The Vegetarian Guy

Here is a link to this month’s issue which features our kitchen in the Rivenoak house in Birmingham, Michigan and some recipes from the upcoming Inn Season Cafe Cookbook.

http://picasaweb.google.com/GVutetakis/DetroitHomeMagazine

This week, our editing team has been immersed in Inn Season Cafe recipes, cutting this, adding that.  An exacting task, this is the final stretch of getting the recipes almost perfect.  Needless to say, appetites are worked up looking at, talking about and documenting the foods that made Inn Season Cafe so popular for decades.  There are no complaints when we break for meals and I am able to cook dishes with local market ingredients.  We have convinced ourselves (without great effort) the satisfaction arising from partaking in beautiful fresh food, adds an edge to the often tedious editing process.  Here is a sampling of the market finds and dishes created.

Quick chopped gazpacho

Fresh caprese style tomatoes

Tomato season is here!

Spinach salad with tofu and walnuts

Corn and leek cakes with chopped guacamole

Michigan blueberries are extra sweet right now.

Swiss chard tart

Almond and orange torta 

For lunch on the Akrotiri peninsula in Crete, a smattering of flavorful foods would be shared among family at home, or in tavernas and kafenions during frequent “volitas” or jaunts to town.  It would be a welcome culmination to the busy mornings that had to be productive before the sun blazed oppressive noon-time heat, fueled by sirocco winds from the desert in North Africa.  During these “kalokeri” (summer), months lunch always had a fresh tomato and cucumber salad with sweet red onions and sliced fresh feta cheese from sheep or goats residing down the road.  Of course, this was dressed with olive oil from local trees and red wine vinegar from nearby vineyards.  Cretan olives were cured a number of different ways, but my favorite was the method my grand uncle Kyriako would use.  In the storage room behind his house, he would pile olives on a tarp with sea salt harvested from the sun-drenched sea rocks nearby in Stavros.  The tide would wash in every ten days to fill the volcanic pockets with a fresh dose of Mediterranean sea water, conveniently evaporating to provide salt before the next swell.  Kyriako’s olives were tiny, similar in size to Nicoise olives, but salt cured with a wrinkled skin. The size was deceptive because they tasted extraordinary and were very addictive.  Meals were always accompanied by bread, not the white pasty Greek bread often seen at restaurants, but darker crusty loaves worthy of a good soak in the salsa of the salad. The noon-time meal often would have Kaletsounia (page 127), potatoes fried in, and dressed with, extra virgin olive oil (superb!), kolakithia keftedes (zucchini balls), various kinds of horta (boiled greens with lemon and olive oil), melitzana salata (eggplant dip), “fasolia gigandes” (butter beans), hard cheeses and local retsina wine of home made wine from grapes in the Vothono valley nearby.  All of this would be followed by sun sweetened figs, fresh almonds in local thyme honey and “karpusi,” perfectly sweet watermelon from the field down the road. This was the mezzes lunch we would share with family and friends during visits to Crete.  Often lasting for two hours, it was a time to share stories, histories and toasts to friendship.  Although, quantities of food were not always large, we would fill up on exquisite tastes and good company.  Lunch would be followed by a refreshing siesta to prepare for festivities in the evening.  This was mezzes the way it was meant to be: enjoyable, stress-free and vibrant with nourishing foods.  

Every week something new pops up at the market.  The first few heirloom tomatoes, sweet white Siberian kale from Cinzori Farms and local peaches are notable this week. Also, as each week progresses, the corn is sweeter and is more tender by the day.  We do not get corn like this in San Diego, where the best is comparable to end of season Michigan corn—-Something to be said for winter dormancy, manifested in the intensely flavorful splendors of summer. 

The season progresses and culinary excitement builds as we explore various local fresh flavors.  Farmers market produce is bolstered by herbs and tender greens plucked from the garden, while bread made from Hampshire Farms fresh ground flours makes the house smell irresistible.

Below is a photo tour as we work on editing The Inn Season Cafe cookbook, documenting my years as chef and chef/owner—1981 to 2002.

The book is entirely vegan as well as all the food presented here.

Maple Creek Farms–beautiful organic foods

Michigan Peaches are in!

 

Burda’s cherries and berries

Sauteed endive with pine nuts

Cinzori kale salad with plum vinaigrette

Donny Hobson zucchinis

Zucchini Parmagiana

Roasted coriander bread with Corscan thyme honey

Chocolate almond cream cake

Knowledge is a powerful “utensil” in the kitchen for creating recipes and this cognizance, combined with a historical perspective, has been one of my guiding passions. It was a path that unlocked the secrets behind recipes and helped me to discover the connections between longevity and good food. 

The basic conflict of interest between food as a commodity and as a health enhancing product correlates with the modern disconnection between the land and the plate.  Research has also taught me that most cultures have vegetarian traditions in some aspect of their history. Sometimes born out of economic necessity, but often these traditions were addressing the spiritual conflict between life and death, man and animal. 

Aromas waft into the nostrils as the dish arrives.  Flavors explode with imagery of fabulous lands and forgotten civilizations, highlighted by local notes of earth, sun and moon.  Pressing the fork into each morsel is a visual delight that alternates in texture from silky smooth to a delicate crispness. Peaceful rhythms scintillating in a background of melodic humming and chatter of others who dine.  Plates are exchanged for the next course and with each move, anticipation builds. Finally, after a thorough sensual workout of the palate, desert arrives.  Visually enticing and not too sweet, it is the smooth finish to a great meal.  Satisfied and vitalized, the body is nourished, the mind is pleased and the soul tingles.  Until the next time, life is perfect.  

Sara and I had lunch at Inn Season Cafe on Friday.  We do not get there as often as we like, our life in Birmingham seems far away even though it is only five miles.  The food was excellent.  I had a wonderfully fresh carrot-apple-ginger juice with a flavorful potato-dill soup.  Sara had the chili, good as always.  We shared the Barbecued Seitan Sandwich and found it to be balanced, without the rubbery texture wheat gluten often has.  The service was great, especially since we were doted on by our longtime friends Jenny, Amber and Jennifer.  It has been over five years since we sold the Cafe and it is exciting to see the restaurant well run, busy and successful.  Kudos to Chef Thomas and Nick for keeping it up as a vibrant centerpiece in the Royal Oak restaurant community.  

I am currently mulling over the final edits of the Inn Season Cookbook (working title) and look forward to the day when it is for sale at the restaurant and bookstores. After all these years there is light at the end of the tunnel!  The book covers the the period from when we first opened the cafe in 1981 to when I sold it in July, 2002.  

Inn Season Cafe

500 East Fourth Street, Royal Oak, MI 48067

Tel: 248-547-7916