AR-News: NY Times - Meatless, Not Joyless

[Atrak at aol.com]

The New York Times

May 19, 2004 THE MINIMALIST 

Meatless, Not Joyless

By MARK BITTMAN
    
 MADE dinner the other night for five, two of them vegetarians, and while 
shopping I realized how often such a situation now arises. Vegetarianism, common 
to most of the world but still regarded skeptically by staunchly carnivorous 
Americans, has made significant inroads into the national culture, and it is 
increasingly making itself felt at American tables.

Vegetarians coming to dinner? I complained about this prospect for nearly 30 
years. Now I was champing at the bit of opportunity.

What changed? Thirty years ago vegetarian food in America meant either brown 
rice and vegetables stir-fried until lifeless or something cooked in the style 
of the original Moosewood Cookbook — heavily laden with cheese and cream. Now 
vegetarian food draws from the traditions of the entire world, traditions 
that, in the form of ingredients, spices and cooking tools, are now available to 
everyone, at least those with access to good supermarkets or the Internet.

A generation ago, you had to travel all over town — yes, even in New York — 
to find real Parmesan and naturally brewed soy sauce, let alone jasmine rice 
or aceto balsamico tradizionale. All four are now available at most 
supermarkets, along with everything else necessary for the two meals that follow — two 
menus, one Italian and one Chinese.

It is amazing that people talk about the Mediterranean tradition of 
vegetable-dominated meals and the fact that Chinese cooking is largely composed of 
vegetables accented by bits of meat, while continually cooking Italian and Chinese 
meals centered around meat. The menus here take another approach, and retain 
their distinctive national characters and flavors while doing away with meat 
entirely. Together, I think, they prove that meatless menus built from 
traditional foods can be not only satisfying but also enticing. And easy.

When I hear the term "vegetarian lifestyle," I reach for my skirt steak. But 
the arguments for eating vegetarian food, if not daily then at least 
regularly, are quite compelling, even to lifelong omnivores like myself. I am no 
preacher, and I will be grilling meat tonight, but consider the following:

• The livestock population of the United States eats well enough to feed the 
world's human population several times over.

• Raising animals for food has caused extensive environmental damage not only 
to equatorial rain forests but to North American prairies.

• Using increasingly limited resources to produce meat sometimes sounds just 
dumb. (My favorite statistic: it takes dozens of gallons of water to grow a 
pound of wheat and thousands to raise a pound of meat.)

• And finally, a terrifying little fact: 70 percent of all antibiotics sold 
in the United States are used to treat healthy livestock. I won't even mention 
mad cow disease.

All of the above makes me ambivalent, but none of it has converted me. Nor 
too many other Americans: most surveys find that less than 3 percent are 
vegetarians. But there are additional reasons, not much discussed, to consider a 
vegetarian diet at least part-time, and to introduce a meatless take on the 
Minimalist that will run regularly.

No one, after all, says you have to be a committed, converted, proselytizing 
vegetarian to eat a diet less oriented to meat. Besides, many self-described 
vegetarians are not, strictly speaking, vegetarians. Today's rules seem pretty 
flexible, sometimes to the point where there is not much difference between 
vegetarians and people who eat moderate amounts of meat.

Furthermore, almost everyone eats vegetarian meals from time to time, whether 
by choice or because peers, friends or, increasingly, the children do. (It 
appears, though the statistics vary wildly, that somewhere between 10 and 25 
percent of Americans under 30 eschew meat.)

And though elitist food enthusiasts rarely talk about it, from a epicurean 
perspective, vegetarian cuisine has become far more appealing, thanks largely to 
the growing influence of Asian vegetarian traditions. (We do not hear, 
either, that a vegetarian diet promotes weight loss, probably because studies have 
not been done. But I don't know any overweight vegetarians, though maybe they 
are walking around hungry.)

Still, it sometimes takes a bit more technique to produce vegetarian food 
that pleases the spoiled palate. For example, I generally make chickpea soup with 
chicken stock and sausage. But I found that I could create a soup with just 
as much flavor and body as my original version by slow-cooking the onions until 
they are brown; by exploiting the fact that, unlike other dried legumes, 
chickpeas produce a delicious broth as they cook; and by adding spinach, whose 
character is just as distinctive as that of sausage. Serve this with homemade 
croutons if you can, or at least with good bread.

Such contrivances, however legitimate or clever, are not often needed: most 
of the dishes here are pretty much unchanged from the traditional versions. Ris 
in cagnon, a Lombard dish I learned from John Thorne (who writes a superb 
food newsletter that has led to several wonderful books), is not much more than 
arborio rice with butter and cheese, but it is faster and easier than risotto, 
and it uses no stock. (It also may introduce you to a good alternative method 
of cooking rice, in the manner of pasta.)

The classic braised escarole dish, which uses a series of techniques that can 
be applied to almost any green vegetable, relies on a hefty amount of garlic 
and olive oil, which are added both at the beginning and at the end of 
cooking, the final additions to freshen and intensify flavors. This dish can be 
enhanced with toasted pine nuts, raisins or currants, pitted black or green olives, 
or chopped tomatoes. Wine can replace the water, for a slightly more complex 
dish.

The Chinese menu includes a few slightly unusual ingredients, but is more a 
combination of infrequently seen and quite common dishes.

Cold braised celery is the kind of thing that begins a meal in Taiwanese and 
some northern Chinese restaurants, a little tidbit that is the equivalent of 
an amuse-bouche.

Tofu salad starts with pressed tofu — well-drained, extra-firm tofu that you 
cut in half and press between layers of paper towels under a weight (a big 
cutting board, for example) for at least half an hour, changing the paper towels 
as they become saturated. If you visit a Chinese market, you should find 
prepressed tofu, often cut into strips. Also known as pressed bean curd or 
extra-firm tofu, it has a brown exterior and is usually packed in plastic, without 
water.

If you have time, make the salad in advance, so the tofu absorbs the flavors 
of the dressing. The salad goes nicely with homemade scallion pancakes, which 
are easier and more successful than you might imagine.

The meal is capped by the kind of soft, tender, highly seasoned eggplant dish 
you have probably ordered in restaurants but may never have made. It is best 
to begin with long, slender eggplants — I like the lavender ones, but the 
color doesn't matter — and large oyster or bai-ling mushrooms. If you go to a 
Chinese market for pressed tofu, you will probably find all of these, but if not, 
regular eggplant and button mushrooms will do.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
    

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