Vegan – Page 8 – Experiments in my New World Kitchen and Garden

Pineapple Vinegar Dressing with Chocolate (!)

I see you rolling your eyes at me! Stop it.

This sounds disgusting but it was a winner. I was reading a recent Bon Appetit magazine article about Modern Mexico and I was prepared for a lot of silliness but instead it was a really smart article by Nils Bernstein.

One of the dishes was a salad made with a vinaigrette with instant coffee. At first, like you, I thought, why bother? Then I tried it. It was very good. Then I thought, if coffee is good, wouldn't chocolate be better? Guess what? It was.

The original recipe called for sherry vinegar and while that's nice, in fact, very nice, I decided to try it with our pineapple vinegar. Friends, I don't have to do anything clever for a good long time. This was great and it's time for a victory lap and a long rest on my laurels.

Pineapple Vinegar Vinaigrette with Stoneground Chocolate
If it tastes overtly like pineapples or chocolate, you've used too much. It's a new taste and lovely. You can experiment with different vinegars but don't mess with the chocolate. Artisan chocolate from Mexico is the only way to go.

3 tablespoons Rancho Gordo Pineapple Vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
3 tablespoons Rancho Gordo Stoneground Chocolate, finely grated
salt and pepper
1/3 cup olive oil

Whisk together the vinegar, honey, chocolate, salt and pepper until the chocolate is incorporated. Slowly whisk in the olive oil until the dressing has emulsified. Serve room temperature over salad greens.

What to Do With a Pot of Beans No. 3: Bean Soup with Roasted Red Pepper and Kale

Yes, that's been the flu that has been knocking me down. But I get right back up! Thanks in part to some leftover beans!

This was entitirely based on what was in the fridge. Leftover Ayocote Morados with lots of bean broth and not so many beans, a jar of Trader Joe's roasted red bell peppers, some kale that was left in the "Crisper" drawer of my fridge and salt. Once heated, I added a spoonful of yogurt. It was incredible! Proof again that when you start with good ingredients you can make some simple magic.

What to Do With a Pot of Beans No. 2

I had a small about of cooked heirloom beans left. I had used most of them for a salad, so I had very few beans and lots of bean broth.

I added a little water to get the pot to soup level and then added some chopped potatoes. After about 15 gentle minutes on medium heat, I had bean and potato soup. Salt, herbs and anything left over in the fridge would be welcome.

This is why one should cook heirlooms. Commodity beans would have required a ham hock or a bouillon cube. Good heirlooms just need water and time.

Ayocote Morados in a Pressure Cooker: One Hour from Whim to Wow!

I’ve been cooking in so much clay lately that I thought I’d give some love to my pressure cooker. This was a gift from the wonderful Lorna Sass but I’ve also been reading posts from a great Facebook group of vegans who use an electric pressure cooker called the Instant Pot.

I have a regular modern pressure cooker. It’s weird how quiet it is, especially having grown up with the loud, hissy rattlers of the past. It doesn’t compare to clay but how else can you cook a pot so quickly with such little effort? People who live at high altitudes know that they are essential and even Mexican food maven Diana Kennedy told me she often cooks beans in a pressure cooker and then finishes them off in a clay pot once they are almost cooked through.

Is there a prettier bean?

I start with onions, garlic and olive oil, just like I would with any other method. I have heard the oil prevents foaming that can clog up the release valves, but I would do it anyway for flavor.

The Ayocote Morados are added and water to cover by about one and half inches. Note that the beans are unsoaked. I cover the pot and “lock” it and turn the heat to high. Once the high pressure is acheived (as in the photo), I turn the heat down to low and time 35 minutes for ayocote beans. I would probably do 20 or 25 from most Rancho Gordo beans but ayocotes are extra dense and big and the farmers in Mexico aren’t as consistent as we are in California. A few extra minutes with these big beans won’t harm them.

Once the timer goes off, I cut the heat and let the pot come down in pressure on its own. I don’t unlock it and I don’t add cold water over top, a technique that can be used for other food.

Once the pressure has dropped, I remove the lid and turn the heat up to medium and allow the beans to finish and the bean broth to evaporate a little, making it extra delicious.
I had masa on hand this morning, so I made tortillas while I was waiting. I don’t want to show off, but I did manage to get them all to puff, the goal of all tortilla makers!

The beans were gorgeous and within an hour of a whim, I had beans and tortillas, making for an excellent breakfast and a happy way to start the day.

Jill Nussinow, a pressure cooking evangelist and author of The New Fast Food, prefers to soak her beans before pressure cooking. I think she’s right, as you get a more consistent result. She says you can also soak and then freeze, popping the frozen beans into your pressure cooker as needed. I hate freezing things and I rarely can plan to soak. The lesson here is there’s no one technique and as long as you’re cooking beans, I believe you are ahead of the game.

Direct Canning Dried Beans

This was a new one on me. Check out this video.

I was intrigued and I had to try it. One internet commenter asked why one would bother. Why not just make them in a pressure cooker? For me, some beans like baby limas or garbanzos, I just want a little bit. I don't need a whole pot. I also like the idea of beans in my larder, ready to go with just a little heating up.

I bought a pressure canner (yes, I know I'm a little obsessive) and went to work. I differed from Aunt Duddie in that I added 2 cloves of garlic, a teaspoon of Oregano Indio and about a tablespoon of olive oil in each jar before filling them with boiling water. I did everything else as suggested and guess what? They came out great.

I can't wait to try this with different types of beans and see how they do.
My concerns, and if you are a canner i'd love to hear what you think, are the olive oil and garlic. Will this remain shelf-stable even though I added oil? Does it make any difference.

I heard all the jars "ping" and I checked their seals this morning and the lids are on tight.

One other concern is I left some head space but some of the beans continued to suck up the liquid and the head space is more than recommended. Does this extra air matter?

Now I'm fantasizing about soups and chili. What do you think?

Pinole: A Toasted Corn Treat

Yunuen from Xoxoc was very excited when she told me about a special pinole (peen-oh-lay) made from heirloom blue corn. I wasn’t 100 percent sure what to do with it but I knew if vaguelly had something to do with a kind of atole drink, not unlike gruel.

It turns out there are many uses for it and a delicious hot beverage is not uncommon. To make Atole de Pinole, you start about a litre of water to boil. In a measuring cup, add a cup of milk or almond milk and mix in 1 cup of the pinole. This is to avoid lumps. Add it to the soon to be boiling water. When it reaches a rapid boil, turn the heat down so you have a gentle boil and let it roll for about five minutes. At this point, you add more sweetener or milk and of course you can play around with these ratios, keeping in mind the more milk and sugar, the higher the chance for scorching and you’ll need to keep stirring constantly.

My youngest son asked for me and then later asked me to make it again, so in our house, it’s a hit. I searched the internet for information on it and most of it comes from runners, who mix it with chia for a potent energy food.

Visit the Pinole page at Rancho Gordo

A Better Cup of Mexican Chocolate

How do you improve something as divine as Mexican chocolate? Let me tell you. Many indigenous people drink it made with water. I have tried and it's fine but really, I need the hot milk to really be sent to the moon.

Well, a wise friend told me to try it with almond milk. My instincts are to say no and run in the opposite direction but when you think about it, almond milk is almost like an almond horchata drink and almonds and chocolate go so well together. Well, it's better than when made with milk! It's rich but not as filling. I'm a convert. By the way, this keeps things vegan.

Here's how to order our stoneground chocolate online.

Mushroom-Avocado Tacos

Is there anything that doesn't work on an heirloom corn tortilla? No.

Sauteed wild mushrooms with lots of garlic, plus avocado. What's not to like?

Mushroom Epazote Taco (Vegan Before Six a la Mexicana)

Three very debauched weeks in Mexico have led me to Mark Bittman's VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good
program. It's very simple. Eat vegan for breakfast and lunch and for dinner you eat what you want. If you're in tune with your body, you probably won't crave meat. I refuse to BE vegan but if it means weight loss and an improvement in my health, I'm happy to EAT vegan, at least for awhile.

The book is great but it really doesn't address the way I eat, which is mostly Mexican. I'll be posting my successes here as they happen and any notable failures as well. I am cheating with two ingredients. I'm taking a little milk with my first coffee in the morning and I'm using my good chicken stock for flavor. I know there are prefab "good" stocks out there but I'm not really into settling for vegan substitutes of known things. I'd rather do without cheese or creamer or whatever than have a Trader Joe's version with 75 ingredients. But I can't do without my chicken stock and it has few if any calories and it's just my compromise.

If you are a serious vegan I can see how Bittman's book and my even weirder interpretation of it could be considered offensive so I apologize in advance if this is the case. At this point, my issues are weight loss and a concern of what it takes to bring a pound of beef to market, organic or not. Maybe this will all change and I've learned never to speak in absolutes about these things but essentially, Vegan Before Six with milk for breakfast and chicken stock for flavor feel just about right, for the moment.

These tacos were made with sauteed mushrooms in olive oil with onion and garlic and then tossed with chopped epazote. My instincts were screaming "Queso fresco!" at me but I ignored them and this was delicious. Next time a little thinned out guacamole/tomatillo salsa.

Masa Fantasies: Oaxacan-inspired Corn Love

Hoja santa (or sometimes Yierba Santa) (Piper auritum) is a delicious leaf used throughout much of Mexico for flavor and as a wrapping. I’ve had very little luck growing it at home, which has been frustrating as I’ve heard over and over that’s invasive! Well, this year they decided they were happy and I have a nice crop of hoja santa leaves to play with.

In Oaxaca, where this plant is used a lot, they make a delicious little masa snack called tetela. I wasn’t sure about how to make them but I did steal the technique and the results were great. You can make these without just about anything that inspires you. I liked the fact that the leaf helped block the bean juices from permeating into the wet masa.

Diana Kennedy came up with the phrase “masa fantasies” to cover the hundreds of snacks and treats you can make with masa. The same item may have a different name in other parts of Mexico but they all have a certain creativity in common and they all tend to be delicious.

The secret is to take your time and let the weight of the tortilla do the work for you. This filling was simply Sangre de Toro beans (I’m loving these more and more) and a few ripped hoja santa leaves.

After all three sides are done, you can wet the seam and try and make it seamless, but I didn’t care that much.

You just heat them up on a medium skillet or comal. My next experiment would involve deep frying them. Or maybe you can and report back.

Remember, the filling could beans and cheese, cheese and salsa, just about anything.

I’ve seen Oaxacans scramble eggs on yierba santa leaves on clay comales. They would use the leaf as almost a non-stick pan and then scramble the leaf into the eggs right before serving. I’ve also seen them press the leaf right into the masa and then toast both sides. I love these when lightly toasted as they have a very mild, almost minty flavor. When the leaves are fresh, it’s somewhere between anis and root beer that you taste.

This last snack I just pressed the leaf into the masa to make a tortilla that I toasted on both sides before adding scrambled eggs and Sangre de Toro beans and Felicidad hot sauce.