Spinach Hot Toss

Right now, you may be internally questioning the legitimacy of the term "hot toss." Conversely, it's possible you have assumed that "hot toss" is, indeed, a legitimate name for some type of dish, and you just don't know what it is. I suppose it mightn't have crossed everyone's mind to read the title of the post, either, and thus many of you are unsure of the nature of my monologue. I'm going to clear the air, so to speak.

Perhaps nobody has used the term "hot toss" before, and that's okay. But it's about time we do. If we can give ridiculously descriptive names to recipes such as "Ground Beef, Onion, and Garlic Casserole Layered with Peas, Carrots, and Rosemary-Mashed Potatoes Seasoned with Sea Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper, Topped with 18-month Hand-Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and Baked in a 10-inch Round Earthenware Dish," or absolutely not even a little descriptive monikers like "Dutch Baby," surely I can, in good conscience, coin a concise yet slightly descriptive handle along the lines of "Spinach Hot Toss" (it's hot, contains spinach, and you toss it together). And we should all feel at liberty to use it. Legitimate? I think so.

I am a simple woman. I enjoy instant gratification, small pleasures, and justifiably unpretentious living. This is a simple meal. Filling, nutritious, but simple. And it costs under $5 to make 2 servings. It's no $.99-cent 12-pack of instant ramen noodles, either. (I say that with both pride and conviction.)

I am not pretentious.


SPINACH HOT TOSS

Extra-virgin olive oil or other cooking oil
chopped onion
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
some kind of herbs/spices (I used a little oregano and a bit of smoked paprika)
whole lotta frozen chopped spinach
few garlic cloves, pressed
some finely chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans are best)
small handful of cooked black beans (or other cooked legumes)
about as much frozen corn as you had beans
again as much cooked rice, barley, quinoa, or other starchy bits
bunch of grated cheddar cheese
fresh tomato, chopped up
fresh basil (or cilantro, depending on your spice palette)

1. Chuck your onions in a pan with some olive oil, over medium heat.

2. Stir them a bit and cook them until they get yellow and start to crisp. Or brown them. It doesn't really matter, just don't burn them.



3. Add a little bit of seasoning and stir it around, and then dump in the spinach, nuts, garlic, beans, and corn. Mix that up good (I forgot the nuts).



I used more beans than I wanted to (I really wanted to use up what I had leftover in my fridge, which was more than I should have), and not nearly as much spinach as I wanted to (I ran out), but it's not like the dish is ruined or anything. Anyway, it should look greener than mine.

4. Keep cooking that, and stir it every so often, until the spinach and corn is all thawed out and everything's nice and hot in the pan. Then mix in your grain/seed/starchy bit. I used pearled barley, since I had some on hand. I did have to cook it first, but that's kind of a non-involved process so I didn't care. Again, I used a little more than I intended. Oh well.



5. Take it out of the pan, put it in a few bowls, and mix in a whole bunch of grated cheddar. And then chop up some fresh tomato, and a little bit of basil, and put it on top.

Looks good, no? Except my dish ended up being more about grains and legumes, and less about spinach and cheese. I like the version with more spinach and cheese better. But it's kind of hard to mess this one up. And it takes like, 10 minutes. And why the heck wouldn't you want to make it?

I mean, Hot Toss. Come on.

Vegetarian Burgers

The moment you've all been waiting for has finally arrived. You may now read a step-by-step pictorial instructive digi-manual on how to make vegetarian burgers that are not rubbery-bendable, highly processed, full-of-nothing-whole, weird-tasting, headache-inducing, perfectly extruded little cylinders. No, these are real burgers. Messy, delicious patties of summertime. Only without the flesh.

I must apologize that they're not vegan. But only a little, because I quite enjoy them as they are. I'm sure if you're vegan you can think of some way to veganify these burgers. Or come up with your own. Or keep eating frozen boxed products that resemble food in no good way. Or skip the burgers altogether.

These are relatively easy to make, especially if you have a food processor. If not, you just have to work a little harder. And for some reason, like yogurt and vegetable stock, vegetarian burgers are one of those foods that people just don't seem to want to make themselves. They'll bake themselves a fancy cake, or make a batch of cookies requiring specific temperatures, carefully measured ingredients, and perfectly spaced plops of dough on a lined sheet - but they won't throw together a few comestibles to make a burger. Why is that? I honestly have no idea. Frozen "veggie" burgers from a box taste disgusting. And call me persnickety, but I don't want soy protein concentrate, modified vegetable gum, or wheat gluten (in its most naked form) tainting my food with its indeterminate origins (or destination, for that matter). My philosophy is that if you can't make an ingredient relatively easily in your kitchen from its whole source, it probably doesn't belong in your diet (key word = "probably" - there are exceptions).

Now. I'm not on a high horse, I understand people have time limits, and budgetary considerations, but in all honesty - these don't take that long to put together and they're cheaper than buying them premade, and they are so many times better. You can also form them, freeze them, and save them for later. Maybe you could even make some kind of a meatless loaf, but I've never tried it.

A little tip for making vegetarian burgers: use lots of mushrooms. These provide juiciness, the natural glutamate flavor (also found in beef), brown color, iron, potassium, and some B vitamins as well. As for the other ingredients - onions and garlic because they're awesome and should go in almost everything, bread crumbs to absorb moisture, ground nuts for some good extra fat and to simulate those crispy bits that are on the outside of a beef burger, eggs to both hold it together (when they cook, they grab and hold) and provide some B-12 and protein and whole fat, quinoa for a complete plant protein, black beans for more plant protein and good fiber and folic acid and iron (and flavor!), cheese for some melty delicious fat, nutritional yeast for your dose of vitamins (and a good flavor), salt and pepper and Worcestershire sauce for seasoning. It may seem like a lot of fat, but one of these burgers has half the fat and barely more than half the cholesterol (and a lot more of the vitamins and minerals, except B-12) than a beef burger of the same size. So there you go. It's healthy to boot.


VEGETARIAN BURGERS

3/4 cup nuts (any soft or fatty nut will do - I used peanuts, but walnuts and pecans work really well too)
1/2 cup bread crumbs
3/4 lb mushrooms - cremini or button (creminis are great, unless they're more expensive)
1 cup cooked black beans, drained
1 cup cooked quinoa, drained and pressed dry if very moist
1-2 tbsp cooking oil
1/2 cup diced onion
3ish cloves of garlic, pressed
~1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (check ingredients for vegetarianism - many brands have anchovies)
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup shredded swiss, provolone, or mozarella cheese
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 eggs

1. Your first step is to make use of your food processor. I like processing in the following order: first nuts, then bread, then mushrooms, then quinoa/black beans. That way, you don't have to wash the food processor in between. For the nuts, process until they're pretty fine and crumbly, but do be aware that when processed past a certain point, they become nut butter. That's all fine and good, and I'm sure it wouldn't hurt the recipe too much, but it's not what we're going for. Set them aside when they're processed, and toss into the empty processor some stale artisan bread. Break it into chunks first. Let it whir away for a few minutes until you get crumbs. If you already have bread in crumb form, you can use that. If it came from a box or a can, I wouldn't trust it. But that's just me. So set your crumbs aside and put in your mushrooms. Pulse it until the mushrooms just look like itty bitty pieces but aren't quite yet a mushroom paste. Like this:

If the pieces are too big, they won't stick together as well. And they won't cook as fast. So take out the mushrooms and set them aside, and chuck in the black beans and quinoa together. Just pulse until the beans get sufficiently mushed up. The quinoa is somewhat immune to the blade, which is fine.



2. Heat up a medium-sized steel or stainless steel pan over medium heat with some oil. When it's hot (put your hand over it, you should feel a good amount of heat but not see any smoking), put in the onions. Cook them for a few minutes, stirring them around a bit every so often. When they are translucent and starting to brown, dump in the ground up mushrooms, and the garlic, and stir to get it mixed. In a minute or so, the mushrooms will release a whole bunch of mushroom juice.



This is delightful. Just let it do that. Stir it every so often. The water will evaporate and you'll get a more concentrated flavor in the pan. Once all the liquid is out, and the mixture inside the pan is formable, stir in the Worcestershire, take it off the heat, and transfer it to a bowl (if it stays in the pan, it might start to stick). Season the mushroom mix with salt and pepper.



3. Right away, stir in the cheese of your choice. Usually I use Swiss, but I had Provolone on hand this time and it worked better than I expected. It was adhesive and gooey and stringy. I was enchanted, actually. Once it's all melted, stir the mushroom mix with the bean mix in a bowl. Add the nuts, bread crumbs, and nutritional yeast and combine everything. Taste for seasoning and adjust with salt and pepper as necessary. Once you are satisfied, add the eggs. Just crack them right into the bowl and mix it all up until the eggs disappear and the contents of the bowl look wetter than before.



This is your burger mix. It'll make about eight. Or however many you want.

4. You can cook these in whichever way strikes your fancy. I like them best grilled, but as luck would have it, I don't have a grill. Some people like to broil them. I don't like to because then I have to bend over and put things in the oven. So I cook them on the stovetop in my delightful cast iron pan. In any case, it's good to toast your bun first. If you have the option, get a really attractive bun from some neat local bakery. I didn't want to scour the local bakeries, and the Whole Foods here has a very meager selection of fresh baked goods (all their own, as they don't seem to be into supporting the local economy), so I went with Rudi's whole wheat buns. (I could have made some, I guess, but that takes hours and is a somewhat touchy process.)

A side note - Rudi's has changed its label/packaging, and its products (although the press release on their website talks only of the new packaging). Whatever happened to product integrity? I got some of the pre-change whole wheat buns, and compared the ingredients to the whole wheat buns in the new packaging - totally different. In addition, the new ones have more calories, more sugar, more sodium, more carbohydrates, less fiber, less protein, and a much lower vitamin and mineral content. Uhhh... thanks, Rudi's. BTW, your new packaging is ugly.

Back on track. Toast the buns.



6. You should probably ready your condiments at this time as well so your burger doesn't sit around getting cold while you slice tomatoes. I like (from bottom to top): bun, dill pickle (or relish), lettuce, avocado, tomato, burger, completely melted cheddar cheese, fresh thinly sliced onion, ketchup, and mayo on the top bun. Unfortunately, I didn't have any lettuce and had to use kale. No biggie. And I messed up the order of the bottom ingredients. But it wasn't too bad.

Anyway, you should cook your burger. It's important that your pan or grill or broiler or whatever is not too hot. I mean, it should be hot, but not super hot. This is a dense burger with a lot of moisture - you don't have to worry too much about drying it out, but you do have to worry about cooking it through (it does have egg, after all, and it will fall apart if it's not cooked enough). If your heat is too high, the sides will burn before it cooks to the middle. But don't worry too much. Just scoop out a bit of burger mix, form a patty (make sure it's not too thick or it will never cook through), and put it on.



And flip it when it's brown and halfway cooked.



If you're using cheese, stick it on top of the browned side right now. It should be thinly sliced for maximum meltage.



I like to cover the pan with a large lid for a minute or so while the cheese melts. Do take the lid off to finish cooking the burger, though, as some moisture has to evaporate. It should be melty. And brown on both sides, and cooked all the way through.



And now... you can put it together in whatever order you want, with whatever condiments you want (the more adornments, the better). But it should look more or less like this:



and taste somewhat like a summer barbecue party.

I suggest that you make some vegetarian burgers of your own. Change the ingredients a little, if you'd like, there's no right or wrong. They're extremely satisfying. And gratifying. Maybe a touch mystifying, but only if you haven't made them yourself.

Stocking Up (and Yogurt, Too)

I don't like buying prefabricated foodstuffs if I can easily make them myself - especially if they're more expensive premade. Take... oh, say, yogurt. Or vegetable stock. No wait, take both, because that's what I made this week.

(Like you had a choice.)


Making vegetable stock, for instance, is pretty simple. And it's handy to have around, because what if I want to make stew? Or risotto? Or something else that takes stock?

Why make your own vegetable stock?
- it's cheaper than buying stock
- you actually get to use vegetable scraps you'd otherwise throw away
- minimize waste from a) commercial production of stock, including packaging, and b) usable scraps
- it's very easy
- sodium control
- ingredient control
- quality control
- the stock is only subject to your whims, and not irradiation, complete sterilization, and contamination from horrid things

Every day, from whatever vegetables I use in my cooking or eating - carrots, celery, onions, kale, garlic, herbs - scraps go into a 1-2 gallon bag in the freezer. I call it my "stock bag." Onion skins go in... carrot peelings... kale stalks... thyme stems... that kind of thing. I don't put carrot greens or really inedible things in there, though, or things with no real flavor of their own (like lettuce, or potatoes). And if I have a vegetable that kind of wilts in the fridge but doesn't go bad, and I don't want to eat it because it's too floppy, I'll put it in the stock bag, too.

And then when the bag's full, I take everything out and dump it in my stockpot and cover with good water. Filtered, or bottled, or whatever. You're making a stock, so the water is kind of a feature. You don't want it to taste like Phoenix tap water.



I also chop up a few fresh carrots and half an onion and smash a few garlic cloves and toss them in. You don't even have to peel them. (By the way, don't put in the insane amount of parsley that I did here. It kind of makes it bitter.) I think the most important flavors in a stock come from carrots, celery, and the members of the Allium genus (onions, leeks, garlic, chives, etc). Make sure you have plenty of those in there.

Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer, cover partially and let it go for an hour or two. Stir it every 20 minutes or so, to make sure everything's getting overcooked the same amount. When it's done, you should be able to mash a previously-fresh chunk of carrot with a fork.



It should also smell pretty good. Put a nice big strainer over a nice big bowl and carefully pour in the vegetables and their cooking liquid.



Let that drain in there for a few minutes (prop it up if the bottom is sitting in the stock) and then set the strainer aside to cool before you dispose of the veggies. They are great in a compost pile, or eaten by a pig. If you have access to neither of those things, you can always just throw them out. They've lost all value at this point (but really, pigs love to eat anything).

Salt your liquid to taste. It's probably two teaspoons per 6 cups. I don't know. Just keep tasting.



You can use it right away, or pour it in a nice sealing jar and freeze it - whatever you need. You could freeze it in an ice cube tray, and then put all the cubes in a bag in the freezer, so when you need just a little stock you can take out the right amount. I used a bunch to make cassoulet, and stored the rest.

Tada! Vegetable stock. Kind of simple. Very cheap.



--- --- ---

And now for yogurt. I use the method (approximately) used in the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. It's not scary. You don't need a yogurt maker. It's not difficult. As long as you are capable of pouring and stirring.

You should have a few tools on hand, though. Have a watertight quart-size jar. I love the ones with the little orange rubber seal. Also have a small hard picnic cooler that will fit said jar and still be able to close. And last, but not least, have a candy thermometer that you can clip to the side of a saucepan.

Why make your own yogurt?
- it can be cheaper than buying processed yogurt
- it's easy
- it's pure - keep powdered milk, gelatin, and other thickeners and stabilizers out
- you can choose the source and type of your milk
- it will only undergo what you put it through, and not the rigors and dangers of commercial preparation

This yogurt is not quite as firm as yogurt you'll find in little plastic cups. The reason is that it contains no thickeners, other than the culture Lactobacillus delbrueckii bulgaricus (which also breaks down lactose so you can digest it). It is creamy and thick, and a great probiotic.

Start with a quart of the freshest whole milk you can get, and pour it into a saucepan (preferably one with a heavy bottom, not super-thin). It should fit with a little room. Clip your thermometer to the side so it's as far into the milk as you can get it without touching the bottom of the pan.



The first step is to re-pasteurize the milk. Yogurt is made with beneficial bacteria, but they can't work very efficiently when there's other bacteria in the way. So pasteurizing will give your milk a fresh new start. Put it over medium heat or so. Not too high, or it will scorch on the bottom and your yogurt will taste like burnt milk. Are you really that impatient?

Stir it every couple of minutes (from the bottom) so it doesn't scorch. You want to get it to 180°F - not higher, because it will lose just about anything nice that it has in it, and taste much like cooked milk, which is weird. Not lower if you want to minimize your risk of unsavory competition for your good bacteria. But if you're trying to keep it near-raw, and have raw milk fresh from the cow, maybe you could skip the pasteurization step.

When it reaches 180, take it right off the heat and put it on a cooling rack. Keep stirring it every few minutes (not as often as you did when it was on the stove). You are now cooling it to the proper temperature for yogurt cultures to thrive - between 110°F and 115°F.



The milk takes a little while to cool, so you can also prep your cooler and jar by filling them with scalding hot tap water.



Close up the cooler to retain the heat and warm everything up faster.

Your milk is still not cool, so you can get your culture ready. Take 1 tablespoon - no more, no less - of active culture yogurt and keep it handy. If it's your first time making yogurt, get a small container of plain, whole milk yogurt from a brand that advertises live cultures (the more, the better, usually), and take it from there. Nancy's Springfield Creamery in Oregon makes lovely cultured dairy products, and their yogurt makes a great starter. Get one with an expiration date as far in the future as possible. Bacteria do die off after awhile, and if you get a dud culture, you'll get dud yogurt. I had a batch from two weeks ago that I made, so I used a tablespoon of my own yogurt.



When your milk finally enters the 110-115 range, plop in the tablespoon of yogurt and whisk it up. Immediately dump the water out of the jar and cooler, dry the inside of the jar with the cleanest towel you have, and pour in the milk. With confidence. If you are afraid, you might spill it everywhere and lose everything you've ever worked for. Don't cry, though; I hear there's no use.



Seal up your jar and put it back in the cooler. Fill the cooler (so it just covers the jar of yogurt-to-be) with very hot tap water.



Close the cooler and put it in an undisturbable location (no moving or opening) and leave it alone for 8-12 hours. The longer it sits, the firmer and sourer it gets. I like yogurt sour (more good bacteria!), so I usually leave it at least 10 hours.

After your allotted time, take out the jar and put it in the refrigerator to chill. When it's chilled, it will be all yoged up. And really neat!



If you're not used to plain yogurt, or don't like the sourness, I recommend sweetening it with brown sugar, rapadura sugar, maple syrup, agave nectar, or honey (although, adding honey to chilled yogurt is difficult, as the honey gets nervous and seizes up and takes quite awhile to blend). Berries are also good, as are chopped nuts, granola, or shaved chocolate. You can use it in any recipe calling for yogurt.


Hope you enjoyed the how-to guide. It's really very satisfying to have an intimate knowledge of your food.

PS: Sorry there's no saguaro pudding. They're a protected species or something. Maybe next time, if I can find some saguaro fruit or seeds on the market.