This was supposed to be the Roman version of a Burmese tea salad, but then my husband convinced me to add an avocado.

THE first time I tried a Burmese tea salad, I immediately started trying to figure out how to make them at my house all of the time.  They are amazing: you should go to a place that makes them and put said salad into your face at the first possible opportunity.

BUT I could not figure out how to buy high quality fermented tea leaves.  I gave up my hopes and tempered my love for these salads with the quite unreasonably long wait outside of the local Burmese place.  Very small tragedy.

HAPPILY, I started reading Apicus - a cookbook from ancient Rome. (There are a lot of great vegetable recipes. Every recipe marked "for vegetarians" has calf's brains in it. There are no desserts. Salt is always added as a brine.) What if I took some traditional Roman vegetables, and added a Burmese twist?  I could still use the fried shallots (fried shallots are the best) and the chopped romaine (for crunch: a salad is still delightfully crunchy if it is 10% romaine instead of 80%. Pro tip.) I could use kale instead of tea leaves, I could replace peanuts with walnuts, I could use parmesan instead of fish sauce (yes I know garum is very very Roman but it's a salad few people want fermented fish on their salad.) and cucumbers instead of tomatoes: it would be great!

THEN the spouse convinced me to add an avocado. It was an amazing salad entirely because of the avocado. You know what makes it more amazing? Abandoning the Roman thing almost altogether, and using chopped cilantro or mangos or tomatoes, replacing the walnuts with sesame seeds and chopped peanuts, and adding olive oil.  Olive oil makes most things better.

Serves 4
Slice one large shallot thinly, and place over medium heat with a little oil.  Fry until crisp, stirring frequently to prevent burning.  Add a little salt.  This takes about ten minutes.

Tear one bag or one and a half bunches of fresh, crisp kale into bite-sized pieces.  Salt. Microplane about an ounce of parmesan cheese onto the kale; add a tablespoon of olive oil and toss gently so every leaf has a little bit of cheese on it to make up for the fact that it is not a carefully fermented tea leaf. (you could also use soy sauce or Bragg's or nutritional yeast, maybe.)

See how I've divided the ingredients into equal pie-chart slices? Do that, it looks nice, and then you look real smooth mixing it at the table.  You are going to add one or more of each of the following ingredients:

A small romaine heart, chopped (this is enormous; you may need to excavate a small pit in the kale for your lettuce.)
A half cup to full cup of a sweet thing like mangos, apples, pears, peaches, peppers, or tomatoes. 
A chopped avocado
A quarter cup of chopped herbs like cilantro, green onions, or mint (this is optional.)
A quarter cup of crunchy nut-like things such as peanuts, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, or sesame seeds.

Put the fried shallots in the center to disguise how badly the segments connect.

Look how pretty that is!  So pretty!

Now squeeze a lemon over it and stir it up and serve it.

Tidbit: Miso Butter

Mix equal parts white miso and soft butter. Add it to all of the things. (About a tablespoon of each should be fine for a pound of produce. You know I believe that animal fats are fine in pursuit of eating leaves.)

Roast brussels sprouts are particularly good. So is fresh corn. Broccoli. Blanched kale. Sweet potatoes Or if you want to thicken a sauce, whisk this in at the end.

Bad Idea Fridays: Wasabi Peas

The wasabi pea snack is gross. I don't know why I had high hopes for a dish based on the snack- but I did! Look how washed out the photo is- washed out like my failed dreams.

Note the quick watermelon radish pickles from the last post.

Basically, one tosses a pound of snap peas in a cup of hot broth and a tablespoon each of soy sauce and butter. When the peas are warm through, they are done.

This part of the dish is fantastic. It could use a little bit more salt, but if you deploy the radish pickles, you have litle salt bombs spread throughout. Do that. Serve that.

Do not invest a lot of time in hunting down horseradish. (Because the wasabi on peas is actually horseradish, and it's basically a clever conceit dish.) When you do hunt down horseradish, and the smallest root weights a pound and a half, don't buy it. When you buy it, wash and peel it before grating it over the dish. If you grate it, don't keep grating until the flavor is obvious.

Next up, I find things to do with my seventeen pounds of fresh horseradish.

Black Beans with Orange Depth Charge

I think this picture looks menacing.

This is an adaptation of how my mother makes black beans; she adds the orange from the beginning, but we don't do that because adding acid to uncooked beans results in tough skins and fire rain.

Pick over two cups black beans. Put in a pot with lots of water- like six cups- and a bay leaf, 1/4 tsp oregano, and maybe a little espazote. Simmer gently for 1 and 1/2 hours, or until tender. Add additional water as necessary to maintain a soupy texture.

An aside about beans: most types of beans take 2.5-3 hours to achieve tenderness. Black bean take less time. You could give them another half hour, but if they aren't tender by then, you have old beans. They will never become tender. Give up and order take-out instead. Throw away the rest of the beans you bought.

Also, beans are done when one blows on them and the skins crack and peel back a bit.

Right. Muddle the beans a little- smash a few of them to give the broth heft. (A few being about 1/4 cup. No need to get carried away.) Slice in half one or two oranges. Juice all but one of the halves and add the juice to the beans. Toss the remaining unsqueezed half into the beans and simmer for another half hour.

Oh, you could add some chiles here. I'd go for something with a lovely floral note such as a habenero. Señor C does not agree. My mother adds half a cup of red wine and puts the chile peppers in other parts of the meal

If done correctly, the pectin in the orange pith produce a bean dish that resembles pahoehoe. The texture is almost satiny. Also, it tastes like oranges and orange oil.

Serve with rice and salsa. I like to pretend it's Cuban, and serve with unripe banana salsa and chopped hard boiled egg.

Carrot Cabbage Kimchi Salad

I read this article about carrots making you pretty, and then A reminded me of college- an era where I was just learning to feed myself. We made a conscious effort to turn orange one winter and met with limited success. But hey, sun shy persons and Irish readers- carrot tans are better than the real thing.

Peel and grate two large carrots. Chop 1 cup of cabbage. Dress with 2-4 tbs. kimchi. It won't seem like enough dressing, but it's really a nicely balanced little dish. Sarlah noted that pickles taste better when paired with their unfermented kin- I think of it as a vegetal horror movie in my mouth.

I forgot to take a picture of this. You're tough though. You can imagine what it looks like.

Minestrone

The original recipe was raw- it still lives somewhere on VegWeb. I read said recipe on Game Night after the initial round of Nuclear War left me with no viable population and a looseleaf notebook full of Cheyenne's recipes. I scanned it, but I was trying to memorize the entire notebook in one gulp, so my recollections are somewhat fuzzy. I know that there was lovingly homemade tomato juice and raw mushrooms and all sorts of vegetables that are never in season at the same time. This is a loose, loose adaptation. It's loose enough that I might make the actual recipe later and post that too.

Serves 3.

Get 16 oz. pureed tomatoes from some source. Blanch 1 cup cauliflower florets and 1 cup bite-sized kale until tender. Warm tomato puree, 1 can white beans (loose adaptation!), and 1 cup water, stock, or white wine. Mix the juice of one lemon, the juice of one orange, and 1/4 cup miso. Add orange mixture to soup. There's no need to heat the soup past your preferred temperature for consumption. Add chopped parsley and cilantro, and garnish with fresh pepper and olive oil.

Eat.

Super Bowl Salad

C is sick- whimpering in his sleep, spouting deranged doggerel, I'm surreptitiously checking for the nearest urgent care clinic sick- so the only thing our kitchen should be producing is a.) soup and b.) things for the C's father birthday extravaganza. Be that as it may, I thought that I'd post this recipe before it becomes irrelevant.

A has been complaining that all of my sliced things on plates salads contain ingredients that aren't available on island paradises. This may be true- I believe that after 2000 years of eating mostly poi, native Hawaiians are having no truck with dishes of questionable palatability.

I present The Super Bowl Salad: made entirely with things that are available in Hawaii!

It is green and gold to extort the gods to follow the side of righteousness, and it's... good for... people who want to celebrate. Together.

Or, you know, curse fate.

It's also a pretty good flavor combination- it might be better with a sliced red bell pepper, but they're $4 a pound right now.

Cut off the top, bottom, and skin of a ripe pineapple. You can tell that the pineapple is ripe because the innermost leaves are easily removed and the base smells like ripe pineapple. Cut half the pineapple into 1/4 inch thick slices and then into wedges. If there are any pineapple eyes in your slices, remove them mercilessly. Cut a cucumber into 1/4 inch slices. If the skin has been waxed, you may want to peel it first. Arrange the cucumber and pineapple slices on a plate. Dress with a dash of lime juice, a sprinkle of salt, and some chopped mint. Eat.

Udon with Mushrooms

This is a very simple and quick meal- I served it with quick steamed broccoli.

Put a medium pot of water on to boil. Cook one bundle udon in the water until al dente and drain. Dress noodles with a few drops of sesame oil. Peel and dice an onion. Saute in 1 tbs. oil until translucent. Add ten sliced mushrooms (I used button, but -5 shiitake would be good. I think the original recipe was all about Crimini.) and fry until browned. Add the noodles, 1 tbs. soy sauce, and 1 tbs. mirin (or white wine). Fry for about a minute, until uniformly warm. Eat.

Make quick steamed vegetables by washing the vegetable, placing it in a microwave safe bowl, covering the top of the bowl with saran wrap, and microwaving it for three minutes. There.

Chilean Avocado Salad

I'm at a conference, so my posts will be... to the point [and guest posted! - ed]. Also, here A. A salad for the tropics.

Take one perfect avocado. Peel, deseed, slice, and fan out on a plate. Sprinkle with salt. Serve with bread. Think giant ground sloth thoughts.

The salad in the picture has toasted sesame seeds (because avocado and sesame are friends) and chopped cilantro and probably a little bit of Meyer lemon juice. I make everything Californian.

Orange and Jicima Salad

During my quasi-vacation, I researched lots of recipes, cooked lots of food, and took shoddy photos of the things that I cooked. I thought that was a wise way to spend my time, but today's experiences suggest that I should have been clawing my way up cliffs instead. I am dog tired- please enjoy another "sliced things on plates" salad.

Slice one small jicima. (about the size of a large apple) Alice Waters says to slice it into matchsticks, but what does she know? Make the slices as thin as you can be bothered to. Section two oranges- it is vitally important that the oranges be very good oranges. If they are not, put some lime juice and salt on the jicima and call it a day. Arrange the oranges and jicima on a plate. Dress with orange juice from the sectioning, the juice of 1/2 lemon, olive oil, salt, cumin, and... what is that, cilantro? Yeah. Put some cilantro on there. Eat.

Porotos Granados- Hideously Californicated

The bread is most essential.

This is a traditional Chilean summer dish. Or it would be, if I were using fresh cranberry beans instead of dry red beans. And if the corn were not sweet corn and there were less of it. And if the squash were more cooked. And if the tomatoes were not canned and not in the stew but sliced on a plate next to it. And if I didn't include paprika- it's too spicy.

To quote C precisely, "It's nothing like the stew I grew up with, but if you kept making it forever, I would be happy." It's very hearty- it straight up sticks to your ribs. I figure some of my imaginary readers are looking for something that will make them feel full and also warm.

The next set of instructions is for people who still have problems with not cooking their own beans. Feel free to skip this and use two fifteen ounce cans of unseasoned small red beans and two cups of water. (or pinto beans)

Take two cups small red beans and simmer them in 6 cups of water for about two hours. Add water if necessary. When the beans are almost tender, carry on with the recipe.

Slice, seed, and peel about two cups of winter squash. (They do sell the prepared squash in the frozen section now, if you don't have a half squash moping around the fridge.) Simmer with the beans (and a bay leaf) until the squash is fully cooked and on its way to disintegration.

Slice 1/2 onion and saute in oil until tender. Add 1/2 teaspoon cumin, 1/2 teaspoon paprika, and 1 cup corn. Saute briefly- until the corn is coated with spices. Add to the beans with a 15 oz. can of diced tomatoes. Simmer for about 15 minutes- the texture should be something like chili, so add water if needed. (Or steal the broth with a spoon and wander around sipping a mug of bean juice.) Eat with lots of bread. No, more bread than that.

Winter Salad

This salad was originally going to be named something that cast all sorts of aspersions on people who don't have winter produce. I changed my mind because my evil laugh didn't carry over to text. Instead, we have a friendly, accessible title.

I love frisee (death to accents) but I have trouble finding recipes for it. (Yes, there is the salad where bacon fat replaces olive oil. It's January. We don't eat like that anymore.) I also love other winter fruits- and C eats mandarins like other people eat Cadbury cream eggs. Clearly, all of these things need to become a salad.

Tear one head of frisee into bite sized pieces and put in a medium sized bowl. Add seeds from 1 small pomegranate. Peel two small mandarin oranges and add the segments. Slice in one avocado.

Make a dressing from the juice of one Meyer lemon, a teaspoon of chopped shallot, 1/4 cup olive oil, and a little bit of salt. Dress the salad. Eat. Cackle.

Mango Salsa

Earlier, I indicated that there was a huge range of salsa besides tomato. I have *two* kinds of Solanaceae free salsa for you this coming week, to prove my wild-eyed allegations.

Take some mangoes. If you've got Tommy Atkins (what a problematic imperialist name for a fruit variety) mangoes, two will be sufficient. If you have Manila mangoes, four will be necessary. If you have another variety of mango, I will assume you are familiar enough with the first two varieties to draw your own conclusions. (I can also come to where you live and test these mangoes extensively.) Cutting mangoes is a bit difficult- there is a line of rough bilateral symmetry which indicates the location of the seed. One can remove large ovals of mango flesh from either side of this line- and then peel off the slightly toxic skin and dice the fruit into a bowl. The remaining flesh on the mango disc could be conscientiously sliced into the bowl, in theory. This has never actually happened. Instead, remove the last bits of skin, gnaw on the pit like the primate you are, floss your teeth, and get on with the rest of the salsa. (This involves repeating the process with at least one more mango. Other people might point out that you can share the mango pits, but you should point out that you are both making the salsa and holding a very sharp knife.)

Dice 1/4 medium onion very finely and add to the mango bowl. Dice 1/2 bell pepper(inessential), one handful cilantro, and one handful mint. (Mint is actually pretty important, but don't let the lack of mint combined with a surfeit of mangoes prevent making mango salsa.) Put these things in the bowl. Add the juice of 1.5 limes and a sprinkle of salt. Stir. If I'm making this for my Midwestern father, I chop in a couple of chiles. If I make this for my Chilean husband, I add a little more lime and mock him.

My entire family pretends that only I know this recipe so they will not have to chop all of these things. Now it is on the Internet, and they have no excuse.

Sick Person Soup

I further desecrate Japanese cuisine.

One of the best things about miso is the ability to make a single serving of soup in five minutes. You might say that's one of the nice things about canned soup, but I affirm that miso is slightly cheaper, slightly lower in sodium, and has never been consumed cold out of the can while standing outside in a downpour. That is to say, miso does not taste like sadness and poor career decisions.

As I stated earlier, I am currently ill. This soup contains several ingredients that holistic medicine proscribes for colds, and three that evidence based science suggests have merit. Why yes, I did go to the health food store in a small town with an obvious cold. Why yes, I did get advice. The pseudoscience will be scattered throughout, the evidence will be at the end. Think of it as a treasure hunt.

Take two cups of water. Simmer over medium heat and add the following ingredients.
Two sliced shiitake mushrooms. Chinese medicine suggests this as a remedy for upper respiratory disease.
One tbs cilantro leaves- used as a cold remedy in India.
(The goal is for the mushrooms to get cooked through, as twelve units of mycology have made me terrified of uncooked mushrooms. Prepare the following ingredients, and then add them just before removing the broth from heat.)
Three cloves garlic, smashed and chopped. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans suggest this as an antibiotic and as a gentle way to lay waste to disobedient bacteria and virii colonizing your body. And it's supposed to sooth sore throats.
1/2 inch grated ginger The entire western world and China suggests ginger for colds and coughing.
Juice of 1/2 lemon. Vitamin C, need I say more?
Blend in 2 tbs. red miso. I'm kinda reaching here- it's supposed to rebalance the hormones and suchlike. Reduces the risk for breast cancer- always a good plan. Salty, so my reduced tasting ability is sated.
Drink very hot. If you feel less abraded and lazy than I do, you might consider adding some red pepper flakes- also a holy rain on your internal fauna- or black pepper, or a grated chile.

What does science suggest reduces the duration and severity of a cold? Drinking lots of water, drinking hot liquids, and getting adequate electrolytes. Which is lame, and does not allow me to imaging thousands of viruses writhing in terror. "No, no, increased hydration! Aiiiiii, soothed mucus membrane tissue! Anything but that!

Bad Idea Saturday: Acorn Bread.

Sarlah dared me to do this, and I am apparently seven years old.

So some time ago, Sarlah sent me an article about eating acorns. The article had no recipes, a few tips, and a general message that I should cook with acorns, because I deserved it!

"Goodness," I thought, "Have I been unusually unpleasant lately?"

I have long suspected that acorns simply aren't very tasty. If they were, we would have domesticated them like almonds and walnuts. If they were, some of the hundreds of cultures that used to eat them wouldn't have happily turned to wheat in all of its beautiful forms at the very first opportunity. If acorns were tasty, hogs would eat the ones that fall into their pens before they ate hog food.

But because I can't resist a dare, I shelled a whole bunch of acorns, poured them into a cloth bag, and suspended them in the toilet tank. This is the sole practical tip in that article: replace the endless rinsing that used to be found in streams with the sterile toilet tank. Every time you flush, the acorns leech out a little bit of their bitterness. (The acorns will stain the water in the bowl a weak-tea brown. If you leave part of the bag outside of the tank, water will drip all over the floor. You will then have to explain that there are acorns in the toilet. It will go about as well as you might expect.)

I started looking for acorn bread recipes. An ethnobotany guide explained that 3/4 of the calories consumed in Pre-Columbian California were from acorns. It noted that the indigenous peoples of California were blessed with the ability to gather most of their food for the coming year in four or five days. It notes that preparing enough acorn gruel for the daily meals took at most one or two hours a day, leaving the people of California with copious free time. It also notes that they spent most of this free time searching for foods that were not acorns. Because acorns suck.

I found several recipes online, but they all seem to suffer from the "lotta butter, lotta eggs, lotta flour" problem. Those things taste good on their own! There's no reason to add acorns except as some bizarre ecological cachet! What's the point?

Huh. While I was complaining about that last bit, my mother wandered by and shared anecdotes. Apparently, my opinions about cooking with acorns have not changed much over the last twenty years, and are the long lost reason that I was... mutually agreed to not be the best fit with the local Girl Scout troop. I must have been really obnoxious about native peoples and their access to sugar, wheat, and baking soda. And they say we mature as we age.

The Internet recipes also rely heavily on common names for oaks. Several sites (and Cuervito) suggest eating only the seeds of the white oaks. The ethnobotany guide suggests that the preferred species were black oaks. There is a local species known as the Oregon White Oak (Quercus garryana) which is closely related to the California Black Oak (Q. kelloggii). Both species are technically classified as red oaks. There's a sister clade known as the white oaks, and it contains the Blue Oak, (Q. douglasii) the Golden Oak (Q. chrysolepis) and a whole bunch of other oaks that do not have color related names. All the records I can find are iffy, because anthropologists are terrible botanists. This is a pet peeve of mine; I had to take a quick break from researching this article to spam my anthropologist cousin with information on oak identification.

I ultimately went with the Q. kelloggii growing in my back yard. Lazy...

But what of those acorns, sitting patiently in my toilet tank for... about a month now? I tasted them every week or so, and they never got less bitter. Today, I took them out, rinsed them off, and nibbled on one for a while. Then I spat it out and drank three glasses of water. Then I tried another: still bitter. Then I shelled a fresh acorn and tasted it: less bitter than the prepared ones.

But what is this? One of my friends just returned from a reskilling fair, where there was a workshop on acorn cuisine. She suggests boiling acorns for 90 minutes to remove bitterness. The part of me that objects to using quickbread ingredients objects to boiling things in a pot for a very long time. At the very least, the energy going into making the nuts edible is probably greater than what is strictly reasonable. But still- I now have a viable plan to make an acorn food product, it's already Saturday afternoon, and my cold leads to poor decisions.

------------------------------------------------------

(Makes like four tiny biscuits, because why would you want more?)

Take two handfuls of acorns. Crack them with a meat tenderizer or a nutcracker, and remove the shells. At this point my father will wander into the room, shake his head, and say "Somehow I thought that you would have outgrown doing inexplicable things in the kitchen by now." He will then go outside so that he doesn't have to observe the devastation being wreaked.

Take said acorns and boil for one and a half hours. Change the water three times. Peel off as much of the skin over the acorns as possible- Internet sites say that it's richer in tannins, though my tongue cannot detect a difference.*

*I do have a cold, and it was cook things with tannins in them day, (quince, unripe persimmons) so I may be absolutely wrong.

Remove acorns from heat and drain water. Pulse in food processor (sorry Cuervito!) until it resembles some sort of meal. Frequent scraping of sides will be necessary. (I suppose food processors technically violate the reskilling/native foods part of this exercise, but I purposely cooked without appliances for three years, and am confident I could do so again in a pinch. I could also live on oranges and potatoes and dumpster olive oil again. Part of some experiences is proving that it was a bad idea. Like eating acorns.)

Mix with a bit of water and notice that the dough is not at all cohesive. Grudgingly add a couple tablespoons of wheat flour to harness the glory of gluten. Perhaps a dash of salt? Does that offend delicate sensibilities? And a clove of minced garlic- interesting choice. Form into small oblong biscuits, attempt to wrap in oak leaves, fail, wrap in chestnut leaves, succeed, but only until the biscuits have gone into the oven. Bake for twenty minutes. Remove. Clean the kitchen to make future Bad Idea Fridays possible.

Okay guys. Guys. Everything tasty about this is based on wheat and garlic and salt, but I would totally eat these to survive. It's got a little bitter aftertaste, and I ate only one, and that one was eaten with about an equal volume of bad idea jam- but they aren't awful. They just aren't very good.

Californicated Miso Soup- Traditional Style

It's not quite the same without the shaved dried fish.

Although I've had only one kind of miso soup ever, there's apparently a theory of appropriate ingredients. You should have one ingredient that floats and one that sinks, one with a strong flavor and one with a mild flavor. I've been happily thinking of combinations ever since.

Serves one.

Heat 12 oz water in a small pan. Add two chopped scallions, about 2 oz. sliced silken tofu and 1 tsp dried wakame broken into tiny little pieces. (The things that make this recipe Californicated are leaving out the large fish flakes because of overfishing and feeling guilty when one realizes one has purchased California grown wakame- one of the top 100 invasive species in the world in your own precious ecosystem.) Simmer for five odd minutes, until the wakame is unfurled and edible. Take two tbs. fresh red miso. (Most packages have serving sizes neatly delineated. Trust them in case I'm wrong.) In a separate bowl, blend miso with some of the pathetic excuse for broth you made. Remove the rest of the broth from the heat, and gradually blend in the miso mixture. Never ever let the soup boil after you've added the miso- it'll make everything gross. Put into a bowl and consume.

If you have personal objections to wakame, or cannot procure it, cilantro is a reasonable and tasty alternative.

Beet Salad

My excuse for not going live earlier? June. Work has been... June.

I like to have a little salad in my lunch- my parents aren't crazed vegetable eaters, and it's a good way to get an extra serving in. This week, it's going to be beet salad, because I live in the middle of nowhere and being seasonal is difficult.

Crap, the farmer's market is going on right now. Be right back.

Hey, there were beets there! Justified! (Like most lunch items, serves me for four days.)

So grate two raw beets. This will leave you with a lot of grated beet. Make a quick vinaigrette by blending 1 tsp Dijon mustard (I like Inglehoffer)with 1/8 cup red wine vinegar and 1/4 cup olive oil. (Salad quality oil, whatever that means for you.) Add salt and pepper to taste, pour over grated beets. Taste. Adjust. Put in Tupperware so it can sit in a hot backpack for five hours.

It's a tasty little salad- nicely sweet. If you wanted to make it super Californian, you could use tahini instead of mustard and add some soy sauce and sesame seeds. If you wanted to make it Chilean, you'd cook the beets, peel them, and then do pretty much everything else the same.