North Coast Cookery

Notes--Cookery Roundup.

2011-03-12T16:29:00.000-08:00

1: Beans for quick! a

So, I make a lot of beans. And here, in far too close detail, is one easy favorite (on injera no less). Black Eyed Peas + Water in Pot + Spices (and when it's going on injera I usually use one of the Ethiopian Berbere blends I got from Auntie Arwen) + Olive Oil + Sauteed Onion. Cook to a slightly mushy consistency.

2: Beans for Quick! b

No pictures yet, just some notes in case this works well. I love sausage. I bought several sausage spice blends from Penzey's, & first try, of course, was the ol' "homaid" seitan sausage, which, as usual, came out tasting amazingly not like sausage. So, two experiments underway: beans spiced appropriately & with a little vegetable. Blend 1: kidney beans, onion, jalapeno, breakfast sausage mix. Blend 2: Navy beans, potatoes, and either bratwurst or Italian, probably Italian. The Italian is a slightly sweeter blend, and so it it will likely be a better match. I experiment with it, choice depending upon whether I roast or boil the potatoes. Roasted taters might be nicer with a "sausage forte" rather than a "sausage douce" blend (a la' poudre forte versus poudre douce. I'm so medieval).

3: Duck eggs!

There we go. Hard boiled, fresh, and boiled and dyed duck eggs. At last, a source. Whether they are regularly there or not I can not say, but given that it's an oriental market, I expect there's a good chance that they're there regularly. They'll stay a treat, though. 79¢ for one egg rather means that I won't be buying them often. I had one fr breakfast with black beans and tortillas the next day, though, how could I not? However the best bit of cookery so far was this lacto-ovo vegetarian medieval nom nom:

Leek & Mushroom Pie. Nom. Nom. Nom. I have the research and stuff gathered for it, but I just haven't felt like writing it up. It's something I have actually made a lot. I just have never presented it as something that I would have other cooks prep up with some assurance that it's SCA appropriate.

I need to get to it soon, though. Then I won't have it on my to-do list.

4: Why Pictures are so often fail for me:

This was a delicious lunch one day in January. I took a picture so that I'd write it down and share, because, again, it was simple and yum. The roasted veggies were delightful and tend to be the same trick used over and over: veggies, olive oil, spice mix. I can't recall which mix I used here, but the nigella seed is pretty obvious, so it was one of only two blends in my spice box. I remember it was okay, but not as good on roasted veggies as other blends. What I really wanted to recall was the fact that I found that broccoli stalks roast well. Peel the woodiest bits off the stalk with a peeler, chunk 'em up the same way you might chunk a carrot, and go forth and roast.

The moment of fail? The quinoa. I can't recall how I treated it. And it was good. Darn. This happens to me all the time. I'm just not diligent about keeping my cookery notes. ::sigh::

Injera.... of the wheat-based, North American sort.

2010-10-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

I have a great love for sourdough; it's a fabulous flavor addition that also keeps me from having to buy bread yeast. For years, I have been working at making various kinds of pan-baked flat breads from my sourdough, and would eventually come up with a bunch of varieties that I like. Most Americans think about the sort of thing you can get at IHOP as the only sort of pancakes, but actually, there are lots of different kinds of pancakes, as evidenced by this article in Wikipedia.

Injera is sometimes described as a pancake, sometimes as a flat bread, but whatever you call it, it is a quintessential element of Ethiopian cuisine, and I love it. As I have to regularly feed and eat my sourdough, I decided that an injera (of a sort) was an excellent project.

It took me a number of years to get a reliable rate of return on my experiments. This is not a perfect injera, as it is wheat based and does use a little more leavening than just the yeast in the sourdough, but the results of just sourdough, white flour, and water are too gummy to work well. This method will, however, produce a yummy injera that will work under any stew, or wat, or, really, whatever you might usually eat with bread to soak up sauces in any style of cuisine. Actual working time is not that long, but it is a process, so you'll have to plan for it.

Injera is a process, not a recipe!

1. Feed your sourdough starter the night before. I have a well established sourdough starter that I keep in the refrigerator. Take it out, pour off the liquid that has accumulated at the top (this is the alcohol that the fermenting sourdough has produced. You can stir it back in, but it will make a very sharp flavor that many people don't like. It will also make your starter more liquidy, and will require you to adjust the amount of liquid you add later), and scrape the rest into a plastic, ceramic, or glass bowl with plenty of room. Feed the starter one cup of flour and one cup of warm (but not too hot) water. Stir it up with a non-metal utensil*. Don't worry about lumps, just get it all moist. The bacteria and yeast in the sourdough starter will take care of the lumps. Cover the bowl, set it aside, and go to bed.

The amount of activity you get in your sourdough will relate to the temperature in your kitchen. Heat directly affects how fast the sourdough will rise and fall, with warmer kitchens producing faster rises, but 7-8 hours is usually enough in most North American kitchens to get it into the useful cycle without getting it past the useful stage (where you start producing significant amounts of alcohol).

In the morning, return 1 cup of the starter to a jar and place back into the fridge. The remainder in the bowl is what you have to work with for the injera.

If you don't have an established sourdough starter, you can get one either by following these classic instructions, or by purchasing one of the commercially available starters. Or you can get one from a friend. :-)

2. Measure out your remaining sourdough. I usually end up with between 1 to 1.5 cups. From this point, you must recognize that you are working with an ingredient that will never be as predictable as purchased yeast and be prepared for some flexibility.

3. Gather the things you need: a pan for baking, a liquid, and a baking mix. I have a dedicated, round, non-stick, flat griddle/pancake pan. A round frying pan of any sort will work, but this really works best with some kind of griddle pan, preferably something that won't require you to add a "lubricating" ingredient, like butter or oil.

As for liquid: I use almond milk, as this adds more flavor, more body, and more nutrition than water. Soy milk should work, but I haven't tried it. And for the baking mix: I use Bisquick's Heart Healthy mix, as it lacks milk and egg. There is some soy lecithin in it, but as of this time, it hasn't been a problem for me. If it ever gets to the point where it is, I'll just have to mix my own baking mix. There are plenty of instructions for a homemade baking mix online, so I won't go there now.

4. Add the milk and baking mix to the sourdough in the ratio 1 part sourdough to 1.5 parts milk, 1.5 parts baking mix. Let it rest for 15-30 minutes, to allow the sourdough to begin rising.

5. Heat your pan. Just like regular pancakes, test for heat by shaking a few drops of water on the griddle; they should roll about and jump and dance. Reduce heat slightly if needed--if you are the sort, like me, who heats on high, you'll need to cut that back when actually cooking the pancake. Medium to high-medium should do you for the baking of the injera. When the pan is heated, pour a small amount of the batter on to the hot pan and cook (as described below, beginning with #6).

This is where you must remind yourself that you are working with what is an ever-changing ingredient. What will work perfectly on day 1 will not work perfectly on day 2. The heat in your kitchen, the heat in your pan, the time you let the sourdough rise over night, the time you let the mix rise, et cetera, are a delicate balancing act.

When you finish cooking that test injera, eat it as soon as it is cool enough to eat. You are looking for it to be too thick or too gummy. "Gummy" can't really be described well, but if you ever ate a gumdrop, you know it. This method of making injera should produce, when right off the griddle, a very thin and flexible flat bread with a slightly gummy texture, but that texture should be something that you would eat even if a little gummy--you know, that "It's not perfect, but it's tasty and I can manage" sort of moment. If it's too thick--which is usually evident in the pour--add a little more liquid. If it's too gummy, add a little more baking mix and a little more liquid, and set aside another 10 minutes or so. Keep making little text injera until you are either at the point where you are satisfied with the texture, or you have invested as much of the ingredients as you are willing to invest and are accepting of the fact that this will not be a perfect batch (don't worry, though, you can still eat them, more on that later). Remember, though, the more baking mix and almond milk you add, the less intense the sourdough flavor will be.

6. Pour enough batter on the griddle to make a single, thin (about 1/8 inch) injera. Usually, your batter will land in the center and you will swirl it around to make a thin, even layer. Watch for the injera to start cooking and bubbling even as you swirl it around the pan; that's a good sign. Your pan is hot without being too hot and your batter is probably of a good consistency.

7. Let the miricle of heat, steam, and leavening do its magic. You will watch the injera carefully--small bubbles will appear and pop all over the surface. Let it all cook merrily until the top of the injera is dry. You'll recognize it. The above picture is of a dry injera. Spots that were still wet, still needing to cook, would appear brighter. It doesn't actually take very long to get to this stage.

This is a closeup of the surface, with the contrast slightly enhanced, to show you what the surface will look like. The tiny bubbles, like this, are perfect. Larger bubbles are not a problem, but the more little bubbles you have the spongier the texture will be at the end. If you have larger bubbles, try stirring down the batter to reduce the amount of air in the mixture (remember, the yeast is not the only leavening agent at work here, so it's not a tragedy if you stir it down a little). If that doesn't work, make the batter a little thinner with a little more liquid.

8. Flip the injera. Traditional injera is finished at this point, but this recipe is better with a little heat applied to both sides.

You can see the path the batter took when I swirled it in the pan along the pattern in the injera. I usually leave it flipped just long enough to let steam start penetrating this side for 5-10 seconds. Not long, just long enough to let steam start working merrily. (Note that this is the point at which you eat your test injeras, otherwise, proceed)

9. Flip the injera again and move it to a covered dish. I usually place it on a ceramic plate, fold it in half (so that the brown side is out)and cover the plate with a glass frying pan lid. Why? Because you are going to let the residual heat and steam finish cooking the injera--that's what will move the texture from slightly gummy to spongy.

Stack the cooked injera into the covered dish as you cook them. When the last one is done, set them aside and let them completely cook to room temperature. You might want to remove the lid from the dish and shake off the condensation once while it's cooling, but if you forget, it's usually no big deal. Cook up a stew and have a delish dinner.

If your Injera isn't perfect

So you let steam get you to the end and you can't stop yourself from a nibble and decide that, well, this batch came out differently than you hoped. All is not lost, so don't put that stack of food that you spent money and time to make into the garbage yet.

First, cook up the stew you were going to make and try it anyway. Very often, what doesn't work plain will be just fine once it absorbs the sauces from the stew. You can also reheat this on the griddle, and that extra bit of heat will sometimes help.

If that doesn't fix it (and it's rare for me that thiese simple steps won't rescue an imperfect batch) then you can...

toast them in the oven and eat with sugar, butter, jam, syrup, et cetera.
Slice into strips and marinate with a sauce for a very soft noodle.
cut up and fry with za'atar and olive oil, or some other favorite thing, like pesto or garlic or whatever.

Only my first batches, before I stopped stirring the two-week old hootch back into the sourdough or significantly under used baking mix, were ever so awful that I couldn't finish eating what I'd made. I find this to be usable all the time, these days.

Let me know how it goes!

Note:
Sourdough should not be mixed with or rested in metal utensils--the actions of the yeast and bacteria symbosis can pick up flavors from the metal.

Roasted Cauliflower. And Leftovers.

2010-09-29T16:44:00.000-07:00

Yah, I eat a lot of earth-toned food. Yes, yes I do. And I never think about a photo until its impossible to get a good one.

Be that as it may, this piece of a picture features a couple of things I do all the time (1. make something via the fried rice engine, this time, using carrots, onions, and mushrooms and 2. make lentils) and one new thing. It's the new thing I want to mention.

I tried roasted cauliflower. It was wonderful. I did look over multiple recipes, as there are tons of them, and decided that this one was the starter recipe for me.

Except I subbed nootch for Parmesan cheese. And I left off the vinegar. It's all good and stuff, but I was just wanting the veggie and the spices. My modification:

* 8 cups 1-inch-thick slices cauliflower florets
* 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 tablespoon fresh marjoram
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* Freshly ground pepper to taste
* 1 t nutritional yeast
* 1 t garlic

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 450°F.
2. Toss cauliflower, oil, spices in a preheated, great big, cast iron frying pan. [Don't burn yourself!] Spread on a across pan and roast until starting to soften and brown on the bottom, check and stir every 15 minutes until done.

Yum. This was certainly Cauliflower FTW! and I expect the regular recipe is quite nice, too, but I wasn't interested in missing the flavor of the spices by tossing with my exceedingly expensive and super flavorful 18-yr-old Balsamic.

Product Review: Living Harvest Hemp Frozen Desert

2010-09-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

People who know me know I love Living Harvest's tempt hemp milk. It's more expensive than my usual almond milk, and it's less frequently available (when I finally ran out of my stock pile, I went to my right well beloved Outpost and hunted the aisles, only to learn that they only carry it when the state-wide, loosely associated food cooperative system has it on sale. Because they have to, then.)

So I get it once in a while, and I stock pile it, and have it as a treat.

I found another treat:

Oh, my goodness.

I tried the mint and the coffee biscotti. This was completely delicious, and even the Baby K and the Baby Ry loved it: high praise indeed. I'm glad to have found it, as it makes a wider range of non-dairy deserts available to us. It is denser that the Luna & Larry's coconut frozen desert, which is nice, but each desert has its own merits, so it is about on par for taste and mouth-feel. Yum.

Beer and Tsardust

2010-07-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

or, The Fried Rice Engine.

... what was I wanting to share about beer? I forgot. Other than I collected a multiple number of beer based recipes that I want to try, of course.

Anyway, I took a run out to Penzy's. Very soon I'll be off to Pennsic, and so I don't want to invest in too much as far as cooking spices go (saving my money for Auntie Arwen), but I did feel the need for smoked paprika, based on one of the beer recipes I've got hanging around. While there, I found a spice blend with the enchanting name of Tsardust memories. The ingredient list read like a typical period receipt (salt, garlic, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, marjoram--so, salt, garlic, marjoram, and poudre forte, all found in medieval European cooking) and so I had to bring a jar of it home with me.

This is what I did with it, that first try, and I quite enjoyed it. I do tend to throw vegetables into leftover rice for a quick meal--really, really often, as it happens. Like any bit of cooking that's really more a process than a measured out recipe, it's a little different every time, and, frequently, once the brassica family gets involved, so does some sort of oriental sauce--schezuan, usually, just a little something drizzled over the stir fry.

The usual sauce mix for it involves:

1 T nutritional yeast
1 T Maggi seasoning (or soy or worchestershire--vegan or regular)*
1-3 T olive oil

Into this goes an onion (and thence, sauteed), the rice, and whatever vegetables I decide will complete my meal today. Today, I tossed in a couple teaspoons of the Tsardust memories. It was nice! Nice enough for me to write it down to make sure I try it again.... and can find what I did when I am ready to try.

Many a tasty dish is lost to me because I forgot to write it down.

Roasted Eggplant

2010-06-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

Briefly, a note about a portion of a recipe that worked well:

I ran across several recipes I would like to try on EatingWell.com, and I decided to try this one: Spiced Eggplant-Lentil Salad. Unfortunately, it depends largely on a fruit that I pretty much hate: mango. Still, it seemed easy enough to just leave the mangos off and go from there.

Unfortunately, the lentils got cooked way past the "individual lentils" stage, and so that got carried on into the usual lentil stew I make myself. Good thing I like them that way!

What I did get to try was the roasted eggplant bit:

# 4 tablespoons peanut oil or olive oil, divided
# 2 teaspoons chili powder
# 2 teaspoons curry powder
# 2 medium eggplants (3/4 pound each), trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes

# Preheat oven to 500°F.
# Combine 1 tablespoon oil with 2 teaspoons each chili powder and curry powder in a large bowl. Add eggplant and toss well. Spread the eggplant on a large, rimmed baking sheet. Roast, stirring once halfway through, until tender, about 15 minutes.

Unfortunately, my oven takes far longer than 15 minutes to roast eggplant cubes to what I consider done, so in future, I'm going to have to remember to throw some potatoes and other vegetables in there, as well. It's a shame to waste all that fuel on a couple of eggplants.

The eggplants were very good, though, and I think I would like this even better if I subbed out the spices listed here and subbed in some of my many, many spice blends.

ETA, much time later: I tried the above with Auntie Arwen's "Sheik of the Desert Ras el Hanout" blend instead of the listed spices. OMG. So good. Must remember that.

Notes for ROUS pie, first, easily supportable version.

2010-04-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

These are just some links I want to save, some quick notes on the whole ROUS pie thing; it works kind of in conjunction with having finally made the Sage Onion Fava concoction to my satisfaction and, while looking for the recipes that were going to support it as a Reasonable Substitution For Vegans Seeking Nosh for SCA Events, got reminded of the ROUS Pie Project.

Because I found a receipt that makes me want to laugh: "If you want to make pies that have the flavor of cheese." Circa 1300 France, the very basic steps are thus: grind roe and bread with almond milk, and put it in your pies to give the flavor of cheese.

I've been working the geeze gravy thing for a while, and haven't yet come up with anything that is significantly better than any other nootch fake cheese sauce recipe online, although I'll eventually get around to sharing them here, if only to ensure that I always have access to them. And, of course, every Lent, folks in the Middle Ages would become experts at substituting out all animal products aside from sea creatures. But it makes me laugh to find this recipe--apparently, I'm not the only one ever had this issue.

Oysters in Gravy is popular across centuries and cuisines, and, if you are willing to use the word unguent as a loose synonym for gravy, wipes out 2 of the 4 letters--the other 2 then become easy, using the "For to make fysche tartes owt of Lent" (here) from form of curry: Rice and Spices. It's a simple as pie redaction/recipe bash/compatible cookery bit. I still want to do it as an Oyster/Eeel/Shrimp/"Rarebit" pie, but I want to see what I can do with the limits imposed by these two recipes, as well.

One of the things that's kind of a kick about the medieval cookery database is that it's done by hand, so you never can be sure that you've found everything you mean to find. It pops you up a lot of treasures when you don't expect it, but one of the reasons I had to save the links is so that I can go back and print off a hard copy of the recipe sometime in the next few days. I have found, much to my chagrin, that I sometimes need months to again find a recipe in the data base if I wasn't paying attention to the keywords I used to find it the first time.

Product Review: So Delicious Coconut Yogurt and Milk/Beverage

2010-04-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

I miss yogurt so much. There are plenty of soy-based substitute products, and rice based substitute products, but, of course, what I have been looking for is an almond based substitute. And, when I was dragging myself around Outpost the other day, not only did I find the Coconut Bliss, I also found this:

This product is not as new to the market as I thought, but it's certainly new to me. And it was good. I tried several flavors, the sharp, berry-based flavors I tend to prefer. The texture was smooth, thick, and the sweet of it is acceptable, although maybe a little more than I'd like.

However, its cost makes it something that I do not expect to eat regularly. That is a problem. Given that it's price puts it in the "treat" range, and regular yougurt is cheaper, I'm not sure I am going to be buying this often.

Also tried, by this same company: So Delicious Coconut Milk. It's not bad, but it was thin, and had a sharp taste to it; I don't see myself switching to this from almond milk. I didn't care for it on my cereal and it didn't cook as well as almond milk in any form--cold case, UHT packaged--or easily, locally available brands--Blue Diamond, Silk. It also is not as lovely as Living Harvest's Hemp Milk, which is only occasionally locally available. It was, however, much better than any rice milk I have tried. It is also far more reasonably priced than the coconut yogurt, so price was not an issue here.

FWIW, my preference is for Blue Diamond Almond Milk. You may have noticed. The coconut beverage will not be replacing, or even supplementing, it. However, if my only choices are the So Delicious or Rice Dream, it's So Delicious for the win.

I'm going to have to get to work on a recipe for almond based yogurt. Just as other bright people came up with a coconut milk creamy desert, surely someone else out there has already tried.

Product Review: Coconut Bliss

2010-04-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

I totally frakkin' love ice cream and frozen custard. I have not tried the soy frozen deserts because, well, they're unfermented soy, and one single go round with rice-based cheese was enough to make me scream yuck and swear off rice-based "dairy" forever and ever amen. There are some frozen deserts that I have once in a while--fruit juice bars, some brands of gelato--but nothing quite takes the place of something creamy.

After a while, it seemed to me that making my own with a pudding recipe and coconut milk would be a quick fix. And then I found this recipe, proving yet again that great ideas never occur in a vacuum, and even better, she figured out the steps, saving me the trouble of doing so myself.

Well, today I took a quick trip to my favorite local grocery, my well beloved Outpost Coop. I just wanted a bundle of vegetables for supper, but I was so hungry! Never a good idea to shop when hungry. But I'm not sorry I wandered around, because, first, I didn't spend st00pid amounts of money, and second, I found this:

Pricey, of course. But less expensive than the Turtle Mountain version. And it has a reference to the moon! And neato graphics! Whee, such decision making! I bought the Chocolate Hazelnut flavor, figuring that if the coconut flavor was noticeable, it would work well. And I totally love chocolate with hazelnuts.

And I have to say, it's nice. It doesn't have the same sort of body that ice cream has, but it is creamy and delicious. And yes, my first impression was that of chocolate coconut with some crunchy nuts. The texture is pretty light, but there is plenty of coconut fat in it, and that's completely what makes it a win as a frozen, creamy dessert. I'd like to try a few other flavors, too. At some point, I'll want to make my own, but this will be quite nice for my replacement frozen dairy craving until that point in time. Might even try it to flavor coffee. That might be a win, too. Yay, win!

Some simple cookery notes, because it's only simple cookery going on right now.

2010-01-31T11:42:00.000-08:00

I've been hurt since late December or so, and it waxes and wanes in terms of the injury's ability to interfere with what I am doing, and right now, it's a great big wax--I'm hobbled right now, hardly moving. Some notes based on things I've started but have not been able to follow on through as much as I have wanted.

Lima Bean Spread: I love lima beans, frozen, but have noticed that the big lima beans that come dried are a different beast all together. I don't really like them as entities that one can cook up for a larger dish, like a lima bean stew or something. What I have noticed: they cook from dried to mush pretty quickly, and so with the addition of just enough flavoring to mask the faint hint of lima bean, you can make a pretty decent protein spread for a sandwich. It's not as good as hummus, of course, but then, chick peas have a nice flavor that works with vegetables and breads and whatever else. The Lima Bean spread, however, isn't lima bean-ish enough to be really distinctly delish for lima bean lovers, but sufficiently lima-beanish to make it less than invisible, like a sandwich spread based on white beans. My fist solution: a couple shakes of liquid smoke, which worked very nicely. I will be playing with that, because it was nice just served on flat-breads, but it needs a little more to really make it something I am going to be handing around as a recipe. Dried lima beans cooked to mush and a little smoke flavor certainly produces an acceptable spread, but my suspicion is that it can be something more without needing to go quite as complex as hummus-from-dried-chick-peas.

Garlicking Up Sauces: In this old Ars Gratia Artis post, I mentioned my tendency to buy expensive Italian sauces (because it is the expensive ones that have sugar instead of corn syrup, olive or canola oil instead of soy bean oil) and then, after a few bites, garlic it up to the point that any crap sauce would do. Well, I'm running a little low on fundage right now, so I thought, well, maybe I'd try me a can of Hunts spaghetti sauce. At 89¢, it seemed like it might be worth trying despite some of the low quality ingredients--I shouldn't have the soy, true, but if I could get a decent taste out of it, it might not be too bad to use once in a while to make my moola stretch, and I have a very large amount of fresh garlic to use up.

Yeah. It was a waste of good garlic cloves. I pulled out the powder immediately, I could not get that stuff good with anything less than plenty of powder and heaping spoonfuls of giardiana. It's too sweet. Whether one calls that as a WIN or a FAIL kind of depends--if I just need a reasonable sauce to overwhelm with powerful flavors, then... well, it works, but I may as well just use some tomato paste and avoid the soy and the corn syrup.

I dunno. I read the ingredient lists on so many foods, and I'm thinking to myself that it's not really a wonder that so may people are not healthy. It's probable that we will all use *some* processed foods; it's hard to completely avoid it *all* and we'll just have to chant the mantra "everything in moderation." However, it's really easy to go to a grocery story and buy food enough for a month and come out with meals that are all technically appropriate for health according to the "food pyramid" and still have nothing but good-tasting death in your cupboard--which sort of rolls me along to the next small bit.

Real Pancakes from Scratch: Baby K loves pancakes, and wanted some for breakfast. Having none of his favorite pancake mix in the house (whatever that mix might be), I made them from scratch, via the recipe for griddle cakes in the 1975 edition of Joy of Cooking. Things I noted: it's better with a smidge of vanilla added and using 2 eggs. It needs more milk than the recipe calls for. I need to stop putting cooking spray/butter/margerine on the pancake pan I have, as this burns quickly and makes the pancakes look burnt when they are not. But what took me by surprise was the realization that for him, the idea of cooking pancakes from a recipe in a book was worrisome. He knew what he was going to get from a box, and he knew that there are some kinds of pancake mixes that he does not like. But the idea that someone might make them without depending on the "magic" of a boxed mix was weird enough that he wondered if it was going to be something edible. His voice was full of joy and delight when he sang out that they were wonderful and gobbled them up, but his voise also had that tone of relief that indicated he had expected otherwise.

Huh. We never had pancakes much when I was a kid, although I was certainly aware of pancake mixes. But it never occurred to me that cooking them from scratch had become such a rarity in this culture that simply by following a recipe from the 1975 edition of a popular cookbook I was engaged in a resurrected recipe. I knew how to make pancakes from scratch, I just didn't bother. That's true of a lot of people. However, sometime between now and then, that's become more and more rare, to the point that I don't think I know anyone who *does* make them from scratch unless, like me, they have some reason for avoiding particular ingrediants in mixes (generally powdered milk, soy, and eggs), or they want something you can't get in a box (sourdough). It was a weird, weird moment. Pancakes are so simple, after all.

Vegetable Bowls I want to Remember: No pictures here, either, just a bit of recollection. 1: I often stirfry veggies as a simple meal, something I have been doing a lot of these past injured weeks. Two things I noticed: all that peanut oil that I have accumulated from pouring it off of the natural peanut butter I buy (rather than mixing it in) mnakes a very nice stir fry oil when serving the veggies over rice--I've been using olive for so long that I had forgotten about the nice qualities of peanut for anything other than the neat trick of making a chocolate cake taste like a chocolate-peanut butter cake by simply substituting the peanut oil for the "vegetable oil." And 2: I used to eat a lot of somen noodles, but had gotten away from that while with Michael. He hears somen, he thinks ramen, and that's the end of it. But I recalled my love for these, and for soba, and went and got some recently. I used to usually eat this with just some plain mixed vegetables mixed in, but the other day I tried stir-fried mushrooms, onions, garlic, eggplant, and seaseme seeds. A few days latter, I went with green beans, onions, garlic, and I liked that, too, although it takes a much larger amount of green beans:noodle ratio to make me happy than it takes mixed veggie:noodle ratio to make me happy. Not sure what's up with that, but I have plenty of time to try it all out.

Short note to myself: More on Fava Beans and Grit brand gravy.

2010-01-15T21:08:00.000-08:00

So. Fava beans have to be soaked for a couple of days to really get them ready for cooking. I finally cooked some up with the skins on. 2 days soaking, long enough for them to get nice and plump and have just the hint of the little white sprout break through the brown skin. Into the pressure cooker with a little salt and a smidge of oil, and they were cooked to bursting. I was pleased that they tasted far better cooked this way than going through the misery of peeling the skins. It's still a process to prep them--but soaking them for 48 hours is a darn sight easier than soaking them for 48 hours and then needing three days to peel them.

What I was really happy about, though, was their compatibility with another gravy recipe from the Grit. I stumbled on the recipe a few days ago, and thought to try it as it was a little less fat and milk intensive. Sage and Onion gravy, to be precise. I'd love to show you the picture of the dish in the completed stage, but it was impossible to get a nice looking photo. It's such a brown dish. Really brown. Next time I make this gravy, I think I may cut back on the salt in the soy sauce--when you just don't add salt to your food, things like soy sauce can be overwhelming, and I'd hold off on the added salt in the gravy, as well--there isn't any nut milk to counteract the saltiness. I used olive oil instead of margarine. Other than that, it's a very nice and reasonably compatible dish. The nootch and soy are going to prevent it from ever being a period-like dish, but I think it could certainly be served as a compatible vegan entry at a feast that would be perfectly acceptable to an omnivore's palate. There are a few fava and onion and sage dishes out there in period literature; I may pull it together for a post on Cook-A-Long. And I'll get a picture that is far less brown. ;-)

Sourdough Pancakes, and grit yeast gravy saves a pie.

2010-01-12T17:59:00.000-08:00

Two sorts of sourdough pancakes

I needed to use up the last of the sour dough I had prepared, and so two batches of sourdough pancakes seemed to be the solution. Fox a New Year's present, my dear friend Ghita gave me some duck eggs. Ah, duck eggs. Yum. I love eggs, and can only eat duck eggs, and so if they come to me as presents once a year, you can be sure I will eat every one. However, I did not want to spend ALL my eggs on pancakes, so I tried two different recipes. The first, the pancake on the left, based on this recipe, was very, very simple:

2 cups “heart smart” bisquick mix
1 1/2 cup almond milk
1 cup sourdough starter

Mix this all together, set aside to rise 15-30 minutes, and cook on a griddle pan.

This was actually an excellent compromise between my favorite vegan pancakes and standard sourdough pancakes. They are slightly "gummy," as sourdough can sometimes be, but I think a little more milk and flour might change that--if I bother to try. These were really quite good just the way they are, and I did not find the lack of the perfect pancake texture to be a problem at all. Very easy. Very tasty. Less need for bisquick and almond milk. I used my sourdough after it had been fed for a week; it'll be interesting to see what it's like after one day out of the fridge.

The second pancake, on the right:

1½ cups of starter with
1 duck egg, slightly beaten
1 Tablespoon of canola oil
2 Tablespoons of almond milk

2 Tablespoon of sugar
¾ Teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon (generous) of baking soda

All ingredients were at room temp. Mix all the wet ingredients, then add the dry ingredients, and stir quickly to mix. Once the baking soda goes in, the pancakes have to be cooked immediately, so don’t mix that up until your pan is ready and you are prepared to cook the cakes. Once you add the baking soda, the rise begins immediately. It’s no joke, you have to cook them up straight away. I cooked them on a moderate heat griddle. I let them cook to the point where they were nearly dry on top—like injera—before flipping. These are thin, liquidy—you have to let them cook enough to be set.
My previous experiences with classic sourdough pancakes have not been great—gummy, with too much alkaline flavor as a result of the rising agents used. This was really good, though—I ate them straight out of the pan, with no syrup, et cetera. They make a thin pancake, and yes, with a slightly gummy quality, but it seemed to me merely to be the nature of a heavy, moist bread. Much better than eating something that tastes like the gel inserts for your shoes. "MMMM, I'm gellin'!" should not apply to pancakes. ;-)

A Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie I like!

And so, with tons of grit yeast gravy left over and a yen for Shepherds Pie that is now a year-old monster craving, I decided to give it a try. Oh, what a WIN. This is mostly a note to myself that quorn crumbles, grit yeast gravy, and sauteed veggies all mixed together will be so very tasty that the lesser quality of mashed potatoes made with vegan spread and almond milk instead of butter and whole milk will be unnoticeable, and this returns to me one of my absolute favorite comfort foods. Ah, Shepherd's Pie, how I have missed thee. You don't taste the same this way, but the difference is not worth worrying about. Yay!

Sourdough biscuits & gravy

2010-01-10T18:30:00.000-08:00

Today's breakfast: Sourdough Biscuits with Grit Yeast Gravy
Most of the time, I consider how likely an ingredient or process was to have existed before 1601 when I am cooking for experimentations' sake. The primary reason I took to sourdough baking was to make period bread--active dry yeast was simply not around back in the day. Usually, when I make sourdough bread, I make a loaf and eat it. That hasn't worked well recently because I just haven't been eating much bread, and I have not had time to wait for the rise. It's a process, after all. Feed it the night before, prep it the next morning, spend time as needed for the rise, and then spend time as needed for the bake.

Sadly, I had let my starter languish in the fridge so long that I was wondering if I had killed it. I just had not had time to do a traditional loaf of bread. However, I need that starter to live. On Monday, I pulled it out, poured off the liquid that had accumulated on top (it was tooooo sour for my taste), and began feeding it daily for a week. I planned on doing individual rolls that could just serve me as single servings of bread when needed.

Then I thought about the delicate balance of prepping, timing, and baking all those rolls. Nope. I didn't want to do that. But now I had a crap ton of sour dough to use up. It seemed to be time to try sourdough biscuits again.

Now, the last time I made them, they were okay, but I wasn't wild about them. I used a different recipe this time. I based it on the recipe found here, and when you compare the two, you'll note that my modifications are extremely minimal:

Sour Dough Biscuits:

Mix wet:
2 cups active sourdough starter
1/4 cup olive oil

Mix dry :
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbl baking powder
3 tbl white sugar
1 tsp salt

Combine the wet mix with the dry mix. Form into golf-ball sized pieces, and arrange into oiled cast iron pan or oiled clay baking stone to rise for 15-30 minutes. Brush tops with oil or melted butter-substitute. Bake at 400F after the rise, 15 minutes or until golden brown.

I've also a batch made with canola oil in the freezer; I don't expect them to taste significantly different, given that these were perfectly pleasant. Michael found them a little too "crisp" for his taste, but the flavor was fine.

Jodi gave me the recipe for Grit Yeast Gravy last summer, and with so many biscuits, it seemed like a good time to try it. On the whole, I thought it needed to sit for an hour before serving--it's a little too heavy on the soy sauce flavor for me right off the burner. In looking for the recipe online, I noted that Jodi's version was essentially identical to this one, except she left off the vegan worcestershire sauce. Further, I used almond milk rather than soy. It was very good, and it made WAY more gravy than I expected. Michael's judgement? Pretty good for a vegetarian meal.

Praise with some faint damnation, indeed. Well, he liked it, and that's what matters. :-) Why? Because I liked it, which means he's going to have to eat it again. ;-)

Black Bean Burgers.

2009-12-27T10:38:00.000-08:00

Another attempt at veggie burgers based on the now-disappeared veggie engine. Obviously, I still have it amongst my personal documents. This time, I went New World:

Black beans, an uncertain amount, but it looks like it was at least 3-4 cups once they were cooked up.
2-2.5 cups cooked brown rice
1 11 oz can of "Mexican corn," drained.
2 small onions
4-5 large cloves of garlic
1 package of taco seasoning
Teaspoon-ish of salt
2-ish teaspoons of freshly ground pepper
1/3 cup olive oil + oil for cooking
1-ish cup of vital wheat gluten

Sautee onions and garlic in oil, and mix up with previously cooked and cooled black beans, corn, rice, taco seasoning, salt, pepper, olive oil, VWG. Form into patties, place into oiled pans, and bake to your favorite stage of done. We like them crispy, so they get cooked at 400F for 45-90 minutes, depending on how much liquid is in each patty.

I did not add any liquid seasoning to this, and left the additional liquid requirement (beyond the oil) off this time because I had cooked the black beans from dried a couple of days ago. There was plenty of bean gravy attached to the beans, so no need to add more liquid. The beans were cooked with 2 sliced carrots, chopped onions, a clove of garlic, salt, and a splash of oil.

Michael felt like this was the best batch I'd made yet, and they were quite nice even straight from the oven; the VWG flavor I usually get while these things are still hot wasn't present.

Again, the only thing I really don't like about the process is the amount of time that it takes to make them and bake them. The mixing is pretty fast, so if I was using canned beans it would go faster, but I still need to precook the rice, and it takes a significant amount of time to cook them to the stage of done we like. Whatever savings one might be getting in terms of food cost is more than offset by the fuel cost and time cost. I'll keep making them, though, because I like controlling the ingredients and having more variety than the few commercial brands available that are soy and egg free.

ETA, 2 Nov 10, 12:40 AM: The veggie burger engine has reappeared.

Curried Beans instead of another Hoppin' John!

2009-12-17T13:58:00.000-08:00

Now, I have a ton of cook books. Once upon a time, I looked at all the books of Medieval cookery I have and decided that I needed to try a recipe from each book I owned. I managed, and then I found that online sources tend to be more useful because I can look up a whole bunch of variations of recipes across time and space, and come up with something that represents my tastes and time interests--something I really love doing--rather than following something redacted by one cook and wondering if that dish, delicious though it might be, really represents the flavors and techniques used.

Now, I love beans. And I love rice. And I love greens. So, as I have fallen in love with Joanna Vaught's Veggie Burger Engine (which is still in my recipe books despite the sad loss of it on the internetz), and realized that I have my own Veggie Pie Engine, I'm also aware that I have my own Vegan Hoppin' John engine. Now, a hoppin' john engine is not as fabulous as a veggie burger engine, but it does indicate a cooking habit that suggests that I love, love, love dishes that are greens, rice, and beans cooked with oils and spiced to please my palate and complement the primary components in the hoppin' john*. Of course, it's meatless for me, but I'm not trying to feed it to a soul food aficionado, I'm cooking it for myself.

However, although I could eat Hoppin John and all the various versions of it from all the cultures that have taken to beans and rice as a dish with a silly regularity, I don't want it all the time. It occurred to me that it was time to try some of the recipes in my vast (or, at least, larger than most folk's) library of cook books. The first to catch my eye? "Black-Eyed Pea Curry" in a book called Hot and Spicy Cooking

I liked the dish a lot. I did serve it over brown rice, because, hey, that's how I like it. Beans and rice. It would do fine over any grain, however. I did think about serving it with corn tortillas instead, but that's for next time. The celery was very nice addition.

On the whole, though, I was waiting for the hot, and it never arrived. This is supposed to be spicy? I recollect thinking. So I spiced it up, and it was better. The primary point here, of course, is that it isn't as spicy as I thought it would be, but then, I think Tabasco sauce is a needed ingredient in most dishes. Anything you make is improved by lots of hot peppers, in proportion to their Scoville rating, so you are talking about an overall heat of 10,000 to 150,000 SU in the dish. Anything less will get Tabasco sauced. This got sauced, suggesting that I didn't find it to get to 10000 SU, despite the use of chillies.

I did not copy out the recipe. Instead, I took a picture. The original recipe is here. I did make some substitutions:

Ghee => Olive oil
4 Chopped Tomatoes => Tomato sauce. Non-awful fresh tomatoes can not be obtained this time of year.

And that would be about it for the subs. It worked out well and I'll likely make it again, next time treating it as a taco filling or some such and adjusting the SU as I may. :-)

Vegan Leek and Potatoe pie, and what appears to be the birth of the Veggie Pie Engine.

2009-12-15T12:27:00.000-08:00

Some while ago, I made a parsnip pie in a reproduction 16th c. frying pan, which I really enjoyed.

This time, I tried a potato & leek pie in a geeze gravy and a "fake stone" 10 inch pie plate. I wish I could remember the brand name of the pie plate, but I took the label off and have not seen such a thing since. The only thing I can say about it is that I think it's some kind of cast ceramic, maybe cordierite. The point, of course, is that it's a cast stone material that is supposed to make crusts extra special crispy. I've had it for a while, and it was time to put it to use.

Leesie's Leek and Tatie Pie.

It worked nicely as a savory dinner pie, and with a salad & a glass of Shiraz, it was an easy meal. It also demonstrates the value of having a few simple recipes under your belt, because if you know how to make a basic white sauce, a basic oil-based pie crust, and perform a few simple things like prep and saute vegetables, you can easily assemble any variation on a savory vegetable pie you want to assemble.

Generative cooking, if you will, based on the concepts of the generative learning model.

This used:

1 recipe of basic oil pie crust: use your favorite to make a double crust pie for a plate as described below.
1 recipe of geeze gravy: use your favorite fake cheeze sauce to produce about 2-3 cups of sauce.
A mess of potatoes
2-3 bunches of leeks
- in short, all the leeks I had in the house plus enough potatoes to slightly overfill a 10.25 inch diameter, 1.75 inch deep pie plate
garlic to taste--cloves if possible.
salt, pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350F, or adjust according to your oven's personal foibles. The point is to have it at a temperature to bake the pie upon assembly.

Wash, clean, and slice the leeks. Set sliced leeks aside to soak in water for 30 minutes or so, to allow whatever grit may still be in them to settle out. Prepare your pie crust. Roll it out and set into a cool place to keep chilled while you are preparing the rest of the dish. Wash the potatoes, peel if desired, slice, and parboil in slightly salted water; check as needed and drain when finished. If you believe your leeks have soaked enough, saute them in some olive oil with a few cloves of garlic. Prepare your geeze gravy.

Now you are ready to assemble.

Prepare your pie pan as needed to release the pie upon completion.

Mix the sauteed leeks, the parboiled potatoes, and the geeze gravy in a large bowl. Taste for spice adjustments, adding pepper, salt, and perhaps garlic and other favorite spices and herbs, as needed. Set aside.

Place the bottom crust into the pie plate( blind bake if desired, I did not), then fill with the leek/potato/gravy mix. Cover with top crust, seal the edges, and pop into oven until done.

Serve and enjoy. This basic pie was very good with cayenne pepper sauce on it, it was good cold without additional condiments, and it was good with a pepper-heavy powder forte.

Comments on what I learned:

Typing it out as if it was really a recipe reinforces just how much work actually went into the dish. It's not a wonder that cooking from scratch has decreased so mightily in this day and age. They may be simple processes, but it's not really simple. It's largely why I have gotten into the habit of cooking large portions of things--that way, I have 3-5 meals for all the effort.

My oil crust recipe is very simple--flour, oil, liquid (usually water). I almost always use a mix of white and whole wheat flour. This time, I used straight up white flour. Ah, yeah, if it is at all possible, I will never do that again. I really like it better when it is mixed grains.

I really like this pie plate. The crust might have been better if the bottom crust had been blind baked slightly to decrease the inner side's moisture, but the outside of the crust was everything I expected a crispy nice crust to be, and, of course, the top crust was fine. Anyway, This is an Excellent Tool. I found it at Ace Hardware, of all places, on the clearance rack. The Ace Hardware site does not list any bakeware like it, though, so I am wondering if it is out of business. Sad.

It is a mild savory pie. I will be very comfortable trying a lot of spices in the sauce, to see what works, what doesn't.

When I made the pie, I assembled it in layers: potatoes, leeks, geeze gravy. It was good that way, or I wouldn't be recording this for my future reference. However, I would have preferred the sauce to go all through; this is the way I usually prepare savory pies. In future, mix it all up first and then place into crust.

Just as an aside, I'd like to try this with a little bit of liquid smoke--I think that it might make a nice touch. Just a very little, though.

Food for Michael. And me.

2009-12-12T23:04:00.000-08:00

First;

Michael loves moussaka. I had eggplant and was thinking of making a sort of veganized version of an eggplant lasagna I had seen at this little cooking site: Feed Me Bubbe. I'd peeled 'er up and salted 'er for that de-bittering step Bubbe recommends... and Michael saw the eggplant and turned to me with these frakking eyes so huge and weepy and hopeful that they'd make Margaret Keane cry and said, "Are you making mousakka?"

Sigh. Yes. Let me look for a recipe.

I found this one: Classic Greek Moussaka with Eggplant.

It worked out okay! It'll be easy to mod for a version I can eat, I think. I didn't have tomatoes, so I subbed 12 oz of tomato paste and 36 oz of water, and ground beef for lamb. Since I was making this for Michael, I made the basic bechamel with whole eggs rather than egg yolks, and there was no real Greek cheese to be found, so we used a mix of Americanized feta and mozzarella. Next time, not so much water with the tomato paste. Michael enjoyed it tremendously and decided that I am the Bestest. Girl. Evah. He also asked for more eggplant in it next time, and lamb rather than ground beef. And then he ate every bit of it. It was *a lot,* probably 12-15 servings worth.

I was going to make a version of it myself, with a bechamel based on nut milks and possibly nut yeast and herbs in place of cheese, no eggs, and whatever fake meat crumbles were in the fridge, but there wasn't enough eggplant.

Next time, eh? And that is why this is here. This is the base that I'll build my own version upon. :-) And I made Michael happy, so it's an all around win.

Cooking with ghosts.

2009-11-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

Late October and early November tends to be the time when the religions typically practiced in North America tend to remember the dead. This is my mother, more than 10 years gone now, the auburn haired girl that stands beside her own mother, who is holding my aunt in her arms.

I didn't deliberately focus on a dish in remembrance in my mother while I was cooking last night, but it came to me, as I was cooking, that I was doing something that my mother would often do in her later years, make a soup for supper that used a commercially prepared beef base and whatever vegetables were in the house. She generally did this because she was, by that time, permanently disabled, and food stamps only go so far. It is one of my great regrets that I could not be financially stable enough to be of any help to my mother, despite my education, until after she passed. But that's a story for another day. This story is about this soup my mother would make.

In earlier years, she would make meatball soup, something that I would eventually take over, and this was her way of making it when she did not have any meat. Last night, we had a plenitude of veggies needing to be used and a man, Miguel-san, who has been very sick for a week. I found myself cutting all the veggies up and tossing them into a pot, with the intention of adding vegetable bases rather than beef base, and rice noodles and peas for the "complete protien" component. A mild, healing soup for dinner for the sick man.

This is what I got:

The contents are carrots, celery, peas, potatoes, onions, cloves of garlic, a packet of onion/mushroom soup, a tablespoon of vegetable base, olive oil, and rice noodles. Michael liked it just the way it was. I peppered it up for its initial serving; later bowls, after the soup had cooled and the rice noodles kind of took over the pot, I needed soy sauce to counteract the flavor of the rice starch. This was my first time cooking any rice-type noodle, and I did not know what happens when you let them stand in liquid. Next time, I'll make some sort of pad thai-inspired dish.

As I ate it, I thought about standing in my mother's kitchen, listening to her describe how she had made the soup, watcher her smile as I told her that I liked it. It is poor folks food, no doubt, and the addition of the olive oil was my little stab at trying to address the one problem of the dish, as I remembered it--the lack of fat made it less flavorful. When I make it again, I'll likely use wheat noodles--and, in truth, the dish will be a little different every time, just as it was for my mother. In a strange way, it was like my mother stood beside me as I stirred, and this living recipe is like another way my mother lives on now that she is gone.

Aunty 'Rouda's ROUS pie.

2009-10-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

Okay. So, for the duration of the reign (which means nothing if you are not in the SCA but is an important referent for what I am about to say, so, in the event that there is a non-Scadian reading what I am about to write, at least understand that what's about to follow is not true at all in the real world ;-) ... the Royal whim has been proclaimed, and for the duration of the reign, The Princess Bride is considered documentation for any A&S project. On the Northshield mail list, Gabriella asked for suggestions for altering her feast dishes in ways that might work with this theme. This was my reply:

For instance, you have rabbit, which you are thinking of as the last dish in your first service. And you want this to be your ROUS. Well, then, if you are swapping out the earlier stew for a sandwich--a decidedly post medieval dish--you can balance that by making a ROUS with ROUS. ;-) The soteltie is traditionally the last place in the service order, and so that would work nicely. :-)

ROUS-- a presentation version of the dish, a standing pie that has been decorated and disguised as a Rodent Of Unusual Size. This takes a trip around the feast hall for the Ooohs and Ahhs and then is served to the head table.

A dish of ROUS (Rabbit, Onions, Unguent [the sauce or gravy], Spices) served as simplified standing pies to the remaining tables.

There would be a lot of different dishes you could make with ROUS as the initials--you could be even more clever with a pie made with Rarebit, Oysters, Unagi (Eel!), Squid or shrimp--essentially, a seafood pie in a savory cheese sauce. ;-) An illusion food that completes the illusion by not having any rodent in it. ;-)

Since I have spent much time working on cheese-like sauces, and I love seafood, I think that Aunty 'Rouda's ROUS pie is going to be a dish in development Real Soon. Mixed seafood pies are pretty findable in medieval cookery, so it's a really do-able project. And I'll likely do the other version, too, but it's probably going to have to be red beans or roasted veggies or rice for the r, rather than rabbit. That'll be the totally vegan version.

Geeze Gravies and Grocers, part 1: Grocery stores.

2009-09-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

Milwaukee is not a small place. I have occasionally forgotten that, because I grew up in Chicago, which, in all its immensity, easily dwarfs large numbers of the world's cities. I was reminded of the fact that Milwaukee is not all that small when I was hunting for a particular product.

There isn't much cookery going on right now, as mentioned in last post, but that has got to change. I have to eat, and when I saw my food bill this month, I realized that I can't keep this restaurant eating thing up. Sure, I have no time to cook, and yes, it's given me a reason to try a number of restaurants I've been meaning to try, but the plain fact is that I am a social servant in this culture, and so I never have the luxury of spending all the money I might feel like spending.

For a very long time, I have been trying to make a vegan, no-soy-cheese substitute sauce that will stand in for cheese in pre-1601 recipes. The standard vegan substitute in this situation is nutritional yeast, and, while the nootch certainly does impart a flavor that works and is distantly like Parmesan cheese, my blackened Laurel heart will not rest until I can come up with a sauce that will be cheese tasting and comprised of verifiable pre-1601 ingredients. You can make an argument for nootch based on the idea that yeast was certainly used for cookery in period and that it is occasionally written about in a way that you can pretend implies adding it strictly for flavor, but the plain fact, as far as I can tell, is that nootch as a specifically produced food is pretty recent on the "inventions in cookery" timeline.

This is not true of fermented tofu. Somewhere out in the world there are a bazzillion cooks who, when presented with the same challenge, might have said "Oh, yeah, I know just what to do!" and reached for their jar of doufu-ru, but I had to learn it existed. Tofu is not something I ever loved even when I was eating whatever soy jumped on to my plate, so the chances of me stumbling on this stuff became tiny, tiny, tiny the moment I realized I was going to have to cut unfermented soy out of my diet. 99.99% of the tofu on the American market is your garden variety bean curd that, as useful as it is to the general vegan/non-ovolacto piscetarian, is something that anyone with thyroid issues is not going to be able to touch.

Fermented tofu, according to this article, appears in the written record in China in 1578 CE. And so, having stumbled across the existence of the product thanks to surfing teh internetz, I stumbled around the Milwaukee area trying to find it.

And that brings me round to the point.

I suspected I could find the product in one of the many Asian markets in the area. What I wanted to know was if I could find it elsewhere--the Asian markets most likely to have a wide selection of products tend to be more on the north end of the metro area, and thus, a bit out of my way.

In Outpost? Nope. If it's not at Outpost, then there is little point in trying the more standard grocers in the area, although I did give my favorite Sentry a brief run through, just in case. Nope.

However, there is a grocer in the Milwaukee area, a place of legendary status in this metro area, a place that is considered so upscale that a number of my former acquaintances will only shop there because they imagine it adds to their "high-class" cache: Sendiks. I've only shopped there a few times, never particularly impressed either positively or negatively.

I have an impression now, though.

Sendik's sucks.

It sucks like a suck ass sucking thing of suckiness.

I swear to dog, it has got to be by the good will and generosity of the people of Milwaukee that this local chain continues to thrive--kind of like the same way people kept buying Van Heusen shirts because they were "American made" long after it had become very clear that Van Heusen had shipped its manufacturing overseas. Only a willingness to believe the bluff could explain why anyone thinks this is a chain full of unusual and finer foodstuffs for the tony crowd. That may have been true a long time ago, but it is not true now. Is there a place for Sendiks in the Milwaukee market? Sure. If they are offering a selection of things Joellen Average will never otherwise try at a price that isn't too much for her family to bear, great: I'm all for wider experiences for everyone. And if she gets her little ego boosted, well, as long as she doesn't cross my path, it's all good. But is it the establishment it's reputed to be?

Oh, hell, no. I saw nothing there that I could not find elsewhere--with one exception: the despair-inducing deli section.

Well, let's be fair--I'm not going to like anything with mango in it. I'm especially not going to like it if the "crab" turns out to be that shitty fake crab crap with the allergy-provoking egg ingredients in it. So if your special crab salad has eggs and mangoes in it, I'm going to get sick eating it.

Which I did.

If that was all, I'd shut up. But the cabbage salad sucked. The sushi--not something you'd even begin to expect would be fabulous in a grocery story--was just sad, and that was just a vegetable roll. What the hell would it have been like if there was seafood in it? I have long understood that too much wasabi ruins the balance of delicate flavors an amuse-bouche of sushi can provide, but for the first time ever, I was extraordinarily grateful for the wasabi--it changed the awful vegetable roll into a nice crispy crunchy base useful for transporting the fabulous flavor of horseradish into my mouth.

Gak. Sendik's, I am so done with you.

After that trip, I abandoned the immediate vicinity search and went to a north side Asian grocer. Milwaukee's near north side is not the nicer area, but it's not bad. A lot of rural Wisconsinites find it terrifying, and people have left my place of employment after one visit to a home on the north side, too nervous to look past their lack of familiarity with the urban experience and notice that "lack of expensive houses" does not equate with "radically terrifying and vastly dangerous area of horrific poverty."

I found the above jars at Rhino Foods. I popped it open, and, yay! It does taste remarkably like bleu cheese. Yay.

I'll soon be popping some into a non-cheese sauce, hereafter described as a geeze gravy, to determine how it will work as a flavoring agent in a non-dairy béchamel--essentially, what all vegan "cheese" sauces turn out to be. Yes, every vegan food writer talks like he or she has just invented the Best. Vegan. Cheese. Sauce. Evah. whenever they bust out their recipes (hence my thinking of them as "geeze" gravies), but all this tells me is that American cooks really lack in some basic skills. I am eternally grateful to my Junior High School Home Ec teacher for teaching me to make a white sauce. Little did I know at 12 years old that I was being given a key to a cookery kingdom.

Chianti? You think?

2009-09-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

There are a limited number of bean varieties available to the average American consumer in the average grocery store. Furthermore, there is plenty of misinformation to be found on teh internetz: one of my favorite falsities is a statement made in some news paper story on the resurgance of the fabulous fava bean that flatly proclaimed that no other bean was ever eaten in Europe prior to the arrival of New World varieties.

Well, there's a food writer whose going to have an "eh, ah, OOPS!" moment one day.

Fava beans are something that I have had some difficulty in finding around here. I keep looking for canned broad beans or fava beans or whatever, but they just have not been about in the stores I frequent--and don't even think about dried fava beans in the local Sentry.

But, as has been said before, I often shop at my well-beloved Outpost Co-op, and one day some number of months ago, I looked up in the bulk food aisle and saw dried fava beans.

At last. I found them.

So I do my research, and then I research a little more, because I've never cooked them before--I can't even be certain I've eaten them, beyond in my own home made seitan. When all my research is done, I have come to understand that the beans need to have their tough brown skins removed before eating.

It took me days to get what would evenually be about 1.5 cups of beans from dried brown pebbles to skinned beauties ready for cooking. I loved the smooth feel and the look, but other food writers were not kidding when they said the skins were tough to remove. Some of the fava beans, even after 3 days of soaking, never softened enough to be peeled.

I sorted through various bean recipies in various pre-1601 sources, and was not wildly enthused by any of them, but since it was clear that I was going to have to cook the beans first, I popped them into the pressure cooker, covered them with water, sprinkled in a little salt, and let them go.

... Just a little too long. ::sigh::

By the time I opened the pressure cooker, the fava beans had cooked to the "perfect for pureeing" stage. I sprinkled in some olive oil, some poudre fort, and mashed them.

They were okay. The dish was not a sufficient return on my effort, but it was not terrible. Fava beans were not the delish treat I had been lead to believe, but I would make this again if it did not require so much effort to prepare the beans. I put the remainder of the dried fava beans (about 3 cups worth, actually) into the freezer, figuring that it would be some long while before I would want to work with them again. The best thing that came from that experiment was the realization that I had come very close to the water:bean ratio needed for the pressure cooker--throw in pre-soaked beans and then cover with 1/2 to 1 inch water.

And a few days go by.

Now, I have not had much time for cookery--or much of anything else--in recent months, and so, when Wednesday last came along and I needed some supper, Angelique and I went off to a restaurant I had tried several years ago but never really got to know, Sharazad.

On a whim, I ordered the app combo, noting that there were quite a few vegan appropriate items thereon, in addition to the spinich pie (quite free of feta cheese). In the app was a dish called foule--a dish I'd never met, a dish of fava beans. I was eager to try it, hoping that it would be inspiring.

It was, all right. The damn brown skins were right on the beans. Frak! All that time and effort, and the skins are perfectly fine to eat.

Other things I noted: I really like their baba ganooj, more than I like the same dish from Abu's Jerusalem of the Gold (which recently changed hands, totally wrecking the bizarre charm of the former interior). The adas majroush (lentil soup) is very nice, and the next time I go, I think I will be adequately fed via the app plate and the soup. There are a number of fish/seafood dishes on the menu, but I'll likely work throiugh all the vegan things, first. I can get a decent fish meal lots of places in town, but a decent vegan meal is a rarer thing.

And I'll be damned if I peel another dried fava. Feh!

Pennsic Eating When You Are Me

2009-08-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

Gingered Pottage

I experimented with pressure cooking at Pennsic this year, and I can say with certainty that it is a partial success. The pressure cooker would come close to hitting standard pressure, but it never succeeded; I presume this is related to the fact that the prevailing winds cooled the pot in exactly the right ratio to the flames heating the pot to perfectly balance the heat on the edge of pressure. Foods cooked more nicely, as the lid reduces steam and heat loss even if it did not hit pressure. It would be worth dedicating a pressure cooker to the camping stuff if I can find a better cooker for home use.

We tried several things--a cooked turkey breast for Michael that was very delicious, and various "period in principle" vegetable pottages, where the idea is that you prepare a vegetable pottage comprised of period (or period like) ingredients and enjoy an easy lunch. The above pictured is the most successful, comprised of fresh garlic bulbs, a huge chunk of peeled and diced fresh ginger, carrots, potatoes, parsnips, and a rutabaga. Oh, and a bit of salt and pepper to taste. Potatoes are barely period, arriving in the occasional euro cook pot in the 16th century, but I'm not sure about the swede. The earliest reliable reference I can find is a vague description of a seventeenth century record that implies the possibility of unrecorded earlier use.

However, it was very good, and a very reasonable vegetable pottage for a Renaissance persona. If you include the gray area in your time frame, you can eat it without feeling like your place in the space-time continuum is too wretchedly disturbed. And if you can't, sub in one sweet potato and one turnip for a similar flavor and all pre-1601 edible roots.

I generally cooked meat separately for Michael, and he would add it to whatever I made. The primary problem I faced: keeping the meat. If one leaves home with rock solid frozen meat, what one brings has to be cooked within 2 or three days, depending on your cooler. Once cooked, it's only good for 2 or three days. Thus, you can only be sure of having decent meat in the cooler for 4 days, with the expectation that you might get to 6. I am seriously considering for next year precooking meats and keeping a dry-ice cooler, a fresh foods cooler, and a small defrost cooler. As bad as that might sound in terms of gear, it's only the addition of one six-pack sized cooler. I already carry 2 medium coolers to Pennsic and have done so for years.

Most years, I just shop at Giant Eagle for food when I get there, but I did pantry shopping this year--I looked at what I had on hand and just brought food from home. This worked out fine, as well--better, in some ways, as much of what was in the fridge would have had to be thrown out upon my arrival home. This fact also makes me think that the dry ice/wet ice/defrost system is going to be a better idea.

The food court at Pennsic is always something of a challenge. There is very little there for strictly vegan fare, but you can do okay if you allow eggs, dairy, or both into your vegetarianism or your piscetarianism. I did find myself in the position of "eat dairy or starve" a couple of times, so I tried the spinach wrap at Once Again/Nobleman's Inn and the Spinach Pie at Fruity Cobbler. These are the things I ate and can recommend as edible that can fit with a picetarian + dairy food style:

*French Fries from various vendors: I found I liked the ones at Nobleman/Once Again's best.

*Spinach Wrap from the same tent.

*Falafel from Fruity Cobbler. Spinach Pie was okay, but I preferred the Spinach Wrap, above.

*Shrimp and Vegetable stir fries from Delights of Cathy--be aware, however, that they do cook everything in the same woks. Their portion sizes have also gone down.

*Vegetable dishes from Cock & Bull (sauce may be butter or margarine, I didn't ask. Having already had feta cheese by that time, it hardly mattered which was used when faced by my huge-o-matic hunger).

There were other dishes I could have tried, but generally, if I was up in the food court and faced with uncontrollable hunger, I gravitated to the french fries, being the best way to control the hunger and not have to fret about how it was cooked.

Black Beans Two Ways, and more commercial seitan sausage.

2009-07-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

So, you know, part of buying a pressure cooker to quickly cook beans means that one will be cooking beans a. lot.

I have a wide variety of beans in my store room, and a quick look at the veggies needing to be eaten suggested the next stop: black beans.

I'd set the beans to soak before leaving for work, and they cooked up quickly in the pressure cooker. I was aiming for one of my favorite black bean recipes, Frijoles Negros. Except the peppers. Never really have green peppers around.

Of course, upon opening the pressure cooker, I found myself with lots of tasty broth and slightly underseasoned beans. Hm. I was too hungry to spend serious time adjusting the dish, so I finished up the plantains and one of the Field Roast chipolte sausages. These are both easily preparted with a little time in the frying pan.

And the beans were fine, the seitan sausages edible, and the platains were yummy. As the other half of this product review, I'd like to mention that the chipolte sausages, while edible, are still not as good as the seitan chorizo by Upton's, and no amount of spaghetti sauce in the world would make those Italian's acceptable. It is extremely unlikely that I will be trying any Field Roast products again. Every one of them has been a disappointment.

However, I still had me some black beans for dinner the next day.

This was actually the more successful meal: the re-spiced black beans with sauteed onions, garlic, jalapenoes, and napalm (a Thai chilli sauce called, properly, sriracha). On the side is quinoa cooked in the black bean broth and beets with olive oil and seseme seeds.

In that meal is the beginning of a comfort meal I think I will love, but since that used up the Frijoles Negros, this is as far as I have gotten.

w00t! Happy McPan!!!!

2009-07-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

I close my eyes and I can still see that moment....

I'm in my grandmother's kitchen, and it's decorated like pretty much every other working class home in an area filled with depression bungalows. Creaky old stove, lino on the walls; it's a 1930's time capsule. I'm watching a pan, and the pan has a ... thing... on it. The .... thing .... jiggles every so often, and the pan hisses and spits.

This is fascinating.

"Why is it doing that, Grandma?"

And she looked at me and smiled. "It's a pressure cooker," she answered, as if that explained everything, and no more was said.

I don't know if she ever used it again. I don't remember any of the other Grand Dames in my family using it. Nonetheless, somewhere along the line, I learned a little bit about it, and since switching to a piscetarianism that is just a few fish meals and some honey away from veganism, I've wanted to pursue the interest born that long ago day. I cook a lot of dried beans. It takes an awfully long time. And it heats the house something fierce.

So, standing in the local Kame Apart (the only discount retailer that showed a preference for corporate donations to liberal causes based on the information collated by the apparently defunct buyblue.com), I noticed two pressure cookers on the clearance shelves. One of them came home with me.

I like to make a personal version of Red Beans. It's not in the least based on any "Red Beans and Rice" recipe, simply because it came about through my desire to have a kidney-bean mash and some rice without the overabundance of fake smoke flavor to be found in that atrocity served up at Popeye's Fried Chicken. I decided that this would be the first thing I tried in my new pressure cooker. It takes a long time to cook on the stove top, and even longer in a slow cooker.

There they are, the ingredients in the pan!

In it all went. I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out, because the amount of food in the pan was completely out of proportion to the amount of water the happy helpful instruction manual said I needed. 4 cups. That's right, four frakkin' cups. Anyone with even a little cookery experience should be able to infer that from the amount of ingredients in the picture, four cups was excessive.

Nonetheless, I followed the instructions, this being my first try with a pressure cooker and all, and when the amount of time that was supposed to pass passed, I opened the pan to find......

Kidney Bean Soup.

Goddamn delicious kidney bean soup.

I'm going to have to work on the liquid to solids proportion. However, I'm thinking that even a failed recipe, as long as what goes in is going to result in a pleasant combination, is going to produce a decent broth. The beans were certainly to proper mashing consistency, and the flavor was all there. 30 minutes versus hours and hours and hours, and the cooking did not make the house unbearably hot--an important consideration when the air conditioning in your home consists of one small window unit.

I have the recipe written down in my Box O' Cookery Happiness; the primary deviations from the usual template would be that I used the garlic/ginger paste I love because I had no fresh ginger, and I had about a cup and 1/2 of leftover cooking broth from the yams that I added to the mix. I'll write down exact-ish proportions the next time I make this.

Meranwhile, it's helpful to note this chart of suggested cooking times for dried beans. It's also helpful to note that my pressure cooker is medium pressure, only hits 10 psi rather than 15. It's going to require an additional 4 minutes time for every 10 in the chart--so something that should take 12 minutes will take 16; something that should take 30 will take 42.

Product Review: No sausage love tonight

2009-07-11T17:29:00.000-07:00

So, while in my right well beloved Outpost Foods the other day, I noted that they had an owner special on seitan-based sausages. Now, someone stumbling through here might notice that I am fond of seitan as a meat analogue. And I'm an Outpost owner. And so the forces of the Universe conspired to get me to part with my hard-earned money and buy 2 packets of them: Field Roast brand Italian Sausages and Chipotle Sausages. They've been in business for some time now, and so I thought it would be worth trying. Mind you, the first Field Roast thing I'd tried, a grain meat analogue about the size and shape of a tube of liverwurst and made from lentils, was so disappointing that I thought I'd never touch another grain substitute.

But I love my italian sausage, and I'd had some decent "seitan chorizo" from Upton's Naturals, so I thought, what the hell, I'd give it a try.

And so there it is, the Italian sausage, served with saute onions, peas, and mashed sweet potatoes. The peas and potatoes were good. The Italian sausage?

I've got three more of 'em to choke down, because I don't spend that much money on food only to throw it away.

They are not terrible, but they taste exactly like VWG with some oregano thrown in. Maybe that tastes like an Italian sausage to someone who has not eaten the real thing in 5 years or so, but all I could taste was the gluten. I guess my next step is to freeze them (because I don't want to eat nothing but seitan any more than I would want to eat nothing but tofu could I have it) and try them drowned in spaghetti sauce the next time I eat spaghetti.

::sigh::