And using bone char (or bone marrow - ie Gelatin) also violates vegetarian principles since you can't get bone without killing something. Thus why you really need to read labels on everything you buy. You'd be surprised how many animal by-products are used in food that you would typically think to be animal-bit-free.

~spidey

I'm wondering whether consuming dairy products might violate vegetarian principles as well as vegan principles? Because the factory dairy industry can't function without killing calves.

-- Nephele

Good question! I think that there are a lot of vegetarians who eat and drink more "by the letter" of the vega law than its spirit. But then I am always surprised how many people don't know that gelatin is made of bones and that using bones cannot be reconciled with a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. Although I probably should shut up, since I had never heard about suger being not vegetarian (what does bone char in sugar, anyway?). So, I'm going to study a bit before sugar is added to the grocery list.

To answer Nephele's question, I personally use milk and other diary products (mostly cheese), but not much. For a lot of things, there are replacements available. Soy products etc. But I have been thinking about going either hardcore vegetarian or even vegan for a while.


Variations on Nephele Pasta and Artichoke Recipe
Note 1 Where amounts are used, remember that I only know how to use the metric system!
Note 2 I think it's vegan, but you can make a vegetarian variety as well. That's explained in the last step.
Note 3 I wrote the amounts down for one person, so you can make it easily in a recipe for two, three, seven...

One Roast some pinenuts in a dry, (non-stick) frying pan. You don't need oil or butter do roast them. They do easily burn, so stir them regularly and take them out of the pan once they are getting brown/dark. Put them in a plate until you need them again.
Variety: you can also use walnuts instead of pinenuts. In that case, just break them into little pieces and put them in in step five.

Two Boil pasta as it is described on the package. I used organic, whole weat penne, but feel free to use your favorite paste. Note I think some pastas contain egg, so choose your pasta carefully if you are vegan.

Three Open a can of artichokes (about 200 - 250 gr) and slice them into little cubes. Cut a clove of garlic finely as well (one little piece, not the whole "ball") or use a garlic paste (in that case, you don't have to slice it).
If they are in season - and you are feeling a little bit adventurous - I guess you can also use fresh artichokes. If you don't know how to do that, look online.

Four Heat some olive oil in the frying pan and add your garlic and artichokes. Keep stirring while you heat it. Season with freshly ground pepper, some Italian spices (basil, thyme, oregano),and a little bit of salt (if you like).

Five Put the pasta in with the vegetables and make sure the whole dish is hot. Then take it off of the stove and add a little bit of good olive oil.

Six - optional for vegetarians Add some crumbly "creamy" goat cheese, grated goat cheese, or parmasan. How much you need, depends on the "strenght" of the taste of the (goat) cheese. If it is a not so "strong" taste, then you need no more than two tablespoons (with a little heap). If it is a strong tasting cheese, use less. Otherwise it will dominate the dish.

Serve right away. A dry white wine is also optional

It's not as easy as Nephele recipe, but I hope it can be an alternative for those who live in areas where they do not sell the products she uses. I also hope I wrote everything down in a clear way!

A tricky question and one I have asked myself many times.

There is inherent to the dairy system the by-product of calves born. And yes, something must be done with those calves. Depending on where you look, this can vary but almost always the male calves eventually get used as meat whether for veal or beef and the females are relegated to a life of milk production and pregnancy. Some farms are fairly sustainable in that they don't constantly breed their cows (they rotate the pregnant cows so as to not cause a great deal of trauma) but even they keep the male cows to raise as pasture-fed beef. A little friendlier if you can find it, but I see your point which is why I am looking into weaning myself off the stuff.

I am still torn on eating eggs though. As a friend puts it "eggs are chicken periods - they are going to have them whether you eat them or not" and I get my eggs from a lady who keeps pet chickens so I really don't feel guilty about eating them. The chickens are treated at least as well as I treat my cat, and the lady who sells the eggs does so because she can't possibly eat everything they lay and she doesn't want them to go to waste. If I didn't have this option, I wouldn't touch eggs.

~spidey

Nachty, many thanks for that pasta/artichoke recipe! The addition of pinenuts sounds delicious!

After artichokes, I think that basil pesto is my next favorite thing to put on pasta. But a lot of the ready-prepared basil pesto available in the supermarkets also contains Parmesan cheese. Last summer I planted some basil in my garden, and my attempts at home-made pesto didn't turn out so bad. So this coming summer I'm going to practice more on my pesto-making in earnest.

Spidey, I think that if I knew for certain that my dairy and eggs were coming from animals that weren't being abused on factory farms, then I could enjoy consuming those products as a vegetarian rather than abstaining from them as a vegan. I wish I had a local egg-lady as you have!

But as for eating industry-produced eggs because (as your friend says) chickens "are going to have them whether you eat them or not..." It's just that it's lately been bothering me that the chickens are confined the way they are in the factory farm process (and that includes even the so-called "free range" chickens). And, of course, once the chickens stop producing eggs, they're sent off to slaughter.

I never really thought about any of this stuff before. Maybe I'm thinking about it too much.

Here's a vegan recipe I found on the Web for boxty:

Vegan Boxty

The first time I ever had boxty was on my last trip to Washington, D.C., when I had lunch at an Irish pub called Fadó. There are a few Fadó pubs throughout the country, but none in New York.

I really, really, really wish we could get a Fadó here in New York, because boxty is the most absolutely DELICIOUS thing. I got hooked on it when I was in Washington, and I'm STILL suffering from boxty withdrawal! I'm going to try making some of my own (although I'm not sure the vegan recipe I found is quite like the boxty they make at Fadó).

-- Nephele

Nope. It's a little matter of "awareness". As you explore, you find doors opening up which you need to look through... Where you draw the line in accepting and adopting what you find is where you define your personal position.

Probably!!

And yet it seems odd to define myself by what I eat (or refrain from eating). Although when any of us call ourselves "vegetarian" or "vegan," that's clearly not the whole of what we are.

One of my favorite writers of the last century, and preserver of the Yiddish language, Isaac Bashevis Singer, put it this way:

"This is my protest against the conduct of the world. To be a vegetarian is to disagree -- to disagree with the course of things today. Nuclear power, starvation, cruelty -- we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one."

Back on topic: Has anyone here ever tried boxty? I haven't yet tried the vegan recipe for it that I'd posted earlier. I was hoping one of our more experienced cooks in this thread might have given it a go first.

-- Nephele

Yet it gives new life to the old adage, "You are what you eat", don't you think?

I don't want to make assumptions, but for the vast majority of the users of this forum, I suspect that it's true that we don't pay a great deal of attention to what we eat - we just buy, take it into the kitchen, cook and eat. Actually following a diet to try and lose weight makes people think about it more, but the growth in the number of readily-available "light" options has even made that so much easier. Whereas, a vegan diet takes determined effort and a willingness to research to follow, and is consequently more time-consuming than usual. You really DO have to think about it... And that's not a bad thing. With time, it's something you get used to and it becomes second nature.

I've had them both in the UK and at a pub I used to go to in Virginia Beach. I don't really remember them being anything special. I mean, in essence it's a glorified hash brown.

~spidey

Let's say someone has the celiac disease / is intollerant to gluten and has an overproduction of insuline, which would exclude any kind of sugar from the diet... do you have any recipie matching these characteristics?

-- 27 Jan 2011, 11:37 --



eeehm... sorry for this, Minnie, hope it's not going to offend you, but the Italian in me needs to clarify this...
When it comes to saffron it's always good to be careful with it and respect it's needs , saffron has many healing effects as many plants do, but it's very VERY delicate and should not be overheated. Best thing to do when using saffron in cooking is to put it at the end of the cooking process to preserve it's good effects. If the recipe you mention NEEDS saffron at the beginning of the cooking process I would strongly recommend substituting it with curcuma (turmeric), which also has many healing effects but is more resistant to heat, plus, it tastes more or less like saffron and gives more colour in less quantities.

About Mushroom risotto I usually prepare it with soy cream instead of wine. And I must add, as an Italian, that mushroom risotto is GREAT also without parmigiano.

Cassie, I’m definitely not offended – when I posted the recipe I was actually hoping you’d do exactly what you’ve done, eg, pass on tips to make it more authentically Italian. Also, thank you for the advice about the saffron, and the suggestion of using turmeric (curcuma); actually, that suits me better because we always have that around (it’s a key ingredient in many, many curry recipes) as opposed to saffron.

I’m not familiar with soy cream; I’ll need to try and find that! I like the slight piquancy that white wine brings to the flavour in the recipe you’ve quoted, but am definitely prepared to try anything which makes it more authentic – something which always concerns me about English versions of recipes taken from international cuisine is that in some way they’re nearly always “anglicised”, so that the result is effectively only an approximation of the “real thing”.

So, thank you for the wonderful tips!

And, I never realised that parmigiano was subject to “appellation controllee” rules. The closest English equivalent I can think of is that of Stilton cheese; genuine Stilton is only produced at something like 6 farms in a particular area of England. However, at the moment, I think they’re still fighting to get the name protected.

Let's say the recipe with wine is the old rural Italian recipe, whereas the one with soycream (which I prefer but can be substituded by regular milk cream) is the more modern recipe you would likely find in a restaurant, the important thing about mushroom risotto is to always put a little bit of parsley at the end of cooking in both recipies. Wanna make it more Italian? Don't use preconfectioned mushrooms, go to a grocers' and get fresh ones . I have a bunch of porcinis in my refrigerator, they're a present from my uncle, he often finds them when he goes with his dog to find truffle. Italians "never" (of course it can happen) use preconfectioned meals, a true Italian would always go for the fresh thing.

Want something TYPICAL Italian? CAPPELLETTI! It's a typical recipe of my region, (Emilia Romagna) and there is an internal war because maids from Bolonia make them with meat and are called TORTELLINI whereas maids from Ravenna (my hometown) make them only with Parmigiano cheese:

Prepare the filling by making a paste from:

1 pound grated Parmigiano
2 whole eggs
A pinch of nutmeg


For the pasta, follow the instructions for home-made pasta, using 2 1/4 cups of flour and three eggs.

To make the cappelletti, roll out a thin sheet of pasta on a well-floured wood surface. Then use a knife to cut out 2-inch side squares of dough. Put a level teaspoon of the stuffing in the middle of each square and fold the circles over to make a triangle, dampening the edges of the disks a little to make sure they stay stuck together. Then wrap the triangle base around a finger, giving them a half-twist to turn up one pair of corners and pressing the other pair together to make little rings.

Gently boil the cappelletti in the broth until they are done, 3-5 minutes (the pasta should be al dente). Fifteen to twenty cappelletti in a brimming bowl of broth should be sufficient for a healthy eater, though you may be tempted to eat more.





Worchester sauce as far as my professor of translation used to say at the university, but I may be wrong... Plus you have a something I envy you enormously: MILK! Milk in England and Germany has that salty aftertaste that makes taste buds dance (italian expression, I hope it gives an idea), whereas Italian milk has a very sweet/sugary/almost-vanilla aftertaste and I'm talking about milk immediately after milking and immediately boiled when still warm. (Luckily it's still common in the countryside over here)

Again - thank you, Cassie! I've learned a lot from your wonderful posts on this subject.

Porcinis are a relative rarity at the moment in this country, and you either tend to find them either dried or in a jar, preserved in oil. I look out for them constantly, but until now I've never found fresh ones. However, I'm not going to stop trying - eventually they'll turn up!

You've been to England; you probably know that we tend to call them all "tortellini", regardless of filling. I'm grateful to you for having made the distinction. Here, they tend to use ricotta rather than parmigiano. However, if I were in Italy, I'd definitely be a soldier for the Ravenna girls' army!

I agree that thinking about what you eat isn't a bad thing, but what you said about vegan dieting is the reason I don't think I can become a vegan. I just don't have that kind of patience even though I know it would help me in the long run.

Anyway, I don't if this has been discussed on any other topic, but I need some advice about tofu. I can't afford it right now, but I plan to give a try. I'm a clumsy cook, but I would like to be able to eat some old meals I had to sacrifice with a meat substitute(spagetti, pasta, tacos etc.). I want to try knew tofu meals too of course.

I know I can google this, but figured it wouldn't hurt to ask any of you first.

P.S. Simple recipes (if possible) please. I'm a beginner cook.

There's something on the veg thread!