Alabama

Veggie Spaghetti with Gulf Un-shrimp

Jane B. (original recipe)

For the next couple weeks, I will be touching down in a different Super Tuesday state each day. We begin alphabetically, with Alabama. I've never been to Alabama. I wanted to take a road trip through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, but this was another missed opportunity.

Aside from football, Alabama is known for high rates of poverty. I wanted to scrutinize this stereotype, and it turns out it's a pretty interesting case. According to my single source, the problem is that Alabama sought to be an exploited third world nation before globalization, which is already kind of a stupid idea, but then globalization happened and they lost out to China and other countries that are easier to exploit, I guess. This, combined with a very regressive tax structure, low investment in education and public health, and of course a history fraught with discrimination and other mishaps.

Well Jane (I had a cat named Jane) is here to put Alabama on the map for her fancy conceptualization, a vegetable-forward take on spaghetti marinara. She has no way of knowing this, but I have a mild fascination with producing a vegan shrimp alternative in the form of a mushroom tortellini. For whatever reason, it's easy to buy mushroom ravioli but I've never been able to find mushroom tortellini commercially available. Usually I am far too lazy to make tortellini from scratch but a number of years ago I did make a very complicated formulation for un-shrimp including pasta dough from scratch, inspired by a magazine about Japan. This time I will use dumpling wrappers and a simplified recipe, but I am pretty optimistic. I wish I'd thrown in some kind of Alabama reference to make them especially gulfy, but hopefully it's enough that I go to all this effort.

We are here to show another version of Alabama, celebrating natural abundance, and hopefully inspiring policy reforms that can uplift flourishing communities for the good people of your state. Of course, Alabama has been impacted directly by national programs, for worse or for better; in the latter category the creation of a social safety net that was novel for its time and place but could use some common sense improvements, such as expansion to universal healthcare. My wealth deserts program would also help create livelihoods in impoverished areas, although I don't like the idea of enabling regressive Alabama state policies, so maybe your state problems, problems of economic justice, are something we should all be talking about and Alabama can be a microcosm for our efforts to build a strong middle class across the land. This is why I decided to investigate the stereotype instead of avoiding mention of it. I figure avoiding it doesn't help anyone.

Besides football and poverty, you may think of: To Kill a Mockingbird, Forrest Gump, Selma.

Un-Shrimp

• Vegan Butter

• 4 oz. (approximately 1 1/4 cu.) Oyster mushrooms, chopped

• 1 1/2 Tbs. Soy sauce

• 2 tsp. Apple cider vinegar

• 1 clove Garlic, minced

• 1/2 tsp. White miso paste

• 1 Tbs. ground Almonds

• 1 1/2 tsp. Nutritional yeast

• 1 tsp. Sesame seeds

• Wonton/dumpling wrappers

Veggie Spaghetti

• 1/2 medium Spaghetti squash

• Olive oil

• 1 small Shallot, chopped

• 4 cloves Garlic, chopped

• 1 15-oz. can Diced tomatoes

• 1/2 tsp. Sugar

• 1/2 tsp. Salt

• 9 fresh Basil leaves, cut into thin strips

• 4 dried whole Chile de Arbol

• 2 cu. Baby kale

• 1 dozen Un-shrimp

Preparation

Make the un-shrimp ahead of time. In a large pan, melt a generous quantity of vegan butter. Then add mushrooms and saute for 15 minutes. Sometime midway through, add the soy sauce and apple cider vinegar. With about 3 minutes remaining, add the garlic. When finished cooking, put mushrooms in a food processor with miso paste and pulse until finely chopped. In a bowl, combine mushrooms, almonds, nutritional yeast, and sesame seeds. This is your un-shrimp filling.

A nut grinder is an invaluable tool for the aspiring vegan.

Spoon 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons of filling into the center of a wonton wrapper. (If your wrapper packaging say otherwise, go with your gut. Mine said 1 Tablespoon but I thought this was too much.) Wet your finger and use it to moisen one edge of the wrapper. Fold in half and seal, then moisen one corner and fold around so that the dry corner is fastened on top of the wet corner. Place the formed un-shrimp on a cookie sheet. Repeat until you run out of filling. I was able to make 11 un-shrimp. Then place cookie sheet in the freezer overnight. After the individual un-shrimp have frozen on the cookie sheet, you can transfer them to a bag and keep frozen until ready to consume.

Heat oil in a medium saucepan. Saute shallots and garlic over medium heat about 4 minutes. Warning: this is a weird recipe, but I pretty much followed it as written. So what you're gonna do is add the tomato, salt, and sugar, cover, and cook for 10 minutes. Then remove the cover, lower the heat, and add the basil and chile peppers, cooking another 10 minutes. Feel free to experiment with adding the chile sooner and the basil later. Also, the recipe does not mention stirring, but see if you can resist. Remove chiles and discard. Now add the baby kale and I'd stir it until it wilts. If you are a purist and don't want to stir, then you can try covering the pan and steaming the kale, but this didn't work especially well for me, so go figure.

You will probably have a whole spaghetti squash so you'll need to do an internet search to determine how long to microwave it (let's guess 15 minutes). My grocery store was selling half-squashes with instructions to microwave for 12 minutes, then let it sit for 5-10 minutes. Begin boiling un-shrimp water while squash rests. My squash was cleaned already but if not you will need to clean out the seeds, then use a fork to break the cooked flesh into strands. Put strands into a bowl or onto a plate and top with tomato sauce.

When un-shrimp water is boiling, add un-shrimps and cook for 5 minutes. Carefully remove with a slotted spoon and enjoy on top of sauced squash, not to be confused with Sasquatch.

Discussion

A lot of work, but pretty swell. It's a giant pile of vegetables but it simulates spaghetti marinara with meatball analog, I guess, with the un-shrimp.

I had to guess at the cooking time on the un-shrimp so I tried (from left to right) 4 minutes, 5 minutes, and 6 minutes. I think 5 minutes is correct, but all three seemed fine. I've never eaten real shrimp. I quit meat when I was 18 and mostly thought and think eating invertebrates is kind of disgusting. Maybe we should be feeding our pets on worm protein but that is another discussion. My goal is therefore not to mimic the taste of shrimp (like I know) but to create a culinary substitute that bears a vague visual resemblance. If you made your own pasta dough, you could dye it pink with just a hint of beet cooking water. These are tasty but rich. An initial serving of three was great and a fourth that followed might have been too many. My original recipe called for ground kombu, which would have been pretty gulfy, dunno what kind of seaweed they have but in any case I tasted the filling and thought it was good enough not to meddle with, so experiment with kombu by your own volition.

Jane the cat

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