Pizza

I've got a new favourite pizza dough: it's the New York Style Pizza dough from Serious Eats. It's easy to whip up in the food processor, and can sit in the fridge for a few days until you need it. I think it tastes best after at least 2 days in the fridge.

Last night's pizzas were delicious: caramelized onion, mushroom, cashew cheese, tomato (pictured); lemon, cashew cheese, tofu mizozuke, rosemary, rocket; and pear, cashew cheese, tofu misozuke, walnuts, rocket.

Broad bean burgers

I had some leftover cooked-from-dry broad beans (fava beans), and remembered that there was a recipe for broad bean burgers in Ottolenghi's Plenty (also appears here). It turns out the recipe called for fresh beans, but the cooked dry beans worked really well. I also replaced the spinach in the recipe with a bunch of greens from the garden: rocket (arugula), fennel fronds, broad bean leaves, and nasturtium leaves. We ate the burgers with a 'coconut sour cream' with lemon and chives. (Inspired by a bunch of experiments with vegan nut cheeses, I made the sour cream by fermenting pureed young coconut flesh with rejuvelac.)

These were really good -- I made them again a couple of days later, which is saying something.

Corn on the cob

I got over my Western-Mass.-induced corn snobbery and bought a couple of ears at the market this week. I decided to go for the classic corn on the cob, and then I felt the need to go all southern for the rest of the meal: seitan ribz; kale cooked collards style, with smoked coconut flakes and magic shroom dust; broccoli, not really fitting into the theme; and biscuits. I based the BBQ sauce on the apricot one in Veganomicon, but used dried apricots and a few random smoked prunes in place of the fresh apricots, used less of the sugary ingredients, and added some vinegar.

100% sourdough bagels

Recipe from Wild Yeast.

Vegan poached egg

I used this recipe, and even though it kind of seemed like a silly thing to make, it ended up being tasty and fun to eat.

I added a little black salt to both the white and yolk mixtures. I also added a few drops of soy sauce and Maggi sauce for a little extra umami in the yolk. I was really pleasantly surprised by the airiness of the white.

Pizza patate

As I've said once or twice, I love the pizza patate at Sullivan Street Bakery. A few years ago, I read about a recipe for it on Smitten Kitchen. But there was a lot of uncertainty -- Deb concluded that there must've been an error in the recipe because the dough would've been way too wet. Reading around about pizza bianca, though, I decided that I wanted to try the original version of the recipe -- it really is supposed to be a very wet dough.

I think the main problem is that the recipe doesn't talk you through the parts that go against your normal baking instincts. The dough really is more of a batter. (After about 10 minutes in the stand mixer, it did sort of pull away from the sides, but when the mixer stopped it slumped right back again.) And the 30 minute baking time just seems much too long for a pizza, but it turned out to be just right.

I let the dough rise for 2 hours. The directions call for you to split the dough in two, and spread it on two baking sheets, but I just used one large baking sheet, so it was slightly thicker than intended. To spread the dough out, I had to rub my hands with oil because it was incredibly sticky.

Overall, this was very very close to that delicious pizza bianca from Sullivan Street. The crust was excellent, like a thin, chewy foccacia.

Secret ingredient

The first time I tried making a passionfruit-flavoured cake, it didn't work very well. I added the amount of passionfruit called for by the recipe, and the batter tasted of nothing. I added more and more, and yet the final cake did not taste of passionfruit at all. (I saved the cake, somewhat, by topping it with a passionfruit ganache that was excellent -- the chocolate-passionfruit combination is delightful.)

Anyway, cut to last week, when I bought some feijoas at the markets. To me, they smelled intensely of passionfruit. (Other people compare them to guava or pineapple.) They tasted okay, but mostly just made me want passionfruit instead. And luckily enough, this week at the markets I found passionfruit on sale.

So, I bring you passionfruit cupcakes (with secret ingredient, feijoa):

These worked out well. The passionfruit taste was definitely there. I topped them with some lemon 'cream cheese' icing which was a nice combination.

1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 feijoa, pureed with soymilk to make just over 1/2 cup total
4 large passionfruits
1 t vanilla extract
1 cup plus 2 T flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt

Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.