Raven's Restaurant - Vegan Cuisine

A note: We are working on an equally tasty vegan version of our scones. The recipe we are providing here is for our non-vegan, rich scones.

Honestly, we believe that the most beneficial diet for the planet's health is a whole foods vegan diet and our scones are neither vegan nor whole grains. Vegan diets save the emissions from the equivalent of 12,000 miles driven per year by a vehicle getting approximate 22 miles to the gallon. Nevertheless, we offer this recipe and ask those readers who use it to also try a whole foods vegan lifestyle one or more days a week. Just one day a week is equivalent to saving the emissions from 1,700 miles each year.

This is our most often requested recipe and is based on traditional English scone recipes. We use all organic ingredients and have found that ingredients make a huge difference.

Experiment: When we first worked on the recipe we found that the scones flowed across the baking sheet. Too much butter - and we reduced the butter by a quarter. The difference we believe was the amount and quaslity of butterfat in the organic butter we used. In those days, we could not get Strauss Organic Butter on the Mendocino Coast and when a supplier added Strauss we switched and again had to use about 3/4ths the amount of butter we had been using. Ingredients make a huge difference. Bear that in mind when preparing this recipe.

Ingredients and Procedure

1. Mix the following dry ingredients
4 ¼ cups all purpose organic flour
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
2. Cut in with two knives or a pastry blender
¾ pound organic butter, cut into small squares
(When you’re finished with this process, your mixture should look like small peas.)
3. Mix the following wet ingredients in a separate bowl or container
½ cup buttermilk (may need a bit more)
½ cup cream (may need a bit more)
1 egg, beaten
Splash vanilla
4. With swift, quick strokes, fold the wet mixture into the dry mix. Do not over mix.

Assembly

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1. Place mixture on a lightly floured surface and press together without over working the dough.
2. Flatten with a rolling pin into a rectangle. Fold dough into thirds, like you would fold a letter. Add one cup of fruit of your choice. Roll and fold two more times.
3. Splash buttermilk or cream on top, brush evenly, then sprinkle with sugar.
4. Cut into triangles and bake in a 350 degree oven until golden brown, approximately 30 to 40 minutes.

Makes 16 scones

At the Ravens’ we are guided by the fact that we live within a predatory planet. It is violent and the very way we eat fosters violence. Some of here are vegan for that very reason. However, vegan is not a another name for “righteousness.” We know that as we have compassion for the grains, fruits and vegetables we do eat, we must have compassion for those who eat animal products as well as for the animals themselves. Below is a quotation from our Ravens’ Cookbook. It speaks to this issue:

“Food is energy - it is energy trapped, bonded to life. We digest destroying the integrity of the food and freeing the proteins, carbohydrates, fats and micronutrients needed to build and sustain our bodies. We are molecular beings, transferring bits and pieces of other molecules to function molecularly - that is, to organize, replicate, regenerate and repair ourselves.

“Using energy extracted from our food, we interact, exchanging information between each other and this information exchange is most often about finding, holding, building sources of energy of one sort of another, be it money, some idea of power, or food itself.

“Food is life and we eat life - or a product of life like dairy. Life eats life in a seemingly meaningless cycle. Even in those instances where we think we might avoid eating life by drinking milk we learn that dairy and eggs are seemingly innocent foods that do not demonstrate obvious sentience and are obtained from animals who are bred for the purpose. Those unable to lay an egg or produce milk – the males – are killed, usually after a six week life in a cage for a chicken, de-beaked and pumped full of antibiotics or after a few months in a calf pen or three years in a feedlot.

“We eat life: it is transformed into our lives. Our planet appears predatory and dangerous when looked at from purely a materialistic viewpoint. This is not a happy realization. Many of us separate ourselves from the violence of procuring food: we go to the supermarket. But if we eschew violence how can we ask another to procure our food, kill for us? We cannot.
We see ourselves as a nexus of change – from a violent and not particularly conscious relationship to the food we eat to a more conscious relationship. We “know” that eating is always killing, and we believe that remembering this honors the plants, fruits and grains we eat and in so honoring these foods, we eat what we need to eat and waste far less. Here, we do not serve animals but do serve dairy and eggs with the hope that many guests will try vegan dishes. This is what we hope to be the first step for many of our diners toward conscious dining and a vegan lifestyle.”(Copyright 2006 – Used by permission.)

This morning the Today Show featured organic wines and spotlighted Ceago’s Cabernet Sauvignon, one of the wines on our list. Ceago cabernet is made with grapes from Mendocino County’s Redwood Valley which are grown using certified biodynamic methods that go beyond standard organic methods. Ceago Vinegarden is Jim Fetzer’s creation.

Our wine list features three Ceago wines as well as another 93 wines from wineries from around the world made with grapes produced by organic, biodynamic, or sustainable methods. We hold in high esteem vintners such as Jim Fetzer who emphasize the terroir – the “place” – the land and weather that characterize the grapes grown there. Growers who use pesticides and chemical fertilizers mitigate their vineyards’ terroir by homogenizing the difference between places. The chemicals kill the soil’s micro-fauna and –flora forcing the vine to be dependent on chemical fertilizers. Biodynamic and sustainable methods essentially seek to enhance the life of the soil or minimally not to interfere with the soil’s indigenous life.

At the Ravens’ at the Stanford Inn by the Sea we are concerned with terrior and sustainable agriculture. We grow using sustainable methods and are certified organic by the USDA. We support sustainable practice by purchasing organic and, if coffee or tea, products that are proven to be fairly traded.

Wine Spectator has bestowed an Award of Excellence to our list which contains 96 organic or sustainably produced wines. To balance the list, our wine buyer, Amy Mullally, has carefully selected and additional 35 wines including seven different cabernets by our friend, Mark Carter who created Carter Cellars.

Our main, focus, however are the excellent Mendocino County organic and sustainable wines including Jim Fetzer's and other members of his family: John who owns Saracina Vineyards, Patti Fetzer who produces Pattiana wines, and Dan who created Jeriko Vineyards. In addition, two other other notable wineries are the oldest organic winery in the United States, Lolonis of Redwood Valley and Yorkville Cellars in the Yorkville Highlands.