Cooking inspiration with Yondu Culinary Studio

 We have used Yondu in our cooking classes, and it is an amazing tastemaker in the kitchen.

The company is doing some online cooking classes, and they are worth attending, you will get ideas. You can register for the classes through Eventbrite here.

Having said that, like most food businesses, they are trying to leverage the "plant-based' trend only in the general sense, and they stick to a traditional nutritional model, which can be confusing, particularly when it comes to the usual misunderstanding that it is hard to get sufficient protein on a plant-based diet. With high school nutrition, people worry always about "but where do you get your protein?" which is not warranted, and seems to be a problem only because they do not know the actual protein content of foods (like even rice or potatoes at 10-11% of calories from protein are a perfectly balanced food). The corollary to that problem is also the overconsumption of protein in the standard diet, which turns out to be unhealthy in the first place. So, as long as you get your staples of rice, or potatoes, etc., you can build a meal around that. In short, if the general conversion from a "normal" recipe to a #WFPB recipe involves seeing to your staples, which need to be complex carbs (brown rice, potatoes, or whole grain pasta, etc.) and not refined foods. Aside from that, you typically make more veggies than "ordinary food." That can include both cooked and raw.  

Accordingly, if I use a Yondu recipe here, I may post some comments or variations from time to time to illustrate how you can easily make proper Whole Foods, Plant-Based meals with Yondu. Used properly, Yondu allows you to create a lot of flavor without adding a lot of salt and that is really the crux of the whole thing. Their classes have given me some great ideas.

In my own cooking the easiest taste makers ("umami" is the word of the day for aromatic and flavorful taste) are:

1. Yondu
2. Braggs Liquid Aminos
3. Panch Puran

Caramelizing onions

These days, caramelizing onions for me often involves Yondu, though sometimes, depending on what I am cooking, I may start with roasting some Panch Puran in my pan (the seeds, not the powder).

Here is my routine:

1. [optional] Roast Panch Puran for 5 mins at 350F
2. Dry roast the chopped onions at 350F for 5 mins (optionally chopped chili or peppers can also be added at this stage.
3. Continue another 5 mins at 350F, and gradually stir in a cup of water with 1 Tsp Yondu.
4. Add in chopped garlic

That's a great start for many wonderful vegetable dishes. You can make spinach, Malabar spinach (in my Bangla neighborhood "Poi leaf"), Amaranth leaves (" shaag"), chard, any green leafies can be started this way.  On the other hand, we also know that our taste buds do change on a plant-based diet, and I am often amazed how good something simple like steamed spinach can be.  

More Bengali Inspiration #1

I will be recreating the recipes we prepared at the last class, and give some more detailed instructions.

Meanwhile, if you want to get your information from the source, you can of course ask the Bangladeshi greengrocers on Starling Ave (aka Bangla Bazaar), or, there is a series on youtube, Village Food Life, which allows you to study some of the Bangladeshi cuisine in a fairly authentic village setting. I will use one of the videos below.

Recipes

While you can vary these recipes endlessly, some of the basic patterns and spices are very helpful to understand and I will break them out here, for they are the building blocks.

With lentils, you can make a quick sauce or a soup. We will make one here, but there are many kinds of lentils, so you can vary this endlessly and fine tune it to your own taste.

Poi Leaf

Here is a recipe about Malabar Spinach, or Poi Leaf, which is available year-round. It is a bit like spinach, but it has a richer taste, and soon enough you will figure out when Poi is more suitable than spinach. As it says on the site I linked here, it's like there are hints of citrus and pepper in the flavor.

At our recent cooking class, we just made boiled poi leaf, but on this occasion, I am going to make more of a stew with it, using the stems as well.

Caramelized Onions are the start

I started my cooking with a frying pan to caramelize 4 to 5 medium-size onions finely cut-up, with some finely cut chilis, and a jalapeno, plus garlic, while adding slowly about 8 oz of veggie broth and about a tablespoon of Braggs Liquid Aminos. The key is to not stir the onions at first, until the bottom begins to brown, and then, before they would char, you start stirring them, and you will gradually see a glaze form in the pan. You can then use water, or veggie broth, or vinegar to deglaze the pan, so that instead of sticking to the pan, the onions are nice and moist.

Note, the article I linked here, suggests caramelizing in a hot frying pan, which is the best. It will take 5 minutes or less. Here is an article that describes a slow method, which also works, but is inefficient because it costs too much time. If you do it over high heat, you just need to watch it closely. If you go the medium temperature method, it will take 25-30 minutes.

For about 1.5 lbs of poi leaf, I used about half the onions and added a piece of turmeric, cut-up in thin slices. I cut up the stems in 1/4" pieces, and cooked them with the onions, adding a little more water. Once the stems were soft I threw the leaves on top and let them wilt over a low flame, about 15 minutes. Then I mixed the whole thing together. It was delicious.

Lentil Sauce

I used a 3 lb Deshi squash (water squash) and 1 lb of split red lentils.

Water Squash

Starting with the caramelized onions, I added some turmeric, and a few bay leaves and a bunch of cilantro cut up fine and the squash cut-up to about 1/4" thick 1/8th wedges. Then I added about 1 lb of lentils and water to cover and about a table spoon of liquid aminos (in lieu of salt) and that cooked for about 30 mins. With a wooden spoon I could practically pulverized the squash, and make a smooth sauce out of the whole thing, while removing the bay leaf.

With that, I had enough sauce left over to freeze two quart bags for another day, and that still left me enough for about two more days, which I could keep in the fridge. You learn to cook in batches.