Fresh Herb and "Chicken" Larb with Sweet Mango Sticky Rice (E.A.T. World: Laos)

It's been great to see E.A.T. World taking off across the blogs, and I've enjoyed travelling with everyone!  Our ongoing mission: to explore new food worlds, to seek out new ingredients and new recipes, to boldly go where I almost certainly have not gone before.  Like Laos!

My alphabet soup approach to E.A.T. World brings us back to southeast Asia, for an introduction to larb, sometimes called the "national dish" of Laos.  Larb (or laap, larp, laab, or lob...it's one of those words with a slippery spelling as translated to English) is a salad of meat, fresh herbs, lime juice, hot peppers, and an abundance of fresh flavors.

This recipe comes from Cooking from the Heart: The Hmong Kitchen in America.  The Hmong are an ethnic group from mountainous regions of Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, and southern China, and the authors of Cooking from the Heart say nobody makes a better larb than Hmong cooks.  I've been curious about Hmong cooking and culture since getting to know some awesome Hmong students in a summer program a few years ago - there is a large Hmong population in Minnesota, especially in the Twin Cities.  This cookbook nicely combines recipes with information about Hmong tradition and culture in Laos and America. 

Vegan Chik'n strips from Morningstar Farms are the meat substitute here, although nicely marinated or seasoned tempeh, seitan, or extra firm tofu would be really good too.  The flavors in this salad are so bold that whatever protein you use will be instantly infused with larby goodness and taste spectacular.  Promise. 


Regarding all those flavors, this salad is a showcase for a few ingredients I've never used before - Sichuan peppercorns, roasted rice powder, and galangal.  Sichuan peppercorns can be tricky to find because they are quite often not labelled as Sichuan peppercorns, rather "dried pepper corn" like the packet above, or other variations on that theme.  If you're not sure, ask the folks are your local Asian market, like I did.  They have a light citrus scent, and a reputation for causing mild numbness on the tongue.  I toasted these and ground them before adding to the larb, and used a fairly generous amount.  The effect, and I mean this in the most complimentary way, is a little what licking a battery must feel like.  My whole mouth felt all tingly and sparkly after a few larb lettuce rolls.  Really worth checking out, if you haven't tried Sichuan peppercorns before.

Regarding battery-licking, I'm sure you can find a lot of videos of kids doing that on Youtube, if you want to make yourself wish the Internet was never invented.

Above, from left to right:  Galangal, lemongrass, mint, culantro, and green onions.

Besides the process of collecting and chopping all of the ingredients, larb is pretty straight-forward to make.  The Chik'n strips were marinated and lightly sauteed in rice wine and lime juice.  To this, I added all kinds of good stuff:  lots of fresh mint and cilantro leaves, fresh culantro, green onions, a red jalapeno pepper, lemon zest, galangal, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, white pepper, more lime juice, and lemongrass.  A few spoonfuls of roasted rice powder, pictured earlier, is added at the end.  It adds a crumbly, sticky texture, and a distinctive and pleasing smell.  You can make your own rice powder too, but it's really cheap to buy.

Once everything is tossed together, the preferred way to eat larb is in lettuce wraps.  They're really onto something here, as the cool and crisp lettuce wrap is the perfect contrast to the chaotic jumble of flavors inside.  Chaotic might be exactly the wrong word though, because all of these flavors come together in what might be better described as a chorus in perfect harmony.  My ability to come up with a metaphor to describe what larb tastes like ends here, so I can only recommend you try it yourself sometime.  I used butter lettuce, but Boston or good old iceberg lettuce would be fine too.

I'm not reprinting the entire recipe from Cooking from the Heart here, since I'm hesitant to copy recipes out of cookbooks without permission.  There are a lot of larb recipes online, so google away...every one is a little different, so you can adapt to your tastes.

To settle things down after larb, here's a simple dessert of sweetened sticky rice with coconut milk and mango, also from Cooking from the Heart.  I'm new to sticky rice too, and I screwed this up by overcooking the rice.  It ended up as sweet sticky rice porridge, still pretty tasty, though the rice was supposed to hold together in a neat ball on the plate.  Whatever :)

Potato Pancakes and Mulled Wine (E.A.T. World: Czech Republic)

 
We're in the Czech Republic for today's stop on the E.A.T. World tour, enjoying a bit of street food and drink.  These potato pancakes - I see them called bramboráky or bramborová placka - are the essence of the street food ideal: portable, hearty, and fried.  If you'd like something to wash down those greasy golden wonders, you could do worse than svařák, mulled wine served steaming hot.  Sitting here in midwinter, this pair seems pretty appropriate for a chilly weekend afternoon.

To set the scene, come along with me to Český Krumlov, along the winding Vltava River.  I took this photo last January, from the castle overlooking the old town center.  With ice on the river and snow on the ground, mulled wine was the perfect companion as I wandered around the city.  One guy - just up the street from the bridge on the left side of the picture - sold cups of mulled wine at a table on the sidewalk, from one of those big coffee thermos servers.  It's a brilliant idea for getting through winter, and I can't imagine why the concept never caught on here.

We'll get to the wine in a moment, but potato pancakes come first.  They often contain eggs and maybe milk, but vegan bramboráky deliver exactly what a potato pancake should.  They're crispy and golden on the ouside, soft and creamy on the inside, and flavored with onion, garlic, and marjoram.  Sauerkraut is an optional addition.  As a sauerkraut fan, I mixed a healthy dose into the potato batter, and loved the sharp and tangy flavor it added.

These are easy, and the quantities are pretty flexible.  I found just a couple of tablespoons of all purpose flour was enough to bind about two cups of shredded potaotes while frying.  Here's my quantities, and basic directions:
2 cups raw potatoes, peeled and shredded (use a grater or food processor)
1 medium yellow onion, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup sauerkraut (optional, but very nice if you like sauerkraut)
1 tbps. dried marjoram
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground black pepper
1/3 cup unsweetened almond milk, or any other non-dairy milk, or water
2 tbsp. all purpose flour (maybe a bit more, depending on your first pancake)
Oil for frying, enough to liberally coat the bottom of your pan

Here's what worked for me - mix everything together in a big bowl, keeping a little extra flour on hand.  Test to see if your oil is hot enough by adding a tiny bit of potato - if it sizzles immediately, the oil is ready.  Next, make a small potato patty with your batter as a test run.  Let it brown on one side for a few minutes, then flip over.  If it holds together, you have enough flour.  If it's a little loose, mix another tbsp. of flour into your main bowl of batter, and make another patty.  I mention this just because you might get a little variance in the moisture content of the potatoes or sauerkraut, so the amount of flour needed may fluctuate a little.


Fry on each side for 3 or 4 minutes, until nice and golden brown.  I found the oil maintained a nice temperature, without cooking too fast, at medium high heat.  After draining on paper towels for just a couple of minutes, enjoy them while they're piping hot and crispy.



Svařák
I found a bunch of different takes on mulled wine online, but the fundamentals are red wine, spices, and sweetener.  Here's an excellent article on Czech mulled wine, as well as varieties from other cold countries of Europe.  For the base of my svařák I used a bottle of Yellow Tail cabernet sauvignon, which is vegan - all of their reds are vegan, but not their whites. 

Rather than getting into the whole vegan wine/beer briar patch here, I'd just recommend you check online about whatever brand you like and is available to you.  Many companies - like Yellow Tail - include FAQs on their sites.  And if you don't drink at all, problem solved :)

Cinnamon and cloves in the mulled wine will make your place smell like the winter holidays.  Orange zest adds a little zing, and agave nectar and brown sugar heightened the sweetness.



While you can make mulled wine on the stove top, I took a tip from the Czech wine vendor and made it in my coffee pot.  Here's the logic - my coffee machine pot never boils, so I put this on and let it be for almost an hour.  You can do the same thing on the stove top, just as long as you keep the wine from boiling - the alcohol will burn off as the wine boils. 


For a one liter bottle of red wine, I mixed in 2 tbps. each of agave nectar and brown sugar, 1 tsp. orange zest (lemon is great too), a cinnamon stick, and 4 cloves.  Whether in the coffee pot or on the stove top, keep it hot but not boiling for at least a half hour.  It can be kept hot throughout a party, and leftovers apparently keep pretty well.  I just had a little cup when I made this, and put the rest back in the wine bottle.  Now it's back in the fridge, ready to go whenever the mood for mulled wine strikes...which I think is right about now! 
Na Zdraví!  (That's Cheers!, folks :)

Harissa Seitan "Wings"

Before we move on to the next stop on the world tour (remember your winter jacket!), I have a short follow-up from Tunisia.  Harissa seemed like a natural for a vegan wing sauce, and this is a super easy recipe, useful for tofu, seitan, tempeh, or any other "meaty" food.

This technique can be used with any hot chili sauce, be it sriracha, red curry paste, chipotle salsa -whatever you like.  Mix one part chili sauce with about half as much Earth Balance margarine, mixing together over low heat on the stove top.  Toss the results with whatever "wings" you're using - baked tofu, fried tempeh, etc.  In this case it was breaded and fried seitan pieces. Serve hot with a nice cooling dip on the side.  For this, I blended together a little silken tofu, along with tahini, fresh lemon juice, minced garlic, and a pinch of salt.

My fried seitan chunks benefit from a couple of hints picked up from The Splendid Table: room-temperature foods tend to behave better when fried, and develop a nicer, crunchy coating.  This worked like a charm, and I won't try to bread and fry anything straight out of the fridge again.  Also, I mixed in a tbsp. of corn starch with the coating of flour, salt, and pepper.  This adhered much better to the seitan bites than my usual breading, which usually is just all-purpose flour and some spices.  These two tips were a big help for me, as I'm often stumped with getting a good, golden brown coating on fried foods.

Roasted Veggie Couscous with Harissa and Preserved Lemons (E.A.T. World: Tunisia)

 
 We're still in Africa for our third stop on the E.A.T. World tour, where the Atlas Mountains meet the sea, in Tunisia.  The sun is shining in a clear sky, the Mediterranean is a sparkling blue, and I'm on the beach.  North Dakota in January, with our ice storms and blizzards and Minnesota Vikings, are far, far away.  Life is good.

I didn't know much of anything about Tunisian food, besides those four words in the title: couscous, harissa, and preserved lemons.  That's a shame, but learning about food traditions is what makes E.A.T. World so much fun.  Tunisia, as a coastal nation with indigenous diversity and historical influences from Spain to Syria, has a stunningly diverse food heritage.  I began at the beginning, with a simple combo of roasted vegetables and couscous, as a base to experiment with the signature flavors of harissa and preserved lemons.

My veggie couscous contains a variety of roasted and stir-fried vegetables (cauliflower, sweet potato, carrots, zucchini, raisins, asparagus, eggplant, red bell pepper, chickpeas, onions, and garlic), seasoned with a little salt, pepper, cinnamon, and cumin.  Toss the veggies with prepared couscous, and you have a versatile and easy meal.  I used a ton of veggies because I roasted a bunch over the weekend. 

Harissa is a hot chili sauce that seems to be mandatory in any Tunisian meal.  I looked at a half dozen or so recipes, and no two are the same.  I made this with dry pan-toasted caraway and coriander seeds and garlic cloves, along with chili powder, one fresh fire-roasted hot chili pepper, olive oil, and white wine vinegar.

My harissa is mostly based on the recipe in Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet.  That's a great cookbook of international recipes, and also the name of Robin's blog.  Here's my minorly adjusted harissa recipe:

1 tbsp. caraway seeds
1 tbsp. coriander seeds
3 cloves garlic
1 small fresh chili pepper (I don't know the name of the one I used, but it looked like a red jalapeno pepper, but a little hotter)
1/3 cup chili powder
1 tbsp. white wine vinegar
3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt

Dry toast the coriander and caraway seeds until they become fragrant - just a few minutes.  Dry toast the peeled garlic cloves as well, watching that they don't burn.  I did these in my cast iron pan, without any oil.  Because I had that mystery pepper around, I fire-roasted it on my gas stove, and peeled and seeded it after allowing it to cool down.  If you have a spice grinder, grind the whole spices, and mix with the ground chili and diced garlic and any fresh chilis, and the liquid ingredients.

For me, it was another chance to use the mortar and pestle - fast becoming my favorite kitchen gadgets.  Here's the final product, with a little water added to thin it out a bit.


I introduced my preserved lemons in a previous post, and I'm trying them here for the first time, after letting them cure for nearly four weeks.  Upon opening the jar, I was pleasantly surprised!  They didn't go bad, which means the jar was sterilized well, and I managed to follow an extremely simple recipe.  Good for me, I guess :)

To make one quart of preserved lemons, I used two pounds of organic lemons (organic is important here, because you're eating the peels) and a half cup of sea salt.  After sterilizing the jar and lid in boiling water, fill the jar with alternating layers of quartered lemons (with the pulp and seeds still intact) and salt, and a few spices if you like - I used one cinnamon stick, 1star anise, 5 cardamom pods, 4 whole cloves, and a few whole black peppercorns.  After the lemon quarters are filled to within a half inch of the jar top, squeeze juice from the remaining lemons into the jar until all the lemon quarters are submerged.  Different recipes suggest letting the lemons cure for different periods of time, but three weeks seems about average.  After curing the lemons in the sealed jar at room temperature, the lemons keep in the refrigerator for months.


To use, scrape out the pulp and seeds, and rinse in water to remove some of the salt.  The flavor is - surprise! - salty and lemony.  Use the diced or sliced lemon peels to season North African stews or tagines or wherever else a dose of salt and citrus sounds like a good idea.  As with harissa, it makes sense to serve these as sides or relishes, so anyone can use them to their taste.

One final thought on harissa - I made much more than I could use with this couscous, so I have one thing on my mind: vegan harissa wings, which I remember seeing on someone's blog.  I like the idea of combining North Africa with sports bar food, though I won't be bringing them to any Superbowl party.  Thanks Vikings...though if Brett Favre is reading this, we'd love to have you back next year :)

Berbere Lentil & Seitan Stew with Injera and Awase (E.A.T. World: Ethiopia)

Once in a while I get mildly obsessed with finding a food I've never eaten before, and for a few months that's been the case with injera.  And it may come as a surprise, but injera isn't exactly easy to find in North Dakota.  So in the spirit of E.A.T. World, fasten your seat belts - we're off to Ethiopia.

Injera is a spongy, soft, and slightly sour bread (the batter is fermented, like sourdough) that blurs the line between bread and table cloth.  Saucy stews or stir frys are served over injera, and the bread acts as plate and utensil, with scraps of injera used to scoop up portions of stew.  It's one of the trademarks of Ethiopian cooking, but since I've never been to an Ethiopian restaurant, or for that matter Ethiopia, it was just one of those things I read about. That's why I was happy to find it at a new east African market in Fargo - it's actually made at the East Africa Injera restaurant down the road in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

I've even tried making injera a couple of times.  Once I just ended up with sour pancakes - lame, but edible - and another time with a gooey batter that was impossible to flip over.  Just lame.  I'm not giving up, and even have a little bag of teff flour - injera's main grain - on the shelf.  But for now, I'm happy with the stuff made by the professionals in Saint Paul.

OK, enough with my injera relationship.  We've got a meal to get to: an Ethiopian stew of lentils, seitan, onions, and tomatoes, seasoned with a berbere spice blend, and an additional red-hot sauce on the side, awase.  I did a little searching online for guides, but this is mostly out of Marcus Samuelsson's beautiful book The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa.  It's full of gorgeous photos, and plenty of techniques, spice blends, and ideas to make a vegan cook happy.


Berbere is a wonderfully multi-dimensional spice blend, heavy on hot chili peppers, and another foundation of Ethiopian food.  I made my own, first pounding the whole spices - coriander, fenugreek, cardamom pods, peppercorns, cloves, and onion flakes - to a fine powder with a mortar and pestle.  Then I mixed in the chili powder and other spices.




















Here's the quantities I used:
2 tsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. fenugreek seeds
1/2 tsp. black peppercorns
6 cardamom pods
4 whole cloves
3 tsp. onion flakes (or powder)
2 tsp. ground ginger
3 tbsp. paprika
1/3 cup guajillo chili powder*
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
2 tsp. salt

I like guajillo for it's balance of bright flavor and heat - it's hot, but not blazing.  You can use any chili powder you like, but mind the heat, since a third cup is a lot of chili powder.  A third cup of cayenne, for example, would be pretty damn intense.  Here's my finished spice volcano, Mount Berbere.


On to the main course.  I used brown baby lentils (masoor matki at your Indian grocery) and seitan for a dish based on Samuelsson's recipe for a stir-fried beef stew.  Thin sliced red onion and seitan are sauteed in 4 tbsp. (you know you love that) of Earth Balance margarine, standing in for the traditional butter.  When the seitan and onions are browned, add 1 cup of diced tomatoes, 1 cup of cooked lentils, 3 cloves of diced garlic, 2 heaping tbsp. of berbere powder, a dash of ground cumin, and a half cup of dry red wine.  Simmer for another few minutes, letting the alcohol from the wine cook off.

The sauce in the little plastic bowl is awase, a hot condiment that lets each diner regulate the spiciness for individual taste.  It's a couple tablespoons of berbere powder, with a heaping teaspoon of cayenne pepper to make for serious heat.  The spices are mixed with a tbsp. each of water, lemon juice, and red wine.  Tear off a piece of injera, scoop up a bit of stew, and dip the roll in awase to your liking.  One final note: if you're not a fan of seitan, or have a problem with wheat gluten, this is also excellent with diced eggplant replacing the seitan.  I made that too, and it was every bit as good as the seitan version.

Pho with Tofu and Vegetables (E.A.T. World: Vietnam)

 
I'm jumping into the stove-top travel project E.A.T. World with a trip to Vietnam, for a steaming bowl of pho.  If Vietnam has a national soup, this would be it.  Pho typically features beef broth and fish sauce, but a rich broth of ginger, onions, star anise, cloves, and vegan "beef" broth powder (with a few more additions) packs more than enough great flavor.

A quick side note on the E.A.T. World format - I know I'm not sufficiently organized to do this alphabetically, so I'm using a random approach.  Thus, starting with "V."  My goal is to cover the alphabet in the next few months...at least I say that now :)

I've had pho (pronounced "fuh," by the way...you probably knew that, but I've said "fo" more than once), but never made it at home, so I scanned a few relevant cookbooks for ideas.  My main source is Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, by Mai Pham, another good library find.  Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian has a nice faux pho recipe too.   I'm used to soup being an easy and improvisational affair, but pho is nothing to mess around with.  The key is the broth, so let's begin at the beginning.

Making Pho Broth 
Pham's recipe for pho calls for toasting or charring the ginger, onions, and spices before adding to the soup broth.  This makes sense, because roasting vegetables always brings out flavor that simple boiling does not.  I charred the ginger and yellow onion over my gas stove burner, and peeled away the charred parts before adding to the broth.  Here's the onion, which actually set off my smoke alarm.

The star anise, whole cloves, and black peppercorns were dry-toasted in a fry pan for about two minutes, before adding to the ginger and onion broth.  Other broth ingredients include one crushed garlic clove, one tbsp. sugar, 1 tbsp. vegan beef broth powder, a pinch of kelp powder (a vegan nod to the fish sauce) and salt and tamari to taste.  I simmered the two quarts or so of broth for about an hour, and then let it sit.  The flavor developed nicely after the broth sat for a couple of hours, so if you make this I highly recommend making the broth well ahead of time, even the night before.  After the broth has cooled, pour it through something to strain out the ginger, onions, and spices.

On we go to the soup ingredients.  Since pho can include so many great fresh veggies and herbs, it really was born to be vegan, if I may say so.  The trick of pho is to let the boiling hot broth cook the soup ingredients just before you begin eating.    To ensure that everything cooked fairly evenly, I used naturally thin veggies - snow peas - and thin sliced carrots and broccoli florets.  Deep-fried tofu cubes and cooked rice sticks provide the soup's bulk, with boiling hot broth poured over the tofu, noodles, and veggies.  My ingredients are assembled below - the chopped serrano peppers, scallions, bean sprouts, thai basil, and cilantro are added as garnishes, to your taste.

Here's a broccoli floret, a brilliant green after a few minutes in the broth.  The vegetables will still be pleasantly crisp, since they do their little bit of cooking in the soup bowl.  It may be a good idea to blanche the vegetables for a moment in boiling water right before assembling the soup, just to preserve the heat in the serving bowl.

I almost forgot about the limes!  Fresh lime juice is sprinkled in along with the other garnishes, like these bean sprouts and thai basil.  I also made a little dipping bowl with hoisin sauce and hot pepper sauce (sriracha), since I've seen that done.  The sauce was great with the tofu and veggies, and can also be used to further season the pho.  Mai Pham frowns on that though, since she says it masks the subtle flavors of the pho broth.  She has a point, but hoisin shares the licorice flavor of star anise, so I think they go together well.

Pho requires more than a little special preparation, but it really is a treat.  It's also a good reason to break out the chopsticks, and pick up one of those cool soup spoons at any Asian market.  The rice sticks tend to bunch together into one long rice stick weave, so I recommend shamelessly slurping and shoveling with your chopsticks.  I think that adds to the fun.  One more tip:  use the biggest soup bowl you can find, since the more broth you use, the longer the soup stays nice and hot.  Any proper pho is a meal in itself, so don't be shy about that big bowl.

E.A.T. World

I love this idea. I've been a little lazy about coming up with interesting food lately - there was even a four day stretch last week of rice and lentils or beans every night, where I felt so much like the vegan stereotype...even though I think rice and lentils can be awesome.

Enter the E.A.T. World project! I just found this over at River's excellent The Crafty Kook , with an amazing introductory voyage to a sidewalk cafe in Austria. The rules, such as they are, are covered over there. In summary (and this is the best thing) there really aren't any rules. It's just a cool way to encourage everybody to try out recipes and inspiration from all over the world, with an alphabetical theme. There are even cool logos to use. I hope this spreads all over the place - it's a wonderful idea, and I can't wait to go travelling with you all!