Catchup

Good things I ate (or drank) in the second half of 2014:

From Vedge, Broccoli Rabe Philly Style (seriously bitter homegrown broccoli rabe [which I cut with gai lan to tone it down a bit], roasted red capsicum, porcini mayo)

 Pizza and roasted cauliflower at Pizza Domenica in New Orleans:

 Birthday/journal acceptance cake (Chocolate/root beer):

Asparagus pizza:

Enchiladas Especiales Tacuba style (wish I'd had poblanos; made do with green chillies and used rehydrated yuba sticks as chicken, and cashew cheese)

Pasta with a pureed caramelized onion / nutritional yeast sauce and cubed smoked tofu:

Pumpkin and pecan pie(s):

Home brewed saison:

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving at the new house:

Clockwise from the top: maple glazed brussels sprouts, mashed potato, vegie roast, pumpkin,  stuffing with mushrooms and pecans. The vegie roast was pretty good, and made for nice sandwiches the next day. (R commented that it was probably the best fake turkey he'd ever had -- surprising, since I think the manufacturers were aiming for roast lamb.)

 

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.

No surprise

Porcini stock cubes obviously lead to mushroom risotto. This one involved a tiny amount of chanterelles, a lot of cheap white mushrooms plus the stock cubes -- lots of mushroomy goodness.

(I promise that the next photo I post will involve a green vegetable -- enough with the orange and brown!)

Boring but good

Here you see veggie 'meatloaf', roasted butternut, mashed cauliflower and mushroom gravy. Luckily the plates in this kitchen are colourful, because otherwise this was just a plateful of orange and brown.

 

The loaf is an Adventist style dinner loaf made with beans and rice (unfortunately the magical loaf studio seems to be down at the moment, but you can find the basics of the recipe there). This was my first attempt at mashed cauliflower and it was pretty good, but I think a stick blender might do a better job at making a creamy puree. The potato masher left it a bit chunky.

I'm really missing my electrical kitchen gadgets. There's no blender here, or food processor, or hand mixer, or anything like that. I hadn't realized how often I used those things. Needless to say I was very pleased to find the potato masher buried in a drawer.

Knifeworthy

This was a meal worth buying a knife for.

Today I had a craving for butternut pumpkin. I bought one, and then realized that there was no way in hell that I could cut that thing with the blunt knife in the kitchen here. Hence, new knife.

Here you see roasted fennel and butternut, and pasta with a simple bechamel (or mornay, I guess) of roux, soymilk, water, nutritional yeast, fake parmesan, salt and pepper. (Clearly I am still a fan of the fennel + butternut + bechamel combination.)

Fennel and butternut lasagna

Making lasagna is not usually something I do without quite a bit of forethought. But this one came together on the fly, used up leftovers, and was terrific. The basic idea was like that of this butternut lasagna (though unfortunately my rosemary plant has since died, so no wonderful rosemary bechamel this time).

The layers were caramelized fennel, butternut, and leftover lentil loaf. (In the interest of time, I steamed and then sauteed the butternut rather than roasting. It worked out fine.) Caramelized fennel and butternut is a very nice combination.

I just noticed that this photo and the previous post's one have the same colour palette. Note to self: make some more red food, will you? This brown+cream+orange+green thing is getting old.

Pumpkin tortilla soup

I finally got around to making the soup I mentioned in my very first post: pumpkin tortilla soup. I used dried ancho peppers plus a little bit of chipotle, and I added some chickpeas too. It was good. For some reason I'm always surprised by how well pumpkin and tomato go together. (Which reminds me, I must make the Fire Roasted Tomato, Butternut, Curry Coconut soup from B36 Kitchen again. It's delicious.)

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.

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!

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.

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.