Croissants

These are sourdough croissants made with homemade vegan butter. They worked out pretty well (though they're nowhere near as impressive as their inspiration, txfarmer's gorgeous ones). They're much better than the last time I attempted vegan croissants.

The annoying thing about the recipe is that it asks for a 3 hour final rise at 26C. I couldn't see how to make that happen and still have them ready for breakfast, so I left them at cold room temperature (15 - 17C) for about 12 hours, and then put them near the oven as it preheated. They definitely rose a lot in that time, but they weren't (as the recipe puts it) 'soft and jiggly', so maybe they were slightly underproofed. 

The vegan butter behaved nicely for the encasement step, but I was a bit worried about the first turn after it had a rest in the fridge for an hour. I think the butter was too firm: it seemed to crumble as it folded. The final dough looked like pie dough, with specks of butter, which didn't seem quite right. I wonder if it would be better to let the dough rest at room temperature for 20 minutes between turns, as in Peter Reinhart's recipe.

100% sourdough bagels

Recipe from Wild Yeast.

Bagels

Oh I love me some boiled-then-baked breads. Last time it was soft pretzels, this time: bagels.

I used the recipe for Montreal-style bagels from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, with a few changes (no egg, 1/4 of the white flour replaced with whole wheat, less sugar/honey). Now, I LOVE Montreal bagels (from Fairmount Bagel, please) but I was sort of aiming for a NYC-Montreal hybrid here, to satisfy the Long Islander.

This recipe is great. You can have fresh bagels out of the oven less than an hour after you wake up! The secret is that you mix up the dough a day or so (even up to a week) earlier, let it rise for a couple of hours and then stash it in the fridge. When you want bagels, you take the dough out, form it into balls, let them rise for 20 minutes, shape them, boil them, and then bake for about 25 minutes.

Potassium

I've not had good hearing (or much at all) in one ear for more than a week. Doctor man gave me many several prescriptions... Basically, it's a nerve. Not helped by prescriptions. What can be helped is an immune boost, and support for depleted adrenals (they handle stress, and the tooth-grinding - stress - doesn't help with the nerve). Foods high in potassium are adrenal/kidney-friendly, and raisins are near the top of the list. So breakfast (usually whole groat oats in the rice cooker) involved raisins this morning.
"What?" "Jason is mourning?" "Why?" "And who's Jason?"

Pumpkin cinnamon rolls

I know I promised green vegetables in my next post, but I figured that the pumpkin-deprived NOLA-ites deserved some pumpkin foodporn: pumpkin cinnamon rolls (recipe from the zine Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk).

My copy of the zine is currently on a ship bound for Singapore, so luckily the author has posted the recipe online. (I made half the recipe, and used half whole wheat flour, and added some pecans to the filling. Yum! I like how the filling worked out -- the recipe has you add some flour to the usual mixture of sugar, cinnamon and butter and I think it really helped to keep the filling from oozing out too much.)

At least the NOLA-ites have access to canned pumpkin. No such luck for the Aussie contingent.

Migas

For ages now I've been wondering how to veganize Tex-Mex style migas. This was a pretty good first attempt, I think. I was inspired by the recipe for Scrambled Tortillas in Vegan Brunch, which uses pureed soft tofu, but instead I blended up a box of (firm) silken tofu with about 6 T of chickpea flour (maybe a little bit more?), about 1/2 a cup of water, some nutritional yeast, black salt, turmeric, cumin, salt and pepper. I sauteed onion, jalapeno, peppers and 5 corn tortillas (cut into small strips), and then poured in the tofu mixture. I cooked it over med-high heat, stirring often and scraping up the cooked bits. At the last minute, I grated on some cheese. We ate this with a spicy tomato sauce (not pictured) based on the one in the Vegan Brunch recipe.

I was worried that the mixture would never cook through and firm up, but it did eventually. The texture was very much like the scrambled chickpea flour recipes I've tried from 660 Curries, but a bit softer.

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.

Hawks and Flutes and Hipsters in Chucks

That's right.  It's the monthly vegan potluck.  I overheard some seriously bizarre conversations, but under the big sky of BRUNCH, I also ate some fantastic scramble.  Ecchem.  (Honesty enters.)  Scrambles.

I made quesadillas stuffed with scramble and a tofu cheez sauce.  I wanted them to stay dry-ish, so I didn't stuff them with black beans.  I brought  them in a pot on the side.   No sense of color here in the photo OR in person.  (Says she with a big bag of parsley in her fridge.)  

Next month: Green foods.  PS: I learned that cashews have been used to treat depression (high levels of niacin.)  AND Nola has a new restaurant, "Bamboo," which takes its name AND its menu from the NYC establishment, Red Bamboo.  The South rises again.  

Baked doughnuts

There's no mistaking these for real fried doughnuts, but they hit the spot. Maybe I'm just a sucker for the cinnamon sugar. The recipe is from 101 Cookbooks. I made some adjustments (half AP, half whole wheat flour -- this was a weekday breakfast after all, we need some whole grains in there -- and no egg) and it worked just fine.

I made the dough last night, cut out the doughnuts and left them in the fridge overnight. This morning they warmed up for an hour while I walked the dog, then were baked for 8 minutes, brushed with some melted EB, and rolled in cinnamon sugar. And then they were gobbled up.

Breakfast of Champions

I've been advised to start all my workouts with "a shot".

It's tri-berry.  ...At least it offers 100% of daily Vitamin C.

(Sigh.)  And it works.