A wise man (or was it the Beach Boys?) once said, “Christmas comes this time each year.” The holiday season is upon us, the air is cold and Fifth Avenue is chockablock with holiday shoppers filling their noses with the usual Fifth Avenue scent of burning hotdogs.

Also making guest appearances in December: my fuzzy slippers, the winter triangle, Macy’s advertisements, fat squirrels, and pink cheeks. And there’s something about December’s wintery weekends that makes me want to swandive back under my covers and not come out until someone puts a hot bowl of something under my nose.

Well, I got a little hungry and couldn’t wait for someone else to make a bowl of something so I decided on this tagine that’s rich, flavorful, filling and healthy to boot. So much in fact that I’m contributing it to Sweetnick’s Antioxidant Rich Foods (ARFs) Tuesdays, which I’ve long been aware of but painfully lax in submitting too, even though most vanesscipes are brimming with antioxidant goodness.

This recipe is based on a traditional lamb and green olive tagine, but without the lamb of course. You can serve it to your own little lamb, whole flock, gaggle of Beach Boys or whoever.

Serves: 6
Time: 1 hour

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I was at a party the other night, making merry and chatting about moonlighting as a vegetarian virtuoso (or, at the least, a well-practiced devotee of the art of vegetarian cooking) when I was asked a question that so often follows up my veggie cooking admission: “What sort of cuisine do you specialize in?”

This question never fails to unnerve me as vegetarian cooking is a cuisine onto itself. Vegetarianism gives one free reign, in my humble opinion, to pillage and de-carnivorize recipes of every region, cuisine, homeland, backwoods, and entomology. It’s a very open, forgiving, humanistic (except for the pillaging part) libertarian sort of cuisine.

Every country can boast at least one traditional vegetarian dish, even if it’s a more carnivorous cuisine: hummus, pirogi, ratatouille, dal, pilau, chile rellenos, doubles, gado-gado, dolmas, and borscht to name a few. Many more vegetarian dishes can be extrapolated from traditional recipes by just omitting or replacing the meat.

Pasta e Fagioli is a traditional Italian dish that has been in my memory since childhood. Not because I remember eating it, but because I remember reading about it in an Italian cookbook by the actor Dom DeLuise. (aside: why do actors make such darned good cookbook writers? Madhur Jaffrey anyone?) Anyway, not only is this is excellent and traditionally vegetarian Brooklyn-Italian dish, it furthermore helps elucidate the haunting lyrics of Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore:”
When the stars make you drool joost-a like pasta fazool

serves: 8 (makes great leftovers!)
time: 1 hour 20 minutes, or 40 minutes if using canned beans

Pasta e Fagioli

1 yellow onion, diced
5 cloves of garlic,minced
3 stalks of celery, sliced
2 carrots, diced
olive oil
5 cups of veggie stock
1 1/2 cups of red wine
1 very large (35 oz) can of tomatoes
1 tsp oregano
1 1/2 tsp rosemary
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 (16 oz) bag of dried kidney beans or 3 cans of canned kidney beans*
2 cups elbow macaroni
sploosh of balsamic vinegar
salt, pepper
red pepper flakes
Parmesan cheese, optional

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I cooked up a big batch of this soup to feed a large & hungry group of sisters and artistes. It was very well received, not only for dinner, but scarfed down for breakfast the next day.

What’s the secret? Love. It’s the best spice.

As I mentioned in my Khichri post, I recently went to an Indian Ayurvediic Cooking Class at the Natural Gourmet Institute. I learned many things that night, but foremost amongst them is the concept that one must cook with love and intention. This concept has been knocking around on the edge of my brain for a while now, I just wasn’t sure how to put it. People claim that they can’t cook or are afraid of messing up and dear oh dear what should they do. My retort is: you just have to want to, don’t think too hard about it, and you’ll be fine. Nalini Mehta, my Ayurvedic instructor, used the wonderful phrase, “food knows when you’re nervous” and I agree. It tastes better if you just trust it’s going to taste better.

Give this Kadhi a try: gather your friends and sisters, want and intend to create something delicious, don’t worry if you don’t have some of the spices, (actually, don’t worry at all), get started, keep going, all of a sudden stop and enjoy your wonderful soup.

Serves: 4 as a main, 6 as a side
Time: 30 minutes

Kadhi, adapted from Nalini Mehta instructor at the Natural Gourmet Institute

Olive oil or ghee (clarified butter)
4 cloves
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp fenugreek seeds, optional
dash asafetida, optional
½ tsp cayenne pepper
1 inch ginger, minced
2 green chilies, minced
4 cups yogurt
1 cup water
2 Tbsp chickpea flour (besan)
fresh cilantro, chopped, for a garnish

Heat a little oil or ghee in a pot and toss in the dried spices: cloves, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, and fenugreek seeds. Stir the seeds until they are a few shades darker and start to pop. Now add the powdered spices: asafetida and cayenne pepper. Stir for a second and immediately pour in the yogurt and water.

In a small bowl, whisk a little of the yogurt soup into the chickpea flour and blend until there are no more lumps. Add the flour mix to the soup pot and combine well.

Taste for salt and serve with a little cilantro sprinkled over. See? That wasn’t so hard.

Perfect with pita bread and a tomato, cucumber, and chick pea salad. Or, try it over Khichri like gravy over mashed potatoes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about balance lately and, as life likes to do, was given nearly 3 ½ hours worth of instruction on this topic at an Ayurvedic cooking class last week at the Natural Gourmet Institute for which I signed up months ago.

For the record, Ayurveda is an ancient form of Indian alternative medicine that, as far as this Midwestern American can tell, is about achieving a balance in all things – taste, temperature, emotion, physicality and spirituality.

The class, taught by the sunny Nalini Mehta, was a crash course for me in this Indian/ Ayurvedic idea of balance. Apologies to Nalini if I don’t get this quite right, but the gist of Ayurvedic cooking is to use a balance of the following six tastes in a meal: sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, astringent and salty. These, and again I was quite distracted by the yummy food being cooked to get this exactly right, correspond to the different natural elements of air, water, earth, fire, space. And depending on you and your loved ones’ natural body chemistry, your current emotional and physical states, the weather, time of day, etc., more or less of each of those tastes is desirable in order to achieve an overall balance.

This is, quite obviously, a little different than the sort of “food balance” I grew up with in Chicago: a slab protein, 2 sides of veggies and a big ole scoopful of carbs.

What I took home from this class, besides a rather un-Ayurvedic full belly, was a fuller sense of life and the comfort that a meal cooked with love and intention can provide.

Try this Khichri. Make it for the people you love. It’s a 4000 year old Indian comfort dish extraordinaire… it’s a protein-filled risotto with a kick, and is sure to balance out holiday stress.

Serves: 6
Time: 1 hour

Khichri – Indian Rice and Pea “Risotto”, adapted from Nalini Mehta

Olive oil or ghee (clarified butter)
2 dried red chilies, crumbled
1 tsp cumin seeds
8 cloves
8 black peppercorns
1 large yellow onion, cut into rings
1 large zucchini, cut into cubes *
½ bag of spinach, roughly chopped*
1 inch ginger, minced
1 tsp turmeric
¼ tsp asafetida, optional
½ tsp coriander powder
½ tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
1 ½ cup yellow or red split peas, toor dal, or moog dal
1 ¼ cups basmati rice
7 cups water
salt
Ghee, melted butter, or oil to garnish

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