Recipe 2: Vegetarian Wonton Soup

This is a recipe best made in several parts. I made the entire soup this afternoon, but it was exhausting and time-consuming. For all maternal chefs, I will begin breaking down my recipes into "napable" portions. For others who do not have to concern themselves with sous-chefs who need constant hugs and bottles, consider each portion to be around one hour.

Therefore, I would create this recipe over the course of a few days. One day, I would make a batch of stock. I would then freeze it in small portions. On another day, I would make the wontons and freeze them on a silpat (more on this idea to follow). Which would mean that on the day you want to eat the soup, you would need to leave yourself about twenty minutes of prep time from start to eating. This is a two-nap prep recipe.

VEGETARIAN WONTON SOUP

Broth:

1 chopped onion OR 1 sliced leek
9 cloves of garlic, chopped
7 scallions (including greens)
4 carrots, chopped
4 slices of ginger
1 pieces of kombu (optional)
1 ½ tbsp soy sauce
1 ½ tbsp mirin
2 tsp salt (more to taste)
1 ½ tsp sesame oil
½ cup of cilantro leaves and stems
7 dried shiitake mushrooms
12 cups water

Saute the onions and garlic over medium heat until beginning to brown. Add the scallions, carrots, and ginger and sauté for a few minutes until soft. Add water as well as the kombu, soy sauce, mirin, salt, sesame oil, cilantro, and shiitakes. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer (partially covered) for an hour. Strain, pressing the liquid out of the vegetables. Discard the solids and allow the broth to cool. Freeze this broth or use within two days if you refrigerate it.

Wontons:

1 head of napa cabbage, shredded

2 carrots, peeled and minced

3 scallions, finely chopped

A drizzle of soy sauce

A sprinkle of ground ginger

1 tbsp garlic oil

Wonton wrappers

Combine the cabbage, carrots, and scallions. Heat a wok over high heat and coat with Pam (or oil) as well as the tablespoon on garlic oil. Once the wok is heated, add the cabbage mixture and saute for a moment to coat with oil. Drizzle soy sauce over the cabbage as one would salad dressing--the idea is to coat the cabbage rather than drown it. Sprinkle ground ginger over the mixture and saute until the cabbage is wilted. It will reduce in size by about half. Drain the mixture from the wok discarding the sauce.

It is impossible to describe how to fold wontons without pictures. Ming Tsai has a great cookbook called Blue Ginger that has step-by-steps photos for folding wontons, eggrolls, and sushi. Place a small mound of the filling in the middle of each wrapper and fold accordingly. Place finished wontons on a silpat placed atop a cookie sheet. Alton Brown advocates for using the silpat as a non-stick workspace. Because the silpat can be placed in the freezer, I use it to freeze any food that would stick and tear on a regular sheet of tinfoil. After the wontons have frozen, you can remove them from the silpat and store them in a ziplock bag.

Putting It All Together:

Cover the bottom of a saute pan with a coating of canola oil. Fry the wontons on each side until they are brown. Set aside on paper towels to drain.

Boil and drain a serving of udon noodles (these noodles can be purchased fresh or frozen at a Japanese market). Chop two or three servings of broccoli, snow peas, sprouts, cabbage, carrots, tofu and julienned red pepper. Thaw the frozen stock (I usually take it out of the freezer in the morning if I want to use it at night and leave it in the refrigerator for a slow thaw) and bring to a boil. Add the vegetables and cook for 7 minutes on a slow boil, covered.

Serve by layering noodles and wontons at the bottom of the bowl. Cover with the vegetables and broth. Eat immediately.

Do not cook too many servings of vegetables because the vegetables will continue to cook and soften even after you remove the soup from the heat. Therefore, do not cook the soup before you are ready to eat and do not leave the vegetables sitting in the broth.

The Long Break

Not-for-Profit Dad has finally emerged from deep dark hole that sucks us all in for the beginning of December. He has a ten-day program that he prepares for throughout the entire year. And during those ten days, he lives, eat, sleeps, and breathes his job. It's a trade-off. On one hand, as September rolls around, his schedule becomes less and less flexible. On the other hand, come mid-December, he can stay home to participate in the twins' physical therapy session. Because it is currently AFTER the program, I am very positive about this arrangement. Of course, if I had written this entry on December 1st, it would have been a very different, darker entry. Full of curse words.

The return of the daddy has also brought on a host of parties, and therefore, a host of new recipes. Since I last wrote, I have been inventing, inventing, inventing. Tonight's dinner was a vegetarian wonton soup (recipe above). Last time I was in Israel, I ate this fantastic vegetarian wonton soup at a restaurant called Apropos (which is no longer standing due to a bomber). That is the best part about kosher dairy restaurants. Vegetarians can get all of the dishes that are typically made with meat. Israel is the best place to get French onion soup. For vegetarians...I mean. Meat eaters may want to try somewhere like...I don't know...Paris.

The first night he returned home, we had nori-less maki that I had glazed with a soy-ginger sauce. It was pretty disappointing. Ming Tsai had taught me (yes, me personally, since I believe each and every one of these celebrity chefs write their cookbooks directly to me) how to glaze rice and it sounded like such a neat idea. Unfortunately, the glaze I made was too sweet. I drizzled wasabi oil as a garnish on the plate, so it cut through some of the sweetness. I had tried out this idea of nori-less maki because I wanted to make it for the twins and I couldn't see them gnawing through seaweed with their gummy mouths.

My other grand recipe was recreating the avocado eggrolls served at the Cheesecake Factory complete with the cashew-tamarind dipping sauce. I had found tamarind concentrate at Fresh Fields, and I was dying to use it. I'm going to make a vegetarian Pad Thai later this week. Need to think up other recipes that use tamarind since I now have a large container of concentrate...

So the Kosher Vegetarian Mum is back--back with her books, back in "cooking school", and back with her children insisting, "bup!" whenever they want to be lifted so they can watch the Kitchenaid spin. Check back on Friday when we bake our first family challah.

They Should Rename It a Good Sexist Name Like Mamallote

Currently, I am swimming through several poaching (to cook in a simmering liquid) lessons, the best of which has been learning how to cook "en papillote" which translate to "in parchment." When cooking en papillote, one fills a parchment or foil pouch with meat or vegetables, herbs, a bit of fat, and some water or broth. The food simmers inside the pouch, steaming and becoming infused with flavour from the herbs and broth. I am in love.

The best part of cooking en papillote is that--as far as I know--you can prepare the pouch hours ahead of time, throw it in the oven, and pull out dinner a few minutes later. My first foray into cooking en papillote (can you tell that I like writing that word. It makes me feel all smart and Frenchy and fancy) was making a garlic and potato side dish that was infused with fresh rosemary. Had I been smarter, I would have thrown together the pouch while the kids ate goldfish crackers after dinner (instead, we made fresh pasta which is very exciting for them since they have yet to view television. It's like the Iron Chef right in their own home). Put it in the oven while the kids bathed and then had a delicious plate of potatoes and garlic when I came back to the kitchen. Instead, I made the pouch, made the rest of my dinner, looked at the cooking time (damn that whole read-all-the-directions-before-you-begin thing!), ate the rest of my dinner while it cooked, and then enjoyed a few potato slices while I typed this. I'll have the leftovers tomorrow for lunch.

We're eating well in D.C.

Actually, we are cooking well in D.C. I have yet to find the time to actually eat what I cook since my children don't seem to want me to bring food to my mouth. Attempts at feeding myself are interrupted by tears from stolen toys and screams as Ladybird tries to get back the aforementioned stolen toy. Regardless, we have a refrigerator filled with very attractive leftovers.

Terrior

I learned a great word yesterday--terrior--which is pronounced "te-wah." It is a wine term that refers to all of the outside influences that affect the grapes, such as the wind, sun, soil, water, etc. But think about the terrior of my recipes--the child clinging to my leg, the ill-timed cry as the sauce is burning, the sticky toy that made its way into the dough. Who can really tell the difference in wine from one season to the next? But the blatant terrior of my food that speaks volumes about whether my children were conscious or unconscious at the time of preparation? Or pretending to be unconscious, but giggling while they play with Ocean Wonders instead of napping?

Don't they know that I can hear them through the monitor?

Gone, But Not Forgotten

The creme fraiche met its end this morning when it still hadn't thickened after 18 hours of sitting. Not that I expected it to be finished, but I expected it to be thicker than milk. I wish there was a cooking hotline you could call and explain your situation: I was trying to make creme fraiche; this is what I did; why didn't it work?

Whole Foods to the rescue. I will be swinging by the store tomorrow to see if I can score some creme fraiche for my grilled lemon sauce.

My daughter loved the gnocchi. Ladybird always lets you know if she approves of a new food by humming "mmmmmmmmmm!" She opened her eyes very wide, raised her eyebrows, and announced her opinion on the gnocchi after the first bite or two. Gibble, on the other hand, stared at the gnocchi for twenty minutes, picking up one to take a tentative lick before setting it down again. He ended up with a bowl of acorn squash and barley.

My daughter is such a gourmand.

For the Love of Creme Fraiche

Waah waah waah, we're too tired to help you make the gnocchi that we will end up rejecting for dinner. We need to take a nap.

(one mother lugs two children upstairs)

I have been listening to my children alter between silence, quiet play, and all-out-completely-rude-in-my-face-we're-not-going-to-sleep laughing for the past hour. It is time to call this nap a bust. For the third day in a row. I think we're in the transition zone, that tentative time between two naps and one nap. That create lovely, joy-filled afternoons while 15-month-old twins lie on the floor, beating their feet against my stomach in anger as if it was my fault that they didn't sleep. Damn bitch of a mum.

Since I am passing along all of my cooking school tips to you, my number one piece of advice is to read ALL of the directions before you begin. Before you go food shopping. Before you plan to use creme fraiche that evening when it takes 36 hours to make. Before you cook the gnocchi at 3:15 in the afternoon and you read on to discover that gnocchi needs to be served immediately so here are some ways to keep gnocchi until you are ready to use it.

My current lesson--preparing creme fraiche--seems a bit too easy to be true. All you do is cook 16 ounces of heavy whipping cream to 110 degrees. Add an ounce of buttermilk and allow the mixture to rest in a glass jar (lightly covered) until it thickens. I am not a very patient chef. I have returned to the creme fraiche no fewer than three times already even though I made it 45 minutes ago. Just checking on how that thickening is coming along. On 35 hours and 15 minutes to go! As of yet, it has not noticeably thickened which has now made me worried. I have checked my current recipe against two other recipes to make sure I did not leave out a step such as whipping the cream.

The creme fraiche was to be used on top of the gnocchi in a grilled lemon sauce. Though the gnocchi is currently boiled and now congealing unattractively in the refrigerator while I rethink dinner. And back to my most important lesson to date: read all directions before you begin.

Yawn

You know how sometimes you look at your offspring and you see so much of yourself reflected that you gasp in amazement? And sometimes you look at your offspring and you think, "I really like to sleep so I don't really understand why you want to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning. Don't you like to sleep too?" We're sort of having the second kind of moment right now.

We are both sleepers. Give us a day off and we're most likely to sleep until 11 a.m., go get coffee, and then complain about exhaustion. Please don't get me wrong--we're very lucky that our kids are relatively good sleepers. It's just that I would never pass up the opportunity to take a nap, and they are currently upstairs going on their second hour of laughing and shaking the bars of their crib. I am about to go upstairs and get them and label this morning nap a bust.

It's sort of more like one of those I-am-so-jealous-of-you-right-now-why-aren't-you-taking-this-opportunity times that all parents have. Whether it's your child giving up a chance at grad school that you never had. Or blowing off family traditions that you've carefully nurtured through the years. Or skipping a nap when your mother would give up all of her calphalon pans for two hours of sleep.

Actually, that's not really fair since I don't really like the calphalon pans anymore. I'm currently saving up money for a visa out of no-stick-land. Off to go get my children and start another day of cooking school.

Gobble Gobble

Thanksgiving rocked. First and foremost, I got the meal on the table when I said I would--a feat I rarely accomplish. I achieved that same goal tonight, getting the meal on the table at 7:35 when I guessed it would be ready by 7:30. I'd like to think that my at-home cooking school is changing me.

Next off, the turkey meat was moist and the skin was crisp. I need to take everyone else's word because I do not eat turkey (refer to my screen name). The kids mostly protested the turkey and ate a few bites of side dishes before consuming an entire meal of veggie puffs. But everyone else ate many platefuls--polishing off the stuffing and most of the cranberry sauce. I was pretty proud of my accomplishments considering that it was the first time I had cooked for Thanksgiving (which has more emotions attached to it than your average dinner party) and my first time that I had cooked a turkey.

I took copious notes on the process so I could recreate the bird next year, but basically, I coated the bird in a non-dairy margarine/spice mixture, stuffed its cavity with vegetables, and cooked it without touching it for 2 1/2 hours. When it came time to deal with the bird, I told my husband I wanted to do it myself. I went downstairs, poured myself a glass of vodka (no, not a shot glass of vodka--a 12 ounce soda glass of vodka), decided not to drink it because while it would numb the revulsion, it was probably also enough vodka to send me to certain death. I then had TO PICK UP THE DEAD BIRD WITH MY BARE HANDS TO PLACE IT IN THE ROASTING PAN. Pretty much breathed through my mouth and repeated the mantra: you were premed in school you were premed in school you were premed in school. I spent two months studying ebola in great detail. I could certainly carry a turkey a few inches.

So now that Thanksgiving is over, I can turn my attention back to my cooking classes. In order to practice my knife techniques, I made vegetarian pho tonight. I am not very adventurous with my ordering--most menus only hold a few vegetarian options. Whenever we go to Nam Viet, I order the same vegetarian pho, also known as sup chay. Love it, love it, love it, and it is the food that I always ask for when I am having a terrible day. For years I have tried to figure out how they make the broth. And tonight, I think I have figured out a recipe that closely resembles the pho. All ingredients can be purchased at your average supermarket, making it ten times more appealing than if I had to go to four different stores in order to obtain obscure ingredients. My pho recipe follows...

Recipe 1: Vegetarian Pho

Vegetarian Pho (also known as sup chay or pho chay)

Ingredients:
Broth
Vegetable oil
1 tbsp minced ginger
1 onion, chopped
4 shallots, chopped
½ tsp anise seed (can use less)
4 whole cloves
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 gallon of water
2 carrots, chopped into chunks
Leftover stems from the broccoli that will go into the soup
1 stick of cinnamon
1 tbsp black peppercorns
2 tbsp salt
2 tbsp sugar

Separate Ingredients for Assembled Soup
Broccoli
Carrots
Sugar Snap Peas
4 shallots
Scallions
Cilantro
A block of firm tofu (baked with peanut oil)
Rice vermicelli
(other optional ingredients: sprouts, mushrooms, cauliflower, or baby corn)

In a stock pot, sauté over medium heat the minced ginger, onion, shallots, anise seed, cloves and garlic in a lot of oil. When the onions and shallots are brown, add the water, carrots, broccoli stems, cinnamon, peppercorns, salt and sugar. Bring the broth to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for an hour.

While the soup cooks, prepare the other ingredients. Cook the rice noodles and set them aside. Individual steam each vegetable (broccoli, carrots, sugar snap peas) for three minutes in the microwave. Cube the tofu and bake it in the oven at 400 degrees (for 25 minutes) after tossing it with peanut oil and salt and drizzling a bit more on top (grease the cookie sheet with Pam). Fry the shallots and chop the scallions and cilantro.

Drain the stock over another bowl with a strainer and discard all solids. Return the stock to the pot and keep warm while you assemble the soup. Place in each bowl a nest of noodles, vegetables, a few cubes of tofu, scallions, fried shallots, and cilantro. Pour broth over the mixture and serve.

(this recipe was created with guiding help from a recipe found on the "veggie asia" website and many tastes of Nam Viet's vegetarian pho)

Rainbows and Crystals and Indigo Babies--oh my!

Dead animals stink.

That's the lesson I took away from the butcher this morning when I went to pick-up the turkey. Gibble agreed with me and pointed at the display of dead birds wrapped in plastic exclaiming, "der der der!" at the top of his lungs as if he were trying to draw an ignorant crowd's attention to a murder taking place underneath their nose. Oh my G-d...underneath my nose... Waiting in line for ten minutes, breathing in the fumes of the carcasses. It reaffirmed my life-long commitment to vegetarianism. Gibble, our boy twin, clawed his way up and down my body, alternating between clinging to me with his face buried into my shoulder and staring behind him at the display case in horror.

A side story: when my niece was four-years-old, she asked me one day as she ate a plate of chicken nuggets if I thought that it was funny that the nuggets were called "chicken" and there was also an animal called a "chicken." I told her that I didn't think it was funny at all because the chicken she was eating was once the chicken that walked around the barnyard. She fell off her chair laughing, thinking the whole thing was a joke. She was equally hysterical when I told her that cows were hamburgers. She climbed back into her chair and annouced, "you are so funny."

Interestingly, my aforementioned son gobbled up the chicken and rice I served him last night. And loved it.

My brother came into town for Thanksgiving, so he accompanied me to the butcher, carrying Ladybird, our girl twin. Ladybird was not subjected to the harsh reality of the origins of Thanksgiving dinner. Instead she travelled around the store with my brother in search of Israeli couscous (which is thicker than regular couscous--in case you were wondering), pointing out every interesting bottle and jar. Both twins have a thing for small, empty plastic bottles. Gibble's best friend is an empty saline nosespray container named Saylie.

I am back on track in preparing my Thanksgiving dinner after a time-sucking side trip into Internet surfing on the subject of "Indigo babies." Someone had posted a message about Indigo babies on my parenting listserv, and curious, I googled the phrase, which brought me into the new age world of babies who can "tell the future." There were testimonials from parents blasely relaying the fact that their children can predict events. Googling indigo babies also taught me about crystal babies (who shine like crystals, attracting a large crowd of followers) and rainbow babies who do something else that is very very special.

I needed to waste a half hour contemplating whether either of my children fit into these three categories before I remembered that I didn't believe in these things and I had a Thanksgiving dinner to prepare.

Our Thanksgiving menu:
Turkey and gravy (will be made tomorrow)
Mushroom gravy
Mushroom stuffing
Green beans and potatoes in a shallot-vermouth vinaigrette
Garlic spinach
Sweet potatoes with caramelized apples
Broccoli in hazelnut butter
and for dessert...
Pumpkin bourbon pecan pie

And because I am so on top of my game thanks to my new cooking school (one day after learning my new knife techniques, I can chop an entire onion in under a minute), my sous-chefs and I can blow off this afternoon and roll around in the downstairs play area, otherwise known as Little Tykes Heaven. And speaking of my sous-chefs, I can hear them awakening as we speak.