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redefining ‘vegetarian,’ ‘painting’ rice, and making tomato sauce with mollie katzen

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Illustration coptright Mollie Katzen, from the endpaper of her book "The Heart of the Plate"

THE ADVENTURE IN Mollie Katzen’s “The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation,” begins even before the first recipe page. It starts in the delicious, intimate endpapers—which came from illustrated journals that the author has been keeping since she was a teenager, which were also the origin of her beloved, bestselling “Moosewood Cookbook.” The musings (that’s one in the photo above), in drawings and hand-lettered words, speak to how Mollie—a keen gardener, and the guest on my latest radio show—approaches food today. Learn how she suggests we re-define “vegetarian;” how she “paints [her] rice,” and makes her simplest, most delicious tomato sauce. And maybe win her newest book, too. 

How has the cooking changed since the 1970s and the origins of “Moosewood” back in Ithaca, New York, which Mollie left 30ish years ago for Berkeley, California? She recently said in an interview that the answer to that question is just two little words:

Olive oil.

“You could not buy a bottle of good olive oil in this country then,” Mollie says.  Her current cuisine is lighter, and “more modular,” she explains, with “layered plates” and more small dishes (including little charmers she calls “saladitas” that bump up the flavor of a meal and may incorporate a bit of fruit or nut or herb—lots of surprises, as in: good things come in small packages.)

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MOLLIE KATZEN, with more than 6 million books in print and for decades a leading advocate of smarter eating, was the guest on this week’s public-radio show. It’s a must-listen, and you can do so anywhere, anytime: Locally, in my Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) region, “A Way to Garden” airs on Robin Hood Radio’s three stations on Monday at 8:30 AM Eastern, with a rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. It is available free on iTunes, the Stitcher app, or streaming from RobinHoodRadio.com or via its RSS feed. The October 7, 2013 show can be streamed here now. Robin Hood is the smallest NPR station in the nation; our garden show marked the start of its fourth year in March, and is syndicated via PRX.

highlights of my radio q&a with mollie katzen

Mollie Katzen (Lisa Keating photo).Q. What’s the view out your window, Mollie, looking into your garden?

A. I’m somewhat limited—which is a good thing, I think. I live in a fog belt, near the San Francisco Bay. The limitation is a good one, because it keeps me in greens, but I don’t have long enough sun days to get tomatoes ripened on the vine. I can get them all the way into existence, but not ripened.

Kale loves it here—all sorts of kale. It’s the rock star of vegetables now, but I have been growing it forever. And I grow several different strains of arugula, including one that’s genuinely perennial here—so I have arugula showing up in the cracks in my patio, and the cracks in my driveway.  I joke about it, but secretly I’m very envious of myself.

I have a beautiful purple collard—the official vegetable of Richmond, California, the next town over from me, with beautiful deeply purple stems.

Mustard greens insist on procreating here, too, so I have mustard—a red mustard. So the greens show up everywhere—there’s no shortage of greens here—and they sort of take care of themselves if I pull everything up and keep everything watered.

Spinach will come back, year after year, too.

And I have two artichoke plants that are “un-dead”—I cut them back and they spring back to life.

One of my other favorite plants is the radicchio ‘Treviso.’ When you let it bolt, the flowers are cornflower blue, and it will climb, so I plant it near a trellis. I’m crazy about this radicchio in every stage of the game. And I can grow beans, too—favas and others.

Q. What would you not be without in the garden—noting those limitations of your site, of course?

A. For me the fun things to grow are the fresh herbs—the flat-leaf parsley and cilantro. I like snipping just what I need for that one occasion with my scissors, letting them grow in the garden where they will be preserved for weeks. I can buy great herbs at the farmer’s market here, but then you use a small amount and the rest of that bunch doesn’t keep well.

I don’t have enough sun to grow enough basil to make pesto from my garden, but I grow small amounts to snip into salads.

I like to feather some flat-leaf parsley and cilantro with some scallions in the food processor, and get them really powdery, and then you put that into some cooked rice.  It turns the rice bright green—and you have added a serving of vegetables.

Q. There are many bright-colored rice dishes in the new book—blueberry rice, cranberry rice, green and orange rices…tell me more.

A. I’m into painting my rice! There are a lot more grains and rices available now. So for example: One of my favorite is black or forbidden rice, and I embed with beluga lentils and minced mushrooms.  It becomes “Black Rice Plus.” I love playing with the classic rice-and-beans combinations, and using fruits and vegetables and herbs to do that.

My orange rice doesn’t start out orange—it starts out as brown basmati, my baseline rice. I orange it up with orange bell peppers and roasted ‘Butternut’ squash, and the garnish it with chopped papaya and I serve it with a Cuban-style black beans. Great for October, for Halloween!

"The Heart of the Plate" cookbooks, by Mollie KatzenQ. Though you are a creator of some of the best-selling vegetarian cookbooks of all time, I have read that you are not a strict vegetarian. Can you speak about that a little?

A.  I feel that the definition of the word “vegetarian” is up for renewal. I am not a big fan of people labeling themselves food-wise. It limits the imagination and limits the conversation.

Eat what you want; don’t eat what you don’t want. The identity thing takes it a bit far for me.

I would prefer semantically that the food be what we are describing, and not the person. The person will change—we will have days when we have different energy levels and different needs, and eras in our lives, as we age, where our metabolism changes.

We don’t want to lock ourselves into an identity…I used the word “vegetarian” in the subtitle of the new book, but I am also questioning that word more than ever.

For me, I see it as an adjective, and not a noun.

I find that the definition of it has always been something about meat: as in, “Keep it off my plate, please.” I have not very often heard it as a positive statement about vegetables. And I have met many vegetarians who don’t eat a lot of vegetables. So that word is problematic.

Q. Your tomato sauce seems to have evolved, too—I see it now comes from roasted ‘Roma’ type tomatoes.

A. I love a very plain tomato sauce. Most commercial tomato sauces are positively saturated with salt—with some kind of sodium.  But when you make your own, in the case of these slow-roasted ‘Roma’ tomatoes, you don’t need any salt.

They’re the meatiest and least-juicy tomatoes. They can start out very unpromising—not very red, not very soft—but they really hold a lot back!

What they hold back comes forth when they are in a slow oven, 250 degrees F or so, and cut into quarters or sometimes sixths or eighths, depending on their size.

Laid out on a single layer on a slick of olive oil—it’s kind of like a cross between roasting them and drying them.  You keep them there for a good long time, and they become like candy.

They are so genuinely, deeply the essence of tomato. You can mash them or rough puree them, and it’s an incredible, rich tomato sauce.

  • Find Mollie Katzen anytime at her website, and check there to see if she’s doing a book event near you sometime soon.

how to enter to win ‘the heart of the plate’

I’VE BOUGHT TWO EXTRA COPIES of Mollie Katzen’s big new cookbook, “The Heart of the Plate,” to share with you. All you have to do to enter is answer the following question, typing your reply into the comments box way at the bottom of the page (past all the other comments).

What’s at the heart of your plate these days? What has changed most about the way you cook, or the ingredients you use, compared to Moosewood-era or even just five or 10 years ago?

(My answer: I added dairy and eggs back into a formerly all plant-based diet of many decades in duration. As Mollie says, our bodies change and we may need more or less of something!)

Feeling shy, or have no reply? Just say “count me in” or some such, and I will.

I’ll select two winners (U.S. and Canada only) at random, after entries close at midnight on Wednesday, October 16. Good luck to all!

(All photos courtesy of Mollie Katzen. Disclosure: Amazon affiliate links yield a small commission that I use to buy books for future giveaways.)

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431 comments
October 9, 2013

comments

  1. Navarre Leroy says

    September 11, 2014 at 12:28 am

    Jalopenos, finely diced in most anything; grilled in halves and stuffed with blue cheese and toasted, chopped nuts. Fleur de sel. Creative anything. Slow roasted cherry tomatoes preserved in olive oil with some garlic. Thai basil pesto: a concoction that is in the freezer in very small Ball jars, awaiting veggies, noodles, and wrappers. Regular pesto, too. Desperate for a stand mixer because homemade bread in any form is to die for, including pizza, pasta, naan, pita, all of it. Ratatouille.

    Reply
  2. Sue says

    September 16, 2014 at 12:25 pm

    What a fabulous book! I would love to win this book! I still use my Moosewood cookbook and am one of those folks who waffle between strict “Vegetarian” and non. Wish I’d planted more Roma Tomatoes this year, as we will be eating alot from my garden and the goods I put up.
    Happy Almost Fall, can’t wait for stew and soup season!
    Sue

    Reply
  3. Corinne says

    December 14, 2014 at 2:19 pm

    I live near Ithaca, New York and just love Moosewood restaurant. I bought Mollie’s books when they came out way back when. I still use the books and can not wait to buy this new one. Great interview.

    Reply
  4. Maggie Mailer says

    December 14, 2014 at 2:40 pm

    Count me in please … Thank you …

    Reply
  5. Rick Gebhard says

    February 7, 2016 at 8:02 pm

    I eat a Paleo Diet now. But I still use a lot from the Stilllife cookbook, like the sesame asparagus, (but no tofu).

    Reply
  6. Gillian Carter says

    June 3, 2016 at 9:55 am

    Hot banana peppers and/or just the juice find their way into alot of my dishes. That and fresh spinach underneath, on top, or quickly stirred in at the end.
    Living in Saskatchewan in Canada – an area with limited frost free days – I’m not going to be growing those peppers myself anytime soon, but I can keep myself in fresh greens alot of the year.

    Reply
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Podcast: Soups, Soups & More Soups

I’VE FOLLOWED a vegetarian diet for decades, but it wasn’t until just a few years ago that I mastered a really good vegetable soup. Now I’m learning variations on vegetable-based soups, plus ones with beans and even ideas for mushroom soups, too–all thanks to Alexandra Stafford and these recipes. (Stream it below, read the transcript or subscribe free.)

https://robinhoodradioondemand.com/podcast-player/6211/vegetable-soup-ideas-with-ali-stafford-november-5-a-way-to-garden-with-margaret-roach.mp3

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Instagram post 2190297402408409324_444552553 Snow day. To be followed by a snow night. #awaytogarden #wavehillchairs
Instagram post 2177779417009402040_444552553 No matter that it was 11F and 17F on mornings this week; my lifelong companions and I are all tucked in, each in our respective offseason spots. Three giant pots of #cliviaminiata that are actually pieces of my long-gone grandmother’s original plant from many, many decades ago, love the offseason bright cold of the mudroom, and get no water till around the new year or so. They need a chill (under 50 but above 35) for about 40 days to trigger timely bloom in late winter/early spring (without it they will bloom whenever, later, like June or even summer). The #alocasia reacts to the cold of the mudroom by shutting down and going dormant and leafless, and then I’ll let it sleep till late winter, when I give it a drink to see if it awakens. That one sleeps and wakes on its own timetable because I do not have a proper spot for it (ideally warm, like 60 or 65 at least, and humid and bright...no can do the humid part here). We have been together probably 10 years anyhow, despite my shortcomings as a #plantparent . #alocasiaamazonica #clivias #houseplantsofinstagram #houseplants #awaytogarden
Instagram post 2172580656557749859_444552553 Gardener: “I raked all the leaves!” Nature: “Oh, really?” (Cue sound of demonic laughter from on high.)
Instagram post 2170506606641504178_444552553 I wanna tell you how it’s gonna be You’re gonna give your love to me I wanna love you night and day You know my love will not fade away Not fade away Nope. Not this #cotinus leaf’s fiery hot love at least. Like the 1957 #buddyholly song I first heard by #therollingstones in 1964, it keeps going. #awaytogarden #fallfoliage2019 #cotinusgrace #notfadeaway
Instagram post 2168987273989949378_444552553 “Jack Frost nipping at your, er, geraniums...” And here it comes.
Instagram post 2166837817953503284_444552553 Constant companions: If you want to keep good company all winter, grow some good keepers. My house is stuffed with piles of #cucurbita awaiting their time in the oven or soup kettle. Each one is a character, distinctive. On one chair in the mudroom two close cousins in #cucurbitamoschata — the horse collar-shaped one called ‘Tromboncino’ or ‘Tromboncino Rampicante’ snuggles with some ‘Butternut.’ The ‘Tromboncino’ are better eaten green and small as #zucchini but I can’t resist their eventual mad size and shape, big enough to wear around your neck. I use their meat for enriching vegetable stock; the ‘Butternut’ are far more rich and delicious. Seed respectively from sandhillpreservation.com #sandhillpreservationcenter and @turtle_tree_seed (whose ‘Butternut,’ selected for “lastingness” for decades, will keep and keep into next spring or more). #wintersquash #awaytogarden #goodkeeper #cucurbitaceae
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Instagram post 2161992098629435854_444552553 Beans are life. I mean, not only do I live on them daily (as I have as a vegetarian for 40+ years) but each one is a seed, a living embryo, a distinct and gorgeous little DNA miracle. I have been inspired by the hashtag #31daysofbeans by @lukasvolger lately, loving watching someone unknown to me (um, who shares my oatmeal thing too apparently...also see his #28daysofoatmeal) dish up the #phaseolus. We both admire bean ambassador Steve Sando @rancho_gordo and this photo might be my fave bean of all that I “met” via Steve years back, big and flat and chestnutty ‘Christmas Lima.’ My advice: don’t wait till Dec. 25 to dig in.
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Welcome! I’m Margaret Roach, a leading garden writer for 25 years—at ‘Martha Stewart Living,’ ‘Newsday,’ and in three books. I host a public-radio podcast; I also lecture, plus hold tours at my 2.3-acre Hudson Valley (NY) Zone 5B garden, and always say no to chemicals and yes to great plants.

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