Sarlah Salad.October Style.

Why yes, that is a piece of chicken skin. It makes your skin beautiful.

I am the worst vegan ever.

This is another recipe garnered from a roommate. I have a lot of these, both because some of my roommates are awesome cooks and because I've had twenty-four roommates. Law of averages, really. Sarlah lived on a salad of chopped vegetables- fresh, blanched, and wilted- with one of several fermented soy products and a wee bit of oil. Of course, this version is remade for my finickier tastes- and as a "last farmer's market of the year" salad.

Rinse one handful really nice lettuce. Or chopped cabbage. Or parsley, kale, chard. I'm not really a follower of the cult of the salad. Green or red leafy thing. Put it in a large bowl.

Garnish with cucumber slices, apple slices, halved cherry tomatoes, sliced tomato, toasted peanuts, toasted sunflower seeds, bell pepper, carrot, (I keep referring to the picture to remember what I included) boiled beet slices, sliced raw or wilted summer squash, and finely sliced onion. In short, go to the farmer's market. Put the vegetable contents of the market into a bowl. Dress. There you go.

But the dressing, you ask- what sort of dressing makes this salad a Sarlah salad? Take one tbs miso, two tbs rice vinegar, and one tbs olive oil. Stir together. Put on salad. Eat.

Cowboy Caviar

I took the picture before stirring because it was just too pretty.

Take two cans black beans. (Fine, yes, I cooked 1 cup dry turtle beans. HeadLaurel would scold elsewise. However, this is better with canned beans. And easier. See how there are no beans in the picture? That's because they're still cooking. Still.) Drain and dump into a giant bowl.

Chop one red onion, two handfuls cilantro, and one bell pepper. Dump into bowl. Blanch two ears of sweet corn and cut off kernels. Add kernels to bowl. Goodness, how pretty. Stir. Juice two limes. Mix juice with 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 clove grated garlic, and about as much capsaicin source as you can stand. (None is an amount here. I won't judge.) Add to bowl. Stir. Taste. Maybe a little salt?

Serve as a dip, or as filling for tortillas. Or eat it straight. It is important to use a fork when eating it straight, FYI. Particularly if you have poison oak on your fingers. I usually eat about a quarter of this with a half an avocado chopped and stirred in- but if you're serving it to starving hordes and you want to be fancy, add two chopped avocados from the get-go. And maybe a little tomato/peach salsa on the side.

Stir-fried brussels sprouts, cream of tomato soup.

If I ever have readers, y'all will look back on the four month gap in posting and shake your heads. I deserve rebuke!

Regardless, the above was my lunch today. It was delicious. Gaze on it with envy. Recipes follow.

Stir fried brussels sprouts: (15-20 minutes)
Buy a stalk of brussels sprouts at the farmer's market because they are just unreasonably pretty. Cut... fifteenish sprouts off of the stem, remove tough outer leaves, and rinse. Slice lengthwise into fourths. Dice 1/4 red onion. Smash and skin 4 garlic cloves. Heat 1 tbs vegetable oil on medium high heat. (Yes, if this were a real stir-fry, it would be very high heat. You wouldn't have read this far for fried brussels sprouts, and if I'd said sauteed, half of you would have adjusted the temperature downward. I regret nothing.) Fry the onion until the edges are brown. Add the brussels sprouts and garlic. Salt and pepper to taste. (A few red pepper flakes wouldn't be bad here, but I'm feeding a Chilean.) Fry, stirring frequently, until brussels sprouts are tender enough to eat. (7 minutes? You may need to add more oil.) They usually get a little burned when I make them, but I like that. I also like them crunchier than my Midwestern parents- if you don't want your vegetables fighting back, you might want to splash a little water in the pan and cover them for the last minute. Eat

Vegan Cream of Tomato Soup.
There are two tricks to this soup. One is the mirepoixesque base of sauteed red bell pepper, yellow onion, and cilantro. (My Puerto Rican roommate taught me this. Her stews were excellent, though a bit heavy on the chorizo and bullion cubes.) The other is the addition of good quality bread partway through the cooking process. (A cookbook taught me this. Such is life.)

Take two pounds really good tomatoes. Boil water, immerse tomatoes for fifteen seconds, and then remove skins and stem scar. Do not squeeze out seeds and juice. When it's not the best time of the year (tomato season!) you can use good quality canned tomatoes (I think they're 22 ounce cans). Cook them longer to remove the canned taste, and use as little of the canning liquid as seems reasonable.

Chop one yellow onion, one red bell pepper, (Or orange. That would be awesome. In fact, I used a couple of red jalapeños, the product of another impulse buy at the farmer's market. Congratulations, you've found the driving force in my culinary experimentation.), a bay leaf, and a handful of cilantro. Saute in 1 tbs vegetable oil in a large heavy pan until onion is soft and translucent. Sprinkle with salt. Coursely slice in peeled tomatoes, 4 smashed and peeled cloves of garlic, and 2 slices good quality white bread, torn into 1 inch pieces. Bring to a simmer, and let bubble away for ten minutes. Cool slightly, and then pulse in a food processor or blender (in two or three batches) until slightly chunky or very smooth, depending on your preference. Return to heat, warm slightly, and then thin as needed with broth, white wine, beer, or water.

If you wanted to have the analog of a grilled cheese sandwich with this, I'd steer away from vegan cheese which has a distressing texture when warmed. Try mashed avocado on toast- perhaps with some toasted sesame seeds.

Tomato Salad

This one is pretty complex.

Find a good tomato. This one is a yellow Brandywine- my college roommate's (and only follower's) favorite tomato. It is one of mine, because it reminds me of her.

I do have around seven favorite tomato varieties.

Slice the tomato. Drizzle with good olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Try to eat with something other than fingers.

Carrot Pickles

I made these a while ago, but they're just coming into their eating prime. The picture is from before I added vinegar because it's prettier.

Take two pounds of carrots- it's suggested to use a variety of colors, but I used red ones and now the whole thing is blood red. Peel and remove ends. If thick, quarter. Simmer 1 cup cider vinegar, 1 cup water, 1 tbs salt, and 2 tbs sugar over medium heat until the solids dissolve. Add eightish peeled garlic cloves, slightly crushed, and 1 tsp cumin or coriander seeds.. Stuff the carrots into a very clean 1 quart jar, and pour in the vinegar mixture. Cover the jar, store in the refrigerator for four weeks.

(To sterilize the jars, you can boil them, or boil the lids and put a half-inch of water in the jars and microwave them for a minute.)

These are good in sandwiches, maki, weird Sarah salads, and probably a whole slew of other things.

German Potato Salad

This is a sorry excuse for a vegan recipe- being as it required the suffering of three different species. Happily, my mother informs me that it's also a sorry excuse for German potato salad. According to her every potato chunk should be coated with an acrid gloss of roofing tar- or a roux made with bacon fat and cider vinegar and whole wheat flour. Regardless of cultural accuracy or following the sentiments of this blog, it's pretty good potato salad. It has no mayo, if that's a thing. Also, it's what I'm having for lunch this week, so stop whining.

I will be giving my Midwestern recipes extra leeway, because I can think of about three dishes that are perfectly vegan. They are all pickles.

Dice two onions, and caramelize them in 1 tbsp butter, lard, or for those of us without seven generations of German grandmothers hissing in our prefrontal cortexes some sort of vegetable oil. This will take a while- that's why one does it first. At some point you may find the onion pan to be dry- add more fat and make sure the heat is nice and low. Cut 10 Yukon Gold or other waxy potatoes (the red ones or the white ones or the purple ones)in half, and boil them until fork tender.

Chop 4 stems of celery, a good handful of parsley, and cucumber pickles. The total amount of chopped pickle should be half the amount of chopped celery. You should use dill pickles, but I'll still be your friend if you use bread and butter. Or non-cucumber pickles, actually. Hell, I still love C, and the man hates pickles. I've gotta find some with Yellow #5. Put the chopped vegetables into a large bowl. Oh, and dice one slice of bacon.

You'll probably finish chopping long before the onions turn properly brown and the potatoes become edible. Do some dishes or something.

When the potatoes finish, cut them into thick slices and put them in the bowl. Add the onions. Take the old onion pan, turn the heat up to medium high, and fry the bacon until crisp. Keep stirring, or it will burn and you will be sad. This is where you'd make a roux if you were bound by tradition, but we already silenced those demons with lard earlier. We are strong. Instead, add one tbsp of mustard, (not French's, fools) 1/3 cup of cider vinegar, 1 tsp sugar, 1/8 cup of olive oil, and 1/3 cup chicken broth. (The secret to great vegan cooking is homemade chicken broth.) Turn the burner off, stir until blended. Pour over the vegetables, mix everything together. Chill.

This should be a little on the acid side, because I was raised on acrid roofing tar potato salad, so you may want to hold back on the vinegar at first. Or to be more accurate, I added sauce ingredients until it tasted right instead of measuring, and too much vinegar is the only thing likely to make the final product inedible. If the balance is off, add things until it tastes good. This holds up very well in a backpack- though that might be in contrast to my memories of dubious mayonnaise based potato salads.

Please note: butter, bacon, and chicken broth. Tasty.

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.