I was the Guest Chef at the last Frugal Foodies hosted by our friend Moses in his Berkeley home Dec 21. How I became a Guest Chef is less related to any culinary expertise as to my frequent attendance at previous Frugal Foodies and my voicing menu ideas enough to Moses that he requested that I put a menu together.
My emphasis is usually healthy vegan recipes with calcium rich veggies and avoiding root vegetables, not necessarily for all the traditional Jain reasons, but to emphasize other flavors. I feel that all too often, the easy way to spice up food is putting in onions and garlic. I ended up using fennel in the spanakopita, which is also a root, but celery could be used too. And i used asafoetida, which family members later told me has recently been exposed as containing some other animal component from horses’ hooves! I can’t find any information about this on the web. But if it is true, I’d rather choose to season with (one-sensed) root vegatables such as onions and garlic than something that hurts horses, who are 5 sensed animals.
I made a few mistakes this time in modifying recipes and the result was a salty vegan Spanokopita. But people ate them anyway. What I’m posting here are the corrected recipes for the entire menu.
1) Puda/pudla: Christian posted this recipe earlier. People enjoyed making this.
2) Collard greens/butternut squash stir-fry
3) Spanakopita
4)Chocolate chai spice shortbread cookies
5) Millet pulao
6) Cucumber Raita
These are going up in separate posts, some with pictures, next!
Vegan Jains 