After consulting a few choice source materials — Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian and Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking — I began to feel quite confident that I could make my own yogurt. Both say it is easy as pie and making your own yogurt, with live cultures and whatnot, seems like a) one of those hippy-dippy things that went out in the 60s but b) so magical that I had to try it.

So put on your bellbottoms and love beads, roll up your hemp sleeves and follow these amazingly simple instructions. All you will need is about 1 lazy hour, 1 night to sleep, yogurt, a quart of milk, a large pot, a whisk, a ceramic bowl or thick glass jar, a towel, a pilot light or other hot place and a can-do attitude.

1. Buy a quart of milk that you like. Whole milk, naturally, tastes better than skim and I can imagine that a little whole cream in there would make it even better. Ms. Colwin advocates goats milk, I advocate whatever fresh organic milk you can find.

2. Buy some plain yogurt that you like. Since this is going to be your “starter,” along with the milk it is what is going to influence the taste of your yogurt. I’m a fan of the Stonyfield Farm brand though have recently indulged in a passionate love affair with Fage, which has a thick tangy taste that I cannot seem to get enough of.

3. Pour your milk into a big pot and bring to a boil. Easy enough.

4. Once it’s started to simmer, take it off the heat. Pie. I told you.

5. Let it sit for 15 – 25 minutes to cool it down the Correct Warm Temperature. You can find the Correct Warm Temperature the following ways

• With a candy thermometer, when it reads 100 - 115 degrees.
• Sticking your finger in the milk for 10 seconds without pain.
• Timing 20 minutes from the time you’ve taken the milk off the stove. Should be close enough.

6. Add 2 Tablespoons of your starter yogurt to a small bowl. Whisk until fluffy. As fluffy as yogurt can be, anyway, which isn’t very.

7. Whisk a little of the Correct Warm Temperature milk into your bowl of fluffy yogurt.

8. Then, add your starter + milk into the whole pot of milk that’s at the Correct Warm Temperature. Whisk to combine.

9. Pour your almost-yogurt into a thick ceramic bowl. Cover with a lid or saran wrap. Ms. Colwin suggests a large thick glass canning jar instead of a ceramic bowl, but a bowl worked fine for me.

10. Wrap the bowl or jar with a towel. Or blanket. Or tie-dyed wallhanging.

11. Place the wrapped bowl over your hottest pilot light overnight. If you don’t have a pilot light, try a radiator. If you don’t have a hot radiator, maybe try your oven or on top of the freezer (which, counter-intuitively) tends to be hot. If you don’t have a pilot light, radiator, oven, or freezer, you probably shouldn’t be making yogurt.

12. In the morning, be surprised to find that you have a bowl of your very own yogurt.

13. Put your yogurt in the fridge, assuming you have one, to enjoy for the next few days.

I’ve been feeling quite smug about this venture and saved a few bucks on my grocery bill in the process. The sisters didn’t find the yogurt as impressive as I did. Then again they they weren’t the ones magically reproducing live active cultures overnight. My yogurt had a nice, but not incredibly thick, texture and a good tang with a buttery aftertaste. I don’t think it necessarily tasted any better than store-bought yogurt, but it didn’t taste any worse either and you get the added satisfaction that you made it yourself and you know exactly what is in it.

Try this and let me know your how you fare. Of, if you tried it before, I’d love to hear about your successes and failures.

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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What is our vegetarian equivalent of a feast’s centerpiece?  What is our veggie Rib Roast?  Our equivalent of Duck a l’Orange?  Our trussed-up golden bird wearing those frilly mini chef-hat thingies on its legs?  For as much as being vegetarian has going for it, our feast tables are missing a coup de grace, a piece de resistance, a chef-d’oeuvre, and other long winded French phrases.

So this vanesscipe is here to fill that void in the middle of your Special Occasion table, to take center stage on your crocheted potholder, to replace the big hulking suckling pig with an apple under its schnoz.  When I was growing up, a Special Occasion often meant some Frenchy dish with a rich sauce to ladle in the crater of a mountain of creamy and cream-laden mash potatoes.  It meant the triumvirate of French food additives: butter, cream, and wine.  And heck, if one doesn’t do it, use ‘em all.

This vanesscipe is a vegetization of a recipe my mom used to make on medium-special occasions.  Not a Thanksgiving, not a birthday, but maybe for a softball match won or a closet well-cleaned.  It’s no Tofurky centerpiece, and that’s a good thing.  It’s a rich and elegant main course that yields a scrumptious sauce to ladle over the lightest, fluffiest mash potatoes.  It gets its luster partially from the butter and cream, but also from tarragon, a subtle but fragrant and elegant herb that really classes up this dish.  Hopefully it will so impress you and your carnivorous friends that they won’t even notice that your Special Occasion table is missing a huge suckling pig.

Serves: 6 as a main dish
Time: 35 minutes

1 yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
butter or olive oil
3 8oz boxes of chicken-style seitan with the liquid, cut into bite sized chunks
3-4 carrots, cut into ½ inch chunks
2 potatoes or parsnips, cut into ½ inch chunks
1 Tbsp flour
1 bunch fresh tarragon (or 2 Tbsp dried)
1 veggie bullion cube dissolved in 1 cup hot water
3/4 cup heavy cream
salt
pepper

Sauté the onion and garlic in a little butter or olive oil until wilted.

Add the seitan, carrots, potatoes or parsnips, and ½ of the fresh tarragon. Sprinkle the flour over and stir to coat.

Add the veggie broth and simmer for 10 – 15 minutes.  When the parsnips/potatoes and carrots are almost cooked, take out the seitan and veggies and reserve in a bowl.

Boil the remaining liquid down until very thick then stir in the cream and heat until almost boiling.
 
Return the seitan and veggies to the pan and heat through.   Stir in the remaining ½ of the tarragon, reserving a little bit to sprinkle on top of finished dish.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Turn out into a beautiful serving dish, dust with the reserved tarragon, and enjoy your veggie masterpiece.  Serve with mash potatoes to induce fainting.

Upon my urging my mom gifted me a pressure cooker for Christmas last year. Since then, my pressure cooker (or, p.c., as I like to call it) has been lying around my cupboard, directions inside, collecting dust. The whole idea of cooking under pressure frightened me well away from p.c. for 10 1⁄2 months. It’s my pleasure to report that the two below items helped me reach a tipping point and I used my darling p.c. for the very first time for this recipe.

1. Li’l Sis used to be her dorm’s fire safety marshal
Since I’m living with a ex-fire marshal I figure however scary using a pressure cooker is for the first time the Li’l Sis can step in and save the day. The good news is: using a pressure cooker isn’t scary all, quite the contrary; it’s easy and letting the steam out when depressurizing is pretty darn fun. The bad news is: after witnessing the Li’l Sis toast a flatbread on the stove over the open flame I found out she was only her dorm’s fire safety marshal in order to claim one of those plastic red fireman’s hats, and probably shouldn’t be depended upon in issues of fire safety.

2. wheat berries
These little things are my new favorite food item. They are a whole grain, a good source of vegetarian protein, wonderfully chewy, and fun to eat. Wheat berries, despite their cute name, are just the whole wheat grain minus only the inedible outer hull. The only problem with wheat berries is that they usually take 1 1⁄2 hours to cook. Far too long for a busy girl. P.c. to the rescue – they only take 40 minutes in a pressure cooker.

Serves: 6
Time: 55 minutes with a pressure cooker

Warm Wheat Berry and Apple Salad

2 cups water (3 if not using a pressure cooker)
2 cups wheat berries
1 large or 2 small apples, cubed small
½ cup dried cranberries
½ cup golden raisins
½ cup walnuts
2 tbsp rice vinegar
3 tbsp orange or apple juice
splash of olive oil
½ tsp salt

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I went apple picking last weekend. I did indeed pick apples. I did indeed go on a hayride. I did indeed pose with live goats and stick my head through one of those photo backgrounds so it appeared that I had the body of a wooly ewe. But because of a camera, ahem, malfunction, all I have to show for it pictorially is this watercolor:

As disappointed as I am to no longer have the photographed memories that could last a lifetime, I did have 25 pounds of apples to eat and therefore decided on this lovely autumnal menu of Mustard Braised Tempeh topping a Warm Wheat Berry and Apple Salad

Serves: 6
Time: 30 minutes

Mustard Braised Tempeh

(2) 8oz tempeh blocks
olive oil
2 tbsp orange or apple juice
2 tbsp Braggs, tamari, or soy sauce
2 tbsp grainy mustard
1 tbsp honey

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