The 2013 Food Lover's Cleanse Diary: Day 10
Sara Dickerman didn't just write the Food Lover's Cleanse--she's an active participant. Follow along with her every day as she reboots her diet. (No juice fasts allowed.)
I was busy yesterday afternoon. Since I'm heading back to ski lessons today, I went ahead and cooked tonight's pot au feu, which was easy enough. After all the chopping over these weeks, it's nice to have a dish that treats vegetables almost like meat, preserving them in big chunks to be cut up by a diner at the table.
Then I got to feeling sad about all the straggly bits of greens I had lying about the fridge: half a radicchio, the tops from the beets, some frisee trimmings, a few half onions and the like. I decided to make a minestrone of them all, something I could freeze up for a future healthy meal when the cleanse is kaput. I sweated some garlic with the onions and carrots, adding some fennel seed and chile flakes. I put in a mountain of chopped greens, covered them with water, and set the soup to a low simmer after it came to a boil. When it was done, it tasted good, but I'd been too lazy when chopping greens and had left them in large raggedy bits. The concoction looked rather like a sink with a broken garbage disposal. Arg.
Thankfully I could turn to my big crimson blender. It's a fairly recent purchase: after years with a not-quite-sharp blender, I splurged on a discounted VItamix. As a food writer, I have a lot of gadgets in the kitchen, but I'm choosier than you'd might expect. I might not live in a tiny apartment, but there's never enough counter space at my house, either. If a machine's not performing, it gets sent to the basement, where after a little while it's carted off to Goodwill. This blender, however, has me totally smitten for a couple of reasons. It can churn the dickens out of a puree, so everything from blackberry smoothies to soups ends up ultra-velvety in texture--almost as if there were cream in there somewhere. And secondly, the blender has a seriously variable motor, which, since you can start in a really low gear, eliminates the dreaded "hot-soup exploding blender" situation with which I'm all too familiar.
After a twirl in the blender, my ugly duckling of a soup emerged thick and smooth and elegant. It was still a sullen green, but much more appetizing nonetheless. I'll dress it up later with some creme fraiche and a jolly splotch of Sriracha or harissa.
I wouldn't recommend a top-of-the line blender for everyone, but it is one of those tools that can make veggie-focused dining both more fun and elegant. I do think every avid home cook should have good graters on hand: one very sturdy box grater (I like Oxo's) and one rasp-style grater for smaller shreds of parmesan, lemon zest, and my great lazy trick, garlic. I don't know when I started grating garlic so much, but since it saves several minutes of chopping and washing (the graters are machine washable), I've been doing it a lot during this cleanse.
Of course, I put my box grater to good use yesterday, too, making that red cabbage, beet, and apple slaw. I'm a little weird, but I loved reducing such a big pile of vegetable to shreds without picking up a knife. Think of the other nice veggie dishes you could make with your box grater: Carrots, apples, and walnuts, celery root with herbs and mustardy vinaigrette, zucchini pancakes, and, of course, confetti lentils. If you top them now and then with a nice rare slice of flank steak, so much the better.