09.04.08
Posted in american, cooking, food, main dishes, non-casein, non-dairy, original recipes, vegan at 4:12 pm by Hanne Blank
This is a cellphone photo of my lunch yesterday, which, in this case, was, a serving of a dish I first devised in college when I was poor and had to make something hearty for a vegan potluck. My roommate at the time christened it, amusingly if not entirely charitably, “Hungry Hungry Hippie.” (The reference, for those too young to get it, was to the children’s board game Hungry Hungry Hippos, introduced by Hasbro in the late 1970s.)
Hungry Hungry Hippie is one of those dishes for which I will never publish anything like a precise recipe because there really can’t be one.
Nonetheless, I love Hungry Hungry Hippie to this day, and wish to spread the joy.
Hungry Hungry Hippie is, in its most elemental form and as pictured here, a sort of pilaf of cooked seasoned barley tossed with cubed tofu.
It can get plenty fancy if you have the scratch and the interest.
But usually, if you are making Hungry Hungry Hippie, you don’t.
How you make the basic version (and it makes plenty) is like this:
– you take about seven cups of water and you put it in a big heavy-bottomed pot what’s got a lid to it, and you start heating it
– then you flavor the water with a spoonful or two of Vegemite or Marmite, maybe some miso, and some onion powder and garlic powder; the water should end up pretty strongly flavored and a notch or so saltier than you’d want it for soup. You use the Vegemite or Marmite (I prefer the latter) because it has a lovely strong meaty flavor that goes really well with the barley, and also seems to penetrate and soak into the barley better than anything else. Don’t use boullion cubes instead of Vegemite or Marmite, it won’t work, it’ll taste of salt and nothing else.
–then you add a couple-three tablespoons of olive oil or whatever kinda oil you got. Bacon grease is amazing in this, but totally not vegan or vegetarian. You do what turns you on.
– then you pour in 2 cups of pearled barley and you stir it, and you bring it to a boil
– then you reduce the heat to a low simmer, cover it most of the way, and let it simmer until the barley kernels get to swelling appreciably
– whereupon you give it a stir, turn the heat off, put the lid on tight, and ignore it for a couple hours until all the liquid is absorbed
– at which point you drain and cube a pound or so of firm tofu and toss it into the barley, and reheat the whole thing a little (add another half-cup of liquid if you do it on the stovetop, or else put the whole thing (covered) in the oven at 300F for a bit)
And then you eat it! Unless, of course, you’d like to add something yummy to it first.
Many things can be added to Hungry Hungry Hippie along with the tofu. Some combination of sauteed onions, garlic, celery, and mushrooms is good. Thoroughly caramelized onions are super-duper rockin’. So are caramelized tomatoes, or little bits of sun-dried tomato. Sauteed cabbage (sliced thinly) goes into it nicely. So does chopped fresh parsley. And so do chopped up dried tart fruits like unsweetened dried apricots, or cranberries. When I could, I used to eat it with a dollop of sour cream on top.
But it’s also really tasty (and hella easy) on its own. I like it with a healthy wodge of black pepper ground on top.
Its many virtues include keeping well, reheating well, being very nutritious, being very filling, having lots of complex carbs that will handily carry you through the day, being high in fiber, and being extremely economical.
Good for hippies and other living things. Give it a whirl.
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08.03.08
Posted in allergy, cooking, food, food allergies, main dishes, non-casein, non-dairy, original recipes, pasta, salads, vegan at 7:16 pm by Hanne Blank
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m allergic to casein, the protein in milk. So I’ve had to work out some ways to achieve the same culinary effects one can get from milk products without poisoning myself.
This recipe for what I call Not Cheese, But Not Bad, Sauce is one of my favorites, because it is one of the most successful texture and mouth-feel replicas of the comfort-food original that I’ve yet come up with . A sauce based on nutritional yeast will never taste like a cheese sauce, not really. But if it’s creamy, smooth, savory, a little salty, and rich, it definitely pushes all the right buttons. The flavor provided by the yeast and Marmite (a yeast product), plus garlic and onion and plenty of mustard, is perhaps not quite cheeselike but it’s not quite not cheeselike, either.
As a bonus, it’s vegan, so there’s no cholesterol to worry about. And all the yeast means it’s bursting at the seams with B vitamins. It will keep reasonably well, although it doesn’t reheat quite as gracefully, texture-wise, as dairy mac and cheese does. (Still tastes good, though.)
I like to pair Mac and Not Cheese, But Not Bad, Sauce with a particularly bright and somewhat acidic side dish to help cut the richness. Today I made an impromptu cucumber and cilantro salad in a spicy Asian marinade.
Not Cheese, But Not Bad, Sauce
2 small onions, minced
3 cloves of garlic, crushed or minced very fine
10 Tablespoons vegan margarine
1 cup unsweetened, unflavored faux-milk of your choice (I usually use almond), thinned with 1/2 cup hot water
2 Tablespoons prepared mustard
4 Tablespoons creamy-style almond butter, cashew butter, or tahini
1 Tablespoon Marmite
1 1/2 cups nutritional yeast
1 Tablespoon ground dry mustard
Measure out the nutritional yeast and ground dry mustard in a bowl, and stir to combine. Set aside.
Melt the vegan margarine in a saucepan and add the onions. Saute the onions in the margarine until they are transparent, then add the garlic. While the onions are cooking, stir together the faux-milk/water mixture, the prepared mustard, the nut butter or tahini, and the Marmite until thoroughly combined. After you have added the garlic to the hot fat and onions, let it cook for about a minute, then add the liquid and stir everything well. Reduce heat to barely a simmer.
Add yeast/mustard mixture to the liquid slowly, using a whisk to combine. Once all the yeast/mustard mixture is added, whisk over low heat for about 2 minutes, then remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes, stirring once or twice.
This provides enough sauce for a pound of elbow macaroni. Cook the macaroni until it is quite well done, or it will absorb too much liquid from the sauce and the sauce will lose its texture. Reserve a quarter cup or so of the pasta cooking water when you drain the pasta, and add it back into the dish a tablespoon or so at a time if this begins to happen.
Serve hot with plenty of freshly-ground black pepper.
Note: if you don’t like the slight lumpiness introduced by the onions, feel free to omit them, but they do add some dimension to the taste that I enjoy.
I love a good marinated salad, and I also love the southeastern Chinese (and indeed, pan-southeast-Asian) combination of cucumbers and cilantro and chiles — it is bright and sprightly and summery and delightful. Although, yes, probably not a dish for those people to whom cilantro tastes of perfumed soap. Of whom I am not one. Which is why I like to make a salad that goes a little something like this…
Spicy Cucumber and Cilantro Salad
5 Kirby cucumbers, small Asian cucumbers, or other firm-fleshed variety with few seeds (if you must use another variety, consider removing the seeds so the dish won’t get watery), peeled and sliced about 1/4 inch thick
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 cups cleaned and dried cilantro (coriander) leaves
3 Tablespoons rice vinegar
2 Tablespoons Asian sesame oil
1 teaspoon Chinese chili paste (in oil) (or less if you do not care for a lot of heat)
Sprinkle sliced cucumbers with the salt and toss with your hands to combine. Let stand 15 minutes, then rinse well in several changes of water, and drain well (use a salad spinner if you have one). Toss the cucumbers with the cilantro leaves and add the vinegar, sesame oil, and chili paste. Toss well to combine, cover, and refrigerate for an hour or so before serving.
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