Skip to main content

Cookbooks 4: Moosewood



4.     The Moosewood Collective of Ithaca NY. Mollie Katzen’s original Moosewood Cookbooks (1974 and 1977) are classics both of vegetarian and American cuisine, with their hippie happiness, ashram commune stews, and handwritten pages. My copies are written over in my own hand with changes to ingredients and levels. Her departure from the Moosewood Restaurant brought into play the collective composition, i.e. anonymous, of all subsequent titles under that name. We have several, but ‘Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant’ (1990) is our favourite. The book is divided into ethnic and regional cuisines, the outcome of their practice of testing new vegetarian dishes each Sunday at the restaurant. It is a product of the expanding adventure of Moosewood, though signs of its heyday are everywhere, for example, the weights and measures section is titled ‘What we mean when we say, “One medium onion…”’ The answer to that is one cup of onion, diced.

Recipe. To make Oden (Japanese winter stew) dashi stock, heat 4 cups of WATER with a square of KONBU. When bubbles begin, remove the konbu then soak DRIED SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS for 20 minutes in the liquid. Remove the mushrooms and add 3 tablespoons of SAKE, 5 tablespoons of TAMARI SOY, and 3 tablespoons of MIRIN. The konbu goes into a large saucepan with all of the following: HARD-BOILED EGGS (I usually add one for each person at the table), 1 cake of TOFU cut into cubes, 3 CARROTS cut into rounds, 3 TURNIPS quartered, 2 POTATOES ditto, and the mushrooms. The dashi stock is then poured over the stew. You bring to a simmer and keep it like that for 30 minutes, partially covered. The Oden is then kept in a cool place like the fridge overnight. Next day, before serving, bring to a simmer then add SPRING ONIONS, LITTLE SPINACH LEAVES a big handful, and maybe a bunch of WATERCRESS though I find that can be too much sometimes. Serve with HOT MUSTARD or WASABI.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy?

This is one of two short papers given by Philip Harvey at the first Spiritual Reading Group session for 2014 on Tuesday the 18 th of February in the Carmelite Library in Middle Park. He also gave a paper on that occasion, which can be found on the Library blog, entitled ‘A Rationale for Purgatory’ . Nadezhda Mandelstam recalls in one of her books how her husband, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, would say that when reading poetry we can spend a great deal of time discussing what it means, but the first and main question about a poem is not what does it mean, but why was it written. That is the place to start. Here are eleven reasons that I offer quietly to help us think about this poem: Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy? You may have other reasons and these are invited. We will spend most of our time today looking at meanings, but also at why. I wrote these out as they occurred to me, so there is no priority order. 1.      He wrote the poem because ...
4 comments
Read more

Some Thoughts on an Inscription INVICTIS PAX

Watercolour by Jayaram Parappil An article written for the parish paper of St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne Words by Philip Harvey and Peter Bryce In the Victorian period every youth with a classical education knew that Invictus was a title given to Roman gods. Central amongst these was Invictus Sol, the unconquerable sun. The cult of sun worship was a contender for attention in the early Christian era of the Empire, imported to Rome from the East and a threat to the local deities. Moreover, Invictus was by extension a motto of the Roman legions, making it a military word of exalted expectations. There is the very faintest echo of this in the naming of the 1948 Australian cricket team, the Invincibles, led by the formidable Donald Bradman. The English were hit for six and no one got hurt. The triumphalism inherent in this word is displaced and problematized by another piece of Victoriana. Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole t...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Walk (Seamus Heaney)

This poem was read aloud at Janet Campbell’s funeral in Hamilton in Victoria in December 2006. Janet was a great lover of poetry all her life, a great reader of poetry, and she read everything of Seamus Heaney. Indeed, when she worked in Melbourne or London bookshops Janet would grab hold of Faber pre-publication copies of Heaney if they came into the backroom, and disappear for days, copying lines onto postcards for her friends, transferring lines into her lifetime of diaries. Diaries that were also a lifeline. Janet read everything, but Heaney was one of the regulars. Seamus Heaney keeps a tight line. He is rarely though completely opaque and the way into this poem is the word ‘longshot’. We only find in the second of the two poems that we are being asked to look at two photographs. Or, at least, poems that are like photographs. Or, better still, strong memories that have taken on in the mind the nature of longshots. The two poems in one are reminders of close relationships. ...
Post a Comment
Read more