Recipe: Acorn Squash Curry

One of the things I've begun to do since becoming a vegetarian that I used not to is more cooking integrating multiple vegetables at once, creating dishes that taste delicious and last for several days, rather than my old approach, which I grew up with, which entails cooking several different things separately and then putting them on the plate. The old pattern entailed cooking a piece of meat (say a lamb chop), a vegetable (say, spinach), and a starch (say brown rice).  This is how my mother cooked and still does; my late maternal grandparents, both of them very good cooks, would make more integrated dishes, perhaps based on their experiences growing up in the South before and during the Great Depression and its aftermath, when putting whatever you had into a pot was the preferable way to go.

C and I, or alone, would then have these meat+starch+vegetable with bread (homemade over the last few years). Pasta dishes were an obvious exception; in those I sometimes combined multiple vegetables (onions, mushrooms; vegetarian lasagna involved spinach, zucchini, yellow squash, etc.), or vegetables and meat.  Occasionally I would cook stews or soups--which are extremely easy, and my friend Phoebe M. used to recommend them many years ago, but the idea of making a soup, for whatever reason, left me cold--or other dishes entailing combinations, but these were comparative rare. I'd go to the store and plan things around the meat I was buying. What would go with these chicken legs? What would go with these pork chops? And so on.

When I first shifted to vegetarianism, I would do something similar, cooking 2-3 vegetables (beets, broccoli, etc.) separately, adding the brown rice or couscous, and then have a slice of bread with it. But learning to combine several different vegetables in dishes has been a boon. It saves lots of money; the dishes last for days, whether I'm eating them by myself or with C; and when they work, they are delicious. Another thing I've learned to do is improvise: if I have certain spices in the kitchen, I can now figure out different kinds of curries, for example, and create something that has a different flavor depending upon the vegetable at hand. Also, having certain types of beans, lentils, and varieties of rice makes variations on certain dishes possible.

Here is a winter dish that I created--of course others have created something very similar and you can find recipes online--the other day that is perfect for winter meals. It incorporates acorn squash, which I almost always used to roast or cook in a pan of water, but which here becomes the basis for a filling and incredibly tasty meal.  Its natural sweetness, amplified by the carrots, and hardiness is such that I didn't even need to add chutney, and the potato adds a contrasting flavor but similar texture.  The curry I use below is improvised; you can change some of the ingredients, thus varying its flavor, but the basic cumin + coriander + turmeric + ginger + cinnamon + cayenne + clove combo seems to produce a delicious flavor, and obviates the need to buy pre-made curry powders, which you still may want to have for other dishes where a particular (red Madras, say, or milder curry) is what you're seeking.  Making this sort of curry means a fragrant kitchen, and less need to try to figure out how to incorporate vital herbs and spices into your diet.

ACORN SQUASH CURRY

2 TB olive oil
1 medium-sized or large acorn squash, cut into 1 inch chunks
1/2 large or 1 small brown potato, chunked
1-2 carrots diced
1/2 large yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic diced (or equivalent)
2 TB fresh ground ginger
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cardamom (optional)
1 tsp ground cayenne pepper (optional)
1 tsp turmeric
2 cloves
1 cinnamon stick (or ground equivalent)
1/2 can of unsalted tomato paste
1 cup of water or vegetable stock* + extra water while cooking
salt & black pepper to taste

Start by adding chunking and dicing all your vegetables. Wash the skin of your acorn squash before you chunk it. Using a sharp knife and being very careful, pierce the skin of the squash and cut it in half.  Then, after removing the very tough ends and the seeds, slowly cut it into small chunks. Go slowly, because acorn squash skins can be tough, and you don't want to...well, you want to keep all your fingers! (Let me add that I like the texture of the softened acorn skin, but if you want it softer, you might microwave the diced chunks for 2 minutes to soften them up.)

Next add the olive to in a cooking pot. Let it heat on low, and add diced onion and garlic. (I highly recommend using real onions and not onion powder, both for flavor and texture.) When the onions have begun to break down, add the acorn squash and the carrots, to let them soften. Turn the heat to medium. Add salt and pepper. Stir frequently. Once the squash has begun to soften, add the potato chunks, the spices (including the ginger), the tomato paste, and the cup of stock or water. Let it boil for a bit, then simmer for 30 minutes, stirring and adding a little water periodically to ensure that the potatoes don't burn.

(If you want some protein, about 20 minutes before you're done you can add 1/2 cup of red lentils + 1/2 cup of more water to cover them or cook up some curried lentils (1/2 cup lentils + 1 cup of water + salt, pepper, curry powder, cooked till lentils are soft) to go with this dish and brown rice.)

The squash and squash skin should be soft before you serve. Also, remove the cloves & cinnamon stick if you are serving to guests, who may not be so found of these hard bursts of flavor.

Serve over brown rice (2 1/2 cups of vegetable stock or water + 1 cup of brown rice + tsp of olive oil), with fresh homebread bread, and there you go!

*I learned how to make vegetable stock from watching and (probably misremembering!) Chef Jacques Pepin's show on how to make really scrumptious, practical dishes, but here goes, and you can freeze it so it's always available: 2 cups of water + 1/2 onion + 1 stalk of celery diced + 1-2 carrots diced + pinch of salt and pepper --> boil for 20 minutes et voilà, you have basic vegetable stock!

On the Road to Vegetarianism 3 + Homemade Marinara Sauce

In 2010, I blogged twice (first in March and then again in May) about my adoption of a mostly vegetarian--vegetarianish is probably the correct term--diet. In those posts I described how I'd moved away from eating almost all meat except for the occasional seafood--and had also decided to forgo almost all processed foods with a few exceptions. I noted that I had not, however, become a vegan. Cutting out meat was a huge step; while I'd cut back on beef years before for a variety of reasons, until that January I regularly ate chicken, lamb, turkey, and, to a lesser extent, pork and duck. It was a rare meal that did not include meat of some sort.  Other changes included more baking, daily cooking, and meals based more on seasonal and local options. I started eating vegetables I had infrequently eaten (eggplant, cauliflower) or infrequently since childhood (turnips, beets), and devising all kinds of dishes that combined them, often drawn from South Asian and Mediterranean cuisines in particular.

In my initial post I remarked on my amazement at being to go a week without meat; in my second, I said that I had gone weeks without it. I have now passed the year and a half mark (August 15 is about a year and 8 months to be exact), and I am happy to say that I've been able to maintain doing without meat (and processed foods in general), both in Chicago and Jersey City, and during travels here and there, with only a few exceptions (holidays like Thanksgiving; a meal at the home of a poet friend in Los Angeles, where only hamburgers--and lettuce--were available; etc.).  I still don't miss meat, and I still have not gotten into tofu, seitan or meat-like substitutes, but I do like eggs, some dairy (mostly cheese), and fish and shellfish on occasion that have not decided to become a vegan.  Not going the vegan route has also meant less disruption for C, though he eats less meat than he once did, even when I'm halfway across the country.

From the beginning, my shift to vegetarianism included recognizing the ethical dimensions of doing so, as a range of philosophers, critics, food writers, and others have articulated over the centuries, but those initially were less crucial than my personal desire, for health and economic reasons, to make the shift.  Over the last year and a half, I've watched, as I used to with horror, the ongoing massive recalls of US meat products and produce, the increasing epidemic of obesity in this country and in rich and developing nations, and the exploding price of food in general, and feel that moving towards a vegetarian diet was the way to go.  Countless revelations, in print, film and video, about the horrors of industrial meat production in the US and the West have underlined my conviction. Yet I've striven to maintain my stance of not proselytizing for or pushing my shift on anyone else, though as I mentioned, several people close to me have moved more towards this way of eating. I've kept myself in check because I realize full well that traditions and cultures of meat-eating are deeply ingrained in this society--I once bought into them--and across the West, and all the appeals anyone makes to anything beyond sheer economics, or in specialized cases to spiritual and religious traditions, will have little impact on most people's eating habits.

I also realize that we live in a time where in the US at least, many of the least nutritional foods are cheaper than basic staples, because of the structure of government subsidies of various crops and processed foods, and it continues to be the case that those with the least resources can economize, to the extent possible, by eating fast and processed foods, rather than healthier options, including a diet mostly comprising of fruits and vegetables.  Such a diet also requires the added efforts of planning and cooking--with improvisation thrown in--which our society had for decades come to deprioritize, though the vogue over the last decade of food TV, foodieism and culinary education in general has reversed this to some extent. Alongside all the reality shows like Top Chef, Iron Chef, and the glut of Gordon Ramsey-related programming remystifying cooking, there have been more than enough shows guiding attentive viewers through simple, delicious meals.

I am glad I learned to cook as a child, having watched my mother and grandparents do so (my father could cook only the simplest meals, though he could barbecue anything) and having done so for most of my adulthood after college, but I have come across a large portion of people who never grew up learning how to cook and, even with the culinary vogue over the last decade, have not learned to do much beyond prepare already prepared meals. One thing that cooking vegetarian meals has done is to make me a more skillful cook in some ways, and a confident cook overall.  Knowing that I'll have to whip something up that tastes good without revolving around meat means that I've had to learn new ways of cooking,  combining types of foods, trying things I hadn't thought of, because I could always default to: meat + starch + vegetable or even just meat + vegetable + bread.  Over the years I can attest to having assimilated many recipes and techniques, by the likes of Julia Child, Martha Stewart, Jacques Pépin, Lidia Bastianich, Rachael Ray, Paul Dean, G. Garvin and others, and then there is my Lonely Planet of cooking, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, which has yet to fail me in any regard (it sits alongside cookbooks like The Joy of Cooking and by figures like Patti Labelle and institutions like Cupcake Café), but aside from a vegetarian cookbook Reggie H. provided, most vegetarian cookbooks I've seen have tended towards an older way of thinking about vegetarianism that leaves out a range of possibilities.  Thus learning new techniques and improvising have proved the way to go so far. And I hope to keep going forward along these lines.

None of this is new to some of you, I know. So please indulge me. I welcome any thoughts J's Theater readers have about vegetarianism and veganism, vegetarian and vegan diets, and anything else related to this topic.  I also have included a recipe for intrepid home cooks who've never made their own tomato sauce. I tried this last year, after we got a great harvest of tomatoes, and then again recently, and it was better the second time around. You can make your own marinara sauce at any time, though, using canned tomatoes, and it will taste better--and less sweet and salty--than almost any brand you buy in a jar.

HOMEMADE VEGETARIAN MARINARA SAUCE
Based on several online recipes, including author John Mariani's, and a bit of experimentation

1/2 cup olive oil
1 large white or yellow onion
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed or diced
2 Tbsp fresh or dried herbs (basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, etc.)
1/2 cup red wine
12 cups peeled and seeded tomatoes (or 2 (28 oz.) cans of crushed or chopped Italian-style tomatoes, with sauce)
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
1 1/2-2 cups white mushrooms, sliced
1 teaspoon of sugar (you can skip, but add if using canned tomatoes to counteract their acidity)
salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, heat the olive oil. Add the onions and cook slowly, till they sweat. Do not burn them, as this will affect the taste of the sauce. When the onions are translucent and soft (if yellow, they'll be golden brown), add the garlic and dried or fresh herbs (fresh herbs retain their flavor if added later, but it's okay to add them at this point), carrots, celery (and any other vegetables, like yellow squash or zucchini) and cook for 5-7 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of red wine, to deglaze the pan, and let this mixture cook for 2 minutes. Add the peeled and seeded tomatoes or canned tomatoes and their juice, and the mushrooms, and stir to combine all the ingredients. [Again, for simple marinara, you can skip the mushrooms.] Bring to a simmer, and cook on low heat, stirring occasionally for 2 hours. As the sauce is cooking, add 1 tsp. of sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. Serve with freshly cooked whole wheat pasta!

[Note that if you are making simple marinara, you can start with onions and garlic alone, skip the rest of the vegetables and the red wine, keep or remove the onions and garlic before adding the tomatoes and sauce, and just cook the vegetable-less tomatoes for 20-25 minutes. This version goes well with linguine, spaghetti or any other pasta.]

How to Peel and Seed Tomatoes
First core all the tomatoes, and gently score their bottoms with a +. This will help to pull the skin the tomatoes. When you have done this with all the tomatoes, use a slotted spoon or laden to lower them into boiling water and let them cook for 15-30 seconds. (If you drop them in you could get boiling backsplash. Not good!) Do not overcook them. Add 3-4 tomatoes at a time. After they've boiled immediately transfer them to a bowl of icewater. Do with the next set until you have blanched all the tomatoes. You should be able to peel off the skins with ease. Next, using a strainer over a bowl, split the tomatoes apart with your fingers, and gently rub them against the inside of the strainer to remove as many of the seeds as you can. The juice will run into the bowl, and you can place the seeded tomato right into the bowl as well. After you've collected the seeds, dump them on a paper towl or bowl (you can save them if you want to plant tomatoes for next year!), and proceed until you have completely seeded all the tomatoes. You should have a bowl of tomato sauce and pulp, with no skin and no seeds when you're done.

Photos

Tomatoes from the backyard garden
Lightly scoring the tomatoes' bottoms
The tomatoes cored

Blanching the tomatoes, part 1 (a brief boil)

Blanching the tomatoes, part 2 (cooling in icewater)

Peeling the tomatoes

A peeled tomato

Gently seeding a tomato

Seeding a tomato and collecting its juice
The tomatoes after being peeled and seeded
Sprig of oregano from the backyard garden

Sprig of thyme from the backyard garden 
Diced vegetables (basically a mirepoix), before the tomato paste has been added

After the tomato sauce is added

The tomato sauce cooking Homemade sauce with homemade baked bread