Rendang Rising

I had never even eaten Rendang before, let alone made it. I always feel slightly disadvantaged when I try to cook something that I've never seen or tasted before (how would I ever know if I'd gotten it right?). But my good friend Michael Pang-Larsen (he added his wife's surname to his--how cool is that?) sent me a sample of one of his new products, a "sambal" (from his mother-in-law's special recipe), so I had to try it right away. It wasn't just the fact that I had a new, intriguing food product to try out (which would have been enough); or that my friend had spent  300 Danish kroner (about $54!) to send it to me-- it was, more than anything, the wild-man infectious enthusiasm Michael has for food, cooking, and life itself (on his LinkedIn profile, he lists his education as "School of Love - not yet graduated"). I just had to honor it all, immediately!

The recipe for preparing rendang he sent along with the package was simple: "approx. 200 grams paste, 1/2 liter coconut milk, for 1/2 kilo tempeh," with just a few notes on cooking and serving. The sambal itself (a wet paste made from all fresh roots and herbs) is brilliant--an Indonesian-Malay-Singaporean blast of flavor, fragrance and pungent heat. Enriched by a creamy reduction of coconut milk, this sauce is a freaking knockout. I live up a dirt road in a little town in Colorado, so I had no kaffir lime leaves (damn!), but I got a great effect by adding a splash of fresh lime juice at the end. I garnished the dish with shredded cilantro and slow-roasted grated young coconut. Ooh baby.

Lucky for me, I have a bunch of sambal left over. Michael thinks like a serious chef, so he doesn't bother with cutesy little "gourmet" jars. His sambal comes in a no-nonsense 1-kilo bag, for people who want to get in there and do some real cooking. My kind of guy.

Mustard Greens with Golden Beets and Daikon

For such a simple dish, this has amazing flavor and texture contrasts. The root vegetables are cooked together first, with a little sesame oil, salt, mirin, and sriracha. The white daikon radish turns yellow from the juices that bleed out of the beets, which fools the eye, because their flavors are quite distinct. The mustard greens are added toward the end, and cooked until just tender-crunchy. The result is a spicy, sweet, slightly bitter, pungent, tender, chewy altogether delicious bowl of vegetables. Highly nutritious, too!

From Fringe to Cutting Edge

A recent article in the Washington Post trumpets the rise of veganism in America as a mainstream phenomenon. Apparently 1% of the population is now on the veganwagon--including high-profile folk, like Bill Clinton and Mike Tyson. This is good news for someone who has one vegan cookbook out, and another in the works for 2012 (that would be me), but it should be even better news for anyone concerned about the rising cost of "healthcare" (read: "medical intervention"). All this should come as no real surprise, considering the growing body of anecdotal evidence as well as scientific studies indicating that dropping animal food is a healthful act.

One glaring omission in the discussion on the merits of the vegan diet is very often the improved sense of well-being. We hear about weight loss, and of plummeting cholesterol. We hear a lot about the sick, heartless treatment of animals in factory farms, and about the pollution and greenhouse gases associated with these unconscionable, disgusting death camps. We read how much energy, food and water is wasted producing a pound of meat. And all of this is important information that no sane person would ignore. But what doesn't seem to really make news is how freaking fantastic it feels when you make the switch. It hasn't been that long for me (a mere 16 months), so even on a bad day, I still marvel at how much better my body is functioning without the (literally) deadweight of animal food in my system. By the third day, I felt like a new man--seriously!

To me, this has nothing whatsoever to do with ideology. Sure, I like the fact that I'm not participating in the mistreatment and slaughter of animals when I sit down to eat. But I don't even call myself a "vegan." My diet is vegan, and my sympathies are vegan, but I'm all about what works. Which brings me to the next point, the food.

Although it's not entirely true that "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach," food quality is certainly a decisive factor in winning someone over to a new way of eating. As a dedicated hedonist, I would never have even contemplated the switch if I had not been confident that I could bring enjoyment with me. By this, I don't mean I favor meat-imitative products (I don't go for self-deception in any form). I mean food itself can be made delicious, regardless of what restrictions anyone might place on its ingredients. I know this because I've had a long career feeding people on one one kind of diet or another. This is crucial information.

If we're going to move in the direction of a plant-based diet as a culture, we'll have to do two things: 1) lose the notion that eating meat is good (why would you want a faux-burger if you aren't still craving a real one?) but more importantly, 2) raise the quality of vegan fare from the erstwhile hippie fodder to truly excellent food in its own right. Bottom line for any eater: if you're really enjoying it, you're not on some kind of forced diet--you're having the time of your life (as well you should)!

I'm here to help make this happen.

Satsumas

This is a bit unfair of me, I know--it's well past the season for these majestic citrus fruits, so it'll be pretty much impossible to find any until next fall. But I took some pictures around the first of December, and there is a way to preserve some of their unique flavor that's worth sharing. If you don't mind waiting a year to try it...

Satsumas have a flavor and sweetness akin to (but much better than) a tangerine or mandarin, a skin that comes off very easily, and no seeds! For some reason, I forget to look for them in the late fall, so it's always a sudden thrill when I see them in the market somewhere--it's like finding wild raspberries on a summer hike in the mountains (Wow! Look! Rip. Slurp. Yum!). The guys in the produce section always forgive my unbridled brigandage, partly because they know me by now, but also because I invariably end up buying a ton of them on the spot.

Satsuma season is very brief; they show up toward the middle of November, and in two or three weeks they're gone. Sometimes you can get them as late as Christmastime, but their flavor will have slipped from bright and miraculous to well, much better than nothing.

Once in a while, I'll go off the deep end and buy a case right when they first appear, thinking I'll have them for a while (yeah, right). Two problems with this idea: 1) they're so easy to peel and eat, you go through them like mad, and 2) even at a furious devouring rate, you still can't keep pace with their ripening speed, even with help, so the flavor will decline by the time you're eating the last ones.

A couple of  years ago, I decided to dry some of them when they were at their peak to see what would happen. This was before I bought a dehydrator, so it took them over a week to sun-dry completely. Also, the first time around, I sliced them a little too thick, which made them take even longer. Live and learn, right? Ultimately it doesn't matter how thick or thin you slice them--once they're dry, they taste equally fabulous (although nothing like the fresh ones, let's face it). They're like citrus chips that start as a crunch and then begin to reconstitute in your mouth, releasing both the sweet juice flavor and the very slightly bitter oils in the skin. Freaking spectacular, frankly.

Then I had the idea to grind them to a powder and use them throughout the year as a spice. This turned out to be a brilliant move (except that it reduced my stash of satsuma chips to about an afternoon's worth).  A mere teaspoon of the powder can hurl a salad dressing or dessert sauce into another world of taste sensation with one whirl of the whisk. I had saved some of those quaint little old-world bottles of Sanbitter  (a non-alcoholic version of Campari by San Pellegrino) because I couldn't bear to throw them away, so I filled them with the satsuma powder and used them as gifts for special people. Sorry, no picture; they're gone like a satsuma in winter.

FORKS OVER KNIVES

Check this out:



Looks like a terrific film. I can attest that simply by cutting animal products from my diet, and reducing my intake of refined products to almost nothing, I've experienced dramatic health benefits (and I was already in pretty good shape!).

What? Chicken-philia is supporting homophobia?

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 I'd say the factory farming of animals (chickens in particular) is a far greater threat to civilization than gay marriage could ever be--to ANYTHING! A little tolerance, Y'all, please!

Everyone Eats Vegan

During my very brief stint in sales, I learned a little bit about getting past people's objections, and since my book Speed Vegan came out, I've had ample cause to use this technique. It's not that I need people to approve of what I eat or don't eat (it works for me, so why would I care what anyone thinks?). No, this is all about selling the book, and the title gives some potential buyers an easy out.

Most vegans get it, of course: Speed Vegan. Duh! It's fast food for people who don't want to compromise their values or their health. I say most vegans, because I've encountered some who are more concerned about the well-being of animals than their own health. People who eat animals often see a kind of challenge in the word "vegan," an affront to their diet, their culture, and sometimes even their religion. So they state an objection, by way of summarily dismissing the issue--and the book, and its author. "Oh, I'm not into that," they'll say, or "I'm not a vegan." Maybe they'll add a look of benign disdain--a face you might expect them to make if you had just passed some obnoxious gas.

I have my theories about the underlying issues driving these objections--not the least of which is the possibility that some may feel morally inferior when faced with someone who doesn't eat animals (as if they intuitively suspect that there is something not quite right about their own diet). I don't know, of course, this is all conjecture on my part. But whatever the reason, I don't like the feeling I get when people need to separate themselves from me (and from buying my book), so I usually try to bridge the gap by addressing their objections. Here is my favorite response, which works most of the time:

"Well, you know, everybody eats vegan food; it's only vegans who don't eat everyone else's food." They usually get it right away (smiles, nodding heads). For the ones who still look dubious, I have the follow-up, "Regardless of whether people eat meat or not, everyone needs to eat plants, especially green plants, if they want to be healthy." Who could argue with every article ever written on diet and health?

That's my wedge. It gets people to at least open the book, begin salivating over the photos, and (often enough) go through the cost/benefit analysis and (hopefully) buy the book. It also has the deeper effect of re-humanizing a group of fellow humans they may have written off as way too extreme to be normal. Any time I can help remove a barrier for someone, I feel like I've really done something.