The Enchanted Pantry - Recipes by Loba
Tuesday, September 29th 2009 @ 4:16 PM (not yet rated)
Editor’s Note: I love cookbooks and have quite a collection. Loba’s latest work, The Enchanted Pantry (as yet unpublished), promises to be one of the best. Not only does it have some of the yummiest recipes ever, it also features several short pieces by Jesse Wolf Hardin, a true sensualist and lover of everything having to do with delicious food. I had a hard time deciding which recipes to include in this excerpt. I finally went with the season and picked foods typical for the harvest and into winter, and I chose vegetarian recipes so everyone can enjoy them. So here you have a hearty soup, and an awesome dessert. Add a salad and a loaf of hearty bread, perhaps a good bottle of local apple or blueberry wine and the meal is complete. I included the ginger tea recipe because I love it. Enjoy!
It seems hard to believe, but I arrived in the wilds of the
Enchanted Canyon without knowing how to cook a thing besides ratatouille and stir-fry! And to this day we still laugh about the fact that I didn’t know how to start a fire in the wood cookstove, putting the paper on top of the wood instead of beneath it! Now please understand, I was fresh from hanging out with mimes and jugglers in San Francisco, my hair shaved as part of some subconscious purging, and my body unnaturally thin. I came looking for the solitude in which to find myself. Little did I know that at the end of the path through the dark forest I would find both my most magical purpose and my dream home.... complete with lions and coyotes and bears, oh my!
It took awhile to see how my alternatively bingeing and depriving myself was related to low self esteem. One of the first things Jesse did was to perch me atop the curved wooden counters of the Enchanted Kitchen and feed me a stream of sesame coated pancakes from his cast iron pans, with all the butter and real maple syrup and sour cream and blackberry preserves and peanut butter I wanted! He helped me accept the hungers I’d been denying, helped me to love myself enough to quit worrying if I had a little belly or not! It’s been both exciting and empowering, learning to make and tend fire, collect luscious rainwater, gather wild foods, preserve and can Summer goodies, bake my own wholesome bread, and fashion my own special recipes. Restaurants and convenience foods might be “easier,” but like Jesse writes, “cooking is a daily opportunity for us to be more involved in our own mortal survival, more intimate with the sensuous world we’re a part of, more at home in our homes and bodies.” Sure it takes extra time and effort, but the reward isn’t just in the eating. The reward begins with the personal experience of touching and smelling, rubbing and rolling, mixing and kneading!
It sounds silly to say I’ve found the secret to happiness, but it seems that I have! It all boils down to this: Be your most real and compassionate self, at all costs, feeling everything deeply. Recognize that all of life is a banquet, then add your personal touch. Don’t trust anything that’s artificial. Dig in like you mean it! And don’t be afraid to show some enthusiasm!
I do all my baking and most of my soups and stews on an 1886 wood cookstove (Loba’s Lovin’ Oven!), or in my wonderful solar cooker. I use my “Magic Chef” (a 1920’s gas range) for the quicker meals, for broiling and coffee-making, and to time my recipes for the modern range.
These recipes may have been “cooked up” in an old timey cabin deep, deep in the woods, but they can be duplicated in any modern kitchen, anywhere. By providing fresh quality ingredients and following these instructions, you will likely have amazing results. But every step of the way, taste, taste, taste! Taste each ingredient, the stock or batter, and sample the entree throughout the cooking process to monitor when it’s perfectly done. Cooking, like life, is about taking responsibility for results, for what we create and send out into the world, and for the ways in which we nourish and satisfy ourselves!
Tomatoey Lentil Soup With Garlic & Onion
Kiva and I begin craving this soup when the first really cold nights descend on the canyon, and then I make it on just about every baking day because we so love to dunk pieces of buttered fresh baked bread into it! There are so many ways to vary the experience from day to day we don’t get tired of it. We really enjoy it over a piece of baked fish or chicken, or enchilada style with homemade corn tortillas. And little Rhiannon loves it when served like a sauce with extra olive oil, over any kind of pasta. Plus there are simple ways to change the flavor, adding different veggies, olives, or nuts, wine and bacon, or even Thai chile paste and peanut butter. Double the recipe for a crowd, keeping in mind that folks often want seconds!
(Serves 4)
Water
1 1/2 cups brown or green lentils, rinsed and checked for stones
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large yellow onion, diced
1 15 oz. can whole tomatoes
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and left whole
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon salt
Lots of freshly ground pepper
A few tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 big bunch watercress, spinach, kale, dock, nettles, or turnip greens
Romano cheese and sour cream, for garnish
Put the rinsed lentils in a large pot, covering them with 2 or 3 inches of water. Bring to a boil over high heat then reduce to a simmer. Meanwhile, cook the onion over medium heat in a skillet until browned and tender, then add to the pot. Toss in everything else but the greens, and cook until the lentils are quite tender. Taste and adjusting the seasoning as you like, and add more water as needed. Make sure the greens are entirely free of grit (even big city leafies often have a little sand on them!) and put them in at the very last, just until they’re tender. Don’t overcook them! If you have any watercress or turnip greens, leave them raw and arrange prettily on top of each bowl, with the cheese and cream mounded in the center, and a teaspoon or more of extra virgin olive oil drizzled on top.
Other optional additions:
•Buttered toasted walnuts
•Kalamata or oil cured olives, pitted (or serve on side)
•A tablespoon or more Thai red chile paste and 3-4 tablespoons peanut butter (add to simmering soup and mix in well, serve with yogurt or coconut milk on top, and some roasted peanuts)
• Pasta or short grain brown rice
•Chopped fresh carrots, celery, basil, parsley as a garnish on top
•Green Chile Relish (garnish or serve alongside)
•Roasted veggies
•Tamari and nutritional yeast (for yeast fans only)
Hazelnut Honey Cake With Baked Plums & Blackberry Wine Sauce
You’ll find this especially good sliced and toasted in butter, or served with any combination of fresh or baked fruit mixed with sour cream and a little brown sugar. I first served this to our friends Carlos and Gioia, flamenco guitarist and dancer, who blessed us with their beautiful presences one Summer. Gioia, who is from Spain, loves food and cooking as much as I do, and we had a fine time sharing crazy food stories and poring over recipes together. She has that wonderful quality of exuding pure rapture whenever I serve her anything, but especially a seductive sweet like this one! Try to include the mace, it adds a lot! You can substitute nutmeg with different but still incredible results. If you can’t find hazlenuts or hazlenut butter, you can substitute toasted walnuts or enjoy it plain.
For the cake:
1/2 cup melted butter (or canola oil)
3/4 cup honey, warmed if neccessary
2 eggs
4 tablespoons hazelnut butter, warmed, OR 1/3 cup hazlenuts, toasted and skins rubbed off with a towel, chopped finely or ground
1 cup unbleached flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (omit if using salted butter)
1/2 teaspoon mace
2/3 cup water
Preheat oven to 350. Beat together the melted butter and honey, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Warm the hazelnut butter until it can be stirred easily, and beat that in too. OR, toast the whole hazlenuts in a skillet until they feel very hot and smell toasty. Rub them with a kitchen or paper towel to free the skins. Grind them in a clean meat grinder or a blender, or let them cool a bit then put in a plastic bag and pound with a rolling pin. Sift together the flours, baking powder, salt, and mace in a separate bowl and add alternately with the water, mixing each time until just blended. Pour into an oiled, papered 9” cake tin, and bake at 350 until just done, about 35-40 minutes.
For the baked plums:
6 black plums
Water or red wine
Oil a baking tin (I use a cake tin). Wash the plums and arrange them in the tin, pouring 1/4 cup of water or red wine in the bottom. Put the plums in the oven when you put in the cake, or when you serve dinner (if you can rely on yourself not to forget them!). They take about the same amount of time as the cake to bake completely, but can stand another 10-15 min-utes in the oven if needed.
For the sauce:
1/2 cup mellow red wine (such as Merlot)
3 tablespoons blackberry jam
3 tablespoons honey
1/3 cup sour cream or 1 cup whipping (heavy) cream (optional)
Simmer the wine until it’s reduced by half, then stir in the jam and honey until melted. Slice the baked plums into large pieces, as large as you can, stir them into the sauce and heat until the plums are very warm. (If the plums have just come out of the oven, this won’t take a minute!) Taste! If the sauce seems a little sweet to you, stir in the sour cream or whip some heavy cream to use as an extra topping.
To serve:
The cake may be served warm or cold, but I prefer to serve it warm. To warm the cake, slice pieces and cut them in half lengthwise (I usually cut the cake into 6, unless dinner was extremely filling or there are small children). Warm 2 large skillets and toast each half-piece in ample butter on both sides, or simply put well buttered pieces on a baking sheet into a preheated 350 oven until warm.
Put each piece of cake on a warm plate, and spoon a generous amount of the warm sauce on top. If you’ve cut the slices in half you can serve the cake shortcake style, with some of the sauce between the halves. If you haven’t added sour cream to the sauce, consider topping with freshly whipped cream, at the last possible moment so it doesn’t melt too much!
Variations:
•Drizzle warm cake with a quality hot fudge or caramel sauce (warmed). If using caramel, baked apples would be a delightful addition.
•Serve cold or butter-toasted cake with fresh strawberries or raspberries mixed with sour cream and brown sugar to taste.
Faery Fresh Ginger Tea
Ginger Tea makes a bracing wintertime companion, and has long been held to be a favorite of fairies as well as the fairy-hearted! I love to keep a pot of it simmering on the woodstove, getting progressively stronger and stronger as I drink from it all the day long. Ginger tea is known to strengthen the immune system as well as soothe an upset stomach, and has been used as a general health tonic by the Chinese for countless generations. But unlike many of those Chinese herbs the acupuncturists recommend, ginger tea has a wonderful spicy flavor that nearly everyone enjoys – and all the more so with honey! It’s a wonderful way to nourish and delight yourself as well as your family and your circle of friends.
From Volume 4, No 3 & 4
Photo: Wolf
Grate or chop 4-5 inches of fresh ginger root into small (approximately 1/4”) pieces. Place grated or chopped ginger in a pot of 2 quarts water. Bring to a boil over high heat, then simmer for at least 1/2 hour. Don’t throw the ginger out after finishing the first batch of tea, as you can get more flavor out of it a second and third time by simply adding and boiling more water. Add additional ginger when it starts getting too weak. A squeeze of lemon or lime juice gives it even more zip, as well as Vitamin C.
