Broke Vegetarian

Stop eating spinach, you idiot. If that’s your entree into fresh veg, it’s like starting your iTunes library with whatever was playing in the elevator this morning. (BTW, how come elevators never play music anymore?)

But, if you have to eat spinach, this technique will work for you, too. Our test case, however, is Spigarello, a green worth capitalizing because it is quite simply the best. For a while, I thought that was broccoli raab (rapini) for its texture, nutrition, peppery bite, and propensity to be served with meat. Spigarello, though not a hybrid, is pretty much a sweeter broccoli rabe mixed with tender Tuscan kale (leave the tough, curly stuff for IHOP). 

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Here’s maybe why I get so damn annoyed when vegans call things things that they aren’t. Vegan mayonnaise. Seitan cheesesteak. And now? Vegan Tofu Omelets (via a friend via postpunkkitchen).

You know what’s in a fucking omelet? No, seriously. You get one guess, but take your fucking time. I’ll even let you GOOGLE that shit. Yeah? Oh, snap. No fucking way. It’s eggs. Eggs aren’t vegan. So you don’t get to eat anything called an omelet.

Until some enterprising soul comes up with this. 

Oh snap, you showed me! Ain’t no omelet but it looks just like one! Why not call it one, then?

BECAUSE YOU JUST PISSED ON THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF MY FUCKING FAMILY, ASSHOLE.

The dish pictured above—here’s the recipe—is actually a pancake of gram flour (chickpea flour or besan) and turmeric. You’ll never guess what the fuck else is made that way. You’ll never guess. Take a second. GOOGLE that shit. Or, you know what? Maybe GURUJI it instead.

OH SNAP. That’s right, bitch. The picture above, which looks a heck of a fuck lot like old Vegan Crunchy Tits’ photo up top, is actually CHILLA—one of Mumbai’s (that’s Bombay for my more imperial readers) most popular street foods and what a lot of Indians eat every day for lunch. You know, after the eggs we have for breakfast.

Wow! I guess we must all have read the same issue of Vegetarian Times a thousand years ago. 

New rule: Same as the old rules. Good food can represent a culture, but is not itself a tribe.

Listen, haters. You saw the legit mushroom tart I just made. And I had a bottle of Oregon pinot open. And wild, line-caught keta salmon was on sale. Maybe it was bloodlust. Maybe I had a hankerin for pulling some pinbones. Or maybe I didn’t want to disturb the delicate balance and serendipity of this fucking beautiful universe. 

Haters gonna hate. So move on. Skip this post. Find some crunchy vegan blog that tells you how to toast muesli (you put it in the oven, then you take it out of the oven). But here’s some real cooking, bitch. A fundamental technique for any kind of protein that you can also apply to vegetables like asparagus, par-boiled potatoes, and baby artichokes.

Pan-Basted Summer Salmon

Get some tweezers and pull out the pinbones that run in a straight line opposite the belly portion of the fish. There’s usually about 10 of them. Your fishmonger can do this for you. And if you ask him to, you don’t deserve to eat this beautiful fish. You’re a cook. Not a “heater-upper.” So do this one little piece of butchering yourself, you fucking microwave.

By now, it should have taken you longer to read this post than it should to cook your salmon. 

Starting with about a 24-ounce side of salmon, cut it into three half-pound portions. You could easily get four portions out of this, but it means you love each of your friends 25% less than you think you do. Asshole.

The keta, or chum, salmon is among my favorite of the salmons. Not as strong as the seasonally popular sockeye or as beautiful and sweet as the regal king salmon, it’s the best fish for high-heat cooking. And while I may not eat it raw, a lot of us probably have. Their babies at least. The funky salmon roe, or ikura (btw, why the fuck does everyone italicize foreign words?), you get at fine sushi restaurants often come from keta.

Uh, then again, this is a vegetarian blog. So maybe you haven’t had this. I hope not, at least. I hate it when vegetarians go to sushi restaurants and try to get all the fucked up not-fish stuff. Oh, by the way, the eggy tomago you like so much? Yeah, that’s made with crushed shrimp shells and shit.

While heat often brings out the oily, “fishy” flavors in, well, fish, keta salmon works in exactly the opposite way. It often comes out of the chill chest smelling like fish. Which, if you watch enough food network, you probably think it should never do. It’s supposed to smell like “the ocean” or some shit.

Whatever. It’s a dead fucking animal. That smell is its memory of gasping for air with a metal hook driven through his jaw. But after a good wash and seasoning, a few minutes over heat tempers some of these wilder aromatics. No matter what the keta smells or feels like when you bring it home (the meat can feel a little mealy sometimes), it will cook mid-rare to a clean, almost absent aroma and wonderfully flaky flesh that pulls apart like petals on a rose.

The first step: grab your finest nonstick pan, which you no doubt have on hand for cooking fish. Throw it out the window. I fucking hate nonstick pans.

Now that you have an actual grownup pan on your stove, turn the heat on. You can get pretty hot—it’ll give you a crispier skin more quickly—but I think there’s a tradeoff there. We’re going to be cooking with a lot of extra virgin olive oil and butter. They’ll burn to shit at the nuclear temperature you probably want to cook at. If you prefer the high heat, choose a neutral oil like canola or grapeseed.

For the rest of us, get a good, responsible heat on the pan and fill it with a small wading pool of olive oil. It should be enough to slightly come up the sides of the fillet. Drop in a whole clove of garlic, a couple wedges of lemon, and three or four sprigs of fresh dill.

Season your fish and drop it skinside down over the vegetation. 

What we’re doing here is actually shallow frying the skin and the portion of the meat that connects to the skin. We’re fusing these two parts together better than god did.

Don’t touch it. Two minutes. Now the fun part.

Tilt the pan toward you, grab a spoon, and a couple fingers of room temp butter. Drop the dollop of butter on top of the flesh. 

You’re going to cook the top of this fish without turning it. 

You’re going to cook the top of this fish without turning it. 

Quickly spoon and splash the pool of oil onto the flesh side of the fish. Every piece of fish the hot fat touches should start to turn opaque and, yes, that’s right. You’re now melting butter with olive oil and the salmon’s own fat. You just made butter more awesome.

For the next two minutes, continue spooning the fat over the top of the fish. 

With a flexible offset spatula, carefully peel the fish off the pan and put it in a glass dish to rest. Top it with a handful of raw dill and let that shit rest.

Now, stare at it. Look at what you’ve done. You’ve infused dill, lemon, garlic, olive oil, and butter into this delicate fish. But you’ve done it without anyone who eats this ever thinking “dill” or “garlic” or “lemon.” No, instead you’ve built these flavors subtly and delicately into the very fabric and DNA of the salmon itself.

In less than five minutes.

You think it’s raw, but the fish loves you so much it promises to finish cooking while it rests. Because he loves you. He forgives you for pulling him out of the water, right when he was looking for a quick fuck. He forgives you for the swift hammer blow upside the head that left him alive, but severely concussed. He forgives you for that fucking hook in his mouth.

When you’re ready to serve, throw away all the dill, put the fish on the plate, and top it with sel gris. Pull out that mushroom tart and glass of pinot.

The universe applauds.

With the global population surging to a predicted 9.1 billion by 2050, a vegan diet will be a must in order to be able to feed the population.