Things Fall Apart

The centre cannot hold.

Especially when said centre is made of crepes and pastry cream. Behold! The crepe cake!



Doesn't that look lovely(ish)? It's rather a pity that that's not how it looked when it got to the table. This is:



Back in January, my friend challenged me to veganize this cake. It looked complicated, so I decided to wait a while, until I was a bit more comfortable in the kitchen. A while turned into months and then her birthday was coming, so I decided to figure it out and make it her birthday cake. I really wanted to get it right, so I started working on it over a month in advance because the filling kind of freaked me out. This wasn't merely a case of substituting margarine for butter and a little bit of soy yogurt for an egg and I didn't know what to do, so I took it to The PPK. As always, they were very helpful and directed me toward the pastry cream filling of the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I decided layering that with a few batches of the sweet crepes from Veganomicon would do the trick and set to work.

Here's my first attempt:





Failure. The crepes were too thick and not browned enough and the pastry cream was too loose. The reason? I couldn't get my agar flakes to dissolve. I officially hate agar flakes.

A few days later, I tried again:



Per the suggestions of the lovely people on The PPK, I reduced the crepe batter from 1/2 cup to 1/3 per crepe and dissolved the agar flakes in the microwave (which still took HOURS). The crepes still weren't brown enough, but it was only a test, so I was going for speed (as you can see by my ever-so-smooth filling job). It looked good enough to me. The cream was thick and the crepes were thin, so the cream was able to support the crepes, instead of the other way around. With eight crepes, I called it success. But the recipe called for 25 crepes and it never occurred to me that the number would cause a problem.

Though it looked good, I found the taste slightly lacking. It tasted good and it was nice and sweet, but it didn't taste like anything. Just sweet. I wanted to layer in some thinly sliced strawberries, but I thought that would be too much of a variation (read: cheat) from the original recipe, so I decided to substitute chocolate extract for vanilla in the final cake, top it with powdered sugar and write on it in melted chocolate (at first, I wasn't going to write on it at all, then I was thinking of using royal icing or something similarly generic).

The birthday dinner was on Wednesday, so I planned my week accordingly. Monday night, I went home early and made the crepe batter (four times the written recipe) and the pastry cream (six times the written recipe). I knew I'd have the agar issue, so I did that first, working on the batter while the agar sat in the warm/hot soy milk slowly dissolving, then whisking it for five minutes at a time. For hours. My right arm is currently on strike.

This is a lot of crepe batter:



Please notice the box of soy milk in the background. It's right side up, but I'm pretty sure the text on the back is upside down.

More pastry cream than I ever want to see again:



Tuesday night, I went to see The Futureheads do their first US show in two years (which was superawesome. Expect a fall tour. Run, don't walk for tickets!), then went home and made the crepes and put it all together.

Thirty crepes:



I only needed 25, so I put aside the uglier crepes and the best one (for the top) on a cutting board as I worked. I got to 18, paused to wash my hands, looked over at the cake and it looked like a landslide. As I stood there, the crepes were sliding off of the cake, onto the table, then almost onto the floor! I ran over and caught them (part of them were already hanging off the table), then grabbed up the whole cake and dropped it down on the cutting board. Right on top of the nicest crepe. Crap.

Once I got the pastry cream of of myself (and the table) and convinced myself I was neither going to cry nor throw the crepes around the room, I started reassembling the cake crepe by crepe, using my hands to smooth the filling, instead of my spatula. Since half the filling ended up on the table, cutting board and me, I thought the cake might hold together better with the thinner layers of filling. Since it was already covered with pastry cream, I included the "best crepe" in the cake and topped it off with a clean one, so the cake ended up being twenty crepes instead of 25. That was good enough for me, so I dusted it with powdered sugar and wrote on it with the melted chocolate.





That's how it looked when I put it away. This is how it looked when I woke up:



Appetizing, isn't it? (No)

I IMed the birthday girl when I got to work and basically apologized for completely ruining her birthday (because that's how it felt to me) and tried to brainstorm how to fix it. A coworker noticed I was upset and when I showed her why, she laughed at me. When she was done laughing, she suggested I just move the top of the cake to the center of the pile and trim it around, so that's what I did.

Here it is, with the trimmings my coworkers and I ate throughout the day:



And here's the finished product:



Obviously, it's not nearly as attractive as it started out, but it was presentable enough. And everyone seemed to enjoy it. Even the wait staff at the restaurant tried some, but they didn't tell me what they thought of it, so maybe that was their polite way of not telling me they hated it.

Wow, this post is sort of epic (read: too damn long). Sorry about that. But if it took you this long to read it, think of what it must have been like to do it!

And if you're reading this, happy birthday, Shar! (that's what the cake says, in case you can't tell)

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 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!

Know Your Pantry

It's always important to know what you have on hand. If you don't, you may have your heart set on having something for lunch, only to discover you can't have it (or have to change it) because you're missing a key ingredient.

Take Fat Free Vegan's Vegetable Fried Quinoa, for example. When deciding to make a double recipe of this, it would be really helpful to know you only have one-half cup of quinoa left at home (2 cups required). Refusing to be discouraged, I substituted rice for quinoa and it was super tasty (and easy), but I'm sure wasn't the same.



I'm trying to use up all my grains before Passover anyway, so it could have been worse. This recipe allowed me to use up the last of my quinoa and my basmati rice. One-quarter cup basmati rice. Just when I thought I was going to have to get take out for lunch last week, I found a bag of brown rice with more than one and a quarter cups in it. I was ready to rock.

Quinoa has a shorter cook time than rice, but I threw it all in together anyway, so it took a bit longer to prepare than written. Thankfully, the extra cooking didn't make the quinoa gross. I think that may be because the quinoa didn't really get overcooked since so much of the water had been absorbed by the rice by the time it would have been a concern.

I used baby carrots because I'm lazy like that. I also used the whole bok choy, not just the leaves; I didn't want to look for something to do with them. Both the carrots and bok choy stalks contributed a really nice crunch to the dish.

Overall, I really like this recipe. It's relatively healthy, simple, quick and tasty. It will definitely become a staple when I start having staples (since going vegan, I've made something new almost every time I've cooked and hope to continue the tradition for quite some time).

Seitan the Second

Many moons ago, I tried the Simple Seitan recipe from Veganomicon with much success. More recently, I tried the Seitan Cutlet recipe from the same book with significantly less awesome results. However, I paired it with the fantastic Sauteed Spinach and Tomatoes so all was not lost.



I don't know if it was the nutritional yeast in the Simple Seitan that made the difference, but this seitan looked and felt different right from the start. It was very elastic and wouldn't really knead, even when I added some extra water. When it was time to put the cutlets in the baking pan, I couldn't even flatten them out into cutlet shapes; they just snapped right back to being blobs.

When I tried to eat them, cutting was a chore and they stretched almost as much as hot melted cheese (though they got less stretchy after sitting in the fridge for a while). I was able to feel the lemon zest in them, but didn't know that was what it was at first, and kept picking it out of my mouth. Even when I knew what it was, it still felt gross in my mouth. I made these a few weeks ago and still have four (of twelve) in the fridge. I ended up ordering take out on two days because I didn't want to eat these. I suspect the last four will go in the trash, but I'm hoping some sort of saving inspiration will strike before that happens.

Spinach confuses me. For about a billion years, I was told spinach is high in iron and if I'm not going to eat meat, I have to eat my spinach and my broccoli. Then I read that spinach contains a compound that blocks iron absorption. The more I Googled, the more confused I got, so I brought the question to the PPK and here's what I learned, in brief:

Cooking the spinach helps break down the compound that blocks iron absorption.
Vitamin C aids iron absorption so eat it with tomatoes or orange juice or something.
Kale is better*.

This recipe gave me two of the three: the spinach was cooked and some tomatoes were thrown in, so I think it was OK, ironwise. That's good news because it's amazing, tastewise. It's chock full of onions and garlic and awesome. And it's super fast to make, so please do.

When good seitan goes bad:



Doesn't that look tempting (the correct answer is no)?



*At the time I made this dish, I hadn't cooked kale yet, but I have now and they were correct. I now love kale. It'll be a June wedding.

Happy New Year!

I know I've already posted this year, but this is my first entry about something I actually cooked in 2008, so I thought I'd wish everyone well here.

Personally, I'm not doing so great. I almost died on New Year's Eve, botched both things I prepared yesterday and have a cold. The worst thing about this cold is that my friends and I are finally having our holiday gathering this coming weekend and about half the gifts I plan on giving are baked. So unless I can shake this thing by Saturday night, I'll be baking in gloves and a face mask. Tips (like advice, not money) greatly appreciated.

I attempted to make Fat Free Vegan's Garden Vegetable and Bean Soup and the Buttermilk Biscuits from Yellow Rose Recipes. Fail.



Please look at the recipe on fatfreevegan.com. Could that be any easier to make? No. Is it impossible to fuck up? Yes. Unless you're me. I was supremely lazy and decided to use the food processor for everything, so instead of pieces of onion, my soup's base was a sort of onion puree. I also used red cabbage instead of green. And too small of a pot, so it nearly boiled over. See?



Please look at the picture on fatfreevegan.com. Now look at this:



Do they look anything alike? No. And the disparity is getting greater with time, as the broth darkens and the zucchini and beans turn purple.

That said, it's still tasty. It's not the sort of thing where I flip out with the tasty goodness at every spoonful, but it's satisfying.

The biscuits should have been a cinch, since I just made them, but no. See the picture at the top of this post? I call it breadscuit.

I doubled the biscuit recipe, so I needed five teaspoons of baking powder. I put in five tablespoons. Of course, I realized what I'd done right when I finished dumping the last one in, so I tried to scrape off as much baking powder as I could and leave in approximately five teaspoons. Perhaps that's why the dough was incredibly sticky, no matter how much flour I added to it. The dough was so stuck to my hands that I had to call my brother in to add the flour while I kneaded it. After adding what felt like ten cups of flour, I gave up, scraped as much of the dough off my hands as I could and threw it in the oven. A few minutes later, I remembered I had poppy seeds, so I pulled it out, dumped them on and put it back in (in retrospect, I also have flax seeds, which have been a way better idea. Pity I forgot).

Oddly enough, my mother and brother liked the breadscuit. I didn't think it was half bad either. Then again, maybe it's not so odd. Baked dough is almost always a good thing.

Baked Beet Cakes

I've had leftover beets and shallots and and Horseradish Dill Sour Cream and things from when I made the Veganomicon Autumn Latkes sitting in the fridge for a while, so I decided to try Fat Free Vegan's baked adaptation (scroll about halfway down, they're shaped like hearts) last Wednesday.

For some reason, my brain just didn't want to follow the instructions. It seemed to think that since it had already done beet cakes once, it knew what it was doing and didn't need to pay attention to what was printed out.

It was wrong.



I kinda just shredded all the vegetables and let them cook in the water together. And my breadcrumbs were ground so fine they looked like they were flour again (I did them in advance, in the blender, because I didn't have a food processor yet. Shredding the vegetables in the processor was a DREAM). And I don't think I chopped the fennel finely enough. I may have made them a bit too big and didn't have them in the oven long enough too.

Despite all that, they were still edible. Not my favorite things, but I ate them for lunch two days in a row.

So now I know: even when I fuck them up, beets are OK.

This is the recipe as printed, not as I made it.

Beet Cakes

2 cups peeled shredded beets (about 3 average sized beets)
1 cup peeled shredded carrot (or parsnip) (about 1 average sized carrot)
1 cup peeled shredded sweet potato (1 average sized sweet potato)
1 shallot, finely chopped (about ¼ cup)
½ teaspoon salt
several dashes fresh black pepper
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, chopped (or caraway)
1/2 cup rolled oats, quick cooking
1 cup homemade whole wheat bread crumbs, plus additional for covering

Took the grated beet and carrot and just about covered with water and cooked for 10 min until it was soft. Drained well and reserved the liquid to use for the sweet potato. Cut this into smallish cubes, cooked just covered with the liquid for 15 minutes until soft, drained (reserving liquid - I hate to throw away cooking water if I can find some use for it) and mashed with a little of the liquid. Mixed these two together and let cool for 10 minutes. To this I added the shallot and seasonings as well as 1/2 C rolled oats (quick cooking but not instant) and 1 C Homemade WW breadcrumbs. Mixed well until combined - it was a little moist but not sticky. I used a 1/4 C measuring cup and scooped out 1/4 C fulls which made a nice patty shape, covered in breadcrumbs, flattened a little and baked on a tray lined with tinfoil for 30 min at 400F, turning them after 15 minutes. They didn't brown up or anything but were very good!!

A Toast!

To demolishing the toaster oven!

Ummm....so....it may be possible that I still can't make toast.

I went to a late concert Saturday night and knew I wanted to make a lot of things this weekend, so I decided to do some work before the show. The plan was to make some breadcrumbs and Pumpkin-Apple Butter (damn, do I ever love that butter. I think it was better last time I made it, though. I used apple cider and nutmeg this time. I also burnt it ever so slightly. Oops!

ANYWAY! While I was working on the butter, I loaded up the toaster oven with whole wheat bread. I then ignored the toaster oven, since it's supposed to ding and stop when it's done, right? I did check it once because it seemed like it was taking ages to get done, but the bread didn't look particularly dark. The sides of the toaster oven itself looked a little brown, though, and I was surprised I'd never noticed that before. I finished making the butter and went upstairs for a second. When I came down, there was smoke pouring out of our (now very brown) toaster oven, which contained several rectangular slices of charcoal. Obviously, the house stunk and needed a good airing (and it was FREEZING that night). I'm kind of concerned the smoke detector didn't go off, though.

Personally, I blame the toaster oven. I did the same thing the next day and had no trouble. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I Do Cool Shit With a Little Help From My Friends

This is not at all vegan-related, but I saw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at Studio B Wednesday night. "Satan Said Dance" was the second song they played, which gave my friends and I joy.

Anyway! It's been about a week since I last mentioned my dehydrator, so let's discuss that a bit more, shall we?

Since then, I put up another batch of cucumbers, left them on too long, then did a small batch of carrot and parsnip slices. The absolutely coolest thing of all is that my carrots and parsnips are now CRINKLE CUT because my friends bought me the coolest wavy chopper thing I've ever seen in my life (and an ass-kicking serrated peeler). Not only does it make my vegetables look all fancy, but the edge is really sharp. It was actually easier to cut the carrots and parsnips with the chopper than a real knife.



Just so you know, if you leave cucumbers dehydrating too long, they get really thin and taste funny. By funny, I mean borderline gross. Most were OK, but I almost spit a few out. Next time, I'll dry the cucumbers on the weekend so I can be around to observe them.





A few days ago, I actually read the little book that came with my dehydrator instead of skimming it and noticed something important that I hadn't read before: in order to properly dehydrate carrots and parsnips, you're supposed to steam them first. Oops. I'm not a raw foodist, so that's no BFD for me, but I wonder if they dry carrots and parsnips. If so, maybe they soak them in something instead of steaming before drying (I don't actually know if that'd help since it's, you know, drying).

This was an excellent opportunity for me to use the steamer basket I'd bought a couple of weeks ago, making this a two-new-tool night. I'd never used a steamer basket before, so I didn't really know how to use it and therefore got it all wrong. My first mistake was I thought the basket was supposed to sit in the mouth of the pot, not on the little legs (they seemed to short to me to hold enough water, since it evaporates during steaming). Since the basket obviously didn't just suspend itself in mid-air at the top of the pot, I improvised:



That, of course, lead to my second mistake: steaming the vegetables uncovered. This took eons and the larger pieces never really got tender. I waited until they got rubbery and threw them in the dehydrator for a little over 24 hours.

When I took them out, a few pieces were OK, but most were hard as rocks. However, even they weren't a total loss since I could just suck on them to soften them up, yielding long-term parsnippy goodness.

A friend and I stopped at The Brooklyn Kitchen on our way to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on Wednesday, and they explained what I was doing wrong with the steamer. Armed with that knowledge, I will go forth, steam and dehydrate more carrots and parsnips. Stay tuned to see who will reign supreme, in the me vs. parsnip dehydration event of the year.*






* I have no idea why I wrote that, but I laughed while reading it over, so I'm not deleting it!

Babys First Failure

I've finally done it. I took a perfectly good recipe and completely fucked it up.

Tuesday night, I attempted to make Vegan Matzo Balls for my family's Friday night soup.

As far as I know, I did everything according to the instructions. I did all the blending and pureeing in a blender. I did all the mixing with a silicon spatula. I covered my bowl with saran wrap and let it refrigerate for an hour. I put all the balls on a parchment-covered cutting board and dropped them in one by one using a slotted spoon (when doing the non-vegan balls, we just use our hands, not a blender, maybe a fork for the initial mixing, the batter just sits out at room temperature for twenty minutes to firm up and we drop the balls into the boiling water by hand as we make them). The only way I varied from the instructions was to make them a bit larger than written.

Unfortunately, the photos don't tell you where I goofed:



The whole ball-making process went fine. They even floated up to the top of the pot when I removed the lid, then sank again just like the VWAV said they would, which I thought was a good sign. Yet when it came time to take them out of the water, they were seriously mushy. About half were just sludge. This is especially bad since, as my grandmother would say, in my family "We like our balls big and hard" (to be 81 and have the sense of humor of a thirteen-year-old boy!).

I'm not giving up, though. According to the Internet, this recipe has worked for people other than Isa, so I will try again. I think I'll add a bit of extra matzo meal and leave the mix in the fridge overnight instead of for an hour, though.

Crabby Apple Puffs

This is another recipe of my own invention, made by messing with existing recipes that already worked for me (which doesn't actually require any skill or creativity and makes "recipe of my own invention" savage hyperbole, but it makes me feel like the White Knight in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There).

I call them Crabby Apple Puffs because I soaked the apples in lemon juice, making them quite sour, before pastrisizing them (yes, I do make up my own words often, thankyouverymuch). A lot of the lemon juice baked off, leaving some of them tasting like plain old apple puffs, but a few retained their lemony goodness and they were nice and sour.



When I accidentally used puff pastry instead of phyllo dough for my Halloween cupcakes, I also accidentally cut up far more than I needed. I thawed the extra strips out on Sunday and soaked them in a mixture of melted margarine and brown sugar, like the original cupcake recipe instructed.

The night before, I sliced up four Granny Smith apples and soaked them in about one half cup lemon juice with two teaspoons cinnamon mixed in, inspired by the raw apple pie I made a while ago.

The apples soaked overnight and the dough soaked long enough for me to finish with my zucchini and tomatoes. Then I took the apples, wrapped them in the dough, brushed the pastries with some of the leftover marinade from the apples and popped them in the oven at 350 degrees until they seemed done. The end!

Done was when I tried to put a fork in one of the pastries and everything went mush. I couldn't tell when the pastry had browned because it was covered with cinnamon. And it never got really crisp because of the margarine (which I'd totally skip next time). But the apples were really soft, so they had to get out of the oven.

I cooled them on a rack covered in paper towel to absorb most of the grease from the margarine and they got firmer and crisper as they cooled.

My family, several of my friends and I all ate them up the day they were baked. My mother, brother and I liked them a lot (we all love sour things) and no one threw up from them or anything, so I guess that's victory, right?

Unfortunately, I didn't pay close enough attention to the amounts I used of things or how long I kept them in the oven to write up a formal recipe, but there are loads of apple pastry recipes out there (e.g.: The Heart-Shaped Apple Galettes in Veganomicon), so I'm sure it's no great loss. I will, however, try to be more diligent while playing with my food in the future.

The filling:



Raw:



They look kind of like weird meat dumplings to me now. Ew.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the Office

Halloween (like most other holidays) has never been that big of a deal for me, but right now, I look at pretty much everything as an excuse to bake. My office had a small celebration and my friends had a gathering as well, so this was a two-dozen cupcake holiday.

I made one batch of Vampire Bites and one of Mummy Cakes. I saw recipes for these posted on Curious Cupcakes this summer and knew I just HAD to have them. Then, Vegan.Chicks.Rock. posted a veganized version of the Vampire Bites last week, saving me the trouble of sorting it all out myself. Win!

So in the end, all I needed was:

A double batch of VCTOTW's Golden Vanilla Cupcakes
A batch of VCTOTW's Old Fashioned Velvet Icing
A can of cherry pie filling
Some phyllo dough, margarine and brown sugar

Sounds easy enough, right? Ha!



I was so in the mood to make something that I actually prepared the icing a day in advance and stored it in an airtight container in my fridge just to have something to do on Monday night. I just couldn't stay out of the kitchen last week. Craziness, I tell you!

Vampire Bites: These came out pretty well and were really fun to make since they're kind of an "advanced" cupcake. Once the cupcakes cooled, I cut a cone out of the center of each, spooned in some cherry pie filling and put the top, flat part of the cone back on, so I had a bunch of closed, cherry-filled cupcakes. Of course, I didn't pay attention to which cones came out of which cupcakes, so none of them fit back on properly, but I think the discrepancy only caused a real problem a couple of times (problem = cherry mixing in with the icing, making the whole cake look like a bloody mess). Icing them was kind of tricky because of the wobbly tops, but I quickly discovered a messy yet practical solution: fingers. I think I've seen other recipes that call for cutting, filling, re-topping and icing cupcakes, so here are my personal steps for icing wobble-top cakes:

1. Spoon the icing onto the cupcake in your usual way.
2. Hold the cupcake in your non-writing hand, with one finger holding down the wobble top.
3. Spread the icing using a finger or two on your writing hand, turning the cake as necessary until your icing is relatively smooth.
4. Repeat as necessary for all cakes.
5. Lick your fingers clean.

DO NOT SWITCH THE ORDER OF STEPS FOUR AND FIVE!

Also, please do everyone a favor and wash after you lick.

After that, wiggling a toothpick around in the icing made the holes and I wiped a bit of cherry pie filling below each hole to look like the dripping puncture wounds left by a vampire on the prowl. Yum!

I cannot tell you how much cherry pie filling and icing I ate without the cake while preparing them. It's gross. After that, I thought the cupcakes would be too sweet for me to stomach, so I let all my coworkers and friends eat them first. Once they assured me they weren't disgustingly sweet, I ate the last one and loved it. It's a shame I'm the sort of person who won't make the same dish for the same holiday ever again if I'm celebrating it with the same people. I mean really. Who wants to be known as Vegan Vampire Cupcake Girl?

Mummy Cakes: These were far easier and plainer than the Vampire Bites. Once the Golden Vanilla Cupcakes were done baking, all I was supposed to do was cut some phyllo dough into strips, soak it in a marinade of 1/4 cup melted margarine and brown sugar, "wrap the strips around the top of the cupcakes, starting from the center and moving out to the sides and put them back into the oven for 5 to 10 minutes, until the filo strips are crisp and golden." No one but me could possibly fuck that up.

Apparently someone in my house (I'm not naming names) doesn't know the difference between puff pastry and phyllo dough. I was told there was phyllo dough in the freezer, found some dough with "P..." on the packaging, assumed it was phyllo and started cutting it up and soaking it. It wasn't until I was actually wrapping it around the cupcakes that I realized just how thick it was and looked at the package. Puff pastry. Great. And, of course, we didn't actually have any phyllo dough, so I just followed the instructions using the puff pastry instead.

Obviously, the cupcakes looked nothing like mummies. Some looked like roses, the rest looked like shit. The edges puffed up nicely, but I was afraid to keep the cupcakes in the oven too long, so the centers and other areas where the dough was really thick ended up nearly raw.

Personally, I liked them, raw dough and all. Maybe I'm weird. Nobody but my mother complained about them, so I guess they couldn't be that bad, but only eight of twelve were eaten (compared to eleven of twelve of the vampires) so maybe they were that bad. The raw dough peeled off the top of the cupcakes easily and I wouldn't have been at all offended if people did that if it allowed them to enjoy the cupcake below, but no one except my mother did. Also, I think the cupcakes turned out a bit more muffiny than usual because the margarine from the topping seeped in as they were rebaked. Still tasty, but muffiny.

(And yes, I did intentionally wait until after midnight to post this so it could count as Sunday's VeganMoFo post.)

Greenery

I'm starting this blog with entries about what led up to me wanting to keep it. This post is backdated to approximately the date it happened.

Once I got back on solid food, my plan was to cook a large amount of food every Sunday so I could eat it for lunch and dinner during the week. I decided to stick to raw and cooked vegetables and fruits I prepared myself for a while. I also wanted to try new vegetables I'd never really worked with (or even knew I'd eaten) before, so I made Mediterranean Swiss Chard and Artichokes in Tomato Sauce (second recipe).



Mediterranean Swiss Chard: This is so fast and easy it's almost silly. I didn't follow the recipe precisely. Instead, I used one enormous bunch of swiss chard, two cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice and not so virginal olive oil. I also let the chard sit in the dressing for ages because I just didn't feel like bringing two separate containers to work with me. Once I saw what boiled swiss chard looked (and smelled!) like, I didn't expect to like this, but did. It's probably not something I'd make again, but I liked it enough to eat all of it. Unfortunately, I ate it for dinner on my way home from work. Everyone in that train car must hate me. The smell of boiled chard + lemon + garlic isn't pretty.



Artichokes in Tomato Sauce: OMGYAY! This recipe is yay for so many reasons.

1. It tastes SO good.
2. It's ridiculously easy, once you know what you're doing.
3. It tastes SO GOOD.
4. It impresses people because fresh artichokes look so intimidating.

I generally assume everyone knows more about cooking than me, but I got a lot of blank stares when I told people I was making artichokes, so here's some of what I learned:

1. You can't eat over 80% of the artichoke.
2. Artichokes are pointy both inside and out, so be careful with them.
3. Be sure to check and clean your artichokes really thoroughly. One of mine had a worm in it. If you miss the worm, it's no longer vegan!
4. They have fur inside.
5. The have a choke (prickly) inside that needs to be removed before eating. So you neither eat the outside nor the center, but a layer of leaves in between.

The recipe said to "Clean the artichokes by removing the tough outer leaves". Once I ripped off the first few layers of leaves, they started to feel softer to me, so I left them on and proceeded to follow the instructions (with some exceptions I'll detail below). I made the sauce, added the artichokes and knew just from looking at it that I'd done something very wrong. The artichokes took up way too much space and were never going to get cooked. If I didn't do something, I'd end up with a pot full of raw artichokes, some of which happened to be covered by burnt tomatoes. I started pulling the artichoke wedges out of the pot one by one, yanking off the outer leaves until I was just left with the heart and throwing them back in the pot. This worked fine for the top layer of artichokes, but as I worked my way down, they got hotter and had actually started to cook, so I had to fish them out with a spatula and run them under cold water before I could handle them. Even after all that, I had to be careful when I ate because I missed some of the tough leaves. Adventure!

As mentioned previously, I made a few small changes to the recipe:

1. I used two small onions instead of one medium.
2. Since I was packing this up to take to work for lunch, there wasn't really any place to garnish it with the chopped parsley. Instead, when it was all done cooking but still slightly warm, I folded the parsley into the dish itself so I'd have some in each serving.
3. I used four cloves of garlic (two were really tiny)
4. I didn't want to use anything with preservatives in it, so I chopped 28 ounces of tomatoes (2 1/4 BIG tomatoes) myself instead of using a can.

Going fishing through a simmering pot might seem like too much effort just for food, but this is so tasty it's worth it. I will definitely make it again, now that I know what I'm doing. Chopping the tomatoes myself definitely gave the dish a fresher, brighter flavor than it would have had if I'd used the can, so I think I'm going to use fresh whenever I make this. Not only that, but the sauce is so quick and easy to make, I think it's just become a staple for whenever I want tomato sauce.





Sexy, steamy artichokes:



Step by step artichoke prep (Ha! A rhyme!):

Look! An artichoke!



O NOES! It's been hobbled!



Off with its head (or top third).



Inside. Do not eat the green. Or the purple. Or the fuzzy white stuff beneath the purple. And the purple may look smooth and soft, but there IS stuff in there that will stab you so don't say you haven't been warned! Beware the savage artichoke!



With fur on the left (do not eat). Shaved on the right (tasty goodness...once you get rid of the rest of the green leaves).

The Joy of Not Cooking

I'm starting this blog with entries about what led up to me wanting to keep it. This post is backdated to approximately the date it happened.

The two fabulous people my friends and I threw that shower for got married. It was lovely and I had no idea what to give them. I wanted it to be something special that showed I truly care. Something that was both very "them" and very "me", not just another set of cutlery.

Neither of them are vegetarians or vegans, but they recently decided to explore the raw food lifestyle. They left for their honeymoon right after the wedding and I was pretty sure that after being abroad for two weeks, the last thing they'd want to do when they got home would be prepare food. The only thing that might have sucked as much would be going out to eat again. So I decided to make a raw vegan dinner and some snacks, load it all up in a superhero cooler and leave it on their doorstep for when they got home.

I wasn't sure what to make, but Italian seemed like a pretty safe bet (who doesn't love Italian?), so I ended up with Dole Italian Salad with Pine Nut Basil Dressing (scroll down to last recipe), Italian Wild Rice Pilaf, and Raw Lasagna for dinner, Raw Apple Pie for dessert and Buckwheat Crackers with Veggie Mac Cheese Spread (second recipe) and freshly dried fruits and vegetables to snack on.



Most of what I made had at least one element that needed to be soaked in advance. Some for one half hour, some for five days. I started dehydrating the fruits and vegetables about a week before they needed to be ready so I could make enough. My family absolutely loved having the dehydrator and soak bowls sitting around for a week...only not really. Despite all the advance prep, I ended up staying up all night making the food to take them (I blame my sleeplessness for forgetting to photograph some of the food). I know that sounds awful, but it was actually fun; the time flew by, but I certainly felt it at work after dropping off the cooler! And, of course, the irony was I still wasn't eating and had to go by scent to decide whether or not it seemed palatable enough to give people.

Basil Pine Nut Dressing: Could not have been easier to make, smelled fabulous (though I have a weakness for basil) and made quite a bit. It made enough to fill the dressing bottle I bought them and leave some over for my family to try. It's very similar to pesto sauce (which I love), but smoother and milder. It also stores well. Definitely something I'd make again.

Italian Wild Rice Pilaf: The rice had to soak for five days to soften and the water had to be changed twice per day, which isn't that big of a deal, but between that and making the lemonade for the Master Cleanse, I felt like I was moving in to the kitchen. I didn't use the flax oil, but did everything else according to the recipe. Again, I don't know how it tasted, but it looked beautiful. I loved the colors and hope to make it again for myself.





Raw Lasagna: The recipe says it makes 1-2 servings of lasagna and four of marinara sauce, but that's nonsense. I used 3/4 zucchini instead of 1/2, all the marinara and the whole avocado and still kind of felt like I was skimping, but I didn't have enough ingredients (or time) to make more. Beyond that, I really don't think I could have messed it up, aside from not being very good at the thin slices yet. I'm working on it!

Raw Apple Pie: This was significant because I goofed and I improvised, but one was not relevant to the other. I remembered to soak the (poorly sliced) apples in the lemon juice/cinnamon solution, adding it to the growing collection on the soak table, but didn't realize I was supposed to make and refrigerate the crust the night before too. Not only did I make it that night, but it was also one of the last things I made. I made it, filled it and only got to refrigerate it for a couple of hours before moving it to the cooler. However, as far as I know, that was all right. No one has told me the pie fell apart or anything. My big improvisation was adding some of the golden raisins I had left over from the stew to the pie. I saved the best apple slices for the top and arranged them as a pretty feeble flower, then drizzled the excess lemon juice/cinnamon sauce over them. The pie still looked kind of plain so I tossed some raisins around it and arranged a few in the center of the "flower". I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I like the whole apple/cinnamon/raisin combination. Don't you?





Buckwheat Crackers: This was another recipe that required two days of soaking, for the buckwheat groats. Then the crackers themselves spent about a day in the dehydrator. I went according to the recipe, but I omitted the carrot pulp. The recipe says to coat the dehydrator tray with a small amount of olive oil, but the instructions for my dehydrator specifically say not to, so I didn't. I regret that now. The crackers stuck both when I tried to flip them and when they were done, so they came out in all sorts of crazy shapes. I hope they tasted better than they looked. The batter was about the consistency of babaganoush and had a lovely, garlic scent that made me want to dive right into it without even drying it out. I definitely want to make these again, but I think I'll double the recipe: I'll dehydrate half on oiled trays and use the other half as a dip with carrots (it'd be way to carb-heavy to put in pita like real babaganoush).





Veggie Mac Cheese Spread: I did everything according to the recipe, using sea salt instead of vinegar. It was more nights blending and draining, but well worth it. I used two pint containers of macadamia nuts and it made enough cheese to give my friends a container of it and keep a container for my family, who LOVED it. It has a nice bite to it from the garlic and onions without being too overpowering. My other family members are all omnis, so they're kind of freaked out by the idea of cheese made out of nuts, but they adore the cheese. My mother (who initially didn't even want to taste it) craves it. Victory for the veggies!





Dried Fruits and Vegetables: I included sweet potatoes, carrots, green beans, pluots, celery, apples, pears, peaches and kiwis. I tried skinning the kiwis before drying them, but the ones I bought were stubborn, so I decided to wait until after they were dehydrated, hoping the fruit would pull away from the skin as it shrank. No such luck. The skin ended up totally stuck to the fruit, so I gave it to them with the skin on. I wonder how that turned out for them.



Overall, it was quite a bit of work, but very much worth it. The bride called me when they got home and she seemed very excited because they hadn't eaten and neither of them wanted to cook. The crackers, rice and pie were all successes but eating lasagna cold seemed kind of weird. I can't say I blame them.

Stew Take Two

I'm starting this blog with entries about what led up to me wanting to keep it. This post is backdated to approximately the date it happened.

I had some time off again the week after I made the knishes and decided to cook some more for my family even though I still wasn't eating. I gave the Byzantine Vegetable Stew another shot and made my first BIG cooking mistake.

The recipe states:

"Place all of the ingredients in the casserole dish, cover, and cook in microwave oven on "high" for about 1 hour, mixing well every 20 minutes…If you don't have a microwave oven, and since the stew is very thick, it would be best to cook it in a regular oven at 350 degree F. Even in a conventional oven, it would be best to mix the stew about every 20 minutes as described above. It might be necessary to add a little more water with regular oven cooking so that the stew doesn't dry out."

I wasn't able to use the microwave that day, so I put it in the oven. I didn't think about what I was doing, I just followed the instructions, so it didn't occur to me that there may be differences between the microwave and the oven in addition to moisture. Like, you know, time. SIX HOURS after I'd put the stew in the oven, the vegetables still weren't completely soft and my family had already given up on eating it, had leftovers and went to bed. Suck.

That said, I did get it done sooner or later and my family loved it the next day. So it's still a really good recipe, just be prepared to use the microwave or clear your calendar for the entire day (since you need to mix every twenty minutes).