Fettuccine Arrabiata with Asparagus, Shiitake Mushrooms and Mock Mozzarella

Lunch of the gods

• 1 serving Cooked Fettuccine
• 1/2 c. Marinara Sauce (recipe follows)
• 2 oz. Mock fresh mozzarella cubes (recipe follows)
• 1 Jalapeno pepper, seeded and sliced
• 4 shiitake mushrooms 
• 2 asparagus spears, sliced into 1 inch pieces
• 1 tsp. red chile flakes
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• Fresh basil garnish

Heat a large pan over medium heat and add olive oil. Saute mushrooms until well cooked, about 5-10 minutes. Add jalapenos and asparagus and saute until barely cooked/still crunchy, about 3 minutes. Stir in red chile flakes and marinara sauce and heat through. Add cooked pasta and stir to combine and heat through. Add mock fresh mozzarella cubes and heat through. Taste and adjust with salt and pepper. Serve with fresh basil garnish.

Marinara Sauce
1 14 oz. can Crushed Tomatoes
1/4 c. finely diced onion
1 big clove garlic, minced/pressed
2 tsp. Dried Italian Oregano
1 tsp. Dried basil
1/2 tsp. Dried Thyme
olive oil
salt

Heat a skillet over medium heat and coat the bottom with a little olive oil. Add onion and saute until translucent (3 minutes). Add garlic and herbs and stir to combine. Stir in tomatoes and raise the heat to bring to a boil, stirring often. Once boiling, lower heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. Taste and add salt.

Mock Fresh Mozzarella
1 block firm tofu
2 tsp. salt
juice from 1 lemon
1 c. cold water

Press firm tofu for 30 minutes between plates, cutting boards, whatever. Combine water, lemon juice and salt in a ziploc bag, add tofu, and marinate for 30 minutes. Slice into 1/2 inch cubes.

First, locate the teats on your cashew...

I've been buying almond, coconut, and/or soy milk instead of milk for quite some time now. Recently I concluded that making nut milk shouldn't be that hard and googled around for guidance. I think I have this process pretty streamlined, have stuff to say, and am ready to document it, so here goes:

Cashew Milk
Cashew milk is flipping delicious and easy to make, so if you want to try making nut milk, I highly recommend starting with cashew. If you have a kick ass blender (vita-mix, blendtec, etc.) you won't even need a nut milk bag/fine mesh to strain it, because you won't need to strain it at all.

1. Get RAW un-dicked around with cashews. No salt, no whatever else. I buy them in the bulk bin now. You will need about 1 cup of cashews to make 3 cups of cashew milk.
2. Soak them in plenty of water for a few hours or even overnight. You can soak them in the pitcher of your blender, so you don't dirty another thing in the kitchen. 
3. Strain and rinse them off.
4. Add them back to the blender pitcher and add just enough fresh cold water to cover. I use filtered water from my Brita for this.
5. Blend on your blender's juice setting (my Blendtec starts out slow, then beats the crap out of them for maybe a minute and a half on this setting).
6. Behold your cashew cream! Depending on what you're up to, you might need to stop here. More on that later.
7. Add in the rest of the water (up to the 3 cup mark is a good place to start) and put the lid back on securely. I shake the pitcher at this point to basically wash down the sides.
8. Blend again on the whole juice setting.
9. Check it out! It looks like milk! 

At this point it tastes very very neutral, so give it a taste and adjust for the consistency you like. If it's too creamy, just add more cold filtered water. I also like to buzz in a pinch of sea salt, a tiny bit of maple syrup, a tiny bit of vanilla extract, and a tiny pinch of cinnamon. If you go overboard on that stuff, it tastes like Horchata, which is damn awesome, as well.

If you find, as I have, that you'll want to make a 3 cup batch of this every week, I recommend soaking a big batch of cashews all at once, then portioning them out into ziploc bags for the freezer. If you don't want to wait 20 minutes while they thaw a little, they can be zapped in the microwave for 30 seconds when you're ready to make milk, so the whole process from using pre-soaked, frozen cashews takes only five minutes.

Other ideas
Double Honey Nut Cheerios 
Flavor your nut milk with honey and a pinch of salt and pour over your Honey Nut Cheerios. OMG Sweet Jesus.
Honey Nut Semi Freddo
Make honey nut semi-freddo by flavoring the cashew cream with plenty of honey and a good pinch of salt and freezing it. It should be too sweet to eat before you freeze it because freezing dulls the sweetness quite a bit. I stirred it once or twice as it was freezing too. This was amazingly good. I think I'm going to try this with hazelnut cream and chocolate next.
Coffee Cream
Coffee cream can be made by adding less water than when making milk, and can, of course be flavored however you like.
Chocolate Cashew Milk
Mix 1 Tbsp. agave nectar with 1 Tbsp. cocoa powder and a pinch of salt until it looks like Hershey's chocolate syrup. Add a little cashew milk to thin and stir until dissolved. Add more cashew milk until it tastes the way you want.
Delicious Cashew Spread
Start with 1 cup of extra thick cashew cream and add 2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast, chopped fresh herbs, cracked black pepper, and garlic (or any combination of that stuff- this combo tastes a lot like Boursin cheese). Awesome on crackers, crudite, and baked potatoes.

Creamy coffee!

Apple Wood Grilled Hamachi Kama with Yuzu Ponzu

Hamachi (Yellowtail) Kama (Collar) is amazing. I'm having trouble even coming up with more to say. It's usually grilled and served with ponzu and is a delicious bit of fish. Kama is often unavailable because the kitchen staff eats it before it ever makes it on a menu. Like the oysters that whoever is carving your Thanksgiving turkey ate long before anyone noticed them (See? You might not even know what the hell the "oysters" are! some a-hole in your family has been hiding them from you) Kama is the ultimate ChefSnack! The collar is the cheek of the fish, and is some of the most succulent and delicate meat you will ever have. You may also see salmon collar available at some Japanese restaurants and even tuna collar very rarely. I got this one at Nijiya Market for under $4. I see it served in restaurants for around $14. Score!

Ponzu is a simple sauce or dressing made from just a few ingredients, but one is the juice of yuzu, a Japanese lemon. If you don't have one (I sure as hell don't) you can buy bottled juice from a Japanese market or substitute in your favorite citrus. I really dig orange ponzu too. For this recipe, I used the bottled yuzu juice.

Apple Wood Grilled Hamachi Kama with Yuzu Ponzu

Preheat your grill to 400 degrees, and if you have any mild smoking wood chips handy, toss some in after a 30 minute soak. I had apple, so I used apple. It ROCKED.

Make your ponzu sauce:
3 parts soy sauce
2 parts rice wine vinegar
1 part yuzu juice
dash of sesame oil

Prepare Yellowtail Collar(s):
Sprinkle the fish all over with sea salt.
Lightly brush with peanut or vegetable oil.
Throw on the grill skin side down, and close the lid. Cook for 3 minutes.
Flip the fish, and spoon a couple tablespoons of ponzu sauce on the skin side of the fish (now facing up). Close the lid again, and cook another 2 or 3 minutes.

Start to grill skin side down. I used my trusty Big Green Egg which has also been called the Aguacate from time to time. 

Flip the fish one last time so that you can spoon on some more sauce and as soon as the sauce is on, remove the fish to a serving plate. Serve with chopsticks a dish of ponzu.

Just eat it! Don't be afraid to just jump in with your chopsticks and fingers to get all the meat.

Crepes

This recipe is my favorite crepe recipe because it produces the absolute thinnest crepes AND the batter doesn't need to rest because it doesn't use flour and so mixing it doesn't produce gluten. It's adapted from The Cake Bible and I've used it for years with great success. (Please pardon my bed-head, it was Sunday morning and I'd just rolled out of bed into the kitchen.)

Strawberry jam filled crepe getting dressed with whipped cream; Lemon sugar crepe; Nutella impostor crepe

Ingredients
3 eggs
1 c milk
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
3/4 c cornstarch
1/8 tsp salt


For Sweet Crepes:
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp Grand Marnier


For Savory Crepes:
handful of rough chopped fresh herbs
or
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard


Clarified butter for cooking the crepes (just nuke butter until melted and scrape off/fish out the white bits, leaving clear yellow goodness)


Procedure
Place the ingredients (except clarified butter), in the order given, in a blender and blend at high speed for 30 seconds.


Heat a crepe pan on medium-high heat until hot enough to sizzle a drop of water. Brush the pan lightly with clarified butter and pour 2 tablespoons of batter into the center of the pan. Immediately tilt the pan to the left and then down and around to the right so that the batter moves in a counterclockwise direction, swirling to cover the entire pan.


For the thinnest possible crepes, pour excess batter immediately back into the blender with the rest of the batter. So, to recap: Pour in batter, swirl around fast, quickly dump extra back where it came from and return to heat. This should all happen quickly- otherwise, adjust the thing you're using to pour in your batter so you're pouring in exactly the right amount. 1/4 cup measure giving you too much batter in your pan? Try another scooper that's smaller.
Cook until the top loses it's shine and starts to dull and the edges begin to look dry and lacey, about 20 seconds. Use a small metal spatula to lift the edge, check to see if the crepe is speckled with brown underneath, then flip the crepe with your fingers and cook for about another 15 seconds.

I have a blue steel crepe pan. No Really. I use my offset icing spatula for crepes, it's thin and easy to handle.

You can fill them however you like but I like mine brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with sugar and a squeeze of lemon.

Breakfast of Champions!

Guajillo Chile Black Bean Street Tacos

I've recently gotten back from a Caribbean cruise where I ate waaaaay too much "cruise food" and needed to detox. To me, this generally means cutting down the drinking a whole lot and only eating minimally processed fruits and veggies (no refined flour, no dairy, no eggs, no meat). Today marks the start of my third week eating what is essentially a vegan diet with some extra restrictions on processed food/complex carbohydrates. I've been eating well; don't cry for me, Argentina! 


Usually street tacos are tiny things full of mostly meat, with few toppings, (carne asada tossed with spicy sauce and topped with onion and cilantro and a lime to squeeze on top is pretty classic) but I wanted to create something that wasn't too gringo but still lightened things up for a busy weeknight. 

Served family style, with individual plates of mexican-style corn on the cob and chile lime fruit cups

Taco Filling Ingredients
2 tsp oil
1/4 diced onion
2 garlic cloves (pressed through a garlic press)
2 Tbsp Guajillo chile paste
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 15 oz. can of no salt added black beans, undrained, unrinsed


Toppings
1 finely diced small tomato
1/2 avocado, sliced 1/8th inch thick
1 large serrano chile sliced into long thin strips
2 Tbsp cilantro, rough chopped
1 green onion, thin bias sliced


12 4” Corn Tortillas (tiny street taco size)


Prepare Filling
Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, then garlic and saute until translucent, about 3 minutes. 
Add chile paste and chile powder and stir to combine and heat through. Stir in the whole can of beans (including liquid), and bring to a high simmer, stirring frequently. 
Reduce heat and let liquid reduce while you prepare the rest of your meal or prepare toppings. Beans should not be too soupy- you want them to stay put in your tacos.


Assemble
Heat 4 tortillas at a time directly over the fire if you have a gas stove flipping frequently (no pan, put the tortillas where you’d put a pan). If you don’t have a gas stove, you can wrap small stacks of tortillas in a damp paper towel and nuke for 20 seconds until warmed. Don’t skip the tortilla heating or your tortillas may tear.


Hold the warmed tortilla in one hand, add a heaping tablespoon of beans, 1 slice of avocado, 1 slice of serrano chile, a sprinkle of tomatoes, and a pinch of cilantro and green onion.


Make a meal
Mango & Cucumber Spears with Lime, Chile & Sea Salt
Elotes (Mexican-Style Corn on the Cob)

Mango & Cucumber Spears with Lime, Chile & Sea Salt

Spicy, sweet, crunchy, tangy, AND salty!

Refreshing fruit salads like this are often available at farmer’s markets here and from street vendors in Mexico. They often are served sticking out of red solo party cups and can include watermelon, jicama, pineapple, melon, and papaya too!

Ingredients
1 cucumber, seeds and skin removed
1 large mango, seed and skin removed
1 lime
cayenne pepper to taste
sea salt to taste


Procedure
Slice cucumber and mango into spears and lay out to receive seasoning evenly. Sprinkle with lime juice, then add cayenne, then salt.
Tip: Add salt and spices from high above the food to distribute it better.
Gather up your spears and serve sticking up in a cup like a bouquet of flowers.

Elotes (Mexican-Style Corn on the Cob)

Mexican street vendors sell corn boiled in their husks from carts stocked with toppings that you can dress your corn up with (kind of like a hot dog cart!). They're also available at most of the Farmer's Markets in San Diego, and indeed, I got my ears of corn from the Little Italy Mercato this week to dress up at home.
Generally the husk is just peeled back so you can use it as a handle to eat the corn, but unless I'm serving it in the backyard, I usually just remove it entirely. This recipe includes my favorite toppings and is vegan if you use the fakey mayo (I can't tell the difference in this recipe between the Vegenaise and commercial mayo, so why not?).


Ingredients
2 Ears of corn, still in the husk
Mayonnaise (I used Follow Your Heart Vegenaise)
Lime
Tapatio or Cholula hot sauce
1 tsp rough chopped cilantro


Procedure
Microwave corn on high for 5 minutes (you will need to increase time for more than 2 ears of corn) and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Shuck the corn (Corn will still be very hot, so you may want to let it cool a little more if you are burning yourself)
Rub all over with lime halves, thinly spread on mayo, sprinkle with or roll in cilantro, and drizzle on hot sauce.
This is often served topped with Kraft parmesan that comes in the green cardboard can, but to veganize, you can sprinkle some nutritional yeast on. I just didn’t bother, it was delicious enough already.