Spaghetti & Beanball Update

I returned to the spaghetti and beanballs this evening, this time using pinto beans instead of chickpeas. I ran into some problems, though. The recipe said you want to start with about 3 cups of beans, which prompted me to use two 15-oz cans because the can said each can yields 3.5 1/2 cup servings. So I stuck with the rest of the recipe, with two minor exceptions. I added a little bit of minced onion (a follow-up on my idea from last time), and again, we still don't have any steak sauce, so I used ketchup in place of that.

But here's the problem. I think 3 cups is the wrong starting number, because the beanballs completely fell apart on me. The problem? 1/4 cup of wheat gluten is too little to seitanize three cups of beans.

The good news is that the beanballs taste much better with pinto beans than chickpeas. And I also chopped up some of the roasted bell peppers we had in the freezer and threw them in the sauce, which gave a nice, smoky flavor.

Mixed results, all in all. But I think I should have either halved the beans or doubled the wheat gluten.

Pumpkin Baked Ziti with Caramelized Onions and Sage Crumb Topping

Straight up now tell me

Will you cashew me forever?

Oh oh oh

Or is this tofu gonna run?

Straight up now tell me

Can garlic and basil together

Oh oh oh

Make a ricotta approximation?

I regret to inform you that the Amish CSA is taking a few months off as a theme for the blog, as we recently received our last shipment of vegetables. In it were a couple of acorn squash.

I am generally unfamiliar with the squash genre of vegetables. I grew up detesting zuchinni and yellow squash -- texture violation issues, generally -- I still prefer them a bit firm. But finally I came around, and have been cooking with summer squashes regularly. I'm still generally a bit unsteady with winter squash.

But here we had these acorn squash, sitting nice and pretty on the counter, and we had to do something with them. Enter the Pumpkin Baked Ziti with Caramelized Onions and Sage Crumb Topping (p. 194). I decided to substitute the acorn squash for the pumpkin.

But before we get to that, let's talk about one of the components of this dish: the Cashew Ricotta (p. 206). First, if you try this dish, you will be making it a lot. Which means you may need a supply of cashews. And for all y'all budget-conscious vegans who shop at Ye Olde Natural Foods Warehouse, the prospect of buying cashews may fill you with dread. But fear not! Your local Indian grocer is your friend! I bought 3 pounds of cashews at International Bazaar on Lafayette Road for $12! Remember, you're not looking for whole cashews because you're just buying them to grind up to make awesome fake ricotta anyway, so don't pay more than you have to...bits and pieces are fine.

This facsimile of ricotta cheese is made of cashews, tofu, garlic, basil, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt. You just throw it all in a blender, and voila! ricotta-like goo. And I have to tell you, this is the first recipe that Iv and I have licked off the spatula. This is some mighty fine stuff.

So onto the rest. I made Iv peel the acorn squash for me because it was a major pain and he's good at that kind of stuff. Though not without swearing. The skin on this sucker is tough. Anyway, he ultimately triumphed, and I finally cut them in half.

And then cut them into little cubes, tossed them with a bit of olive oil, and roasted them at 400 for 20 minutes until they caramelized a bit. They should look like this when they're done.

So once this is done, you mash the roasted squash with a potato masher, then mix it with the cashew ricotta and the onions you've been caramelizing over low-medium heat while all the rest of this excitement has been going on. Then you mix it all up with some cooked ziti, and lay it out in a greased casserole dish.

Then, you create the bread crumb topping. Now, I have to tell you, this recipe calls for margarine. But I am here to say that you don't have to use it. Here's what I did. For breadcrumbs, I bought 3 multi-grain rolls at Kroger, tore them into bits, and ran them through the food processor. I did the same thing with the walnuts.

Then I just mixed the bread crumbs and walnuts with the herbs and fried them in the equivalent amount of olive oil and let them cook until the breadcrumbs were nice and crispy.

Seriously, folks, you don't need margarine for this.

Finally, you just layer the breadcrumbs over the rest of the casserole, then stick it in the oven, and wait for the goodness to emerge.

And oh man, is this good. It's garlicky, salty, and sweet from the squash, with a nice sagey crunch from the breadcrumbs. If you didn't know this was vegan, you wouldn't know this was vegan -- though you might wonder a little bit about why it doesn't hold together as well as baked ziti usually does. But whatever. It's moist and delicious and so on. Make this. It's very good. And it's awesome the next day, too. Iv took some for lunch, where he was brown-bagging with one of his coworkers, and was moved to pity him for his wretched peanut butter sandwich. Yes, this recipe has the power to move you to condescend to your less fortunate friends. All bow to the Pumpkin Baked Ziti!

Spaghetti and Beanballs - Bittman/Veganomicon Mashup

Looking for something quick I could make for lunch today in advance of an Obama volunteer training session, I settled on the Spaghetti and Beanballs recipe (p. 189).

Last night Iv asked me if I was going to ever cook a recipe from this cookbook as written -- do I really want to get attacked for not following the recipes exactly like that woman in Portland? Today I decided the answer was that I don't care about following recipes precisely, and I'm trusting my readers (whom I know to be few) not to flame me for trying to make good food. Because really, the Veganomicon is a great resource for fun and interesting ideas, and occasionally has some interesting techniques, but there are times that I just don't have an ingredient and can't be bothered, or that I just know that my way is better - and in those cases I'll tell you exactly what I did, and you can try it by the book, then try it my way, and tell me who's right.

In any case, both the lack of appropriate ingredients and ad hoc adjustment issues came into play with this recipe. The beanballs are supposed to be made with canned kidney beans. We have some dried ones, but I was under a tight enough deadline that I didn't have time to pressure-cook them, so instead I just thawed some chickpeas I had in the freezer.

You start by mashing the beans till they're mostly smooth, but still retain a bit of texture. Then dump in some garlic, soy sauce, olive oil, bread crumbs, wheat gluten, oregano, thyme, lemon zest. You're also supposed to add steak sauce or tomato paste. We didn't have either in the fridge, so I used ketchup.

After mixing all this up, you form them into balls. I ended up with 13.

This is where I started straying from the method. What the Veganomicon calls for is making a batch of their marinara sauce recipe, cooking the beanballs, then coating them with a half-cup of the sauce, and cooking for a while more, then just topping spaghetti with the marinara and beanballs.

While this method is adequate, I thought I'd try the method from How to Cook Everything (page 152), which works fantastically for real meatballs. The basics of this method are to brown the meatballs, remove them, then make a quick tomato and onion sauce, then drop the meatballs back in and cook for another 15 minutes. I thought there was little reason wouldn't work equally well for beanballs. One of the specific advantages I thought this would have is that braising the beanballs in the sauce would help the wheat gluten to seitanize a little bit, giving the beanballs a meatier texture.

So I browned the beanballs in the oil left over from the broccoli and millet croquettes for about 15 minutes. The texture while I was doing this was alarmingly mushy. I was a bit concerned that the beanballs wouldn't hold together, but I pressed on. The beanballs absorb the oil really well...this wasn't shaping up to be a low-fat dish.

Then I removed the beanballs and kept them on a plate in the warming drawer in the oven. Enter Bittman. I dropped in one medium chopped onion, and fried it for a few minutes until it was just turning brown. At the same time, I took a 28-oz can of whole tomatoes (undrained), and tore the tomatoes apart with my hands. Once the onions were slighty browned, I poured in the tomatoes with their juice, and simmered it for about five minutes, until the tomatoes were just starting to break down.

At that point, I added back the beanballs,and let them cook for 15 minutes, along with some salt and pepper, stirring just occasionally to make sure nothing was sticking. Meanwhile, I cooked the spaghetti. Once the spaghetti was drained, I removed the beanballs, and tossed the spaghetti and sauce together. I divided the spaghetti up among three plates, placing some beanballs atop each.

The verdict was positive. The sauce was great, and the beanballs were very flavorful. Fortunately my intuition about the effect of simmering the beanballs in the sauce was correct, and they did have better structural integrity than it appeared, though they were still smoother and mushier than I'd prefer...a bit like hummus balls, which would be an argument for definitely sticking with kidney beans next time. Some other traditional meatball ingredients, like parsley and finely chopped onions, might also help with this issue. I also suspect a temperature factor might have bean at play. Since I thawed the frozen chickpeas on the stovetop, the mixture was pretty warm when I started frying them, and starting with cool ingredients, or refrigerating the mixture before cooking, might also help.

All in all, the dish was a winner, though. Nice, hearty, and satisfying - not usually the sort of description associated with vegan cooking.

Caramelized Onion Marinara with Almesan

So I was tired tonight and I wasn't even planning to cook for the purposes of this project, but Iv suggested spaghetti, which sounded like a good idea. Then I started thinking that it always seems that vegetarian and vegan cookbooks are so often focused on being all righteous and tofu-ey that they forget that a lot of regular foods are vegan. So before getting started, I checked to see if the Veganomicon had a regular-people pasta sauce recipe.

And indeed it does, with variations. So I went for the Caramelized Onion Marinara, which is cooked precisely how you think it is--caramelize the onions, add garlic, tomatoes, and herbs, cook down, and done. Classic, no soy products involved.

What was more interesting was what the Veganomicon calls Almesan, a concoction that is supposed to serve the same function as Parmesan cheese. It's essentially ground almonds, toasted sesame seeds, lemon zest, and salt. We were out of lemons, so I used dried lemon peel, which might not have been the right choice.

A tiny cast iron pan is essential for toasting sesame seeds. Also good for toasting cumin.



Whirl all this stuff around in a blender (being mindful not to do too much whirling, or you might end up with almond butter), and this is what you get.

I tried talking Iv into agreeing that it smelled like Parmesan. No dice. It smells like toasted sesame. Which was fine.

So here's dinner, on display on the coffee table before we watch the Project Runway we recorded while we were both out of town.

Here's the deal. The spaghetti and sauce were fine. And I should be clear, it was far better than spaghetti sauce from the store -- Iv and I haven't used store-bought spaghetti sauce since we moved in together. So I will say this: if you are buying sauce at the store, stop it right now and make your own. It's so much better, and it's super-easy. You can make it while your pasta is boiling.

And actually, the Almesan was pretty good, too. It imparts a distinct sesame flavor, though, and I think should try making it again sometime with fresh lemon peel. But this has me thinking about, of all things, Lynn Rosetto Kasper. She kind of drives me crazy, because everything's so "fabulous" and all, but every now and again, she talks about the concept of umami, or the quality of "savoriness". And the ingredients she consistently mentions as having this quality are red meat, red wine, parmesan cheese, soy sauce, and fish sauce. Exactly two of which are vegan. Anyway, the thing that's not satisfying about the Almesan is that it really lacks the depth of flavor that Parmesan has.

So I'm on a mission now, which is not really to develop the perfect fake Parmesan, but to work on ways to really get depth of flavor into vegan cooking without using soy sauce for everything. The difficulty that the vegan ethic imposes is that omnivorous cooking can always rely on beef or chicken stock as a shortcut to complexity and deliciousness, but vegan cooking doesn't provide that option (at least not in Western culinary traditions). The vegetable stocks I've made before are not a satisfactory solution.

Together we will find a way to deal with this problem. Veganism is a human ethic, not one that denies the Yum. Let's figure it out!

Hash! (Pie?)

Of all things, it was browsing through the 1971 edition of the Joy of Cooking that I rediscovered the concept of hash. That version, called Red Flannel Hash, is essentially a repurposing of New England Boiled Dinner, which is corned beef, various root vegetables, and cabbage. So you chop up the leftovers, maybe add an egg or some milk to bind it together, then put it in a hot pan, fry it till it's nice and crusty, and you've got hash.

Over the last couple months, I have been redeploying hash in lots of unlikely ways. Iv threw a surprise NC-style BBQ birthday party for me a couple months ago, and I used the leftover pork, potatoes, collards, and whatever else to make a most excellent hash. Another time, I used leftovers from some kind of crazy Indian dinner that somehow involved beets, stewed eggplant, and something else I can't remember, mashed them all together, and made some delicious crap that tasted like something the Bollywood Waffle House would serve up.

So tonight, it was vegan hash. Kind of. I had the leftover Greek potatoes from the other night, Iv's spaghetti with homemade sauce (mirepoix, represent!), some leftover vegan cutlets, and some tomato paste to use as a binder. I mashed up the potatoes, diced the cutlets, and loosely chopped the spaghetti. I heated some olive oil in my trusty twelve-inch cast iron skillet, and dropped the mixture in.

Whereupon it immediately became clear that this wasn't going to be a hash. See, for a hash to work, there has to be little enough that you can flip it with a spatula, and after getting this stuff in the pan, I found that the mass of stuff was so big, that just wasn't going to happen. So I just spread it out so it was more like a pie, kept it on low heat on the stove so it would develop a bit of a crust, then put it in the oven on 325 for 15 minutes.

Once I pulled it out, I sliced it up like a pie, but it didn't hold together well. So, not very photogenic, which means you get no pictures. But, seriously people, this was delicious. Turned out that it was better than the potatoes, the spaghetti, or the chickpea cutlets. Vegan comfort food, people. Learn to use your leftovers.