I must be feeling better... this evening I ended up, without planning to, cooking several things to tide me over the hot couple of days we're heading into, and I was fixing three things at once while rocking out to a remix of RamJam's "Black Betty" which was running in my head. My feet aren't too happy now, but my energy and good mood are back. Amazing what eliminating chronic pain will do.
I made a double batch of baba ghanouj, because I'll eat that any and every day, and all I need are some chips. I made some beet salad for a memorial service I'm attending tomorrow, and I'm sure I'll have leftovers. I made some marinated potato salad, ostensibly for tonight's dinner, but it was so late by the time I finished it that I knew it would be far better with some time to itself. And, finally, I came up with a recipe for lime ice pops -- the ones I could find were either blends of lime with something else, or just didn't seem to fit my needs. We'll see how they come out; still, it's a good start on stuff to eat while it's over a hundred out.
I like simple food as much as complex things, and a lot of my recipes are sort of "Take however much of this you have, and throw in this other ingredient until it looks/tastes/feels right". So quantifying them for a new person can be a little challenging, as simple as they are. My beet salad is essentially "cubed cooked beets, a little salt, some dried thyme, and enough balsamic vinegar that it feels like enough, then drizzle with olive oil". I sort of stumbled on it some years ago, but it turned out to be something that even people who aren't fond of beets think is okay. It must be something about the balsamic vinegar.
My method of cooking means that I can adapt easily, though. When making baba ghanouj, I knew that I needed a substitute for tahini that added umami (savory) flavor, but also some bitterness, as I've never met a tahini that wasn't bitter to some degree. I landed on pureed ripe olives (savory) plus Bragg aminos (umami boost) plus dry mustard, as I remembered that mustard powder or ground mustard seeds has that particular bitter quality. I'm still working on a substitute for ricotta cheese, but it needs that same savory quality, plus a rich mouthfeel, and a fine-grained but fluffy texture... I'll probably experiment with the same ripe olive puree plus something to add body; possibly moist breadcrumbs. It may need a little extra oil to give it the same richness, we'll see.
But that analysis, that tendency to break each food down into its most prominent qualities, is how I can do substitutes which may not be identical, but sometimes result in a food which is equally good. A similar effect can be seen in the vegan ice cream recipes that use avocado as a base: guess what, a ripe Hass avocado is essentially identical to a plant-based heavy cream, and you can use it as such. I've done exactly that to make vegan tikka masala sauce (which was marvelous, by the way). I'll have to post that recipe too, with both dairy and vegan variants.
I like cooking, obviously. I like taking time to focus on something basic but nourishing, seeing it take shape, and figuring out how to tweak it to be how I want it. I like food prep, which occupies the hands but leaves the mind free -- to think, to listen to audiobooks, to half-watch television. I'm good with tools, and I have a finely tuned sense of time and heat and texture. Practice fills in the rest.
That love of cooking has been a huge source of relief and comfort to me over twenty years of dealing with shifting food sensitivities and dietary needs. Low-protein has probably been the biggest shift I've ever made, bigger even than doing low-carb (which I did several times, for various reasons). But I'm finding that a lot of my old favorites are still fine, and some others just need a little nudge to bring them into line. Then there are challenges, like lasagna, or a proper chili. I'm happy to embrace some of those because I know that I have solid options to fall back on if they don't work. After all, failure comes with the territory. Failure is when you really learn. And by this point, even my failures are almost always edible. So why not seize the challenge with both hands?
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