The Poetry, Essays and Personal Journals of Larry L. Dill
The Rugged Vegetarian
Cowboy Cookery without the Cows
Some things never change. But some things do. Deborah’s beloved tofu eating Malamute has gone on to that great Ididarod in the sky. He is sorely missed. And you don’t have to go to a natural food store to get good organic tofu anymore. Just about any old grocery store will do. And I don’t waste time freezing the tofu and then thawing it out to make it more meat-like anymore, either. Simplify. Simplify. That’s the cowboy’s motto and the rugged vegetarian’s, too.
The image on the left is the original cover of the first The Rugged Vegetarian Cookbook complete with Illustrations by the author and hand bound in recycled brown paper grocery bags.
So sit back and enjoy the ride and then get out in that kitchen or out on the lone prairie and rattle those pots and pans.
—Larry L. Dill
The Restaurant, The Book, The Movie
The more vegetarian meals I cook for my girlfriend, the more she tries to talk me into opening a restaurant. “I don’t want to be tied down to a restaurant,” I always reply, with what feels like a pained expression on my face. “I’m a writer,” I add with pride.
”Then write a cookbook!” she fires back. “I have a sense about these things. I know it would go over the top. I can see you on the Today Show. I can see you on Oprah. I can even see you with your own show!”
“I’m a serious writer,” I say, defending myself. “I want to write about important things…like poetry and…neuroscience and…world peace.”
“You mean Whirled Peas? Listen, this could be your ticket to all that,” she insists. “I’m telling you, I’m never wrong about these things. I’ve launched people’s careers on gut feelings like this.” (I was thinking that if she had launched anybody’s career it had been by badgering them to death. But I didn’t say so.)
“OK, I give up… I’ll try it… The cookbook, I mean. I’ll make a deal with you,” I said as we sat in a bookstore drinking our very non-vegan (or pre-vegan as we like to say now) lattes. “If I write this book, you have to find a publisher for it. I just can’t deal with cookbook editors and…editors in general and…you know…people like that. I just wouldn’t be able to do it.” Her hand shot across the table like a used car salesman’s. “Deal!”
What gets my girlfriend so excited about my cooking is, among other things, the way I turn tofu into meat. Beef, chicken, even pork. And what turns her on about the cookbook thing is that I have been tossing around the idea of a restaurant called The Rugged Vegetarian ever since before I met her.
Now just because I toss around an idea doesn’t mean I have any intention of acting on it. But think about it. All sorts of people would like to be vegetarians. The main thing that keeps them from doing it is that they don’t know how to fit it into their image of themselves as wel fed, strong and healthy and (in the case of many men) macho.
Add to that the fact that even when a woman is able to kick the meat habit, if her male mate isn’t, she’s dead in the water unless she wants to cook two separate meals every night. And that’s not to mention the finicky kids.
So my idea was to create a vegetarian restaurant with a rugged image. Rugged name. Rustic design. Wild West atmosphere. Like the million and one barbecue places and truck stop steak houses and bubba beer joints in Texas. None of this California new agey stuff. We’re talkin’ he-man here. Chili, pinto beans, cornbread, hot tamales, chicken fried something-not-meat-but-tastes-like-it, Chinese fried rice, Mexican rice, Cajun dirty rice, black-eyed peas with what-looks-like-but-isn’t-hamhocks, collard greens, corn-on-the-cob, barbequed-looks-like-road-kill-and-tastes-like-brisket-but-isn’t-either-one, spicy potato salad, spicier Cole slaw, okra gumbo, something-that-tastes-like-meat-but-isn’t-loaf. Just tons of good country home cooking without the meat. Cowboy cookery without the cows!
I mean the deal here is to not eat meat, right? Beer is not meat. Pie is not meat. Stuff smoked over mesquite coals does not have to be meat. In the west Texas town of Amarillo there is a roadhouse that serves a 72 ounce steak which is free if you can eat the whole thing in an hour. Nobody actually tries it. (I think Slim Pickens tried it wonst. Course he’s dead now.) It’s just part of the tough guy image of the place.
Get it? The issue here is to be vegetarian and proud of it and don’t be no sissy about it, right? So you cook up this concoction of something that weights 72 ounces and you offer the same deal. I don’t know. Maybe a huge stuffed squash or ten pineapples or something.
That’s it. That’s my idea. I never said it would work. It’s my girl friend who thinks it will work. She and her dog. This girlfriend I keep telling you about has a 175 pound Alaskan Malamute sled dog who loves barbequed tofu smoked over an open fire with roasted onions, potatoes and pineapple on the side. He likes to chase armadillos and wild turkeys in the hills around Austin. But on the one occasion when he actually cornered an armadillo, he took an up close whiff, touched his tongue to the tip of the armadillo’s tail, scrunched up his nose, and looked around at us as if to say, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
Now the point here is not that we are trying to turn this most wolf-like of domestic dog breeds into a vegetarian. The point is that he wants to be one. He loves lettuce and French bread. Granted the French bread has some eggs in it, so he’s having the same problem becoming vegan that we are.
But he’s a wolf for crying out loud! Or at least a near wolf. How much more rugged can you get, guys? I mean this is the kind of dog that turns construction workers into little boys: “Hey, big fella!” they fawn as I take this horse out for a walk. Hey! Come to think of it, what about horses? Hasn’t many a cowboy’s hide been saved by a vegetarian horse? Did you ever see cowboy make fun of his horse because it was eating grass? I don’t think so.
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So how do you turn tofu into rugged he-man food? You put on jeans and cowboy boots and stomp into a natural food store like it was a saloon and in a loud voice you demand to see the tofu. When some wimpy little hippie leads you to it, you grab up the biggest, hardest, ruggedest looking tofu you can find. You get about six of these. No make it ten. I usually just clean out the whole supply. You pack this load into one of those hand baskets and hoist it up on your shoulder and you lug it up to the check-out counter like it was a side of beef or a 12 point buck you were getting ready to strap on the back of your horse. You pay for it with cash! Don’t write a check or use a credit card. It’ll spoil the mood. And you haul your kill home. When you get home you freeze the whole catch just like you would those venison steaks or that 40 pound three-eyed catfish you caught in the Rio Grande.
Now there are only two ways to cook this stuff: out in the wild the way God intended tofu to be cooked (or Buddha or whoever) and at home on the range. I’ll tell you how to do both. You’ll need a couple of other things to enhance the natural flavor of the tofu. You’ll need soy sauce, which we’ll think of as blood, and you’ll need barbecue sauce, which we’ll think of as barbecue sauce.
If you’re going camping you use the frozen tofu to ice down the beer. You take along beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, jalapeno peppers and anything else you like to eat that never had real eyes.
There are two ways of cooking over an open fire: the hard way and the easy way. The easy way is to cook everything in cast iron pots. The hard way is to use spits and grates and grills. Even when cooking in a pot, everything will be smoked, including you and your clothes. So you build a fire and you heat up an iron pot and pour in some vegetable oil which we’ll think of as lard.
The tofu should be thawed out by now, so you squeeze out the excess water, break it into chunks and throw it into the hot lard (I mean vegetable oil). You throw in some chopped onions and garlic and peppers and sauté all this until it’s golden brown and then you add some soy sauce which turns the whole mess into pork butt.
Brown this a little more and then add the barbeque sauce. Let the sauce simmer and caramelize and get all brown and crispy around the edges. Stir it so it doesn’t stick too much. Put the lid on it, pull it over to the edge of the fire and have a beer while your squaw gets the beans and potato salad ready. That’s it.
To do it at home, just use an oven instead of an open fire. Your clothes won’t stink, but what the heck. Serve with every vegetable you can rustle up. Your wolves will love it and your puppies will hush. If you prepare your tofu like I do, right up through the step where you add the soy sauce (but before the barbecue sauce) you can use it in any recipe that calls for meat. Tamales, tacos, enchiladas or chili. Spaghetti sauce, pizza or pasta salad. Meatloaf, burgers, breaded cutlets or chicken fried steak. Chinese or Thai. Swedish meatballs or Indian Sags.
Final handy hint: Add an interesting distraction to every tofu dish in addition to the spices and other ingredients normally called for. Sort of the way they use decoys to set up ambushes or smuggle guns to the Indians in the movies. In Mexican dishes add cactus and yucca (very macho but you can buy them in the grocery store). In Italian, add marinated artichoke hearts (tastes like oysters). In Southern dishes add Ro-Tel tomatoes (very spicy). In Asian dishes get fresh greens and wood ears from Asian groceries. Use Portabello mushrooms in the Swedish meatballs (which of course can double as Italian meatballs by adding tomato paste). Add fresh spinach and cilantro to the sag. Get the idea now Rugged Caballero? Rugged Samurai? Get the idea you Robert Mitchums out there? TOFU! It’s what’s for dinner!
--Santa Fe, New Mexico
November, 1996
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