Raw Till Dinner and Vegetarian

There comes a time (lots of times) in every chef's life when she must look inward and re-evaluate once again why she does what she does and what it means to her. I've had these moments strike me a few times now and it's happened again. Mostly prompted by the tighter fit of my favorite jeans, but also by seeing Jonathan Safran Foer read from his new book Eating Animals at Barnes and Noble the other night. I had read an excerpt from his book in the New York Times magazine a few weeks back and it affected me. I've always struggled with the paradox of being a gourmet chef and wanting to be a vegetarian. The two can go together of course, there are gourmet vegetarian chefs out there, and I might be one someday, maybe someday soon, but I'm not yet. I still have clients and students who want to eat meat and lots of it. How do I work out being a vegetarian myself for moral and health reasons and still justify cooking up slabs of meat for other people? I need these clients, they're my livelihood. But I want to make this work, I want to be able to be meat-free and still have my job.

I sometimes do this thing called "raw till dinner." It's a way to eat raw without going completely for broke. Dinners usually involves a lot of organic, cage-free, humanely raised eggs with different vegetables or sprouted grain toast with avocados and agave nectar, or some kind of pasta or quinoa. These are delicious dinners and I can make a kickin vegetarian dish. But the one thing I will not become is vegan. If only for the cheese (raw, grass-fed, organic, humane) it's worth not having that title to allow for some gastronomical decadence. I can't honestly live without cheese. Well, I haven't tried, so I don't really know if that's true, but I bet it is.

Anyway, eating this way, vegetarian and raw till dinner, always makes me feel really great. And that's the goal here. I don't fool myself anymore that I can be a size 2 if I really really work at it. I just know that when I'm eating clean foods, most of them vegetables, and filling my body with energy from the earth and sun instead of from sugar and wheat and coffee, I feel light and good and weightless. So size doesn't matter. It comes with the territory that my fave jeans will loosen up a bit, and that's great. But I do it because of how it makes me feel most of all.

I'll still be making food for my clients at least until the new year. I also know I'm gonna have to serve some meat to people to keep the bills paid until something comes along that makes it possible for me to be vegetarian in all aspects of my life. But there are certain things that are important to me, like opposing animal cruelty and keeping my insides free from harmful food, and I will do my best to abide by those personal standards.

I'm sure this will go deeper after I read Eating Animals in it's entirety, and I'll keep you posted on that but for now, I'll continue to post what's going on in my food world. I'll even give you a rundown of what I eat on an average day of raw-vegetarianism. Won't that be fun?

Eggs and Cream = Fritatta!

Well if I do say so myself, I made the most delicious fritatta for my client this week. Fritattas are so easy to make and are fabulously Olde-World French and Tuscan. They look amazing and taste amazing and can be eaten breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. Any fresh ingredients you have on hand can go into them and all you REALLY need are eggs and cream. And for you dieters out there, egg whites and skim milk will work too. (Just not as yummy!) Seriously, I love thin people.

So, in this one, I threw:

Feta cheese, fresh sauteed red bell peppers, fresh sauteed mushrooms and fresh basil. The one I make tonight for my man and myself will have some chicken sausage in it too. Here's the basic way to go about it:

1-Crack about 5-6 eggs into a big bowl and whisk.
2-Pour in about 2-3 cups cream, 1/2 and 1/2 or whatever and whisk.
3-Saute whatever veggies you want in an oven-friendly skillet.
4-Turn the oven on broil.
5-Add the egg mixture to the veggies in the skillet and sprinkle in (lots of) the cheese of your choice.
6-Turn the stove to low and cover the skillet.
7-After a while and when the outside seems done but the top needs some heat, stick it in the oven and broil until golden brown.
8-Remove from oven WITH AN OVEN MITT!
9-Let cool, slice, and indulge!

Bon Appetit.

Lasagna From the Scratchiest Scratch (Almost)

Every time I make lasagna from scratch, I wonder why I don't do it every week without fail. It is the most delicious, mouthwatering, lovely, indescribable culinary experience I've ever had, and it just seems weird to say that. It might make more sense to me if that sentence described something with truffles, something exotic or something with loads of dark chocolate. Or something. But no, for me, it's Emilia-Romagna-style many-many-super-thin-layer-lasagna, all three components made from scratch.



The paper thin pasta made from a simple mixture of bread flour, semolina flour and eggs is so wonderfully delicate that you only need to boil it for mere seconds before prepping it to go into the pan.



The Bolognese sauce starts with finely, finely minced Mire Poix (a flavor booster of 1 part onion to 1 1/2 parts each carrot and celery), lots of butter, fresh pureed Italian tomatoes, white wine and well-marbled, well-crumbled ground chuck. It simmers for at least three hours, but all day is best. It's especially great when you make it in the morning and set it to the lowest of possible simmers and your house smells like Italian heaven all day.

The third component is Bechamel, also from scratch; a simple roux of flour and butter, added to scalded milk that's been steeped with 1/2 an onion and a few peppercorns. Add a grating of fresh nutmeg and you have lasagna-binding perfection.




When it comes time to get the gorgeous creation into the oven, the layering is the most wonderful part. I love to see how many super-thin layers I can get out of my components. Sometimes I only manage six, but once I managed eleven! Oh, heaven, you are eleven! Of course one of the layers is freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and that's what you end with on top, but that's the only cheese involved in this amazing invention. And it only spends 15 minutes in the oven!

This is so different from the thick, hefty, chewy, chunky lasagna you get at the Olive Garden or frozen from a box. every simple step in making this beauty is delicate, even down to the eating of it. I just cannot plow through a serving of my lasagna. It's because every bite demands full attention of every part of the tasting experience. It looks delicate in the pan, delicate on the plate, on the fork, and feels delicate in the mouth. Nothing convinces me more of the importance of cooking foods from scratch than my lasagna from Emilia-Romagna.