Godeane’s Feast

Tonight I had dinner with my godmother, Godeane Eagle, an author, vocal coach and speech therapist, and a fine natural foods chef. Here’s what she made:

Spinach and Cabbage Salad
A refreshing blend of sweet, pungent, acid, and slightly bitter flavors.

In each bowl, a couple handfulls of well-washed baby spinach leaves, and an equal amount of grated green cabbage, and one or two red radishes, with ends removed and cut into eighths.

Sprinkle with sliced almonds and raisins. Dress with fresh lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil.

Polenta with Scallions and Celery
A very light, delicate, and flavorful polenta!

Remove roots and upper ends, and chop into 1/4 inch slices, two bunches of scallions and two celery stalks. Place one cup of polenta corn meal in a pan with four cups of pure water, bring to a boil, and reduce heat so that it simmers, and add the scallions and celery. Cook for thirty minutes, then pour out into a square sided baking pan and chill overnight so that it hardens.

Chicken or Chicken-style Seitan in Onion Sauce

Roast two chopped onions in a roasting pan. If you are an omnivore, roast them as the bed on which you are roasting a whole chicken, which yields a pan gravy. The pan gravy and the onions are chilled overnight and the hardened chicken fat skimmed off the next day. What remains is a chicken consomme with onions, which you place in a deep skillet, and inwhich you reheat the slices of polenta along with two uncooked chicken breast halves (cook them until they are white all the way through – no pink in the middle). If you are cooking vegan, make your consomme from boiling together one whole okra pod, one peeled garlic clove, and a sprig each of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. The okra gels the broth. Strain and mix with the roasted onions, use this to heat slices of chicken-style seitan. Add salt if you must. Slices of fresh ripe apricot provide an excellent accompaniment to the chicken or seitan.