Soup Part One: Miso

Tuesday, 12 January 2010 at the Macrobiotic Cooking Club

There are certainly more solid parts per million in my breakfast French press than in a bowl of miso broth. But, coffee isn’t broth, no matter how thick, and so miso remains the simplest, most energizing soup I know.

The traditional base for miso soup is dashi, which is made from bonito (flaked dried fish) and seaweed. Its flavor is delicate and delicious. Aveline Kushi writes that, ideally, soup does contain both sea vegetables and either miso or tamari, “which simulate the salty composition of the ocean from which primitive life evolved.” (Aveline Kushi’s Complete Guide to Macrobiotic Cooking for Health, Harmony, and Peace).

Don’t let dashi-making deter you, though. Use good unpasteurized miso (typically sold in 4- to 16 oz. tubs or jars from refrigerated cases in health food stores) to turn even plain water into a satisfying soup.

Ryan taught me the best way. My cookbooks have recipes for batches of four or more helpings, but if you’re cooking for one or two it’s better to soup miso by the bowl. Made with rough and aged South River miso, this broth is the most satisfying light meal there is. Serve it with thick bread or brown rice.

Simplest Miso Broth
per bowl

1-3 teaspoons miso
boiling water, left to cool for a few moments
scallions, rinsed and sliced thin (green and white parts)

1. Put the miso in your soup bowl and mix in a little warm water to soften it. Gradually add more water until the miso is the texture of mustard. (This should take less than 1/4 cup water).
2. Add hot water, a few moments off the boil; use as much water as you want soup. Stir the diluted miso and the water together and top with sliced scallions.
Note: The amount of miso depends on your taste, the type of miso you are using, and the amount of water. Only experimentation will determine the amount you’ll like best.

Seasoning With Miso

Besides making a meal on its own, miso is good for seasoning any soupy dish or broth you have. We mixed miso into the seitan cooking water last week at cooking club. The seitan was cooked in broth seasoned with tamari and dulse, tasting like the sea, and just a couple of teaspoons of chickpea miso made it into soup.

Soften miso as for soup, and add it to cooked beans for a savory treat. Miso may also be diluted and poured over greens or other vegetables as they cook, although it is best not to boil miso if you can help it. When miso boils, the flavor doesn’t change but the living ferment is destroyed.

Consider the saltiness of miso when seasoning with it. Some dishes may require both sea salt and miso for the proper flavor, while others will taste just right with only miso. Try some of your miso plain or on a slice of toast to find out just how salty it is.

The reason for diluting miso with a little of the water before adding it to soupy dishes is, if you do not dilute the miso it stays lumpy. The Sous Chef at Pure Food & Wine used to add wads of hatcho (soybean) miso to family meal soups, for heartiness. He did not temper the miso, though, so the soup was mostly bland but with biggish lumps of concentrated salty flavor in a few of our bowls.

Besides Chickpea Miso in Seitan Broth, at the Twelfth Meeting of The Macrobiotic Cooking Club, we had:

Carrots Baked Fish Style
Rolled Sushi with Seitan, Cucumber and Sprouts
(Green Tea)

Arugula with Curly Endive, Celery Root and Walnuts

Tuesday, 5 January 2010 at Macrobiotic Cooking Club

Boxed greens are irritatingly convenient, but it is muddy bunched arugula and feathered heads of curly endive that are irresistible. For a small winter salad, the task of cleaning them is not so tedious after all. I learned from reading Deborah Madison’s The Greens Cookbook and The Savory Way. Madison admits of pre-washed greens’ contribution to a speedy salad, but encourages her readers more towards garden toil and countryside gathering. Far from being a nuisance, “Handling the tender, delicate leaves,” she says, “…is one of the keenest pleasures in the kitchen I know.” (The Savory Way)

To make eight small salads:

1 smallish celery root
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 bunch arugula
1 head curly endive
3-4 Tablespoons raw walnuts (halves/pieces)

3 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (about 1/2 lemon)
3 Tablespoons tamari soy sauce
1/2-1 teaspoon toasted walnut oil
1/2 cup cold water

(Heat the oven at 350 degrees F to toast the walnuts.)

1. Peel the gnarly outer layer off the celery root. Use a vegetable peeler to make thin shavings of the inner root. Toss the shavings in salt and set them aside in a small bowl to ‘quick pickle’ while you prepare the rest of the salad.

2. Wash and dry the arugula, removing any tough stems and wilted or yellow leaves. Trim the base off the curly endive and wash and dry the frilly leaves. Set these aside while you prepare the walnuts and the dressing.

3. When the oven is heated, toast the walnuts just until crisp and very lightly brown. Check them every 5 minutes, as they are easy to burn. Once they are toasted, set them aside to cool while you prepare the dressing.

4. This light dressing is based on Aveline Kushi’s Tamari-Lemon Dressing. Combine the lemon juice, tamari, walnut oil and water. It is easy to shake them all in a jar together, then store any extra dressing in the same jar.

5. Add cold water to the bowl with the celery root and swish it around to wash off the extra salt. Taste it and rinse again if it is still too salty. Drain off the water.

To Serve:

1. Divide the curly endive between eight small plates.

2. Toss the arugula with dressing to taste. Divide it between the plates, mounding it atop the endive. Use half again as much arugula as endive.

3. Place several strips of quick-pickled celery root atop the arugula on each plate; to equal about 2/3 the volume of endive.

4. Roughly chop the toasted walnuts and sprinkle them onto the salads.

About Celery Root and Curly Endive

The French enjoy both of these vegetables. Flying to Paris from New York aboard an AirFrance airplane, I tasted celery root for the first time. Shredded and dressed, as it was, in vegan remoulade, it tasted like a delicate and string-less version of the ribby, stalk celery. It is actually not the same vegetable at all, but, according to Larousse Gastronomique, an entire other “…variety of celery grown for its fleshy whitish root, which can weigh…(1 3/4-2 1/4 lb).” In France, it is called celeriac, or celeri-rave.

Celery root is adaptable to cooking styles ranging from the near-raw remoulade and quick pickle, above, to steaming, braising or stuffing. Curly endive, however, with its “very thin and serrated” leaves, is “…eaten mainly in salad.” (Larousse Gastronomique). The Chef at a French restaurant I worked in pointed it out in the salad mix we used, saying he wished he could buy it alone. Similarly, many American restaurant guests pick it out of the salad mix and leave it on the corner of their plates. To each their own, as they say. Those who wish to buy curly endive alone should look at Whole Foods, where I chose mine from a row of the small, individual heads. It may also be called frisee or chicory.

Four of us cooked and ate at Meeting Eleven of the Macrobiotic Cooking Club. In addition to salad, we had the following:

Red Lentil Dahl
Arame and Onions
Brown Basmati with Spinach
(Red Wine and Green Tea)

Next week we’re making sushi.

Post-Hemming-And-Hawing: Burdock

I expired my hems and haws for burdock.

Tuesday, 29 December 2009

Tenth meeting of Cooking Club. The original three members; Laura, Ryan and Hilary (myself). Here’s burdock on the menu:

Quick-Pickled Cucumbers
Kinpira Burdock
Wheatberries with Lemon and Scallions
Homemade Seitan
Roasted Beets with Onions
Miso-Tahini Sauce

It was a feast! We drank Vinho Verde (the Portuguese “Green Wine”) and, after dinner, green tea.

Fright Root

You never know how to cook a vegetable until you’ve done it, so here’s some inspiration to try burdock.

“This long, thin brown root vegetable has a firm texture and gives very strong energy. Although eaten year-round, burdock is especially warming in winter. In Japan, we grew burdock in our garden at home. It was cultivated in raised hill beds…in order to make harvesting easier. In many regions, burdock also grows wild and is more strengthening than the domesticated variety. …[I]n New England we’ve foraged for wild burdock many times…” –Aveline Kushi

“…In cooking, the fleshy roots are prepared like salsify or asparagus.” –Larousse Gastronomique

That “domesticated variety” is easy to find in Asian markets. Course and hairy, like a coconut pulled to the length of your arm; it’s intimidating, but inexpensive. The clerk broke mine in half to fit it on the scale, then I closed it in the vegetable drawer for three weeks while I got the nerve to cook it.

Now that I’ve cooked it, I know how.

To Prepare Burdock

1. Use a vegetable peeler or small paring knife to remove the dark brown skin. It’s cruddy and shreds as you go. The pale inner root will darken as quickly as it is exposed to air, but that’s OK. When you cook it, it turns mushroom-brown.

2. Cut the peeled burdock into julienne or matchstick pieces, or any other small and thinnish style. Slice surely. Burdock is questionably fibrous raw, but once cooked, the root reveals its smooth and toothsome nature. Immerse the slices in a bowl of fresh water. The water, also, will darken. I rinsed my burdock in several changes before cooking it.

Kinpira

This Japanese and Macrobiotic cooking style is especially good for burdock, or burdock-and-carrots, but also can be used to cook turnips, beets, parsnips or any other root vegetables you might have around.

1. Heat a wide, heavy pan over high heat and add a little oil. I used toasted sesame oil for the burdock kinpira. Add the sliced root vegetables and cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes to color.

2. Add water to half cover the vegetables, and a splash of soy sauce. Reduce the heat to low and cover the pot. Simmer for 30 minutes to an hour, or until the roots are soft and have absorbed all of the water.

Traditional kinpira also includes sake, mirin or dashi as part of the cooking liquid. This water version is plenty delightful, but if you have those ingredients you can try adding some.

Cucumber Haiku and 50-Pound Maitake

Tuesday, 15 November 2009

The ninth meeting of the Macrobiotic Cooking Club.
Barry, Laura, Emily, Thomas, Tessie, Ryan and Hilary showed up.

The Menu:

Oat-Wheat (sourdough) Bread
Red Rice
Leaf Salad with Mustard Dressing
Slippery Mushrooms
Quick Pickled Cucumbers

We drank French-pressed fresh ground coffee while cooking, and followed the meal with dessert improvisation; honey bread.

Forbidden Shmuits

Macrobiotic teachers (such as Aveline Kushi, from whose book we cook) frequently discourage students from using natural ingredients such as coffee, yams and honey; but students take their advice with salt.

Yesterday’s curious clicking around the Internet lead me to an open-minded and informed explanation by Steve Gagne on the Macrobiotic Guide website. Gagne answers questions about macrobiotic eating and explains foods often avoided. He presents macrobiotics as a traditional rather than restrictive diet, and invites us to imagine a macrobiotic way of eating developed by Mexicans.

Questions often come up in cooking club about nightshades, and which foods are or are not ‘allowed.’ Definitely, it is good to know about ingredient’s qualities and effects. However, I’d rather choose foods based on their positive qualities than avoid them based on the negative. When food shopping, I try to look first to whole ingredients and local produce. In winter, that’s tough. Certain occasions call for corn chips. Well, are they organic, at least? And, what am I going to combine them with? Remember the big picture.

Overall, it is more important to understand what you are eating, and why you are eating it, than to blindly limit yourself to someone else’s idea of healthy. Who am I to forbid good old potatoes? Learning to balance your diet according to macrobiotic principles of yin/yang (beyond me, at this point) or through intuition, practice, restraint and common sense will clearly help you more than saying ‘no’ to nightshades.

More Whole Grains in Bread

Bread is a lovely canvass of doughy homemade convenience snacking. It can almost effortlessly be made sweet, savory, hearty or light as cotton to suit the baker’s whim.

To incorporate more whole grains into your loaves, all you need to do is soak or cook them first. Add leftover grains; brown rice lightens whole wheat dough. Or, soak cracked grains over night at room temperature and mix them into dough next day (I reserve the grain-soak water to use in the bread dough, too).

For the Oat-Wheat Bread, I soaked steel-cut oats overnight. In the morning, I mixed a basic whole wheat, rye sourdough, adding the softened oats.

Sekihan or Red Rice

“Popular for festive occasions, particularly weddings and birthdays. This dish consists of barely cooked azuki beans steamed with glutinous rice, then sprinkled lightly with toasted black sesame seeds. It keeps very well…is usually served at room temperature…[and] is often packed into small, individual lunch boxes.” -Shizuo Tsuji Japanese Cooking; A Simple Art

“Traditionally in the Far East, red is the color of happiness, and [azuki] beans have always been considered lucky. We would prepare Red Rice for birthdays, graduations, and other joyful occasions…and it is especially delicious made with sweet rice… Medicinally, azuki beans are strengthening for the kidneys.” -Aveline Kushi Complete Guide to Macrobiotic Cooking; for Health, Harmony, and Peace

To make Red Rice, Kushi recommends a pressure cooker. Tsuji says to soak the rice in the red, bean-cook water for 24 hours, or overnight. Either option would surely produce some stunning Sekihan but I had only a regular pot and one day.

I cooked the beans (2 cups) for a few hours with some leftover kombu seaweed, and rinsed the rice (a combination of 1 cup sweet, or glutinous, rice and 2 cups short grain brown rice). When the beans were nearly done, I strained the red cooking liquid and measured it, adding plain water to make 5 1/2 cups or so. I then combined this liquid with the beans and rice in a large pot, brought the mixture to boiling with a few big pinches of salt, lowered the heat and simmered as for plain rice. One hour.
We ate it warm with toasted black sesame seeds and packed the rest for lunch on Wednesday.

The Best Dressing Ever For Leafs

Laura brought fresh baby lettuce and ingredients for our favorite mustard dressing.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Stone Ground Mustard
Lemon
Salt
Pepper

Use about 4 parts oil, 1 part each mustard and lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste. Sometimes we add fresh tarragon or another herb. Thomas sliced some scallions which we sprinkled on the mustard-tossed lettuces.

Slippery Grifola Frondosa

Grifola Frondosa is the technical name for maitake mushrooms. According to Wikipedia, they grow at the base of oak trees, and can exceed 50 pounds in Japan. According to Emily, they cooked up slippery because they didn’t absorb oil like other mushrooms do.

Once Emily came to visit me in New York and we cooked maitake, or Hen of the Woods, mushrooms with noodles, tahini, and red chard, which turned the whole dish pink.

Her Slippery Mushrooms turned out more beautiful; shining tan, sweet and savory with sliced baby onions in oil.

Quick Pickling Cucumbers

I have been waiting a week to tell you about quick-pickling cucumbers:

Salt sliced cucumbers
Let sit half an hour, or so
Rinse the extra salt

The cucumbers come out sweet and crispy; you’d never think it was as simple as it is.

Noodle Bowl Winter Night

Tuesday 8 December 2009

Laura, Emily, Hilary (V), Tyler (D) and Hilary (M-B, myself) made five at the eighth meeting of the Macrobiotic Cooking Club.

One Degree, Fahrenheit

Laura four-wheel-drove us through the frozen outdoors to get sake and ingredients. Steaming noodle bowls and sweet roasted squash added another sixty or so degrees to the one outside.

The Menu:

Baked Puffed Mochi
Soba Noodles in Japanese-Style Broth (Fish-less Dashi)
Roasted Buttercup Squash
Brown Rice

We drank Corn Silk tea and Odell’s Isolation Ale while chopping the Buttercup and bringing seaweed to boiling. After adding a splash of sake to the noodle broth, we let the bottle bubble in the noodle-water pot to heat.

Pounded or Purchased Sweet Rice Snacks

Mochi is a Japanese snack food made from sweet rice. Grainaissance, the same company that makes sometimes-available commercial amasake, also makes widely available commercial mochi.

Commercial mochi is a ‘slice and bake’ pounded sweet rice snack that is packaged as flat rectangular cakes. The cakes are hard until you cut them into small squares with a sturdy knife and bake them in a hot (450 degree) oven.

Mochi puff in the oven, becoming light and chewy.

Dashi, Traditional As You Like

Japanese Dashi is made by bringing water to boiling with a piece of kelp submerged, then adding shaved dried bonito fish, briefly, before straining it all. The resulting stock is light and used in everything from vinegar dressings for salads to clear, hot still-life soups. The Japanese often use granulated instant dashi now, but traditional homemade dashi will lend authentic Japanese flavor even to American-made noodle bowls.

We combined two styles of Japanese dashi for a vegetarian noodle broth. First, we made Kombu Dashi by placing a few squares of kombu in cold water and bringing it to boiling. Then, we removed the kelp and transformed the liquid into Shiitake Dashi with dried shiitake mushrooms.

Noodle Broth
Adapted from Shizuo Tsuji’s recipe in Japanese Cooking; A Simple Art

8 cups cold water
4-5 pieces kombu (kelp), about 4″ x 4″ each
7-8 dried shiitake mushrooms
4 Tablespoons tamari soy sauce
2 Tablespoons brown rice syrup
2 Tablespoons sake
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
3 Tablespoons kudzu root starch, ground and dissolved in cold water

These measurements are approximate. The soy sauce, rice syrup, sake and salt must be adjusted to taste. You will know when the seasonings are balanced by tasting a distinct Japanese flavor. The kudzu is optional. It thickens the broth.

Place the kelp and cold water in a pot over medium heat and bring just to boiling. Remove the kelp and add the shiitake mushrooms. We let the mushrooms simmer for 10-15 minutes to infuse their flavor into the broth.

Strain the mushrooms out, reserving them and returning the pot to heat. Add the tamari, rice syrup, sake and salt, adjusting to taste once they are all in.

When the broth is seasoned, add the dissolved kudzu and stir, simmering, until the broth thickens.

Steaming Noodle Bowls

You must have heard somewhere about the Japanese custom of slurping noodles hot. They slurp to eat noodles steaming hot without burning their mouths. In order to serve hot noodles, keep the broth simmering while you boil the noodles; and have all of the other components ready.

We topped the soba noodles with shiitake mushrooms cooked in oil, then added the hot dashi and a garnish of sliced green onions.

Cutting the Round Vegetables

You must be cunning for the task of cutting round vegetables, such as onions, winter squash and cabbage. If their size and solidity aren’t deterrents enough, you will cuss the challenge of making uniform pieces from the shape of a globe.

For winter squash, thick wedges are satisfying. However, because of their layers, onions and cabbages are easier to cut uniformly if you slice them thin as you can.

How Does the Cooking Club Work?

We have established some routine at Cooking Club meetings, but how are new members supposed to know what to do?

Ingredients:

We try to decide on a menu for next week at each meeting. That way, everyone has a say in what we make, and each person can bring an ingredient that is easy for them to get.

When we can’t decide on a complete menu, we’ll claim responsibility for certain types of dishes. As in, “I’ll bring the greens,” or “I have rice we can use for the grain.”

If all of the dishes are simple (a vegetable with just one or two seasonings, for example) no one has to spend tons of money or time for ingredients. If everyone contributes, we still wind up with a rad feast.

New members may worry that they’ll bring something that clashes with the rest of the menu. That is difficult, with macrobiotics! Everything goes so well together. Carrots are always a good idea, or, if you are really unsure just come empty-handed to your first meeting and bring something next time.

Method:

Once we are all assembled with ingredients in hand and a menu in mind, we cook.

Obviously there is limited space in my kitchen. There are only four burners, only so many pots, and the cutting board clutters up quickly.

Using a variety of cooking methods is efficient. While one vegetable roasts, the grain can steam. Meanwhile, one person can wash greens at the sink while another chops vegetables or slices tofu at the cutting board. Someone may even mix cookie dough to put in the oven as the vegetables come out.

Don’t feel intimidated by the number of people in the kitchen. When so many people cook and clean, no one has to work very hard and everyone gets to eat a good meal.

Macrobiotic Cooking in Real Life

The main idea behind the Macrobiotic Cooking Club is for all of the members to see how simple it is to have a macrobiotic meal.

After preparing, cooking and eating macrobiotic meals with the Cooking Club, it will be easy for members to cook macrobiotic meals for themselves.

Seventh Meeting of the Macrobiotics Cooking Club

Tuesday 1 December 2009

The seventh meeting of the Macrobiotics Cooking Club, and seven of us cooked and ate. Kim and Barry, Emily, Laura, Tyler, Ryan and Hilary (myself). As always, bring back friends next week!

Everything Went So Well Together

It is easy to compose a balanced menu from whole, seasonal, “honest” ingredients. At each meeting we have used a variety of whole grains, garden vegetables, natural oils and sweeteners, seeds, fruits and beans. We vaguely ration recipe responsibility to avoid four pots of rice; and new members tend to like bringing sweet vegetables, like winter squash or carrots.

The menu this week was yet another Winning Combination, with just enough for us all to eat our fill.

Sprouted Wheat Flatbread with Miso-Tahini and Pickled Daikon Greens
Broiled Tofu
Wheatberry “Mash-Up” with Mushrooms, Shallots and Delicata Squash
Baby Bok Choy with Soy Sauce and Toasted Sesame
Drenched Daikon

We accompanied all that with Peppermint Herb Tea and Barefoot Merlot.

If you don't grind Meat, you can grind Grains to look like Tuna!

Sticky Sprout Dough

A few weeks ago, we made a cracked wheat and sesame dough; spread it thin and baked it into crispy crackers. This week, I tried a similar technique to make chewy sprouted grain flatbread.

The ground sprouts naturally form a sticky dough. To make the flatbread, spread the dough out on a baking sheet and dry it in a low oven (200 degrees F). For a sour taste, ferment the dough with a sourdough starter (a few Tablespoons) for a day or two before spreading and drying it. Salt the dough to taste. Sprinkle sesame or another type of seeds over the dough before drying if you like. Half-way through drying, score the sheet of flatbread into small rectangles and flip it over to dry the bottom.
Mine turned out really sour; we doused it in sweet Miso-Tahini sauce and topped it with pickled Daikon greens.

For Delightful Tofu, Press It

Pressing tofu improves the texture, making it more firm; as some might say, ‘toothsome.’ It also removes moisture from the tofu, enabling it to absorb other flavorful seasoning liquids.

To press tofu, spread out a clean kitchen towel or paper towels on a baking sheet or plate. Lay out the tofu in even slices and cover with another clean towel. Place another sheet pan or plate on top and put some heavy jars or books on top of that. Remember you don’t want to crush the tofu, just press the liquid gently out of it. Leave it for 30 minutes or so.

To broil tofu, heat the oven broiler up. Lay the tofu slices out on a baking tray and sprinkle some soy sauce over them to season. Place under the hot broiler until they begin to brown around the corners. Remove from the broiler and flip the slices over, then return them to broil the other side. Serve them hot or in a sandwich!

Lettuce-less Salad

Lettuce grows much slower in the winter so we made this salad with whole wheat, squash and two kinds of mushrooms. Vary the grain and vegetables with the seasons.
For this December version, Laura used:

Winter Wheat Berries
Delicata Squash
Shiitake and Button Mushrooms
Shallot

She cooked the wheat ahead of time, then cooked the diced squash and mushrooms with the shallot in some oil before mixing it all together. There were a few sprigs of parsley left in the garden for garnish, and we seasoned our individual portions with Sherry Vinegar to taste.

Fork and Knife Food

Sometimes vegetarians like something to cut into, too. Small vegetables make good Fork and Knife food.

Mother (Kim) cut each Baby Bok Choy in half and cooked them first in olive oil, then in soy sauce to season and soften them for cutting on the plate.

Vegetables cooked like this are pretty enough without a garnish, but then, toasted sesame seeds are good on everything.

Daikon Radishes, doing their job a month ago.

And Winter is A Good Time for Drenching Radishes

The little Daikon radish patch provided one last garden harvest for this year. I remembered a spectacular recipe from Shizuo Tsuji’s book, Japanese Cooking; A Simple Art. It is simple but each step is important.

1. Bevel the radishes. Cut thick slices and shave the rims to create a rounded shape from each slice. They will look something like little turnips with the tops and roots sliced off; flat on the top and bottom with smoothly rounded sides.
2. Simmer the radishes. Place them in a cooking pot with cold water to cover. Cut a piece of kitchen paper to fit right inside the pot and place it over the surface of the water to keep the radishes from floating to the top and drying out. Heat to boiling then lower the heat and simmer until the radishes are soft and translucent; 20 minutes or so, depending on size.
3. Drench the radishes. Drain the radishes of the simmering water and return them to the pot. Save the paper. Cover the radishes again with liquid, but this time use Dashi (Japanese broth) or something else with good light flavor. We used liquid reserved from cooking the wheat berries; seasoned with soy sauce and grated ginger. Cover the radishes again with the kitchen paper and return to simmering for another 20-30 minutes in order to drench them with the flavor of the broth.

Lean Lukewarm Burnt Cloves of Carrots

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Tuesday night cooking club with Laura, Emily and Miles, another Laura and Jess, Harley, Tom Biscotti, Andy, Ryan and Hilary

The theme was Breakfast for Dinner.

Red Flame Carrots
Laura cut them and we ate them raw. You know the texture of a young carrot. Orange inside and red outside, 6 or 8 inches long. We served the carrots from a handmade Black Walnut wood plate that is smooth and light in weight.

Breakfast Carrots
This idea is based on Ed Brown’s directions in Tassajara Cooking. Didn’t adding ketchup turn them into Dinner Carrots? Most important is eating cooked carrots in the morning.

10 carrots, or how many you want to cook
2 Tablespoons canola oil
pinch sea salt
1/3 cup raisins, chopped into bits

Clean the carrots and chop them into medium sized pieces with the skin on. Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot or frying pan and add the carrots, sprinkling them with salt. Cook the carrots over medium to high heat, stirring often enough to prevent burning, until they begin to caramelize.
When the carrots are as brown as you wish, add the raisins and a splash of water and continue cooking until the raisins are plump and the carrots soft.

Ginger Soy Tempeh or Breakfast Sausage
It is obviously not sausage. Everyone seems to love tempeh.

2, 8 oz. packages soy tempeh
3-4 Tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 1/2 to 2 Tablespoons grated or minced fresh ginger root
1 Tablespoon soy sauce, more to taste

Crumble the tempeh into course chunks. Heat the oil in a heavy pan and add the crumbled tempeh. Cook over medium high, stirring enough until the tempeh is browning.
Add the ginger and soy sauce along with a few tablespoons of water to the browned tempeh. The water will help gather up the browned tempeh that might be stuck to the bottom of the pot. Add enough water to make all of the tempeh moist. Season to taste with soy sauce. I haven’t tried forming it into patties.

Buckwheat Waffles
Aveline Kushi’s Buckwheat Pancakes recipe adapted as waffles. Until amazake becomes more available commercially, or until we learn to make our own, we will have to use the EdenBlend amazake and soymilk drink from the aseptic packages. This double batch made one waffle each for ten of us.

2 cups buckwheat flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons light sesame oil
2 cups EdenBlend, more as needed
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
water, as needed

Combine all of the ingredients, adding more EdenBlend or water to thin to the desired consistency. Try not to stir any more than you have to. Cook it in the waffle iron or in an oiled frying pan. To keep the waffles from getting soggy while you cook the rest, stack them on a rack instead of on a plate.

Serve the waffles with button mushrooms chopped and sauteed, and sprouts or, even better; mushrooms, arugula and sour cream if you wish.

Kasha (Roasted Buckwheat Cereal) with Scallions
More buckwheat, Kushi-style.

2 cups whole buckwheat
6 cups water, more as needed
1/4 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
6 scallions, sliced

Dry roast the buckwheat in a heavy pan until it is dark brown but not burned. Add the water and salt and bring to boiling. Lower the heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes until the buckwheat is soft like porridge. Add more water if it gets too thick.
Serve small portions in bowls, garnished with sliced scallions.

Roasted Squash with What You Like
Jess and Laura work on the farm and brought some squash to cook!

1 medium Delicata squash
1 medium Butternut squash
canola oil
sea salt

raisins, or baby onions, or what you like

Heat the oven at 350 degrees or higher.
Peel the squash and cut them into chips. Clean the seeds. Oil the squash and spread them out on a baking sheet. Oil the seeds and put them off to one side of the baking sheet. Sprinkle all with salt.
Roast the squash and seeds in the preheated oven until the squash is soft and the seeds are crisp.
Add raisins, if you like, or sliced baby onions to the roasted squash and put it under the broiler at the end to brown a little bit.

Sourdough Starter

For Those Who Want to Make Naturally Leavened Bread

In order to make naturally leavened bread (also known as sourdough or simply levain), you will first have to catch or acquire a colony of wild yeasts.
Wild yeasts are different from ‘commercial’ yeasts (Active Dry, or Quick Rise, or even the fresh moist cakes used in bakeries). You will not find them granulated in the baking section, but invisibly in the air and upon the grain itself.
If none of your friends has a sourdough starter to share, how best to colonize these yeasts you cannot even see? Actually it’s as simple as remembering where they lurk and what they eat.

Ripe Sourdough Starter From the 'Fridge

Home For a Yeast

Attracting wild yeasts with a flour and water paste is something like attracting your own nest of birds by building them a house. The main difference is that yeasts are gluttonous and don’t know how to go out and find worms, moths or caterpillars. So you have to feed them often, especially while your colony is growing. The other difference is, no matter how light the chirping baby birds may seem, you will not be able to use birds to raise a loaf of bread.

Developing a Practical Sourdough Method

My current advice on sourdough starters comes from combined experience and the teachings of various bakers. I have followed Peter Reinhardt’s and Jeffrey Hamelman’s methods, more or less precisely, for building sourdough starters. During my Advanced Bread course at Johnson & Wales, my group kept and baked with both rye and wheat starters. Perhaps most influential, though, were the big buckets of sourdough starters I saw in bakeries where I worked, kept by bakers either totally ignorant or particularly aware of just how much neglect wild yeasts will tolerate.

Professional baking authors typically instruct their readers to toss out a portion of starter and replenish with fresh flour and water daily, although it is sad throwing out that much flour. The more practical method, of using what starter you need, storing the rest in the refrigerator and replenishing when it gets low, eliminates the problem of waste. Also, you don’t have to spend time feeding your starter on days you don’t plan to bake.

Choosing an Organic Whole Grain Flour

Sourdough starters for bread-making are made from rye or wheat flour. Using a large percentage of rye starter, or experimenting with wheat starters made with varying amounts of water, will produce different distinct varieties of bread.

For simple leavening purposes (making your loaf of bread rise), either rye or wheat will work. It may be easier to get a sourdough culture going using rye flour, but wheat flour may be easier to find.
Certainly, it is best to use whole grain flour rather than refined white flour. Whole grain wheat flour is sold as Whole Wheat Flour, while whole rye flour is usually called Dark Rye.
Organic flours do not contain genetically modified grains, and you may even be able to find a source of organic whole grain flour milled locally from grains grown in your region. Some bakers are enthusiastic enough to buy grain mills and mill their own flour.
At any rate, choose a flour that appeals to you and keep a few pounds on hand as you get your starter going and bake your first loaves of flavorful sourdough bread.

How to Begin

Building a healthy sourdough starter requires from a few days to just around a week of consistent feedings, and minimal simple kitchen tools.

Leave a vent so the yeast can breath

It is important to use a glass, plastic or ceramic container. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop a sourdough culture in a metal container. I cannot remember why, but I can remember how disappointing it is to feed and feed a starter and to never have it grow. Since you will need to loosely cover the container, it may be easiest to find a 2-quart glass or plastic food storage container with a lid that can be placed over it but not sealed. One other warning regarding the storage container; do not use ‘self-sealing’ plastic wrap to cover the bowl. There is some kind of chemical on the self-sealing surface that effects the health of sourdough. Any kind of spoon or mixing utensil, including your hands, will be fine for making the paste.

Once you have chosen a flour and found a good container, stir together about a cup of flour with enough water to make a thick paste. Place the lid or another loose cover over the container and leave it at room temperature for about 24 hours.

Feed the Starter Regularly Until it is Doubling Between Feedings

Next day, you will not see much, if any, difference in the appearance of the flour paste. That is OK. Remove about half of it and throw it in the compost (or garbage). Add enough flour and water to double the portion of paste that is left. Remember, you will only have to toss out starter for the first few days, so don’t resist.

It is important to add enough fresh flour and water to match the amount of paste you are leaving. That gives the growing yeast plenty of food. Loosely cover the replenished starter and leave for another 24 hours.

Next day, toss out half and add another portion of flour and water to match the amount of paste you have. This time, leave for only 12 hours before repeating the feeding procedure.

After a few days of consistent feedings, your starter will begin to bubble and grow

Continue to toss half and feed the starter with fresh flour and water every 12 hours until it shows signs of life. After 3-5 days you should have a pretty healthy sourdough starter. Soon it will be growing to double its size between feedings, and is ready to use for leavening bread. If you have a clear container, you will see bubbles in the starter. Sprinkle flour on the surface of the starter before leaving it to rise, and you will see cracks in the flour as the starter expands.

Cracked surface of a ripe rye sourdough starter, sprinkled with flour

Naturally Leavened Bread Requires Only Patience

When your starter is healthy and has doubled in size, mix it into a batch of bread dough in place of commercial yeast. Wait long enough and the dough, like your starter, will double. Form loaves, let them double again, and bake.
Sourdough is less consistent in the amount of time it takes to rise, when compared with commercial yeast. The longer rising time, however, gives the dough a chance to develop more complex flavors. If bread does not rise long enough, it may be dense and heavy. Be plenty patient and the bread should turn out good and light.

Between Loaves

When you use your starter to make bread, be sure to reserve a small amount to perpetuate it. A tablespoon or two is usually plenty.
Add fresh flour and water, allow the sourdough to ripen at room temperature until it is nearly doubled, then loosely cover it and store it in the refrigerator until you are ready to bake again.

When using starter directly from the refrigerator, your loaves may take longer to rise. For a faster rise, remove the starter and give it one feeding the day before you plan to bake. This is also a good idea if you go 2-3 weeks between batches of bread.

Always, always remember to keep and replenish a small portion of the starter so that you do not have to start from scratch!

Sesame Sourdough

Please Learn How to Make Bread
Anyone can make piles of homemade bread that will far surpass the quality of store bought loaves. Once you learn this simple skill you will see how ridiculously complicated most bread has become.
Cooks and bakers who are afraid of yeast are simply forgetting its nature; yeast is not a precise chemical leavening agent but a living thing. Commercial (Active Dry) and Wild (sourdough) yeasts all consume sugars and oxygen, creating various acids and carbon dioxide. The acids provide flavor while the carbon dioxide, trapped within the structure of the dough, causes the bread to rise. The warmer the room, and the dough, the quicker the yeast multiplies. The more yeast there is in the dough, the more carbon dioxide there will be to raise a loaf of bread. With less yeast or in a colder room, the dough will take much longer to rise. Be patient. The dough will rise eventually.
So, with the simple distinction of Living Thing vs. Chemical leavening agent, one can be quite comfortable working with yeasts to make bread. Now please learn to make your own bread.

Whole Wheat Sesame Sourdough
This is my approximation of the bread served at Souen, the great macrobiotic restaurant off Union Square in New York City. Actually I am pretty sure they didn’t make the bread in-house. The flour:water ratio and dry yeast measurements are based loosely on a scaled down version of Ed Brown’s Tassajara Yeasted Bread. He taught me how to make bread in the first place. The idea for baking bread in a Dutch oven came from my dad who learned it from the famous no-knead bread recipe. I learned this killer method of making sesame crust when I trailed the bakers at Grandaisy (formerly Sullivan Street) Bakery also in New York. They had a big soggy sponge the size of a half-sheet pan that they’d roll the loaf around on before rolling it in another pan full of sesame seeds to coat.

3 cups water
1/2 cup to 2 cups rye sourdough starter, OR 1 Tablespoon dry yeast
6-7 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons fine sea salt
sesame seeds, about 2 cups, spread out in a wide dish

Mixing:
If you want the bread to rise faster, use warmer water. Make sure it isn’t too hot; you should be able to easily hold your hand in there.
Add the yeast or starter to the water. Make sure the yeast dissolves, if you’re using dry yeast.
Add 5 cups of flour and the salt to the water and yeast and mix with a sturdy wooden spoon. Once it gets too thick to mix with the spoon, use your hand. I find it easiest to hold onto the bowl with my left hand and use my right hand to knead the dough.
Kneading:
There is nothing complicated about kneading the dough. You just want to make a nice soft dough. Quit thinking about how long it is going to take and concentrate on what you’re doing. Add enough more flour so that the dough is not too sticky, but not too dry. Six and 1/4 cups seemed about right when Ryan was learning to make the bread but who knows. If you accidentally add too much flour then add more water. Keep on kneading it until it is nice and soft and smooth.
Rising:
Oil a large bowl and place the dough in it, and wrap it with a plastic bag. Leave it alone until you can see it is swelling. Remember you’re not looking what time it is, you’re looking at the dough. It might take an hour or three. When it is definitely swelling but not huge yet, put the wrapped bowl of dough in the refrigerator to rest overnight. This makes it all the more flavorful and gives you a chance to do something else for a while.
THE NEXT DAY:
In the morning, pull out the dough for an hour before you want to shape the loaves.
Shaping and Rising Again:
After an hour, cut the dough into 2-3 pieces and shape them into rounds. A good bread book or website will teach you how, or improvise. Get your hands under the faucet and rub down the outside of each dough round with water, then roll it around in sesame seeds to coat it. Place it into an oiled bowl and wrap again with plastic.

Heat the oven as high as it will go. Do you have a heavy, oven-proof Dutch oven type pan? Put that into the oven, including the lid, while the oven heats.
You can tell that the bread is ready to bake when you poke it and the indentation is slow to disappear. At first, the indentation will pop right back out. You will eventually be very good at telling when it is ready to bake but at first you just have to trust your gut instinct and accept the fact that you may not bake the loaves at exactly the right time. Just don’t bake them too early because you are impatient.
Baking:
Get a knife ready, pull out the hot dutch oven and carefully get the risen loaf in there. Be careful. You don’t want the loaf to deflate and you certainly don’t want to burn your damn hands.
Once the loaf is in there make some quick cuts on the top of it. Put the lid on the dutch oven and get that hot thing back in the oven for 25 minutes or half an hour (depending on whether you made 2 loaves or 3; larger loaves will obviously take longer to bake).
Remove the loaf from the dutch oven and bake it another 10 minutes or so straight on the oven rack. You can put the second loaf in at this point. It will sound hollow if you tap it. Bake it until the bottom is pretty dark. Sometimes it is nearly black.

Let the bread cool a few hours or overnight before you slice it. It makes a difference.

Recently I have been making three loaves; freezing two in tightly sealed bags to have fresh bread all week.