Where's the Air?

This is a(nother) terrible picture.  But what you CAN see is that I'm no closer to baking a quick bread (this one with beets, carrots, and zucchini, sweetened with maple) that actually rises.  It has two eggs (binders, not leavening agents, apparently)... powder and soda.  I think I went a bit *heavy* on the veg.  Man.

660 Praises!

I had to make some substitutions... like, for starters, a sweet potato... and then some tomato paste instead of tamarind?  Parsley instead of cilantro?  Yeah, well, it was GREAT.  Leftovers for lunch today with a cabbage salad (and still some left).  Ohhh, when oh when will my copy arrive?

Roasted Shallots

I peeled and roasted my share of the shallots (and second that -- not a happy task)...  Still have half of them left.  And a pizza dough in the freezer.  Mmmm???  I think they'd be good with wilted spinach and olives and the rest of my roasted tomatoes...  Or... 

Hadley Gold

While I was in Noho, somebody told me he was out of town and looking at a menu... $12 appetizer: fresh asparagus.  From Hadley (where he'd travelled all the way from, to see this appetizer).  I'm hoarding mine... still have a few stalks left.  Here it is with some cabbage dal and a simple tomato salad (yes, we're in tomato season).  

With Apologies to All

 I made my first fish stew.  It was delicious.  A friend was leaving town and left me a packet of white fish from the farmer's market and "shrimp," which turned out to be frozen bananas... and I loosely followed a recipe from a magazine she left behind as well.  Leeks, a few small red potatoes diced, 2 carrots thinly sliced, some tomatoes I'd roasted earlier in the day, a vegetable bouillon cube... and the kicker?  Some vegan mayo (I know, gross...) mixed with smoked paprika.  I tossed in some corn while the fish was cooking at the last moment, and had boiled the mixture with the cobs.  Truly tasty.  

Shallots

More great ingredients thanks to sp: shallots!

Here you see caramelized shallots based on these ones from smitten kitchen. We ate them with sauteed kale, spinach and sausage, with garlic toast and asparagus on the side.


Note: I have found my most hated kitchen task... peeling shallots. As delicious as this recipe was, I don't think I'll be trying it again unless I find jumbo ones.

Okra love

The lovely sp brought us okra all the way from NOLA, and we couldn't wait to dig in. Here you see Pan-Fried Okra with an Onion-Tamarind Sauce, Jyoti brand Delhi Saag (spinach and mustard greens, from a can), and Five-Spiced Whole Pigeon Peas (Sabud toovar with panch phoron).
The okra and pigeon pea curries are of course from my obsession, 660 Curries. Both were delicious, and pretty quick (under 30 minutes, because I used canned pigeon peas). The pigeon pea curry was the first time I've put my jar of panch phoron to good use, and now I'm a believer. The Delhi Saag was pretty good, considering it was from a can. (I don't know if I'd pay full price for it, but if I find it on sale again, I wouldn't mind having some on hand.)

Plus, here's some news for the 660-curries-obsessed: there's a blog.

Retro dinner

This dinner was very meat-n-potatoes: smothered tofu (with onions and a worcestershire-based gravy, based on this recipe), broccoli, and mashed potatoes. I liked how the mashed potatoes worked out -- they were flavoured with soy yogurt (homemade, and a bit too thin for eating but great for cooking) and chives (a new addition to my tiny herb garden).

Flop

Yeah.  Underbaked. But the real problem was that it was gross.  "It" was supposed to be a carrot cake that was a little more like banana bread than "cake".  From 101 Cookbooks.  But as I was mixing, I was thinking, "was this bag w/w pastry flour, or was it vital wheat gluten?"  Not a good question to be asking (and sniffing! I was sniffing it!).  Although I think I used the right flour, I overmixed.  Ok.  A lot of wrong things happened.  I'm (almost) over it.  I just really.messed.this.one.up.  

Flat cookies

1c spelt, some molasses, oil, and brown sugar... these were almost good in lots of ways.  I found the recipe while blog-hopping and it promised the best vegan chocolate chip cookies ever... I had to make them.  But I think I'm also realizing that the more I cook with maple, the more brown sugar tastes over-sweet to me.  Probably a good thing, right? 

Is this getting boring?

From 660 Curries. Again.

Here you see Chana Masala (made with black chickpeas this time, so I guess it should actually be called Kala Chana Masala), garlic naan, and Chopped Spinach with Dried Lentil Wafers (that's right, papadums).


The spinach and papadum curry was wonderful. The spinach is wilted in water that's full of spices, and then you throw in broken pieces of uncooked papadums and simmer a few minutes longer. The bits of papadum end up quite soft, and they flavour the curry really nicely.

Great Minds...

This is what I did with my almond-tofu cheese this weekend!  Seriously: I made it before I ever checked the blog.  

My contribution to the vegan potluck.  I followed (well, as much as one can follow with a fridge full of farmer's market veg) the recipe for Isa's "Green Goddess" pizza.  Basically a tub of tofu, parsley, basil (I didn't have much), 1c almonds, leeks, a zucchini, three big fists of green beans, garlic, lemon... 

The orbs on top are roasted garlic hunks.  Not so clean with the presentation.  Or the picture, now that I see it...

Spinach and tofu lasagna

I didn't mean to make lasagna.

Last week, I made this recipe for almond feta. I wasn't impressed with it; at first, I thought it tasted good, but then I realized that it didn't taste like good cheese, it tasted like good hummus. I don't understand why fake cheese recipes so often use lemon and garlic as flavourings.

Most of the almond feta went into the freezer, to wait for me to figure out what to do with it. But I put about 1/3 of it in the food processor with about a pound of wilted spinach, to make ravioli filling. So far so good, except when I went to make the ravioli, my pasta dough was too fragile and kept tearing.

So lasagna it was. The layers included a very basic tomato sauce, tofu 'ricotta', mushrooms and the spinach mixture. On top I grated the last of our mozzarella teese. I didn't precook the fresh pasta, I just made sure all the sauces were quite wet, and baked it covered at 350 for 30 minutes, and then uncovered for 25. I usually use dry lasagna noodles, but using fresh ones allowed me to use this cute technique: you make the bottom layer of noodles hang up over the edge of the pan, and then fold them up over the top for the final layer.

When the vegan's away

A couple of days ago I was reading Michael Ruhlman's new book Ratio, and I got intrigued by the idea of making some choux pastry. Eggs are a crucial ingredient*, so I took the chance while my favourite vegan was away to give it a try. I made gougeres, based on this recipe.

The batter for these was very strange. At first it looked all curdled, and I thought I'd messed it up, but as I kept beating it suddenly looked right.

For egg and cheese eaters who like surprises (they go into the oven as blobs of dough, and come out as airy puffs!), I can't recommend these enough. They're fun. (Also, a certain dog of my acquaintance let it be known that he would do anything for a taste, so if you have any dogs to impress, you know what to make.)
*Though I should point out that Emilie of The Conscious Kitchen has made some valiant efforts at veganizing it. Maybe I'll give it a shot one day.

Shopping in Hadley

Usually I pick up vegetables for the week from the small grocery store down the street. But this week I was passing by my favourite Asian food store in the next town over, so I bought the weekly groceries there. Okra! Gai lan! Oyster mushrooms! Black chickpeas! (And a whole bunch of other stuff!)

This dinner used some of my haul. On the left, Cashew and Coriander Stuffed Okra. On the right, Black Chickpea Stew (with coconut, chile, coriander and tomato). (Both from 660 Curries.) And in front, premade roti. The okra was great (but then we in this household can't get enough of okra in any form). As for the black chickpeas, well it turns out they're quite like regular chickpeas except their taste is maybe a little bit nuttier, and they take much longer to cook (45 minutes in the pressure cooker).
I was amused to see the Pillsbury doughboy shilling roti.

Candle Cafe

We're in stinging caterpillar season down here, which also means that we're approaching the worst of flying cockroach season.  But right now, in this lucky little window, we have swarms of flying termites.  Just flick on your lights, and you'll get about a thousand of them.  (In your food, on your body, flying about like insane horrible creatures.)

I closed the doors (the breeze!), turned off the light, and ate my omelette (leek and sundried tomato with a sliver of goat cheese) with an english muffin in the company of a candle last night.   No real-time picture.  No extensive reading up on the newest bug.  Just dinner, expletives, and sleep.  

Graduation Dinner

When a friend graduated from chef school in NYC, I went down for his final dinner.  He served these crackers (in large triangles) with a cherry tomato salad to start.  Super food.  I made these this past weekend when I was trying to figure out how to stretch my last few weekend dollars and had a big bag of sunflower seeds for $1.99.  Toast 'em up!  Grind 'em up!  Mix 'em with oats and maple, oil, oregano, thyme, and a bit of w/w pastry flour.  They taste like Scottish oat cakes.

Leftover fun with chickpeas

The hummus here (the square blob, lower left) was a rescue from my sister-in-law.  She was in her car, I was in the kitchen, and I told her I had a runny mess of a hummus attempt in the fridge, evaporating.  She said "chickpea flour," and I was on a rescue mission.  Not bad.  Not bad.  This batch I made without any oil or tahini, so it tastes like I went camping and made it, but whatever.  Next time I'll use the good stuff.

Tagine!

This blurry mess is the Moroccan Tagine (Spring vegetables) in Vegan with a Vengeance.  I didn't have cinnamon sticks, so I put a few anise pods in there, along with turmeric, raisins, red pepper flakes, coriander, cumin... I love this dish.

Eggplant parm

Eggplant parmesan, ala What the hell does a vegan eat anyway?, with cheese and leftover pasta sauce.

Look quickly -- Quickly! Then turn away!

I had to look away while someone else emptied my cake pans... a birthday cake for a colleague, and another crumbly mess.  Is it the humidity here?  Why is it I can't turn out a decent cake, even with parchment paper?  My flour should have had enough gluten in it... is there just so much bayou in the air I need to add less liquid to my baking mixes?  Ughhh.  This is the SmittenKitchen chocolate layer cake.  It's great.  It's just the non-vegan version of the cake I made a few months back.  I need to find another one... maybe the Veganomicon recipe I've had a few times with cream filling?  

Drat. Another failed reading quiz.

So I have a houseguest for a few days, and I decide to make smoothies and muffins for breakfast.  Whaaat?  No oatmeal-in-rice-cooker?  I know.  I know.  A break in the routine, if you can imagine.

So I'm substituting away, feeling pretty clever making carrot-walnut muffins (local carrots!) out of Molly Katzen's low-fat banana muffin recipe.  Extra leavening, some salt... but darnit, I added oats rather than making oat flour.  My houseguest was sleeping, so probably a good thing I didn't grind oats, but I hated to screw up something I thought was going so well.  Muffins were good, but a bit dry.  More raisins next time!

Julie Andrews, hold onto your hat!

My favorite things these days are cabbage salad with miso dressing, and roasted kale ("chips"). Yum. Yum. Yum. And now that I'm reading _One Bite at a Time_, Rebecca Katz's wonderful cookbook with anti-cancer recipes, I know that this is a meal packed with goodness.

Best part of the cabbage salad, though, is the sidecar container of toasted seeds and nuts I bring with it for lunch. Tofu chunks, sweet potatoes, carrot chunks, onions, wild rice, maybe even celery, pea pods... all great additions.