Homemade Vegetable Stock

For those of us who cringe at food waste, this is a great way to clear your conscience and clear your fridge of those squishy, sponge-like vegetables that are pleading to be thrown away.

When you find that it's make or break time with the vegetables in your fridge, it's time to make a vegetable stock. This recipe is adapted from many different veggie stock recipes, but the most basic one I found was on Allrecipes.com here.

You can also use all of the vegetable waste that you don't use during the week when cooking. Usually, I'll just compost all that sheezy, but if I know I'm making a veggie stock at the end of the week, I'll keep all those stems, leaves, tops, bottoms, cores, etc. that I would normally toss out.

So here's my basic recipe:

Ingredients:

1 Onion
8 cloves garlic
Squishy leftover veggies
Tasty herbs (I recommend fresh parsley, thyme, rosemary, and basil if you've got it. Otherwise, dried herbs are fine)
Leftover veggie stems, assorted parts
2 quarts water (or just eyeball it)
3 tsp salt (or to taste)

So first you want to create a roasty-toasty flavor in the vegetables, so you start sauteeing or roasting whatever vegetables you have + the herbs. You can do this over a stovetop, or you can slice and dice everything and put it in the oven. Doesn't matter.

You should sautee/roast for about 10 minutes. The important thing to remember is that the more surface area that's exposed, the more flavor can come out of the vegetables, so slice and dice as finely as you can. You can even just plop everything into a food processor.

After you sautee/roast, throw in the water and the salt and bring to a boil. Then simmer for a couple of hours. During this time, you can do your laundry, read a book (I'm reading "Eating Animals," by Jonathan Safran Foer right now). During this time, you'll smell an enchanting aroma wafting from your kitchen. This is a good thing and means that your broth/stock will be really freaking tasty.

Once it's simmered for a couple of hours, take it off the stovetop and strain it. Voila! Veggie broth.

So freaking simple and a great building block ingredient for many many recipes. My next post I'll dedicate to doing a recipe that requires this broth.

Motherf**king Black bean Brownies

I got the idea for this recipe this weekend after I visited Plato's Harvest Farms where our intern Sasha and her husband David own and operate an organic farm. We got there at 10am, planted potatoes, spring onions, and leeks and enjoyed a delicious pot-luck lunch, the crowning feature of which was one of the farm hands' incredible black bean brownies. I immediately asked her what she put in them, she gave me the basic run-down and when I came home I did some research into recipes.

I took a recipe off of 101 Cookbooks.com and modified it to include all that tasty shit that the farm hand said was in hers. This is the result:

Amazing Black Bean Brownie Recipe

4 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter (I put in a vegan butter subsitute)
1 can of black beans, well drained
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ cup ground coffee or espresso
¼ teaspoon sea salt
4 large eggs
1 cup maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line a 9x9 inch greased pan.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a glass bowl in the microwave for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on high. Stir with a spoon to melt the chocolate completely. Place the beans, 1/2 cup of the walnuts, the vanilla extract, and a couple of spoonfuls of the melted chocolate mixture into the bowl of a food processor. Blend about 2 minutes, or until smooth. The batter should be thick and the beans smooth. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the remaining 1/2 cup walnuts, remaining melted chocolate mixture, coffee substitute, and salt. Mix well and set aside.

In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer beat the eggs until light and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the agave nectar and beat well. Set aside.

Add the bean/chocolate mixture to the coffee/chocolate mixture. Stir until blended well.

Add the egg mixture, reserving about 1/2 cup. Mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Using an electric mixer, beat the remaining 1/2 cup egg mixture until light and fluffy. Drizzle over the brownie batter. Use a wooden toothpick to pull the egg mixture through the batter, creating a marbled effect. Bake for 40-50 minutes, until the brownies are set. Let cool in the pan completely before cutting into squares. (They will be soft until refrigerated.)

Makes 45 (2-inch) brownies.

Tahini Dressing (the ambrosia of the working class)

People familiar with "Annie's Goddess Dressing" will recognize the taste of this recipe because it's almost exactly the same...except not $6 a bottle.

You should think of this as hummus without the garbanzo beans. Very versatile sauce that, once made, you can use with almost anything you want. I've used it as a massage oil various times and each time I get compliments on its viscosity and garlicky smell.

The comments are usually something to the effect of "why is this massage oil so thick and smelly!?" Then I get slapped.

I also use it as a "green and bean" salad dressing.

Check it out...

1 garlic clove (mashed and chopped)
1/4 c. tahini
1/4 c. lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp hot water
salt
lemon zest (optional)

put all ingredients into a bowl except for the hot water. Put the hot water in last, mix around with a whisk or fork and watch as the magic of chemistry makes everything combine into a beautiful puke-colored sauce.

That's it.

Hummus you will kill for...literally

Alright, so we're all feeling the sharp sting of the recession, but hey, let's look at the bright side, ok?...OK!?

Great. So this is a time when a plethora of opportunities to start anew arise. For example, you can:

1. Intern at a non-profit until you decide what to do with your life (CAI internships available here)!
2. Travel to Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe or many other 3rd world countries to "find yourself" by doing "development" projects. Those stupid underdeveloped people will gladly help find you...
3. Go back to grad school and get that masters in social anthropology with a focus on gender studies concentrating on ecological imperialism so that you can emerge two years later with a greater understanding of the problems you already knew about!
4. Cook things for yourself by buying (shudder) ingredients and (shiver) putting them together into a (gasp) recipe.

Here's an excellent hummus recipe for those of you who wish to avoid throwing away thousands of dollars at Trader Joe's for their expensive (though delicious) hummus.

You'll need:

A food processor (or strong forearms)
2 tbsp tahini (it's like peanut butter except with sesame seeds. Look it up)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves mashed/chopped garlic
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 8 oz. can garbanzo beans
Sprinkle of paprika or parsley as a garnish
salt and pepper to taste

Cool. This is possibly the easiest recipe of all time.

Put everything except for the garbanzo beans into the food processor. Open the can of garbanzo beans and empty all but 1/4 of that yummy bean juice. Now dump the beans and remaining juice into the food processor. Process, and voila! Hummus!

Note: the consistency of the hummus is going to depend on the combination of oil, tahini, and water, so for a thick hummus, add more oil and tahini, and for a thinner hummus, add more bean juice.

As for the garnish, some experiments we've done to spice this recipe up are:

1. Adding cumin and honey for a sweet and spicy hummus
2. Adding tomato paste and/or sundried tomato spread
3. Adding rando herbage like Italian Herbs, basil, parsley, or rosemary

All are tasty. Enjoy the hummus and that delicious sense of accomplishment!