later studies at uni. Turkey, being part of the 'Fertile Crescent', is home to many of our domesticated plants. The early domesticates were genetically most similar to wild plants from the Karacadağ region of southeast Turkey. The location for domesticating einkorn for example is placed in this area. Single origins for both tetraploid wheat and barley are also suggested, with wheat definitely from the Karacadağ area, too (Öskan et al. 2002).

Wild einkorn wheat in the Karacadag mountain range
B. Kilian et al.fig. 6. In: M. Glaubrecht (ed.) Evolution in Action 2010, 137-66.

Lev-Yadun et al. 2000

The 'Fertile Crescent'  was not only the origin of einkorn, wheat, emmer, and barley but also of lentils, peas, flax, and chickpeas. Sedentary hunter-gatherers in sites like Hallan Çemi or Çayönü of course also ate wild animals and early domesticated pigs but they intensively used the fore-runners of our cultivated grains and pulses. Finds of querns and handstones, mortars and pestles, suggest an avid use of grasses, pulses, and nuts (esp. almonds).

Before I venture into the origin of religion in this area I want to come back to the reason of this blog post, the coulinary journey to modernTurkey. OK, just one last picture from the famous site of Göbekli Tepe, the mother of all religion, also called the 'Garden Eden'. Look at this impressive monolith, it's 10,000 years old!

Schmidt 2006, fig. 59

Well, where were we? Ah yes, Turkish cuisine ....

I wanted to keep up the spirit of the late hunter-gatherers in ancient Turkey and look for it in modern Turkish cuisine, so it had to be something with wheat and pulses, lots of pulses, because I love lentils and co.

In the end I choose to make some spinach börek, red lentil and bulgur patties, and a green lentil salad (yes, I know, it was a lentil overkill - did I mention that I loooove lentils?)

The börek were based on a recipe from a German site called Turkish Recipes. Since you might not want to read a German recipe and I veganised the filling anyhow, I give you the recipe here:

Spinach börek

Ingredients:
1 packet frozen spinach leaves (ca. 300 g), thawed and pressed to remove the water
half a block of tofu (200g) (or use vegetarian feta cheese, instead of lemon marinated tofu)
lemon juice from half a lemon
1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic
herb salt, black pepper, paprika
olive oil for frying
1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste
Italian parsley
8 Yufka pastry sheets (I couldn't get them, so I used vegan phyllo pastry)

What to do

Marinate the crumbled tofu in lemonjuice and herb salt. Meanwhile finely chop the onion and garlic clove. Heat oil and fry onion and garlic until transparent, add the spinach and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the tofu crumbles, fry again. Add tomato paste, seasoning and parsley. This will be the filling.
Put the filliing in the centre of the pastry sheet, moisten the edge of sheets and press together.
Heat Olive oil in frying pan and fry the börek on both sides
Can be eaten warm and cold.

Since yufka pastry doesn't contain fat it is nice to fry in the pan, it was a little on the fatty side with the phyllo. Next time I would bake them in the oven if I can't get yufka.

The green lentil salad (Mercimek Piyazi) came from Chili and Ciabatta.

Petra from Chili and Ciabatta permitted to translate and post her recipe, so here it is:

Green lentil salad (Mercimek Piyazi)

Ingredients:

1 cup green lentils, soaked for a couple of hours
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
2 tomatoes, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
1 bunch of flat leave parsley
some twigs of mint
1 and 1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon  paprika (the hot one, Turkish or Hungarian one, if you can't find it use 1/2 a teaspoon cayenne pepper)
4 tablespoons live oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
salt, black pepper

What to do:

Cook lentils in roughly 1.5 l of water for about 15-30 min until tender. Do try them now and then, you wouldn't want to get them mushy. Strain lentils and put in a big bowl. Add all the other ingredients and mix up well. Let rest for half an hour to let the flavour develop.
Serve with pide bread and if you are not vegan you can fry halloumi cheese, that's what Petra did.



And, last but not least the red lentil and bulgur patties are from misstr.com:

In the end, I added some wonderful blogs about Turkish food to my rss feeds and have lots of recipes and ideas which I will try after this journey. Thank you, Joan, for taking us on this tour and I can't wait to see the round-up. See you in Japan then :)

A culinary tour around the world - second stop: Alaska





photo from Ervin Skalamera's awesome Alaska gallery:
http://www.ervinskalameraphotos.com/

 Did I complain about Panamanian food? I must have been a bit muzzy. How could I, with all the beans and maize and tomatoes and all kind of veggies. Alaska on the other hand is a vegan's nightmare. I looked up the index in a cooking book on amazon.com called 'Cooking Alaskan' and I found interesting things like skinning, dressing, and cooking beaver....yeah, well....nope not for me...recipes with salmon, halibut, crabs, moose roast, squirrel fricassee, pickled beaver tail, and lynx steak....again, nope not quite what I want on my plate. Not that I don't like the animals, they are beautiful and awesome .... to watch, but not to eat. Look at them, aren't they majestic and just too wonderful to hunt down and slaughter? How could I ever eat such beauty?

http://skolaiimages.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/_jul4576.jpg

At last I thought maybe a desert, so I looked up Diaxsh  icecream and the Agutuk desert. I don't want to deprive you of their recipes. First the Diaxsh iceream:

"Mix some of the second fall of snow with melted or heated ooligan grease. Beat it up with the hands until it fluffs. Add a bit of sugar to your taste. Pour some blueberries over this and you have Tsimpshean ice cream. This can be frozen and saved for the summer."

So ooligan grease makes it typical Alaskan? What the heck is ooligan grease?? 

Some google time later I found this: 'Ooligan grease is made from a small smelt-like fish that's rich in monounsaturated fat'. Well, a desert doesn't have to be healthy, so monounsaturated fats are survivable, but fish in my ice cream? Thanks, but no thanks, wasabi ice cream is already weird enough for me.

Then just make the Agatuk desert, I thought to myself.

I didn't have to finish reading the recipe, both are btw from Raven's Ruff Stuff And Other Things Native.

"Agutuk or Akutaq or ackutuk or Eskimo ice cream in the past always began with tallow from big game and seal oil as the base for whipping various kinds of berries into a fluffy dessert."

Alaska suddenly became the most undesirable place in the world. Not that I don't like Alaska, maybe I don't like the politics coming from there and the food, but all the rest....just look at the landscape, what is there not to love:

http://www.wildnatureimages.com/3000%20to%2010000/C6CT6046..jpg

And, probably the most important thing (for me at least) is the absolutely fantastic archaeology. Think only of the recently discovered beautifully preserved artefacts one can find nowadays thanks to Global Warming like this arrowshaft complete with sinew:

Dixon et al. n.d., fig. 6 http://www.nps.gov/akso/akparkscience/climatechange/dixon.pdf

Or all the problems linked to the migration of the first people into the Americas! We still are not sure when exactly and on which routes America was peopled.

Araujo et al. 2008, fig. 1

Mitochondrial DNA analyses differ as to when and what route it happened. According to some Siberian ancestors who came via Beringia was the only DNA input (Nelson et al. 2008) and to others their were different inputs which happened at different migrating events (Volodko et al. 2008). Investigation of parasitic worms in humans suggested rather coastal routes and, since tropical parasites were present in prehistoric humans, a water route from Asia is very likely (Araujo et al. 2008). A similar study looking at the bacteria Heliobacter pylori which lives in our stomach showed that Southamerican Indians had the South-Asian strain of this bacterium, not the Eurasian one (Yamaoka 2009). Also looking at the artefacts leaves us enough puzzles to keep some generations of archaeologists busy. If the only route to America was via Beringia, clovis artefacts from Alaska should be the oldest. However, artefacts from the Alaskan Mesa site or the newly discovered Beringia site Serpentine Hot Springs only showed younger points so far. The oldest one actually being from Mesoamerica and Southamerica (Waters et al. 2007).

But let me go back to the kitchen before I blissfully drown in early American prehistory.


What did I do in the end? I actually found a completely vegan drink, an easily veganizable salad and desert and a -with some effort- a veganizable main dish.

• Main dish: Alaska salmon tofu with horseradish, walnuts and herbs
• Salad: Alaska cole slaw
• Desert: Blueberry buckle
• Drink:  Alaska tea

You see, no Palin-names in my recipes, someone else had dips on them *hehe*


To imitate the fishy marine flavour I soaked the tofu in lemon juice and wakame algae:

and here the end result, a totally tasty dish, the sauce alone was worth making this recipe (adapted from a recipe from alaskafood.org)

Alaska Tofu with Horseradish, Walnuts, and Herbs


1 block of Tofu (ca. 500 g)
lemon juice from 1 lemon for marinating
wakame for marinating
cornstarch
olive oil for frying
horseradish sauce (I made a oat milk bechamel and added grated horseradish)
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
1 tablespoon each fresh chives, parsley and tarragon
1 tablespoon good margarine
salt, freshly ground black pepper

Put tofu between a dish towel or kitchen paper and gently squeeze out water. Cut tofu into slices and marinate for a couple of hourse with lemon juice and wakame. Pat dry and turn in cornstarch, then fry in olive oil until tofu becomes a bit crisp.

Meanwhile make a white roux and add horseradish (about 2 -3 inch piece), walnuts, herbs and margarine. Season with salt and pepper. Remove tofu from pan and spread mixture evenly over the tofu fillets.

You can roast it in the oven for a about 5 minutes, but I didn't, it was delicious without this step.

Glenda posted the recipe for an Alaska coleslaw on this webpage and she ate it at a goldmine camp in Alaska, so it has to be authentic. Look at the recipe from that forum. The only difference was that I used fresh cranberries (since I had the opportunity), left out the honey, and used a vegan mayonnaise obviously. For my taste the fresh cranberries were a bit tart, but my husband and son loved them.

The desert was a blueberry buckle. The recipe was based on a recipe from Vegetarian Times. Super yummie, too. This is a photo before it is put in the oven, so you can see the ultimate cinnamon streusel on top of the cake:

and this is after baking, it didn't last long:

The only truely vegan Alaskan recipe, however, was the Alaskan tea. No fish-fats involved and a really recommandable winter drink. You can find the original recipe here.

Alaska Tea

1 cup of dried cranberries

1 cinnamon stick

4 cups of water

juice from 1/2 lemon

juice from 1 orange

1 tablespoon of suger or to taste

Heat up the dried cranberries and the cinnamon stick in the water and let soak for about an hour. Strain and add the lemon and orange juice and the sugar. Reheat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Serve hot.

Makes 4 cups.

I leave you here, and will see you all back in Turkey next week.


Lentils with red pesto

An easy and delicious recipe from veganx: Pasta with red lentil sauce.



 The recipe is in Swedish so here is my version (I hope you don't mind my shamelessly using your recipe, Emmélie):

1 leek

2 cloves of garlic

1 red chilli

2 carrots

4 tomatoes

1 cup red lentils

4-5 cups of vegetable broth

3 tablespoons of vegan red pesto

2 tablespoons of soy cream

150 g frozen spinach

salt, pepper, paprika powder

olive oil for frying

chop the veggies finely and fry in a bit of olive oil. Add lentils and stir till they are covered in oil. Add broth and chopped tomatoes and simmer for about 10 min. Use more water if you need to. Add pesto, seasoning and cream. Add the spinach and let simmer for another 5 min. Serve with any kind of pasta or rice.

A culinary tour around the world - first stop: Panama

A short intermezzo if you will excuse me. I wanted to take part in the 'culinary tour around the world' (http://foodalogue.com/2010/12/culinary-tour-2011-•-the-itinerary.html) although I guess I am already a little late. However, since it was one of my New Year's resolutions to take part in a food challenge and I already made the dish I'll post it anyway. The challenge is to create or adapt a dish from one country each week and blog about it (well, you should rather go to the webpage in case you would like to know more about it).

Panama, as nearly all Latinamerican countries are a real challenge for me, because their diet is heavily based on meat. I remember the placard in Argentina saying 'Meat for All'. The situation was further aggrevated by the fact that I have never been in Panama and therefore never tasted original Panamanesian Panamian food from Panama.

I wanted a vegan main dish which would easily fit into my daily meal plans, without offending my vegan taste nor my omni husband's. After heavy googling I decided to veganise 'Tamale de Olla', a kind of polenta in a pot.

I basically used this recipe http://www.world-recipes.info/panama-panamanian/tamal-de-olla.html but marinated tofu with vegan Worcestershire sauce and white wine instead of the chicken. you have to fry the tofu for some time to get it all crusty and yummie. Annato seeds are not available here, so I added a bit of safran. And maybe I used a bit more chili than in the recipe, but I like it hot...

And here is the result:

different from Italian polenta style dishes and very very tasty. A complete meal with a nice green salad:

Quinoa

Beware! Food post coming forward!

M hates quinoa, I don't quite know why, because it is a really lovely crunchy food. But then he doesn't care what's good for you and he doesn't care about non-germanic food at all. In other words he would like to eat meat all day. Somehow I can't quite feigning sympathy for his tennis elbow and arthritic knee. A vegetarian is usually free of these things - at least at our age.
Quinoa is a wonderful grain, very rich in protein (12-18%) as well as in magnesium and iron. Even Popeye would have preferred it to spinach since it has nearly double the iron content of it.

Anyway, I tried a wonderful and really really lemony recipe from the Fatfree Vegan
(http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2009/10/lemony-quinoa-with-butternut-squash.html).
The only thing I changed is that I used black quinoa I bought in France instead of the usual white one. It is really worth trying, especially since the squash harvest starts and all kind of delicious squashs are sitting on the shelves of your health food store.
As usual a handy cam pic. No time to waste to delve into this delicious meal: