Cinco De Mayo, el primer curso. SALSA!

If there is a better appetizer/snack food than salsa, I am not sure what it is. As a matter of fact, I have become known for showing up to pretty much any gathering to which I am invited with at least one kind of salsa in hand. It is kind of my thing. I also never prepare a tex-mex meal without at least one or two salsas on the table.

I am not so adamant about avoiding jarred salsas, as I am about jarred pasta sauce. There are actually some really tasty pre-packaged salsas out there. This is where my "Do it your F-ing self" nature is going to kick in though. Even though there are some tasty salsa options on the shelf at the grocery store, why would I want to pay 5 or more dollars for a jar, when I can make something just as good in my own kitchen? I have included 3 of my favorite salsa recipes(black bean salsa, roasted poblano salsa and guacamole) here, to get your Cinco De Mayo feast started right.

Black Bean Salsa

Ingredients:
1 - 15.5oz can balck beans
1 - ear corn off the cob, sweet white corn is my favorite (or 3/4 cups frozen corn, thawed not cooked)
2 - plum tomatoes peeled, seeded and diced (check the Nona's 10 Hour Marinara recipe for peeling/seeding instructions)
1/2 - med onion minced
4 - cloves garlic minced
1 - jalapeño minced (more or less to taste)
1 - lime juiced
1 tsp - ground oregano
2 tsp - ground cumin
salt to taste (about 2 tsp)

Equipment:
1 - mixing bowl
1 - pan boiling water
1 - bowl ice water
Knife, cutting board, etc...

Cooking:

• Mix all ingredients together and then refrigerate for at least an hour. Make it a day ahead of time if you can. It tastes much better after sitting overnight.

Roasted Tomato Poblano Salsa

Ingredients:
4 - large tomatoes
2 - poblano chiles (if you have a very low spice tollerance, you can use less but after roasting these wont be very spicy.)
1/2 - med onion minced
4 - cloves garlic minced
1 - lime juiced
1 tsp - powdered oregano
2 tsp - powdered cumin
salt to taste (about 2 tsp)

Equipment:
1 - mixing bowl
1 - barbecue grill
1 - bowl ice water
1 - container with tight lid
knife, chopping board, etc...

Cooking:

• Start the grill up while you are chopping the veggies, and when it is good and hot, arrange all the peppers and tomatoes over the hottest part and leave them uncovered.
• Turn them every 5 or so minutes until they are blackened all the way around.
• Once the skins are all charred and blackened, put the peppers in a tupperwear or soup pot with a tight lid, and leave them covered for 5 - 10 minutes.
• After you take them out, you should be able to easily scrape the skins off.
• The tomatoes get transfered to an ice water bath for about 30 seconds during which I use my hands to brush off as much of the char as I can without destroying them too much.
• After being skinned, the peppers and tomatoes both get chopped up and added to a large mixing bowl.
• Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
• Refrigerate for at least a half hour before eating, overnight is better.
  

Guacamole!

Ingredients:
3 - haas avecados diced
1 - plum tomato
1/2 - med onion
4 - cloves garlic minced
2 - limes juiced (I like mine limey, you might want to start with just 1 and add more to taste.)
2 tsp - salt
1/2 tsp - powdered oregano
1 tsp - powdered cumin

Equipment:
1 - mixing bowl
1 - cheese grater
knife, cutting board, etc...

Cooking:

• Start by juicing the lime into a salad bowl.
• Use a cheese grater to grate the tomato and onion into pulp and add to the lime juice.
• Mix in the salt, garlic and spices
• Once the other ingrediants are all mixed together, prepare the avecados. (Make sure to wait, because you want to add them to the lime juice mixture as soon as they are cut. This will keep them from browning.)
• Dicing an avecado:
• slice into one side of the avecado until the knife hits the pit.
• Holding the knife still, rotate the avecado slowly, letting the knife cut it in half around the pit.
• Once it has been sliced, hold the two sides and twist them apart, like opening a jar. The avecado should come into two pieces, with the pit stuck in one side.
• Place the side with the pit on your cutting board, pit up, and chop into the pit with your knife.
• The blade should get stuck. You can now use it as a handle to twist out the pit.
• Leaving the avecado in the shell, make slices about 1/4 inch apart, all the way across the flesh, penetrating down until the tip of the knife touches the inside of the shell but doesn't cut through it, then switch and do the same thing, perpendicular to the first lines.
• Once you have diced the flesh, use a spoon to scoop it out into the lime mixutre.
• You can mash it all together if that makes you feel better, but I think it is way better to just stir it together well (which will do some mashing) and leave the chunks how they are.
• Unlike the salsas, guacamole should be used right after you make it.
• If you need to prepare it ahead of time, make sure to store it in a zip lock bag with all of the extra air squeezed out. It also helps to save the pits, and put them in the guacamole. Beleive it or not the pits actually do help slow the browning.

You will note that none of these recipes have any cilantro in them, even though it would be in all of these dishes traditionally. There is a simple explanation for that. I hate cilantro. If you are a fan of that wretched herb, feel free to chop up 3 or 4 sprigs and mix it in to any of the above. I am sure you will enjoy it. I, however, will pass. Thank you.

Il mio cibo preferito è il tipo vegano.

I may not be Italian, but I grew up in an EXTREMELY Italian part of New York state, so my love for Italian fare has roots that stretch back as long as I can remember. While a lot of Italian food is heavy with meat and dairy, the cuisine in general is all about fresh delicious ingredients. Many Italian dishes are vegan already and with just a little adjustment, most Italian dishes can be made vegan while staying tasty and healthy (or becoming even healthier.) I am sure to write about vegan Italian food on a regular basis, but let's start with square one.

Whether you call it Sauce or Gravy or make any of the many variations, tomato sauce is one of the staples of Italian cuisine. It is the center piece of many Italian dishes, and assists in many others. I am sure that is why it has also become so popular in American culture. Unfortunately along with popularity, comes mass production. I won't go so far as to say that all mass produced commercially available tomato sauce is inedible, but I will say that jarred sauces that are even remotely decent are so few, far between, over priced and rarely vegan, that they aren't even worth considering. This is especially true when you consider that delicious home cooked sauce is so freaking easy to make.

My goal for this post, is to start with a basic marinara recipe, and then show how changing just a few things about that recipe can give you some delicious variations.

Marinara Sauce

To Start:
You can make sauce in a hurry if you need to. While cooking, you really only need to bring the pot to a boil, and then let it simmer for 10 or 15 minutes. If you rush your sauce though, the end product is going to suffer. To really develop the delicious flavor of a pot of good sauce, it takes time. This isn't always an option though, when you have a job and other responsibilities, and you can't be bothered to spend 3 hours cooking dinner. I know this just as well as anyone else. My solution? Cook sauce on a day off, and cook enough of it to last you a while. It will freeze fantastically and will also last a good week in the refrigerator. I actually prefer the flavor of sauce a few days after it was originally cooked.

If you are in a hurry and want to eat right away try making Pomodoro, which doesn't need to simmer for nearly as long (more on this later)

Ingredients:
1 - medium yellow onion, minced
6 - cloves garlic (more or less to taste. I tend to use a lot of garlic.) minced
1 Tbsp - Italian seasoning
1 Tbsp - Olive oil
Salt to taste/ health restrictions
1 - 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes
1 - 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
2 Tbsp - tomato paste

Equipment:
1 large sauce pot
1 large(punch type) bowl
knife, cutting board, etc...

Cooking:

• Put your large pot over med - med high heat, and add the onion, garlic, oil, Italian seasoning and 1 tsp of salt. Saute, stirring regularly, until the onions have become soft and translucent.
  
• While the onions, garlic, etc... are sauteing, open both of your cans of tomatoes. The crushed tomatoes are ready to go, so just keep them handy. The whole peeled tomatoes need some work.
• Empty the can of whole peeled tomatoes(and all the liquid) into your large bowl and sort through them to remove any stems or bits of skin that are left stuck to the stem end of the tomatoes.
  
• Once you have cleaned out all of the undesirables, loosely crush the tomatoes by squeezing them in your fist. The idea here is to just break them up a little, not to totally pulverize them.
  
• Once your onions are done simmering, add both the cans of tomatoes and turn the heat up to high. Stir the pot constantly until it comes to a boil.
• When the sauce comes to a boil add the tomato paste stir it in well and turn the heat back down. The idea is to turn the heat down until the sauce just simmering.
  
• From this point it's all time and patience. Ideally the sauce should simmer for 3 - 4 hours, stirring occasionally, the longer the better. If you are lucky enough to have a crock pot or slow cooker, go ahead and transfer the sauce into that, set it to medium low and let it go.
  
• Just before I am finished cooking, I adjust the salt. Unless you prefer very little salt in your food, the 1 tsp that we added to the sauté is probably not enough. I like to wait until now to add more salt because the pot will reduce quite a bit as it simmers, and it is easy to have it go from tasty to over salty, if you add the salt early and then simmer for a long time.
  

Variations on a theme

Fra Diavolo
The term Fra Diavolo (litteral translation "Brother of the devil") refers more to a type of sauce than to one specific dish. I have seen it on many different menus in my time and rarely have the dishes been very similar, other than one thing. This sauce is supposed to be SPICY, hence the name. The version that I make is pretty much a spicy pepper filled marinara.

Changes:

• Instead of dicing your onions, cut them in half once, and then cut them cross wise into thin strips.

• Add 4 Italian Long Hot peppers, also cut into thin strips, to your sauté. If you cant find Italian Long Hots, pretty much any larger medium heat chili pepper will work.
  

Bolognese (Americanized)
Most Americans think of a thick meaty tomato sauce, when they hear the term Bolognese. While this is not really correct (the actual Italian dish is mostly meat, with just enough tomato and wine to make it a sauce) it sure is tasty. This hearty sauce is great with a hefty pasta that can hold up to it. My favorites are penne, ziti or rigatoni.

Changes:

• Add 1/4 cup of red wine to your sauté and let it cook for about a minute, just before adding your tomatoes. Whatever kind you have handy is fine, so long as it is not too sweet. Be careful, while most wine wont flash fire like stronger booze does, some will.
  This is also tasty without wine, if you prefer not to use alcohol.
  
• let a bag of frozen veggie burger crumbles thaw, while your sauce simmers and mix it into your sauce during the last 15 minutes of cooking.

Pomodoro
Pomodoro is a fresh fragrant tomato sauce that pairs well with light pastas, like angel hair. It is traditionally made with fresh tomatoes, but you can get away with using canned if you like.

Changes:

• This sauce tends not to be as good reheated, so I generally make about half as much. Use 1/2 as much onion and garlic, and eliminate the crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and Italian seasoning.
  
• If you are feeling adventurous, use 10 fresh plum tomatoes, cut into quarters, instead of the can of whole peeled tomatoes.
  
• Once you have sautéed the onion and garlic, add the tomatoes and turn the heat up to high.
• Once the sauce boils, salt to taste, remove from heat, and mix in about 20 leaves of fresh chopped basil.

Nonna's 10 hour Marinara
Nearly every Italian grandmother I have met has two things in common. 1. She tried to force me to eat something within minutes of meeting her and 2. She has a secret recipe for Marinara sauce so good that it will make you want to cut your tongue out, so it is never again subjected to inferior food. The only thing that I have been able to figure out about these closely guarded secrets, is that they almost always use fresh tomatoes instead of canned, and they have to cook for a hell of a long time. So this is my take on Italian Grandma style sauce.

Changes:

• Replace the canned tomatoes with about 15 large fresh tomatoes, and 3 cups of water(you will need the extra water to make sure that the tomato is totally cooked, before it igets over thick and burns) and forget about the tomato paste.
  
• To prepare the fresh tomatoes you are going to need a large pot of boiling water, and a large bowl of ice water.
• Remove the stem/core spot at the top of the tomato and cut a very shallow X into the bottom of each tomato. Just deep enough to cut through the skin.
  
• Place several tomatoes at a time into the boiling water. You will probably need to do this in 3 or 4 batches.
  
• After 30 seconds remove the tomatoes to the bowl of ice water, and leave them there for 5 minutes.
  
• Once the tomatoes are totally cooled take them out and peel off the skin, which should now be nice and loose.
  
• Once the tomatoes are skinned, they need to be seeded. To do this, cut the tomato in half, perpendicular to the stem and use a butter knife or small spoon to scoop the guts out.
• After they have been skinned and seeded, they should be diced.
  
• This is going to yield a whole lot of tomato. Don't worry, most of that volume is water, which will boil away.
  
• Once you have the fresh tomatoes prepped, this recipe is pretty much the same as the original recipe, except that it takes 10 hours. I know that seems absolutely ridiculous, but trust me it is absolutely worth every minute.
  

Garbage Soup

My Grandma could cook you a 5 course tasting menu, using nothing but dust and cobwebs and you would swear it was made by an Iron Chef. I would imagine that this owes equally to being a child of the depression and then the single mother of a large family. Even though she became much more comfortable financially over the years, there are some habits that she never lost, primarily that the woman does not waste food. Now I don't just mean she eats her leftovers before they spoil, I mean she could give the Native Americans a run for their money with that every part of the Buffalo jazz. There is not a single scrap, clipping, bone, skin, or anything else goes unused in her home.

When I was a kid, I used to poke fun at some of her stranger habits. The one that I remember the most, is Garbage Soup. When making dinner, my grandmother always kept two salad bowls on the counter, one for meat scraps and one for veggie scraps. Everything that was trimmed off of either was saved in the respective salad bowl. I mean everything, cores, skins, stems, everything. When she was cleaning up, she would empty the bowls into matching gallon ziplock bags in her freezer. When these bags got full, she made what I jokingly called garbage soup.

As I have gotten older I have a lot more respect for the whole process. Basically, my grandmother was saving money by making her own veggie and meat stocks, from food that she had already paid for and most people would have just thrown away. This is a skill that she learned because between the depression and being a single mom, she never had any other option. Having grown up under much easier circumstances, skills like this are something that my generation (and those after it) for the most part totally lack. For most of us, that isn't a problem. We just go out and buy whatever we need to eat. Most people I know would not even buy veggie stock (let alone make it,) because that means actually cooking from scratch which is something that is becoming more and more rare in the age of box mixes, canned stew and microwave dinners. Everyone would really be doing themselves a service to try and learn to not only make meals from scratch, but to make ingredients from scratch. For vegans, I think that it is essential.
I am sure to revisit this topic in future posts, but today lets just talk about veggie stock (I obviously don't care to make meat stock.)

Home Made Veggie Stock
The recipe here is going to involve mainly just process instructions, since the ingredients just end up being whatever you have left over.

To start
Get yourself a big airtight container, to keep in the freezer. I usually just use a gallon size ziplock bag. Every time you cut up a vegetable put all your scraps in the freezer. I seriously save everything, from carrot peels to broccoli stems. I once accidentally saved a whole bunch of cerano chile cores and ginger scraps from a Thai meal. The resulting broth was so spicy and delicious, that I now make it a point to try and get some pepper cores and ginger into every batch. You might want to skip the pepper cores if you don't like spice, but it is important to try and get a variety of veggies in there. It will make your end product a lot tastier, and it is also a good way to remind yourself to eat a variety of veggies, which is super important if you don't want a vitamin deficiency.

Ingredients:
1 - gallon bag of vegetable scraps
A heck of a lot of water
salt and seasoning to taste

Equipment:
The largest sauce pot you have
A large open container, like another sauce pot or a big salad bowl
A pasta strainer
A Clean dish towel (paper towels don't work)

Cooking:

• Put all the scraps in your pot, and put it on your stove over high heat until boiling.
• The idea here, is to just let it boil away. Every time the liquid in the pot reduces by a quarter, fill it back up to the top. Keep doing this until the liquid in the pot is the color of a glass of iced tea, then remove it from the heat. (I like to use a ladle to pour some into a clear glass so I can peek at the color.) This will probably take a few hours.
  
• Once the pot cools, line the strainer with the clean dish towel, and pour the broth slowly through it, collecting the liquid in your large container.
• all of the solid veggie scraps should now be all gross and mushy. There is really no nutritional value left to them. Throw them in your trash or compost, or feed them to a pet.
• Put the liquid back in the pot and bring it back up to a simmer.
  
• This is when you are going to add your other flavors. I like to wait until the broth is reduced, because it is really easy to over flavor, since any flavors that you add are going to become more potent as it reduces.
  
• I always add salt (a little bit at a time until it tastes right) and usually about 1 tbsp of Italian seasoning, you can use whatever spices you like though, and I often change it up depending on what I plan to use the broth for. Or if I am not sure, I just don't add any seasoning at all and I worry about the spice later when I am actually cooking.
  
• Whatever the case, add your spices, simmer for 5 minutes, and then remove from the heat.
  
• I usually get somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/2 gallon of stock out of this recipe. It will differ from batch to batch though, so don't get to worked up if you end up with more or less.
  

This stock doesn't have any preservatives in it, so it won't last more than a few days in the fridge. Either make it and use it right away, or freeze it in a sealed container In the freezer, it will last about 3 months.