Skipping the Meat for a Change
Apr 3rd, 2009 | By | Category: Cooking Basics, The Garden | Comments | 11 Comments |
“I think I’m going to do a post about vegetarian food.”
“But Hank, April’s Fool’s Day is over!”
That was my friend Elise, who understands me well enough to know that vegetarianism is not in my immediate future. That does not, however, mean that I don’t love eating veggies — especially in springtime.
When duck season ended I remarked how much I wanted a salad. Winter brings with it meaty, heavy and satisfying meals that are heavy on meat and potatoes and roots but light on green stuff. In eras past, this practice (necessity, really) could degenerate into significant, often serious, vitamin deficiencies. It would often become a race against time to see if some ailment would get you before the snow retreated.
But when it did, the world quickly became green – that lurid emerald which only appears in spring. That color is tonic for the eyes as well as the body. The Greeks often wander the countryside in early spring gathering horta, the myriad wild greens they put in phyllo dough pies and stew with small bits of salted pork they might have left over.
Here in California, spring to me means sugar peas and fava beans, although I did not grow either this year. We also have our wild greens and asparagus, and spring onions and green garlic are in abundance; these are my current fascination.
All of this is why I have been celebrating veggies lately. I’ve been adding several good recipes to the my Idiosyncratic List of Vegetable Recipes, and I noticed that most of them are springtime recipes. When I remarked on this, Holly said,” Duh. That’s when we crave veggies the most.” True that.
Vegetables separate good cooks from mediocre ones. Think about it: A vegetable is essentially a part of a plant that does not want to be eaten. It’s not a seed, and is definitely not a fruit; both are delicious unadorned. Vegetables are typically stalks, roots, leaves and other structurally important bits of a plant. And they often require serious manipulation and care by the cook to make them shine.
A cook with the knowledge to do so understands cooking at a deeper level than does one who does not. There are questions of temperature, moisture, time and salt. Your knife skills must be keener, because a vegetable cut one way may taste entirely different from one cut in another. And it is far more difficult to leave your guests or family feeling well-fed — honored, even — when meat is not on the table.
A Spanish tortilla is an easy way of achieving this. A Spanish tortilla is an omelet, made with eggs, potatoes, onions and olive oil — and little else. Making one is a test of restraint, as you must resist the urge to turn an otherwise elegant dish into a garbage plate. Like many vegetable recipes, freshness of ingredients and technique separate the good from the great.
My tortilla recipe is a farmer’s market special: large fingerling potatoes, spring onions, a little green garlic, farmer’s market eggs and local olive oil. And you need a lot of olive oil and a good, seasoned iron pan to do this right, otherwise the tortilla will stick to the pan when it’s done.
Tortillas are totally vegetarian (although not vegan), take maybe 20 minutes to prepare, and are as satisfying as a steak. There is a reason they are so beloved on Spanish tapas menus.
I have mentioned that my mum came to town last weekend. She does not eat red meat, so I made her some striped bass. I also made her a pair of vegetable dishes that, thankfully, came out pretty well (No one ever wants to disappoint his mother). The first was something of a trick dish:
I call them Mushroom ‘Potatoes.’ They look like fried potatoes, don’t they? Well, these are actually king oyster mushrooms cooked in my Ethiopian spiced butter; the turmeric gives them the color. (I garnished them with borage flowers, which are all over my yard right now.) They taste meaty and exotic and are as delicious as they look.
King oysters hold a lot of water, so I cook them in a dry pan first — this is what I mean by manipulation, as (at least to me) it is not intuitive to dry-cook something before adding the fat. If you skip this step, the mushrooms will absorb too much butter and become soggy and greasy.
The mushrooms were a clever parlor trick, but my asparagus soup was a trip into the obscure.
Looks normal enough, yes? And basically it is a pretty normal pureed asparagus soup. But one of the things that makes my cooking a little different is that I happen to have a few esoteric ingredients lying around, many of which I’ve made.
In this case, the asparagus, green onions and green garlic (Yet again. I know, I know. But it’ll all be over soon…) all were sweated in wild duck fat. And the broth added to make the soup was wild duck broth.
At the end, I added the obligatory heavy cream, plus a little Meyer lemon juice…and a hit of absinthe. Yep, absinthe. I make it. Have a wormwood bush out front and everything.
Why would I do something so strange? Well, remember Elise? She has an asparagus soup recipe that calls for a hit of vermouth. I like her recipe, but for my recipe, I wanted to jack up the herbal-bitter-alcohol quotient, and what better way than with the Green Fairy? It works.
All of which is why most of my best vegetable recipes come in springtime. Spring is a time of creation, of productivity, of abundance. It is also a forgiving season, so it feels OK to take a risk now and again. These paid off.
Spring definitely brings out my very slight (really, very slight) vegetarian tendencies. We’re still slightly entrenched in winter in Pennsylvania, but those little hints of spring have me chomping at the bit. The Spanish tortilla looks very good, but I’d be very tempted to add something green; we’re just starting to see asparagus in our local farmer’s markets. I doubt that it’s local, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a very tasty addition!
Oooh. Nice post. I’m starting to see more green stuff at the farmer’s market which is nice. Even when I was a kid, I always loved vegetables and I don’t think that people need to be total carnivores to be able to appreciate them.
Gorgeous food. I’ll have to sample those mushrooms – meaty mushrooms are about as good as it gets. What farmer’s market do you pick them up at?
I’m definitely not vegetarian but I won’t say no to eating tons of fresh vegetables that are in season – so long as they are not ‘ruined’ in preparation. I find it interesting that many children who have phobias of certain vegetables have memories of really badly prepared vegetables that taste awful. Sometimes you grow out of your childhood squeamishness of some vegetables but I’ve come across many adults who are horrified by tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers, peas, etc…and when you add on their phobias of other things like cheese and fish – what you can eat with such people gets severely restricted.
Tina: There is something green in that tortilla, only you can’t see it. I put spring onions and green garlic in the mix.
Faine: I got them at the Sacramento Sunday market, although you can get them in Citrus Heights or Davis on Sat.
Murasaki: I hear ya. I still shudder at split pea soup because my mum served it INCREDIBLY salty. Wuh…
Everything looks fantastic and elegant as usual mate. I totally agree about the winter meat-fest, and coming to spring it is all about the green stuff. Course, not completely vegetarian with the wild duck fat and broth (you lucky, lucky bugger you) – I can only imagine how darn good that tastes.
Wow absinthe and duck fat in one dish?! That sounds dangerously good and possibly addictive. I’m impressed that you have your own wormwood bush! This is added incentive to teach Oscar to fetch a duck by next fall.
Sorry Hank, I commented without reading your recipe. Definitely on the list for dinner one night this week.
Pretty borage flowers. I’ve been craving nearly vegetarian foods, with just a wisp of pancetta here and there for flavor.
I’ve fallen prey to the spanish omelette as dumping ground more than once. However there are some additions that I’ve never regretted:
-cherry tomatoes
-rosemary and/or oregano
-baked till crisp pancetta substituting some of the olive oil for the reserved fat
That’s a culinary booyah.
I believe pretty strongly that my 18 years as a vegetarian were instrumental in whatever skill I can lay claim to as a cook; learning how to extract maximum flavor from plants gives one a sensitivity to the processes of cooking that is not easily acquired otherwise.