Spring desperation

I find it much easier to eat local/seasonal food in winter than in early spring. It's finally starting to warm up around here, and there's buds on the trees and bulbs are starting to sprout, so where's the asparagus and rhubarb? And how about some strawberries? It's going to be a while...

In desperation, I bought California asparagus and cherry tomatoes from who knows where. I browned the tomatoes quickly in a very hot pan, and then dressed them with soy sauce and sesame oil. (This is based on a warm salad in Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.) Then I mixed in some fake bacon and snow peas. The asparagus was done under the grill (=broiler).

Gone native

When I first arrived in America, I was regularly horrified in diners. Specifically, I was horrified by the jam (or jelly, if you will) that would be placed -- for no discernable reason -- on my plate alongside my eggs, toast and butter. But it wasn't just that: I would look around me and notice people dipping sausages in maple syrup, and for the life of me I couldn't understand why menus would offer combination plates of, say, eggs and sausage and pancakes. Shouldn't that be "OR pancakes"?

When I arrived here I was a simple soul. Hell, I was kind of blown away by the places that Americans find to put peanut butter (e.g in ice cream, inside pretzels, inside pretzels in ice cream, etc).

I am still horrified by the thought of jam on the same plate as eggs. But apparently I am softening my stance on savoury + sweet combinations -- here's what we had for dinner: waffles with FAKE BACON INSIDE, along with apples sauteed with cinnamon and chili. (Idea stolen from Tigers and Strawberries.)

A few notes:
* The best thing about this meal was the apple -- the combination of chili, cinnamon and the sweet/tartness of the apple was insanely good.
* (As if it needs to be said) fake bacon is nothing like real bacon. I found the flavour too weak in this. I think next time (next time!) I would cut the fake bacon into larger pieces, so that when you hit a piece you could really taste it.
* I was out of powdered cinnamon, so had to grind up cinnamon sticks in the spice grinder. It was delicious.

Ode to HM

One need not eat the steamed rice separately from the steamed cabbage and broiled tofu.  This is a lesson from HM, and a lesson the single (read: lazy) cook likes to forget.  But I was scheming the moment I saw that head of cabbage... and loosely followed Heidi's recipe for miso dressing (101 Cookbooks) and tossed it with chopped cabbage and grated carrot.  I timed the rice cooker to finish its business when I got home, and these nori sheets were hanging out in the cupboard.  An episode of Star Trek and it's a great night.

Flirt

I don't think I believe my luck here this spring... and find myself wondering what I'd do if I had to work for these strawberries.  Like convince them to come home with me rather than hand over a fiver for them.  (Yup, that's all.)  "Why, you're making me blush, too!"  Oh dear... best to stop there.

Beet and Potato, Spinach and Mushroom

For those of you Vegans or good Vegetarians, forgive me the egg slices here.

These are salad leftovers -- and there are still some hanging out in the fridge. I forget that salads don't age like soups... there's still quite a bit of the potato-beet mixture in the fridge. I could have held on to some of those beets for a little while longer -- overheard someone at the market talking about chopping beets with celery and onion and some hard boiled eggs... I lost him at the "Catalina" dressing, though. I think it once appeared in our fridge during one of my mom's diets in the early 90s. Yuck.

Cookie experiment

Inspired by the technique in this recipe from the New York Times, I bring you a cookie experiment: chocolate chip cookie dough based on the one in Vegan With a Vengeance, with one batch baked immediately, and the other 27 hours later.

Exhibit A: the immediate one.
Exhibit B: dough baked after 27 hours.
The verdict: Exhibit A was fine, but Exhibit B was better. The edges were crisper and there was a nice caramel taste. Yay science!

Limas, polenta, and kale chips

Last night we had lima beans in a simple tomato sauce over polenta, with kale chips on the side. The limas cook in 7 minutes in the pressure cooker; the polenta was done in about 15, so this was not only very satisfying but quick too.

The kale chips were just so-so; the texture was amazing (papery and melt-in-your-mouth), and the taste was very reminiscent of my favourite: roasted cauliflower. But they had a bit of an aftertaste that I didn't like. This didn't stop me from eating quite a few -- such a great texture, and so salty!

I just had leftover limas and polenta for breakfast. No kale though.

65 pounds of limes

Limes were 5 for a dollar at the local grocery store this week. That's unheard of around here. (Apparently the store owner ordered 65 pounds of them by mistake.)

And so, this tasty morsel: a coconut-lime cupcake from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Quick vegetable stew

This meal was quick and good. Onions, mushrooms, eggplant and chickpeas cooked in a sauce made up of tomato paste, water and a few big spoonfuls of canned pumpkin, plus coriander, paprika and cilantro.

Good lord. Potluck!

Birthday lunch. SO much food.

I'll vouch for the blue potato/cauliflower salad (smitten kitchen) in the foreground... and in the upper left corner, an adzuki bean dish I really like with a ginger-sesame-tamari dressing. I like it because you finely slice a red onion and cut a few carrots into matchsticks, pour boiling water over them for 1 minute, drain, and toss. How cool is that "cooking" method? And it makes the red onion edible!

p.s. There's bacon on the table: can you spot it?

Cake and cake and cake!!!

This here is a monster of a chocolate (vegan) birthday cake.   There's a layer of ganache and red raspberry jam in the center, but it's basically chocolate.  Whole wheat flour to support it (2c ww/ 2c apf) - there's basically a cup of cocoa and a bag of chocolate chips melted with hot coffee).  I can't eat it.  The caffeine makes me crazy.  

You'll see (look carefully) that the sides are held together with frosting - (1/4 c earth balance, 3/4 cup soymilk, until melted, then stir in a bag of chocolate chips) - the cake crumbled coming out of the pans.  I should have used bigger pans, but something in the whole wheat flour/brown rice syrup thing went wrong.  Not sure what.  Guess I'll have to bake it again!

Mhhm Mhhm Potato Something-or-Other

Vegan potluck: Green Foods. Not much green, but Irish enough with the spuds, and earthy enough because I cycled to the event.

This here is a tasty cross between colcannon and potato salad. Apple cider vinegar and dijon made it salady (plus the wilted greens - mostly the Wholefoods braising mix) and shallots and back-of-the-spoon action make it colcannon-y. I still don't have a potato masher. I know...

Gumbo

I hesitated about posting this one, since the photo is not so different from last time, but this trick is worth remembering: cooking the seitan in the gumbo. This technique was mentioned in kittee's post on sausage gumbo (the recipe that I based this gumbo on). I made a quick seitan dough (vital wheat gluten, chickpea flour, smoked paprika, onion powder, water, soy sauce, olive oil) and tore off very small pieces and threw them into the pot to simmer with the gumbo for 45 minutes. Yum!

Cauliflower Cheese

This post brought to you by: nostalgia. I had a craving for Cauliflower Cheese (which I know sounds strange to some -- just think Mac and Cheese but with cauliflower instead). I made up this cheese sauce as I went along, and it worked pretty well. Unfortunately I didn't really keep track of the measurements, but I wanted to post my best guesses so that I'm prepared the next time nostalgia strikes.

Cauliflower (No) Cheese
1/2 head of cauliflower
1.5 T olive oil
enough flour to make a roux
3/4 c water
3/4 c soymilk
1 t dijon mustard
1/4 c nutritional yeast
1 T fake parmesan
2 t miso
salt
pepper
nutmeg

1. cut up the cauliflower and steam it
2. make the roux
3. add the water + soymilk, and the rest of the ingredients, and whisk until it thickens
4. cover the cauliflower with the cheese sauce; bake at 400F for 20 minutes
5. (optional) place under the grill (broiler) for a few minutes to brown the top

Good things we ate (Chickpea edition)

Both of these dinners were (directly or indirectly) inspired by 101 Cookbooks. First, there's chickpea soup with homemade pasta (inspired by this recipe -- and reading Heidi's description of it now makes me want to make it again immediately). My version included carrots and mushrooms, and the broth was half vegetable, half chickpea cooking liquid.

The other meal was more indirectly related to 101 Cookbooks; I think it seemed 101 Cookbooks-ish to me because of the wild rice, which Heidi uses quite frequently. It was a sort of stir-fry of wild rice, thinly sliced cabbage (thanks to my As Seen On TV V-slicer), mushrooms, spring onions and chickpeas, along with garlic and thyme. It needed a little acid, so I finished it off with some lime juice and it was good.

Goodbye/hello to 660 Curries

So, 660 Curries has to go back to the library in a couple of days. I really love this book -- I've already bought my own copy.

Here are two meals indebted to the book. In the first photo, going clockwise from the top there's Beetroot Curry from stonesoup, a paratha, and Fenugreek-flavored Dumplings with Cabbage from 660 Curries. The parathas were going to be filled with a broccoli mixture (ala Gobi paratha, but with broccoli instead) but it wasn't very cooperative as a filling, so we ate it alongside our parathas instead (that's that green stuff in the centre). The dumplings are made of chickpea flour; they were flavoured with fenugreek (methi) and ginger. (Think falafel, but without the crispy exterior, and with a very mysterious and delicious taste from the fenugreek.) The Beetroot Curry was pretty good, but I wimped out and didn't put in enough chiles. Also, I put in a ton of curry leaves and they smelled great, but the flavour was quite muted.

The second picture shows two curries from 660 Curries: Brown Lentils with Cumin and Turmeric, and Broccoli with Ginger and Coconut. The broccoli curry was a revelation -- I've been so bored with broccoli recently, but the addition of ginger, coconut (reconstituted from dried) and some spices really impressed me.

Finally, an in-progress shot of the beetroot curry. I will admit it's not the best photo, but the colours are so pretty.