Another Egg Recipe: From My Favorite “Cookbook”

Are you getting tired of egg recipes yet? I hope not, because I have one more for you. (Look, I’m trying to be timely, what with Easter coming up!) But this will be all for a while, since I ran out of eggs. (Hey, Rhoda . . . when can I pick up some more?)

The following is a very simple idea, but it illustrates one of my favorite cookbooks. I’ve raved about this book before, and I’ll probably rave to you about it again!

It’s not really a recipe book so much as it is an idea book—a gentle introduction for how to go about improvisational cooking—in a healthy and vegetarian way. If you’re not vegetarian, you can still get a lot out of this book, because it glorifies vegetables, grains, eggs, and dairy products. It’s fun; it gets your creative juices going. And it’s simple; it proves that awesome cooking doesn’t have to be complex.

It’s an excellent book for a young person just learning to do his or her own cooking. (Hmm: think graduation gift!)

The book is Tassajara Cooking, by Edward Espe Brown. When it was originally published in 1973, Brown was the cook at the Berkeley Zen Center in California. Now he’s an internationally renown chef and cookbook author.

Here’s a link for purchasing a copy. Seriously—I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It opened doors for me; it gave me permission to play around in the kitchen, to “visualize” flavor combinations. It gave me basic guidelines that I still use today.




Since I’ve been talking about eggs, and a few recipes I’ve shared have been rather, um, rich, here’s one that you can feel pretty doggone good about. It’s from the “greens” chapter, and it appears on pages 68–69 of the 1973 edition. It follows such unusual and fun-sounding creations as “Green, Orange & Mushroom,” “Spinach Goes Bananas with Sesame,” and “Spinach Could Also Go Apricot”!

Greens Get Egged On

The egg can appear or disappear, but in any case the greens are meaty.


greens – oil – salt, pepper – eggs

Sauté-steam the greens until they’re nearly done. Stir in some beaten egg or eggs. With a few eggs and lots of stirring, the eggs will blend in much like a seasoning. With more eggs and less stirring, the effect will be more omelette-like. A few teaspoons of soy sauce can go in with the eggs. If you like onions, start by sautéing the yellow kind, or sprinkle on some chopped green onion as garnish.

Pretty easy, huh? Go try it! With a handful of strawberries and a piece of bread, with or without Tabasco or salsa, it would make an awesome lunch!

Cantaloupe Sorbet

Melons—Sweet juiciness in frosty pulp. The high water content of melons makes them the most refreshing of hot-weather fruits, but for the same reason they are not suitable for cooking into sauces or pies. Chill them in the refrigerator, in the creek, or in the shade. Cut out a thick crescent and bite in. Don’t you wish your mouth was bigger?

—Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara Cooking (Boulder: Shambhala, 1973), 115.

Yesterday, my friends, I had occasion to drive out Highway 50 to Sedalia, and as I returned I stopped for provisions at the Dutch Bakery, a Mennonite-owned market in Tipton. My prime objective was to visit the bulk-grains aisle and replenish my stock of oat bran for my famous muffins.

Then I got sidetracked by the carts and carts of ripe local watermelons and cantaloupes. I leaned over and poked my nose down into the cantaloupes—inhaled—ahh, there we go! I had to buy one!

It was large, and there’s only two of us, so I decided to cut up half to eat “plain,” and then to “do something else” with the other half. . . . But what to do?

When I’m looking for interesting things to do with vegetables and fruits, I tend to consult two books: Tassajara Cooking, by Edward Espe Brown, and the much more recent Farmer’s John’s Cookbook, which I also love. (Remember the chilled cucumber-mint soup? What an awesome recipe!)

Both books offer fresh ideas for flavor combinations. Brown, in Tassajara Cooking, suggests the interesting combination of fresh cantaloupe drizzled with lemon juice and topped with a mound of cashew butter (“Cantaloupe Fancies,” p. 115).

I would have never thought of that, but although cashews aren’t my thing, I’ll bet this combination would send some people over the moon.

Farmer John offers recipes for a cantaloupe-and-tomato salad, for instance, and for “Cantaloupe and Cardamom,” which is fresh-cut cantaloupe jazzed up by ground cardamom, some fresh lime juice, a bit of black pepper, and chopped fresh cilantro (p. 214).

Again, I wouldn’t have come up with that combination on my own—but it is indeed very interesting; adding those flavors makes you “interpret” cantaloupe in a whole new way.

I landed on this cantaloupe sorbet recipe from Farmer John’s Cookbook. (I’ve been using the ice cream maker a lot recently!)




Below is essentially the same exact recipe as provided in—note the official, complete bibliographic citation—Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics, with Lesley Littlefield Freeman, Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2006), 214. I have made slight amendments, but quantities and ingredients are the same.

This sorbet is incredibly refreshing, and it lacks the strong, puckery-sweet quality that other sorbets usually have. The cantaloupe (not sugar) is unmistakably the star ingredient, and the ginger adds an addictive je ne sais quoi.

Farmer John’s Cookbook says this recipe serves 4—and it’s light enough you could eat a lot of it at a sitting—but I think it serves a lot more than four people, considering sorbet is usually served in little dabs.

Ginger Melon Sorbet

—approx. 4 cups cantaloupe, cut into cubes (about half of a large cantaloupe)
—1/2 cup sugar
—1 1/2 tbsp. lemon juice
—2 tbsp. grated ginger (see neat trick below!)
—garnish: mint leaves

Add all ingredients into food processor or blender and purée until smooth. Depending on capacity of food processor, you might have to work in batches.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Now, for your bonus cooking tip, check this out!

Convenient Grated Ginger

When I’m in a rush (which is most of the time), I have tended to avoid recipes calling for fresh-grated ginger because of the preparation ginger requires. And no matter what grater-gadget I used, I always scuffed my knuckles at the end, or else it seemed that I always had a nubbin of ginger in the fridge that I never used up.

But here’s a neat trick to make fresh ginger be more convenient. I learned this from the St. Louis mother-and-daughter “Punjabi Home Cooking” team of Aman and Gurcharan Aulakh. They use ginger a lot!

Peel a large bunch of ginger and chop it up (I recommend slicing it very thinly against the fibers), then pulse in a food processor to grind it up. Add some water if you need to. Transfer it to a zip bag (don't make it very thick), squeeze all the air out, and seal. Freeze. Then, when you need “fresh grated ginger,” it’s always on hand; just break off what you need (that's why it needs to be a rather thin layer, so you can break it). It’s not technically “fresh,” but it’s incredibly close, and the convenience rocks!

(You can also process and freeze fresh garlic, too; this comes in handy when you’re cooking Indian food and must start off nearly every dish with some garlic in the skillet!)

Cleaning Up

Here’s another post about cooking (sort of), to give you a little break from my introspection and bellyaching about my being a true-blue country mouse living in a low- and no-income neighborhood.

Cleaning Up

I do get introspective when I’m doing the dishes, wiping off the counter and stovetop, rinsing my dishrag, hanging it to dry. (We don’t have a dishwasher. I mean, there’s only two of us and a small kitchen, so cripes, wouldn’t a dishwasher kinda be overkill?) Here’s what set me to thinking.

I watched a little bit of Food Network this morning, and once again, I was let down. That used to be my favorite channel; one of the few “intelligent” broadcasts out there, where I could learn useful stuff. But the past number of years, they seem to be having a problem with thinking up new shows.

These days they keep looking for a new “star”; they keep trying to come up with a new “reality” hook. And they're fixated on showing us diner food and how junk foods are manufactured. Meanwhile, their truly “cooking” shows have lost much of their sophistication, their focus on fresh, pure ingredients, and their educational content. Now most of their how-to shows seem to be about “quick home cooking” or “down-home home cooking”—Rachael Ray and Paula Deen, respectively. They use a lot of shortcuts. And the latter seems not to care very much about my health. (For more on P. Deen, look at this food blog: Georgia on My Thighs.)

And while those programs have a place and an audience, I have to say I miss Sara Moulton, Ming Tsai, and even Emeril Lagasse (even if he overdid the showmanship part, he does tend to cook creatively and from whole ingredients, and when he uses pork fat, it is for a good reason). I learned a lot from these “stars,” from technique, to theories about good combinations, to food history, anthropology, and chemistry. Good thing Alton Brown is still on.

So if Food Network is having trouble coming up with new programs, I have an idea for them: “Cleaning Up.” Think about it. There’s one aspect to cooking that none of the cooking shows has touched—in fact, you’d think it was a dirty secret, a taboo subject never to be mentioned on Food TV. And that subject is the dishes.

Those cooking-show hosts use scads of dishes and beaters and mixing spoons, little nested bowls for all their premeasured ingredients, etc. Once those instruments have had their few seconds on-air, they disappear under the counter for the invisible man to clean up later. (Or maybe they give them away to members of the studio audience as souvenirs: “Paula Deen used this very bowl for her eight tablespoons of butter!” Who knows.)

The fact is, almost as much technique goes into cleaning as into the preparation. Chef-writers as disparate as Anthony Bourdain (the dirty-mouthed, smarty-pants, New York bad-boy) and Edward Espe Brown (the gentle Northern California Zen priest) have commented on the need for the right tools—including having plenty of clean towels and sponges, good sharp knives, decent cutting boards and cooking pots—and (here’s the kicker) the importance of taking care of all of these. Just like a carpenter cares for the tools that are his livelihood.

Sure, I can see lots of corporate underwriting for such a television show (any company that manufactures dishwashers, dish soap, cleaning products)—but the show could still focus on technique, ranging from efficient arrangement of one’s kitchen to specifics of cleaning different kinds of materials (wood, nonstick pans, delicate glassware, etc.). And much more.

So the program could always start as the last guests are leaving after some dinner party, and the host could proceed to demonstrate how we’re going to clean up, efficiently, quickly, and thoroughly. Sometimes it could be in a small kitchen like ours, where there’s limited counter space and no dishwasher; other times it can be in a modern “dream kitchen,” which would give them an opportunity to show all the newest appliances. Or some shows could be about the cleanup after a barbecue party, and they could demonstrate how to clean and care for a grill and such.

Sometimes it could be basic a-b-c stuff—my dad is fond of joking about an old home ec book from his era that gave dishwashing instructions as: “First, fill sink with hot, sudsy water. Next, grasp dirty dish with left hand and washcloth with right hand (if right-handed).”

Other times, it could be about what kind of oil to rub into your wooden or bamboo cutting board, or how to sharpen your knives, clean your cast iron, or how to properly outfit and store your kitchen tools and cleaning supplies.

Another subject that comes to mind is how to get kids into the cleanup chores. That could be a whole episode right there, filled with lots of adorable, audience-pleasing children.

Then there’s the whole “green” aspect—storing and using trimmings for a stock, composting your scraps, using environmentally friendly cleaning supplies, and so on.

What do you think? Am I off my rocker here? I suspect it’s a great idea. Especially if they could get cameos by some of their happy-ass celebrity chefs, who could talk with love about their utensils and how much they appreciate having clean tools, serving plates, and workspace.

One thing is for sure—as my cooking skills have improved over the years, my kitchen cleanup has become much more persnickety and thorough. For instance, the first things I clean are always my knife and cutting board—because I love them.

I leave you with a small quotation from the end of Edward Espe Brown’s Tassajara Cooking (Boulder: Shambhala, 1973). Years ago, reading these comments helped me to see that “cleaning up” is an important part of the process, not drudgery at all, and often flavored with gratitude.

Being Good Friends

Cooking makes cleaning possible, cleaning makes cooking possible. It’s all the same when we are good friends with ourselves and with the world around us. To help us be good friends with ourselves and with others, with rice and cabbages, with pots and pans, we may need some rules:

Clean as you go.

Being good friends with the knives, clean and replace them in the knife rack after use.

Being good friends with the sponge, rinse and wring it out; with the towels, fold and hang them up, and wash when dirty, or before.

Being good friends with the counter, wipe it after use, and scrub sometimes; with the floor, sweep and mop. Get into the corners, and when you’re done, stand the broom on end or hang it on a hook. After cleaning a greasy floor, sprinkle some salt where it’s still slippery.

Being good friends with the dish sponge, don’t use it on the floor. Use the dish towel for dishes, and have another for face and hands.

Being good friends with the scraps and trimmings, make some stock.

Clean the sinks! Clear the drains!

Be friends with your friends.

Frugivory

It’s really quite simple; all you need is a good knife or two, a cutting board, a place to put the scraps, and a bowl. And your choice of fruit.

Today, as I prepared this morning’s bowl of fruit, I thought about a wonderful point made by one of my great culinary heroes, Edward Espe Brown, in his 1997 book Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings: Recipes and Reflections.

You might remember that Brown is the author of the vegetarian “cooking book” (bible) Tassajara Cooking (1973), which he wrote when he was the head cook at the Tassajara Zen Center in Northern California. He is also the coauthor of The Greens Cookbook. If you aren’t familiar with this man’s classic vegetarian writings, you need to be.

Anyway, the point I was thinking about this morning was this: “Are You Worth Fruit for Breakfast?” That’s the title of his small essay, in which Brown tells how he passed through a breakfast buffet line that got him to thinking. There was a lovely bowl of fresh fruit at the end of the buffet. But there was only a small cutting board and a single, small knife for the breakfasters all to share. And no place to put the peelings. Hence, people were only taking the bananas.

Bananas are tidy to eat. The rest—the oranges, the apples, the pears, and so on—require “work.” Brown gently suggests that cooks ought to think about “ways to encourage people to help themselves,” recognizing the need for appropriate work space, disposal for the compost, and tools adequate for the job. “Make it possible and inviting, and all of us are much more likely to do it.”

But then, reflecting on the work of preparing fresh fruits, he muses: “Sometimes we are not sure: ‘Am I really worth sliced fruit today?’” And he answers this question: “Yes, we are feeling good about ourselves today, and we are worth fruit for breakfast.”

He then proceeds to provide some beautifully simple recipes, plus detailed, logical instructions on how to make supremes (you know: those lovely wheels of sliced citrus that lack all the whitish pith).

Brown’s essay must have been mulling around inside my head two Christmases ago when a friend from Northern California sent us a box of fruit for the holidays. We got all kinds of lovely, special things—farmer’s market items. In addition to the excellent orange blossom honey and fresh almonds, we received guavas, Asian persimmons, sweet little apples, oranges, kiwis, and more. I’d never had fresh guavas or Asian persimmons before, so it was like Christmas on top of Christmas.

And they were lovely—fruits are simply picturesque. Think of all the humans in previous centuries to whom fresh fruits were delicacies, worthy of fine paintings.

So at that time, I had an office job, and I decided I was “worth fruit.” Yes, there was a snax machine in the break room, but I was trying to stay away from that. So I made the conscious decision to make it easy for myself to engage in frugivory.

I outfitted my office: A bowl for fruit, decorative enough; I would bring in the week’s supply on Monday and have it basically gone by Friday afternoon. Functional beauty. In my desk drawer, I stashed a small wooden cutting board and a small, decent knife. Elsewhere, a plate (one of those that doesn’t match any of our other sets), a fork, a spoon, chopsticks. Fruits taste different with chopsticks.

At the store, I make it a point always to get a few fruits that go beyond the “usual” for me. Like the persimmons, which taste like sweet pudding, a little pricey, but they elevate the apples and oranges. Or mangos, papayas, kiwis, blood oranges, Cara Cara pink navels, etc. There’s a whole world of spectacular fruits to try, and they keep bringing us new ones.

So, in late afternoon when the “munchies” would hit, when I’d start feeling a little drowsy, I’d carry my implements and selected fruits to the break room and prep my food. Two or three pieces of fruit, sometimes with yogurt as well.

It looked like something zookeepers might throw down on the ground for the orangutans to pick at, but it was pretty good. It certainly fed my craving, and it saved me from the HooHoos, Ding-a-lings, and fried pork hides of the evil snax machine. If you work in an office somewhere, you might consider this as a way to get you through rush-hour traffic, to keep you in a good mood till dinnertime.

Of course, fruit is good for breakfast, too, and it’s usually what I have these days to get me “off to a nutritious start.” I usually top the fruit with vanilla yogurt; adding it helps with my midlife calcium concerns.

So this morning I celebrated the return of the blood oranges at the supermarket. I encourage you to seek them out and give them a try. The produce department is the best part of the grocery store, you know.