It was an apartment like many other stately Upper East Side apartments except instead of a parquet floor the floor of this living room looked like it been prepared for surgery with linen, plastic wrap, and silver utensils stretching wall-to-wall. It overflowed with guests focusing with utmost concentration on… dumplings.

You see, the lively Nex0s hosted a dumpling party last Sunday. Guests were invited bring their own fillings to stuff into dumpling skins until they got silly. It reminded me of the nursery rhyme about Old Mother Hubbard except it wasn’t a shoe - it was an apartment. And there weren’t so many children - there were so many dumplings I didn’t know what to do. So many, in fact, that at the end of the evening I became concerned about the “orphan” dumplings - dumplings whose masters had left without giving them a home. Luckily, my sisters were happy to help house a few dumpling-children. For a few minutes, at least, before they gobbled them up.

Here was my contribution:

Peanut Butter and Jelly Dumplings

peanut butter
jelly
dumpling skins
toppings and/or sauces (suggestions below)

The directions are pretty simple if you’ve ever made dumplings before: stuff your dumpling skins with your favorite kinds of peanut butter and jelly. I used the most amazing peanut butter made by my fellow foodblogger Jessica of Su Good Sweets. Buy some. You won’t regret it.

Steam your dumplings. Or, pan fry your dumplings in butter or vegan margarine. If, like me, you’ve never made your own dumplings before, this PDF from Cooks Illustrated does a great job explaining the different methods of stuffing and cooking the dumplings.

If you want to be extra fancy you can make one of the two toppings I made for the dumpling party:

1) Spiced Sugar

In a small sauce pan, lightly brown a few cardamoms and cloves either “dry” or with a little butter.
Mix with some turbinado or demerara sugar (or just plain white sugar if that’s what you got) and add a hardy sprinkle of cinnamon.

2) Salt & Vinegar Crumbs for the Adventurous

Crush up some salt and vinegar chips. Dip away with your Pb&J dumplings.

I’m guessing that these dumplings would be good with pretty much any sweet “dip” too - warm nutella, melted chocolate, lavender honey, cinnamon-butter sauce with lemon zest. So many possibilities you won’t know what to do.

Someone (alright already, it was Laurie Colwin) once said that real men don’t eat bitter greens. By now I think we’ve all heard that real men don’t eat quiche, but bitter greens is a new one to me. I hadn’t any previous evidence for or against this statement, so to test this theory I invited self-described “real man” Zeljko (seen here in the mirror looking frighteningly like Balki Bartokomous) to dinner. He was quite enthusiastic about the dish, twirling the spaghetti directly into his mouth with gusto and panache.

When I asked him how he liked the bitter greens he said, “These? They’re not so bitter.” But he also admitted that most guys who call themselves “real men” probably wouldn’t consider him to be included in that category. Back to square one.

Please let me know your own findings on this matter. If correct, this premise could make an excellent dating barometer and I’m telling you straight, gentle readers, that a dating barometer in Brooklyn is handier than a big stick in Mypos.
A big stick to herd sheep, see?

From my point of view, anyway, hearty bitter greens are a perfect mid-winter pick-me-up when springy green freshness is still a few inches below ground. And these velvety astringent greens are a perfect polygamous marriage with a toothsome pasta, sweet chewy raisins, and toasted pine nuts. Real or fake, most men are sure to be pleased by this cravable dish. And if you sense hesitancy, reference Popeye and his whole spinach/man thing, and note the splooshes of wine. That’ll have ‘em doing the Dance of Joy.

Hat tip to Nex0s for the recipe idea!

Serves: 2
Time: 20 minutes

Spaghetti with Bitter Greens, Pine Nuts and Golden Raisins

½ pound of spaghetti
2/3 cup of golden raisins
olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup pine nuts
1 head of bitter greens like escarole, chard, chicory. I used escarole.
¼ cup of white wine
salt, pepper, more olive oil to taste
parmesan cheese, optional

Put a big pot of salted water on to boil for the spaghetti and put the golden raisins in a bowl of hot water to soak for a while to plump up.

While the water is heating and raisins are plumping, add a few tablespoons of olive oil to a skillet and with the heat on medium sauté the pine nuts for about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté together with the pine nuts until everything is golden brown – less than 10 minutes. Be careful not to burn the garlic or pine nuts.

Wash the greens thoroughly, cut off any stemy bits and chop the leaves into halves or thirds.

Add the prepared greens to the sauté pan and cook. Drain the raisins and add those too. At the same time the greens start cooking you can add the spaghetti to the boiling water and cook for about 7 minutes or until done but with some bite left to it.

Once the escarole has wilted add the white wine and a generous amount of salt and pepper.

Drain the pasta well and toss with the greens mixture. Adjust the seasonings and add another pour of olive oil, of desired.

Serve with a dish of grated parmesan cheese, if you’d like.

A big kiss and hearty thank you to my oldest sister, The EnvironmentalSis, for these awesome plates.  So cool!

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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Frit-ter
-verb (used with object)
1. To squander away piecemeal; waste little by little

-noun (consumed with passion and a side of dipping sauce)
2. The perfect way to take something good, and make it even better
For example:

Pakoras
Fry Balls
Crisps
Falafel
Hush Puppies
Croquettes
Bhajis

These Green Chili and Corn Fritters are what would happen if an Indian Onion Bhaji eloped to Thailand with a Southern Corn Cake Belle and spawned a spicy, sweet, and savory fritter lovechild.
 
I know 50 minutes seems like a long time to spend on these, but if you get two batches frying up at once you can cut time down the cooking time quite a bit.  However, if you’re not that dexterous, I’m sure there are worse ways to fritter away an evening.

Time: 50 minutes
Serves: 4 -5

Green Chili and Corn Fritters

1 medium onion, cut into thin rings
4 green onions, sliced
3 green chilies, minced
1 box frozen sweet corn kernels
1 1/3 cup chickpea flour
1/2 inch ginger, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt
peanut oil

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I love Indian food.  Indulge my repetition: I LOOOOOVE Indian food.

If you were looking at me right now you’d be pretty convinced that I’m not of Indian heritage. At all.  Annnnnnd… you’d be right!  I have, however, for the last 5 years or so years been looking for a surrogate Indian mom to teach me how to cook traditional vegetarian Indian dishes. (No offence, real mom, but you’re not Indian either.)  My neighbors growing up were Greek, so Saag Paneer there.  My childhood girlfriends were Italian and Finnish, so no dal there.  In recent years I’ve considered trying to date men with good-cooking vegetarian Indian moms, but decided it could get awkward if I spent more time with boyfriend’s mom than boyfriend.

So I’m taking this yak by the horn.  I’ve signed up for an Indian (Ayurvedic, actually) cooking course and have begged my (non-Indian) friend Poundcake to hook me up with her old boss who I understand is a terrific Indian cook and a vegetarian to boot!  I’m looking to help her cook and in return she’d let me help her cook.  I’ll even do dishes.

This past weekend I tried my well-read but unapprentised Indian-cooking hand at an open-faced samosa (a chickpea wrap filled with a potato, chickpea, and green pea curry) and a vegan creamed spinach that I “creamed” with the extra cashews I had on hand from my trip to Trader Joes and left over from my Mango Cashew Stir-fry.

The results are in:

The Li’l Sis said, in a rather blasé way: “This is good, Ness.”  When I questioned her lack of enthusiasm she explained: “my tummy hurts.”  And then “I ate too much.”

Well, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it.  The following vanesscipes are so yummy they make you eat too much! I had some neighbors over too, and they clearly enjoyed their meal but declined to comment because I think they’re afraid that I’ll misquote them or something.  Or maybe they just overate as well.

Serves: 4
Time: 90 minutes

Potato, Chickpea and Green Pea Curry

3 large or 4 small potatoes
peanut oil
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ inch of ginger, minced
2 jalapeno, minced
½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp mustard seeds
8 oz can tomato sauce or 3 fresh tomatoes, diced
1 can chickpeas, drained
2 cups frozen green peas
¼ tsp cayenne
¼ tsp garam masala
¾ tsp salt
chopped cilantro to top

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