The Moosewood Restaurant Table: 250 Brand-New Recipes from the Natural Foods Restaurant That Revolutionized Eating in America

877 Pages·2017·39.13 MB·English

THE
MOOSEWOOD
RESTAURANT
TABLE
250 Brand-New Recipes from the Natural
Foods Restaurant That Revolutionized
Eating in America
THE MOOSEWOOD
COLLECTIVE
Food Photography by Al Karevy | Food Styling by Patti
Harville
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page

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INTRODUCTION
Fourteen books and forty-four years ago, The Vegetable Kingdom,
Inc., our founders, brought forth on this land of the Cayuga Nation
a new eatery, Moosewood Restaurant, conceived in counterculture
idealism and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created
hungry and endowed with an innate appetite for real, wholesome,
luscious food, and that the people who grow our food, cook our food,
and serve our food shall be treated with dignity on this earth. Now
we’re engaged in a great food revolution, testing whether that notion
or any eatery so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
We weren’t the first natural foods restaurant to put the emphasis on natural,
plant-based food, and we certainly won’t be the last, but Moosewood Restaurant
and its cookbooks have influenced how and what a lot of people prefer to eat
today—fresh food that travels directly from the garden and the farm to the table
and the fork. Somewhere between the farm and your fork is where our recipes,
no-nonsense cookery, and a love of culinary adventure fit in. We’ve never
aspired to haute cuisine; everything we’ve ever cooked up is well within your
reach. And yeah, we’re still cooking after all these years. Welcome to our table!
Many of us believe that fresh, nutritious food is a human right, and we work
to support childhood nutrition and family farms, increase the number of local
growers, see agricultural workers make a living wage, turn food deserts into
oases with community gardens and regionally sourced foods, and make healthy
food affordable and accessible to all people.
People are still uncertain about what to call our restaurant’s cuisine. Is it
vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian? The answer is yes, and we’ve published recipes
in all of those categories. Is there any orthodoxy here? Without adherence to any
doctrine or ideology, we leave the preparation of meat and poultry to other
establishments and writers. We decided that this book should focus on what we
do best—using our creativity in the vegetable kingdom. So, going back to our
roots and the type of food that has made us famous, this is a book of 250 new
vegetarian and vegan recipes drawing on multiple ethnic influences. Chapters
organize everything into familiar categories: appetizers, dips and spreads, soups,
salads, sandwiches, snacks, sides, entrées, sweets, and extras. There are tips and
information in the sidebars accompanying some recipes.
We develop recipes for our cookbooks outside the restaurant to make sure
they work without the backup of a commercial kitchen. So the Moosewood table
extends onto our personal kitchen tables. Before long, every horizontal kitchen
surface is covered with competing versions of multiple recipes! Our goal is to
make yours the next Moosewood table, maybe a little tidier.
One of our talents, apparently, is to devise vegetarian meals that non-
vegetarians like enough that they don’t miss the meat. That’s also how we
approach vegan and gluten-free dishes now—we make them tasty and satisfying
enough that most folks won’t miss the cheese, or eggs, or wheat flour.
Throughout the chapters, we have included a substantial number of vegan and
gluten-free vegetarian recipes that can be enjoyed by everyone at the table.
Many other recipes can be made vegan by omitting a dairy product or can be
made gluten-free with simple substitutions.
Is Moosewood Restaurant a health-food joint? Some people certainly think so
when they see fresh-squeezed juices and all the vegetables, herbs, legumes,
greens, whole grains, nuts, and tofu we use. We serve folks with a sweet tooth
who won’t touch sugar. We serve customers who can’t consume tree nuts,
groundnuts, gluten, any food with meat, any food with wheat, any food that’s
white, anything with fat, oils, eggs, lactose, glucose, fructose, fish, corn, canola,
capsicum, nightshades, nitrates, sugar, honey, hominy, citrus, seeds, shellfish,
sulfites, soy, wine, beer, or booze. But they still find things to eat at the
Moosewood table.
We’ve gotten to know our customers and readers pretty well by now. Their
tastes and expectations, their curiosity and culinary IQ have grown exponentially
and, like us, they don’t want to be bored with their food. So, we went on a few
adventures while we were developing this book. We’ve used many new and
rediscovered ingredients, tried new combinations, spices, and condiments, and
explored a couple of cuisines that are relatively new to us. We dove into working
with some less common fruits and vegetables that you might find in your CSA or
at the farmers’ market: fascinatingly fractal romanesco broccoli, fresh fennel,
jicama, watermelon radishes, broccoli rabe, rutabaga, garlic greens, garlic
scapes, golden beets, celeriac; fresh shiitake, oyster, enoki, and other
mushrooms; microgreens and power greens; heirloom vegetables and fruits,
especially apples, carrots, tomatoes. We’ve gotten more familiar with grains like
freekeh, farro, black rice, red rice, millet, red quinoa, flax, and chia seeds. Even
though the market has exploded with enticing condiments and seasonings, or
maybe because of it (we want to improve on what we can buy), we’ve
experimented with mixing up our own versions of favorite blends, such as
za’atar, preserved lemons, harissa, and chermoula sauce; our own garam masala
and spice rub; and our own gluten-free flour mix.
We have some new takes on familiar traditional dishes, such as our Nori Rolls
with Kale, Burmese Tohu Thoke with tamarind, vegetarian Banh Mi, Cuban
Picadillo with tofu, Pasta Carbonara with zucchini and smoked cheese, Spicy
Filo Samosas, Butternut Squash Latkes, Power Pesto, Pozole Verde, Sweet
Potato Gnocchi, Walnut-Cheddar-Herb “Meatballs,” Ethiopian Greens, and
Jamaican Jerk Tempeh Patties. In case you still think we’re just a health-food
joint, check out recipes for baked goods from Bialys to Apricot Frangipane Tart,
and a gluten-free version of a family favorite, Erma Mabel’s Fresh Rhubarb
Cake.
Whether making food for you, your family, or your friends, cooking at home
is self-affirming and empowering on many levels. Among arts and crafts,
cooking with wholesome, intriguing ingredients is one of the most emotionally
and physically satisfying of creative activities, harnessing all of our senses and
intuition. It’s not just about filling up the void; being in relationship with the
character, sound, color, and aroma of your ingredients, the tasks, the timing, the
temperatures, the tools of your trade, and navigating the turf of a kitchen can be
as engrossing as carving wood, painting from life, or soloing on your sax. You
may read the chart, but you can always improvise or riff on a variation. Recipes
are only guidelines.
HOW HOT FOR HOW LONG?
How long it takes to cook, sauté, bake, or roast depends on the
size, shape, material, and weight of your pan, the exact
temperature, pattern, and source of your heat, and how hot your
burner is when you turn it to medium-high (whatever you think
medium-high is). Cook the onions on medium heat until
translucent, about 5 minutes—but getting to translucence might
take 10 minutes or 4 minutes, depending on the pan and stovetop
you use. The only place that cooking times can be expected to
pretty well match your experience is when boiling and steaming
something. Boiling is boiling, but there are still variables—how
tender is your kale, how big did you cut the potatoes? How long
the liquid takes to come to a boil depends on the size of the pot, the
altitude, the size of the burner, and, of course, whether you’re
watching that pot. Even the time it takes to “purée until smooth”
depends on how sharp and fast your blender/food processor blade
is, plus the shape of the container. So use what you know about
your stovetop and your oven. Use your nose, cool your jets, cook
with love, and use the Force.
BREAKFAST
&
BRUNCH