Mothers Day Feast: A Feast for Mothers
Mothers Day in particular is special for me, because I have the best mother in the world. Seriously, I know a lot of people say that, but it’s true in my case. (Actually, scratch that…I don’t know a lot of people who say that.) To celebrate my mother and the other mothers at our motherloving party, I cooked an epic vegan feast. One of my favorite things about family gatherings is that I can introduce free and delicious vegan food to my very suspicious relatives. There’s nothing more rewarding to a vegan cook than to have a staunchly carnivorous grandfather not only eat your food, but enjoy it.
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Vegan Guide to Michelin Restaurants: Asador Extebarri in Axpe, Spain
The servers were uniformly friendly and they tried to be helpful (the language barrier kept me from comprehending what exactly they were describing each dish as). Like most Michelin restaurants, it was a set menu of an insane number of courses, and they already had the vegan menu printed up and placed inside my menu booklet. These menus, by the way, are probably bigger than you are:
In contrast to most fancy restaurants with crazy endless tasting menus, we were given bread at the start. And then — it never stopped! Erma P! So good. I love bread. And these lovely Spaniards gave us like huge baguette halves constantly instead of little hunks every now and then. So funny. Although, in hindsight, considering how painfully full we were not even halfway through the meal, eating all this bread was probably a bad idea.
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First up was a little treat from the kitchen, small grilled bread (more bread!) with tomato and salt and the greatest olive oil I’ve tasted in years. Oh mannn. So freaking good!
The first real courses for me were Salad Leaves and Lettuce Hearts. Husband can tell you that most of my Salads that I make at home only consist of Lettuce Hearts, so I was curious to see what the difference was here. Apparently, Lettuce Hearts are self-explanatory and Salad Leaves are curlier lettuces. Also, Lettuce Hearts all over Spain come with wayyy too much onion. I can’t eat an entire onion’s worth of raw onion. I’ll do my best but come on. It’s raw onion. And not even cippolini oh-nee-on. Husband was like, you have to eat all that onion, it’s like a $20 onion. No, thank you though. Anyway, both were nice and fresh and very lightly dressed (thank you, I hate too much dressing), but pretty basic. It was nice to have something simple and fresh to start but it did make me nervous for what was to come. I should not have been! My first warm vegetable dish was the Golden Chanterelles. Mushrooms have always been one of my favorite foods, dating back from when I thought they only came on top of pizza and I felt it too basic to say that pizza was my favorite food because that’s everyone’s favorite food. But now mushrooms are legit my faves, so this dish was very exciting. I particularly love that they came in a little personal pan. I wanted to ask if I could keep it but we were traveling EasyJet sooo no room. Anyway, the mushrooms were really good, smoky and just firm enough. Weirdly, though, I preferred the saltier, oiler, more garlicky mushrooms from Busterri. Maybe the Golden Chanterelles just needed a pinch of salt, or maybe my mushroom tastes are akin to my chocolate taste (I prefer cheaper sugary milkier chocolate to ‘high quality’ dark because yummy).
Next up was one of my favorites, Cream of Beans. It’s a normal bean soup but I love that name and I was so stoked to finally have beans! It was easy (too easy!) to find veggies all weekend in Bilbao, but impossible to get any vegan protein in restaurants. Hurray for beans! It was a lovely soup.
The following vegetable grilled to perfection was the artichokes, or according to the totally descriptive and helpful menu, Artichoke. These were splendid little oiled and salted buggers that I could eat 1000 of. They had a light balsamicky drizzle that was just the right, subtle amount (too much is the worst). Hot damn they were so good!
The one-two punch of the Artichoke with the next dish, the Leek, was the most impressive section of the meal. Looking at the picture to the right, you’re probably thinking, omg, that is the least impressive dish I have ever seen in any restaurant ever. Well, that might be true, but it was also one of the best tasting. These were freaking plain grilled leeks with olive oil and salt, but whichever wood they were grilled on at whichever lever/pulley height they used made them actually magical. Seriously I cannot imagine any leek in any other preparation ever being as phuhnom as these were. My recommendation to try Extebarri if you have the chance is 70% based on these leeks.
I was confused about whether the next dish was the Baby Beans or the Green Peas, but we decided they were the Baby Beans because Husband’s menu also came with Green Peas so we got them at the same time. They look exactly the same though. These were yummy and hey more beans! I’m getting so strong!
Beetroot was next, and if ever there were beets to convince you that not all beets taste like dirt (#NotAllBeets), it was these. They were a bit tart with their natural juices mixing with vinegar? maybe? (we couldn’t understand most things the waiters said, and sometimes they simply said “I don’t know how to say this in English. Enjoy!”), but whatever was going on, it worked. I would have preferred only two beet pieces instead of four, because this is where I started to get hella full.
Another mushroom dish came next yay! These March Mushrooms were fluffier than the sauteed-seeming Chanterelles, and they were in a subtle and delicious vegetable broth. I don’t know if March Mushrooms is a kind of mushroom or if they were just what was growing in March (when we were there…which makes more sense…) but either way I’m sold. They had a cool texture almost of raw mushrooms but with the much better taste of cooked.
Next were those tricky little Green Peas! They came in an adorable little cup and they were so delicious. Fresh peas are incredible and life-changing; if you haven’t had them before and have only had frozen peas in your life then you need to go to a farmers market and buy fresh peas and make something with them because they are amazing but what you make won’t be as amazing as this little cup of perfect peas was.
Some of you may know that I’m not the world’s biggest red pepper fan. Traipsing around Europe, I see tons of little kids eating raw red pepper strips out of little baggies and I’m like KIDS, simmer down with that nonsense, don’t you know there’s candy in the world? I can’t do raw pepper unless they’re overcrowded with other tastes. Cooked red pepper is only a little bit better for me. Well. Despite my semi-aversion, and despite my being stuffed beyond belief by the time this giant plate of red peppers arrived, I ate the entire thing. These red peppers were omg. Ridiculous. I lightly dragged a tine of my fork (my fork!) across them and it cut right through without any effort. They just fell apart and were heaven. Who knew?
The next dish was hilarious. The cute little bowl of ‘Cereals’, as the menu says, tasted EXACTLY. LIKE. SUGAR SMACKS. You know the cereal with the frog? This was them in the fancy form. The cereals were puffed spelt and other grains mixed with sliced nuts and a sugar syrup. I was very impressed when someone came out from the kitchen to ask me if I would eat honey, and when I said no said they would be bringing my dish after they remedied the error of their assumption. It was worth the short wait, though I do wish it came with the desserts and not in the middle of more savory items. I mean, after all, it was sugar smacks. Sooo good!
You may recall that I got full many, many dishes ago, so you can assume that by this point I was in actual pain. We all were. So we could only laugh when actual normal-restaurant-entree-sized ‘mains’ came out next. Mine was an excellent black truffle risotto. Considering we were in the land where they actually sell the Thermomix, we cracked up saying ‘Hot wet rice! It’s hot wet rice!’ over and over. Side note, laughing hysterically while painfully full is not a smart thing to do. But this was delicious hot wet rice.
Between my savories and my dessert courses and while Husband was given like his 14th piece of steak, I was presented with a goblet of pineapple water ice. It was very mild, mostly ice and not pineapple, but at this point in the meal it was a perfect palate cleanser. It also helped my full belly feel better. ALSO, it was called ‘Water Pineapple’, which I think was just supposed to be Pineapple Water Ice except ‘water ice’ is only a Philly thing so really I just don’t know.
On to dessert! I am used to getting boring plates of fresh fruit at most places, even when it’s fancy, even when they say they can accommodate me, but it’s still a little disappointing to not get something more interesting. Well, this was the most interesting plate of fresh fruit. The strawberries were grilled so they had a rich smoky flavor that worked so well, I really couldn’t get over it. It was accompanied by fresh edible flower petals and a fantastically weird and unique blood orange gel. I don’t know how they made that gel or how they magicked the smoky strawberries but it was all good.
My final (almost there!) course was Baked Apple with Pure Cocoa. I usually don’t like fruit with chocolate but I figured it would be nice here and got excited. I should have realized ‘Pure Cocoa’ meant ‘unsweetened chocolate’ — it was really freaking pure and super bitter with not a trace of sweetness! Yeesh! Mixed with the delicious baked apple it was better, but the apple would have been better without the chocolate or with some kind of plain sorbet (ice cream is too much to ask for).
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As I mentioned in my Bilbao guide, it was nearly impossible to figure out how to use the trains, not only because of the language barrier, but because apparently no one worked in the stations! All-day siestas? Anyway, we ended up having to take a taxi to Axpe for Asador Extebarri. The same driver that picked us up at our hotel drove us home at the end of the night (in the morning, really) and was extremely good (no looking at phones or anything!). His name is Eduardo at CLASS Servicio de Taxi and his local number is 637-505-212.
ASADOR EXTEBARRI, AXPE SPAIN
Water speed: Pretty good, but like all restaurants of this caliber, it’s bottled. You don’t really notice that charge amid the rest of it, but still. I know it’s common outside the U.S. but I am spoiled!
Service: Very friendly and kind. In the beginning of the meal, I felt a little bit rushed, which probably is responsible for getting full so quickly. They got their pacing down better as we went on. Also, they couldn’t explain some dishes in English, which obviously is my problem and not theirs, but it’s worth knowing if you go.
Bathrooms: Nice and clean although I was scared that the extraordinarily heavy lock didn’t work.
Food: Really great! Some dishes were average, but more were wonderful.
Bonus: A very fancy restaurant where you can join in the experience even as a vegan!
A Burns Night Event in London, When Everyone is Scottish
Between courses, we were treated to traditional Scottish entertainment (pictured above) of fire dancers and men reading poetry while wielding enormous knives. We were told that the Scots party in such ways nightly. The girl with the sticks of fire successfully got the fire scarily close to her hair without setting it on fire, so good on her. That was really cool, and if I talked to her I would have asked her how she keeps from burning her hair at social occasions, a feat I cannot say I have achieved 100%. The scary man was one of the guys running the entertainment, and he read the all-important Address to a Haggis, Burns’s most famous poem. I don’t think the enormous knife was necessary, as the words are scary enough. It’s pretty long, and it’s pretty gory when it gets into the making of haggis (so gross). Not vegan-friendly, this poem, except maybe the first line, which is
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
so if you focus on deciphering this opening, you will be sufficiently distracted for the rest of the crazy ass poem and won’t have to worry about listening to rhymes about murdering animals, because you will never decipher this.
The food was decent. While omnivores started with rye bread covered with lox and some kind of dilly cream, vegetarians got that same rye bread covered with spinach salad and cubes of roast vegetables. Not the most obvious choice for a piece of toast, but whatever, greens are good, bread’s good, root vegetables are okay.
Thank goodness for vegetarian haggis. So, real haggis, if you don’t know, is like amoebas on fleas on rats. Vegetarian haggis is OODLES better, and not just because it doesn’t involve cruelty. It flat out tastes better, probably because it’s made of ingredients people are okay with talking about out loud. It’s so much better, in fact, that the one actual Scottish person we met at Burns Baby Burns, the woman sitting next to me, ordered the vegetarian haggis even though she wasn’t vegetarian! She said she just likes it more! Now that’s a huge win. She still had some of the regular haggis from the communal bowl, but her main source of food was the veg one. Yay! Summary, vegetarian haggis is great, regular haggis is a Rhimes.
Also on the tables were communal pitchers of gravy. I mean. We’ve all seen gravy boats and that’s cool. Have you ever seen a freaking drinks pitcher used for gravy? I thought it was wine. It was hilarious. Anyway the plain baked potato was kind of awful to eat plain so I asked a server if there was vegan gravy and she said the communal gravy was! Huzzah! It was also not delicious. I hope she was right.
Something I actually know the servers were wrong about was the existence of vegan dessert. Considering I paid the same price as the omnivores, I figured that there would be a vegan dessert option. Cranachan, a traditional Scottish dessert of oats, cream, whiskey, and honey, filled display tables at the back, and I asked the server guarding the table if there was a vegan dessert option. She said no! I was so mad! On principle! We paid the same price ffs! I asked another server if there was a vegan dessert. She said there was only what was out. Boo. Turns out, she wasn’t wrong, she just had no idea what was out. The next day, the people behind Burns Baby Burns responded kindly to an angry dessert-less tweet I sent out, and assured me that one of the tables of cranachan was all vegan. That’s super wonderful, it’s just that none of the people they had working for them knew apparently. I’m really glad the problem was misinformed servers and not unfair lack of vegan dessert. I mean that doesn’t put the weird ass oats and cream mixture in my stomach 5 days ago but it’s still something!
All in all, it was pretty fun and something I recommend doing if you are in the UK, just so you experience Burns Night at some point. The food was fine, the entertainment fun. A main problem for me was the lack of bathrooms. Outdoor portapotties are fiiine, I guess, if you get non-disgusting ones. I was there very early and I imagine I was the first person to actually check out the bathrooms. They were already disgusting, even an hour before the event was called for. That’s not cool. Another problem was that for how expensive the event was – 45 GDP – there was not one drink included. And the bar was insane expensive. Not even a soda included? Not cool. And of course we have the miscommunication between the people running things. Hopefully, these things can be sorted out for next year and it will be even better. And hooray for Robbie Burns, who actually wrote “Auld Lang Syne” but no one knows that because he also wrote about haggis.
*Correction: Neeps are apparently turnips. I don’t know because a) they all taste exactly the same and b) they didn’t give me any.