No bones about it Daughter’s vegan cuisine gets mixed reviews at party

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Some kids go away to college and come back with green hair. Others show up with a year’s worth of laundry or 20 new body piercings.

Mine came home a vegan.

That’s not to be mistaken for a vegetarian, the increasingly ubiquitous class of fussy eaters who avoid ingesting flesh. There are, of course, variations within that designation – fish eaters and egg eaters, for instance. But nearly all avoid beef and chicken. I fall into the fish-eating, egg-eating group.

A vegan, on the other hand, avoids all meat, fish, dairy, eggs and, as my buddy at work likes to add, flavor. As with vegetarians, there are also degrees of veganism. The hard-core vegan avoids all products that come into contact with animals, including honey and some refined sugar, which is purified with bone ash.

But when you’ve made the effort to follow a vegan diet, it usually reflects an overall life choice. Some vegans are protesting the treatment of farm animals in America. Others would never consider eating animals whether they were farmed organically or not. Still others choose to be vegans to offset the possibility of heart disease.

For the most politically motivated, the lifestyle extends to glue, soap, drums, matches and, of course, bone china, all of which can contain animal products.

Generally speaking, my daughter is a moderate vegan. She sticks to the diet and does the best she can with the other lifestyle challenges. Being the mother of a vegan comes with its own peculiar obstacles. Pasta, soy products, tortilla chips and cookies can all have hidden ingredients that knock them out of the running.

I end up saying: Here, honey – oh, dear, can I still call you that? – eat a grapefruit.

But in all fairness to my kid, I blame myself. She was, indeed, raised in a vegetarian household (the hard-core kind), though she was never required to follow that diet. It’s simply the way we ate at home. She was free to eat hamburgers to her heart’s delight as long as she did it somewhere else. It’s probably significant that her first job in high school was at Burger King, which must have been like a candy shop to her. Eat the Whoppers, I told her. Just don’t bring them home.

Those were the good old days.

I had no idea that my demands would spawn a whole new general of dietary fascism.

I admit to being frustrated by trying to prepare for her visits home. When children come home from college, you want to feed them well. After they graduate and have taken the next life step, as my daughter has, you still want to feed them well when they come home – perhaps even more so because you are no longer paying for college cafeteria food and, bad as that was, who knows what they might be eating once they have to actually pay for the food?

The last time my daughter came home, I asked her if she would prepare a vegan dinner party with me. “Great idea,” she said. “You never did teach me how to cook.”

She suggested I take a look at “How it all Vegan,” a cookbook by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer, two Canadian cooks who are in their 20s and look like punk rockers. Their recipes for “Stephanie’s Nummy Yummy Veggie Spread” and “Burnin’ Butt Burritos” are not my typical dinner party fare. But this was no typical dinner party.

A stack of cookbooks in front of us on the kitchen table, we stayed up late into the night and, by the time we finished planning the food we wanted, we had culled our menu from five cookbooks, the newest and hardiest of which was Robin Robertson’s “Vegan Planet,” published this year. We also grabbed recipes from the punk rockers, Susanna Foo’s “Chinese Cuisine,” and “Very Vegetarian,” a testament to meatless living by sprinter Carl Lewis.

The menu: sweet potato and green pea samosas, chopped green bean and walnut liver, spiced shiitake mushrooms on toast, orange and chipotle tofu, broccoli with figs, garlic and pine nuts, arugula with pears and citrus vinaigrette, and chocolate bourbon pecan pie.

Our imperative was finding excellent flavor, the type that wouldn’t leave eaters hungry for prime rib or a slab of after-dinner Camembert.

My first job was to collect the most dedicated meat eaters I know. I called more than a dozen people before I could find anyone available. I didn’t ask the reasons for declining. I’d like to believe it’s because a woman in our village was cooking a public dinner of chicken Kiev, broccoli drenched in cheese and mashed potatoes in butter. And somehow that sounded better to them than chopped green bean and walnut liver. Go figure.

We finally put together a group of daring eaters, including a tofu skeptic and a ribs-raised Southerner, and early on the morning of our party, my daughter and I sallied forth to the market. We were able to find most of what we needed at the local grocery store but we also had to stop at a food co-op for some of the more unusual items, such as chipotle chilis, garlic chili paste and vegan chocolate chips.

At home, we drained the tofu by wrapping it in dishtowels and stacking the food processor and glass bowls on top of it to push out the extra water. We ground nuts and squeezed fruits. I sauteed mushrooms while my co-chef crimped the ends of thinly rolled dough for the samosas. And although she learned the hard way to measure ingredients away from the main bowl (she spilled an extra quarter cup of Jack Daniels in the pie), she also learned that accidents can sometimes improve a dish! To my delight, she is a meticulous and neat cook, far neater in the kitchen than in her own room, actually.

When our guests arrived, we handed them glasses of wine and the veganorama began. We used our most elegant serving dishes and, for the main course, plated the food in the kitchen and delivered it decorously to diners sitting near a blazing fire in the dining room.

Our highest marks for the evening, it turns out, were for presentation.

Feedback about the food was less unified. My favorite comments were from my daughter’s childhood friend: “Tofu can’t be made good,” he wrote on the dinner card near his plate. “Needs more oxtail.” And about the chopped liver: “I’ve never eaten anything so gray.” Another notable insight was about the salad and came from a writer and avowed dairy lover: “This lacks celestial quality only by the absence of gorgonzola.”

There were also favorable responses such as “Wooo, wooo, wooo” (the salad) and “Yummy!” (the shiitakes).

My daughter and I were both critical. “Liver is gross,” she wrote about the chopped bean dip, “and so is this.”

As with everyone, she loved the pie, which was dense but given some levity through egg replacer, a white substance made from potato powder and vegan leaveners. It does the job eggs would do without bothering the hen.

But much of the dinner was too sweet. Or too garlicky. In fact, flavors bounced between onion-garlic and unrefined sugary.

And that’s my only complaint (except there is something to that “gray” observation). The truth is, I regularly prepare vegan meals without really thinking about it. Pasta dishes, chili, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, salads – all vegan. Something about the intentionality of this dinner, however, strained my patience with the process. I also found myself adjusting the spices significantly and adding more salt than I usually would.

I have too much cheese passion to be a vegan. But I salute my daughter for the amount of work she is willing to do to keep her body in step with her political views. Her veganism put us in the kitchen together, standing side by side talking about food and life and how to dice an onion.

After all, there’s more than one way to skin a tomato, as we say in our home now.

“Vegan Planet” by Robin Robertson confidently combine flavors, colors and textures, and are easy to follow. Her sidebars are informative and helpful, and the writing is always friendly. Home cooks will return to this book time after time for innovative ideas for dinners, parties, snacks and sweets.

Broccoli Rabe with Figs, Garlic and Pine Nuts

Serves 4

2 bunches broccoli rabe, stems trimmed and coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh or dried figs

1/4 cup pine nuts

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the broccoli rabe and boil for 5 minutes. Drain well and set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the figs and pine nuts, and cook until the pine nuts are lightly toasted, about 1 minute. Stir in the broccoli rabe and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 5 minutes. Serve hot.

If you have a taste for Asian food, Susanna Foo’s “Chinese Cuisine” is not only fun to cook from but also elegant to read and look through. Foo, who loves jalapeno peppers, also offers meat dishes, but her vegetarian recipes rely on innovative fusions of North American and Asian delights. The following recipe is adapted from “Chinese Cuisine.”

Spiced Shiitake Mushrooms

Serves 4-6

1 pound small fresh shiitake mushrooms, preferably 1-11/2 inches in diameter

1/4 cup olive oil

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

2 scallions, white part only, chopped

1/2 fresh jalapeno pepper, finely diced (optional)

Freshly ground pepper

French baguette, sliced into medallions and toasted

Remove the stems from the shiitake mushrooms and wipe the caps with a damp cloth. If the mushrooms are small, leave them whole; if large, cut them into halves or quarters.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic and cook over high heat, stirring, until it is golden, 2-3 minutes. Add the mushrooms and sesame oil. Stir well, cover and continue cooking over high heat for 3-5 minutes, or until the mushrooms are tender.

Add the soy sauce, lemon juice, scallions, jalapeno peppers, if using, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 1 minute, or until the mushrooms have absorbed the sauce. Remove from heat.

Spoon the mushrooms onto toasts and serve warm.

Sprinter Carl Lewis has won nine Olympic gold medals and one silver. He was named Olympic Athlete of the Century. Everyone should eat the way he does – and can with “Very Vegetarian,” which offers both vegan recipes that may be time- and labor-intensive, but are also health-conscious and tasty.

Orange-Chipotle Barbecue Sauce with Tofu

Serves 4

1 tablespoon oil

1 large onion, diced

2 teaspoons garlic, minced

1 cup orange juice

1/4 cup lime juice

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

1/4 cup sugar

1 dried chipotle pepper, soaked in hot water and seeded

1 teaspoon garlic chili paste

1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 tablespoon water

1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

1 pound tofu, sliced into steaks and pressed to remove water

Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat and saute the onion and garlic for 5 minutes until the onion is soft. Add the juices, vinegar, sugar and salt and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and add the chipotle, chili paste and cornstarch mixture. Cook, stirring, until the sauce is slightly thickened.

Place tofu in baking dish and pour on barbecue sauce to cover. Allow tofu to marinate 1-3 hours. Then bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes. Serve over rice, pasta or polenta.

“How it all Vegan” is a collaboration between Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer, who love animals and like to leave them out of their culinary pursuits. This is a great beginner book for young people entering the field of veganism because the recipes are easy, hip and fur- and feather-free. This recipe was adapted from “How it all Vegan.”

Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie

Egg replacer (to equal two eggs)

2 tablespoons molasses

1/2 cup corn syrup

1/4 cup Jack Daniels bourbon (optional)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

? teaspoon salt

11/2 cups pecans, chopped

1 cup vegan chocolate chips

4 whole pecans

1 frozen pie crust

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix egg replacer, molasses, corn syrup, bourbon, vanilla and salt. Add the chopped pecans and chocolate chips and mix together well. Pour into pie crust and arrange the four whole pecans in the center of the pie as decoration. Bake 40-45 minutes.