In Recovery

After all the baking I've been doing, when it came time to cook for this week, I wanted to make something fast and easy, to give myself time to recover. Healthy would be good too, but it wasn't a priority. I just wanted to get out of the kitchen before midnight, after the Mother's Day festivities (dinner and a movie - Iron Man. The whole family loved it, even my grandmother, who went in saying "I don't like that nonsense."). Chickpea Broccoli Casserole from Vegan With a Vengeance to the rescue.



If you have a food processor, the active prep time for this casserole is probably about ten minutes. But if you have one of these, don't use the slicing blade to slice the chives. You may have better luck with the S-blade, but I don't know. With the slicing blade, I ended up with really long, thin chives. And I left them that way. It's all good.

The hardest part of this was mashing all the chickpeas because I didn't use a large enough bowl. That's it. There isn't even a fancy spice blend (though I'm sure you could add it, if you wanted to). Just olive oil, vegetable broth and salt. I didn't even have to mince any garlic!

This is probably the healthiest tasting dish I've made from one of Isa's books. It tastes very good, but it sort of tastes like how you'd expect vegan food to taste, which is not what I expect from an Isa recipe. That said, with all the crap I've been eating lately, "health food" was a welcome change.

It's not the prettiest or fanciest of dishes, but it's filling (and healthy and easy) and that's good enough for me.

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy belated Mother's Day to all the mothers reading this. And all the wannabe mothers. And all the people who have mothers. And everyone who likes mothers. Basically, I hope everyone had a nice Sunday.

My mother's birthday was also this weekend. As I mentioned in my birthday post, she loved my birthday cake (a little too much), so I made Blackout the Forest Cupcakes for her and my grandmother for Mother's Day/her birthday.

(Note: the post behind the cut is pretty image heavy; I was finally able to take some photos in daylight and may have gotten a little carried away.)



I started out with the same recipes I used for the cake, Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance, halving them and substituting cherries for raspberries. This yielded ten cupcakes. One could probably get eleven out of it, but I tend to overfill.

The cross-hatching on some of the cupcakes is neither functional nor decorative. I just dropped them upside down on the cooling rack.



Next, I cut a cone out of the center of each cupcake, trying to keep the removed part as tidy as possible, so it could be replaced neatly:



Then I filled the hole partway with the cherry layer:



Topped that with ganache:



Topped that with the bits of the cupcakes I'd cut out earlier (trimmed down for a neater fit - and so I had something to snack on):



Then the cupcakes went in the fridge until the ganache hardened and I could be pretty certain nothing would fall off when I turned the cupcakes upside down. Once they were cooled, I covered them with cherry preserves. I covered the full size cake with more of the cherry layer I made, but I didn't think the cupcakes would be able to accommodate the lumpiness of the cherries and still look nice:



I dipped each cupcake in the still warm ganache:



Then the cupcakes went back in the fridge, joined by the ganache, so it could harden. When it was firm, I used the icing to pipe ganache-y os on the cupcakes:



That was topped with chocolate covered cherries, and when I ran out of cherries, a truffle made from leftover ganache:



The money shot:




Loads of extra pictures:

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yesterday was my birthday, and in honor of that most auspicious of occasions, I baked a cake and brought it to work for my office birthday party on Thursday. I call it Blackout the Forest Cake because it's sort of like a cross between blackout cake and black forest cake. To make it, I adapted parts of Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance.



I started out making the Raspberry Blackout Cake, substituting cherry preserves for raspberry:



Instead of topping it with more cherry preserves, I made the raspberry layer from the Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars, substituting frozen cherries for raspberries:



All that was topped with ganache:



Then another cake and more cherries. When I moved the second cake from the cooling rack to the cake, it ripped about halfway down and I nearly shit my pants. Thankfully, all the toppings covered it up quite nicely and no one could tell:



Then, the whole thing was frosted with ganache and refrigerated along with the remaining topping to firm it up to a spreadable and pipeable consistency:



I also dipped some fresh cherries in the ganache for decoration. I kept the stems on because I thought they kind of looked like birthday candles, and because it made them easier to dip. To get a good layer of chocolate on them, I dipped them, refrigerated them, dipped them again and put them back in the fridge until it was time to use them:



I'm not so great at frosting cakes yet, so I wasn't able to completely hide the seam between the cakes when I poured on the ganache. I managed to cover the seam with the refrigerated ganache, but it didn't come out as smooth as I'd hoped. I guess I just need practice (the top isn't so smooth either, but that's to be expected with the cherry chunks on it).

The next thing I did was pipe chocolate circles onto the cake wherever I wanted to place the fresh cherries. I think of them as "Ganache-y Os":



Then I pressed the chocolate covered cherries into the ganache-y os:



I probably should have done the cake assembly and decoration on the base of my cake carrier, but I didn't because I'm not so smart. I also made the even less smart move of covering my carrier with parchment paper, so that when I piped around the base of the cake, I wouldn't be doing it directly onto the carrier. Moving the cake from the cutting board to the carrier was a nightmare. I really thought I was going to wreck the whole thing. The sides ripped significantly, but I was able to hide it with icing. Then I piped a border on the top and bottom of the cake:



Thanks to the stupid parchment, the cake slid around the carrier throughout my commute (bus, train and 20-minute walk) and I thought it would certainly be ruined by the time I got to work. As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, it didn't turn out too bad; the trim is just a little flat. Here's a shot of the inside:



The cake went over very well, with two people having seconds and one attempting to steal one of the pieces saved for absentees.

Since I'd never made a cake like this before, I did half a test cake last weekend by baking one cake, cutting it in half and layering the two halves instead of layering two cakes:



Here's a shot of the cherry and chocolate layers:



My family loved the testcake so much I knew it'd be good enough for my coworkers. Actually, my mother loved it a little too much: my father had to make her back away from the table and when no one was looking, she rushed the cake and took a second piece (part of a piece I was saving for a friend). She's been talking about the cake all week, so I'm in the process of turning it into cupcakes for Mother's Day (literally in the process; I'm typing this while the ganache is cooling in the fridge). If the cupcakes turn out half as well as the cake did, it will be a happy Mother's Day indeed.

Dont Fear the Seitan

So I was all psyched up to make Julie Hasson's famous sausages this weekend when my friend said she'd gotten BBQ seitan at a restaurant. Follower that I am, I wanted BBQ seitan too, so I made the BBQ Seitan and Crispy Coleslaw Sandwich from Veganomicon. Isa and Terry say the sandwich is based on one they had at 'Snice and few things can recommend a recipe to me more strongly than a comparison to 'Snice, so I was sold. I made Simple Seitan, Backyard BBQ Sauce and Home-Style Potato Rolls (all from VCON), put it all together with some coleslaw (included in sandwich recipe) and a bit of Vegannaise and died and went to heaven.

I know a lot of people are wary of making seitan. After The Lambs' Brains Debacle of '08, I understand why (thanks to Trina for that visual). But this was my second time making the Simple Seitan, and it's wonderful yet again. Clearly, it wasn't beginner's luck. This is just a fool proof way to make seitan. And to prove seitan making isn't scary or difficult (just time consuming), I'm going to take you through it with pictures (I think I did this last time, too, but I definitely took more pictures this time). In case you're not interested in all that, here's what my mouth is going to see as soon as this is posted:



The beginning of making seitan isn't much different from baking. Mix your dry ingredients (in this case, vital wheat gluten and nutritional yeast):



Mix your wet ingredients (oil, garlic, soy sauce and some other stuff):



Combine your wet and dry. Mix it up, knead it for a while and cut it in thirds:



Throw it in a pot with some broth, bring it to a boil, simmer for a while, drain:



Tada! Your seitan is done and ready to be used in the recipe of your choice. It was my choice to slice it up:



And grill it in a grill pan brushed with peanut oil:



I think grill marks are sexy:



I tossed the grilled seitan in the Backyard BBQ Sauce and re-grilled:



Hot grill lines:



Don't forget to make your coleslaw:



Then, slice a roll in half, give it a little shmear of Vegannaise, a drizzle of BBQ sauce if you have bigger balls than me (the Backyard BBQ Sauce is too spicy for me plain, but it's perfect in the sandwich), pile on your coleslaw, top that with seitan, squish down the top bun and have the best lunch ever. It's one of the many recipes I've found in Veganomicon that leave me thinking "I can't believe this came out of my kitchen!"

This is How I Roll

I figure if I keep using that joke, someone is bound to find it funny, sooner or later.

Right?

Whatever. Even if you don't share my sense of humor, I bet you want to share my Veganomicon Home-Style Potato Rolls.



I was really nervous about making these because they were my first time working with yeast. I thought something would go wrong for sure and I'd end up with flat, hard non-rolls. And if that was the case, I wouldn't be able to make sandwiches and I'd just have to go hungry all week. Or something.

Luckily, everything went well and I now have two dozen tasty potato rolls (well, probably 20ish, by now). I didn't think the cupcake shape would be conducive to sandwich making, but didn't know if the rolls would come out OK if I just put them on a baking sheet, so I did half in the pan like the instructions said and half straight on a sheet. I also braided three to see if I could make challah rolls out of them. That didn't go over so well, but the cupcaked and flat rolls are both great.

The recipe is very easy to follow, but I had to use way more flour than indicated to get the dough to stop sticking to my hands and dough mat. And these aren't like the Vegan With a Vengeance biscuits that you can make really quick, if you're feeling sort of bready. The dough needs to sit two hours before being formed into rolls, then another 30ish minutes in the cupcake pans, then they bake for 30ish minutes. That's not including the time you spend actually working on them. They're well worth the time spent, though (and you can go out and do whatever you want while they're sitting around rising; it's not like you have to watch them the whole time).

Before they hit the oven:



The cupcaked rolls, minus a "tester":



All the rolls. The semi-failed attempts at challah are at the top:

Truffle Shuffle

Here's that truffle post I mentioned earlier.

I'm sure it's not surprising that I love junk food. I love cake and chocolate and chocolate cake. Sometimes, it doesn't even have to be that great. Like Passover. The cake mixes are...edible, but definitely not great. They're far better than any cake you can buy pre-made in stores, though. Those taste like cardboard topped with sawdust. And in my opinion, making Passover cakes from scratch requires too much effort and thought to be worth it, so mixes it is.

The obvious problem with mixes is that they all need eggs. My mother tried substituting apple sauce for eggs in one cake and it came out...like crap. It was way too sweet and was softer than fudge in consistency. I was the only one that ate it and I only ate it so it wouldn't go to waste (and because it kinda sorta tasted like chocolate. Almost).

I needed a fix, so I made truffles from the Conscious Kitchen's recipe and uploaded pictures of them to my Flickr. One of my coworkers saw them, thought they looked great, and asked me to make a batch for her to take to a family Passover dinner. I would have totally done it for free, but she offered to pay me and I had to pay my taxes last month, so we made a deal. My first sale! I was so proud that I'm sure I was really annoying to talk to for at least a day.



Make sure you check out the pictures on Conscious Kitchen, but do yourself a favor and have a drool rag handy. Don't say I didn't warn you!

I didn't make nearly as many variations as they did because I was limited by what I had in the house for Passover, but I don't think anyone got bored of mine either. For liquid, I used a splash of vanilla extract, mixed with coconut milk to make 1/2 cup total. When I made them for my family, I used cocoa powder, chopped cashews, almonds and craisins and ground walnuts as toppings. For the batch I sold, I used them as fillings as well.

My work station for the second batch:



Toppings, clockwise from the top left, I'm rolling in chopped almonds, cashews ground walnuts, cocoa powder and chopped craisins. I didn't have a food processor so all chopping was done by hand. Ew:



The truffles are incredibly easy to make. Just melt your chocolate in your heated liquid. Pour the whole mess into pan and refrigerate it until it solidifies (which took hours in the small pan I used. If you have room in your fridge, use something large and increase your surface area to cool your chocolate faster). Scoop out the chocolate a bit at a time, roll it into balls, roll the balls in your toppings. Voila! Truffles.

That said, it may take a bit of trial and error to get your aesthetic right. For example, when I tried to top the truffles with chopped craisins, no matter what I did, I ended up with loads of craisins sticking to each other, leaving bald spots in some areas and piles of fruit in others. I thought maybe rolling the truffle in cocoa powder before chopped craisin would help, but then they barely stuck at all. The next try was powder after craisin. That did keep the chocolate off the eater's fingers, but looked like crap, as you can see toward the rear of this picture:



I remedied this in the batch I sold by filling the truffles with craisin instead (I just wrapped the chocolate around a few craisins before rolling it into the ball shape - this also worked with nuts), putting one small piece of craisin on the outside to identify it and rolling the rest in cocoa powder:



Yeah, it sort of looks like a boob. And I don't have the coordination to keep the cocoa powder off the craisin bit completely, but it's still an improvement. These were the ones that went over best. There was almost a fight over them in my office. I'm not even lying.

When my brother first saw this on the kitchen table, he thought they were Dunkin' Donuts Munchkins. Somehow, he completely forgot it was Passover, I'm vegan and Dunkin' Donuts would never put real, unprocessed nuts on anything.



I love this picture. It looks like I'm building a truffle army, but the recipe actually makes about 24 pieces:



Truffles, ready for delivery to my first customer:



I'm definitely going to make these again (I say that about everything, don't I? But I mean it this time because I have a plan!). I want to try using Frangelico as the liquid, and maybe some coffee liquor (separately). I think it'd be a nice touch to roll them in red and green sprinkles and pack them into pretty boxes during the holidays. Mini cupcake cups might be the perfect size to hold them and make them look fancy and professional.

Passover, Post the Fifth

It's over! Someone pass me a bagel because Passover is officially over. Let's talk about what I ate for the last two days.



Pictured above is the Broccoli-Potato Soup with Fresh Herbs from Veganomicon. What a nice soup. Someone used the last of my dill, so I used a tablespoon or two of rosemary instead and I couldn't find dried tarragon, so I used fresh, but it was still very nice. The herbs are added at the end, so you can still taste each individual flavor instead of just having a mass of taste. Nice.

I also steamed up some asparagus with some garlic and lemon in the water, then threw it in the oven with some olive oil, salt and minced garlic. As usual, that was inhaled by my family in less than no time. I learned a valuable lesson from this holiday: to get my family to eat vegetables, all I need to do is add oil, garlic and heat. Spiffy.

For lunch today, I heated up some of the leaves left over from my artichoke hearts and made a dipping sauce for them from a bit of softened margarine, one clove minced garlic, the juice of one-quarter lemon and a bit of salt. It was my family's first time eating artichoke leaves and they seemed to like it enough (though it didn't drive them wild or anything).

Remember those Brussels sprouts I thought I'd be able to eat with dinner, just not in large quantities? I was wrong. They were SO bitter that I was only able to eat about two halves, then had to stop. Even with mashed potatoes (which make the whole world better) and the portobello mushrooms from Yellow Rose Recipes. What the hell? I have no idea how that happened and don't even know if it's possible to salvage the things. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thus concludes our five-part series on my first vegan Passover. Thank you and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Passover, Post the Fourth

What the hell does a vegan put on matzo? If you're me, everything.

Cream cheese was always my go-to matzo spread, but that's no longer an option. Peanut butter is out, so I tried almond butter this year but didn't really care for it (I don't like peanut butter either). Jelly made it a little better (less sticky), but I still didn't like it much, so I thought it'd be best to make my own spread and decided on the Roasted Garlic Artichoke Spread with Fresh Oregano from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. Here's a picture of it on it's way into my belly:



As written, the dish should take about an hour to make and should yield great, garlicky, artichokey goodness. But I couldn't find canned artichoke hearts that were kosher for Passover (and didn't even know they can be bought frozen), so I bought ten fresh artichokes and had to prep them before making the spread.

I used this page as a guideline to prepping my artichokes, putting about half a lemon, two crushed garlic cloves and a few shakes of dried parsley in the steamer water. I was using a relatively shallow pot, so the lid was slightly ajar, filling the whole house with the fragrance of the steam. I think I should keep a pot of that on the stove at all times. Seriously. It's such a great aroma.

After they steamed for 35 minutes, I pulled off all the leaves (it didn't occur to me until I was writing this to stick them in cold water before doing that, so it was slow going since I kept dropping the hot artichokes back into the bowl), set them aside to eat tomorrow, chopped up the hearts and made the spread.



Delicious? Indubitably. Spread? Not so much. It'd make a great pizza topping (there's something very pizza-esque about the taste; I think it's the dried oregano), but doesn't really stick to things like matzo, and I wanted a spread, dammit, so I broke out the potato masher and smashed the crap out of the artichoke pieces. Viola! Instead spread.

The next day, I broke out my copy of Vegan With a Vengeance and made the Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Toasted Garlic, which was super easy and fast to make, even when I left the sprouts in the oven a longer than suggested because I like everything super well done. I thought they'd get brown, but they didn't. Weird.



They taste good, but slightly bitter and horseradishy. Maybe that's because they'd been sitting in my fridge for a while, or I just didn't cook them long enough. I'll be reheating them in the oven before I eat them next, so they'll get a bit more cook time (and brownness) that way. As they are, I don't think I'd eat a bowl full of them alone (unlike the Cornmeal-Masala Roasted Brussels Sprouts from Veganomicon), but they'll be great with dinner tonight. They're also great on matzo, over the Roasted Garlic Artichoke Spread.



It's quite possible that this may be my last Passover post (four posts for eight days - not bad), but I'm not sure yet, so I'll leave you with the suspense of not knowing. Ha!

Passover, Post the Third

I decided not to spend all day in the kitchen Monday. Instead, I went for a twelve mile walk (I had no idea where I was going and ended up walking an enormous figure eight), then came home and made the Beginner's Curry from More Than Twigs and Berries. So. Good.



As I mentioned in one of my other posts, I couldn't find kosher for Passover curry powder, so I made my own. This recipe calls for chili powder too, and I couldn't get that either, so it was back to the mortar and pestle. I used the blend in post #9 as a template, but I had to omit the cumin because I can't eat it on Passover. And I somehow managed to use my red pepper flakes instead of cayenne pepper. Superfail! There were red pepper flakes in the curry and chili powders, making the curry very spicy (to me, but I'm a giant pansy).

I love curry and was hoping to make some to share with my family over the holiday (they don't eat much "ethnic" food), but all the recipes I had required beans or lentils or something. Then I checked MTTB, and viola! Bean-free curry! It's fast to make, doesn't require loads of chopping, and is crazy good, even with my bizarro spice blend. I've eaten it four days in a row and I'm not sick of it yet. Just sad I'm almost out.

It's too spicy for me to eat alone, so I'm always sure to have matzo nearby when I'm eating it. The recipe says to eat it over rice, and it'd be great over quinoa (rice is a no-no this week), but my Green-Wa is also spicy and I don't want to make more until I finish what I already have. Putting the curry on the matzo and eating it sort of like a hard, open-faced sandwich is really good too.

More Passover to come!

Passover, Post the Second

After I finished making everything I did on Friday, I pretty much fell into a coma and didn't wake up until around 6 PM Saturday and did nothing but eat and read for the rest of the day. Awesome. I got myself all rested up for the cookfest that was Sunday.



The first thing I realized was that I hadn't done anything with all those portobello mushrooms from Thursday night/Friday morning; they were still marinating. I grabbed them from the fridge, and at first I thought they'd frozen because the contents of the container was one solid block. Then I thought they went bad. Turned out the oil I used had solidified in the fridge. Whew! I stirred it all up a bit and it all broke up and was fine. Not realizing the Yellow Rose Recipes recipe makes way more marinade than the Veganomicon one does, I followed the Veganomicon instructions for roasting portobello mushrooms, doubling the cook time because the oven was set to 250 F and I couldn't change it. About halfway through, I realized I was being dumb and that the mushrooms would never really roast while sitting in the soup they were in. Maybe they'd boil, but not roast. So I ladled out about half the marinade, which improved things.

The texture of the mushrooms came out very good, but the taste was a little weird. Kind of sour. I love sour food, so that's fine. My parents tried them and decided to leave it all for me, though.

Next, I made the Broccoli Vinaigrette from The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook. Here's the weird thing about this vinaigrette: there's no vinegar in it. There is, however, plenty of garlic and a huge portion of awesome. This is another one of those did-I-really-need-a-cookbook-to-tell-me-that sort of recipes. Super easy, yet, because it's me, full of fail. I didn't have a steamer basket for Passover, so I decided to try steaming my broccoli in a strainer. A plastic strainer. Well, I hope my mother likes her new abstract strainer sculpture. Even if she doesn't, she liked the broccoli, so that's OK. My father liked it so much he asked for seconds, even though he usually can't stand to look at the stuff. My brother had to be restrained so I'd have some left to photograph. Good stuff.

Here's a mushroom, the broccoli and the Green-Wa. A very nice meal:



I also made the Diner Home Fries from Veganomicon. Those were too good. They didn't even last until I was able to use my camera! The cooked pepper made my grandmother worry about her agita again, but it didn't bother her at all and again, my brother didn't eat around the green bits. The peppers and onions cook just long enough to be tender but still maintain some crunch, which is great when mixed in with the soft potatoes. I'd eat these every day if I wouldn't have to fight my family for them.

I really pulled out all the stops for dessert.

First, there were Tea-Poached Pears in Chocolate Sauce from Veganomicon. This is the perfect dessert to make if you're cooking for someone special and/or are serving a really heavy dinner. Most people I know are impressed by desserts that come with sauce poured on the plate. There's just something classy about it (unless it's a mess). If you have the skills to make designs around the edges, even better (I don't, but when I accidentally dripped, I decided to drip all around to make it look intentional). Also, it's nice and light. It's not really rich, or fudgy or a heavy cake. It's just fruit. Really, really good fruit. It takes a few steps to make, but it's not difficult (though whoever you make it for will probably think it is).



And I made The Conscious Kitchen's truffles. They're going to get another post all to themselves, so for now, just know they're lovely. Delicious, rich, impressive-looking and easy, though time consuming.







Don't worry, I'm not done with Passover yet!