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Everything posted by JasonTrue
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I was born in Seattle, and grew up among 3rd generation Nikkei families, Chinese first and second generation immigrant families, and Vietnamese refugees. For me, the impact of Asia on our local culture and cuisine has been pervasive for a long time. But even beyond recent collisions between cuisines that emerged because of immigration, the process of culinary fusion is a long-existing historical phenomenon; squash and sweet potatoes in Japan and Korea, potatoes and tomatoes in Europe, and chillies in Indian, Thai, and Korean cuisine only became relevant to those cuisines subsequent to colonizations in the Americas. The movement of the apple from Kazakhstan to the rest of the world created the opportunity for well-boozed-up westward travel in the United States, and spread to China, Japan, Europe and beyond. Fusion as a project in itself, and not merely a natural evolution of the availability of ingredients or as a side effect of migration patterns, seems to be a product of urban restaurant dynamics since the 1970s or so. But in the late 90s, it seemed to become such a stylized concept that it sometimes came to mean long lists of incongruously unrelated, interesting-sounding ingredients combined into one dish. For me, a lot of fusion efforts fall flat because of this, and I've ranted about it extensively. I am fully supportive of the idea of taking good ingredients or techniques from disparate cultures, of compatible function, and finding a way to make them work together. But sometimes I feel like the point of restaurant fusions is to shock and impress rather than to taste good. What I hope for is a return to simplicity. I'm not interested in returning restaurant cooking to a focus on "classic" dishes, but on the more natural kinds of fusion that result when, for example, a Chinese chef is confronted with western broccoli or a French chef finds himself in Japan and finds mint incredibly expensive but shiso quite reasonably priced. From such collisions, simple but wonderful flavors can be created. When a Japanese pastry chef uses matcha or yuzu juice, it's often because it's a readily available ingredient and has a culinary function similar to cocoa powder or lemon juice. It's not necessarily because some ego-driven New York celebrity chef wants to kick things up a notch. I went to a French restaurant in Japan and was served French food built upon available ingredients... roasted gobo (burdock) provided a beautiful earthy flavor to build a soup upon, sweet persimmons and black sesame and salt with some yogurt or savory custard provided a nice palate cleanser, and matsutake hunted by the owner of a neighboring Japanese restaurant made a fantastic component of a simple risotto. Yuzu mascarpone sorbet contrasted the readily available with the rare, without being over-the-top. I've been equally impressed by a Japanese-owned restaurant in Seattle, which had some over-the-top fusion trainwrecks but also created some elegant, simple fusions like a hijiki polenta with a miso bechamel sauce. This kind of fusion appeals to me. Not a tower of novel-sounding ingredients made primarily for dramatic effect, but approaches built upon thoughtful understanding of the flavors of ingredients, and creative but humble use of those ingredients within an otherwise strong foundation of culinary techniques.
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My own daigaku-imo. Details and bigger photo on my blog
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The main thing I like about Fran's is the intensity of the chocolate, and the relatively light touch with sugar. The only chocolate that consistently wows me more than Fran's is La Maison du Chocolat, which requires mail order or a trip to San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, or Paris to taste. A lot of things go into the chocolate experience.... they need to come up to room temperature to have ideal taste, and the lower-sugar chocolates have a very short shelf life, so they generally need to be stored chilled but not frozen. Dillettante tempers their chocolate a bit differently and uses a somewhat heavier hand with the sugar, so I don't find them quite as exciting. That being said, I do enjoy the bittersweet version of their Ephemere truffle sauce, and a few of their cakes are quite nice. I used to be a bit addicted to one of their varieties of chocolate covered espresso beans (a rarity for me since I find most companies' interpretations of them less than exciting).
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I wouldn't claim that they are serving haute cuisine or even particularly elegant breads, but based on my experiences in Vancouver, I'd say it would be hard to find an equivalent there. The Russian immigration wave in the late 80s-90s that hit Bellevue and Seattle had a slightly lighter impact on Vancouver. This place is about comfort... a little borscht and sour cream, and a nice savory bun...
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Rather than a cake, I think I might be inclined to do more of a fruit tart. I would be inclined to do a simple pate sucree, use the mascarpone slightly sweetened as an alternative to a custard or curd filling (you could turn it into a custard, of course), and place lengthwise quarters or halves of grilled figs on top after the filling has set. I'd personally like to have some citrus or acid flavors to contrast with the figs, so grilled or at least pan-caramelized halves of kumquat would be perfect. Alternatively, some other citrus fruit, segmented, might be nice.
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I'm quite fond of Piroshky Piroshky, which is a Russian bakery with some American influences (namely, the presence of cheddar cheese, and perhaps the size of their pastries). Another Russian bakery hidden away behind the Sisters German immigrant-run sandwich/salad spot seems to be a little less buttery, but has its charms. I have taken advantage of rustic loaves from Three Girls from time to time; things there range from adequate to very good.
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It's actually not so easy to get unlined cast-iron teapots from Japan in the U.S., and they aren't that common in Japan anymore either. According to one vendor I talked to, the FDA may require most unenameled pots to be labeled "not for food use". Originally they were used as kettles but modern ones cannot be due to the enameling and the increasingly common colored exterior finishes. Iwachu is one of the most common brands in the U.S. because of the sales force strength of their importer, Kotobuki Trading. I was thinking about visiting their workshop when I went to Hanamaki and Morioka but got distracted with other crafty things to look at. Japan has a wider variety of contemporary styles; the one I brought back from Japan for my personal collection is a tall with a square base and a red finish, and I haven't found anything quite like it here, even when compared to the squarish options from Iwachu. But most of the time, tetsubin are actually more expensive in Japan than here. That has something to do with quality, but mostly due to market acceptance of higher pricing, the occasional designer label, and so on. The styles in Japan sometimes sometimes seem to be a little more hip or interesting, but most Japan-produced tetsubin are made in essentially the same way with very similar materials. The process is still very time-consuming and usually start-to-finish production of each tetsubin takes a couple of months (not requiring constant attention, of course). The quality of craftsmanship is usually only really dramatically differentiated with artisanal, usually extravagantly expensive ones, and these are showing off special metalworking skills that take more time to create. Actually Iwachu makes some in this category that are sold in the US, but I have been hesitant to buy any to stock. Mine are all lined on the inside with porcelain. In fact, one of my older ones, black hobnail on the outside and quite large, is actually prettier on the inside as the porcelain is a swirl of green, blue and orange, almost like marbelizing. It is somewhere in a cupboard, if I can find it with reasonable ease, I will try to get a photo of the interior. I purchased it many years ago (early '70s) when a large Japanese department store opened in Los Angeles in the Wilshire district. They were not easy to find, unless one had access to a Japanese community, until a few years ago. The internet is wonderful for giving us many sources for interesting and unusual things. ←
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There are a few different varieties of sansho/Sichuan peppercorns and some of them are best harvested green, some are best harvested red. Last year I got my hands on some fresh sansho in Japan, from the backyard of one of the potters I work with, but he said this variety is better harvested green. I got there a bit too late in the year . They still had a really nice aroma. Minowa said that the flavor is a bit better green for this variety, although it's possible this is a matter of taste. As a parallel, other citrus fruits are conventionally used unripe, such as limes, sudachi and kabosu; some are usually used ripe, such as lemon; and of course, yuzu, which is used both ways. I think the heat treatment changes their color. They should be OK, but may be bad for your citrus plants. Ian ←
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No particular skill in preparing these fantastic apples... I just sliced and seeded them and was happy. They are phenomenally large apples from a local Nikkei farmer. They had great aroma and flavor, good crisp texture, and pleasant sweetness. They are much like the extravagant apples sold in Japanese department stores at premium prices, but he told me that the apples from this tree are mostly his personal stash. He gave some to me even though I didn't deserve them. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, as I was finishing up a supermarket demo. Full size
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Following the habits of my Chinese neighbor when I was a starving student in Germany, I usually toast them in oil to add the tongue-numbing and aromatic properties to the oil. Depending on the dish, they may then be removed or left in. Some people toast them dry, then grind or crush them, and put them into hot oil just an instant before other ingredients are added. Since they are a citrus fruit, the USDA restricts the import of Sichuan peppers for fear of a fungus that could affect citrus growers in Florida and California. Accordingly, they are often now intentionally mislabeled.
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The best time to eat in Japan is the fall... I usually try to make trips to Japan in the fall whenever possible. This year, unfortunately, for various financial reasons and timing problems, I can't do that. But I wanted to start cooking anyway, so I made a couple of dishes highlighting nasu, Japanese eggplant. I wonder if only Japanese consider eggplant a fall food. When I go to Japan in a typical September, "Aki Nasu" is everywhere, on izakaya menus, in the supermarket, and at ryokan. In Europe eggplant was considered a quintessentially summer food. When I went to China several times in 2002, one of the trips was in the early fall, and I asked some colleagues for an eggplant dish when we went out to dinner, and was advised that the eggplant was not so good that time of year; then I went to Japan and every place was selling good quality eggplant as a seasonal highlight. One of my dishes last night was dengaku nasu, nasu broiled with sweetened miso. Another was a simple fried eggplant dish (salted, rinsed, and fried with no coating) and dressed with raw grated ginger and a bit of shouyu. I also made a kind of soup with nagaimo dango, shungiku, and shiitake, and hiya-yakko. Details: Aki-nasu and nagaimo-dango
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Oh, I always thought the difference was that a croissant in France averages 50-80 grams (2-3 ounces) and in the US they seem to start at about 150 grams (at least 5 ounces, or 1/3 lb).
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As I found myself stocking up on satsumaimo this weekend during an Uwajimaya sale, I reminded myself of another classic: Daigaku-imo My Japanese friends are always strangely amused at my literal translation of "daigaku-imo" (University potatoes ) Fried Japanese sweet potatoes are, immediately after frying, coated in a caramelized sauce of soy sauce, sugar, and usually mirin, sometimes with additional salt. The results vary from sticky to crunchy, depending on how hot the sauce is cooked, though I'm partial to the former.
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I think Dilettante qualifies as a bakery, at least at some locations, since they certainly make various cakes and pastries... Though we have a distinct ambiguity in English. I lived in Germany as a starving student, and mostly the Bäcker (Bakeries) and Konditorei (confectioners/pastry shops) had a clear dividing line. Pastry shops usually served cakes and sometimes laminated pastries, bakers served breads and sometimes laminated pastries. Bakeries were primarily places for the savory, konditorei catered to the afternoon coffee and cake crowds. In the U.S., bakeries might serve everything: bread, pastry, cakes, confectionary, chocolates...
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Fran's has one location in University Village in north Seattle, and a slightly smaller one in downtown Bellevue. From downtown, you could take a bus to either location (550 to Bellevue, I can't remember the U-Village one). Bellevue is across the lake from Seattle, and not necessarily interesting enough for a pilgrimage. Dahlia Bakery is relatively close to Macrina (maybe 5 or 10 minutes on foot). I never tried to walk from one to the other, but the stretch isn't that far. I keep trying to teach people that the northern (and occasionally southern) parts of Seattle offer far more interesting food than downtown... maybe someday the tourists will find their way beyond the Central Business District, Belltown and Pioneer Square, and discover Ballard and Columbia City, which are where all the secrets are.
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Well, I think I had some kind of kamameshi-style rice, but the restaurant name escapes me. The person I went with also has a tendency to forget the details, so I may have to reconstruct it from ambiguous internet information. Based solely on my fading memory (I usually remember what I ate fairly precisely, so this is rather awkward for me...), I think it might have been Ten Yi Bao: http://r.gnavi.co.jp/fl/en/a384138/ The interior photo here doesn't seem quite like what I remember, but I'm not sure if that's a matter of lighting or being a different space. Oh... kamameshi... is that on one of our lists? You wouldn't remember the restaurant name, would you (she asks hopefully)? I'm planning to be in Japan again later this year, and your excellent list up above has me drooling in anticipation. ←
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I haven't gotten around to writing on bakeries except for ones that serve sweeter pastries, but I did write about some of my favorite spots for sweets here, which includes many bakeries. Cafe Besalu is really an absolute must if you can make your way to Ballard, both for sweet and savory pastries and freshly-made quiches. Tall Grass Bakery next door can handle your bread fix. I am a big fan of Fresh Flours in Phinney Ridge; they primarily serve Japanese-influenced coffee shop pastries, made on site. (They are also, alas, a customer of mine, so you may choose to ignore my enthusiasm). I like the green tea Parisian-style macarons, most of their laminated dough pastries, and things made with kabocha or satsumaimo. For more bread-focused bakeries, the top of of my list would be, in no particular order: -Tall Grass Bakery (Ballard). The all-rye loaves are a standout, but the ideal thing is to come on a day when they are "closed" (Monday or Tuesday) and buy the first thing that comes out of the oven. No meal service. Officially open Wednesday-Sunday, and I think they keep hours similar to their neighbors at Besalu, roughly 7am to 3 pm. -Essential Bakery (Fremont, Madison Mark). Their breads are pervasive at Seattle restaurants and sandwich shops, mostly for good reason. They make sandwiches and soups, pastries, cakes, and various rustic breads, including the very nice rosemary with coarse salt, and potato. They emphasize organic ingredients, or at least transitional ones. -Macrina (Belltown). Most of Macrina's rustic loaves are quite nice; dense and chewy, they have a lot of flavor. Macrina has dine-in options, though I've only done this once and was not as thrilled as most people who write here, maybe because of how unevenly reheated the potatoes served with my otherwise decent meal were. -Biofournil (Belltown). The one time I've been here they were out of almost everything for sandwich-making, but they have very nice naturally-leavened breads. -Le Fournil (Eastlake). I usually come here for the lunch special, which includes your choice of sandwich, a drink (usually espresso-based or juice), and a cake or pastry, for about $7. It has a somewhat austere interior; it feels like an average coffee shop but the bread and cakes are quite nice. -Le Panier (Pike Place Market) has breads are limited mostly to french-style white breads and laminated doughs such as filled or plain croissants, but if you are in the market and looking for a light lunch or breakfast, it certainly works; you might also try Piroshky Piroshky nearby or the bakery on the other end of the market near Pike that I always forget the name of. -Dahlia Bakery (downtown-ish, leaning toward Belltown). I have limited experience and memory of this place, as I tend to go to Macrina or other options around her, but they have some decent bread here. It's not a bakery, but a good spot for a sandwich and juice: -Bacco (Pike Place Market). Most people seem to come here for a crab sandwich.
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As I think I said in my message, the curry shop think is a personal preference, not something proscriptive. I have even had nice food at a (slightly more Indic than average) Japanese curry shop in Nishi-Shinjuku, not far from a scary-looking "Jonathan's" location that marks the street to the weekly apartment I usually rent when visiting the Kantou area. I firmly agree that it's a good idea to try Japanese-style curry shops, or almost anything else, at least once, although my own experiences have been reliably mediocre. I have had exceptional experiences in Roppongi, too, but I just don't really like the vibe there. If I wanted to go to another country and see a bunch of Americans, Australians, Germans, and British people, I'd choose any urban or tourist center of Canada. On my first visit to a now-defunct Sri Lankan restaurant in Roppongi I had a mostly stellar meal, and I've been to a quite interesting Starbucks-ized Vietnamese coffee shop concept, and I have had a Chinese meal in Roppongi Hills that I wouldn't be able to easily replicate in the US, or Hong Kong or Beijing for that matter. I think a friend's mother took me to Fuji-ya in Ginza, but I've mostly avoided the other branches. I might have been to one in Ueno, though it could have been something else; I think they scolded my friend for us taking photos of each other. I remember the cakes not being as exciting as the setup I was given by my friend's mother. Other things that don't have substantial presence in the U.S., at least in a restaurant form, include: -Kushiage-ya-san -Nabemono -Shochu bars, so far -Oden (the one place in Seattle that did this quit serving oden and focused on booze) I was thinking I can only eat really good mozuku in Japan. All of the ones sold here seem to be pre-sauced and loaded with unnatural-sounding ingredients.
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My usual objectives include: 1) 1 ryokan dinner, and 1 ryokan breakfast, somewhere rural. Some are spectacular, some less so, but it's not going to be repeatable in most of the U.S. 2) Really good soba. My favorite were nothing more than mori-soba in a small farm-operated restaurant in Nasu. 3) Some yuba restaurant, especially in Kyoto. Tofu restaurants in Tokyo will also usually have some sort of yuba offering. (Tofu and yuba restaurants are not particularly vegetarian; just expect very fresh tofu prepared in simple and elegant ways). 4) Some kind of izakaya. 5) occasionally a "genmai" restaurant, which means "brown rice" but refers to a non-ascetic version of macrobiotic, and sometimes organic, cuisine. Usually they offer excellent lunch deals, too. 6) okonomiyaki or monja-yaki. 7) depachika confections and cakes. 8) Wafuu gelato or ice cream (matcha, satsumaimo, kabocha, amaguri, ume, anzu aka apricot, kurogoma, etc.) 9) A place that serves mitsumame or anmitsu, preferably with ice cream, a little gold leaf and various fruits, drizzled with a bit of black sugar syrup (kuromitsu). 10) fresh senbe shops, easiest in tourist craft villages like Takayama or in cultural centers like Kyoto. 11) Some place that serves fresh korokke. 12) okayu restaurants, though I can probably count the times I went to one on one finger. 13) places with really short menus. (tougher for me, since I'm vegetarian, but usually very good). I often also eat in, without really trying: 1) some old-school obaachan style sugary Japanese-style bakery. Not really a hearty endorsement, but I'm sure you'll find at least one by accident. 2) some slightly more fancy contemporary French-influenced bakery with lots of laminated doughs and breads, slightly less heavy on the sugar and the mushy, but often featuring Japanese fusions that you won't find back home. 3) tempura specialty restaurants. (unlike the U.S., tempura places aren't just a way to get rid of fish unsuitable for sushi at a serve-everything restaurant). 4) Italian restaurants, some of which beat my experiences in Europe, and many of which are way more inspiring than average Italian restaurants in the U.S. 5) Indian restaurants, but this is solely out of a need for variation. Most aren't that good, and many use frozen vegetables for cost-saving reasons and japonica rather than basmati rices. 6) Sweet crepe stalls I often grab: 1) something from a mame-ya-san; primarily coated peanuts with different flavors, sometimes also offering agemochi or arare. 2) Some snacks from an omiyage-ya-san to take back home, but most real daifuku or other short-lived confections I only pick up on my last day in the country unless I plan to eat them in Japan. 3) Whatever mass-produced snacks that I haven't yet seen in Uwajimaya in Seattle recently, including various flavored potato chips or Pocky-like nibbles. 4) pickled vegetables from specialty shops, usually after sampling nearly everything. I usually avoid: 1) most "family" restaurants, because I don't have children and I don't usually enjoy the food. 2) Restaurants with robotic signage. 3) Curry shops. But this is just me; a lot of people really like having rouxs from a box served to them in a hurry and cheaply. Note this is not the same thing as an Indian restaurant. 4) Roppongi. Where are those 6 trees anyway? My friends often push me to eat, but I usually don't find myself terribly excited by: - eki-ben (train station bento). I often specifically crave, even though few/no restaurants particularly specialize in them: 1) nama-fu 2) dengaku-tofu or dengaku-nasu 3) yudofu 4) yaki-onigiri (grilled rice balls brushed with soy sauce or a miso-based sauce). 5) ochazuke (rice with condiments and tea) 6) yaki-imo (baked sweet potatoes, usually from yatai or pushcart street vendors) 7) matsutake, in the fall 8) warabi and zenmai, in the spring 9) temple amazake, in the winter, thick and creamy though not much alcohol content 10) Asakusa agemanjuu 11) dango (streetside vendors, preferably staffed by some obaachan or else a husband-wife team). (corrected #8 on the "crave" list)
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Yamaimo are usually small, varying in size between that typical for yukon gold potatoes down to the size of baby or new potatoes. They aren't often found in US markets, at least in Seattle. When I saw them in Japan it was often from a roadside (well, train station side) vendor in a rural town. Nagaimo are long tubers that can be a good meter in length, but are usually cut smaller in supermarkets. The texture and starchiness is similar.
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I'm sure there's a topic for this somewhere, but I'm too lazy to look. One of the things that I really like about the Northwest is the seasonal excesses of summer don't really happen until late August/September... our best local tomatoes start coming in after the rest of the country starts forgetting about them, and it's rather odd to get utterly fantastic peaches and strawberries in September, just as mushrooms and apples start appearing. Eggplants are looking particularly good and are very inexpensive right now, though I'm not sure if they're local or not. Just as the weather starts turning more dreary, we get the good stuff. Only a few weeks from now we'll be getting more interesting mushrooms, and I think we have about 4-6 weeks to passable squashes. Anyway, I'd love to see what people are doing with whatever is fatastic right now. This week I got some excellent local strawberries and made a strawberry-basil sorbet with them. Details
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Seems to me like ochazuke is a good late-night food. In Seattle two places (Blue C, kaitenzushi) and Banzai (nightclub that happens to serve sushi, usually on Saran-wrapped naked people) do late night sushi and drinks. I can't bring myself to eat at either one. Though it has little to do with the time of day.
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I assume the roasted tomato tart is a savory egg tart in the style of a quiche; in such a case, a vegetable or a salad would be a fairly standard accompaniment. I frequently make lots of multicourse vegetarian meals... I think I made 16 or so dishes for one party, including dessert, and there were still people who, upon hearing comment from other guests, said, "oh, he's a vegetarian?" It seems to me like soup, salad, tart, some mushroom dish, some hot vegetable dish, and available bread would make a fairly complete meal, but for dinner parties, I often add other indulgences, such as croquettes or spring rolls. If other foods are likely to settle lightly, my soups might be heavy, such as something with lentils, canellini or chickpeas, or I might make a lighter soup if other dishes are protein heavy. When confronted by a low-fiber starch like pasta or white bread or pie crust, you can provide some contrasting starch that has a higher protein or fiber content, like potatoes or quinoa or something like that. Unless the meal requires eating a large serving of the starch, it's not that imbalanced. Substance comes from grains, beans, tofu, nuts, fiber... If you're serving a fairly balanced meal, there's no reason to worry. I tend to be more excited by having lots of little things to eat than being served some huge entree of "substance." Vegetarians are often more flexible than you expect. I found that picky meat eaters are harder to cater to than average vegetarians or adventurous omnivores. I remember somebody freaking out because I had a basil or sage pesto on my pizza, and this was a meat eater. If I served something a post-college vegetarian didn't appreciate, I wouldn't hear anything about it; they'd just eat something else. There are, of course, people who don't eat food for the sake of enjoying the food, but instead think of dining as some sort of medical regimen and list all sorts of ingredients that they are unwilling to eat because of alleged dire health consequences, but I am not that kind of vegetarian, and I don't usually have to entertain that type of guest.
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Some of those are actually just food coloring, and some are actually from food sources. I sometimes color neri-miso with mortar-and-pestle-smashed blanched spinach. The same should work for pasta. You could theoretically use any blanched greens. For red, I would try the double- or triple-concentrated tomato paste that comes in a tube. And you could always use squid ink, which is classic. Most commercial vegetable-sourced red pastas are using the juice of boiled beets, even if they have some tomato in them, probably because tomato will eventually turn brownish. However, tomato juice or spinach water will likely not contribute enough color to do anything other than turn your pasta a different shade of yellow or hinted pink.