Recipes #2 & #3: Morel & Mushroom Stack and Peppercorn Cheese

I'm a little behind schedule, with vacation and all, but I did two recipes today.


First, the "Three Peppercorn Crusted Cashew Cheese with Honeycomb and Balsalmic"

I started the recipe weeks ago, when I soaked the cashews, but then we went on vacation, so I hauled the poor nuts up there and then remembered I didn't have any Rejuvelac. I didn't have any wheat berries to make any rejuvelac either.

So I saved the nuts in a bag...ten days later...well, let's just say I did a wierd thing for me: I threw them out and started new.

So this turned out beautifully...pretty straight forward until she says to "press the cheese into a ring mold" What ring mold?

I lined a ramekins w/paper instead. I put the peppercorns in first, then the cheese, pressed. Refrigerated, then inverted it. Perfect! and tastey too.
I made one for Deb, my electrician friend who is also now getting turned onto live foods, but I pressed nasturtium flowers into with the peppercorns...pretty.

Second, the "Layered Morel Mushrooms and Fennel with Two Vinaigrettes: Opal Basil and Mustard Seed"

Luckily, because of Draeger's just down the street, I was easily able (if not expensively) to procure dried morels.

This recipe was lots easier than I had imagined and not as tasty as it looked.

I made it easier, for example, Opal basil? I don't think so. Regular basil will do. Crushing mustard seeds to make the vinaigrette? Nah. I used my taragon mustard and it was yummy. I couldn't deal with the honeycomb thing either. So as I was slicing the fennel, wondering how I was going to get the pureed fennel to stack up on the morels, I hear the dreaded sound: 'hack, hack, wretch' No! I scream. Our stupid cat has this throw up thing she keeps doing. Why can't she be like our dogs and head for the door when she has to puke? No, she has to ALWAYS vomit on (first choice) 1) upholstry 2) persian rug 3) carpet 4) bed (sheets and pillows preferred) and lastly is the floor. And I bet she NEVER pukes outside. So in the middle of three dogs (yes, I'm babysitting Jimmy again) and trying to make this new recipe, I'm scraping vomit off the chair cushions and trying to squirt Nature's Miracle into the cane chair where the puke has leaked into the crevaces.

Newcomers beware: she doesn't mention to core the fennel! (Sorry I had to delete the photo, folks, it was blurry and not shot from the side (as I had instructed husband) so sort of looked like a plate a vomit. Really, it looked quite gourmet in real life.

The flavors were good, but the morels tasted watered down...next time (if ever there is one) I will dry them carefully and marinate them in a mixture of both her vinaigrettes first. (bad photo, I'm sorry, blame it on husband, as I do with all things).

With the leftovers, I mixed it all together and it was delicous...voila!

Recipe Uno - Wakame Sushi Rolls

The first recipe is a gourmet looking sushi roll. One of the reasons I never did anything but look at this book with awe and put it back down again.
This recipe went suprisingly well, except that photographer-husband did not download the photos and then "disappeared" from his camera. ugh. so I did the recipe a 2nd time, pictured here a little blurry. Of course you can't really see the sushi and that's because oh-esteemed photographer husband doesn't know how to use his own camera. God forbid should either one of us read the manual. They say food styling and photography is a real art and now I can see why. God, how awful photos of home food can look! I can't be a cook and a techno-photographer both.

I discovered daikon and parsnips, and both are wonderful! You can julienne either up (use a mandolin) for salads...yum! But this recipe used parsnips as the "rice" in the sushi roll.
I felt sure when I rolled it up, it would be a disaster, with the contents bulging out and even worse when I cut it, imagining the nori paper to tear and fall apart, but miraculously, with my first recipe...it turned out as delicious as it was beautiful.

Of course I had to snigger at the call for "brunoise cut" and the "baton" cut this or that. What the hell is brunoise? According to my Food Lover's Companion it is a "mixture of vegetables, finely diced or shredded." And indeed, in the back of Roxanne's book, she does give a definition...fine dice, as she does with baton: match stick. And she says to use the daikon leaves...uh, excuse me, they are tough and practically inedible! I mean this is real life here.

Well, I've learned two fancy words and satisfied the bird (that's daniel, oh-beloved husband-photographer) with a delicious dinner, twice.

About this Labor of Love

Fortified with little experience, but truly a passion for living food, a husband who wants to lose weight (he has lost 14 lbs so far and LOOKS and FEELS terrific) and a neighborhood gourmet grocery store, I will embark on not nearly such a daunting project as cooking every recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, but something less monumental, but still intimidating to me, which will be to prepare all the recipes from Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein’s fancy shmancy gourmet RAW book over the summer. I’ve had this book for several years now and have not attempted one single recipe. What else will motivate me but to declare it as a goal to an audience?

But first I want to not only give credit, but communicate to author Julia Shaffer of Julie & Julia, My Year of Cooking Dangerously that her hilarious book inspired me to do this…not only to love the kitchen more, but that a fellow Texan with a gutter mouth like me, might be inspired to write. And she can…she’s a very good writer. Anyway, she inspired me and before I start my own “mission” (as opposed to Julie's "project"), I want to write her and let her know that I hope she is not feeling plagiarized or copied by my mimicking her project…my husband says the best form of flattery is plagiary...I only hope copycatting is just as flattering. Purchase her book: http://www.amazon.com/Julie-Julia-Year-Cooking-Dangerously/dp/0316013269

So, back in like 1995 this totally cool restaurant opened up in my neighborhood (Inner Sunset, San Francisco) called Raw. I was immediately attracted to this restaurant and was totally intrigued to learn that all the gourmet and delicious looking dishes turning out were totally uncooked vegan dishes. Fermented wheat berries, dehydrated crusts for pizzas and “breads,” pureed fruits for pudding, soaked nuts for “cheese,” herbal infused waters and teas, sea vegetables…all these exotic, delicious but purely healthy foods served in the most artistic way. Nothing heated beyond 105 degrees, so as to keep the “living” enzymes and nutrients that are alive in nuts, seeds and vegetables alive.

The owner, a beautiful man named Juliano wound up moving to southern California where he started another restaurant (I think) and wrote an amazing cookbook. Well, here it is, like 11 years later, and I finally have his cookbook, and am finally ready, with the necessary encouragement from my husband, to start a whole new way of eating. It’s a TERRIFIC cookbook and I totally recommend it. I’ve already been making all kinds of delicious things from it. But his book has like over 100 recipes and I didn’t know if I could do that over the summer, but also his are easier. Roxanne’s is unbelievably high-brow, so thus the challenge.

I started first by making my own almond milk instead of buying the dead almond milk in the box. Beautiful, snow-white "milk" squeezes out of my husband’s beer sock (this is the PERFECT tool for making almond milk) over my hopefully washed fingers and into the glass pitcher. You can add a little blended date or a dash of maple syrup, but truly for us, we really don’t need it. Almonds are loaded with calcium, vitamin E and magnesium, and have their own natural sweetness. We’ve been going through, like a pitcher every 2-3 days.

First you have to soak the almonds (or any nut, like you can make pecan milk, cashew milk, brazil nut milk, etc.) for 4-24 hours. The idea being that when you soak a nut in agua, the nut thinks it’s going to seed and so starts rejuvenating and the enzymes and life-giving properties in the nut “wake up” and once they’re activated, they are optimum for consumption, with the maximum of living nutrients.

Everything is alive. And I know a lot of people don’t eat meat because they don’t want to kill an animal. But how can we say a plant is so much lower on the scale of things? I personally don’t believe they are. Plants, I have learned, in my modest forays into the world of composting and worm farming, do some mind-blowing things…one could say they think and make decisions. Of course most humans snigger at such a suggestion. We are so egocentric. Anyway, I have to say I do feel bad about an animal being killed just so I can enjoy a filet Mignon melting in my mouth, or even worse, oysters, which I LOVE, are ALIVE when you eat them on the half shell. Your teeth ripping into their tender body is how they get to die. At least cows get to die a more humane death. But look how we treat plants. We rip them out of the ground and chop them up! They die slowly, eh? So it is sacred, eating other life, no matter if plant or animal. And I don’t know how to be humane about it, well plants anyway. But for my fellow mammals, I can buy free-range, organic, etc., and hope that the folks at those farms have integrity.

So I got the bright idea, a time saver, to soak my almonds in advance and store them in the frig in a container. Every day I thought of blending them up to make almond milk, but no, I thought, I’ll wait cuz I don’t want to make the milk until we’re ready to drink it…I want it to be as fresh as possible.

So I was ready today to make a new batch. Nursing a bit of a hangover from a wild dinner out with the Dactyls saying farewell to a sister who is moving off to Connecticut with her new husband, I was craving a milk shake. I rummaged through the cabinets and I found Them. I can’t believe he bought Ruffels potato chips! After recovering from the mild shock (Daniel is serious about not eating junk and to lose weight, but I guess he had a weak moment when I left him for a night--God knows, I certainly did not adhere to any kind of healthy consumption last night!) I crammed a few in my mouth as I opened the lid. Shit! A few of the almonds had MOLD on them. Damn, I swear, this live/fresh food thing is so unforgiving sometimes. Better eat another chip. I picked up one at a time and scraped the little dot of blue mold from each nut. After about five I said fuck it and dumped them all into the blender. Ate another handful of Ruffels. Mold is supposed to be good for you, isn’t it? I poured the filtered agua over them and whirled away. Yum almond milk. Yuck, potato chips.