Full Gastronomic Tilt

Listening: Toubab Krewe, Live at the Orange Peel
(A favorite)

Vegan crab cakes. Ponder that for a second. Consider also the fact that Vegenaise tastes enough like mayo to fool even the most hardened sandwich spread devotee. Which I am not. But if I were, I’d be converted.

Vegans are a creative bunch. I mean, they have to be - given the no meat, no dairy, no animal byproduct tenets of their culinary religion. Years ago, in college, like so many meat eaters humans - I scorned what I didn’t understand. No cheese?! Nutritional yeast? Sounds like something I don’t want to put in my body, nutritional claims aside. I saw veganism as a disruption of the natural order of things.

I now realize I had that backwards.

The older I get, the less meat I eat. These days it’s once or twice a week max, often less. I’m choosy about the types of meat I put into my body and how much of it I eat at a time. (as local as possible with vetted humane practices and no more than 4-6 ounces)

But I do eat meat. And I enjoy it.

I’ve read The Food Revolution (strongly recommend), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (ditto) and two of the Pollan books (first half of Omnivore’s Dilemma is a good read, In Defense of Food gets a resounding meh. Do not recommend. The tagline is the gist of it - Eat. Not too much. Mostly plants. Common sense stuff). I’ve thought long and hard about why I eat meat - and I accept it. I could give up eating meat tomorrow and miss very little. While that may eventually happen, today…I like having the choice.

Anyway. I have more vegan/vegetarian cookbooks in my kitchen than any other type. The ingredient choice and recipe creativity can be counted on to stimulate me into trying something new, a little different, perhaps even a bit out of my comfort zone. I’m reminded that there are uses for nutritional yeast and Bragg’s beyond sprinkling on popcorn, that most anything calling for red wine vinegar AND tamari is quite tasty, and that tempeh is not just a brick of texturally odd, tasteless protein.

This brings me to Isa Chandra Moskowitz, whose cookbooks I don’t actually own. This will soon change, because I do lust for them…particularly Vegan With A Vengeance, Veganomicon and Vegan Brunch. Her punk rock DIY aesthetic and honesty speak to me on a level I can’t easily get to with cookbooks, which I deeply appreciate.

Long way around the kitchen table, I found myself in a position to make brunch one weekend morning. I’m known to fall back on staples at breakfast time when I’m cooking - omelets, french toast, tofu scramble, fresh fruit, juice, coffee, mimosas if I’m feeling perky. Sick of the staples, I wanted to make something NEW.

Enter the Post Punk Kitchen, the blog of Isa Chandra Moskowitz herself. I had Googled Vegan Brunch, because the name of the cookbook was all I could recall and I thought perhaps some lucky blogger had scored a recipe to share. Look no further than the source. This ‘teaser’ recipe did its job supremely well. Vegan Brunch will be mine!

The recipe is not difficult or all that time intensive, but it is intentional. You first have to boil/steam the tempeh to alter the textural composition (did I just use a variant of texture twice in four paragraphs? yeah, I did…), then let it cool before you form the cakes so they stay together. No Old Bay here, but you don’t even miss it thanks to a neat blend of ginger, oregano, mustard, hot sauce and nori.

And the Vegenaise. Yumwow. Give these cakes a try. Loads easier than cracking some over-fished, unsustainable crab or dealing with the fishiness on your hands or picking pesky bones out of your lunch.

Recipe here.