An Italian Stallion in the Kitchen

There are certain ingredients I almost always have on hand - stuff like carrots and celery, soy sauce and olive oil. I keep a pretty generic inventory, but when it comes down to the real STAPLES of my cooking, the food and flavors that take priority, there's definitely an Italian slant. A good cook would probably die without the holy trinity, the foundations of so many cuisines, the carrots, celery, and onion that make mirepoix. I, on the other hand, feel forlorn when I open my vegetable crisper, and I can't find mushrooms, spinach, peas, and (okay, sometimes) artichoke hearts. I always have cans of crushed tomatoes in my cupboard ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. What, you need some marinara? How about just a generic tomato base for that rice? And the cornerstones of my spice rack - the grandfathers for all my seasonings - are easily basil and oregano (which don't belong together in marinara unless you're using it for pizza, BY THE WAY).

I'm from an Italian household and grew up on Italian cooking. (With a name like Micco, would you have ever guessed otherwise?) For Italians, food and family go hand in hand. My dad taught me the marinara that his mother taught him, which her mother (in law) taught her, and so on. Some kids brought PB&Js or Lunchables to school, but my lunchbox came with tupperware containers of leftover lasagna or subs filled with meatballs my dad and I made together. One of the first things I learned to make was fettucini alfredo, and how much garlic was too much garlic, was an issue of constant debate in my household. When I went vegan four years ago, my dad felt thrown for a loop. Coming from a culture covered in cheese with bits of meat floating around in it, this way of eating was completely foreign to him. It wasn't such a big deal as a vegetarian, but a vegan? I kid you not: he was worried he'd have to write me out of Christmas dinner.

My dad's correct, in that a lot of what's hit my plate in recent years is totally different from what I grew up on. (I mean, did I really used to eat beef tacquitos...?) I think it's funny when people ask what vegans eat because, after going vegan, I think I've tried more foods from more countries with more exotic ingredients than most omnis. Still, as my palate has expanded and matured, I've always come back to my roots. The recipes have changed a little, but the food hasn't (I now have vegan versions of most of my great grandma's Christmas cookies!), and it's been kind of special teaching my family new takes on the things they've taught me.

One thing we ate a lot in my family was stuffed peppers. The filling formula was basically: grain + veggie + sauce + cheese +/- meat. Now currently, I'm trying to make up for a lot of the bad eating I did at school - save some calories, up the quality, you know - and I thought, Why not update those peppers to reflect that? The flavors in this are very generic Italian, but to appease my current eating goals, I substituted mashed cauliflower for the grain and mixed it with vegan yogurt for a rich but healthy meal. I think it packs a lot of flavor for how spare it is on the calories (probably around 200 per pepper), and it's a nutrition powerhouse that will leave you quite satiated. Serve it with a side of green beans in light olive oil with minced garlic and maybe some crusty ciabatta, for a truly Italian feast.



STUFF-YOU-FULL-O-GOODNESS STUFFED PEPPERS
+ 2 bell peppers
+ 1/2 head cauliflower
+ 3 - 4 mushrooms, finely diced
+ 1/3 c frozen spinach
+ 3 - 4 frozen artichoke hearts
+ 1/4 c plain vegan yogurt*
+ 1/4 c nutritional yeast
+ 1 - 2 T white wine
+ garlic powder (or 1 clove of fresh garlic, minced)
+ dried Italian herbs (dealer's choice)
+ white pepper
+ salt

01. Preheat the oven to 375˚. Cut the tops off the peppers and scrape out those insides. Lightly oil a baking dish (I used a loaf pan since there were only two) and the sides of the peppers, then place them in the dish, and pop them in the oven for fifteen minutes. (Note: some people put the tops back on their peppers and cook them that way, but you can also chop the tops up and use them for salads or stir-fries later. OR roast them with your peppers, but then save them for tapenade - or maybe a Mediterranean influenced sandwich or pizza? Yum.)

02. While your peppers roast, set a pot of water to boil for your cauliflower. Break down your cauliflower half into its little florets, and steam them until super soft. Of course, if you're like me and without a steamer at the moment, you can just boil them mushy and then drain the excess water, but steaming is better because it maintains more nutrients.

03. Transfer your cooked cauliflower to a bowl, and use a sturdy fork to mash it up. You don't want a texture quit as smooth as mashed potatoes (pre-liquid, of course) but it shouldn't look like renegade floret crumbles, either. This dish is meant to be creamy, but the cauliflower is subbing for grain here, so it should be at least slightly toothsome. Then add your yogurt, nutritional yeast, wine, and seasonings (to taste). If you're using garlic powder, this is when you add it, too.

04. Back on the stove, heat up a skillet with some oil over medium heat, and saute your mushrooms. Toss in your spinach and artichokes, and continue cooking until the mushrooms and spinach darken and the artichokes begin to soften. Use your spatula to separate the leaves a little; no one wants to eat a pepper stuffed with nothing but chunky bits of whatnot, but there needs to be a variety of textures and flavors. Then transfer your veggies to your cauliflower bowl, and give it some quick stirs to incorporate all the ingredients.

05. At this point, your peppers should be finished with their first round in the oven, so start filling them. Fill them as high as you want. Fill them until they're practically overflowing. (If you're really daring, save a little room a crumb-coat topping, and put it on half way through the peppers' baking.) Add a little bit of water to the bottom of your baking dish - just enough so the peppers' little butts don't dry out or cook funny (maybe a quarter of an inch). Then return the peppers to the oven, and cook them for an additional thirty minutes. Let them cool, then stuff yourself. (Ooooh, I'm so witty...!)





This makes two peppers, which I guess could be split four ways, but these are so good, who would want to?

* This is roughly the amount that I used, but my filling turned out a little dryer than some might prefer. However, I'm really trying to make up for my bad eating, so I'm trimming calories where I can, and, well, vegan yogurt has a lot of calories. At this amount, I'd say these peppers "taste like health food" (sort of) but increase it a little and they'll border on decadent. It's your call. To spare even more calories, substitute marinara.

Rainy Day Eats

I'm doing really well in school, but nothing else seems to be going my way. I'm trying not to dwell, but my moods get diluted like watercolors in these thick rains we've been suffering. Yesterday, I was driving home from an errand, and though it'd only been raining for about ten minutes, the roads had already flooded three or four inches. It was like driving through gauze with lots of swerving, so I pretty much wrote off the rest of the day and curled up with a lot of oatmeal and movies. When it rains in Savannah, it POURS, and that about sums up my life.

Suffice it to say, chik'n and dumpling soup has been a recurring theme for me lately. It warms me when I'm fresh from the cold, and it's easy to manage when watching all those films. It's also wickedly easy to make, and I've been doing it gluten-free. I'm beginning to suspect chik'n and dumpling soup is the height of vegan culinary greatness, but that might be the rain's influence. Either way, it's been super delicious and one highlight of these otherwise soggy times.


GLUTEN-FREE CHIK'N & DUMPLINGS
+ 2 T olive oil
+ 2 carrots, diced
+ 2 celery stalks, diced
+ 1 - 3 cloves of garlic, minced
+ 8 oz mushrooms, sliced
+ 1/2 c frozen spinach
+ 1/4 - 1/2 c TVP*
+ 4 c veggie broth
+ 1/2 c chik'n broth powder
+ 1/2 c nutritional yeast
+ salt'n'peppa

+ 1/2 c brown rice flour
+ 1/4 c sorghum flour
+ 1/4 c potato starch
+ 1 t baking powder
+ 1/2 t guar gum
+ salt
+ 2 1/2 T Earth Balance
+ 1/4 - 1/2 c water

01. In a large pot, heat up your oil over medium heat. When the pan is warm, toss in the carrots, celery, and garlic, and sautee for three to five minutes or until the celery and garlic take on a sort of translucent quality. Add the mushrooms, and let them brown a little before adding the spinach, TVP, broth, powder, and yeast. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil.

02. While waiting for the soup to boil, assemble your biscuit dough. Mix all the dry ingredients together with a sifter or fork, then cut in the Earth Balance with a fork, knife, or pastry cutter. You're looking for a course, crumble-y texture that's somewhat uniform in its meal-y quality. Slowly add the water, mixing as you go, until the mixture is JUST combined. Since it's gluten free, you can mix it as much as you want without it getting dense or chewy, so it's okay to hold back a little and stir a lot to gauge the moisture of your dough. When you make the balls, the dough should stick to your fingers a little bit but it shouldn't be sticky. After I was finished, I had hardly any dough residue left in the bowl, and that's what you're shooting for.

03. Take little wads of dough - about a tablespoon's worth - and roll them in your hands until they're smooth little spheres of gluten-free goodness. Then toss them in your boiling soup, bring down the heat to a simmer, and put a lid on top. Let the soup continuing cooking for fifteen to twenty minutes. As tempting as it is to check on your dumplings, don't! The steam is what cooks them, and if you break the seal created by the lid, that lets out the steam, and your dumplings won't cook properly. It's a lot like resisting the urge to open the oven door when baking cupcakes or muffins.

04. But when the time IS up, you can take off the lid, let the soup cool, dish it up, and then sit down to watch a really good movie. Here are some of the movies I've been watching lately:

Knocked Up: bumbling goof with curly hair gets foxy blonde pregnant; comedy and romance ensue; nine months later, there's a baby. From the Einsteins behind Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, and Forty Year Old Virgin. (Should I admit I love their movies?)
Annie Hall: what happens when neurosis dates neurosis; sometimes, it's just not meant to be.
The Way We Were: the dramatic version of Annie Hall, ca. forty years earlier; sometimes, it's just not meant to be.
An Affair to Remember: witty and attractive man and woman have fling on boat, then agree to meet at the Empire State Building six months later to resume the affair. Will they? Won't they? Why are there musical moments?
Wristcutters: boy kills himself over girl; finds himself in world even more depressing than life; discovers girl has also killed herself and is somewhere in this new world; goes on a road trip with Gogol Bordello in search of girl. Romance, nonsense, shenanigans, Tom Waits. (I fucking love this movie.)
Harold and Maude: quirky boy falls in love with old woman. Romance, nonsense, shenanigans, no Tom Waits. (I also fucking love this movie.)
Terms of Endearment: Shirley McClaine as a controlling old woman that owns a Renoire; Jack Nicholson as an aging alcoholic astronaut; Jeff Daniels pre-Dumb and Dumber; some lady I didn't recognize who gets breast cancer. An exploration of unconditional love.
Taxi Driver: young Robert DeNiro going crazy with misanthropy. Amazing cinematography and mostly A-list actors. Find yourself asking, "How did Cybil Shepard go from this to Cybil to The L Word?" Strangely identify with DeNiro's commitment to discipline and healthy living. (So good.)
Get Smart: middle-aged cutie becomes secret agent in classic underdog romantic comedy. Anne Hathaway finally plays a role that doesn't involve being confused and/or helpless 90% of the time, and a glimpse of Steve Carell's naked backside.
Good Will Hunting: cutie with a booty and a high IQ struggles to overcome inhibitions about intimacy. Some classic lines and Ben Affleck actually doing a good job.
American Psycho: sociopath on Wallstreet obsessed with appearance and status; extreme misanthropy; includes a scene of dropping a chain saw on a woman three stories down. Christian Bale post-Velvet Goldmine but pre-Machinist and especially pre-Dark Knight. (I point this out because look at how much his body successively changed for each role! INSANE!)



By the way, this recipe serves four.

So, what are some of the movies you've been watching lately?

* TVP is not technically gluten-free, but I think ya'll are clever enough to omit or even substitute for this if you're actually a celiac. And frankly, nothing in the soup portion has to be absolute. Soup - especially broth-based soups - are such a good way to use whatever's lying around in your fridge, especially the produce drawer, so just throw in whatever you want plus some broth and add the dumplings. So simple!