Truck Stop (and the Hunt for Bánh Mì Chay): Lemongrass

Lemongrass

Remember when food trucks were banned in DC? Now they’re so thick on the ground, you’d think we were Portland or somewhere nice. But which ones are great for vegetarians, and which ones just fleshmonger pretenders? Bobby No Meat separates the wheat from the charnel…

Truck: Lemongrass, also @LemongrassTruck
Location and Time: Ballston, 11:45a, weekday.
Conditions: Sunny, 40s. Unfortunately, a woman had just thrown herself on the Metro tracks below us about an hour beforehand, so there were a dozen fire trucks lighting up Ballston.
Line: None to order.
Fare: Cutting to the chase: This is the best bánh mì chay I’ve had in DC. My mouth was like that opening love scene in “The Lover” (and whatever happened to Jane March, anyway?). Let me list the ways this rocks:

  • Perfect bread — an 8-inch baguette with flaky toastiness and a push-in soft interior. Mops up the flavors and the competition.
  • Tofu — mushroom-flavored, cubed and plenty of it. You don’t have to hunt it down as with some other bánh mì chay.
  • Fresh sweet pickle mixture — chunky julienne-cuts of daikon radish and carrot slaw. Ridiculously fresh and good.
  • Lime mayo. You can get this spicy, but it’s piquant even in the wimp version. I could use a little lot more of this. Dock a point.

Look under the hood for yourself:

Indecent exposure.

Indecent exposure.

Verdict: Lemongrass serves the same ingredients in a taco, a vermicelli salad, or a regular salad, along with bubble tea for dessert. This country was built on choice — but I’ll stick with the baguette. BNM says: Follow the Twitter feed with laser-like focus and don’t miss them when they’re near your feeding trough. I’ll keep looking, but my hunt might be over…

Got a food truck you want me to check out? Lemme know…

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First Look: Karaikudi

Image

Beware the drumstick.

Karaikudi ¦ 13949 Metrotech Drive, Chantilly, VA 20151 ¦ 703.817.7755

I’ve been having bad luck lately with economist Tyler Cowen’s usually redoubtable DC-area dining recommendations — first Hunan Gate in Ballston, whose “secret” Manchurian menu he raved about a few months ago (my lunch companion inhaled the tripe, but I found the scallion pancakes mediocre and other vegetarian fare greasy as the Deep Horizon spill), and now Karaikudi, a new Chettinad restaurant in Chantilly’s Sotte Plaza where I was politely refused a spicy dish for my own health.

Chettinad cuisine is one of the most flavorful in India, with complex, fiery and amazing masalas; and although its standouts are generally meat-based, it has some interesting vegetarian dishes as well, like the road-food doughnut kuzhi paniyaram. Since Karaikudi’s menu mixes in the aloo gobis and mutter paneers with its Chettinad fare, I put myself in the hands of the waiter and told him I wanted vegetarian food as authentically Chettinad as possible. His recommendations:

  • Paneer pakoras, slabs of fresh cottage cheese in pillowy cases of fried, savory, slightly hot batter, with a mint sauce riding shotgun.
  • Vegetable kurma, vegetables cooked in coconut milk.
  • Veg Kara Kuzhambu, a potentially astonishing dish (here’s a recipe) that can blow your head off spice-wise if you’re not ready for it. It’s usually made with eggplant, potato, okra, or drumstick, as it was here.

I pointed to the ully theeyal, fried onions in a sauce that includes tamarind and burnt coconut, and said I wanted that, too. He refused — with a smile, but refused twice, saying it would be too hot for me. “These people, they are Indians, they are used to it” he said, gesturing to the restaurant’s other patrons. “You will enjoy these others.” I insisted, but it was clear I was going to lose this one.

Too bad for me, because nothing else lived up to the promise of Yelp and Chowhound’s scouting reports. I got tired of the paneer pakoras quickly; the kurma was hot but not flavorful, and while the sauce of the veg kara kuzhambu was nuclear and as richly complicated as a Matt Damon-Bourne movie plot, the drumstick was way too old and fibrous — like chewing your way through books of matchsticks. Another vegetable — any other vegetable — would have been a better choice. And the chapathi was dry.

There’s plenty else on this menu for veggies — I might go for the vegetable kothu parotta or egg kothu parotta next time. The space is simple and welcoming; the service was slow, so be patient; and they don’t have a liquor license, so load up on mango lassi for now (or come liquored up). But well short of a home run based on the best-foot-forward of this first visit.

Truck Stop: DC Ballers

Remember when food trucks were banned in DC? Now they’re so thick on the ground, you’d think we were Portland or somewhere nice. But which ones are great for vegetarians, and which ones just fleshmonger pretenders? Bobby No Meat separates the wheat from the charnel…

Truck: DC Ballers, also @DcBallers
Location and Time: Farragut Square, weekday, 1p.
Conditions: Cloudy, upper 40s. A perfect pitch for tasting.
Line: None to order; one or two people waiting for their orders. (Most other trucks on Farragut Square that day had thickish lines. That should have told me something.)
Fare: Falafel is both an obvious vegetarian food-truck choice and also an afterthought. Why? Because every veggie already has a favorite falafel (kind of like pancakes or sexual positions) — and so, while we’re curious about a little strange, we also dread eating something that falls short. DC Ballers confirmed this maxim, although in a way I didn’t expect — the falafel sandwich would do in a hard pinch, but another signature dish flagged that their frier should be immediately impounded.

That falafel sandwich has a lot of moving parts — chunks of cucumber and tomato and pickled radish, sliced onion, lots of coarsely cut slaw with a tahini sauce that tastes weirdly sweet (akin to Russian dressing) and a secret stash of hummus that pops out of various orifices of the past-its-prime pita. The falafel in mine was grainy, almost gritty. It was a dozen ingredients fighting to not be in a sandwich, essentially.

Tragedy in a box.

But it sang compared to the Greek fries, which vie for the single worst dish I’ve had this year — a tangle of sodden short-cut French fries, like a collection of dead men’s fingers cut off in a dozen British gangster films, sagging under a mass of sour feta and harsh oregano. Wrapping fries in foil is never a good transport technique, but this mess was saturated enough to suggest that it never had a chance to be crisp out of the shoot. Inedible.

Verdict: Below-average falafel sandwich; tragic fries that will decimate your afternoon’s productivity. BNM says: Don’t bother.

Got a food truck you want me to check out? Lemme know…

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DC Top Dish: Four Sisters’ Tofu in Black Bean Sauce

Four Sisters has been so consistently good for so long — and has a menu that hasn’t changed since they moved to the new Merrifield location — that it’s human nature to take it for granted and roam. Mistake, despite what Tom Sietsma says. My wife and I had a late lunch there between movies at the newish Angelika Film Center (see “Bond,” skip “Flight”), and one of my go-to dishes, the Tofu in Black Bean Sauce (see above), is now better than ever. Chunks of soft bean curd ride in a tangle of julienned carrots, minced scallions and chive, sliced white onions, and hot peppers and leaks cut on the bias. The viscous black bean sauce has a new barbeque-chili note that leaves fire on the lips (and in the hole afterwards, if you get my drift). The tofu absorbs some of the flavor but actually gives you small islands of relief from its pungency, and mimics the cushy mouthfeel of the sauce while providing a nice textural counterpoint to the residual crunch of the stir-fried vegetables. It’s a dish you could practically drink — but you’ll settle for inhaling.

Review: Rice Paper

Rice Paper
6775 Wilson Blvd
Falls Church, VA 22044
(703) 538-3888

Hell is having to watch other people eat. Especially while you have nothing to do but whittle your chopsticks and look at wallpaper that would’ve killed Oscar Wilde much, much faster than the original did. That’s the vegetarian experience at Rice Paper–at least for the first 45 minutes or so, as the struggling service of this Eden Center critical darling sporadically spits out small plates for your omnivore buds and hotpots or bánh xèo for the warren of surrounding tables in this cramped former jewelry store. The menu extends to over 120 items, but only one starter–papaya salad–could have been done meatlessly, so I chose to wait for the mains and focus on conversation and the beautiful women and that decor, which a lot of people have remarked is several bright-and-modern cuts above the Eden Center’s usual card-table-and-folding-chair aesthetic. Granted; although it’s less lux than Restaurant: Impossible makeover on a budget, the exposed brick wall a vaneer and that wallpaper sticking its tongue out on the other wall. Still, beaucoup points for the try.

Less so for the meatless mains — only six in all, and most firmly in the perfunctory, handicapped-accommodationist school of menuing for vegetarians. (A curry, a crispy crepe, some rice noodles topped with the old mixed vegetables and fried tofu standby, etc.) The best of these are the Đậu Hủ Chiên Dòn Xã Ớt (spicy crispy tofu with lemongrass) and the Mì Xào Chay (Dòn hay Mềm) (stir-fried tofu and mixed vegetables on either crispy or soft egg noodles). The spicy crispy tofu (above), tossed with grilled onions, is rubbed in a fabulous salty, white and chili pepper slurry reminiscent of the great Peter Chang’s work; the crust of the tofu yields to a molten fresh tofu interior a little like cream cheese. (If the lemongrass was in there, I missed it, frankly.) The stir fry is very good: soft triangles of fried tofu with a wider variety of veggies–from red onions to carrots to bok choy to broccoli and oyster mushrooms–than you usually find in this workman a dish. There is a sauce below the osprey’s nest of lo mein, and it has a nice hit of ginger; but you have to dig.

Look: If you’re a vegetarian, you already know this. Some restaurants you go to to have a good time watching your friends having a good time; and some you go to to have a good time eating. The point is to increase the latter. This is one of the former.

What Vegetarians REALLY Eat: Red Lentil and Tofu Curry

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the above (underneath all that cilantro) is the way vegetarian food used to look — burlap brown, gruelish, like penance. Good intentions instead of good. Actually, this Red Lentil and Tofu Curry recipe came from Gourmet, and that sackcloth color draws from a fiery slurry of cumin seeds, garam masala, salt and cayenne — sauteed on high for no more than 90 seconds, until your kitchen is transformed into a zone of olafactory irresistibility. (People will walk through twice, noses held up, lingering.) The original recipe is still on Epicurious, but here’s my modified version — vegan and, incredibly, even better over brown rice than white. Somewhere, Molly Katzen lives!

Red Lentil and Tofu Curry (Serves 2 hungry people)

1 medium onion
2-3 cloves garlic
a 1/2-inch piece of fresh gingerroot
1/2 cup red lentils (red are worth it; brown are a distant second option)
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups vegetable stock or water
1/2 pound firm tofu
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds or ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon garam masala or curry powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Pinch of cayenne
Chopped fresh cilantro
Salt at end to taste

Thinly slice onion and mince garlic. Peel the ginger and mince. Rinse lentils in a very fine sieve (mesh is best, otherwise these lentils will slip through) and drain. In a large, heavy saucepan cook the onion and garlic in 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium heat, stirring, until golden. Then add the ginger and cook, stirring, 1 minute more. Add lentils and stock/water and bring to a gentle boil; cook uncovered, until lentils fall apart, about 20 minutes. (You might have to add a bit more stock once or twice; you’re aiming for a very moist but not soupy mixture.)

While lentils are boiling, rinse tofu, cut it into 1/2-inch cubes and gently press it between paper towels to remove excess moisture. (I press mine between stacks of plates.)

Get all your spices together next. In a small heavy skillet, heat the other 2 tablespoons of oil over medium heat until hot but not smoking. Add cumin seeds, stirring, until they are dark, about 60 seconds. Add garam masala, salt and cayenne and cook, stirring, until the fragrance is fantastic but before you burn the spices — about 15-30 seconds. Set aside until the lentils are done; then stir the spice oil into the lentils and follow that with the tofu cubes, stirring gently. Let the curry stand a few minutes to develop flavors. Stir in cilantro and add salt to taste. Serve over rice.

Vegetarian Cooking: A Different Kind of Cress

I’ve technically lived in the South for nearly 15 years now, but still didn’t know anything about field cress (AKA creasy greens, AKA pepper cress, AKA garden cress, AKA pepperwort, AKA upland watercress, AKA wild watercress) until yesterday, when my wife picked up what looked to be about a pound of it at the IGA in Marshall,VA. (I saw a sign for it and was tempted.) It looks like a pumped-up version of watercress and turns out to be an annual related to it, best grown in the spring and fall–and it’ll blow your mouth off eaten raw. (Somebody at DiscussCooking.com calls the taste a mixture of arugula, mustard, watercress and horseradish — heavy on the pepperiness of the arugula and the lingering heat of horseradish, from my experience.)

Most recipes I saw online had it as a green slow boiled with forms of pork, so we were puzzled for a while about what to do with it — then decided to use it like broccoli rabe for pasta, trimming the tough stems away and leaving the leaves for a sauté. Boiled for 7 minutes and then sautéed lightly with 4 cloves garlic and red pepper flakes, it’s delicious with farfalle and 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese along with 1/2 of the pasta water (cook the pasta in the water you used to boil the cress). It cooks down drastically and retains little of its raw bite, instead soaking up the rich garlickiness of the sautée. Great stuff. (Also see these recipes for creasy confetti eggs and creasy quiche as well as creasy greens with sweet potato cakes.)

(Image: Field cress. Image credit: gmayfield10/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Petula Dvorak and How We Ignore Animal Cruelty

While the publicity about the inhumanity of gestation crates for pigs grows (see today’s story in The New York Times), we are also in the midst of a culinary bacon explosion. (The Times also has a long profile today of Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter, at whose headquarters bacon is kept frying nearly constantly.)

How does this work? you might wonder. I mean: On a social psychic level?

For a partial answer, consider Petula Dvorak’s column this week in the Washington Post on how the cruelty of Meghan Mogensen, the director of the Reston Zoo, toward a particular wallaby in her care.

Mogensen, who allegedly has a history of euthanizing animals at the zoo by shooting them, slamming them into walls and feeding them to each other, was convicted of animal cruelty for drowning a wallaby at the zoo that had an injured eye — an eye that could have been easily treated, according to vets. Mogensen was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

But, as Dvorak reports, that isn’t stopping Reston’s parents from taking their kids to this sad little private facility, surrounded by housing developments. (The online photo is amazing — geese, cows, and a zebra grazing on a small field with McMansion in the near background.) Here’s what they told Dvorak:

“The kids get to really see animals here,” said one Reston mother of two, who has a season pass to the Reston Zoo and is also a member of the National Zoo, where she volunteered for years. Despite the court case and the wallaby’s death, she won’t shun the Reston menagerie.

“You know, I heard about it. I’m sorry for what happened, but we’re really big zoo supporters,” she said. Her 3-year-old daughter immediately began telling me about her favorite animal, a one-horned eland antelope she calls a “unicorn.”

“I figured everyone makes mistakes and I’ll give them one chance,” said Virginia Fredricks, a mother of two who is also a season pass holder at the Reston Zoo and was among about a dozen families who came Monday morning, despite hearing about the wallaby incident.

“It was posted on our Listserv, and everyone just went crazy. All about how horrible the place is and don’t go and how it should be shut down,” said Fredricks, who shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll keep coming and give them one more chance. If I hear about anything else like this, we’ll stop coming. But the kids love it so much.”

Dvorak herself says her kids love the zoo. It’s magic to them. So, as she says, we are selective hypocrites: concerned about this case because it involves a wallaby and a young blonde zookeeper, not a chicken and a “portly brunette.” Circuses, zoos and meat: Just as “we pick and choose our outrage — horrified by the death of a cute wallaby, blase about the way pigs live and die to feed our bacon obsession.”

When kids and their pleasure are involved in this country, ethics often seem to take a holiday (although Fredricks’ listserv did go ballistic). Or maybe: adults and their pleasure. Of course we’re not very good at feeling bad; we’re also lousy at looking for ways to feel good that avoid obvious cognitive dissonance. Dvorak clearly doesn’t like vegans and their consistent opposition to animal cruelty wherever they find it. Her column, though, exposes something far uglier: people who now know the enormous price of the shabby spectacle their kids are enjoying, and who simply don’t care. Which means it’s going to take something other than animal cruelty — say, public health — to get them to stop subsidizing animal cruelty.

(Photo: Reston Zoo scene. Image credit: Jennifer Ennis/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

The First Thing To Read If You’re Considering Going Vegetarian

Leo Baubata, the genius behind the blog zenhabits, has just posted the thorough and yet remarkably compact “A Guide to Eating a Plant-Based Diet.” It is now the gold standard entry point for the vegetarian-curious.

What makes Baubata a genius is how elegantly he pulls off his apparent contradiction: a very ambitious blogger (he makes his living at it) whose sole topic is mindfulness. “A Guide to Eating a Plant-Based Diet” crystallizes what makes him so good: it’s generous, clear, systematic, data-based but also inspirational, personal, and above all, very calm. Every vegan who has ever tried to convert an omnivore should study it.

Through short but packed sections like “What’s a Plant-Based Diet?”, “Why Should I Change?”, “How to Change,” “What to Eat,” and finally “Frequently Asked Questions,” Baubata leads the reader with a gentle undertow of reasonableness. “I know this isn’t easy,” he’s saying. “If you want to do it, I recommend taking it slowly. Here’s what worked for me. If you feel overwhelmed, just take your time.” He even posts his food journal online. (A lot of tofu scramble; a lot of figs. I could get used to that.)

His use of “plant-based diet” — the use, not the phrase itself — is new and interesting to me:

A “plant-based diet” is basically another way to say “vegan”, though in my definition it’s a little looser than “vegan” — you might eat some cheese on a salad if it’s been served by your gracious host, for example. So “plant-based” means you eat almost all plants, but depending on your preferences, you might eat something with eggs in it now and then without having a cow. My preference, though, would be to eat vegan all the time, ideally.

Some vegans might scoff that this is about as vegan as a person who calls themselves a vegetarian…except that they eat fish. I’m not a vegan, but I think we need to direct our militancy at those who are really doing the harm. The biggest obstacle for many people to becoming vegetarian or vegan is embarrassment in social situations. We should reassure them instead that it’s more important that their overall lifestyle saved 95 or 50 animals lives that year (or that they’re healthier, or taking the biggest step against climate change they can, or whatever motivated them to take this step). Shame almost never works as a retention strategy.

Anyway, thank you, Leo — fantastic post.

(Image credit: Another Pint Please/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)