Sundays In The Kitchen

So this is day 2 of our culinary adventure in Ithaca. I seriously didn’t do enough training for this sort of expedition. My stomach is not nearly in proper shape for this much food! The title for today’s blog comes from a great song that E found by Canadian singer/songwriter Dan Mangan. It’s called The Indie Queens Are Waiting and it has this line “there’s a place I sometimes like to dine”, but the first few times that E heard it she thought that it was “there’s a place I sometimes like to die”, which is a great line.  After tonight’s dinner, at a place where I did love to dine, I also felt like I was going to die, because I was just so full. I couldn’t even form words properly.

Despite my fullness though we had a great day of culinary adventures. Started off the day with a fabulous breakfast at the Inn — organic local grape juice, homemade scones, peach clafouti to start, lemon ricotta pancakes for E and artichoke frittata with homefries for me — it was quite something. We then retired to our room to recover then set off for a day of discoveries, culinary and otherwise. For lunch we hit Collegetown bagels — E had a fabulous portobello mushroom, roasted red pepper and provolone sandwich, and I had fresh mozarella, basil and tomato on foccacia. I was so full I could only eat 1/2 of it though, and the other half went in my bag for a 4:00 snack. More walking, twacking (Newfoundland slang for window shopping!), and then a stop for drinks at a place called Yerba Mate cafe. E had a yerba mate peach tea and a brownie and I had a latte. E pointed out that you obviously had to have long hair and a beard to work there, because there were 5 guys there and they all had long hair, tied back, no bangs, and beards! There were also 3 women — all with long hair tied back, no beards, but long flowy skirts or pants and no bangs. That’s a lot of flaky staff for one little cafe!

I don’t know what was in that drink, or whether the brownie was “special” (it did have an unidentifiable taste to it, though it was delicious), but by the time we were half way home E was positively giddy and seemed a little drunk. Must have been the herbs!

For dinner we headed to a Mexican place up the street and had a really fun great dinner — 1/2 the price of the Mexican food I had at the Moosewood the night before, and just as delicious. Homemade tortilla chips and 3 kinds of salsa to start (E loved the roasted chile salsa, and I loved the fresh one, mixed with the spicy chipolte) and some delicious sangria for me. Then E had a really delicious smothered quesadilla, and I had (sorry die hard vegetarians, close your eyes), the mole chicken tacos. Love those soft corn tortillas and what could be better than spicy chocolate with your dinner?! This definitely fits my rule that you should always order something in a restaraunt that you wouldn’t or couldn’t make at home. I have never attempted mole sauce and probably never will.

After some more walking, some looking at food (but not eating!), we ended up back at the Inn for dessert — lemon squares and brownies. The lemon squares were incredible and had us running back down the stairs for the last two. (Good thing for those stairs — we`re on the third floor and it`s probably the only thing keeping us from some serious weight gain!)

Will be back tomorrow for a final day of dining.

In the meantime, here`s the video for the Dan Mangan song. Enjoy!

So one of the challenging things about eating vegetarian is the Sunday dinner dilemma. What do people eat for Sunday dinner? In my house growing up it was definitely some sort of meat roasted in the oven — usually roast beef, maybe pork, occasionally chicken, on special occasions, turkey. The only meatless meals we ever had were mac & cheese, or spaghetti (because I didn’t eat the meat sauce) and those were definitely not Sunday dinner.

E & I still like to sometimes have “Sunday dinner” which means a nice meal that takes more than 20 min. to cook that you probably wouldn’t have during the week, and which gives you that comforting, ‘I’m at home”, feeling. This week’s Sunday dinner was planned around gougere, which is a French souffle-type-cheese- puff thing that is probably as close to Sunday night yorkshire pudding as vegetarians are going to get.

We usually have the gougere with roasted squash soup, but that felt way too much like fall, so we decided to try something new and settled on a spinach coconut soup from one of the Moosewood books. And, no surprise here, we changed it up quite a bit, and loved the results. Spinach soup is great for spring, and this one would be perfect for any vegans who are missing cream soups. E was shocked when I told her it didn’t have any dairy in it. The rice and potato combination seems strange,  but really gives it a creaminess and nice texture.  The original recipe didn’t call for the soup to be pureed but we wanted it creamy and it turned out great. It definitely fit the Sunday dinner bill. I’m not going to post the gougere this time, but here’s the soup. As with all cooked soups with green vegetables, it looks best freshly made, but I took it for lunch today and it still tasted great.

Spinach Coconut Soup

• 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 c. chopped leeks, white and tender green parts only
• 4 large garlic cloves, minced and pressed
• 3/4 tsp. ground cumin
• 3/4 tsp. ground coriander
• 1/8 tsp. ground cayenne
• 1/2 tsp. paprika
• 1 large potato, peeled and diced
• 1/2 c. raw basmati rice
• 5-7 c. vegetable stock (the original recipe called for 5, but I think we added at least a cup or two of water to get it right)
• pinch of salt
• 1 can coconut milk (it calls for reduced fat, but I’ve never found that in Ontario. If anyone knows where you can get it, let me know!)
• 1/2 lemon, freshly squeezed
• 20 ounces spinach, rinsed, stemmed, and torn into large pieces
• salt and pepper to taste

Method:

In a large soup pot, heat the oil over medium-low heat. Add the leeks and garlic, cover, and saute for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the spices, and saute for another 5 minutes, stirring often to prevent burning.

Stir in the potatoes and rice, and saute for 1 minute. Add the stock and salt. Cover, bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the rice is tender and the potatoes are cooked through. Stir in the coconut milk and lemon juice. Just before serving add the spinach. When the spinach has wilted, just a minute or two, remove the soup from the heat and season with salt and pepper to taste. Add liquid if necessary. Blend the soup until desired consistency in a blender, or right in the pot with an immersion blender. Serve hot.

Yesterday was the day to buy tickets for our favorite music/eating festival that E and I go to every summer. For more info on that visit E’s eyetunes blog (link on the side). I say music/eating because not only is the music great, the food is really good too and our weekend is often planned around what we’re going to go see at which tent and what we’re going to eat while we’re there.

When E first became vegetarian, we discovered these awesome feta sandwiches from one of the Hillside vendors — it’s a great sandwich for a carnivore who’s trying to convert. Salty, filling, tastes great with chips.  So yesterday we got our much coveted Hillside tickets (they sold out in 4 minutes!), and then just by coincidence we had these marinated feta sandwiches for lunch. Felt like summer (especially because the humidity was ridiculous for the first day of May, and it stormed which it always does at Hillside).

This is a very “loose” recipe, more just an idea really.  E is the sandwich maker in the house, so I’m going to try to interpret what she does. Try it and adjust it how you like it. I know the idea of a feta sandwich can be a little overwhelming, but it really is delicious.

Marinated Feta Sandwiches

For each sandwich

• 1 kaiser or calabrese type bun, white or whole wheat
• about 1/4 c. crumbled feta cheese (I prefer cow’s milk feta for this; I think goat would be too overwhelming here)
• Balsamic vinegar
• Olive oil
• Minced garlic (optional)
• Few slices of tomato
• Handful of mixed greens
• Small handful of sprouts

To assemble:

Smash up the feta with a splash of balsamic and about a tbsp. of olive oil. Add a little pressed garlic if you’re so inclined. The feta should be like a paste. Spread the feta on one half of the bun, splash a little more balsamic on top, then top with tomato, greens, sprouts.

To be authentic, serve with a few slices of watermelon, a pile of your favorite chips (in our house: Miss Vickie’s sweet chili), and accompany it with a glass of lemonade.

On another note: just pulled two beautiful bubbling rhubarb pies out of the oven.  Now that smells like spring!