Summer concert treats

You know summer is in full bloom when outdoor concerts are everywhere. Down in the Peninsula where I live, every town has its own series of concerts, providing free entertainment in different musical genres during a leisurely afternoon or early evening. Listening to music while people-watching or meditating is relaxing enough, but being ambitious as always, I was determined to complete the picture with a homemade picnic meal.

It didn't happen. On a recent Sunday after I had my morning jog, bought groceries from the farmers' market, and cleaned my apartment, I wasn't in the mood of cooking several dishes from scratch to bring to the concert. So I picked up a baguette and some roasted red pepper hummus from a store, and dashed to the Washington Park in Burlingame, where the concert took place. I did bring something homemade though - ginger cookies I made the night before to go along with the picnic meal I had thought I would prepare.

These homey ginger cookies are, again, from Isa Chandra's Vegan with a Vengeance. With a strong molasses undertone, these cookies are not for everyone. But I like their rich, complex flavor and the fragrance that come with every bite. I substituted most of the oil with applesauce screaming "Use me" in my fridge, so the cookies turned out to be more cakey than crispy.

I couldn't remember the name of the band or the type of music it played, but the concert was great. A delightful Sunday afternoon indeed.

Ginger cookies with a strong molasses flavor

Sunday open-air concert in Burlingame's Washington Park

All my efforts to lower my fat intake by using applesauce in the cookies went down the drain though when I bought Haagen-Dazs Five Vanilla Bean ice cream later in the day because it's on sale (and hey, it's hot too!). Made from only five ingredients (milk, sugar, cream, eggs, vanilla beans), its gelato-like texture topped my expectations as the Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream, also from Haagen-Dazs, did a while back. Served with crumbled Belgian-style almond biscuits from Trader Joe's, it was another hugely satisfying indulgence.

Haagen-Dazs Five vanilla ice cream with crumbled almond biscuits

A perfect tie-in for...salads

Yes, it's Mark Bittman's "101 Simple Salads for the Season" article that appeared in the New York Times this week. When he speaks, people just have to listen.

Of the Times's popular food column Minimalist fame, Bittman is a towering figure in food writing. He proselytizes how easy it is to cook well with few quality ingredients, and takes on various causes from promoting sustainable food to a healthier, more vegetarian diet. He has inspired me to learn to cook, and I continue to be his fan by reading his weekly column, subscribing to his Bitten blog, and following his various media appearances, such as his cameo in the everything-looks-so-perfect food and travel show Spain - On the Road Again with fellow hosts Gwyneth Paltrow and Mario Batali.

This 101 salads article is the latest in his series of "101" articles on quick and easy summer cooking over the past few years, each of which I keep referring to from time to time. My favorites are his 101 simple meals from 2007 and 101 picnic recipes from last year. You can make a vegetarian version of most of the recipes, which often take less than 30 minutes to prepare. The thing I like most about these recipes is that they all have some flair - either a tweak of a predictable classic or an exotic touch easily accomplished with everyday ingredients. They make great office lunches too.

Ok, back on topic. I haven't had time to go through all 101 salad recipes yet, but I put together all sorts of salads regularly. They are the best way to showcase seasonal produce in their unadulterated form, require little cooking, and for someone who loves to eat A LOT, they offer the advantage of filling you up without substantial fats and calories (of course you've to be judicious about salad dressings).

My salads usually consist of greens plus 4-5 ingredients with contrasting colors, tastes, or textures rounded out with a homemade salad dressing and crusty loaves of bread. In the summer, I use mostly raw ingredients; in colder months, I often roast the vegetables to give the salads some warmth and depth. The quality of the greens is key here - I've had much tasteless greens, even ones I bought from a farmers' market. So I don't hesitate to pay more for truly fresh, crisp greens.

This "Salad Spinner" article from the Washington Post is another fantastic salad guide I'd recommend. Finally, here are two salads I made recently.

Frisee salad with cherry tomatoes, grated carrots, roasted potatoes, and blueberries, served with European-style multigrain bread

Spinach salad with cherry tomatoes, avocadoes, lemon cucumbers in a lime-cumin dressing, served with batard

British summer pudding

This Summer Pudding recipe from the July/August issue of Vegetarian Times caught my immediate attention when I received it in my mail. It looks elegant but requires little time to put together. In this version, freshly cooked summer berries (I used a mixture of strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries) are ladled into a "bowl" made of sponge cake slices, then the bowl is covered with more cake slices and refrigerated overnight. You serve the pudding by inverting it onto a plate and garnish with more berries. The cake slices take on a rosy tint after soaking up the berry juices. The "wow" moment comes when you cut into the pudding, and the berries burst out of it uncontrollably. The pudding is incredibly moist, lightly sweet, and you get heaps of perfect summer fruits in each bite.

Apparently this summer pudding is a mainstay in the great tradition of British puddings (although it's usually made with white bread). This BBC blog post proclaims the British invented puddings, trifles, and the like. So the British do have something in the dessert arena to rival the French.

Delectable British summer pudding

Like enjoying summer berries, another of my summer rituals is summer reading. I haven't been well-read enough to know before the famed American writer John Updike, who passed away in January this year. But I recently picked up his posthumous collection of short stories, My Father's Tears and Other Stories, from my neighborhood library, and was instantly struck by his extraordinarily adept use of the English language. His writing is hands-down one of the best I've ever read. His depiction of the everyday life of Americans, their love, fear, and trepidations, is piercing, beautiful and sad, yet sympathetic. Savoring his writing is like chewing on good food: it promises layers of complex, intensely gratifying pleasures, and always leaves you with a consummate feeling. Read more about John Updike in this New York Times article.

Writing to savor - John Updike's My Father's Tears

Whole Foods July 4th shopping spree

Over the July 4th weekend I also went to Whole Foods Market for a shopping spree. It's true that Whole Foods is pricey, but after scouring various stores in the Bay area, I've found that for many natural or organic brand-name food products, you find the best bargains at Whole Foods. Going to Whole Foods is like stepping into a candy store every time - there's an overwhelming range of products shouting at you, and I can easily spend more than an hour in the store checking out new and sales items without even starting to get what I set out to buy (not to mention tons of money). Among the items I bought this time were vegan deli meat from Field Roast Grain Meat, Nayonaise (vegan mayonnaise), and the always visually stunning Terra Blues Potato Chips. I felt like scoring a win when I left the store because these items were not only on sale, but I also had coupons to cut down their prices further. Hey, don't frown, I am a guerrilla vegetarian after all!

Shopping booty from Whole Foods

I put together a quick sandwich with some leftover multi-grain bread I bought from Arizmendi Bakery, vegan deli meat, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, Nayonaise and roasted red pepper hummus, and served it alongside the blue potato chips. I know I raved about the bread from Arizmendi Bakery before, but the multi-grain bread was another winner. After a few days on the countertop, it still smelled fantastic, and the molasses in it left me wanting for more like a drug every time I had it. I have a weakness for the Terra Blues chips too - I first encountered it on a JetBlue flight, during which the chips were served as a snack. Kudos to both companies for their great marketing as I now associate the blue chips with JetBlue top-of-mind, and I actually tell people about them, like what I'm doing now. I don't know if it's the color of the chips, slightly sweet taste, or plain good crunchiness, I have since become a devotee and they remain one of my most favorite chips.

Vegan deli meat sandwich served with blue Terra chips

To continue with the July 4th-patriotic-color theme, I made a vegan blueberry coffee cake from Isa's Vegan with a Vengeance. Perhaps because I halved the amount of sugar used, the cake tasted a bit bland. I also substituted applesauce for a lot of the oil, so it was quite dry and dense. I guess it's the trade-off you'll have to make for eating (slightly more) healthy. Anyway, the coffee cake recipe is available from the Post Punk Kitchen site too.

Half-eaten blueberry coffee cake

July 4th color-coordinated jelly

I was reading a Mighty Appetite blog post last week about making color-coordinated sweets for July 4th, and I finally settled on making a jelly, inspired by the Red, White, and Blue Terrine recipe from the blog Fatfree Vegan Kitchen. Believe me, I am no Martha Stewart, but after some busy days at work, I really wanted to do something unique to this patriotic holiday. Since it's almost the end of cherry season, I floated the idea of making a clafoutis, a sophisticated-sounding French dessert I've been dying to try. But I was hoping for a more healthful dessert, so I was thrilled that this jelly is not only vegan, but also fat-free and requires no refined sugar.

I didn't get to buy blueberries that give the original recipe the blue color, and I substituted them with some fleshy, crimson-colored pluots without a hitch. I was surprised that it took so little time to prepare this dessert (or perhaps, I work more quickly now). Dissolving the agar powder, cutting and layering the fruits, pouring the agar mixture over them, then popping the jelly pan into the fridge - all under 30 minutes. When I got back home a couple of hours later, I had a chilled, guilt-free dessert waiting for me.

Chilled July 4th jelly made of summer fruits

The jelly looked gorgeous when you served it upside-down with the sliced strawberries on top. It was sweetened only by fruits (strawberries, bananas, pluots) and the pear juice I used to dissolve the agar, and while I'm all for cutting down on sugar, it turned out to be a bit too light for me. So, you guessed it right, I grabbed more sweets! There happened to be a bazaar run by a Japanese Buddhist temple near where I live, and I went there and bought two imagawayakis, Japanese pastries filled with adzuki bean paste, still warm and fresh off the molding pan. Oh god, I rarely come across imagawayakis ever since I came to the US, and they were as homey and comforting as I've always known them. Too bad that the bazaar was around for a weekend only!

San Mateo Japanese Buddhist Bazaar

Imagawayakis filled with adzuki bean paste

20-minute sesame noodles

Well, maybe it took me 30 minutes. Nonetheless, sesame noodles take a solid spot in my repertoire of simple meals that I keep making over and over again, especially when I am pressed for time like this week. In the version I am sharing with you today, I first cooked some Vietnamese rice noodles and sugar snap peas in boiling water, grated a carrot, then tossed everything with a sauce made from tahini (ground sesame paste), warm water, minced ginger, and a bit of tamari. I served the noodles alongside canned mock meat that I bought from a Chinese grocery store in Oakland's Chinatown. The mock meat was imported from Taiwan. I know I said before that I would eat local as much as possible, but I've yet to find a convenient place to buy freshly-made, quality Chinese-style mock meat in the Bay area. (Lucky Creation Vegetarian Restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown is another place that does it well). In case you're wondering, Chinese-style mock meat is usually made with wheat gluten and have a chewy texture, and can have different tastes depending on how it is prepared. I got vegetarian ham and abalone this time.

Sesame noodles served with Chinese-style mock meat

You can easily create your own version of sesame noodles, or more broadly, Asian noodle salad, by experimenting with different kinds of noodles (buckwheat and soba are my favorites), veggies, and ingredients in the sauce. Say substitute tahini with peanut butter or toasted sesame oil, or toss in some cubed tofu or avocado. I like my noodles to be a bit spicy, so I often add some red pepper flakes when I make the sauce or at the very end. Garnish with chopped green onions, mint, cilantro, or lemon/lime wedges. You can serve the noodles warm or cold, and because they hold together well and the flavors actually get better if they have time to develop, these noodles are ideal to take to the office for lunch.

These two recipes from Vegetarian Times and food blog Cookthink should be good starting points for you to get creative!