Winning Corn on the Cob

There is only one way to make corn on the cob. 

The original recipe goes back to Nero Wolfe, in the story "Murder is Corny." 

Here I am adapting it for a #WFPB regime

1. Corn should be IN THE HUSK
2. Soak it in water for a while
3. Preheat the oven to 450F
4. Put the corn into an oven dish and roast it for 40 mins at 450F.

On the side make a side dish of carrots, caramelized onions with black garlic.

The side dish.

1. A medium-sized onion, cut up fine. 
2. Slowly caramelize the onion with about a cup of water with 1 tsp Yondu. 
3. Meanwhile do a match stick julienne of a bunch of carrots. 
4. When the onions start to be soft, pile the carrots on top
5. Slice about 6 cloves of black garlic on top of this, and mix them in good.
6. Let it simmer, stirring occasionally, until the carrots get soft.
7. In a blender, pour one cup of water.
8. Shovel in the carrot & onion mixture.
9. Puree. 

Now to serve:

• 
  One ear of corn at a time.
• Cut off the bottom so the leaves fall free.
• Sprinkle with Tajin and some hot sauce (I used green pepper sauce here).

The end result here is a nice and spicey corn, and then you have the very mild and aromatic onion puree to soothe the palate.

This is a good lesson from Indonesian Rijsttafel: alternate hot & spicey with mild and aromatic. If it gets really back eat cucumber sticks to cool off. 

Heavenly.

.Have a side of salad and you have a meal.

P.S. the Tajin obviously adds some salt, but the carrot puree is very nearly salt-free. 

 

Out of this world Okra

 This week Al Aqsa was selling okra at $1 for about 2 lbs. So, time to make Okra.

here is the result, which was the best okra dish I've ever made...

Now for the recipe:

1. Roast 1 tbsp of Panch Puran over medium high for 1 minute.
2. Add 2 medium onions, cut up fine, and roast until you see some browning, while turning
3. Now add a splash of water, so the steam helps to caramelize the onions, keep stirring and adding splashes of water for a total of 1 cup.
4. Add 6 cloves of black garlic sliced thin.  
5. Add one bell pepper (I used Orange), cut up.
6. In parallel to above, prep the Okra (I cut them in three),
7. Allow to simmer until the okra is soft.

Easy, peasy and delicious.

Getting Better All The Time...

I believe in the process of step-wise refinement, and Black Bean Salsa is one area of continuous improvement for me. 

Of course, it is one of the recipes I picked up from Esselstyn's book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, when I read it seriously in 2015. I had read it when it first came out, but now I really was motivated to make it work and within a week I was switched to a Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet.

I think today I hit another plateau...

Plus some practical notes on efficient preparation. 

Note: Some times I will use dry beans and cook them myself, but today I'm using cans, which makes it easier to explain the recipe.

Ingredients

2 15.5 Oz cans of Black Beans, drained. 

1 15.5 Oz can of corn

3 celery stalks

2 Jalapeños, sliced

3 Serrano, sliced

1 Poblano, sliced fine.

3 colors of bell pepper, equivalent to about one pepper.

1 bunch of cilantro

6/7 cloves of black garlic

1 bottle of green salsa

3 Limes Juiced.

Preparation

The efficient way to do this is 

• open the cans, and put them in a colander in the sink to drain. 
• Meanwhile, slice the celery stalks fine, slice the peppers thin, 
• fold up the cilantro and cut it up fine, and blend it in.
• our out the green salsa
• peel the black garlic, slice it fine, and put it in the green salsa bottle.
• now juice the three limes.
• pour the lime juice in the salsa bottle, and mix it up good.
• add the lime juice with the black garlic and the rest of the green salsa in the mix.

Serve on tostada, or nacho chips.

Note: Of course, you can make it milder, or even spicier, but this level is just fine to me, but different people respond differently... 

Perfect Pasta Puttanesca

This was one of those "best version yet," of an old recipe. Anice thick sauce, with unbeatable taste.

Pasta Puttanesca

delish.com (loosely based on this recipe)

Ingredients

1 large yellow onion -2 smallish red onions

6-7 cloves garlic, smashed

3 stalks of celery

1 carrot julienned

1 red bell pepper, 2 jalapeños, 1 serrano

a pinch of hijiki and a pinch of wakame, rinsed.

1 package of baby bella mushrooms

1 head of black garlic

Water

1 tbsp Italian Herbs

1 (28-oz.) can strained tomatoes

1 15.5 Oz package of diced tomatoes

optional a 12 Oz box of Cherry tomatoes.

1/2 c. kalamata olives, pitted, skced and/or some other sliced black olives

1/4 c. capers

Optional topping some basil leaves and some vegan parmesan.

You can have veggies on the side, zucchini, egg plant, spinach, broccoli, steamed carrots, whatever tickles your fancy. And a bowl of salad.

And, enough left for another day, as well as 3 quart bags in the fridge, for later.

The secret? Slowly caramelize the onions while you are prepping the veggies, keep adding small amounts of water, and mix it up so the water keeps evaporating, and the hot steam caramelizes the onions. Add the crushed garlic when the onions are soft, and just before you add in the tomatoes. Then let it simmer for a while. 

In the past I would have used some veggie broth, or water with Yondu, or something like Bragg's liquid amino's or, a low sodium tamari, or some such, but the black garlic creates a superior taste. Unbeatable.

Use the carrot as a sweetener, to cut the acidity of the tomatoes. Tastes better than sugar. 

Puttanesca remains a favorite, but this was the best one yet.

My Soon-to-be-famous Black Bean salad

One of the parts I like best about the constant kitchen explorations since I started this #WFPB routine, is the gradual improvement of many simple recipes to a gourmet level experience. 

One of them is with the black bean salsa based on Dr. Esselstyn's recipe. 

My latest version was out of this world, thanks to the discovery of Black Garlic.

Here are some of my articles on Black Garlic:

• https://www.americaoutloud.news/can-black-garlic-help-transform-metabolic-health-researchers-are-taking-notice/
• my blog posts in May 2026, mostly about Black Garlic https://hippocratessays.com/2026/05/

Black Garlic is the result of the Maillard process, which is the same browning process as when you caramelize onions or when cooking a steak. In the case of garlic, it is done at a low temperature, slightly elevated but not as hot as the onions or the steak. To a lesser degree, there is also a fermentation process involved. The result is:

• garlic smell is gone
• great aroma
• elevated nutritional value. This is a nutrition bomb.

Typically the range is between 60 Centigrade and 77 Centigrade, and if you go to the low end of that range, it takes longer. I have a fermentation pot which keeps it at 75 Centigrade and it takes a week.
I am experimenting more and more with various recipes, and there are ways to simply sample it, as shown here:

I often let people sample them on a Triscuit with just one crushed clove and a slice of jalapeño, or without the jalapeño if you prefer. I can get really decadent, and put a drizzle of honey on the Triscuit first, then crush a clove of BG and put a jalapeño slice on top.

Many recipes simply taste better with Black Garlic.

Dressing for cucumber salad:

1. 1 tbsp maple syrup
2. 2 tbsp dijon mustard
3. 3 tbsp balsamic
4. juice of 1 lemon
5. juice of 1 lime
6. 1 tbsp chia seeds
7. 1 tsp dill
8. 5-6 cloves of black garlic, sliced fine.

Another hit in the making is my new Black Bean Salsa with Black Garlic.

1. 2 cans black beans, rinsed
2. 1 can corn, drained
3. 1 bunch of cilantro, choppped fine
4. 3 stalks of celery
5. 1 bottle of salsa verde
6. juice of 3 limes
7. 1 entire bulb of Black Garlic, sliced thin and mixed in (10-12 cloves). 
8. 2 Jalapeños sliced thin
9. 3 Serranos, sliced thin
10. 1 red, orange or yellow bell pepper, or a poblano or a chilaca pepper, cut up small.

As always this type of dish is better the next day, after marinating in the fridge overnight.

 

Fermentation Galore

 This video on Fermented Foods, is worth saving to refer to in the future.

https://youtu.be/5yCI5Ah0lJM?si=TVAwNB30TRNg_tiG

I am not necessarily in favor of the dairy-based foods, nor of the fish sauce in Kimchi, but you can make vegan variants. My supermarket even carries vegan Kimchi.

Fusion Bean Soup all over again...

 I previously developed this soup, starting from a traditional Dutch recipe and I made it with 13 varieties of bean to come as close to the original as possible. 

Yesterday, in our Cooking Class at St. Helena's, we made yet another variant, based on a bean variety I never tried before, Light Red Kidney Beans. They definitely worked well.

For the rest, the soup revolves around using a massive amount of root vegetables. I have never found anything that does not work.

As it was this time the root veggies were:

• 3 Carrots
• 3 red skin potatoes, cut in 1/8th pieces
• 2 eddo 
• 1 yellow yautia
• 1 purple yautia
• 1 white yautia
• 1 kohlrabi
• 1 turnip

The traditional Dutch recipe is not normally spicey hot, but I like both aroma and some heat which sort of lifts the dullness of the root vegetables to the next level.

We pre-cooked the beans with some fennel and some kombu.

The base was made with the usual panchpuran to start (roasted), and then we caramelized the onions and added a green bell pepper and a poblano pepper and garlic, plus 2 jalapeños and 3 serranos, and started building from there, with celery, carrots, and all the root veggies, seitan for chewiness. And so on, including some diced tomatoes.

Here is the last recipe 

https://starlingaveplantbased.blogspot.com/2021/03/winter-wfpb-bean-soup-extravaganza-006h.html

In terms of selecting your root vegetables, you can use whatever is available, I don't think you can go wrong. Parsnip works very well also. 

Because of all the ingredients, it is impossible to cook a small batch. That is why I always have quart bags of soup in my fridge, and I am never stuck.

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