ONLY IN SPIN WORLD
Rich McLellan's Favourite Vegan Recipe

by Rich McLellan

"For years I lived out of the dumpster of the local supermarket, but then technology reared it's ugly head and the market purchased this Orwellian wastage crushing Goliath and my weekly midnight forays as a dumpster denizen became less and less productive. This had the unhappy result of adding just one more human intestinal tract on the consumer side of the food supply/demand equation!

Now I do warehouse shopping which requires that I buy in massive amounts at any one time. I tend to be drawn to the pretty and unique and often come home with such an odd variety of organic mutations that cooking often becomes a matter of what combinations fit best within the confines of the available crockery. I have yet to have to scrape my plate onto the compost pile but there have been some very close calls."

- Rich McLellan MD on veganism and cooking.

What It Means To Me To Be Vegan

To step back to a more natural time, where my sense of being revels in the search for sustenance amongst the wonders of nature. To seek and encounter each marvel. To take part in an age old transfer of energy, such that living things will not have lived just for the pleasure of their own existence, but to move energy forward as an investment in the future of all life. Plants use the sun's energy and minerals of the earth to create fruit and flower to propel quantum's of energy into the future, a future like Moses, for which they are fundamental but which they will never see.

It is where plants and animals find their immortality as substrate. Our last task and our most noble task is to facilitate that transfer of our energy and mass into the future. So the produce section, the open-air markets, they become the conduits for the survival and perpetuation of all life.

My pleasure is in the carrying home of these purposeful friends, to bathe them, to anoint them with spice and oil, to warm and tenderise them in recognition of the gravity of their sacrifice, to prepare them and myself for our individual parts in the future of all life. To do this without pain, without prejudice, without deprivation further ennobles the process. It augments a gentle world, a nurturing world - a world that defends that great rare gift that is sentience.

For what good be sentience without wisdom and compassion?

What You Are Going To Need:

A big steam pot with cover

A Steam Tray that fits inside the Steam Pot

Two frying pans, one whose size depends on the number of guests and may be limited by the size of your stove burners and the other one you haven't used since you gave up crepes after you became a vegan. Both cause less clean up and use energy more efficiently if they have covers.

Tap water or Purified Water if you live in Sydney

Corn meal prepared as mush (1 cup of corn meal to 3 cups of H20 with salt to taste, boiled until thick and mushy not grainy), poured into a baking pan and refrigerated for 24 hours and cut into squares, or circles ½ in. thick. If you can find the often-spiced rolls of corn meal mush the Italians call Polenta, in plastic wrap in the cold pack section of the market, then use that.

Vegetables: Mix your choice but often the more colourful and toothsome the better. Cut, chop or slice so that all are about ½ in width or height or length.

Some of my favourite choices are:

• Asparagus, use the head portion where it naturally snaps off from the stalk. The thinner the spear, the better.

• Red Bell Pepper, crown and seed removed and then sliced into strips.

• Carrots, peeled (save the peel for the soup stock that can be rendered down from the water in which you stream the veggies) and slice in ¼ in. diagonal cuts to make them oblong rather than round.

• Broccoli, using the florets. Stalks can be sliced thinly and put in the veggie stockpot.

• Onions, sliced or Scallions. These are small white onions with long green stalks (small but trimmed down) or the green scallion stalks themselves.

• Cauliflower, florets only, stalks into a stockpot to be blended later

• Chinese Peas pods, the ones with no peas in them (only the Chinese could convince us that we should buy pea pods that don't have any peas in them)

• Tomatoes, with the crown sliced off, then quarter sliced, half horizontally

• Fresh Parsley or Dill as a garnish by cutting into attractive sprigs

• Potatoes, peeled and sliced

• 1 bottle of Poppyseed dressing (should be vegan but check. The Dairy Industry is trying to adulterate everything). Some may see this as selling out to the processed food industry. To those still able to maintain their independence use Sweet or Vidalia onions puréed in the blender with a salt and pepper. Soymilk can be used, but you are walking on the wild side of you go that route.

• Canola or Olive Oil, ½ cup

• Sea salt, (okay, any salt, I just felt like putting on airs)

• Pepper, fresh ground if you can get the pepper mill to work. Mine only seems to work while being held over a clean tablecloth.

• Spinach leaves (the smaller ones are best) or Swiss Chard sliced into strips or bands, since these things can get pretty big.

Cut all the veggies before you start, but keep them separated as religiously as you would post pubescent adolescents.

Okay, turn on the stove, 2 burners

Frying pan on one, with a top (if you have one that fits). Pour ¼ cup of oil into a pan and turn up the heat on high. Just before the oil starts to burn, put on gloves and an apron and place, (throwing has a certain flair to it, but will increase your clean-up time) the corn meal mush into the frying pan. Brown for about 30 seconds and then turn down the heat to medium. In fifteen minutes increase the heat to blowtorch levels again, wait 60 seconds, and then turn all the slices of mush (I hope you are making 2 or 3 per diner, or whatever your frying pan will accommodate). Then let them brown for 60 seconds and then turn the pan down to medium again.

While you are frying up a corn meal storm, place 1 inch of tap water (or purified water if you live in Sydney) into a pot, put a streamer tray above the water, chuck in the sliced potatoes, put a top on the pot and turn up high.

15 minutes later take the potatoes out (I use tongs since fingers are more efficient but less comfortable in doing the job. Fingers also make utensil use at the table a little more awkward afterwards).

Put the potatoes in a frying pan with the mushrooms and oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and fry on high or medium or whatever prevents the mixture from becoming an embarrassment.

Now, return to the streaming tray in the pot. In goes the broccoli, the carrots, the peppers, the asparagus, and the pea pods. The secret is to steam long enough to make the veggies tender, but not loose the fresh green look of the broccoli and asparagus. Some people advocate using a little lemon for this. I use the power of prayer and an overtimer setting somewhere between 15-20 minute marks. It is always an adventure to see what comes out. Two minutes before the alarm goes off, throw in the tomatoes and spinach leaves or sliced Swiss Chard.

Dump the entire pot into a sieve or colander and then immediately back into the pot

Then add the room temperature Poppy Seed or any exotic vegan dressing, put the top on the pot and shake up and down 7 times (no cheating).

Remove the mush slices from the frying pan and overlap them on the plate. With a spatula remove the "marinated" veggies from the steamer pot and place on top of the mush slices as aesthetically as possible. (I strive for positioning somewhere on the plate, and then scrape some of the potatoes and mushrooms fried (or is it sautéed) on top of the veggies and place a sprig of Dill or Parsley to give it a sense of aliveness.

Serve with a dollop of canned cranberry sauce.

Hey, if your guests don't like it, make them cook next time!