Catching Up

Last week, I did a whole mess of cooking for the holiday of Shavuot (Jewish people celebrate being given the bible. It's customary not to eat meat because supposedly meat wasn't eaten until after we received the rules for kosherness in said bible). I was also commissioned to make my boss' birthday cake. I don't have any pictures of the holiday food, but here's the cake (frankly the best part anyway):



I tried to convince my family to go vegan for the holiday (it's only fifty hours), but it didn't work so well. One of the few things my mother actually cooks is a cheese dish that she only makes this time of year and she insisted on making it. Also, someone gave her a baked ziti, so she wanted to serve that. However, it turned out to be crap, so they stuck with her dish. I made the rest of the food for the holiday and it was all vegan.

Blintzes are traditional, so I made the Veganomicon crepes and made some of them into Potato-Mushroom Blintzes. My brother hates mushrooms, so I halved them and made plain potato blintzes as well. I also stuffed some with the Tofu Ricotta, also from Veganomicon. I made the Cherry Compote from Yellow Rose Recipes for dipping.

I love the Veganomicon crepes. I'd been nervous about making crepes because everyone always talks about how delicate and easy to ruin they are, but I had been practicing making them for something else and these are really easy. At first, I was annoyed that the batter had to be refrigerated for an hour before using it, but now I love that I can make the batter the night before I want to make the crepes and just get right down to the cooking when I'm eager to get down to the eating. I don't even have a crepe pan. I use a regular little non-stick pan and it works quite well.

The potato-mushroom filling is amazing. Everyone (except my brother) loved the blintzes. And he said his plain potato ones were some of the best he'd ever had. The filling couldn't be more simple, but it's one of those things that come out tasting very restauranty and people are impressed.

The Tofu Ricotta has the ricotta texture, but definitely not the taste. Everyone liked them, with the "This tastes nothing like cheese" caveat. To me, they taste strongly of nutritional yeast, so I was surprised my family liked them as much as they did (they liked them enough to honestly say they're enjoyable - they don't spare my feelings - but not enough to take seconds).

Making the blintzes themselves takes a bit of practice. I couldn't get a nice shape going, even at the end (I made about fifteen), but only one lost structural integrity and fell apart, so that's not too bad.

The Cherry Compote is very nice. My father has been putting it on everything. It's a bit more sour than I expected it to be, so I probably just used too much lemon juice. It went quite well with the cheese blintzes. I think I'll make it again next time I have a container of vegan ice cream in the house.

My mother requested something with eggplant in it, so I made the Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream, also from Veganomicon. Dudes, that pine nut cream is so rich and awesome and...creamy. I'm always amazed by the ability of nuts to act like dairy. It's so weird. This cream is double great because it doesn't require overnight soaking or anything like some of the other nut "dairy" recipes I've seen. If you don't like eggplant and zucchini and whatnot, just make the cream and put it on...everything. I also got many compliments on the sauce. The shallots make it stand out a bit from jarred stuff. And, of course, there's nothing to not like about eggplant, zucchini and potatoes, so this recipe is a total winner.

I also made Potato Spinach Wedges, a test recipe for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming brunch book. Isa describes them as knishes without the dough, and that's basically what they are. They're tasty and easy. It's great that you can just throw it in a baking dish and be done, instead of making little, individualized items.

Dessert is the most important part of any holiday and I didn't pull any punches. I made Pain Au Chocolat (another brunch tester), Chocolate Almond Cheezecake with Graham Cracker Crust from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook and Strawberry-Rhubarb-Peach Pie from Vegan With a Vengeance.

Everyone went nuts for the Pain Au Chocolat. I stuffed them with raspberries, strawberries and blackberries and served them warm. The chocolate oozed all over everyone's faces and made a wonderful mess. This dessert is wonderful and best eaten 1. warm and 2. with other people. Make them with a few different kinds of fruit, share them around and laugh at the chocolate on each other's faces.

The Chocolate Almond Cheezecake was sort of like a really firm chocolate pudding pie. A really good, a really firm chocolate pudding pie. Serving it with cherries somehow enhanced the almond flavor. It would probably go nicely with a vegan whipped cream, but I haven't mastered one of those yet.

The Strawberry-Rhubarb-Peach Pie was amazing. It really hit the spot, serving it on the first hot days of the season. This was my first time having rhubarb and it really heightened all the other flavors. I love this pie. There have been requests to make it again and I will not hesitate to fill them.

Some of you may remember my birthday cake from last month. If you don't, that's OK because my boss and office manager did. It was Blackout the Forest Cake: 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. They requested I make the exact same cake for the office celebration of my boss' birthday. Taking advantage of any opportunity to feed people yummy vegan food, I complied. The only change was to the decoration: I halved the cherries and removed the pits so people didn't have to spit while enjoying the cake. I liked how the stems looked like candles on my cake, but I think it was worth sacrificing that for the convenience of a spit-free party. Unfortunately, I made it and carried it to work when the temperature was over eighty degrees. Ganache doesn't like to behave at temperatures like that, so it looked a little funny, but everyone agreed the taste more than made up for it.

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.

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!

Passover, Post the First

According to Gothamist, hospitals see "an uptick in total patient volume during Passover...[largely due to] Dizziness from [cleaning] fumes, slips from highly buffed floors or wet bathroom tiles...knife wounds from cutting food, burns from stovetops, and even fingers chopped up in blenders." I only have two cuts and a burn, so I consider myself lucky. Doubly lucky since I did most of my cooking while half asleep.

I'm a sabbath observer, so I had to make sure most of my Passover food was ready by Friday night. I took Friday off from work and started my food prep Wednesday night. And, like all responsible people would, went to see Colin Meloy Thursday night at Music Hall of Williamsburg (side note: he is the cutest thing on two feet. I stood there the whole time wishing I'd baked him cookies). Due to transport issues and my inability to shut up and leave when I'm hanging out with friends, I got home at 2 AM. In case that wasn't bad enough, my mother was still in the kitchen, so I wasn't able to get to work until 3. I ended up not sleeping at all until after dinner Friday night. Oy vey!



Almost every recipe I picked for the holiday used vegetable broth or stock, so the first thing I had to do was make the vegetable broth. Naturally, I made the one from Vegan With a Vengeance. It's such a staple in our house that even my mother made a double batch of it to feed the family and to use in all her cooking (Wednesday night was dedicated to chopping vegetables for all the broth). You'd think after making the broth over a dozen times, I'd be able to make it without screwing it up, right? Wrong. Somehow, I'm unable to tell the difference between parsley and cilantro and ended up accidentally substituting the latter for the former. I didn't even realize it until it was time to use the cilantro in another dish and I didn't have any. D'oh! Thankfully, I like cilantro, and I was just using the broth as an ingredient, not eating it straight, so it didn't make a huge difference when combined with the other ingredients in my dishes.

While that was simmering for 90 minutes, I grabbed Tofu Mom's recipe and made matzo balls. Lots of lots of matzo balls.



And started the crust and the filling for my Raw Apple Pie. I don't have a Passover blender or food processor, just a Smart Chopper, and trying to do all those dates in there nearly made me want to stick my head in next. I hate that thing. Definitely getting something better for next year. But I got it done and had plenty of time to let the filling soak and the crust firm up in the fridge. I tried to get all decorative with a flower in the middle and some golden raisins to garnish, but I don't think it worked so well. It didn't really matter since it completely fell apart when we cut into it, but it was still tasty, which is the most important part.



And I prepped my portobello mushrooms, prepared my marinade and put everything together for Yellow Rose Recipes' grilled portobellos. It was so easy to put together that I forgot I don't have a grill pan for Passover. I decided to roast them instead, after they marinated for 24 hours.



While I'm on the subject of Yellow Rose Recipes, I need to talk about the Braised Cauliflower. I know I say this about everything, but it's really the easiest recipe ever. The aroma when the cauliflower was cooking in the margarine was amazing. My mother kept asking what was in the pan and refused to believe it was just cauliflower and margarine. I was almost disappointed when I added the broth and everything started smelling like it instead of yummy, popcorny, cauliflower. As the broth cooked off, the fragrance came back, better than ever, and joy was had. My family really enjoyed this. It's a side dish that's so simple it compliments everything. Even my grandmother ate one floret and deemed it good. She never eats vegetables, so that's high praise indeed.



I wanted to make the Indian variation of the Yellow Rose Recipes Green-Wa, but couldn't find kosher for Passover curry powder. Instead, I found this handy guide to making your own spice blend that could be deemed "close enough" by some people. Those people don't include me. Not because I'm so discerning, but because I only had red pepper flakes and no matter how much grinding I did with my new mortar and pestle, I just couldn't powder them.



I used that "curry powder", substituted the coconut milk for the soy yogurt and was about to start chopping my herbs for the Green-Wa, when lo and behold! I didn't have any cilantro! Oh yeah, it was all in the soup. So I chopped up the parsley and stuck that in the quinoa instead. And I completely forgot to even add the curry powder until the very last step. I made numerous mistakes with this recipe, but it's very forgiving. The current dish is somehow almost bland, in a good way, but still burns my tongue. My brother ate loads of it; he especially liked putting it on chicken. I can't say I love the recipe as I made it, but it gave me an idea of how it would taste if I didn't completely screw it up. Will definitely try again when I'm not completely out of it.



The last thing I made before the sun set on me was Herb Roasted Potatoes from Vegan With a Vengeance. Holy crap, those are good! I took the time to chop my herbs up nice and fine and got them really well done and my family went crazy for them. Even my grandmother ate a significant portion of them, and usually just looking at spices gives her "agita", and my brother didn't even pick out the onions. Victory!



A couple more pictures from Day One:






Stay tuned for Passover Cooking: Day Two!

How the Blog Saved Passover

Passover, the traditional holiday for matzo balls, is next week. Unfortunately, it's traditional to make matzo balls with eggs. Also unfortunately, it's traditional for vegans to replace the eggs with tofu (e.g.: the Vegan With a Vengeance recipe), one of the many foods forbidden on Passover (according to my family's tradition). I was ready to spend my first matzo ball free Passover when someone showed me Tofu Mom's recipe. I just tried it tonight and I think it made the best vegan matzo balls I've had yet.



As I'm sure I've mentioned in all my other matzo ball related posts, my family likes their matzo balls very firm and we've always found the vegan tofu-based ones to be softer than our preference, but good enough. They don't turn into a huge glob of mush in the soup (the first batch I made did!), but they don't really have any bite to them either.

Until now. This whole baking soda/potato starch thing is brilliant. As you can see in the picture above, the balls can actually be picked up and held between the fingers without oozing or denting or falling apart. Amazing. My family is thrilled. We're so pleased with the consistency, I think we may stick with these even when it's not Passover. Wooha!

Speaking of Passover, I don't know how much activity this blog will see over the next couple of weeks. I've cleaned out the fridge and probably won't be cooking again until the holiday. I've already got my menu planned and will be cooking up a storm (think roasted portobellos, stuffed eggplant, matzo ball soup, braised cauliflower, green-wa, diner home fries, broccoli potato soup, herb-roasted potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts with toasted garlic, roasted garlic artichoke spread, beginners curry, broccoli vinaigrette, baked apples, tea-poached pears in chocolate sauce, and raw apple pie), but photography will be limited since I'm not allowed to use a camera (or a computer) for about half the holiday. I'll be sure to review all the recipes when I'm done, though (and since most are from Veganomicon and Yellow Rose Recipes, I'm prepared for loads of positive reviews).

"Its everything I could ever hope for...

...in a banana bread."

That's what my mother had to say about the banana bread from Papa Tofu (a superawesome cookzine).



My mother had a bunch of extra bananas hanging around the house this weekend and asked if I could do something with them.

Me: What? Like juggle?
Mom: No...maybe....food something.
Me: Bake?
Mom: Yes. I want banana bread (it sometimes takes her a while to stop beating around the bush).

So I brought down my cookbooks and tried to talk her into all sorts of other crazy banana-related sweets, but she insisted on plain banana bread. I'm glad she did because this stuff rules. In the zine, kittee suggests toasting the walnuts, which really brings out their flavor and makes every nutful bite a treat (I don't usually like nuts in my baked goods, but looked forward to finding the walnuts in this bread). My mother liked it so much she doesn't want anyone else in the house to eat it (since I made it for her), but she reserved a large piece for my grandmother, who loves banana bread.

When I said I really liked this bread and I'd definitely make it again, there were cheers all around. That's two baking successes in one week. Wooha!

Mini Cranberry Apple Crumb Pie

I'm skipping ahead to my submission for The Mini Pie Revolution because the deadline is nearly upon us.

For this, I borrowed my mother's "Cranapple Crunch" recipe and adapted it until it was pretty much unrecognizable. I made a dozen pies and when my mother told me she'd eaten three in one day, I knew it was time to get them out of the house and distribute them among my friends and coworkers.



When I made this, I prepared WAY too much filling, a bit too much topping and not enough crust, so I adjusted the measurements but haven't gotten to re-test it. If you decide to follow this recipe, expect it to be tasty but messy. Or just use your judgement and change things accordingly, since if you're reading this, you're probably a food blogger too and have far more experience than I (this is my first original recipe).

Mini Cranberry Apple Crumb Pies

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 bag fresh cranberries
2 cups flour (divided)
2 tsp cinnamon (divided)
1 cup margarine (divided)*
4 Tablespoons
3 apples (my mother uses Granny Smiths, I used organic Braeburns. Both tasted quite nice)
1 cup quick oats
2/3 cup brown sugar

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 and grease your muffin pan.

2. Bring water and sugar to boil in medium, non-porous saucepan. Add cranberries and return to boil. Reduce heat and boil gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Refrigerate until cool. If you do not have a non-porous saucepan, you definitely want to transfer the cranberries to a bowl before refrigerating. As the berries cool, a film will form over the top. Stir occasionally to break up the film and allow the heat to escape or your berries will never cool.

3. Mix 1 1/3 cup flour, and 1 tsp cinnamon in medium bowl. Cut in 5.5 tablespoons margarine, using pastry blender, 2 knives or your fingers, until particles are size of small peas. Sprinkle with cold water, 1/2 tablespoon at a time, tossing with fork until all flour is moistened and pastry almost leaves side of bowl.

5. Gather pastry into a ball. Shape into flattened round on lightly floured surface. Wrap flattened round of pastry in plastic wrap and refrigerate about 45 minutes or until dough is firm and cold, yet pliable.

6. While waiting for your cranberries and crust dough to cool, wash, peel and chop your apples.

7. Melt remaining margarine. To it, add 2/3 cup brown sugar, 1 cup quick oats, 2/3 cup flour and 1 tsp cinnamon. Mix well with fork, until crumbs form.

8. When your dough is ready, roll it into an log and cut it into 12 even pieces. Roll those pieces into balls and flatten them into thin rounds that will fit your muffin tins. Since they're so small, a rolling pin isn't really necessary but you're welcome to use one if you're really particular. Press each crust into a greased cup of the muffin tin and prick it a few times with a fork.

9. Mix your cranberries with your chopped apples. Fill each crust about 2/3 full with the fruit filling.

10. Finish each pie off with crumb topping.

11. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until crumbs brown slightly.

12. Allow pies to cool before attempting to remove them from their tins.

This is why I specified the use of non-porous pots and bowls:



Bottom crusts:



Filled:



Topped:



Baked:



The mini pie stands alone:



I still can't believe it didn't fall apart as soon as it was removed from the pan:



The crumb didn't hold up to cutting too well. This pie is meant to be eaten with the hands:



I may have snuck one while they were still hot...and it may have been bliss:



I don't know what this is or where it came from but I found it in the silverware drawer and it's a perfect Mini Pie Popper Outer. If you're going to make a habit of mini pie making, invest in one:




* I tried to cut back on the amount of margarine used, so I didn't get much of a crumb going. For a bigger, crumbier, crumb, add a couple of extra tablespoons of margarine to the crust dough.



I still have so much food to blog about, and I need to fix up this layout sooner or later. I never realized this would be so time consuming!

Holiday Cupcakes

This blog is significantly behind my bloggable life, and for that, I apologize.

Let's rewind to Saturday, December eighth, shall we?

I spent the evening baking two dozen of the Veganomicon's Jelly Donut Cupcakes for my family's Channukkah party Sunday.



These cupcakes are SO easy to make. And so unique! Also, they don't use a mixer, so you can make them at 3 AM without waking anyone. And they're so fast to make that you can bake them at 3 AM without killing a whole night's sleep. Most of my cupcakes were left with holes in the top, but most jelly donuts have holes in the side, so people actually preferred them that way. The texture and flavor were very different from the previous cupcakes I'd made (all from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World). They were a bit more dense, and definitely donuty.

When I finished making the cupcakes, I met up with some friends to go to Strawberry Fields. On my way to see them, I got the idea to add a butternut squash to my vegetable menorah, but didn't think anything would come of it because I was out. When we got together, we realized we hadn't brought anything for John, so we stopped at Whole Foods for onions. I also bought a ten-pound butternut squash. And carried it around ALL NIGHT. I think it enjoyed Barcade.

I also brought the Veganomicon Spiced Yogurt Sauce to the party as an alternative dip for the veggies (someone else brought one with a sour cream base).

Cupcakes: ready for the jelly



Jellied



Baked



The Cavern O' Jelly



Powdered



From the inside



My date for the evening: the butternut squash

Happy Channukkah!

I still have food from last week to discuss, but the holiday is almost over and I want to post this before I miss it.



Vegetable Menorahs! A cute idea, executed less than skillfully. I probably should have asked someone who can cut in a straight line to do it.

Made of butternut squash roasted with rosemary and thyme, zucchini roasted with garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper and asparagus grilled with garlic and salt, according to the recommendations in Veganomicon.

And in case anyone's wondering, my parents got me a food processor for Channukkah and I love it. My life has changed already!

(kinda)

Thanksnowing

New York got it's first snow of the season Sunday. I knew I was going to spend most of the day cooking anyway, but I took advantage of my family staying in the house, hiding from the elements, to make them all sit down and have a vegan family dinner.

I made the Tofurky Roast with vegetables, Panic Pepper Potatoes, the Baking Powder Biscuits from Vegan With a Vengeance and Sarah's Gravy. I also put out the Pumpkin-Apple Butter from Fat Free Vegan I made Saturday night. Yum!



So, what are Panic Pepper Potatoes? They're the best way I could think of to use up some extra potatoes and the contents of a McClure's Spicy Dill Pickles jar (cayenne peppers, garlic cloves, dill, vinegar). I used about ten potatoes and they were still too spicy for my parents and I to eat a full serving off. A forkful or two was very tasty, but beyond that, it was just too hot. My brother inhaled them, but then again, he eats wasabi raw.

My family still can't get enough of the Baking Powder Biscuits. We had some with gravy, some with pumpkin-apple butter and some plain. All caused joy. My brother put a tiny dab of the butter on a biscuit "just to taste because I'm not feeling pumpkiny right now." He took a bite, grinned hugely and proceeded to pile the butter onto his biscuit. That's what I liked to see (as long as it's not real butter)! I doubled the biscuit recipe this time and am shocked that there are still a couple left right this minute (unless someone ate them while I'm typing this at work).

Sarah's Gravy is a gravy recipe from my friend Sarah (duh). She made it up while standing in front of her stove and wanting to make something quick, easy and tasty. She succeeded. I think I overheated mine a bit because it was thicker than gravy should be, but everyone loved the flavor. The recipe I include below is how I made it, not exactly how she sent the recipe to me (she lists a bunch of optional ingredients and I don't want to give away all of her secrets).

Panic Pepper Potatoes (don't worry, I know this isn't an actual recipe):

Buy a jar of McClure's Spicy Garlic Dill Pickles.
Eat the pickles.
Boil about ten potatoes in the brine with as much water as necessary added.
While your potatoes are boiling, puree the remaining contents of the pickle jar.
Drain the potatoes.
Mix the cayenne/dill/garlic puree into the potatoes while mashing.
Eat.
Cry.

Serve with bread or something else absorbent (Tofurky!) to take care of the oils from the peppers. Do not drink, that will only make it worse.





Sarah's Gravy

2 Tbsp Olive Oil
3 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast
2 Tbsp Flour
1 Cup Water
2 Tbsp Soy Sauce
1/2 Tsp Black Pepper
1 Tsp Garlic Powder

Whisk together first three ingredients over medium heat until they bubble. Continue whisking for an additional minute. Add water and whisk to dissolve. Bring to a boil, whisking occasionally. Lower heat and whisk in remaining ingredients.

Tofurky!

I made a Tofurky Roast (mine came stuffed but gravyless and was meant to serve four) on Sunday. I also made a bunch of other things, but this post is dedicated to the Tofurky.



That there is really what you see when you take it out of the box. Looks kind of like a football, kind of like a ham, and just kind of funny, doesn't it?

It doesn't look much more appetizing unwrapped, though:



The box tells you to surround the roast with one quartered onion, two quartered potatoes and two carrots. That leaves you with really enormous potato pieces, so I halved some of mine again.



Then comes the "baste": one tablespoon olive oil, three tablespoons soy sauce (I use nama shoyu, even on this) and some dried sage. Mmmm.



Then you cover it up and throw it in the oven for an hour and fifteen minutes. When it comes out, it looks something like this:



Add more baste, put it back in the oven for ten minutes, uncovered, and (if one is to believe the packaging) it's done:



It kinda looked done and felt done when I stuck a fork in it (not that I really knew what "done" would look and feel like), but the vegetables were nowhere near cooked, so I wrapped the Tofurky in foil and left it on the stove top to be warmed by the heat of the oven and the pots on it while the vegetables cooked.

I make fun of Tofurky and similar mass-produced synthetic meats a lot. I call them science experiments, Igor food and other insulting things. But look at the Tofurky's ingredients. I can pronounce everything on that list. They even go the extra mile to let you know their stuff isn't genetically engineered. Pretty responsible, I think.

I served the Roast as part of a family dinner of sorts on Sunday night (more on that later). My brother was first to try it and exclaimed "Wow! It's turkey!" I was shocked! "Really?!?" "No, but it still tastes good," he laughed, finished off his portion and asked for more. My mother actually liked the included stuffing better than what we had at Thanksgiving. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it too. So much that I spent all of Monday looking forward to eating the leftovers when I got home from work (with a biscuit, not in a sandwich). It was still tasty after two minutes in the microwave. I don't think the texture changed much either.

Carving the Roast (which kept rolling away until my brother held on to it while I cut):



Sliced. Mmmm....stuffing.



Looks kind of like a hard-boiled egg, doesn't it?



Thus concludes our photo essay on the Tofurky Roast. Have a good night, get home safe and don't forget to tip your bartender.

Flesh-Free Friday

I may want to revisit Thanksgiving at some point and write a bit about how that all went down (quite well), but at the moment I want to write about a tradition my family started this year: Flesh-Free Friday. From now on, my immediate family will go vegan for the Friday after Thanksgiving (I will do all the cooking, obviously). This time, we brunched on three dishes from Vegan With a Vengeance: Asparagus, Olive and Mushroom Frittata (page 14), Baking Powder Biscuits (page 26) and Tempeh Bacon (page 23). We dined on two from Veganomicon: Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Croutons (page 81) and Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic and Navy Beans (page 137). We obviously love garlic.



My mother loves biscuits. Almost more than she loves her children. When I first started cooking and baking, her reaction was almost "Pretty cupcakes are great. Yeah. Whatever. Can you make biscuits?" So when we decided we were all going to finally sit down and have a vegan meal together, I knew I had to include biscuits. She loved these babies before they even went in the oven. She just sniffed the raw dough and deemed them worthy (by comparing them to a memory of the Pillsbury dough, I believe). By the time they were ready to come out of the oven, she and my brother were practically dancing around in front of it waiting. They weren't disappointed. She said these fulfilled her biscuit craving perfectly, while my brother deemed them "professional quality". My father liked them as well.

Not only are they tasty but the texture came out absolutely perfect and they're so easy to make they're almost impossible to mess up. Fast, too. And you don't need a food processor or blender or anything. I think I'm going to make them with whole wheat flour soon (I like to follow recipes exactly the first time I make them, if possible).

Tempeh isn't bacon. However, after being marinated per the VWAV instructions, it's damn tasty. It's also thick, chewy and definitely "meaty". Almost the entire plateful disappeared before I finished making the frittata!

Speaking of the frittata, I lost my tumeric so I made it without. I also kept it in the oven quite a bit longer than indicated. I baked it in Pyrex and just kept it in the oven until bubbles stopped coming up the sides. My family likes things very well done. So well done that I have a friend who used to joke that because of how I prepared food, he thought the only way to give kosher, vegetarian food flavor was to burn it.

I made it with asparagus, fresh cremini mushrooms and black olives. My brother is deathly afraid of mushrooms, but he finished his portion anyway. He said it was the first thing I'd made that wasn't fantastic (but it was still edible, so I consider that a victory). My father said it was a winner (it was his first time eating olives) and my mother loved it and would like to eat it again.

Just like with the biscuits, the bacon and frittata are incredibly easy to make (but take a bit more time) in addition to tasting fabulous. It's the sort of food that people will assume you totally stressed out over, which earns you points when you don't feel like taking out the trash.

My brother loves Caesar salad almost as much as my mother loves biscuits. He's had it in so many different places, I consider him a bit of a connoisseur on the subject. He loved the strong dressing and the spicy croutons, doing everything but lick his plate to get the last of it. My mother is still raving about the croutons. I'm just angry at myself for serving it with romaine lettuce only; my spinach was old and I thought my arugala was basil.

I've already discussed the soup, so I won't go into much about that here, but just know that my family absolutely inhaled it. I swear, I dished out the soup, blinked, turned around and all the bowls were empty and mouths were smiling.

So yeah, if you're ever looking for a few easy, omni-approved vegan recipes, look no further. Here's your salad, your soup, your protein and your carb, all in one place (well, two books, really).

Seventeen biscuits go into the oven:



I take them out, blink and there are fourteen left:



Bacon:



Extremely well done frittata:



Mmmmmm....croutons:

Quote of the Millennium

"I'd go vegetarian if Dayna* would cook for me!"

- My mother AND brother

(and yes, I know this is a cheap post, but it's Saturday night, so cut me some slack, OK?)


*Dayna = Me

Tis the Season

I didn't mention this yesterday because I wanted to have something to write about today, but after I finished cooking all that food (yes, I know that's like nothing for some people, but to me, it's a whole lot) Sunday, I did a trial run of Tofu Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving (we're going to family in New Jersey. If all goes well, I'll be bringing Tofu Pumpkin Pie and Raw Apple Pie. My mother is bringing a huge salad and Cranberry Crumble (both vegan) and my grandmother will bring a fruit platter. I'll have plenty to eat just from what's coming in our car. Holiday traffic, I laugh at you! I have the desserts! - That's all that counts, really, isn't it?)



When I first started looking into the whole vegan thing, there were several dishes I found approximately 473829 recipes for. Macaroni and cheese, butternut squash soup, pesto sauce and pumpkin pie are a few of them. Lucky for me, I love all those things. I mentioned the multitude of pumpkin pie recipes to my friend Sarah and her reply was something like "Fuck them. I have the best pumpkin pie recipe EVAR. I make it every Thanksgiving for a whole load of omnis and no one ever knows it's vegan until I tell them, and when I do, they say they like it better than regular." This sounded like my kind of pie.

The recipe calls for "1 can (16 ounces) pureed pumpkin". I've been on a natural, real foods kick, so I wanted to use a real pumpkin and puree it myself and somehow could not find a pumpkin at the regular supermarket that wasn't a jack-o-lantern pumpkin. In November! I didn't have time to go to the farmer's market, so I made the test pie with canned pumpkin. This probably means I should make the real pie with canned too, since I already know how it'll come out. Bah.

It also requires "1 9-in unbaked pie shell (buy a frozen one with no offensive ingredients, or use the classic Betty Crocker recipe substituting vegetable shortening or soy margarine)". I obviously wanted to make my own, so I searched bettycrocker.com for pies until I found Ms. Crocker's recipe and made the appropriate substitutions.

I have to give Sarah credit; the pumpkin pie filling is definitely one of the best I (and my testers) have tasted. My brother doesn't even want to look at Entenmann's now (which is a good thing!). However, after leaving the pie in the oven for an hour, the pumpkin was starting to crack (you can see that pretty well in the picture of the slice below) and the crust turned out to still be kind of raw (oddly, my brother prefers it that way), so I guess I'll have to experiment with the crust a bit to get it to bake at a lower temperature (the baked crust wants to be done at 475, but this pie bakes at 350).

Tofu Pumpkin Pie

Unbaked One-Crust Pie Crust:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable shortening
2 to 3 tablespoons cold water

Filling:
1 can (16 ounces) pureed pumpkin
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 package (10-12 ounces) tofu, any kind does but firm if you can get it

Pre-heat oven to 350.

Mix flour and salt in medium bowl. Cut in shortening, using pastry blender (or pulling 2 table knives through ingredients in opposite directions), until particles are size of small peas. Sprinkle with cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with fork until all flour is moistened and pastry almost leaves side of bowl (1 to 2 teaspoons more water can be added if necessary).

Gather pastry into a ball. Shape into flattened round on lightly floured surface. Wrap flattened round of pastry in plastic wrap and refrigerate about 45 minutes or until dough is firm and cold, yet pliable. This allows the shortening to become slightly firm, which helps make the baked pastry more flaky. If refrigerated longer, let pastry soften slightly before rolling.

While waiting for pastry to cool, blend tofu in a food processor or blender until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and blend well.

After 45 minutes, roll pastry, using floured rolling pin, into circle 2 inches larger than upside-down 9-inch pie plate. Fold pastry into fourths; place in pie plate. Unfold and ease into plate, pressing firmly against bottom and side and being careful not to stretch pastry, which will cause it to shrink when baked.

Pour blended mixture into a 9" unbaked pie shell. Bake for approx. 1 hour. Filling will be soft, but will firm up as it chills.

Chill overnight and serve.

Per serving: (1/8 Pie, filling only) 122 calories, 0.9g fat, 4g protein, 0mg cholesterol, 49mg sodium, 26g carbs.

I made the pie exactly as written above, but Sarah says: "I usually reduce the sugar, and you can also mess around with the spices. Try allspice, but maybe leaving out the cloves." I also ended up with a bit of extra dough (which probably wouldn't have happened if my board wasn't so small; I'm ordering a pastry mat today in the hopes of getting it by Thanksgiving), so I stuck some vegan chocolate chips in it and made a nice, crispy cookie.

Crust:



Raw:

A Flock of Firsts

I achieved many culinary firsts yesterday. I:

1. Cooked tofu.
2. Made a "real" meal (a protein, a grain and a vegetable all on a plate together).
3. Plated the food after cooking it and actually sat down and ate it while it was still hot.
4. Had polenta.
5. Worked with poppy seeds.
6. Got my entire family to eat (and like!) asparagus.
7. Made recipes from Veganomicon.



I started with the asparagus, following the incredibly easy Veganomicon grilling instructions: cut off the ends, throw in a bag with garlic and olive oil, rub, let sit for at least ten minutes. I let mine sit while I made the rest of the food.

Bagged asparagus:



Then I moved on to the polenta. Forgetting about cooking for a moment, I'd never even eaten polenta before, so I was kind of nervous about how it would turn out. How would I know it was done? How could I tell if I fucked it up without any basis for comparison? I did a quick search for "polenta" on flickr and decided that would have to do.

Veganomicon has two polenta recipes: broccoli and soft poppy seed. I picked the Soft Poppy-Seed Polenta just because it looked like it took less time to prepare (this was because it was left soft). Then I noticed I had some broccoli left over from my weekly Big Ass Salad that would never survive until next week, so I chopped that up and threw it in with the poppy seeds (which were full of static somehow and stuck to everything). It was probably a bit less than a cup of broccoli.

Polenta when it was just added to the pot, so you can actually see the broccoli:



Please heed the instructions when they say to stir regularly. I didn't know how often I needed to stir until I saw that if I left it alone for more than about thirty seconds, it started to bubble and make lovely glooping and popping noises like a witch's cauldron (even on the lowest heat setting). It was actually pretty fun to watch.

According to the book, the recipe should make 4-6 servings. I doubled the recipe so I can eat it all week (don't know how well that will turn out, but we'll find out) and I got about fifteen servings out of it. Talk about bang for your buck! Definitely worth the complete lack of effort.

Finished polenta:



Extreme Closeup! If you look really carefully and know it's there, you can see the broccoli:



Then I moved on to the Basic Broiled Tofu. The hardest part of this recipe was cleaning the broiler. My family moved to this house nearly ten years ago and the broiler had never been used. The storage drawer under the oven was full of dust. It was pretty nasty.

I doubled this recipe too and I'm glad I did because I could just inhale all of it. That's how good it is. And it took less than 30 minutes to make. And it's low fat. WIN! (actually, according to the icons, all three of the recipes I made are low fat, take less than 45 minutes to prepare and are regular supermarket friendly). I think I may have put a bit too much lemon juice in the braising sauce, but that's OK because I love lemons. I think it adds a nice zip. I used Nama Shoyu as the base for the sauce because I don't really like regular soy sauce, but Nama Shoyu is totally yummy. For me, I think it's worth the price, but I try not to use it too often.

Once it was done, it was really, really difficult for me to keep myself away from the tofu long enough to grill the asparagus in my new grill pan. I'm glad I kept my self-control, though, because the results were amazing. Right before putting it in the pan, I added a bit of sea salt and shook it up again. Seven minutes in the pan and I had gorgeous, tasty, perfectly textured asparagus.

Check out those grill marks!



It was so good, I thought I might even be able to get my no-green-food-eating little brother to try it. He and his friend did, then came downstairs begging for more. So did my equally no-green-food-eating father. My mother doesn't like the look of asparagus, so she closed her eyes before biting into it, but ugly or not, she loved it. If I'd let them, they would have left me with nothing to eat during the week (the brother also really liked the tofu and thought the polenta was OK)!

It's so thrilling to have found something my whole family loves that isn't chocolate. And that's just from my first time trying out the book (of course, I also got oil and garlic on it)! I see many happy meals on my family's future, thanks to Vegan With a Vengeance and Veganomicon.

Vegan food on acid?

Not Your Mamas Matzo Ball Soup

But it is my mama's matzo ball soup...now.

In a drastic step forward, this week, my mother changed over from traditional matzo ball soup to matzo balls in vegan broth for the sabbath. The two of us are dragging the rest of the family kicking and screaming into a 21st century, where we're no longer dependent on animals to live.

I'm Jewish and my family is rather traditional (I'm also the only vegetarian in a family of omnis). Every Friday night and Saturday afternoon, we all eat a meal together when my father and brother come home from synagogue. True to stereotype, we start dinner with matzo ball soup every week. Also true to stereotype, the matzo balls were always cooked in home made chicken stock.

Up until not that long ago, my attitude toward vegetarianism was "If I don't see it, it isn't there," which suited my mother just fine since she always removed all the chicken from the broth before serving the soup anyway. Needless to say, she was less than happy when I told her I'd no longer eat a soup that had touched chicken (or matzo balls that involved eggs) and I hated going soupless, but we both coped.

Then I brought home Vegan With a Vengeance and showed her the Matzo Ball Soup recipe. She was curious, but that was about it. She said something about not liking the idea of using so much oil to make the matzo balls and that was that.

Then (as I've mentioned enough times to make anyone reading this sick, I'm sure), I decided to break my Master Cleanse fast with VWAV's Golden Vegetable Broth, the recommended stock for the vegan Matzo Ball Soup. It all went down something like this:

Me: Spends what feels like eons chopping vegetables and working really hard to make my first soup. Finally finish it, taste it and completely spaz out at the awesomeness of it. Proceed to run around the house brandishing a ladle full of hot broth and shouting TASTE MY SOUP! IT'S SO AWESOME! EVERYONE HAS TO LOVE IT! THESE COOKBOOK PEOPLE ARE GENIUSES! I COULD MARRY THIS SOUP!

Mom: If it'll shut you up, I'll taste the soup. Does so. There's no chicken in this?

Me: Nope.

Mom: Just vegetables?

Me: Yup.

Mom: Then where does it get the flavor from?

Me: The vegetables.

Mom: Seriously?

Me: Yes. It uses lots of vegetables.

Mom: But it looks and tastes so much like mine!

Me: Yup!

Mom: But it doesn't use meat?

Me: Nope.

Mom: So it's healthier.

Me: Yup. Probably cheaper too.

Mom: Hm.

So she used up her remaining stock of chicken soup (I had a separate portion of the vegetable soup every week), went out and bought a metric assload of the vegetables required for the Golden Vegetable Broth (plus celery and turnip) and secretly replaced our traditional chicken soup with vegan broth!

The rest of the family liked it, but my father complained that chicken soup is the tradition, not vegetable broth. We told him to stuff it and my mother plans on using the vegan broth every week, now. She's still not making the vegan matzo balls, so I've been going without, but it's a start. And since she doesn't object to me making the vegan matzo balls for the family, I'm going to try to make them next week and see if I can't convert us over completely by the end of VeganMoFo.

(Funnily, my mother will never, ever give up her meat, but she's very proud of all the vegetables and things I cook and likes me to bring vegan food to our holiday family gatherings. She also loves to just talk about vegan food and actually sat down and read most of VWAV and VCTOTW. I think it makes her feel enlightened - and she enjoys how Isa and Terry write).