Holiday Foodblogging: Vegan Chili

Since I first posted a recipe here, I've made peace with cheese, re-upped on eggs, and scheduled meat once every other week, but there are still plenty of days and all kinds of reasons which call for hearty plant-based meals. I've tried my hand at chili a few times with mixed success. Here is the latest effort.

Whole Economy was fresh out of dry red beans except for adzuki, which I've never cooked or eaten before. I cooked about 3/4 of a pound of them in a stiff vegetable broth made from plenty of hot peppers, garlic, and shallots (no onions, they do funny things to my broths), along with a couple of stray carrots and some cauliflower scraps. Add some salt to the broth as it is simmering for maximum flavor extraction; after straining out the solids, make sure the broth is still hot as the beans are added. Adzuki are smaller than the great American kidney bean, so they cooked nicely right out of the bag in less than 2 hours.

Meanwhile, get the skillet sizzling and sautee/stir-fry a couple of blocks of crumbled tempeh and a head of cauliflower, finely chopped/riced. Do it small batches, just barely enough to cover the pan; piled-high veggies will steam themselves without browning.

Once the beans were done, I let them cool for about 15 minutes before combining the tempeh and cauliflower, along with a generous dollop of tomato paste and little too much chili powder mix. Topped with sliced green onions. The final product is plenty flavorful and probably too spicy to serve without a warning. As usual I used too little broth, so it is a bit thick. But it doesn't get much meatier or more nutritious than this. Happy helladaze from the Fickle Ears kitchen.

Son of Iron, Man! – Givin' Thanks for Beans 'n' Greens

This year's foodblogging: kale and pasta salad with pinto beans and sauteed tempeh.

INGREDIENTS (precise measurements customarily omitted per my previously discussed impatience with them)

•Several leaves each of green, red, and lacinato kale, finely chopped
•1 package Trader Joe's 3 Grain Tempeh, cubed
•1/3 to 1/2 bag Trader Joe's Brown Rice Fusilli*, cooked
•1 can Trader Joe's Organic Pinto Beans with Sea Salt, drained and rinsed
•Small handful of finely chopped red onion
•Small handful of finely chopped garlic
•Olive Oil (for coating the salad)
•Coconut Oil (for sauteing the tempeh)
•Bragg's Liquid Aminos
•Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute
•Dash of ground cayenne pepper

PREPARATION

Combine the three varieties of chopped kale in a large mixing bowl. Coat with olive oil and Liquid Aminos to taste. Mix in the chopped red onion and pinto beans, then the cooked pasta with an additional splash of olive oil to grease the skids.

In a large skillet, dissolve the cayenne pepper and chopped garlic in coconut oil over medium heat. Add the cubed tempeh and saute until lightly browned on the bottom. Before turning with a spatula, splash on Liquid Aminos to taste and a generous heap of 21 Seasoning Salute. Flip/mix thoroughly and allow to brown again.

Finally, combine contents of skillet with those of large mixing bowl, toss, and enjoy.

DISCUSSION

Now some tips in case anyone actually tries to make this. Perhaps it's my own impatience or simply that I'm often, unlike today, in quite a hurry in the kitchen, but I find getting the right amount of salt (that's the Liquid Aminos here) quite elusive, especially when coating the kale. You can burn the tempeh and overcook the pasta and the salting can still make or break the dish. So experiment and be careful not to overdo it on the first pass.

Second, resist the temptation to dissolve the 21 Seasoning Salute in the hot oil before adding the tempeh. It will just burn. Once I realized this, a quantum leap in Ironman!tology was achieved.

Finally, this dish is a direct experimental descendant of last year's recipe, and that is to say that early versions involved combining everything step-by-step in the skillet and cooking it all together. That still works okay, and it's still a great way to deal with a half-bag of kale that got pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten for two weeks. However, as I was doing this kind of thing a lot, I eventually decided I needed to figure out a way to eat more raw kale and onions rather than simply steaming/frying the piss out of them all the time and hence likely losing a lot of the nutrients. Here, then, is one very nice solution IMHO.

Incidentally, while I was always apprehensive about sharing last year's dish for fear people might not really like it, I have since stumbled on the perfect use for it which I suspect could more reliably be served to guests: as filling for Fajitas Gringos with the tortillas of your choice. That's fuh-JY-tahs, the way your college roommate's white-ass parents would say it when you would all go to Chipotle after someone's degree recital.

That's all for this year, foodie friends. Keep fighting the good fight against vegan anemia, and maybe keep those gas pills close at hand as well. Til the next time hunger strikes...


*Not that I really care, but I am suspicious that TJs has actually mislabeled rotini as fusilli here. At the top of the latter's Wikipedia page, there is a notice that it has been proposed to merge the two entries; however, the picture to the immediate right is of something not quite like what I put in my salad today, which may explain why the proposal has evidently not yet achieved approval from the hive mind.

Making A Habit Of It: A Second Lapse Into Foodblogging

I now continue tumbling down the slippery slope of blogger-like behaviors with an encore foodblogging extravaganza. This year's iteration, however, bears quite a bit more directly on my musical activities than you probably would otherwise imagine. Over the past several years, I began to suspect that my largely vegan diet was not serving the needs of my choppers all that well. My first thought was protein, but I now suspect that iron has a much larger impact. The following dish was developed for iron loading, combining as it does three vegan iron powerhouses: kale, tempeh, and black beans. I eat it three times a week and have seen a noticeable improvement in my ability to get and stay in tuba shape. It's also a darn tasty and filling meal sure to please all but the most terminally constipated of fast-foodists. The recipe is shared below. Please note that most all of the measurements are approximate and included simply for effect; I do not own any measuring implements and have never actually measured anything when making this dish. Use your instincts and embrace some subtle variation within repetition. (Did I mention I eat this three times a week?)

•••••
Iron, Man!
feeds 2 people, or 1 tuba player

•1/3 Cup Canola Oil
•Two Handfuls Chopped Onions
•One Handful Chopped Garlic
•2 Tbs Ground Cumin
•1 Tbs Ground Cayenne Pepper
•One Package Trader Joe's 3-Grain Tempeh, Chopped
•One Generous Splash Bragg's Liquid Aminos
[low-sodium soy sauce substitute, available at health food type places and some supermarkets; a miracle; get hip to it if you're not)]•Two Handfuls Cherry or Grape Tomatoes, Chopped
•Lots of Kale, Chopped (I use about 3/4 of the Trader Joe's bag)
•One Can Cooked Black Beans, Drained and Rinsed
[if you have time to cook your own beans and know how to do it well, this can really put the dish over the top; unfortunately, I have been opting for the expedience of the can lately]

In a large, deep skillet or wok, combine canola oil, cumin, cayenne pepper, onion, garlic, and tomatoes. Cook on low heat for 5-10 minutes, mixing occasionally to distribute. Mix in tempeh and liquid aminos and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes.

Now add as much kale as will fit in the pan. You really can't have too much, since it cooks down so severely, but you'll be lucky to fit a whole bunch/bag in there unless you're cooking in one of those massive witches cauldrons.

If using a coverable pan, cover at this point, but do not mix. When kale first begins to wilt, uncover and mix to distribute spices and oil. Cover and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes, or until kale reaches the desired state. (If using a wok with no cover, it's possible to get more or less the same results by bringing the heat up a tad and mixing every few minutes.) Uncover, mix in black beans, remove from heat and let cool. Serve.

You're now ready for life as a bodybuilder, or an improvising tubist, whichever sounds more exciting to you.

Holidays?! Foodblogging??!! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

At the risk of deflating what little intrigue I might create here once a month, I'd like to make the implicit explicit just one more time: in writing this blog for the last 6+ years, I've taken a hard-line, moralistic stance in favor of an exclusive emphasis on content which relates, however tenuously, to music and the world immediately surrounding it; this was in direct response to my experiences of repeatedly and maddeningly encountering other musicians' blogs where one or two brilliant missives in their area(s) of speciality were almost hopelessly buried amongst innumerable pictures of pets, progeny and, not infrequently, food. After a few years of this, the idea occurred to me to devote one month out of each year on my own blog to a no-holds-barred miasma of inanity, impulsiveness and insufficient proofreading as an ironic commentary on this state of affairs. The result is the Blog Month project, presently in its fifth iteration.

With that context in mind, understand that what I'm about to do gives me pause even so. I've never gone quite this far down the rabbit hole and I fear what might happen to me and my work if I do, but this is Christmas Day, I now live within reasonable (by CA standards at least) driving distance of most of my extended family, and I do, honestly, though I've come to it later than I would have liked, love food and cooking, and not just to assuage Wolf's Law. And so, today, Christmas 2012 in the good ol' USA, we here at Fickle Ears wish Happy Holidays and all that other stuff to you and yours and whoever else as we mark a new high, or low, depending on your perspective on the matter. Here's sending some vegan, gluten-free gingerbread your way: