Vegan Fare: It's a Bitch

A close friend of mine said recently that God has an exquisite sense of irony. She was referring to Trump coming down with COVID-19, but I think I want to make that my new mantra for most everything in life. Particularly in relationship to my soul food kitchen. You see: I’m cooking up a pretty big assortment of ribs, brisket, chicken done nine ways, and so on, and everyone in my life is more or less a vegan. And that’s just the start of the irony.

Where it really gets crazy is that in a kitchen devoted to slow-food cooking, HANDS DOWN the things that take the longest to prepare are always my vegan dishes. Slow-roasted baby back ribs? Let’s say 8 to 9 hours, depending on the size and the carryover time. Pfffffff. My baked beans with BBQ tofu takes 8 hours of prep, followed by 11 hours in the oven.

Or let’s dive into the details of the picture included here, which amounts to a PARTIAL list of the mise-en-place to make vegan burgers. It was my son’s birthday recently, and so I decided to do something a bit special for him. I had forgotten how long it takes — and that doesn’t even take into account the long, slow journey into night to make the vegan buns. There’s the black rice, that seems to take forever to cook. The black beans, which in fact do take forever to prepare. And let’s not forget a gaggle of complementary ingredients each demanding its own little sweet spot of pampering and attention (my favorite is this sauteed mash of walnuts and cremini mushrooms, but that’s another story.).

Of course, at the end of the day, what indeed took me the whole fucking day to cook, gets scarfed up in nano seconds by my son and his roommate, who, did I mention, is not even a vegan for chrissake. And that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?