Get Your Hijiki On: Spicy Seaweed Sauté

I live in a dorm and eat most of my weeknight dinners in the cafeteria downstairs from my apartment. I am not complaining. I love having a meal plan. It's great to be able to come home from work after a long day, put on a pair of slippers and schlep down to an all-you-can-eat buffet. No frantic 5:30 trips to the grocery store, no tired pizza orders, no sink full of dirty dishes.

But let's just say I eat a lot of chickpeas during the week. A lot of salty lentil soup, bean burritos, and baked potatoes. I don't mind simple food, and it's fine, but usually by the weekend I am ready for something a little wilder, something that makes my cells and tastebuds sing a different song.

Add to this my recent fixation on seaweed, and here's what you get: a bowl-full of lively macrobiotic-inspired dishes: soba noodles with tahini-umeboshi sauce; tofu marinated in soy sauce, browned in coconut oil and coated with toasted sesame seeds; piles of steamed baby kale; and the pièce de résistance, a zingy sauté of onions, carrots, and the most powerful tasting seaweed of them all, hijiki.

Hijiki is briny and fishy and tough; it needs soaking and takes a while to cook; it's strong-smelling and takes some getting used to. But I have grown to love it, especially when cooked for a good long time with sweet vegetables and the toothsome seasoning trio of soy sauce, mirin (cooking wine) and cayenne. A little hijiki goes a long way, and it makes the perfect side dish to a grain-and-vegetable-based bowl of food like this, adding flavor and texture and a wallop of nutrition.

This is a bowl of food just begging to be mixed into a jumble, and hijiki is the magic element that brings it all together.

Spicy Seaweed Sauté

Serves 3 or 4 as a side dish

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1 small onion, sliced thinly

Big pinch sea salt

2 carrots, sliced into thin rounds

Big handful dried hijiki, soaked in water to cover for 30 minutes (or you can use arame, no need to soak)

1/2 cup water

2 tablespoon shoyu or any good-quality soy sauce

2 tablespoons mirin or cooking sherry

Big pinch cayenne pepper

Heat coconut oil in skillet, add onion and salt and cook ten minutes over medium heat. Add carrot and stir well. Drain hijiki and stir into vegetables, cooking for a few minutes.

Add water, shoyu, mirin, and cayenne. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Check and add a little more water if you need to.

Uncover and cook off any remaining liquid. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Hail hijiki! Baked potato, I'll see you on Monday.

Seaweed is the New Kale: Arame with Tempeh

Kale is so 2013. Seaweed is the new kale.

In the weird world that I alone inhabit.

But if you want to have an incredibly satisfying vegetarian dinner that will make you forget about winter, that will infuse you with minerals and give you superpowers, that will make your kids sad and inspire them to beg for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and that will remind you of when you--billions of years ago--were a creature swimming in a salty ocean, then please join me in celebrating arame, a lovely, edible weed of the sea.

Arame with Tempeh
Serves 2 as a main dish

8 ounces tempeh, cubed
3 tablespoons coconut oil
1 bag arame (7.6 ounces)
2 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced
3 or 4 carrots, cut into matchsticks
3-4 tablespoons soy sauce

Soak Arame in a bowl of cold water while you start preparing the dish.

Heat 3 tablespoons of coconut oil in a large skillet and brown tempeh, turning occasionally, for 10 minutes or so. Scoop browned tempeh pieces out of the skillet with a slotted spoon, trying to keep as much oil in the pan as possible. Set tempeh aside.

Add onions to pan with a small pinch of salt and cook over medium-low heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add carrots and cook 2-3 minutes.

Drain arame (reserve soaking water) and add to skillet on top of onions and carrots. Add tempeh cubes on top of arame. Cover with 2 cups of the soaking water, add 3 tablespoons soy sauce, bring to a gentle simmer and cover.

Cook undisturbed for 15 - 20 minutes, until liquid has mostly cooked off and everything is tender. Cook uncovered for a few minutes if necessary to finish cooking off liquid. Taste and add 1 more tablespoon of soy sauce, if you want to.

Serve on a bed of greens, or garnished with lots of parsley or green onions.

White Bean Chili with Roasted Corn and Poblanos

This chili requires several steps and multiple pots and pans, and it will leave your kitchen wrecked, unless you're better than I am at cleaning up as you go. But I've never felt so in-tune with the late summer harvest: roasting corn, toasting pumpkin seeds, scorching and peeling poblano peppers, it's about as ritualistic and satisfying as cooking gets.

Part of my plan here was to teach Henry how to roast peppers. Unfortunately, I was a terrible model. I grew impatient with the process, like I always do, and didn't blacken them enough or steam them enough, and wound up grumpily scraping off little bits of tenacious pepper skin until I finally gave up and left tons of skin on.

It was fine. The end result was smoky and delicious, and provided an opportunity to teach my son that you don't have to do everything perfectly right to produce a damn good bowl of food.

Anyway, late summer is short - maybe too short to worry about peeling every piece of skin off a pepper.

White Bean Chili with Roasted Corn and Poblanos
Serves 6-8

1 lb small white navy beans, sorted, soaked, rinsed, and drained
4 poblano peppers, roasted and peeled (good tutorial here - I used a little olive oil instead of cooking spray)
4 medium ears corn (in husks)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon salt
Big handful cilantro, leaves pulled off, divided
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
8 ounces soft goat cheese (optional)
2 tablespoons milk (optional)
Big handful raw pumpkin seeds

To cook beans:

Place in a large pot with six cups cold water. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce to strong simmer, and cook one hour or so, until beans are cooked tender but not mushy. Check regularly to make sure beans are immersed in water - add more if necessary.

Meanwhile:

Roast and peel the poblano peppers (link to tutorial above). Chop roughly and set aside.

Roast the corn (keep husks on) in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. When it's cool enough to handle, husk and use a sharp knife to scrape off the kernels. Set aside.

Warm olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onions and a small pinch of salt. When onions sizzle, reduce heat to low and cook ten minutes, stirring occasionally  Add garlic, chopped roasted poblanos, oregano, cumin, salt, and about half the cilantro leaves. Cook five minutes, stirring.

Scrape every bit of olive oil/onions/garlic/poblano mixture into a blender. Scoop out 1/2 cup or so of bean cooking liquid and add to blender. Blend well - at least 1 minute. You will have a gorgeous green saucy paste. It will smell so good you won't believe it. Add more liquid if necessary. Stir mixture into beans.

Add corn and lime juice to beans. Taste and adjust seasoning, and simmer over low heat 15 minutes. Stir occasionally to ensure beans don't stick or burn. You might need to add a little more water.

Roast the pumpkin seeds by stirring in a dry skillet over medium-high heat until they pop and smell toasty. This demands constant attention.

Warm milk in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, add goat cheese and stir constantly to make sauce. (To make dish vegan, omit goat cheese sauce and top chili with vegan sour cream or yogurt substitute).

To serve: Ladle chili into a bowl, spoon a few tablespoons of goat cheese sauce on top, add pumpkin seeds and cilantro to garnish.

Harvest time. Coming soon: Roasted Tomato and Jalapeño Sauce!