Happy new pizza

While my pizza prowess is nowhere near that of sp (whose pizza dinner parties are legendary, at least in my mind), I must say that I was proud of this one.

The dough is based on the recipe for olive oil dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. This time, I made it mostly with whole wheat flour (say 1 part AP to 3 parts whole wheat), plus a little bit of vital wheat gluten. (I also use a bit less yeast than that recipe calls for.) This dough is amazing, given how little effort it requires: you mix the ingredients together (no kneading) and then let it proof for 2 hours. Then it goes in the fridge, ready to be used any time in the next 12 days. When it's time to bake, you take the dough out of the fridge and it's ready to go -- it doesn't even need to warm up.

It bakes at 550F for about 8 minutes -- the crust ends up with nice puffy edges and a chewy and crisp base. (It rises quite a lot, so you need to roll it out really thin. Yes, I said roll -- I admit it, I use a rolling pin.)

This pizza was topped with kalamatas, caramelized onions, baby spinach, garlic and Follow Your Heart mozzarella.

I am hoping the new year is like this pizza -- delicious, and with kalamatas as far as the eye can see.

Pumpkin loves vanilla

This was my first ever savoury vanilla experience, and it was good. It's butternut pumpkin (squash) and vanilla risotto, inspired by this one at Veganize It... Don't Criticize It.

My risotto was half Arborio, half barley, due entirely to me not realizing that we'd run out of Arborio. The mixture worked out fine, but I wouldn't really recommend it -- I think the rice cooked a bit faster than the barley. But the barley half was nice and chewy, so things ended up okay.

The vanilla flavour was subtle, but definitely there. It brought out the sweetness in the butternut.

That's what I'm craving?

I woke up yesterday morning craving pomegranate molasses. (I wish I was joking.)

The day before I had done a fast run (13 miles, each mile faster than the last) and a hard swim after, and what seemed silly to me was my craving. Right-o. (Feeling like I might get sick in the pool seemed, and you will agree, appropriate.) But it seemed ridiculous to not satisfy the yummy sweet craving.

I went online - to foodblogsearch.com - and found a lentil soup with roasted pumpkin. I had no roasted pumpkin and couldn't imagine where I'd buy such a thing when there are strawberry plants bursting from the ground. So I looked to my fridge and found a few sweet potatoes, a lone turnip, carrots, and a little bitty yukon gold. That's a pumpkin.

I'd just read an article on roasting sweet potatoes in Cooks Illustrated, so I gave it a whirl -- with all the veg, including two peppers. But first, the big heavy pot: I started by browning half a LA onion, then added 3 cloves minced garlic (one minute). Added 1t cumin, 1t coriander (ground, both) and 1/4t cayenne. One liter broth, 2 bouillon cubes, 1/2 cup (plus what was left in the bag) red lentils, and simmered it for 30 minutes.

The fancy magazine trick to roasting sweet potatoes is to place peeled 3/4 inch rounds (first toss with oil and salt) on a rimmed baking tray on tin foil (spray it) and cover tightly with another piece of foil. Place in cold oven, crank temp to 425, and keep them there 25 minutes. Uncover, jostle them, and cook another 15-20 minutes. Cut into smaller pieces (if you're me, with a chef knife on that baking tray) and add to lentils.

The recipe called for 1t molasses to top each serving of soup. It was divine. Far more than the sum of its parts, and did a bang-up job of emptying my veg drawer before I leave town.

Urban Compost

This is my trash last week after making dinner.  It should have been soup stock, it should have been layered with dirt, I should be too ashamed to post it...

But there you go.  Waste.

I need to make some phone calls and figure something out.

Time machine dinner

This is a summer meal - soba noodles and peanut sauce - but it has been in the seventies here, and with all that bayou in the air, it felt hot, baby.

After the photo, I added some pan-fried tofu, a head of chopped romaine, and toasted peanuts.  I topped it with a peanut dressing that has become a real pal over the years... I love Didi Emmons, and her pizza restaurant in Cambridge, MA (Veggie Planet, just near the Harvard Coop).  The peanut sauce is from her book, Entertaining for a Veggie Planet.  

From memory (I think accurate):

1c coconut milk (I always use low-fat)

2 cloves garlic, minced

2T ginger

2t chili sauce

handful of chopped cilantro (I added mint too, because I had it)

tamari to taste

1/2c peanut butter

juice of 1/2 lime (about 1T)   

Cookies. (Of course.)

If we can overlook several things: 

Washing my car on Saturday,

Excitement over running "hills" in a parking garage,

The thrill of swimming outside (yes!) under the dark morning sky...

I had a small this-girl-ain't-midwestern breakthrough while making cookies.  I made SMALL cookies.  Seriously.  And they were better for it.   (Plates in photo are actually 3.5" coasters.)

I made some gingerbread cookies from Cooks Illustrated, and two recipes from Clotilde over at C&Z.  Her chocolate cookies - half whole wheat flour to support all that chocolate - are amazing.  (I followed recipes here and used butter.)

My second pomegranate

A pomegranate was the star of tonight's quick dinner.

We had black beans (Goya's black bean soup -- MSG-haters beware, but for everyone else, this stuff is great: deliciously seasoned black beans straight out of the can. I would never have known, were it not for smitten kitchen.) and rice (a mix of wild rice and brown rice, out of the freezer), Tofutti sour cream (only in the house because of latke festivities last night), blue corn chips, and what R called a 'pomegranate avocado salad'. It's this recipe for guacamole with pear and pomegranate, but with the proportions radically changed (we only had one avocado) and no grapes (too out of season for me -- yes avocados are not exactly in season here either, oh well).

Fruit mince pies and snickers

This is what Christmas tastes like to me: fruit mince pies (dough recipe from here, minus the egg yolk, and the filling is Robertson's fruit mince (no suet!) plus a grated Granny Smith apple).

For Hannukah, I made R fake Snickers bars using the Chow recipe for Snickles. For future reference (if I am ever crazy enough to make this recipe again) I halved the recipe, and replaced the egg white in the nougat with 1 Ener-G egg, plus a packet of whipping cream stabilizer. (I don't know if the stabilizer (or the Ener-G for that matter) did anything, it was just a hunch. It worked out okay, but not as fluffy as the real thing.) For the caramel, I used mimiccreme and EB. And I used Trader Joe's pound plus bittersweet chocolate. (Only later did I discover that the temperatures for tempering chocolate differ for milk vs. dark chocolate. I followed the recipe temperatures, which are for milk chocolate, and it seemed to work out okay.)

By the way, future self, if you are reading this and planning on doing this again, (1) buy a decent candy thermometer, your old one sucks and (2) if you can make sense of the recipe instructions for using 2 forks to dip the bars in the chocolate, you're a smarter and more coordinated person than I.

Book report: How to Eat Supper

Today at the library, I found The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper and after casually flipping through it with no intention of borrowing it (too many cookbooks at home already!), I had to bring it home -- it was making me hungry.

The recipe that caught my eye was for almond-turmeric potatoes. It's very simple: onions, potatoes and turmeric slowly cooked together with a little stock, so that the onions caramelize. Then it's topped with toasted almonds. (A photo of this dish graces the cover; even the librarian checking it out to me said "I don't know what that is, but it looks delicious.")

It was okay; a bit plain (though maybe I was just underwhelmed because my expectations were high: the book describes this recipe by saying "If you cook no other potato recipe in your lifetime, you must try this one"). The most interesting things were that, despite the turmeric, it didn't taste Indian in the slightest, just sweet and creamy, and that the toasted almonds did something pretty special -- it wouldn't have occurred to me to combine them with these flavours, but they were very nice.

I'm looking forward to trying more from this book. (And also, now that I think of it, I'm looking forward to having the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.)

My first pomegranate

This was the first time I've ever used a pomegranate. I've eaten one before -- as a kid, we found a pomegranate tree in someone's backyard, and my overall impression was that they were a lot of effort for not much payoff. But then, we were just biting into the fruit, and probably getting mouthfuls of the untasty pith along with the tasty seeds.

The best thing about this salad (steamed kale, sauteed potatoes and tofu, pomegranate seeds) was the dressing. It was a mixture of tahini and pomegranate molasses, plus water, salt and pepper. It was great!

Bread for sp

Whenever I make this bread, I think of sp.

It's my oatmeal bread, based on a recipe for Burghul Bread that I found on Haalo's blog (and which she found here).

I let the bread machine knead this (because I'm that lazy), but then bake it in the oven in a cast iron pot, like the famous no knead bread. (This makes a fairly large loaf -- I use a 6 quart pot.)

Oatmeal Bread
175 g leftover oatmeal
225 ml warm water
25 ml olive oil
235 g white flour
235 g whole wheat flour
1/4 cup rolled oats
2 T flaxseed meal
3/4 T salt
1 t yeast
(sesame seeds or rolled oats to decorate)

(UPDATE: You can also make this bread without leftover oatmeal. Replace it with 50g raw steel cut oats, and increase the warm water to 350ml.)

1a. The lazy way: put the ingredients into the bread machine, and let it do its thing (on the dough cycle).
1b. The hands on method: bloom the yeast in 25ml of the water (plus 1 t sugar). Then mix everything together. Knead it for 10 minutes, adding flour as necessary.

2. Let it rise, covered, until doubled (about 1.5 hours).

3. Lightly knead, and shape. Sometimes I make a boule, but this time I made a loaf. I put it on a piece of parchment paper, and put the whole thing into a loaf pan to rise. (If you love sesame seeds or rolled oats, put them onto a plate and then roll the loaf in it, pressing them in, before putting it into the pan. This time I just brushed the loaf with a bit of water and then sprinkled the oats on top.)

4. Cover and let it rise for 1 hour. About halfway through, preheat the oven to 400 F, and put the cast iron pot (complete with lid) in.

5. Take the loaf, still on the parchment paper, out of the loaf pan and put it into the cast iron pot. Bake it for 30 minutes covered, and then 20 minutes uncovered.

Mmm, root vegetables

I really miss summer.

Last night's dinner was one of those clean-out-the-fridge affairs. I made a stew that was loosely based on the Stewed Tofu and Potatoes in Miso Gravy (from VWAV). But I had no potatoes or mushrooms -- this stew had turnip, parsnip, and carrots along with the tofu. We ate it over steamed kale, and sopped up the gravy with my take on Wild Yeast's Norwich sourdough (with whole wheat flour replacing the rye).

I liked how this worked out. I don't often stew tofu, but it's not a bad technique -- it soaks up the gravy and ends up mildly flavoured, puffy and soft.

Wine! Yay!

The bottle - plastic - is "eco-friendly."

Seriously.

Apparently the glass bottles are a pain in the arse to do-over.  It seems so backwards, but what's inside is GREAT.  (And this from me.)  A introduced me.  

So I made the Creole red beans recipe again. I just love love love that flavor. Here's the recipe -- it's tried and true. I usually only saute half an onion, then add half a bag (cup your open hands) of dry red beans (kidneys). People here eat this dish traditionally on Mondays, but it took me forever to motivate. I think I bought the tempeh last week, and finally made the beans... Sunday?

Use one package tempeh - steam 10 minutes.

1/3 c brown rice syrup (maple)

1/3 c oil

1/4 c tamari

1t paprika

1t oregano

1/2 t thyme

1/2 t black pepper

1/2 t ground cumin

1/4 t cayenne

"Whisk" (fork fluff) ingredients in a small, heavy saucepan over high heat. Bring to a simmer, then pour over steamed tempeh (I cut it in slices, but cubed is how it ends up). Refrigerate overnight. Amazing, lip-smackingly good sauce. Pour extra into the beans. Use vegan sausage in the dish for a totally insane protein rush.

Hey You.

I made a chickpea soup with that broccoli.  I couldn't wrap my head around the recipe -- I mean, come on... raisins and shitake mushrooms?  WTF?  So I thought I'd try it.  Too many bean-based, veg-based soups that are mushy and predictable (read: yummy and warming), and too few weirdo experimental things.  So.

Here's one of those big old Louisiana onions, a big head of broccoli (everything here: fried or x-large), and a beautiful (warm) fall day.  I'm actually wearing a hat to make the soup, but whatever.  That's because I'm cheap, not because it's not a nice day.

And then: the beans were slightly undercooked.  I didn't add the arrowroot equivalent (the more expensive bead-shaped stuff) and so I didn't get the texture that was supposed to be there.  No creamy.  Sludgy/beany.  Damn.  

But I'll try it again, probably with a pressure cooker.  

And sorry about the order of the post -- I'm not sure how to space the pictures and the text...  I'll figure it out.    

Thanks be to dog

We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home, with our new friend. He's very good at sitting under the table without begging.

On top of the table, there was: mashed hubbard squash (with cinnamon, nutmeg and cayenne), cranberry sauce, wild rice stuffing with fig and (Louisiana) pecans, mushroom gravy, beans, an unrecognizable seitan roulade, and (I'll explain) a big bowl of salt.


The seitan roulade and the accompanying stuffing were inspired by the ones in this video by Emilie of The Conscious Kitchen. (I didn't wrap the roulade tight enough, so the seitan ended up expanding too much and the roulade just would not cut into neat slices. But it tasted good at least. I am looking forward to seitan and cranberry sauce sandwiches tomorrow.)

In the bowl of salt hid baked fingerling potatoes (like so). They worked out nice and (as you'd expect) salty.














And for dessert, at long last, pumpkin cheesecake from Fat Free Vegan. Yum!

Gumboish

I came home from NOLA with a hankering for gumbo -- most people get to satisfy this desire while actually in NO, but vegetarians are not most people.

I based this loosely on kittee's recipe for sausage gumbo. I didn't have all the ingredients she calls for (e.g. tomato, parsley, gimme lean) and I'm sure I committed some gumbo faux pas, but it was delicious anyway. (Some of my substitutions and additions included red peppers, some leftover beans, and some soyrizo. I'm sure a gumbo purist would not approve.)

As well as gumbo inspiration, NOLA also provided me with white chocolate chips (thanks to Kosher Cajun). Finally, my Australian macadamias were able to achieve their true destiny:

Butternut lasagna

Out of nowhere, I had a craving for butternut lasagna. Some googling turned up this recipe, which had some nice ideas, like adding rosemary and roasted garlic to the bechamel.

I pretty much followed that recipe (in spirit, if not in actual measurements and details). I used the bechamel recipe from Bryanna Clark Grogan's wonderful book Nonna's Italian Kitchen. I used no-boil lasagna noodles, which soaked up almost all the bechamel, which is fine by me.

The rosemary made this insanely good. Next time I just need to remember to make a bit more bechamel, because I ran out and could only put a too-thin layer on top.

Pizza pie

In St Louis recently, I had some amazing deep dish pizza at a place called Pi. (Hey, even the president-elect agrees.)

Their pizza has a really great, buttery-tasting cornmeal crust. Yesterday I tried to replicate it, which was challenging, because my memories of eating it were a little foggy. They mostly amounted to "Damn, this is good".

I used this recipe, with a couple of changes. I used half AP flour, half medium-fine cornmeal, and 2 teaspoons of vital wheat gluten. I also reduced the oil to 4 tablespoons. It worked pretty well, though it was a little bit crumblier than I was aiming for.



I topped it with a cheeze sauce (of the cashews + nutritional yeast sort) plus a small amount of Follow Your Heart mozzarella (Tagline: It melts!), then some peppers, chard and kalamatas. Not bad. Not bad at all. (Though I'm still dreaming of the Berkeley pizza at Pi.)

What to do with pumpkin

Before I moved to this country, I never would've had this problem.

You see, I have some roasted pumpkin puree, and I don't know what to do with it. Back home, the answer would have been obvious. But this place has opened my eyes to the world of pumpkin desserts, North American style -- I've come a long way since my first, skeptical encounter with pumpkin pie*, in Montreal (7 years ago!). If I hadn't sworn to lay off of the sweets for a while**, I'd be making this immediately. (Maybe I'll be able to hold out until Thanksgiving. Maybe.)

So, maybe pumpkin tortilla soup? Or tofu kabocha pie?***

*My brother, visiting recently, reminded me of how foreign American pumpkin desserts are to our antipodean palate: his comment on a pumpkin muffin was "Tastes great, just like gingerbread, not like pumpkin at all!".

**Don't feel sorry for me. This is but one of the many desserts that have appeared and then quickly disappeared from our kitchen recently.

***Yeah, that's right, I don't care that they call for kabocha squash. It's all pumpkin where I come from.