The Complete Tassajara Cookbook

We continue vegetarian week with cooking out of The Complete Tassajara Cookbook. Tassajara is a Buddhist Zen Center outside of San Fransisco. In the summer time, it's open to the public as a retreat/hot springs. But what they are really famous for is it's vegetarian cuisine.
Over the past few years, they have released a couple of amazing new cookbooks. One specializing in lunches, picnics and appetizers. Another specifically for dinners and desserts. Just this past year they re-released a couple of favorites. An updated version of their bread book and The Complete Tassajara Cookbook.
This is what we made.

Kale and White Bean Soup
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Warm Radicchio Salad, Fresh Mozzarella, Avocado, Fire Roasted Walnuts
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Tassajara Spinach and Smoked Cheese Pie
Green Beans with Sesame Paste and Garlic
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Quick Vegan Spice Cake

We started off by preparing the soup. If I recall, in a recent post, i mentioned the joys of using dried beans over canned beans. Mainly because of the texture. For this soup, I reluctantly admit I used canned beans. Due to my unorganization, dried beans just didn't fit into the schedule. There just wasn't enough time to soak and simmer the bean, so I resulted in using the canned white beans. C'est la Vie!
Anyways, as usual, I changed this recipe around a bit to suit me. Because we didn't use the dried beans, we were no able to infuse the flavours of sage, garlic and bay leaf into the beans while simmering. So, I started off by adding onions, garlic and sage to a pot and saute lightly. I added in the beans and tossed all together. I had made a nice vegetable stock using carrots, onion, celery, tomato, leek and some mushrooms. I topped the beans up with the stock and brought to a simmer. After allowing it to simmer for a few minutes, I pureed a bit of it with the immersion blender, leaving it fairly chunky and very lightly creamy. While it was coming back to a simmer, in a seperate pan we sauteed the kale lightly in olive oil, and when just wilted, added it into the soup. Season with salt and pepper and done.
I do have to admit, using canned beans is very convenient. Because it was partly pureed, i was only partly embarrassed for using canned beans.
I think soups that are only half purred are great. They have a bit of creamyness, in this case due to the beans, and still have texture from the whole beans and kale. So next time y'all decide to make a pureed soup, blend only half of it and see what happens.

Next was the salad. This salad was a favorite of the night. We started off by tearing up the huge mozzarella balls into pieces. The Buffalo Mozzarella was fresh from Fromagerie Atwater, the greatest cheese shop in Montreal. The pieces were drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with Herbes de Provence, and seasoned with salt and pepper. It was set aside to marinate while the rest of the salad was put together. The Radicchio was cut into large pieces and added to a hot pan with olive oil, shallots and some garlic. I didn't want the radicchio to wilt too much so I left it at a medium heat. Just to slightly wild, but still have some warmth and crunch. After a few minutes, I added in a bit of balsamic and tossed it together. Put it on a large plate and added sliced avocado, the mozzarella, freshly chopped basil and the fire roasted nuts.
Fire Roasted nuts isn't really the most accurate description for them though. I realized I didn't have any walnuts, but I had some blanched almonds and raw cashews. So i prepared them the same way. In a small pan on high heat, I tossed them to toast, being careful not to burn them too much. Then added a bit of salt and some sugar. Right away it started to smoke and the sugar was caramalizing. The recipe said to toss in constantly so the melted sugar coats everything evenly. Easy enough. The nice thing about these nuts is that they were not "Candied" nuts, rather than just lightly sweetened. They were not fire roasted, or what I would think is fire roasted. But they were tasty non the less.
I have to admit, it wasn't the prettiest salad ever made, but it sure tasted good. The Balsamic and radicchio worked really great together, the marinated mozzarella was creamy and rich, and the nuts added the crunch we needed.

When choosing recipes to cook in classes, I've mostly tried to stay away from making "pies" or quiche for a main course. I find them boring most of the time. And besides, everyone can make a quiche no? But just like deciding to write a blog, I'm trying out new things. So I decided to make the Tassajara Spinach and Smoked Cheese Pie. The one thing that grabbed me about this was the use of smoked cheese. Not an ingredient used too often by many people. One of my favorite recipes is a Gnocchi dish from the Molto Italiano cookbook by everyones favorite orange chef, Mario Batali. The tomato sauce to go with the gnocchi incorporates olives and smoked mozzarella. This pie doesn't just add the smoked mozzarella, but also parmesan and cheddar.
i had to start by making the tart dough before hand in order for it to rest in the fridge. I followed the ingredients exactly, but followed my own method. When I do pie dough, i use the food processor to cut up the cold butter. The less I touch it with my hands, the better. Usually I can achieve a pretty flaky pie dough this way. This recipe adds a mixture of white and whole wheat flour, sugar, salt and paprika to the dough. When using whole wheat dough, there can be a tendency for it to be heavier than usual, so that's why I was careful in how I prepared it. By pulsing it in the food processor, the butter doesn't have a chance to melt and the dough stays relatively chilled. Working fast, I incorporated the cold water, brought the dough together, and right away placed it in the fridge to chill.
Meanwhile I prepared the other ingredients. I sauteed mushrooms and spinach, grated the parmesan, aged cheddar, and smoked cheese. After the dough chilled for 30 minutes, it was rolled out into a pie plate, the bottom spread with dijon, the cheeses were layered at the bottom and the mushroom and spinach mixture put on top. A quick note about the mustard. It ended up I only had a bit of dijon, so I spread on some grain mustard to compensate. Worked out really well in the end.
For the liquid it was a basic egg, milk and cream mixture spiced up with a bit of Tobasco. Poured into the pie and placed in the oven at 425* for 15 minutes, then 300* for 25 minutes. It was really simple to do and the final result was not only impressive to look at, but the taste was out of this world. All that cheese can't be bad. The smoked cheese came through but not too over powering. Well balanced.

The side dish was equally impressive. To start, the beans were blanched in a pot of boiling water until just done, about 1 minute. Meanwhile, we crushed some toasted white sesame seeds in the morter and grated some ginger and garlic on the microplane. In a large hot pan, we added some olive oil, black mustard seeds, and once toasted, added the ginger and garlic. After 30 seconds, the beans were added and tossed together with the spiced. We added in the crushed sesame past and a couple tablespoons of water. The crushed seeds soaked up the liquid and created a thick sort of sauce with the grated ginger and garlic. It was garnished with some black sesame seeds and fresh cilantro. The ginger and garlic gave it a nice sweet taste and the seeds added a little bit of pop/crunch. And the great thing is that it took like 10 minutes to prepare.

Finally dessert. I like making vegan desserts. I don't do it in too many classes because people aren't to keen on the word "vegan". But if you were served a vegan cake, you would not think it was vegan.
One of the things that make vegan baking so great is the ease of preparation. Everything is thrown into one big bowl, mixed together and baked. There is no creaming of butter or room temperature eggs added in stages. Dry and wet ingredients are thrown together. In this case, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves were joined with water and melted coconut oil. I've never used coconut oil before, but it makes sense in this cake. Instead of butter (not vegan) you use oil, and coconut is cook in cakes, so therefore, coconut oil is a good choice.
In the last minute, i decided to double the recipe. It was no problem to do that and the cake came out very nice, but the baking took longer. The recipe sayd 30 minutes, but because I doubled it, it too more like 55 minutes. I also added in, because I had some, raisins and dried blueberries. They added little bursts of sweetness and a bit of texture. Because the cake took longer to bake, and the class was running a little long, i took it out earlier than I should have. I won't call this a "mistake" per se, but lets just say we had what we called "Molten Vegan Spice Cake". Of the 95% that was cooked, it tasted great, the texture was moist and you tasted the spices, but not to overpowering which is nice.
In vegetarian classes I like to try to incorporate tofu. But with the recipes I picked, tofu wouldn't have gone. The tofu recipes have more of an Asian influence, which I love. But having a Tofu-Miso Stew just won't go with the Kale and Bean Soup, Radicchio and Mozzarella salad, and so on. So I bought some soft Almond Silken tofu on the side with the cake. Even in vegetarian classes, tofu is a touchy subject, as it was with a couple people here. But after tasting it, they were surprised how good it was. As an alternative to whipping cream (not vegan) it was a winner. They ate it all up.

In any given vegetarian cooking class i teach, there is usually only maybe 1 or 2 actual vegetarians. Tonight we had 1 vegan. People are just interested in learning about alternatives to eating meat, or just adding life to their vegetarain options. The Complete Tassajara Cookbook will do just that. The recipes are interesting, tasty and exciting. The recipes from the Tassajara are tested in their kitchens and served to their guests. Some recipes have been around since the beginning of the Tassajara in the late sixties. So You can trust they are solid.

Next class: Pasta et Cetera