Hello Blogosphere! And greetings to new readers in Germany, Hong Kong, and New Zealand! I hope you'll continue to check out Orbiting Vegan for all that's best in vegan food, nutrition, and the occasional literary departure from reality, or foray into wild abandon. And of course a dubious relationship with the onion.
Speaking of onions, they figure semi-prominently in today's entry, but I'll get to that shortly. They say never keep an onion waiting, I say, if they don't like it, throw them to the Clomes.
Ok, getting vaguely serious, one of the people who keeps popping up mysteriously in this blog is my father. Mysterious because, quite frankly, he generally won't touch anything I cook with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole. And if I characterize my diet these days as "orbiting" vegan, he has his own gravitational pull, and is generally encircled by the "four food groups": ground beef, chocolate ice cream, diet soda, and rippled potato chips.
One of my clients (Hi Anna!) turned me on to a great new cookbook,
Vegan Cooking for Carmivores, by Roberto Martin. Martin is notably the personal chef of
Ellen DeGeneres and
Portia De Rossi, both vegan, however Martin himself was not vegan when he took the job.
He enters with a unique perspective, and one of the primary aims of the book is to create recipes that resemble the comfort foods you love, and substitute vegan alternatives. Having really only leafed through it at this point, my major criticism is that he frequently makes use of faux meats, soy products such as tofu, so there are some ingredients that are a step or two further from the source than the purists among us would prefer. That said, we all know I believe in moderation, so some gardein beef less beef tips here and there don't really bother me. To be honest, I have yet to try a vegan "meat" product that was truly exceptional, and so I prefer my vegetables do not burden themselves with aspiring to be animals.
I bought this book, However, with an agenda, namely, preparing something that looks, smells and tastes so good that my dad won't be able to resist it. I frequently offer, but never push, and frankly, as his child, I have enough insight into how he thinks to know that if he's going to try something new, he needs to choose it himself. Frankly, I think he walks into our kitchen these days and wonders what on earth he's going to live on with all this actual food taking up so much space. Ah, the generation gap.
I the spirit of this agenda, dinners for the next entire week will be taken directly from Martin's book, and my hope is that something will at the very least raise an eyebrow or perhaps flare a nostril or two.
I began with Martin's variation on grilled cheese. I'll have to make this one again later in the week, because by the time I got home from the store, it was well past dinner hour, but I was starving so I had dinner at 9:30 anyway. This "grilled cheese for grown ups" involves making a simple, and much to my chagrin, succulent red onion jam, and a healthy serving of baby arugula.
Here's the Jam Biz:
1 tbsp high heat oil (I used sunflower oil, safflower or grapeseed are also good. Olive oil bad, it has a low smoke point, so in this instance it's not really your friend.)
2 red onions sliced thin (the thinner the better, if you have a good mandolin, break that sucker out!)
1/2 tsp kosher salt (I used sea salt)
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1 tbsp fresh rosemary (right from my garden!) minced
2 tbsp balsamic
2 tbsp agave
Making the jam takes a bit longer than I would prefer to wait, at what was for me about three hours past dinner time, but was well worth it. As prep goes, the hardest part was chopping the onion. Ps, if you are like me, aside from being devilishly handsome, you are also probably extra prone to tearing up in the presence of raw onions. Slicing open a citrus fruit and keeping it on your cutting board will help to neutralize the onion's "mace factor.".
Heat a large, deepish pan on high heat, then add the oil, then add the onions when the oil is hot. Throw in your salt, pepper, and rosemary, and continue to cook on high heat for a few minutes. Keep stirring and do not walk away, kitchens burn down this way. That's a funny story for another day. Turn down the heat to lowish-medium and let the onions continue to cook until they are all well carmelized and soft (15-20 minutes.). Then, add balsamic and agave, remove from heat and let those puppies cool down. Reserve about a tablespoon for each sandwich, then you can store the rest in the fridge.
Here's the sandwich biz:
4 slices of whole wheat bread
2 tsp vegan butter
Dijon mustard
Red onion jam
1 plum tomato (sliced and paper-towel dried)
Sliced vegan cheddar cheese (Martin prefers "follow your heart" brand, but I found a vegan cheddar not made from soy or rice, but from almonds. This was far and away the best cheddar substitute I've purchased or made myself. I will update with the brand name in the near future.)
8 oz baby arugula
One the onion jam is made, the rest is a cake walk. Perhaps a flourless, eggless, gluten-free cake walk?
Butter two slices of bread, and spread Dijon mustard on the other two, add the jam, tomato slices, cheese and arugula, in that order, on top of the Dijon. Then, top the sandwich with the buttered bread, butter side facing up.
Preheat a large frying pan with a lid, lowish-medium, in fact, if the pan you used for the jam still seems clean enough, just go ahead and use that, any residual flavor will just get soaked up by the bread. Melt the rest of the butter, and put the sandwiches in the pan. Cover. After 4 or 5 minutes, check the bottom for loveliness. In this case, loveliness equals a copper tone golden brown. Then carefully flip the sandwiches over, and cook until the other side achieves an equal state of loveliness.
Then eat them. You could let them cool for a minute or two, but I was so hungry at that point I was willing to risk burning the roof of my mouth in the name of facilitating the movement of these sandwiches from the plate to my belly.
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Location:Madison, CT
