The Cat With the (Chef's) Hat Comes Back (and back and back)

The renowned chef and author, Michael Ruhlman, notes in one of my favorite cooking technique books, Twenty, that the first and most important technique of all is thinking ahead: “Before you begin. Stand still. Think . . . imagine what is about to happen.” Simple in its brilliance.

So right now, I’m thinking about one of my favorite books of all time, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. I keep thinking about how the unexpected pink ring s/he leaves in the bathtub morphs from a localized problem into a colossal one, with each new spur of the moment solution exacerbates the problem. Why? Because I never planned to make a vegan pizza.

It started out innocently enough. I love the simplicity of Marcella Hazan’s 4-ingrendient tomato sauce. But it has butter in it. And I wondered how it would work as a vegan dish, substituting olive oil for the dairy. Brilliantly, as it turns out. But now I have a few liters of vegan tomato sauce. What to do with it? Pasta, of course. But that’s not terribly interesting. And, in any case, I have a pasta pesto kale dish on my vegan menu and really didn’t want a similar dish as well.

Plus, I needed parmesan cheese for that dish. Hold on. My vegan son is always talking about how he misses the taste of very few things, one of them being real parmesan cheese. How about a vegan work-around to use with the sauce. Voila. Ground cashews, salt, garlic, and brewer’s yeast. Not bad at all. In fact, pretty damn good.

Still, the idea of a vegan spaghetti with vegan parmesan cheese still didn’t seem compelling enough. I looked around the kitchen: I had some broccoli and mushrooms that needed to be cooked fairly soon. My son loves both. So, back to Michael Ruhlman for a few lessons on the techniques of sauteeing, highly recommended. The mushrooms get seared first, with the addition of onions on the back end. Then the broccoli, sauteed on a high heat.

Hmmmm.

I’ve got vegan tomato sauce that is totally kickass. Some great roasted veggies. A vegan parmesan cheese. It’s starting to look a lot like pizza. Which is where I landed. Irit says it’s hands-down the best pizza she has ever eaten. And she doesn’t even like pizza. All goes to show you what the best laid plans of slice and dice with bring you. Or lack thereof.