The Flexibility of Cooking

One thing I like about cooking is that you have both a rich tradition AND endless flexibility. Last night, for instance, I went to cook a reciped I'd gotten from a friend many years ago: Red-Cream Lentils with Polenta. It's a German dish, and I remember it being creamy and having a unusual but mild herb flavor.

I had some seitan already cooked, so I substituted that for the lentils, which take a while to make. And, I had some already cooked rice in the fridge, so I figured that could be a good stand-in for the polenta. Ah, yes- I didn't have cream. Some half and half will suffice. The recipe calls for marjoram, which I usually have, but I was out... so I substituted poultry seasoning, which has marjoram as the third ingredient (of about ten!). I had the onion and the vegetable broth, that the recipe called for. I had to leave out the tomatoes, though, as I didn't have those, and I didn't bother grating the hard cheese I had in the fridge, either.

OK, so there were a FEW substitutions, but the dish turned out OK after all, if a little bland. It needed something. I had some dried curry leaves (used in Indian cooking but NOT part of curries), so I ground up some those in the seitan/onion/poultry seasoning. Just right! Good cooking is as flexible as a determined yogi.

World Made By Hand

I just read a very interesting novel, "World Made by Hand," by James Howard Kunstler. It is set in upstate New York, a decade or two in the future. The US is eventually unable to maintain supplies of oil, gets embroiled in a end-all war in the Middle East, and suffers nuclear attacks on Washington DC and Los Angeles. The lack of oil shuts down the entire US infrastructure and the economy collapses and political unity dissolves. Everything that requires oil becomes scarce, and people are left to grow their own food and learn again the skills required to make things they used to buy at Walmart.

While the outcome seems extreme, the really interesting part of the novel is how it makes such an outcome seem to be a very logical follow-on on our current dependence on petroleum. While one can argue about how long oil supplies might last, and how conservation measures might prolong things in the face of increased cost of oil, it really does follow that IF oil does become scarce, then a whole host of unpleasant things happen.

The story and characters of the novel are three-dimensional enough that the reader doesn't feel like the book is just a diatribe against modern short-sightedness. It's a good read- not just describing a possible world, but also how the characters react to this radically changed world.

Vegetarian Gyros!

People sometimes ask me, "Now that you're a vegetarian, what do you miss eating?" There isn't much I miss. On thing I do mention when asked this, though, is GYROS.

But guess what? I've learned how to make a vegetarian version, and it rocks! Very tasty, and not particularly hard to do. The recipe below feeds four.

Seitan Gyros

Ingredients
1 cup wheat gluten flour
3/4 cup vegetable broth
2 TB soy sauce
1 ts cumin seed
2 ts oregano
large pinch cinnamon
large pinch nutmeg
1/4 ts cayenne
1/4 ts paprika
1/4 ts salt
black pepper, a few grinds
one half onion, sliced into thin half-rings

garnish:
two medium tomatoes, diced
lettuce, shredded

Preparation:
Mix all dry ingredients (except onions and the garnish) in a large bowl. Mix soy sauce and broth together, then add to dry ingredients. Quickly stir. When it forms a mass, plop it onto the counter or a cutting board and knead 25 times. Let it rest for five minutes, knead a few more time, then break it into four pieces. Boil three cups of water, add seitan pieces, five cloves of sliced garlic, and one tablespoon vegetarian broth powder. Lower heat and simmer for one hour. Make sure the water doesn't dry out. Best to add one cup of water at the mid-way point. You can discard the garlic, or add it in with the seitan later.

Cut seitan into small, irregular pieces (cut on a bias and then the edges will get crisp). Brown half of the seitan in one tablespoon oil in a very hot skillet. Throw in half of the onion slices and cook for a few more minutes. Keep warm and repeat the procedure with the other half of the seitan and onions.

Warm the pita in a skillet with a touch of olive oil. If the pita is a little dry, you can add a tablespoon or so of water to the hot skillet and cover to steam the pita for a little while. When the pita is warm, sprinkle with the sumac powder. The sumac looks like paprika or red pepper, has a delightful quasi-citrus flavor. Middle-Eastern markets stock it.

Fold or slice open the pita, add the seitan, then add chopped tomatoes, chopped lettuce, and tsatziki (see below).

Tzatziki (John's Way)

Ingredients:
16 oz. (1/2 large container) plain low fat yoghurt
1 large cucumber, peeled
4-6 cloves garlic (depending on size), minced
1 to 1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 TB good olive oil
10-12 fresh mint leaves, minced (or one teaspoon dried mint)

Preparation:
Peel and grate the cucumber, using the most coarse side of a four-sided upright hand grater (you can seed the cucumber, too, but it doesn't seem necessary). Put the cuke into a bowl, and put a smaller bowl on top with weight on it to press juice out of the grated cucumber. Mince the garlic and mint leaves. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Chill and adjust salt to taste.

Fraud!

I was checking my bank account today, and discovered two large charges going to Barnes and Noble- $342.43 on 12/26 and $345.59 yesterday. I called them up and got bounced around a bit, before eventually talking to a supervisor in their fraud department. Turns out, someone had made a couple of online orders, one of which was sent to Illinois and one somewhere else. They had suspected fraud on the orders, and had even interecepted one of them. I asked the supervisor if they sold things other than books on the website... maybe the thief had purchased something that could easily be fenced? He said that Barnes and Noble did in fact sell other things, but that these particular orders were in fact books. What kind of books? BIBLES. Go figure.

The Potato Inn

When the earthquake in Sichuan province struck last Tuesday, I was in Yunnan province, to the south. Sounds very bad; it has been all the news here.

After leaving Yunnan province, I stayed a night in Kaili. Apparently, there are some interesting minority villages not too far from Kaili. I went to the China International Travel Service for some advice. The kind ladies there worked out an itinerary for me, given the time I had left. So, I started out that very day, plan in hand (I had arrived in town very early in the morning). Unfortunately, their schedule was wildly optimistic about what could be seen in a given amount of time. For the morning, for instance, they told me, go to place X, north of town, and there was some sort of regional fair. They even gave me a map. You get there by getting a bus to place Y, but make sure that this bus passes through place X, because there are two ways to go. Then, on the way back, you can see place Z by getting off at place W, then walking a few kilometers up the hill.

The hard part was finding someone who knew where the heck place X was. Now, place Y, the place I take the bus in the direction of, that was OK. So, the ticket agent sold me a ticket there. Then, when I got on the bus, I told the driver and conductor I wanted to go to place X. "Place X?", they said. Yep. Near place XY. "Oh, sure. No problem. You can get off at place V, and it is very close to there." I figure, sounds good. I can't quite make out what they are saying the name of place V is, but I figure they'll tell me when toget off. So, winding bumpy roads and mountain scenery and the bus sound system turned up so loud I had to put earplugs in. And finally, after a couple of hours of this, around mid-afternoon, we reach place V. And sure enough, the conductor says, "Here you are, get off here." I'm in a dusty crossroads town of no particular charm. I figure I'll get a bit to eat, then work out how to get to the place I really want to be. I walk a market: fruit and cassette tapes (?) and rope and odd bits of meat. The (only) thing to eat seems to be a sort of cold dish of cubes of rice with glop on it. It doesn't call to me. I ask around and confirm the name of the little town, then sit down to study the map. Hmmm. I'm only a little more than HALFWAY to my destination. So, it took me two hours plus to get to where I am now, it'll be another hour an a half there, then I'm looking at a further three and a half to get back to my hotel in Kaili! And that isn't even including the stop on the way back, which I can't do anyway, because the route I'm on is the other route. Grumble, grumble. Like I said, the ladies at the CITS were wildly optimistic. The bathrooms at this little dusty town were notable, too. Check out this video. This is what I'd call a "type six" public bathroom- the worst of the worst. You've got your auto flushing, your "flush it yourself", your "it flushes when the dripping bucket fills up, and the "it is supposed to flush and may oneday." Those types- what I'd call types one, two, three, and four- are all the flushing sort. Then, there's the type where there is no water involved, but maybe you've got a bit of a drop. Say, you're up here and the effluent falls a good number of feet down there, below. This can actually be sort of OK, with proper ventilation. Let's call that one type five. Now, what we've got here is a type SIX, the worst of the worst. Latrine-style and no drop. Watch your step and don't fall in! See video at the bottom of the page...

Anway, I digress. So, in the end, I figured I had to go back to my own plan. The next day, I headed down to the town of Congjiang. It was a good 7 hour bus ride away, but at least I knew right where I was going. And the minority village was only 7.5 kilometers up the hill from town. In town, I checked into my very comfortable hotel. The next day, I caught a motorcycle taxi up the hill to Basha, the Bai minority village. They've held onto their traditions very tightly. Beautiful architecture and rice fields. Women in embroidered clothing. Cows and chickens about. And it was quiet! Very peaceful. I explored for a while, then sat and enjoyed the silence, and walked back down into town.

I spend another night in Congjiang, the (mostly) Chinese river town, the headed to ZhaoXing, one of the larger towns of the Dong minority. This town has all traditional architecture, over seven hundred households, and five drum towers. This was one of my favorite places in China. On the bus on the way in, I saw a sign for "The Potato Inn." Sure, enough- English and Chinese both- "Potato Inn." So, I had to stay there. I never did ask what potatoes had to do with it, but it was a very comfortable place.

For some reason, blogger is loading all my images at the top, rather than where I place them. But anyway, (in something like reverse order) there is a picture of my hotel, the view looking out from the porch just outside my window, some scenery from a hike I did way up the hill from ZhaoXing on my second day there (larger picture), and a view of LiLun village, just up the hill from ZhaoXing.

Today, I took a LONG and bumpy bus ride south, hoping to get as far south as Guilin, so I could secure a ticket to Guangzhou. I got as far as Sanjiang, and the bus station was shut down for onward travel. Although Sanjiang seemed a bit provincial when Tama and I first came here, this time around it is sort of like "bright lights, big city," since I've been in smaller villages. As I was outside across from the bus station trying tofigure out where to stay, a woman said they had accomodations. OK, I'll have a look, I say. I was expecting a bit of bargaining, since she was coming to me, rather than me to her. We walk up to the third floor (passing the internet bar in which I'm currently writing this). The room is clean, the bed feels less sprung than most. "How much?" I ask. "Thirty," she says. "It's cheap." Sure enough, I didn't even have the heart to bargain with that, since that is less than most of the dorms I have stayed in this time around in China. "I'll take it."

Off to Guilin tomorrow, then the night train to Guangzhou... unless I am unlucky and a berth is unavailable, in which case I'll have to catch a bus.