Come and Get ‘em: Recipes from VB6!

5|21|13

Photo Credit: Daniel Meyer

Makes: 4 Servings

Time: about 1 hour

This take on eggplant Parmesan proves that (a) you don’t need a lot of oil to cook eggplant, and (b) you don’t need gobs of cheese to make it delicious. Try using zucchini or portobello mushrooms as variations, or serve the vegetables and tomato sauce over polenta or a more sub-stantial meal. If you can’t fnd whole wheat breadcrumbs (panko-style are best), make your own by pulsing lightly toasted whole-grain bread in the food processor or blender.

2½ pounds eggplant

5 tablespoons olive oil

1¼ teaspoons salt, plus more to taste

Black pepper to taste

1 onion, chopped

2 tablespoons minced garlic

2 28-ounce cans diced tomatoes, with their juice

1 cup chopped fresh basil leaves

1 cup whole wheat breadcrumbs, preferably coarse-ground

1. Heat the oven to 450°F and position two racks so that they’ve got at least 4 inches between them. Cut the eggplant crosswise into ½-inch-thick slices and arrange them on two rimmed baking sheets.

2. Use 2 tablespoons of the oil to brush the top of each eggplant slice and sprinkle them with ½ teaspoon salt and some pepper. Roast the eggplant until the slices brown on the bottom and sides, 10 to 15 minutes; turn and cook the other side until they’re crisp in places and golden, another 5 to 10 minutes. When they finish cooking, remove them from the oven and lower the heat to 400ºF.

3. Meanwhile, put 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When it’s hot, add the onion, sprinkle with another ½ teaspoon of salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down and the mixture comes together and thickens, 20 to 25 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

4. Cover the bottom of a 9 by 13-inch baking dish with about ½ inch of the tomato sauce. Nestle a layer of eggplant into the sauce and top with some of the basil. Cover with a thin layer of tomato sauce and repeat until all the eggplant is used up; reserve some of the basil for serving. Sprinkle with the breadcrumbs, the remaining ½ teaspoonsalt, and lots of pepper, and drizzle with the remaining tablespoon of oil. Simmer the remaining sauce (you should have about 2 cups) over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, while the eggplant bakes.5 Bake until the breadcrumbs are golden and the sauce has thickened, 15 to 20 minutes; let rest for 10 minutes before serving. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature, garnished with the remaining basil; pass the remaining sauce at the table (or refrigerate or freeze it for another use).

Nutritional info (using all the sauce):

Calories: 411 • Cholesterol: 0mg • Fat: 22g • Saturated Fat: 3g • Protein: 9g •Carbohydrates: 53g • Sodium: 1221mg • Fiber: 16g • Trans Fat: 0g • Sugars: 17

Scrambled Tofu with Spinach

Makes: 4 servings

Time: 20 minutes

In this hearty morning scramble, tofu takes the place of eggs. Since tofu is undeniably bland, it’s important to ramp up the seasonings a bit. I like to use spinach, but any leafy greens will work. Other options: sliced mushrooms, leeks, cabbage, and asparagus; chopped broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and zucchini; or grated winter squash and root vegetables. This scramble makes an ideal lunch, too.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 large onion

1 tablespoon chopped garlic, or more to taste

1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

Black pepper to taste

1 tablespoon red chile flakes, or 1 or 2 fresh hot red chiles (like Serrano or Thai), minced

1 ½ pounds fresh spinach, trimmed and rinsed well

1 ½ pounds firm or silken tofu, drained and patted dry

1. Put the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When it’s hot, add the onion and garlic and sprinkle with salt; cook until the onion is translucent and the garlic is soft, 3 to 5 minutes.

2. Add the chiles and cook, stirring, until fragrant, less than a minute. Raise the heat to medium-high and add the spinach and ¼ cup water. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until the spinach is wilted and fairly dry, 5 to 8 minutes.

3.Crumble the tofu into the pan and stir, using a spatula to scrape the bottom of the pan and combine the tofu and vegetables; adjust the heat as necessary to avoid burning. When the mixture starts to stick to the pan, it’s ready: Taste and adjust the seasoning, serve hot or warm.

Nutritional info (with firm tofu):

Calories: 224 • Cholesterol: 0mg • Fat: 13g • Saturated Fat: 1g • Protein: 14g
Carbohydrates: 177g • Sodium: 727mg • Fiber: 5g • Trans Fat: 0g • Sugars: 5g

Steak and Broccoli Stir-fry

Makes: 4 servings

Time: 30 minutes

Once you learn one stir-fry, you pretty much have mastered the art, and you can make a different one every day of your life and never encounter a repetition unless you wanted to. (See sidebar, page 200.) This one works with just about any combination of vegetables and protein, which might be boneless chicken breasts or thighs, sturdy white fish, shrimp or squid, or pork shoulder. You could also skip the meat altogether and substitute tofu. The other ingredients are equally flexible. I like broccoli here, but try, alone or in combination, bell peppers, cabbage, bok choy, fennel, spinach, snow peas or snap peas, asparagus, summer or winter squash, green beans, mushrooms, carrots, or cauliflower. For a change from rice, serve with whole-grain soba or rice noodles.

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

12 ounces beef flank or sirloin steak, very thinly sliced (easiest if you freeze the meat for 30 minutes)

1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

Black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1 tablespoon minced fresh hot chile (like jalapeño or Thai; optional)

1½ pounds broccoli, trimmed and cut into bite-size pieces

½ cup chopped scallions

2 tablespoons soy sauce, plus more to taste

Juice of 1 lime or ½ lemon (optional)

¼ cup chopped peanuts or cashews

3 cups cooked long- or short-grain brown rice

1. Put a large, deep skillet over high heat. When it’s hot, add 1 tablespoon of the oil, swirl it around, and add the beef. Sprinkle with ½ teaspoon of the salt and some pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the beef starts to brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer the meat to a plate.

2. Add the remaining 3 tablespoons oil, then the garlic, ginger, and chile, if you’re using it. After 15 seconds, add the broccoli and all but a handful of the scallions. Cook, stirring infrequently, until the broccoli is bright green and beginning to brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the remaining ½ teaspoon salt and ½ cup of water. Cook, stirring occasionally, until almost all the liquid has evaporated and the broccoli is almost tender, another minute or two more.

3. Return the meat to the pan along with the soy sauce and lime juice, if you’re using it, and a little more water if the mixture is dry. Raise the heat to high and cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is reduced slightly. Stir in the peanuts, then taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary; garnish with the remaining scallions, and serve over the rice.

Nutritional Info (with ¾ cup brown rice):

Calories: 572 • Cholesterol: 55mg • Fat: 28g • Saturated Fat: 5g • Protein: 31g • Carbohydrates: 54g • Sodium: 1510mg • Fiber: 10g • Trans Fat: 0g • Sugars: 6g

Carrot Candy

Makes: 4 servings

Time: About 3 hours, largely unattended

Here, you concentrate the sweetness of carrots by slow-roasting them until they’re essentially dehydrated. The resulting “candy” is slightly chewy and slightly crisp—the perfect healthy snack to eat alone, or as a vehicle for dips.

You can use this technique on virtually any vegetable, alone or in combination. Thinly sliced fennel bulbs, beets, parsnips, celery root, and turnips all work great, as will cauliflower or broccoli florets. All will take somewhere between 2½ and 3 hours, depending on the cut and how dry the vegetables were to begin with. If you want something crunchy and salty, try the variation. If you have the pans and oven space, make at least a double batch, using an assortment of vegetables. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week.

8 medium carrots (about 1 pound)

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ teaspoon salt

1. Heat the oven to 225°F. Peel the carrots and cut them into ¹⁄8-inch coins. Toss them with the olive oil and salt, then spread on a baking sheet in a single layer. Cook until slightly shriveled, dehydrated, and sweet but still soft and chewy. You might have to move them or the pan around to ensure they don’t burn or get too crisp.

2. Start testing the carrots after about 2 hours, and remove them from the oven when they’re as chewy or crisp as you like, another 30 to 60 minutes. Cool thoroughly before storing in an airtight container.

Nutritional Info (about 2 carrots):

Calories: 58 • Cholesterol: 0mg • Fat: 4g • Saturated Fat: 1g • Protein: 1g • Carbohydrates: 6g • Sodium: 284mg • Fiber: 2g • Trans Fat: 0g • Sugars: 3g

The Nomad’s Kitchen

5|17|13

When “The Hakka Cookbook” appeared last year, I immediately set up a cooking date with its author, Linda Lau Anusasananan, who lives in the exotic and far-flung city of San Mateo, south of San Francisco.

The book’s subtitle is “Chinese Soul Food From Around the World,” which could mean almost anything. The Hakkas are sometimes thought of as the Jews of China, because they’re dispersed all over the place. But the Hakka people cannot even point to an original homeland (sources say “north-central China,” but that’s a big place), and the word Hakka roughly translates as “guest families.” These are itinerants, and you can find Hakkas everywhere. “Some people call us dandelions, because we thrive in poor soil,” says Anusasananan, who was born in California. She has also traveled widely to learn new recipes for the book.

Read the rest of this article, here.

Bad Enough

5|17|13

Things are bad enough in the food world that we don’t need to resort to hyperbole to be worried or even alarmed.

It’s one thing to decry the lack of fairness and consumer protection when businesses and the government decide what gets produced, marketed, labeled, regulated and sold [1] , and how. It also makes sense to be outraged by the health, environmental and economic damage caused by our food “system”[2] and the diet it encourages.

But it’s another to call those things evil. Evidence, for instance, that an excess of something like sugar may well be bad for your health does not mean that the substance itself is “bad.” (In fact, we need sugar to function.)

Read the rest of this column, here.

Mark Bittman says you can be a part-time vegan

5|15|13

By Glenn Yoder for The Boston Globe

Six years ago, Mark Bittman was faced by his doctor with two unsavory choices in order to address a smattering of health issues related to being overweight: surgery or drugs. Another physician recommended going vegan, but The New York Times columnist and host of Cooking Channel’s “The Minimalist” decided to compromise, building a flexible vegan diet that fit his lifestyle. In the first six weeks, he lost 15 pounds. In the next six weeks, he reduced his cholesterol and blood sugar level, cured his sleep apnea, and shed another 15 pounds. “The emphasis is on changing the proportions of what’s in your diet. Then everything else kind of follows from that,” Bittman says. “Obviously, there are political and environmental and larger implications of all of this, but I wanted to do something that didn’t confuse the issues, that said, ‘If you want to have a sort of personal food policy that’s going to improve your health, reduce your carbon footprint, probably make you feel better, this is the way to think about it.’ The science is pretty clear and this is a strategy. There are a lot of other strategies but this is a strategy that seems to be working.” On April 30, he released his latest book, “VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . For Good,” detailing his experience and showing how to follow a similar path.

Q. There are a lot of common diet mistakes people make. Why is this easier to commit to?

A. Well, I think the cheating is built in. One of the first questions people ask me is “Can I put milk in my coffee? I can’t live without putting milk in my coffee.” And the fact is, I put milk in my coffee and I break the rules all the time. But it’s a common-sense thing. There’s a big difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon of milk or cream in your coffee and two cheeseburgers or a large fry. Science says that we should be eating more foods from the plant kingdom and less processed food and fewer animal products. That’s pretty much clear. So this is a strategy for doing that. If you follow it 100 percent, then obviously it’s more effective in executing what we think needs to be done, but if you follow it 60 percent, you’re probably still eating twice as well than if you’re eating a sort of standard American diet. So there’s a lot of wiggle room in here and I think people need to look at the strategy and say, “How do I make this work in my life and how strict do I want to be?” Obviously if you break every rule five times a day, then you’re not doing it. So there’s got to be some adherence to the principles of the strategy, but it doesn’t seem right to say, “Do this or it doesn’t work.”

Read the rest of this interview, here.

Spring, Loaded

5|12|13

When you think of spring rolls, you probably envision the kind that are served as an appetizer at nearly every Thai restaurant in this country, a tangle of sometimes-identifiable vegetables rolled in a thin wrapper, deep-fried and served with a sweet dipping sauce.

But spring rolls go far beyond that. They’re found all across Asia, with wrappers, fillings and cooking techniques that differ from one country to the next. Fresh spring rolls, sometimes called summer rolls, are a staple in Vietnam. Most typically, they’re made of rice paper filled with rice vermicelli, cooked meat or shrimp, raw vegetables, basil, cilantro and mint. They’re wonderful, a rare combination of substance and light.

Read the rest of this article, here.

Mark Bittman’s New Vegan Mantra Leaves Room for Play

5|9|13

By Molly Gore for SF Weekly.

Let’s get one thing straight: Mark Bittman is not a vegan. The first thing he does, sitting down to breakfast at a beautifully curated vegan feast while on tour to promote his mostly-vegan eating manifesto, is demand some dairy.

“What do you say we send this whole vegan thing to hell and get some milk around here?” he says. On cue, dainty milk pitchers arrive, and Bittman’s coffee gets a hearty dose.

The scene is an apt introduction to the longtime New York Times food columnist’s new and entirely nondogmatic approach to eating, outlined in his new diffusively-titled book, VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 To Lose Weight and Restore Your Health…For Good. The book promotes a principally-vegan diet before 6 p.m., permitting reasonable freedom after that time to eat whatever you darn well please. Well, almost. He puts a few soft restrictions on the nighttime freedom, namely common sensical advice like not eating milkshakes until dawn and “all but” eliminating junk food (the “all but” being a nod to the truth that “everybody needs to break the rules sometimes”).

Read the rest of this article, here.

New York Magazine: Mark Bittman Enjoys Running Through Times Square at 5 a.m.

5|8|13

Read the rest of the interview, here.

I Talk VB6 with DuJour

5|8|13

Read the rest of this article, here.

Kitchen Little

5|8|13

When you argue, as I frequently do, that cooking has the potential to help us deal with many of our dietary problems, you often elicit a kind of “I don’t care, I hate cooking” response in addition to the expected “I don’t have time.” And that’s fine; cooking isn’t the only route to eating better, and besides, those who hate cooking, or can’t make the time for it, may be lucky enough to have someone else cook for them. As long as they wash the dishes.

But it pays to remember that it’s been 40 years or more since cooking went out of style for most Americans, and that a positive approach to it — one that encourages cooking and counters the ongoing marketing surge that helped make it seem so “unnecessary” — could help to change matters. And although that kind of approach can be effective with anyone (I’m constantly meeting people who began cooking in their 30s and 40s, for example), it’s bound to be most effective with kids, who haven’t yet been fully brainwashed to believe that there are better ways to spend their time than cooking — like watching television, for example!

Read the rest of this column, here.

I Answer Frequently Asked Questions about VB6

5|7|13

Question: I don’t know if I could give up bacon and eggs. How do you brunch on VB6?
Answer: Making the change is not as difficult as you might think. At first I craved a bagel with cream cheese or bacon. But my habits changed after a few weeks, and now I enjoy my VB6 breakfasts as much as I did the old ones. Oatmeal with fruit, a smoothie, or fruit salads are all great brunch options.

Q: What was your inspiration for writing VB6?
A: After five years of success on VB6, I came to really believe in the lifestyle. Then I started to hear from friends and coworkers—even strangers—and realized it wasn’t just a quirky little thing.

Q: Do you have a favorite spicy seitan recipe that is VB6?
A: I like pan-searing, roasting, or grilling setian and then tossing it in sauces or stir-fries.

Q: What’s a favorite go-to vegan lunch for you?
A: I don’t have go-tos; I pretty much cook what I’ve got. But I would say my most frequent lunch is either chopped salad, if I have a bunch of veggies laying around; and if I don’t, I almost always have cooked beans and grains, so I’ll throw something together with them. Having said all of that, it’s rare that I’m home for lunch, so I hit a salad bar or go out for falafel.

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