Potato and Kale Enchiladas with Garlic Saffron Rice

I really enjoy cooking most in the company of others, and so I recruit people as often as possible. Thus, Saturday morning evolved into three of us crammed into my tiny kitchen, Coronas on hand, causing a ruckus and emerging a few hours later with a fantastic mess and an even more fantastic dish.

And, once again, the dynamic duo were on hand to make everything especially divine.

Recipes below - both of which have been adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks - Veganomicon.


POTATO AND KALE ENCHILADAS

Ingredients

For the Enchilada Sauce:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 yellow onion, cut into small dice
3 large green chilies (such as Anaheim or even Italian-style long green peppers), roasted, seeded, peeled (don't know how to roast? See below!), and chopped.

2-3 teaspoons chili powder, preferably ancho
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon marjoram
1 (28-ounce) can roasted diced tomatoes with juice
1 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2-2 teaspoons salt

For the Potato and Kale Filling:

1 pound waxy potatoes (Yukon gold or red)
1/2 pound kale, washed, trimmed, and chopped finely
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 cup vegetable stock or water ( i actually prefer to use vegetable bouillon, to me the flavor is much richer as I control the amount of water I add)

3 tablespoons lime juice (an excellent excuse to buy a bunch of coronas and limes)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, or to taste

12-14 corn tortillas
Optional and highly recommended: A helping of Daiya Vegan Cheese - shredded Cheddar (can be found at many Whole Foods) to sprinkle on top

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and have ready a shallow casserole dish, at least 11 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches.

Prepare the enchilada sauce first: In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat, saute the onions is oil for 4 to 7 minutes, until softened. Add the remaining sauce ingredients, bring to a simmer, and remove from the heat. When the mixture has cooled enough, taste and adjust the salt if necessary. Puree with an immersion or regular blender until the mixture is smooth and even.

Prepare the filling: Peel and diced the potatoes, then boil them until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and set aside. Cook the olive oil and minced garlic in a sauce pot over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally until the garlic is sizzling and slightly browned (be careful not to let it burn). Add the kale, sprinkle with a little salt, and raise the heat to medium, stirring constantly to cover the kale with the oil and garlic. Partially cover the pot to steam the kale until it has wilted, 4 to 6 minutes. (BTW this is a great way to just quickly prepare some Kale as a yummy snack or side dish!)

Remove the lid and mix in the potatoes, vegetable stock, lime juice, and salt. Mash some of the potatoes. Cook another 3 to 4 minutes, until the stock is absorbed. Add more salt or lime juice to taste.

Create an enchilada assembly line (this was the best part! And the main reason enchiladas should always be a group effort): Have ready a pie plate filled with about 3⁄4 cup of enchilada sauce, a casserole dish, a stack of corn tortillas, a lightly greased, heated pan (for softening the tortillas), and the potato and kale filling.

Ladle a little bit of the enchilada sauce onto the bottom of the casserole dish and spread it around. Take a corn tortilla, place it on the heated pan for 30 seconds, then flip it over and heat until the tortilla has become soft and pliable. Drop the softened tortilla into the pie plate filled with sauce; allow it to get completely covered in sauce, flip it over, and coat the other side.

Now, place the tortilla either in the casserole dish (the easiest way) or on an additional plate. For best results I highly encourage you to layer it with another heated, sauce-covered tortilla; then run the potato filling down the middle and roll it up. Continue with rest of tortillas, tightly packing enchiladas next to each other.
Pour about a cup of sauce over the top (reserving some for later), cover tightly with aluminum foil, and bake for 25 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, until edges of the tortillas poking out of sauce look just a little browned. Top off with Daiya Vegan Cheese, letting it melt. Allow to cool slightly before serving. Top individual servings with any remaining enchilada sauce, warmed slightly.

HOW TO ROAST GREEN PEPPERS (One of the funnest things ever!)

The easiest and most enjoyable way to do this is to get some tongs and roast them right on the stove top (provided you have a gas burning stove, electric wont work). These peppers can take it! Slowly rotate them over the fire until the skin gets blackened and blistered - you want to go until about 75% of the veggie is covered in burnt skin. Then place them in some kind of heat-resistant bowl or tupperware and cover with a lid or cloth and let cool for about 10-15 min (trapping in the steam helps the burned pepper skin loosen up). Once cooled you can peel off the skin and then seed and chop the pepper.


GARLIC SAFFRON RICE

Ingredients

1 3/4 cup of water
1 vegetable bouillon cube
Pinch of saffron threads (5-6)
2 table spoons oil
5 garlic cloves, minced finely
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 cup long grain white rice (jasmine or basmati)
Pinch of ground coriander
Salt and pepper

In a medium sized sauce pan boil the water, add the bouillon cube, and cook till it has dissolved. Then turn off the hear, stir in the saffron threads*, cover and set aside.

In another medium sized pot take our dynamic duo (that would be the olive oil and garlic) and saute them over medium heat until the garlic starts to turn golden. Add the onion and saute a little longer (as I have said before, I like my onions to still have some color and crunch so I tend to move on before they turn translucent). The onion should take about 5 minutes. Next add the rice and saute for about a minute before adding in your saffron and veggie broth along with the coriander (don't be afraid to be generous).

Cover your pot and bring the concoction to a boil, stir it up once, and then reduce the heat and let it sit for about a 1/2 hour. Make sure the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender. Remove your now-glorious rice and let it sit for about ten minutes. Then give it a stir - its ready to meet the world!


* Saffron is expensive. Until the delicious little red threads appeared under my Christmas tree this year, I adamantly avoided recipes that centered on them. I was delighted to discover that I can save and re-use my prized saffron threads! (Thanks Veganomicon!) All one needs to do is, pour a small portion of the broth into a small cup (about 1/4 a cups worth) and add in the saffron threads. Let it steep for a good 15 minutes or longer. Then use a strainer (like the kind for tealeaves) to pour back in the broth - let the saffron threads dry off and then add them back into its carefully guarded container!




(Recognize those little red stems? Each flower only caries three! Native to Southwest Asia, Saffron is the worlds most expensive spice by weight.)

Pasta with Tomatoes and Artichokes

The more I cook the more I become convinced that garlic and olive oil can transform anything into the edible. This pasta dish is an excellent quick fix when jar sauce just won't do. Total time from prep to plate - 1 hour (or less). Depending on your sauce/pasta ratio preference this serves about 4.

Ingredients:

Can diced tomatoes
GARLIC ! (today I used four fatty cloves, the amount varies depending on my mood)
Olive Oil
Oregano
Basil
Artichokes (quartered)
Onion (one tiny one or half a big one)
Pasta of choice (I prefer Rotini)

I chop up the garlic (my favorite part) and drop it into my too-small frying pan with a generous douse of extra virgin olive oil. I usually add the chopped onion immediately thereafter because I like my onions crispy and I hate when my garlic gets overcooked. Normally the BF chops up the onion but as I was flying solo this afternoon I had to brave the tears and go for it. Sometimes I add some salt and pepper to the garlic and onions, just so that there is more of a party going on.

As soon as I have the garlic near-brown I dump in the diced tomatoes, generous with the juice. Usually I don't use the whole can but today I did because I was lazy and couldn't think of a reason to save the leftover tomatoes. Too many canned tomatoes can smother the rest of the flavor (aka the garlic and olive oil!) so I compensated by cooking the sauce longer and letting juice burn off. Immediately after adding the tomatoes, I added a generous helping of artichokes. Mine happen to be lightly marinated which I think adds a nice kick. Lastly I sprinkled on some dried basil and oregano. Cook the sauce with occasional taste tests until you think its ready - usually when I get a nice balance of flavors and loose the "can" taste in the tomatoes.

When I boil my pasta I usually add a bit of olive oil to the water pre-boiling, its something I saw a lot of Italians do in Italy, and if its good enough for them its good enough for me. (To be fair I think I've seen a lot of California moms do it to, so the secret has been out for a while). If you don't cook your pasta this way though, I highly recommend it.

If I had a decently sized pan I would add the pasta to it with my sauce and mix it all together stir-fry style. Sadly my pan is a bit of a runt, so instead once the pasta is drained I dump the sauce concoction into my pot of pasta and mix it all up under low heat.

This is definitely my lazy-day go to pasta dish because the truth is, as long as you have the dynamic duo (that would be garlic and olive oil) and some pasta, you can scrounge your fridge and cupboards for whatever else looks good and toss it in and have a quick and yummy dish.

If you want to fancy it up, splash some white wine in when you add the tomatoes.

Urth Cafe

Lovely lunch at Urth Cafe today. Despite its crowded popularity I enjoyed a wonderfully long lunch catching up with a couple friends over a soothing bowel of tomato and rice soup and a very dense slice of vegan chocolate cake. The rainy week washed away the smog and made for a very clear and sunny sky today. I was able to forget the anxieties plaguing me and the work awaiting me and just focus on the moment at hand which is a rarity for me.

Urth is hardly a buried treasure, and in fact I was rather late in discovering it myself, but when friends of mine come to visit LA I like to take them to Urth because it is a good place to dually satisfy a sincere desire for something organic, healthy, and full of character (by character I mean the homey design with a bookcase in the corner, fresh baked treats, and jars of tea leaves that belong in my great grandmothers kitchen) with the more indulgent desire of something socially crowded, a little decadent (by this I mean pricey coffee that looks like a work of art - see below), and indicative of Los Angeles hip & posh culture.

Cornbread Muffins & Hiking -> Pure Luck & Scoops

I kicked off my morning with some yummy yummy cornbread muffins, whipped up on the spur of the moment from Dr. Oetker's Organic Baking mixes (I used egg replacer for the one egg required). Cornbread is something I oddly crave often and rarely encounter in vegan form. These were wonderful, sweet with just the right cornmeal texture. I find so often with food that texture is everything - especially when dealing with vegan or vegetarian food that is attempting to be a kind of homage to their meaty counterparts. If something is mush when it should crunch or runny when it should be thick, it throws a bad light on the taste. These muffins held there own, warm and crumbly and particularly enjoyable with a dollop of agave nectar (Ever since i made the impulse purchase at whole foods I've been seeking out opportunities to use my agave).

Armed with the success of a good breakfast, I sat out on a hiking adventure with some friends to Santa Ynez Falls. One of these days I'll find a way to do proper justice describing the wonder of tramping through a forest. I think the effect is particularly striking after spending an hour elbowing my car through traffic to get there. I think many would agree, LA can be quite claustrophobic and unyielding. Whereas nature is welcoming and completely supple. For a few hours my friends and I found inspiration while scrambling over rocks, tripping into creaks, and sliding down mudbanks.

This evening, after rewarding my bruises and scrapes with a hot bath, the BF and I headed off to Pure Luck for a BBQ meets Mexican delicious dinner. Pure Luck has introduced me to the wonder that is jackfruit, and its eerie ability to sub in for carnitas. I also owe them for surprising me with the joy of pickle chips and garbanzo bean salad. The best part of Pure Luck is being able to walk across the street and find ice creme heaven in Scoops. Bright blue tile, local art featured on the walls, and a giant mobile made out of colorful oversize plastic spoons, are some of its more notable features. O fcourse the heart of the place comes from Scoops' assortment of quirky flavors (both vegan and not) - from bacon and cheese to chocolate and Guinness. I enjoyed a helping of Oreo cheesecake while Adam chose Oreo mascarpone.

Ann Cooper: Renegade Lunch Lady

Rainy mornings are for peach tea and TED talks. Thinking seriously of rewarding my 7:30 AM wake up with a 9:30 AM nap, I decided instead to watch an online video of Ann Cooper speak, and her talk mesmerized me. Who is Ann Cooper? She is the director of nutrition services for the Berkeley (California) Unified School District, and she's an outspoken activist for serving fresh, sustainable food to kids. Following her talk I visited her website and following her website I read an online interview from 2006. She is very clear and direct in her mission to provide kids with healthy food.

According to her, reforming school lunches is a "social justice issue." Hardly giving you time to process the information, in her talk she hurls out at you one statistic after another about government subsidizing and big agribusiness leaving kids with unsuitable, detestable, barely-edible lunches that are making them sick. Sick to the point where we are ushering in a generation that is expected to have a lifespan shorter than their parents. 70% of all antibiotics consumed in America is consumed by animal husbandry. The result? We get diseases (like e coli) that we cannot cure. Not only that but by feeding children a diet high in suguar and saturated fat, we undermine their chance at a healthy life. According to Ann Cooper :: "The Centers for Disease Control estimates that of US children born in the year 2000...one out of three will develop diabetes in their lifetime."

Her talk got me to reflect on my personal school lunch experiences. When I was about 7 years old, and living in San Diego, California, I would pretend to get a corn dog for lunch (even though I hated them) so that the lunch lady would serve me ketchup (which I loved to eat on its own - gross). By 6th grade my palate had evolved and i was now living in Corpus Christie, Texas. I ate chili-cheese Frito's and an ice cream snickers bar every single day for lunch. I was perfectly ok with that. I was 11 years old. High school found me back in San Diego, where we didn't even have a cafeteria. Food was served at one or two "food carts" which were bright orange carts on wheels, smaller than the kinds found at football games. It offered an array of chips, microwavable burritos, cup 'o noodles, and cookies. When I decided to become a vegan at 15, needless to say I started bringing my own lunch.

None of this seemed odd to me. We go to school to learn and without knowing it, I learned how to eat (poorly as it turned out). 7 year old ketchup-loving me doesn't care about nutrition, or sustainability, or organic produce, unless someone is there to guide and educate me otherwise. Of course I was ok with chili-cheese Frito's and microwaved burritos, I never knew any better. No one explained to me the consequences, the long term costs. No one taught me how to grow my own vegetable garden, how to cook, how to tell a ripe avocado from a rotten one. And if we don't learn how to eat healthy in school, where are we supposed to figure it out? If eating this way, 5 times or more a day over the span of 13 years, is not only the norm but a norm sanctioned by our teachers - the ultimate figures of authority, then why would we break out of this habit once we leave school? We don't. And we pass this misinformation on to our own children and the cycle continues until it is so protected by tradition that we have to label anyone who cries for its upheaval as a "renegade."

Ann Cooper is trying to change this. When she started in the Berkley school system, the only tool in the kitchen was a box cutter. There are kids who have never seen fresh produce, who do not know that strawberries come from the ground, not from a bush or a tree.

I could go on and on inarticulately parroting the things i have learned from her today. I would rather people explore for themselves. Let 20 min of your day whiz by as you look at this video. Its worth it.

I've included a picture as well of her "meal wheel" I think its awesome and far more accurate than the bogus pyramid we all grew up with. Yes, bogus.

Hungry Planet: What The World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio

Hungry Planet Is an amazing book, with some really provoking pictures, some of which can be seen online by checking out Peter Menzel's photography gallery.


The book presents some awesome photography on - you guessed it -- what people eat. In the gallery online you can find a sample from an in depth series of pictures in which families from all over the world are photographed, in their homes surrounded by all of the food that they eat in one week (This includes everything from groceries to fast food and snack food). The contrast from family to family is striking both in the extreme differences and the similarities, as each photo reveals a bit about not only the nutrition of a family, but also their economic standing, the make-up and size of their family unit, and even the decor and architecture of their home. From a single picture one gets a very private and intimate glimpse into the home and family life of cultures all over the world, in a way that I feel is easily relatable and identifiable. Regardless of where we come from, or how we live - we all have to eat.

Check it out! Look! Look! Look!

And so it begins

What do I want out of this blog? Well the truth is my goals are primarily personal and secondarily social. In this blog I hope to find a collaborative and exploratory space that allows me to grow in my ability to express myself through writing. I've chosen to tackle the rather broad and ambiguous topic of "All things food" because that is my most interesting obsession (although it ranks highly with "Batman" "Sharks" and "Finding an Awesome Job")

What to Expect. On any given day one might find an article on the latest delicious dish I have mastered in the kitchen, a scathing rant on the public schools inability to properly feed students, a giddy ode to a restaurant I adore, or a lament of the atrocities of industrialized food production, and much much more. My interest knows no bounds.

Food intrudes into politics, connects us with our culture or offers us a way into another’s culture. What we eat can be influenced by our philosophical, moral, or religious beliefs and thus it is an intrinsic part of who we are. What we like brings us together or distinguishes us from others. Cooking is considered both an art form or a hobby, and eating can be either an indulgence or a necessity. How we eat, what we eat, when we eat and with whom we will eat offer a wealth of insight. Food production and consumtion affects our bodies, minds, all creatures big and small, the environment, the economy, whole ecosystems and civilizations.

So rather than wasting too much time trying to figure it all out and offer a clear (if not concise) definition - I will let this blog be what it will. I will write about what interests me and see what course this takes, and one day I hope to gain some perspective and insight. Some readers would be nice too.