Blackout Onigiri

Sometimes a first impression is completely wrong. I admit it. I was wrong. When I took a first glance at Super Natural Simple: Whole-Food, Vegetarian Recipes for Real Life by Heidi Swanson of which I received a review copy, I wasn’t sure I would be very interested. Those first few pages I glimpsed included some very simple ideas like a bean salad made with canned beans and a few other ingredients and packaged root vegetable chips that get warmed in the oven and tossed with oil, green onion, and lemon zest. Maybe I was in the mood to be more challenged that day? As I started reading the book, and I really do read all of my cookbooks, I kept encountering dish after dish that I wanted to make. I think I tried more recipes from this book than any other before its first mention here. The recipes are streamlined, the ingredient lists are mostly pretty short, and there are things I’ll be making repeatedly for years to come. One that I’ve already made a couple of times and wish I had a constant supply of is the Puffed Rice Party Mix made with unsweetened rice cereal, raw peanuts, raw cashews, raw peptias, flaked coconut, crumbled nori, and spices including turmeric. It’s a delicious and nutritious snack mix. The turmeric will stain your fingers as you eat it, but it’s so addictive you won’t mind. Or, you’ll use a spoon. One of the other first recipes I tried was the Lemon-Garlic Pita Chips, and that was as simple as it gets with pita cut into wedges and tossed with olive oil, minced garlic, and lemon zest before being toasted in the oven. Those chips were then cut into shards to garnish the Coconut Asparagus Soup that was thickened with potato and brightened with lemon. The Weeknight Pot Stickers is another dish I’ll return to often. Dumpling wrappers were filled with the Lemony Carrot Salad, from The Best Salads chapter, and crumbled tofu. They were then fried and steamed and served with ponzu and chile oil. I suspect the Som Tum Noodles will also become a regular in my meal rotation. As promised in the head note, they were sweet, sour, salty, and spicy. Rice noodles were cooked with added turmeric in the water and were then tossed with cherry tomatoes, grated carrots, cucumber, chopped kale, herbs, and a spicy lime and soy dressing. And, there are sweets too. I made the Sunflower Brittle because I was intrigued to see a recipe for a brittle with no refined sugar. It's made with just maple syrup, and it was fantastic. After all those recipes that I’ve already tried and more that are flagged, I then read the Power Pantry chapter. This is where you’ll find basics like sauces, dressings, pickles, broths, and seasoned salt, etc. There are some nutritional powerhouses here like the Omega Seed Spread and the Purple Jasmine Rice, Seeds and Spices. This chapter is where I found the Blackout Beans and Rice recipe and the recommendation to use it in the onigiri found in a previous chapter. I’d never made onigiri before and couldn’t wait to try. 

To start, black rice, black beluga lentils, and black sesame seeds were rinsed in a strainer and then transferred to a bowl. Water was added, and the mixture was left in the refrigerator overnight to soak. The next day, the mixture was placed in a saucepan, coconut milk and salt were added, and it was cooked until the liquid had been absorbed and the rice and lentils were cooked through. Once cool enough to handle, the mixture was formed into triangles. And, that’s when I decided I want an onigiri press because I’m definitely going to make this and other versions in the future. In the book, the triangles were grilled and glazed with a harissa-tamari sauce. I went with gochujang instead of harissa, and I griddled out of fear of the triangles breaking and falling through the grill. They were served with a green onion garnish and more glaze. 

I don’t know why I’d never tried making onigiri before, but I’m so glad I finally did. Forming the rice triangles was fun, and I look forward to trying different variations. The surfaces got a little toasty from the final cooking, and the glaze added a punch of flavor. With so many dishes I’ll be making again and more that I still want to try, this book will be a permanent fixture in my kitchen.

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Forbidden Rice Salad with Blistered Broccoli and Miso Dressing

Sometimes when I first open a new cookbook, there’s something that quickens my pulse, makes me hungry, and makes me want to cook. With my review copy of East: 120 Vegan and Vegetarian Recipes from Bangalore to Beijing by Meera Sodha, it was the chapter devoted to tofu. A whole chapter, just for tofu! That’s not so surprising given that this is a plant-focused cookbook based on Sodha’s vegan column for the Guardian. But, I like tofu, and it was exciting to see it used in several dishes here. The book is vegetarian rather than strictly vegan since it expands on what she has written for the column, and the dishes are inspired by flavors from South, East, and Southeast Asia. It’s intended to be a practical cookbook for getting meals on the table in a reasonable amount of time. The tofu chapter grabbed my attention first, but to be honest I want to make just about everything in every chapter. The Snacks and Small Things chapter has Celery and Peanut Wontons with Chile Soy Sauce that are simply boiled before being topped with sauce, and the Potato Dosa with Pea and Coconut Chutney looks crispy and delicious. Among the noodles, the Mouth-Numbing Noodles with Chile Oil and Red Cabbage and Food Court Singapore Noodles are on my short list. There are curries for every season, and the summery Thai Green Curry with Eggplant, Zucchini, and Snow Peas will be in my warm weather plans. From the rice dishes, I tried the Brussels Sprouts Nasi Goreng right away and loved the marinated, sliced Brussels sprouts on top. One of the other first things I made from the book was, of course, a tofu dish. The Honey, Soy, and Ginger Braised Tofu was sweet and spicy. Some others I’ll try soon are the colorful Chile Tofu with sweet peppers and chiles and the Spring Vegetable Bun Cha with pickled cabbage. There are also chapters for legumes, sides, condiments, and sweets, but I want to tell you more about a dish from Salads. 

The Forbidden Rice Salad with Blistered Broccoli and Miso Dressing looked fresh, crunchy, and full of flavor, and it was. In the book, it’s made with broccolini, but I had just received regular broccoli from my CSA and used that. First, the rice was cooked, drained, and left covered with a towel in a sieve. The dressing was a puree of cashews, fresh ginger, white miso, oil, and lemon juice. The broccoli was blistered in a frying pan as were the snap peas that I used in place of snow peas. To put it all together, the rice was spread on a platter, shredded red cabbage was layered with sliced watermelon radish in my case, thawed edamame, avocado wedges, and the blistered broccoli and snap peas. Last, dressing was drizzled on top. 

The magic of pureed cashews made the dressing thick and rich, and the lemon, ginger, and miso flavors would work well with a variety of salad ingredients. That combination worked especially well here with the chewy rice, crisp radishes, and blistered vegetables. Like all the recipes in this book, the mix of tastes and textures brings a lot of fun to the plate.

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Golden Cashew Sauce with Chile and Lime Served with Black Rice and Panfried Tempeh

I have a vacation fantasy wherein a personal chef prepares all of my meals with fresh, nutritious ingredients put together just the way I like them. I have all the time in the world to explore whatever surroundings I’m visiting, do lots of yoga, go for long runs, and every lovely locally-sourced, organic snack, beverage, and meal appears perfectly-prepared just when I want it. In this particular fantasy, the food and drinks would look a lot like what you’ll find in the new book from Amy Chaplin, Whole Food Cooking Every Day: Transform the Way You Eat with 250 Vegetarian Recipes Free of Gluten, Dairy, and Refined Sugar of which I received a review copy. As I read the book, the same thought kept coming to mind: this is what I want to eat every day. The twenty chapters each present a base recipe or two followed by several variations on that main idea. The one exception is the Vegetables: Land and Sea chapter that includes a variety of dishes with different ingredients. The recipes are gluten-free, sometimes grain-free, and mostly vegan, but some options call for eggs and goat cheese is suggested here and there. This book gives you building blocks for putting together nutritionally-dense and variety-rich meals that completely bypass highly refined, processed, and artificial foods. Throughout, there are suggested ways to customize the recipes and ideas for what to pair them with for creating interesting twists and complete meals. The photos showing all the flavor variations in each chapter made me want to try every option. Among the chia bircher bowls and porridges in the first and second chapters alone, there are sweet, savory, simple, elaborately-garnished, spring, summer, fall, and winter directions to try. The gluten-free breads, with toppings options, had me longing to fill my freezer with them. I started with the Black Rice Sesame Bread made after soaking black rice and black sesame seeds overnight before grinding them with the remaining ingredients in the food processor to make the dough. The nutty, toasted slices of bread were delicious with smashed avocado and sliced hakurei turnips. There are nut and seeds milks to try, compotes, soups, bean dishes, dressings, sauces, crackers, bars, cakes, and more. I’ve made nut butter before, but I’d never thought of making coconut butter by grinding dried, unsweetened coconut in the food processor. The dressings, made mostly with vegetables and just a little oil, have inspired me too. The artichoke dressing with meyer lemon and chives is on my list. My second stop in the book was for the Berry Chia Pudding made with frozen strawberries cooked with orange juice to soften before being mixed with cashews, coconut butter, and vanilla. The puree was whisked with chia seeds and left in the refrigerator for serving with cacao nibs and freeze-dried strawberries. I also tried the Matcha Berry Muffins made grain-free with dried coconut, sunflower seeds, almond flour, and coconut flour. They were tender and light with just maple syrup and orange juice for sweetness. I couldn’t pass up the Date-Sweetened Granola made with a puree of softened dates and no other sweeteners. I loved that it included buckwheat groats since that’s become one of my favorite additions to granola. But, the dish I want to tell you all about today is from the Sauces chapter. 

All of the versatile sauces would work well for noodle dishes, paired with vegetables, or as dips. I quickly fell for the photo of the Golden Cashew Sauce with Chile and Lime shown served with black rice, panfried tempeh, and a tangle of sprouts. I set about recreating it. The base recipe for a Creamy Nut Sauce was followed with some additions. Chopped onion was sauteed in olive oil until golden, and then garlic was added along with grated fresh ginger and turmeric and chopped red chile. Mirin and water were added for deglazing and allowed to simmer. The mixture was transferred to a blender along with raw cashews, more water, tamari, and lime juice. The sauce can be made warm by adding boiling water to the blender, or it can be made at room temperature and reheated before serving. I browned some slices of tempeh, steamed some black rice, made a quick pickle of kohlrabi and carrots, and did my best to mimic the presentation shown in the book. 

The thick sauce added great flavor as each bite of tempeh was pulled through it. I’ll make it a bit thinner with more lime juice when I use it for a rice noodle dish with lots of cucumber and chiles. First, there’s so much more I want to try here. The crackers, waffles, bars, and cauliflower bakes all look so good. With all the recipe variations, meal plans, and prep tips, this book makes it easy to eat like this every day.

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Carrot and Rice Salad with Ginger Sumac Dressing

I feel as though Nancy Silverton and I go way back except that, of course, I’ve never met her. In 2007, I read her Breads from the La Brea Bakery book and soon thereafter made my sourdough starter that I still use today. I’ve made many of the breads from that book and have even gotten comfortable adjusting recipes here and there. I make a whole grain version of the bagels from that book. And, it’s that voice of Nancy Silverton that I think I know, the voice of her writing from 1996 when that book was published. All these years later, the voice of her latest books is a little different. She’s having an amazing culinary career and experience and passage of time have brought clear preferences for certain flavors or techniques. Her latest book is Mozza at Home: More than 150 Crowd-Pleasing Recipes for Relaxed, Family-Style Entertaining, and I received a review copy. It’s full of recipes she turns to for entertaining both at her home in Los Angeles and at her second home in Umbria in Italy. The book includes nineteen different party menus with various side dishes that would go well with each theme or main course. If you’re planning a dinner party, you could pick and choose how many and which side dishes to prepare. Then, Desserts has a chapter all to itself. The idea was that most of the desserts could be paired with multiple menus, and you can choose from the whole collection. For main courses, the menus include dishes like Saturday Night Chicken Thighs with Italian Sausage, Sicilian Swordfish Spiedini, Dean Fearing’s Frito Pie, and Lamb and Chicken Tikka Kebabs. I got caught up in all the various salads as side dishes. The Farro Salad with Fresh Herbs and Feta is like a Greek salad with farro. The Couscous Salad with Root Vegetables and Ricotta Salata is perfect for fall with carrots, parsnips, and radicchio. And, there’s a Mixed Grain and Seed Salad made with quinoa, wild rice, and fregola sarda. I couldn’t resist starting with the Carrot and Rice Salad with Ginger Sumac Dressing for the seasonally appropriate color scheme. 

There are a lot of interesting things going on with this rice salad. Three different types of rice are suggested. You could limit that to one instead, or use two types of rice as I did. I used black rice and red rice and skipped the brown rice. Each type of rice is cooked separately and then cooled by spreading on a baking sheet. The second main ingredient here is the carrots, and they need to be cut into short julienne pieces. The process for cutting the carrots is suggested as follows: “cut the carrots into 3- to 4-inch segments. Using a mandoline, slice the segments into 1/16 inch thick lengthwise. Stack the slices and slice with a knife into 1/16 inch batons.” I employed the carrot slicing trick of making angled cuts that you stack and julienne rather than pulling out the mandoline. I don’t remember where I learned that trick, but it’s a great one. The third main ingredient for this salad is a whole cup of flaxseeds that were toasted in a dry skillet and cooled. The dressing was made with lime juice, sumac, champagne vinegar, grated fresh ginger, and red chile flakes. I believe there’s a typo in the book for the quantity of sumac. I used almost a tablespoon not one half cup. That was whisked together and set aside. The cooled rice was combined in a big bowl with the julienned carrots and flaxseeds. The mixture was drizzled with olive oil and tossed to coat. The dressing was added, and the mixture was tossed again to distribute. 

The bright, zippy dressing livens up the rice and makes this a fun salad. The flaxseeds add a nice nutty richness to go with the freshness of the carrots. I’m not sure if I’ll keep working through all the salads I want to try or maybe move on to the Eggplant Lasagne next. Then, there’s the Desserts chapter to devour. For today, I’m happy to enjoy the orange and black of this dish. Happy Halloween! 

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Black Rice Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

As I read the May issue of Bon Appetit, I noticed one mention after the next of little, old Austin. I thought: what are we, Portland? Clarks Oyster Bar was noted in Dish of the Moment regarding shrimp toast; in a list of uses for hot sauce, the Michelada was inspired by one from a dive bar in Austin; and in the Good Health section, there was a story about our Lake Austin Spa Resort. We are pretty proud of our food scene here in Austin, so it’s nice to see our city being referenced more often in magazines lately. It was in that story about Lake Austin Spa where I found this Black Rice Salad, and the recipe is available online. This is an ideal dish to have on hand as our hot, summer weather settles in. Having a big bowl of this in the refrigerator makes grabbing a healthy lunch easier than ever. I collected some local green beans and tomatoes at the farmers’ market and mixed them with thawed edamame and sliced green onions. The bright red of the tomatoes and greens of the other vegetables look great with the dark, glossy black rice. Toasted walnuts add some protein and crunch. 

Black rice requires about 35 to 40 minutes of cooking, so start that first. Once the rice is tender, you need spread the rice on a baking sheet to let it cool. While the rice cooks, toast the walnuts in the oven, and whisk together the vinaigrette. Lemon juice, white wine vinegar, and honey were whisked together, and olive oil was drizzled in while whisking to complete the vinaigrette. Season with salt and pepper to taste. I like a lot of pepper with lemon. The original recipe doesn’t include cooking the green beans, but I don’t really like raw green beans so I blanched them after cutting them into small pieces. The edamame was thawed, the green onions were thinly sliced, and the grape tomatoes were halved or quartered. Everything was tossed in a large bowl, and the salad was ready for serving. 

You could add a little decadence to this otherwise very healthy dish by topping it with crumbled goat cheese or feta, but it really doesn’t need it. My favorite accompaniment to it was extra tomatoes since they’re so good right now. This dish is just one more thing to love about Austin. 

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Snapper with Farro, Black Rice, Green Garlic, and Tangerine

I had heard so much about the book Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin that I finally got a copy last fall. There’s always a backlog of books I need to read, so I only just got through it a month ago. If you’re not familiar with it, the book showcases meals from the restaurant’s Sunday night, set-menu dinners. It’s organized by season as the food is true to Goin’s interest in using locally-grown, perfectly fresh produce. When I was reading the book, one dish after the next piqued my interest, but the one I absolutely had to have first was the wild striped bass with farro, black rice, green garlic, and tangerine. This just sang of spring to me. It looked fresh and bright and luscious in the photo with the tangerine sauce and segments. So, to celebrate the start of the season I made this on Saturday with just one minor alteration.

I never see wild striped bass in my local stores, but I learned that I could make a special request for it at Whole Foods. Unfortunately, I learned that too late so I proceeded with snapper instead of bass. An issue that required some planning ahead with this dish was the black rice. There is a list of sources in the book which includes one for the rice, but I found Italian black rice on Amazon and purchased it there. Italian black rice, check, farro, check, believe it or not, green garlic was ready and waiting in the produce department of Central Market, so check for that too. Then, in an effort to buy back some carbon footprint from the flown-in rice, I snipped the pea shoots from my garden and used a local viognier from Becker vineyards. Viognier actually does very well in Texas, and this is one of a few good locally grown and bottled options.

When I arrived home with the snapper, I set about seasoning it with tangerine zest and thyme and parsley from my garden. The fish then rested in the refrigerator for about four hours. The rice and farro were cooked separately but similarly with olive oil, onion, bay leaves, wine, and water. Some chile de arbol was added to the rice while the farro received some thyme. Once cooked, both were poured out onto a baking sheet to cool. To complete this part of the dish, sliced green garlic and sliced chile de arbol were sauteed in olive oil before the farro was added. After the farro toasted some, the rice was incorporated and then the pea shoots were added just to wilt. I finished this part and let it stay warm on the stove while then cooking the fish.

The snapper was removed from the refrigerator and allowed to come to room temperature before being quickly seared in olive oil. After a few minutes on each side, it was removed, and the pan was wiped clean. The sauce was a simple reduction of tangerine juice into which butter was whisked and salt and pepper and tangerine segments were added. The fish was placed atop the rice, farro, and pea shoots, and the tangerine sauce and segments were spooned over all.

I had thought about this meal for so long that I really took my time in preparing it. I wanted to make sure I didn’t blank on any crucial steps in the instructions. I have to say again that it just looked so great in the book that I had really worked up high expectations. And, yes, it was that good. The sauce was brightly fruit flavored and not too rich, and the farro and rice were chewy and substantial without being heavy. The chile de arbol and green garlic added nice pops of flavor, the pea shots were freshness itself, and the fish was light and nicely seasoned. Now, I’m planning other ideas for black rice and farro with asparagus and who knows what else, and I’m looking forward to trying more things from this book throughout this spring and the rest of the year.

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