Mission Street Vegetarian Food

mission street food, food not bombs night

My friend Chelsea who is a vegetarian and food expert pointed this event out to me. It was an all veg menu! The setup has cool written all over it. The dinners are served in this Chinese Restaurant that still runs delivery throughout the night. It's super dark inside, and its byob. I brought a bottle of Spanish wine that tastes like flowers :) Flowers pairs well with everything, that's what I'm gonna claim anyway. I met up with a vegetarian friend and we ordered everything. it was great. and it was all good. if i had one of those yelp accounts id give it a bunch of stars. i really hope this guy has a cookbook, i want to eat this every night now!

Polenta and Beans, Leek and Chervil Soup

I went to the farmers market today. I sampled Polenta and Beans and was given a recipe for it. I had all the ingredients at home for it so I thought I would give it a shot, and I ran into some Chervil so I picked up some leeks for leek and chervil soup.

So it starts out with broth, which contained the following:
1 onion diced
1 cup leek greens
1 potato
3 carrots peeled and diced
3 stalks celery chopped
3 cloves garlic
small celeriac peeled and chopped
small butternut squash peeled and chopped
sprigs of chervil
sprigs of thyme
marjoram
2 bay leaves
4 peppercorns
salt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
9 cups of water

stew all ingredients + 1 cup of water for 20 minutes
add remaining 8 cups of water and simmer for 30-40 minutes
strain and reduce broth more if desired.

I decided to make Polenta with the broth, use no cheese, and a little butter... I was afraid the broth might make it too flavorful and I thought it was up until I melted some butter into it then it was kind of amazing.

The beans, to top the polenta

in olive oil saute: 1/2 onion diced, 2 cloves garlic sliced, thyme, bay leaf, red chili flakes for a few minutes.

to it add, a can of muir glen stewed tomatoes, crushed with a fork, then add beans, the recipe uses cranberry, I found some butter beans at the store, salt, pepper and cover with broth and simmer forever :)

for the soup, saute some leeks in butter then add the broth and simmer for 30 minutes, top with some freshly chopped chervil.

its a lot of work, a lot of time, but very delicious!

lotus and taro root w/tofu, roasted yuan choy, steamed egg with soy sauce

My mom said you're supposed to eat chicken on new years eve, so I should eat an egg. I thought about what chinese style eggs were, and decided to steam it with water and soy sauce, with a little ginger and green onions.

i had a whole bag of yuan choy, which has flowers that make it look like a broccoli rabe, i decided that i would not make it chinese style, but more italian. i roasted it in the oven with red chili flakes, lemon zest, garlic, salt and olive oil.

last, i decided to just sautee the tofu, taro, and lotus with ginger, green onion and indian spices, tumeric, garam masala, ground cumin, red chile, salt.

served it all with some sweet rice.

jai -- first attempt

"jai" in Chinese means vegetarian.

I bought a Chinese cookbook but this wasn't in it. It is a traditional new years dish, food eaten by buddhist monks. So, on the first day of the new year you should have a vegetarian dinner, which is technically Monday but I was sure that I would screw it up so I thought I'd do a practice run at it.

I knew what I wanted to put in it, this has bean threads, soy bean curd sheets, tofu, fat-choy (for the new year), lotus root, shitakes, ginger, garlic, and green onion, with a mess of soy sauce, mushroom sauce, and white pepper. I also had a can of gluten and a can of bamboo but I didn't put it in this time around.

I got the instructions over the phone from my mom: soak all the dry stuff including the bean threads. when you add them, also add water and let it dry up this will cause the bean threads to cook and become clear. they still seemed to bunch up, and of course it wasn't nearly as good as my moms but I will give it another shot. the lotus root is really pretty, there is a whole world of chinese vegetables to play with... exciting times.

endive risotto with walnuts

carnaroli, homemade-broth herby, butter, white wine, fontina, endive, toasted walnuts, parsley

A Little Spicey

Saffron Butter, Parsley, Marjoram, Red Onion, Roasted Yellow and Orange Bells, Spinach, Pine Nuts, Parmesan, Fettuccine

Parsnip Soup with Curry Spices

Apple Crisp, granny smiths sliced, with lemon zest and juice and sugar topped with butter, cinnamon, flour,sugar

I wish I had Naan and Chai too, that would've made it all perfect.

Chinese Food

I've eaten Chinese food for the last two days. Chinese New Year's is coming up, and we had a big family dinner. I asked my aunts how to make daikon rice cakes. green bag of rice flour mixed in while warm into shredded daikon, mix extra ingredients and steam, cool, and fry. i think it would be fun to make rice noodles too. and try out different rice flours. california is such a huge rice producer i bet there's some good local stuff too.

i went to dinner at this shanghai restraunt, 2nd time, with friends from work, they're all from taiwan. i'm the worst asian ever, i'm an american born dummy... i'm going to get better at it, starting with food!

anyways i think i should start by doing more cantonese dishes, my mom watches the chinese cooking shows so shes always doing modern stuff and telling me about it.

i should figure out how to cook some of the chinese new years dishes, i want to be closer to my roots.

in other news... all these seed catalogs are rolling into my mailbox and the descriptions are great. don't know if i'll be planting anything this year or not. i might go and try to get a free plot, or do something indoors? i like broccoli raap a lot.