The Tao Restaurant has a revered place in the history of Bloomington, Indiana, where I went to college. It was very much a product of the 1970s: it was owned and run by a yoga ashram, as was the adjacent bakery, Rudi’s (named for the ashram’s founding swami, Rudrananda). It was a little pricey for my student budget but I managed to go a few times. I remember it as an elegantly homey place with food that was quite delicious. When I lived in Bloomington in the mid ‘80s The Tao was in its final years. The ashram had already moved to Boston (later they would relocate again to Portland, and soon Rudi’s and The Tao closed up shop. The building now houses a collegiate sports bar called, ironically, Yogi’s.

One of the Tao’s chefs, Sally Pasley, wrote a cookbook called The Tao of Cooking. It came out in 1982, what one might refer to as the “late hippie” era. The recipes, all vegetarian, draw both from the earthy and natural ethos of the ‘70s and from the growing culinary sophistication of the ‘80s. They span the globe: there are recipes for samosas, for chiles rellenos and for Turkish boreks, for gnocchi and for Japanese egg rolls. There is also lentil soup and tofu burgers and something called Hobbit Pie. And there is Big Veg, the soy burger that was “the mainstay of the Tao menu in its early years.”

I was happy to find a Soy Burger recipe in the Tao, not only because it affirmed my memories of the restaurant’s hippie culture but, more practically, because the Paisley Farm Winter CSA had recently left me with a pound and a half of dried soybeans. I followed the Big Veg recipe almost exactly. It made a batch of burgers that were hearty, very healthy-tasting, and… a little bland. They were more earthy ’70s  than sophisticated ‘80s;  their flavor was, to quote one Bloomington blogger, more well-meaning than delicious.

But nonetheless it’s a very good recipe: it’s an excellent blank canvas onto which any number of flavors can be drawn. Unlike, say, black beans, soybeans don’t come with much flavor of their own, and so they happily take on whatever flavor you give them. Think of tofu to understand what I mean. Big Veg could be curried, or given an Asian treatment of ginger and sesame oil. It could be spiced up with smoky canned Adobo sauce or with a spicy Thai mixture of jalapeno, cilantro, lime, coconut milk and lemon grass. Or to add a bit of irony with your flavorings, mix in a small amount of pork that’s been roasted, shredded and tossed in barbecue sauce. Use pork raised on a small local farm: you’ll bring Big Veg in an idealistic full circle from its hippie-era origins to our own locavore era – not such a great distance, perhaps.

With thanks to Sally Pasley Vargas, to The Tao of Cooking and to The Tao restaurant, I’ve typed up the recipe for Big Veg below, accompanied by a few suggested variations. I haven’t tried these variations yet: if you do – or if you dream up one of your own — I’d love to read about it in the comments section.

Big Veg
From The Tao of Cooking, Sally Pasley, Ten Speed Press, 1982
The Big Veg was the mainstay of the Tao restaurant in its early years. All manner of leftovers can be incorporated into the mix. I like mine on toast with sliced tomato, Bermuda onion, and ketchup.

1½ cups soy beans
1 cup finely chopped onions
1 tsp. finely chopped garlic
¾ cup grated carrots
¼ cup ketchup
1 egg
1 tsp. salt
pinch cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce
½ tsp. thyme
1 cup bread crumbs
flour for breading
bread crumbs for breading
beaten egg
oil for frying

1. Cover soy beans with water and soak overnight. Cook until tender, about 1½ hours. Drain and mash to a paste with a food mill or food processor.

2. Mix beans with remaining ingredients and taste for seasoning. Form into eight patties

3. Dredge patties lightly in flour, coat with beaten egg and roll in breadcrumbs. Heat about ¼-inch of oil in a heavy skillet or frying pan and fry until crisp and brown on both sides.

Variations:
Curry Soy Burger:
Smash the clove of garlic from the recipe and 1 additional garlic clove with the edge of a knife. Place them into a mortar or small food processor with the teaspoon of salt. Add 2 tablespoons of curry powder (or more, to taste) and mix into a paste, adding a few drops of water if needed.

Heat a tablespoon of butter in a large skillet. Add the minced onion and curry paste. Cook, stirring, over medium until the onion is translucent and evenly mixed with the spices, 5 to 7 minutes. Allow to cool slightly, and add to remaining ingredients. Omit the thyme; substitute 2 tablespoons tomato paste for the ketchup and 1 tablespoon lemon juice for the Worcestershire sauce.

Asian Soy Burger:
To the mixture above add: 2 tablespoons minced ginger, 2 tablespoons sesame or aji oil and an additional tablespoon of soy sauce (do not use Worchestershire sauce). Omit the salt. Omit the ketchup and add 1 tsp sugar. Use ½ cup chopped scallions in place of ½ of the onion and 1 tablespoon chopped chives in place of the thyme. Dredge in panko in place of the breadcrumbs.

Soyburguesa Mexicana:
Heat a teaspoon of corn oil in a skillet and add ¼ cup fresh or frozen corn kernels. Cook, stirring occasionally, until browned approximately 10 minutes. Allow to cool.

To the bean mixture add: the roasted corn kernels; 1 to 2 tablespoons adobo sauce from a can of chipotles; 1/3 cup finely chopped cilantro. Omit the ketchup and add 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon lime juice. Omit the Worcestershire / soy sauce. Omit the thyme and replace it with 2 tsp Mexican oregano. Dredge in cornmeal in place of the breadcrumbs.

Read the recipe
In Indiana in the ’70s there probably weren’t many white kids who regularly ate curry at home, but I was one of them. My mom was from a missionary family and grew up in Maharashtra, India. On special occasions she’d make a big pot of her special curry and serve it up with papadum, tomato chutney, spicy mango pickle from a jar and piles of white rice. We kids always requested it for birthday dinners, and our eager dinner guests would swoon from the heady aroma of spices.

But even if I was a little more savvy about Indian food than some of my fellow Hoosiers, of course I was still very naïve about it. To me, Indian food simply meant the dish my mom made: big chunks of beef and potatoes stewed in a brown gravy spiced with curry powder. It wasn’t until college that I began to learn how vastly many different kinds of dishes can be can be called “curry.” In Indian restaurants I found dishes made from lamb and chicken, from any number of vegetables, from fish. Later, in cookbooks, I even found curries made from eggs.

In my cookbooks there are recipes for hard boiled eggs in spiced sauce, for eggs scrambled in spiced butter, for Parsi-style omelets, and for eggs baked in a casserole with cilantro and cumin. My favorite method though is to poach the eggs in a spicy broth and serve them with a sauce made by thickening the broth with yogurt. I made a version of this recently and served the eggs atop a warmed pita spread with roasted eggplant, alongside a dish of coriander-spiced potatoes. It was filling and satisfyingly spicy, and a small step away from being entirely vegetarian: with vegetable broth in place of chicken stock the dish is entirely meat-free. For familiarity’s sake I’m calling the dish “curried eggs,” even though I know that ‘curry’ is really a westernized term, mostly used to describe the flavors of South Asian food by those who live in other parts of the world.

And I’m calling it ‘curried’ even though the dish contains no curry powder. Curry powder is also a westernized creation, a pre-mixed blend of cumin, coriander, cloves, cardamom, fenugreek, turmeric, etcetera that’s essentially a short cut to creating an Indian flavor. By most accounts it’s not used by Indian cooks. Instead, they cook with the individual component spices, varying them according to their preferences, their region, or the dish they’re making. As one cookbook author states it: “the Indian cook keeps the spice box handy near the stove, so that he/she can use the spices much the way a painter uses a palette, as mood and family preference dictate.”

In this spirit my curried eggs are spiced with a combination of garlic, ginger, cumin and turmeric. I’ve only recently kicked the curry powder habit, and have just begun learning how to blend my palette of spices, so I don’t know if this combination is a correct or acceptable one. It was awfully tasty though, so I think I’m off to a good start.

Recipes:
Curried Eggs on Eggplant Pita
Coriander Skillet Potatoes

I spent Christmas this year with my brother Joe and his family in Vermont. It was a laid-back and very relaxing holiday. Joe, my sister-in-law Nancy, my nephew Andy and his girlfriend Casey all pitched in on a fuss-free but very delicious Christmas dinner (John, my other nephew, was at work fitting boots for the skiers at Smugglers Notch). Here’s what was on the menu:

Whether you call it pan sauce or just plain gravy, to me it’s just not a holiday dinner without it. Particularly in winter (and in Vermont it gets cold!) the floury thickness and full flavors of a good beef gravy are deeply satisfying — exactly what we mean by food that sticks to your ribs. I recently wrote a brief overview of gravy-making for Epicurious, so I won’t go into too many details here. For this batch I deglazed the roasting pan with red wine, added some dried marjoram I found i the cupboard, and since we had no beef stock on hand I filled out the drippings with canned chicken stock. That worked just fine. I used a beurre manie to thicken the sauce – the first time I’ve done so. I was very happy with the richer, silkier, and lump-free sauce that resulted. In my haste to get to the dinner table I forgot a very important gravy-making step: pouring the juices from the carving board into the sauce. By the time I’d realized my mistake the the gravy was already in its serving dish, so I decided to use the bloody red liquid as a garnish. I liked the way it looked, although it may’ve been more appropriate for Hallowe’en than for Christmas.

The roast, a sirloin tip that Joe cooked to a perfect medium, was one of the last remaining cuts from Delicious, a heifer Joe raised for beef last year. Delicious’s days were spent days on a nearby farm, happily grazing in a patch of lovely Vermont pasture with other cows destined to become Christmas roasts. Her name was given to her by my nephew John, and she lived up to it unfailingly.

Nancy prepared theaw fluffy and flavorful mashed potatoes. Her method: cube the potatoes and boil them with garlic cloves, and plenty of ‘em. Drain the liquid and whip everything together. They were perfect

Joe went down into the root cellar and came up with a gorgeous buttercup squash, one of this year’s crop from his garden. He prepared it as simply as could be: he sliced it in half, scooped out the seeds, place it on a baking sheet, poked the skin with a fork and roasted it in the oven until it was soft. Then he scooped it into a serving bowl and stirred in some butter. A little butter is all you need for garden-fresh ingredients like these.

We also served up some old-fashioned dried sweet corn, a favorite in my family and a nod to our Pennsylvania Dutch forbears. I’d brought back a sack of the dried kernels from my recent trip through Northeast Indiana’s Amish country. They’re prepared by by simply soaking the dried kernels in boiling water, then cooking them with butter and milk. The finished dish tastes sweet and nutty and fits perfectly as part of a holiday dinner.

Also on the table was a plate of the spiced, candied apple rings I made recently (one of my very first forays into home canning). They were always a part of holiday dinners laid out by my grandmother when I was small.  My Grandma actually bought hers at the grocery store – later in life at least. But her recipe box contains a recipe for them, so I’d guess she made them from scratch once or twice. I like to think I’m reviving a tradition from my grandmothers younger days by making these.

This pie was a collaboration between Joe and me – I made the crust, Joe made the filling. It was taken from the Epicurious recipe for Maple-Hazelnut pie. It was just like a pecan pie, but with hazelnuts substituted for the pecans, with maple syrup in place of some of the corn syrup, and with bourbon added for an extra flavor edge. We modified the recipe a bit by toasting the hazelnuts to freshen them up an by adding a few drops of maple extract to strengthen the maple flavor.

Other dishes not pictured: Brussels Sprouts that Casey and Andy cooked with garlic and balsamic vinegar; Joe’s buttermilk dinner rolls; mini Yorkshire puddings cooked in butter since the roast was too lean to produce much in the way of pan drippings.

I loved this dinner because it was elegant and festive and just about entirely stress-free. I also love that everyone chipped in. The only thing missing was my nephew John, away in the mountains. John – you were there in spirit when we toasted you with raised glasses of champagne!

A note from Chelsea Whittaker, manager of the McCarren Park Greenmarket:

The Greenpoint Greenmarket will be closed on 12/25 and 1/1. But the market will be back in full swing on 1/8 and will continue to run year-round. Yes, year-round! No need to stock up on your root veggies now. Get them and other market goodies all winter long.

Meanwhile, the market is open for business this Saturday (12/18) and is a perfect place to get holiday gifts. Pick up a festive Christmas cactus from Brandywine Gardens, goat meat from Consider Bardwell (now Animal Welfare Approved!), a bottle of wine from King Ferry Winery, and grain from Cayuga Pure Organics.

After years of saying “this is the summer I learn how to can,” I finally made it happen. I’ve long viewed this mysterious process with trepidation. How can it be possible to hold food indefinitely in suspended animation? How is it possible to protect it from the riot of hungry microorganisms, and the rot and decay they cause, with only a thin layer of glass and a heat-sealed metal cap? With awe I’ve looked upon the strange alchemist’s setup: magnetic wands and special funnels, metal rings and paraffin and vats of boiling water into which jars are lowered on special racks. In my kitchen no project had ever before been undertaken which required anything to be sterilized.

But then, canning is a time-honored practice. I reassured myself that it’s part of many a home cook’s routine. Certainly my Pennsylvania Dutch forebears were ardent practitioners. I knew I needed to give it a try.

And so I did. I decided to can two things: tomatoes, and a corn and poblano salsa inspired by the Perro Poblano, the chili dog I made for last year’s Brooklyn Hot Dog Cookoff.

I did my research. I studied the Ball Blue Book and the classic Putting Food By.  I learned that if you don’t have a pressure-canner, and you’re just using a boiling-water bath, you need to be sure the food inside the jars is sufficiently acidic. You also need to make sure the contents of the jars contain plenty of liquid, so that the heat from the boiling water can fully circulate through to the center of the jar, killing off any last redoubt of bacteria that may be lurking there.

In other words, with canning you can’t just wing it like you can in ordinary cooking. If you’re just starting out it’s a good idea to find a recipe (there are many in the books mentioned above, or on the USDA website), and follow it to a T. Or, better yet, take a class.

I wish I’d followed that advice. Instead, I approached my first canning project like I approach ordinary cooking: I looked over a recipe to get its basic ideas and then incorporated those ideas into a dish of my own. This is fine for making dinner, but in canning it felt nerve-wracking. If I screwed up the result could be more than just an unsatisfying supper. It could be botulism.

But I forged ahead, trying my best to be careful.  The tomatoes were pretty straightforward: I simply blanched them to remove their skins, then heated them up and packed them into hot, sterilized jars. To play it safe (some tomato varieties aren’t all that acidic) I added lemon juice to each jar. The corn  salsa was a little tricker. I made a salsa base from sweet corn (blanched and cut from the cob) chopped white onion, roasted poblano peppers and salt. To can it I referred to a recipe for Amish-style corn relish, using lime juice – and plenty of it – in place of the traditional white vinegar. Lord knows what it will taste like when I open those jars in January.

Another piece of advice: for your first time out, try canning just one thing. Canning requires you to have a large boiling cauldron of water for the jars, a small pan of boiling water to sterilize the lids, and a pot to heat up the food. In my case that meant a pot for the tomatoes and another for the corn. What with managing jar lifters and magnetized lid-lifting wands, while trying to keep everything operating-room clean, I would’ve felt better with one fewer pot on the stove.

I managed though to pack three pints of tomatoes and a pint and four half-pints of corn salsa. When the jars came out of the cauldron and cooled  — wondrous to behold – they all sealed. The lids held tight. Even now, a month later, there’s no oozing, no funny noises, no smells. Everything seems to be ok.

But after all this, do I really know that the food inside is safe?  I’m taking my health and well-being into my hands, and maybe that of my friends and guests, thinking I can safely store food at room temperature for months on end. What will happen when I open those jars? Check back in January for a full report – assuming I survive!

This week in the market, come learn all about winter squash! Taste different squash and sign up for the Greenpoint Greenmarket Winter Squash Pie Bake-Off, now happening on Novemeber 27th. All participants will win a prize! Sign up at the market info tent or email cwhittaker@greenmarket.grownyc.org for more information. And make sure to stop by Dipaola Turkey to reserve your Thanksgiving Turkey.

McCarren Park Greenmarket Update for 10/30:
Halloween weekend is here! Make sure to pick up your last minute pumpkins at S & SO Farm, Healthway Farm, or Garden of Eve. And celebrate the holiday with Market Portraits! Visit the info stand and have a FREE harvest themed portrait taken of your family, your dog, your kids, or you with your veggies!
ok maybe that wasn’t so scary. Happy Halloween everyone!

From Chelsea Whittaker, market manager at Williamsburg / Greenpoint’s McCarren Park Greenmarket:

The leaves in the park are starting to turn beautiful colors and fall to the ground. Its always fun to rake those leaves and jump in a pile, but have you ever thought about using them for compost? Gather around the information tent at 10:30am this Saturday, Oct 23, and learn all about leaf composting from master composter Kate Zidar of the North Brooklyn Compost Project!

This year, the market will once again be hosting a winter squash pie bake off! If you love to bake, then this is the competition for you. All contestants will win a prize. Sign up for the Greenpoint Greenmarket November 13th WINTER SQUASH PIE BAKE-OFF at the market info stand or email cwhittaker@greenmarket.grownyc.org.

You can read about last year’s winter squash pie contest here. See you at the market!

This summer was great for cooking and eating even if it wasn’t so great for blogging on Dave’s Kitchen. (It was, however, great for blogging on Epicurious.)Here are a few highlights from a great foodie summer:

	Mis en place for pea risotto…
	…becomes actual pea risotto…
	…which gets fried into pea risotto suppli that take third place at fourth edition of the Food Obstructions.
	Chef Joe shows off his pizza dough technique during a July pizza party…
	…and makes some amazing pizzas…
	…with toppings taken from his amazing garden.
	I made ice cream for the first time in several years. The first batch was raspberry-swirl.
	And of course, I visited the unforgettable Vermont Cheesemaker’s Festival.

Happy Foodie Autumn everyone!

To kick off GrowNYC and Edible magazine’s second annual Eat Drink Local Week, local chef Jordan Colòn of EAT restaurant will be cooking at the market. Come watch him and eat his delicious food around 10am. Make sure to check out the Eat Drink Local shopping list for the ingredients of the week (http://tinyurl.com/2c9k2fu) and pick up almost all of your ingredients at the market – get clams from Pura Vida, wine from King’s Ferry Winery, dairy from Ronnybrook Farm, and grapes, squash, and cauliflower from S & SO, Garden of Eve, Red Jacket Orchards, Healthway Farm, and Cranberry Hall Farm. You’ll certainly be eating well this week!