Day 43 - Seitanic Red and White Bean Jambalaya

Seitanic Red and White Bean Jambalaya

This recipe was a definite home run! Even with my colossal screw up....

The journey of this recipe involves preparing different ingredients in stages in the same pot. First, brown the seitan, then remove and put aside. Then, cook the vegetables, then add tomato paste, then deglaze, then add rice, then add everything including the browned seitan, bring to a simmer and stick it in the oven. Easy enough, right?

Well, the step I missed completely was the part where you remove the seitan from the pot. So the seitan was there during the vegetable sauteing, the deglazing, and the rice browning. Oh dear. I realized it about halfway through, but there was nothing I could do but press on. I thought it might ruin everything, but my end result was pretty great. Granted, the seitan was stirred and handled constantly, so there weren’t a lot of big chunks, but there were some. And the texture of the jambalaya was quite dry in the end. I wonder if I would have ended up with something wetter/stewier, if I had followed the instructions properly.

And yet, it was delicious. Great flavors, great mix of proteins, really hearty, and incidentally, waaaaaay more than 6 servings. 10, at least! Marcy had no idea there was a mess-up in the cooking process.

For the record, I did incorporate a work-around/substitution for green peppers, which I should mention in case there are other green pepper haters out there. I used jalapeños. For some reason, they don’t bother me the way bell peppers do, and if you remove the seeds and ribs, they’re not spicy, just pepper-tasting. I usually substitute two or three jalapeños per bell pepper. So much better….

SFO: 9

(This tastes great and is amazingly hearty and filling. I just had to take a point off for the fact that this dish dares to evoke the word “jambalaya” and fails to deliver the expected chicken and/or sausage.)

Day 42 - Simple Seitan

Simple Seitan

This is one of the recipes that inspired me to take on the project of cooking my way through this book. Making one’s own seitan is one of those vegan-empowerment things. And it’s the one protein, unlike tofu or tempeh, that you can make on your own without too much fuss. I remember when I was a vegan back in 1988 when it was tough to find already-prepared seitan, and I made my own by washing regular flour until all that was left was the gluten. Now they sell this handy dandy vital wheat gluten. Hallelujah! That washing thing was a bust!

This recipe comes together in a snap. My only question is: How elastic exactly is the elastic dough that I’m aiming for? I wonder if I’m over- or under-kneading my gluten. My dough is a little porous, and I think it might be contributing to a somewhat spongy final product. This time, when I made it, I was very vigilant about catching it right at the boiling point, and I still ended up with some sponginess. Not as bad as the first time, but I wonder if I made this dough in the electric mixer with the dough attachment, might I end up with a better result?

Even slightly spongy, I love the way this tastes, and I love that I can make it myself. Thanks I&T!

SFO: 8

(I think anyone would be happy to eat it, but I fear that some meat eaters might feel a little shortchanged when they discover that this is the main course protein.)

Day 41 - Hummus with Roasted Garlic

Hummus with Roasted Garlic

Yikes, I blew this one.

I roasted some garlic just for the occasion, but then when I was actually putting together the hummus, I added too much fresh garlic, and now the hummus is too garlicky!

I think I&T's suggestion of 2-3 cloves of garlic is way off. I think one small clove of fresh garlic would be plenty. And I knew this going in, but I forgot, and in went 3 cloves. And now all that beautiful roasted garlic is buried under the clobbering weight of 3 fresh cloves. I should have left out the fresh garlic entirely.

I may have to try this one again....

SFO: 10

(As long as you both eat it...)     

Day 38 - Hot and Sour Soup with Wood Ears and Napa Cabbage, Pineapple-Cashew-Quinoa Stir-Fry, and The Green Tea

Remember how Ryan and Judith were going to come over for dinner? Sadly, Judith got sick and had to cancel, so it's just Ryan and me and our Chinese-y cookie feast!

Hot and Sour Soup with Wood Ears and Napa Cabbage

I don't think I've ever tried to make a hot and sour soup. I&T are right in proclaiming the non-authenticity of this recipe. It doesn't deliver that authentic Chinese result, but it's in the ballpark.

First thing I want to talk about is dried wood ear mushrooms. I found these at Kalustyans. If you don't know about Kalustyans, you need to check it out immediately. It's a great place to find whatever ethnic foodstuffs are eluding you, and lucky for me, it's a 10 minute walk from my apartment.

The bag of mushrooms I bought was an ounce worth, twice what the recipe called for, but it seemed like such a small amount when I portioned out half an ounce that I decided to throw the whole bag in. I mean, when am I going to use dried wood ear mushrooms again, right? Cut to a gigantic mound of rehydrated mushrooms! I left them in, but beware the amazing, expanding wood ear mushroom.

Next thing I want to talk about is hot chile oil. They don't call it hot for nothin'. And I&T wanted me to put in 3 teaspoons! (Now, why did they say 3 teaspoons instead of 1 tablespoon?) I knew that 3t was going to render the soup inedible for me, so I put in 2, and it was still crazy, over-the-top spicy hot! Three would have meant bleeding esophagus. We managed to eat it anyway, noticing that the cooler the soup got temperature-wise, the less the chili heat bothered us. Hmm....
 
The final thing I want to mention is white pepper, which this recipe includes. Am I the only one who thinks that ground white pepper smells yucky? I don't even know what word to use to describe the smell... sulphur? Body odor? Stinky feet? Do I have a bad batch of white pepper or is this a thing?

Overall, I thought the soup could have used more Sour, but I guess I&T decided to focus on nailing the Hot part. What's nice about this soup is the heavy tofu presence, as well as the other vegetables floating about. I liked it, but I don't think I ever need to make it again.

SFO: 9

(One point off for tofu-o-phobics.)


Pineapple-Cashew-Quinoa Stir-Fry

Yes yes yes! This is the best of vegan food right here!

Everything about this dish was amazing! The pineapple juice-cooked quinoa tastes incredible, and then when stir-fried together with all the other little treasures? Forget about it! Again, my quinoa took waaay longer than they say, but no biggie. I made it the night before.

There is something missing in the instructions of this recipe - I&T never tell us when to add the cashews back in. My guess is that they'd want us to do it pretty late, so I put them in just before I took it off the heat.

This is a hole-in-one! What a great dish to bring to a pot-luck! Four thumbs up! And it smells great, too! (see picture)

SFO: 10

(If you need to introduce a non-believer to quinoa, this would be the perfect vehicle.)

The Green Tea

Here's the ice cream sandwich combining Terry's Favorite Almond Cookie and Green Tea Ice Cream.

I'm happy to say, it works. It didn't change my life, but I was happy to eat it. As was Ryan. (He also ate an Open Sesame, so clearly these ice cream sandwiches are totally working for him.)

SFO: 9

(One point off for the general muddiness of Green Tea Ice Cream.)

Day 37 - Terry's Favorite Almond Cookie

Terry's Favorite Almond Cookie

I've never been particularly partial to the almond cookie, but since I was going to be having my friends Judith and Ryan over for dinner, this seemed like an obvious choice. See, our typical (i.e. ritual for the past 20! years) date involves dinner at House of Vegetarian in Chinatown, followed by a stop at La Bella Ferrara for cookies in Little Italy. So I thought I'd cook something Chinese-y, and then serve cookies for dessert. (Plus, I have that Green Tea Ice Cream in the freezer, waiting to be made into ice cream sandwiches with these cookies!)

This cookie batter is very dense - again I used my electric mixer, but once all the dry ingredients were added, the batter was too thick to do much. I made about 50/50 medium-sized and full-sized cookies. I figured most people wouldn't want to eat a mammoth ice cream sandwich made from gigantic cookies....

As has been the case with all of the cookies I've made from this book so far, these seem scarily underdone when removed from the oven. I've been using a combination of I&T's timing suggestions, the smell test (i.e. they're done when you can start smelling them), and visual cues to determine when to take them out. In this case, I went by the browning around the edges, plus they were smelly by then, and it was right in line with I&T's times.

And just as I&T warn, the cookies are crazily soft (seemingly way underdone) before they've cooled. But lo and behold, upon cooling, they transform into normal chewy cookies.

I like them. They have a nice crackly appearance, with the nuts baked into the tops. The weird ingredient here is the sesame oil, which really expresses itself, even though only a small amount is used. I simultaneously love it and am bothered by it. 

SFO: 10

Day 33 - Sweet Crepes

Sweet Crepes 

Even after all my cooking adventures, this was my first attempt at crepes!

I love that this batter happens in a blender - just dump everything in and blend the crap out of it. The only thing is, you have to think ahead, given the need to refrigerate the batter for a while....

I don't have a crepe pan, so I opted for my big cast iron skillet. I was prepared for lots of messed up crepes, as everyone (even I&T) warns that it takes some practice to get a decent result. But I had good crepes, right off the bat! The skillet worked perfectly - of course it was greased within an inch of its life, but that's how you do it, right?

The batter made six generously sized crepes, and Sam and I ate three of them. (OK, I ate two and she ate one.) We filled some with Not-Tella (yum) and others with berries (also yum). That little bit of sugar in the batter was just right, and the crepes tasted like the lightest, most delicate pancakes ever.

These are a real treat, and so easy to make!!

SFO: 10

Day 32 - Mushroom and Spinach Strata and Diner Home Fries

As I mentioned yesterday, my lovely and beautiful goddaughter Samantha is visiting for a special godparents weekend! Her godmother Patty Ben (aka my godwife) also lives in NYC, and since they were going to be spending the day together, I thought we should all start out with a vegan brunch!

Mushroom and Spinach Strata

Strata with no eggs is a funny concept, since I think eggs are really the star of a strata. This custard is made from the usual vegan suspects: tofu, mustard, lemon juice, etc., and I was curious to see if the substitution would work.

While I feel the results were mixed, the gals were decidedly in favor. I thought the herbs were a little overwhelming and that the sour notes (i.e. the lemon and mustard) in the custard dominated in a bad way. Also, because the custard doesn't have the same soaking abilities as egg, I thought the bread could have been cut into smaller pieces, since there were some big, dry-ish chunks in there.

But like I said, I was in the minority. Seconds were served to all, and the following morning, Sam even wanted leftovers! That says it all!

SFO: 9

(Clearly they're feeling a 10, but I'm feeling a 7 here, so I took an average.)

Diner Home Fries

Yup. That's exactly what these are! Just like diner home fries! I thought the potato slices were kind of big to start, but by the time these are done cooking, there's been a fair amount of crumbling away, and the finished product is nicely proportioned.

As you now know, I hate bell peppers, and Sam doesn't like potatoes, so these weren't particularly popular. But after I picked out all the peppers, I was very happy with the results.

SFO: 10

(Nothing to object to here. Unless you're Sam and I.)

Day 31 - Not-Tella

Not-Tella

In anticipation of my god-daughter Samantha's arrival (!), I thought I'd give this recipe a shot, as she has a mild (oh, who are we kidding?) extreme obsession with the "real" thing, Nutella. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get my hands on soy milk powder so I made the dark chocolate version. 

Survey says: good, but NOTHING like Nutella. 

First of all, I&T instruct us to only pulse the food processor, but I'm here to tell you, this recipe requires the food processor to go constantly, and for a while, and even then, you end up with a gritty texture. That's the big difference here, the texture, which is nothing like the creaminess of Nutella. It's more like a paste.

Samantha got in late last night, and I made her taste it. She likened it to the texture of the red bean filling in Chinese and Japanese dessert items. Very astute. And accurate.

Even though we agree that it's not very Nutellian, I'm thinking we're going to have to try it in a crepe while she's here....

SFO: 9

(It's safe for anyone. Just don't sell it as Nutella. Bill it as chocolate hazelnut paste.)

Day 30 - Ancho-Lentil Soup with Grilled Pineapple and The Mocha

30 Day Check In!!
I think it's going very well. There have been very few disasters (only one, actually) and a lot of great food and exciting discoveries. I'm really excited to be on this journey, and I'm happy to report that as of today, I've completed 42.5 of the 313 total recipes. (FYI, the half is the Roasted Portobello Mushrooms that I need to redo.)

Ancho-Lentil Soup with Grilled Pineapple 

The title of this dish is perfectly descriptive, but it can't communicate how amazing it tastes. This recipe includes the preparation of homemade ancho chile powder, which is fun! I've ground up toasted chiles before, but I love the way I&T turn it into an event. And it really adds so much flavor to the soup!

I used half vegetable broth and half water, and I also added about a half cup of the optional extra cup of water before blending. Incidentally, my lentils took another ten or so minutes beyond the book's suggested time.

This is one of those soups that you can't appreciate until it's all come together. Once the lime juice goes in and you've blended it and you're tasting for salt, you can tell it's a special soup, but wait: the thing that really sends it over the moon is the grilled pineapple. A spoonful of this soup together with a bite of that fruit is heaven. Marcy agrees.

SFO: 10

(It's not the lentil soup your grandmother made, but it's amazing, so just eat it, will you?)

The Mocha 

Here's my second ice cream sandwich, The Mocha, incorporating the Chocolate-Chocolate Chip-Walnut Cookies and Coffee Ice Cream which is then rolled in chocolate sprinkles.

Great idea, great combo. The only place where it disappoints is in the lackluster coffee flavor and icy texture of the ice cream. But as it melts, the texture improves, and the flavor, while not spectacular, is fine. 

Marcy, in a rare moment of dessert indulgence, actually eats one! (Note: check out the engagement bling on her hand!)

SFO: 9

(A 10 in concept, but I'm still cranky about the ice cream.)

Day 29 - Coffee Ice Cream and Green Tea Ice Cream

Since the basic ice cream recipe calls for 6 oz of silken tofu, and the tofu comes in a 12 oz container, I thought I'd waste-not and knock out two flavors at the same time!

Coffee Ice Cream

I've made non-vegan coffee ice cream from a Martha Stewart recipe that is so decadent and so flavorful that it has never failed to elicit "best ever" accolades. Needless to say, it's a tough act to follow.

I wasn't sure how to handle the coffee part of this recipe. It calls for 4 oz of strong, cold espresso, or coffee extract, which I don't have. What I do have is instant espresso powder, but how much to use? The product suggests a heaping teaspoon per 3 oz of water, but that seems way too weak for this application. I consulted the Martha recipe, which calls for 4 tablespoons (!) of instant espresso powder (for a slightly greater total amount of ice cream). I decided to split the difference, and I dissolved about 2.5 tablespoons of powder in boiling water to total 4 oz.

Survey says? OK. Less luxurious than the peanut butter ice cream, for sure. I wonder if the missing 4 oz of soy milk replaced by water (espresso) contributes to the slightly thinner, icier quality here. 

Also, I think it needs even more coffee flavor! If I make this again, I will follow Martha's lead and use 4 tablespoons of powder in 2 tablespoons of water. And if that doesn't equal 4 ounces, I'll make up the difference in soy milk.

SFO: 8

(This is totally respectable, but not as convincing as the peanut butter. It's more like Thinny Thin. Does anyone remember Thinny Thin?)

Green Tea Ice Cream

I have an ex who loves green tea ice cream, the more earthy and bitter, the better, and he got me on board. So I was excited to try this. 

I found a little container of matcha powder at my local Asian supermarket and added a considerable 2 tablespoons to the ice cream mix. (FYI, that used up about 3/4 of my $11 container, so this ice cream's flavoring alone cost roughly $8!)

Survey says? Good. Also a little icy. As for the flavor, it takes a few seconds to kick in, but it eventually appears, and it's well-calibrated. (Is this a phenomenon of frozen food? Delayed flavor response?) 

I wonder if my first homemade vegan ice cream experience was elevated by the presence of peanut butter, bringing a higher fat content and smoothness with it. Today's ice creams are good (enough), but the consistency is less satisfying, I'm afraid. How are these going to perform in ice cream sandwiches? Stay tuned....

SFO: 8

(For the same reasons as the Coffee. Also, I wonder how many people out there enjoy this flavor....)

Day 27 - Chickpea-Quinoa Pilaf

Chickpea-Quinoa Pilaf

"Chickpea-Quinoa Pilaf." Try saying that ten times fast.

My bestie David is doing this fitness thing called Snatched in Six Weeks, so he's literally counting and logging every calorie, balancing carbs, protein, fat, etc. You know the drill. So I had to find something super-healthy to make for him, and this seemed like a good choice.

When I saw the whole tablespoon of coriander seeds in the ingredients, I thought, This must be a typo, and I went on a google hunt for evidence of that. Instead, I found accounts of people either enjoying this recipe as written or thinking it was blah, not flavorful enough. Wha? With all those coriander seeds?

I brought out the old mortar and pestle to crush the seeds, and it was very exciting to smell the smells coming from them as they were ground down. But it didn't allay my fears that this big pile of fragrant, sandy matter would be distasteful in the finished dish. Still, I carried on with the recipe, verbatim.

I'm very happy to report that the recipe is pretty darn perfect. What I thought would be overwhelming was just right. The flavors are great - that tablespoon of tomato paste really delivers. And the quinoa-chickpea combination is solid. We really liked this.

The only thing I will say is that it took a lot longer for the water to be absorbed than I&T suggest. They ballpark 18 minutes, and mine went about twice that long. Maybe when I lowered the heat "to very low," it was too insanely low. But who cares. Nobody fainted waiting for it, and the finished product was excellent.

SFO: 10 (as a side) 

(David thought that if this were served specifically as a side dish accompanying something more substantial, any meat eater would be happy to eat it. But if it were the main course, he'd lower the score, just for "what's quinoa?" and "no there there"ness. I totally agree.)

Day 25 - Hot Sauce-Glazed Tempeh, Jalapeño-Corn Gravy, Mashed Potatoes, and Chocolate-Chocolate Chip-Walnut Cookies

My friend Seth came over for dinner. Since he has mushroom-a-phobia, I put together this anti-fungal mini-menu....

Hot Sauce-Glazed Tempeh

I was so scared of this recipe! The marinade calls for 1/4 cup of hot sauce. 1/4 cup!! And then, you add some cayenne too!?! I'm a lightweight when it comes to spicy, i.e. heat. 

As it turns out, the tempeh soaks up only a small bit of flavor during its hour-long marinade. While this was a relief on one hand, on the other, I longer for more flavor on the tempeh, even heat.

I finally broke out the cast-iron grill for this one. Ugh. I hate cleaning that thing. I actually did this endless seasoning process last year which involved brushing it down with flax oil and baking it at 1,000,000° on SIX different occasions. And still, the food sticks. Argh....

Maybe my tempeh was unusually thick, or the grill wasn't hot enough, because five minutes on each side didn't give me grill marks, not to mention heat the tempeh through. (But it did leave burnt-on bits of tempeh that were impossible to clean off.)  

The great thing here is the blanching of the tempeh. It really takes any funky taste out of the product. Seth had never had tempeh before, and I thought that tempeh might spark his mushroom-a-phobia. You know... fungus... fermented soy beans... they must be related somehow. But tempeh, blanched, is quite mild and has a nice kind of meatloafy quality. Good 'n' hearty. Just could've used more flavor.

SFO: 9

(For the record, omnivore Seth thought this was an SFO 10, but I disagree: I mean, explaining fermented soybean cakes to your typical meat-eater seems like a hard sell. I averaged our scores. Funnily, he thought the kale I served on the side would be the tougher sell.)

Jalapeño-Corn Gravy

This "gravy" is cute, easy, unusual. I can't really compare it to anything I've ever had before. I think it's because it's so sweet! Given its name, I was expecting it to have some heat, but it doesn't. In fact, the jalapeño presence is almost completely overwhelmed by the corn, which really dominates this gravy. As I&T wrote, it does go very well with the potatoes and tempeh. Sweet and creamy x  (fluffy/starchy + meaty/savory) = yummy. Well-designed!

SFO: 10

(It's unusual, but it's not foreign and unexplainable, like tempeh.)

Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes just always work, sort of like hummus. It's hard to wreck them. Vegan margarine and soy milk aren't butter and whole milk, but they totally get the job done. 

I do need to say something about the recipe as printed, though. I made a big boo boo, and I'm man enough to admit it was entirely my fault, but because I think it's an easy mistake to make, I felt it was worth mentioning. 

Most recipes list the ingredients in order of appearance. For instance, in this recipe, you bring the potatoes to a boil in salted water, cook them until soft, then drain and add margarine and soy milk. So you'd expect the ingredient list to be ordered:

potatoes

salt

margarine

soy milk

 

However, the ingredient list is ordered like this:

2 lbs potatoes

2-3 T margarine

1/2 cup soy milk

2 teaspoons salt

So I salted the water with the 2 teaspoons, and then when I was adding the margarine and soy milk, I added another 2 teaspoons of salt. Eek! I caught my mistake in time to scoop out as much of it as I could eyeball, so it was edible (barely) but I think it's an easy mistake to make, given how the ingredients appear. So stay more alert than I did!

SFO: 10

Chocolate-Chocolate Chip-Walnut Cookies 

Yummmmmm! Another great vegan baking triumph!

It seems like most (or all) of these dessert recipes are written without instructions for electric mixers, so I've been adapting them in order to use mine, since it's such a great workhorse. And it performed beautifully with this recipe, using the paddle attachment.

These cookies are so good, I had to freeze them right after I served them (and ate 10 of them). Following the directions for size/shaping, i.e. 1-inch balls flattened into 1.5" disks, I ended up with much more than the 36 cookies estimated. Probably more like 48.

Ten minutes in the oven was about right for a chewy cookie with a soft middle. I let the second batch go a couple of minutes longer, and I liked that consistency even better. Still chewy, but with a little more structure.

Great flavor - great cookie!

Note: this comes up in other recipes, but I think it's worth mentioning here. Grinding whole flaxseeds is not a 1:1 situation. It takes about 3 tablespoons of whole seeds to end up with 4 tablespoons of ground.

SFO: 10!!

Day 23 - White Bean Aioli

White Bean Aioli 

I needed a quick something to make today, and I know my friend Marcy is always up for bean-y things, so this seemed like a good idea. Now, this recipe says it takes 10 minutes to make, and it really does take 10 minutes! And it's delicious!

I'd say this is more of a white bean dip than an aioli. There's no reason you couldn't put this out in the same way you'd put out a hummus. Yes, it's very garlicky, but that short amount of cooking time that the garlic gets really takes the edge off it.

SFO: 10

Day 21 - Roasted Red Pepper Hummus, Poppy Seed-Cornmeal Roti, Mashed Spiced Sweet Potatoes, and Holiday Cranberry Sauce

Tonight was Book Club, aka Jeff's Book and Cook Club. See, after I cooked my way through Martha's book, I missed the constant dinner parties and entertaining, so I invited a bunch of friends to be a part of a book club for which I would provide meals inspired by whatever we just read. And here we are over two years later, celebrating our 18th selection/dinner together. 

Notice I didn't say "book" in that last sentence, because tonight was a Wild Card dinner. After every eighth book, we have a Wild Card selection, i.e. something that doesn't fall into one of the categories we regularly cycle through, namely: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Epic (anything over 500 pages), and Classic (anything published before 1965). For example, our first Wild Card entailed reading a month's worth of The New Yorker. Tonight's Wild Card selection entailed watching four specific Woody Allen movies. 

I know, I know, it's not a book. It's not even a magazine. It didn't involve reading in any shape or form, but it was what the group voted for, so tonight we had Chez Woody with a meal inspired by those four movies. It was a decidedly un-vegan meal, but I did manage to incorporate four recipes from the book!

Our cocktail hour brought The Annie Hall-way of Finger Foods, mostly non-vegan selections, descriptions of which I will spare you, but I did include what I called Self-Hatred Hummus, as a nod to Woody's line in the film that sums up his basic ideology: "I would never wanna belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member."

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

I hate bell peppers. Unless I'm forgetting something, they're the only food I absolutely despise. I can smell, taste, sense them a mile away. If a pepper passes over a pot while it's cooking, the whole dish is tainted for me. It's not just a taste thing, it's also an indigestion thing: bell pepper is the awful taste that keeps on giving.

And if you know anything about this book, you know that it is positively RIDDLED with bell peppers. So how am I going to handle this? Like any good, self-hating, rule-following Jew, I'm going to prepare all the recipes verbatim, even those with the dreaded peppers. Hopefully, there will be people around me to enjoy them. I will taste everything, but chances are 99.9% that anything with peppers will not get a second bite from me. (FYI, this doesn't apply to jalapeño or serrano or any chile peppers. Those I'll eat.)

That's why I dubbed this dip Self-Hatred Hummus. Because I would never want to eat it. But other people did, and evidently it was fine. That's Adinah posing with it above.

SFO: 10

Poppy Seed-Cornmeal Roti

The first course was inspired by the film Crimes and Misdemeanors, which is a film almost completely devoid of food and food references. In one scene, Woody and Mia are eating take-out Indian, and he jokes, "How's the Tandoori Mouse?" So in a desperation move, I went Indian for this course. I made this Carrot Pachadi recipe and served it with the Poppy Seed-Cornmeal Roti.

Poppy Seed-Cornmeal Roti is the recipe that ate my afternoon. It's not that it's so hard, it's just time-consuming. I hadn't done the math, but if you're making ten of something that needs to be cooked for 3-4 minutes on both sides, that's 60-80 minutes of cooking time! And that doesn't even include the painstaking process of brushing and folding and sprinkling of crumbs and multiple rollings that these require. Oy.

And to add insult to injury, after all that work, I think I must have made one or more very big mistakes here. While the flavors were really nice (though could've been saltier... I know, broken record), the rotis were tough and dried out, not even remotely "soft, flaky, buttery" as described.
 
Here are my guesses for where the bad turn happened: 1) I rolled them too thin. 2) My pan was too hot. 3) I didn't wrap them or reheat them well. 4) I over-kneaded them to begin with. 5) I increased the recipe by 50%.

1) I saw the instruction to roll into "as thin a circle as possible" and went for it.
2) In retrospect, I realize I should've turned the flame down when I saw the big black spots forming on the breads. I mean, little black spots are good, but big ones? My bad.
3) I wrapped them in a damp dish towel as they were being made, and rewarmed them tightly wrapped in foil, all as directed, but I think the damage may have been done already.
4) I let my KitchenAid mixer knead for me (with the dough hook). And maybe I let it go on too long. 5-6 minutes of kneading by hand might not mean 5-6 minutes of machine kneading.
5) Upping the recipe by 50% should have set me up for 12 small rotis. What I got were 10 very large rotis. This makes me think #1 is at least one of the culprits.

Also, I assert that there's a typo in here.  It has to do with the oil. The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons in the crumbs part of the recipe, plus more for brushing. However, there is also an instruction in the recipe to coat the just-kneaded roti dough in a tablespoon of oil before it rests. I think that that tablespoon is meant to be factored into the 2 tablespoons that it appears are meant to go into the crumbs.

Here's the problem: when you add 2 tablespoons of oil to the crumbs ingredients, you don't get crumbs, you get paste. If it were 1 tablespoon to coat the dough ball, and 1 tablespoon for the crumbs, I think the crumbs would end up with the right, crumby consistency.

And should I even address the ludicrous "typo" that says these take 30 minutes? Simply cooking 8 rotis takes between 48-64 minutes, and that doesn't include assembling the ingredients (5m), kneading (5m), resting time (10m minimum), and rolling and folding and brushing and crumbling (1,000,000m). Even if you roll out the next roti while you're cooking the last one, you will need to set aside about an hour and a half for this recipe. Trust me.

As for the taste, delicious. Even tough and dried-out, my book club buddies enjoyed this. That's my cousin Harriet nibbling on one.

SFO: 10

(I'm not going to punish this recipe for my own mistakes. If made well, I'm sure anyone would be happy to eat them.)
 
Mashed Spiced Sweet Potatoes

The main course got its inspiration from Hannah and Her Sisters, which begins and ends with two consecutive Thanksgiving dinners. There's a no-brainer! 

Mashed sweet potatoes always have a place on the Thanksgiving table! As for I&T's take on them, it's easy, straightforward, traditional even. The only thing distinguishing these from your average Thanksgiving side dish is the absence of butter (enter vegetable oil). Very tasty, and a good candidate for making ahead. Reheats well.

SFO: 10 

(Even Tracy ate it!) 

Holiday Cranberry Sauce 

One of my favorite Thanksgiving ingredients is fresh cranberries. I was so excited to see that they were still available in the stores. I was curious to try this recipe because of the agar addition. I've never used a thickening agent for cranberry sauce, but it must be because there's more liquid (apple cider) and less sugar than your typical versions. 

Warning: watch this pot carefully! Evidently apple cider with agar in it really loves to boil over. It happened to me twice!

As for the taste, good. The apple cider doesn't change the flavor profile too much. The cranberries dominate. The agar doesn't seem to bind this a whole heck of a lot. It was soupier than my traditional version. Ultimately, not preferable, but fine. Annie liked it.

SFO: 10

(It's safe to serve to anyone, but I won't be using this recipe come Thanksgiving.)  

P.S. Dessert was a non-vegan French Apple Cake inspired by Midnight in Paris. I almost made the Apple Galettes from the book, but I thought it might be too much to take on....

Day 19 - Banana-Nut Waffles

Banana-Nut Waffles

First Veganomenkrantz brunch recipe! AND first waffles ever!! My guest today is my little jazzy baby, Alysha. (If you don't already know her, you have to check her out here, singing one of my songs.)

I've never owned a waffle-maker. It was one of those things that seemed too fetish-y, too specific. And I just never developed enough of an obsession with waffles to justify buying one. But that's one of the reasons why I love projects like this one. It forces you into cooking and buying things that you wouldn't typically gravitate to. And I'm so glad I did!

These are amazing! Great taste, texture, everything! My waffle iron is the kind that you put on the stove, not a plug-in version. And since it was the first time I've ever used it, I'm not sure if the tender waffles I ended up with are due to the recipe, the waffle iron, or how long they were cooked. While I suspect I could have gotten more color and crust if I cooked them longer, they were so yummy and deluxe that I didn't want to risk ruining them. 

One of the things that really hits me when making all these quick, easy, amazing recipes is: why don't people cook at home more often? It's so easy! And fulfilling!! I mean, homemade waffles!! C'mon!

SFO: 10

(Alysha doesn't even like waffles, but she really liked these.)

Day 16 - French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme

French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme

Bold assertions are made in the introduction to this recipe. "This is the last lentil soup recipe you will ever need" is the first. And it goes on from there.

To me, lentil soup is one of those things that's hard to mess up. If you assemble the standard ingredients with even the minimum cooking know-how, you will end up with a decent soup. Obviously, this soup is better than decent. But is it definitive? Is this the lentil soup that marks the death knell of that new hit Food Network series, America's Next Top Lentil Soup? Who can say, other than the judges from America's Next Top Lentil Soup.

I&T, I appreciate your quirky sense of humor in the prose portions of this book, so I'm not going to belabor the point. It's a very good soup. The tarragon is an unexpected and welcome touch. And French lentils have always been my favorite form of that legume. So I'm a fan. The King of Pants liked it too.


SFO: 10

PS I made that loaf of Whole Wheat Rustic Italian Bread from this amazing Cooks Illustrated recipe. Time-consuming, but worth it!

Day 15 - Chickpea Cutlets and Mustard Sauce

Chickpea Cutlets

This is one of those Veganomicon recipes that gets a ton of airplay. Seems like it's made its way into the top five list of everyone who has this book, so I thought it was a good choice with which to renew my palate in the wake of the Great Beanball Debacle of 2012-13. I know, it's a lot of pressure to put on this poor recipe.

But it came through!! This cutlet was chewy and gluten-y and flavor-y and delicious! And really easy to make! I can see why everyone is crowing about it. 

Unlike many of the recipes I've tried so far, this one is very confident in the salt department, which you know I love. And let's talk about the gluten:beans ratio here, which I've already posited is the reason the beanballs don't work. In these cutlets, it's 2 parts beans, 2 parts floury stuff (gluten and breadcrumbs), and 1 part wet stuff (oil and soy sauce). In the beanballs, there's 6 parts beans, 1.5 parts floury stuff, and less than 1 part wet stuff. Very different, right? Maybe it should have read 1 1/4 cups instead of 1/4 cup gluten. Hmm....

In any case, I think the beanballs could learn a thing or two from the chickpea cutlets. They're toothy and meaty and savory and all-around yummy, not to mention pan-fry-able. This will be a fun dish to serve to skeptics.

The only things I may jiggle with next time around are: a) baking instead of pan-frying just to check out a different texture, and b) mashing the chickpeas a little better. I definitely didn't leave any whole beans, but I think I'll prefer the texture of these with fewer or no bean chunks in there.

SFO: 8

(This rating is but a guess in a vacuum. I may have to revisit this when there's some hard data.)


Mustard Sauce

It's only appropriate that I try I&T's recommended topping for the cutlets. They are right when they say that this is "for mustard lovers only!" Luckily, I am one!

This thick, thick mustard sauce is thick. Did I mention the thickness of this sauce? And it's thick with bold flavors: sherry, capers (with brine!), soy sauce, garlic, lemon juice, and a whopping 1/4 cup of whole grain mustard, all bound together with a vegetable broth/cornstarch slurry. 

It totally works, it tastes great, and like most of these recipes, it's really easy to make. Well done, gals! 

SFO: 8

(Safe for all, but how many people out there are this into mustard?)

Day 13 - Mediterranean Olive Oil and Lemon Vinaigrette, Cheezy Sauce, Mac Daddy, and Spaghetti and Beanballs

This was a big day for Veganomenkrantz! Two meals, with two different sets of challenges!

PART ONE - The Cousins from D.C.

My first cousin, Stacey, is in town, visiting from Maryland, with husband David and children Sam (12), Ben (11) and Hannah (8). It so happens that they keep kosher, so the good news is, a vegan meal takes all the guesswork out of it. Everything's kosher! And Stacey and David are very open-minded eaters (unlike another of the cousins, I'm told). It was going to be interesting to see what the kids would and wouldn't eat. Macaroni and "cheese" seemed like a good bet, but I had a lot of emergency back-up plans in place.

Mediterranean Olive Oil and Lemon Vinaigrette

At the last minute, I realized I needed a dressing for the simple salad I put together. Luckily, I had all the ingredients on hand for this. It's very straightforward, very herb-dense. I would say that while the juice to oil ratio is on the healthier side, it's not a dressing that will emulsify like an oilier version. (A little mustard might have helped with that.) Also, it's relentlessly tart - a blip of agave might mitigate that.

SFO: 10 

(really, n/a)

Cheezy Sauce

This is the big sauce for the Mac Daddy, and I was very anxious to see how I&T approximated cheese sauce. It's very convincing! I used a very orange-y vegetable broth (actually half broth, half water) so my cheezy sauce was quite orange. There's a big garlic presence here. And the mustard, though only a small amount, really stands out flavor-wise.

I don't know anything about nutritional yeast (although I just googled it), so I was curious to see it in action. The flakes basically melt into the sauce, and I'm guessing what they provide is flavor and maybe color. So the main thickener here must be the flour, although it's interesting that I&T are able to get away with a 4:1 ratio of flour to fat. I thought the standard ratio was 1:1 for thickening. Yet another way in which I&T have come through for the fat-averse.

All in all, I'm impressed. It's not cheese sauce, no one will ever suspect it's cheese sauce, but it's a great-tasting, similarly-textured alternative. Cool!

SFO: 6

(I think this could be a tough sell because it's hard to explain what exactly it is. It can be scary when the main ingredient is something most people haven't heard of...) 


Mac Daddy

Here is the casserole itself! The components are a pound of extra-firm tofu, seasoned and crumbled to ricotta consistency, 3/4 pound of cooked macaroni, and two recipes worth of Cheezy Sauce. It's very easy to assemble, and the look is almost right. (Obviously, the sauce doesn't behave in the oven like a real cheese topping would. Maybe a crumb topping would have helped here.)

Flavor-wise, I'm going to say the same thing about this that I said about Cheezy Sauce. It's not a perfect imitation, but it's a "great-tasting, similarly-textured alternative." (Maybe that needs to be an acronym here. GTSTA. Or NAPIBAGTSTA. I'll get back to you on that.)

Now the real test was going to be the children. The first to taste it was Sam, who was already grooving on the smell from the oven. He gave it... a perfect 10! Wow!! Next was Ben, who was a little less excited ("7") but still happy to eat it. And then there was Hannah: "2. No wait, 1."  Ah well, it would have been too easy if they all liked it. For the record, the adults were pretty satisfied. That's Sam with a mouthful. :-)

SFO: 7

(This is the rough average of all our ratings put together.)


 



And here's Hannah with her fall-back-plan muffin. (Which she said was a 10.)






 


And here's the whole family (that's Ben with the book). It was so great to see them all and to share this food adventure with them! Thanks you guys!!








PART TWO - Tracy C.

One of my all-time best friends, Tracy C. has a very unique attitude about food. There are things she's really happy to eat, and things that are completely out of the question. Which I guess describes everybody, but Tracy has some pretty basic things in the second column, i.e. pretty much anything that could be described as a sauce, condiment, dressing, or creamy in any way. So cooking for her presents specific challenges... Luckily, tomato sauce is one of the few loopholes, and spaghetti and meatballs is one of her favorite things. So trying this recipe on her was a no-brainer. And there's no one better in the role of SFO barometer.


Spaghetti and Beanballs 

After my experience with the Black Bean Burgers, I had really high hopes for how these beanballs would turn out. The burgers' combination of mashed beans and wheat gluten was really yummy and the texture was excellent! Alas, similar ingredients here resulted in a much different outcome....

There must be a typo or mistake in this recipe, because the consistency of these is all off. They don't hold together in the pan. The first issue points to the beans department. The recipe says to use a "20oz can of kidney beans, rinsed and drained, (about 3 cups)." First of all, I could not find a 20oz can of beans. So I found a 25oz can of beans, drained them, and used 4/5 of them (by weight). This did not equal three cups of beans. It was probably closer to two. Would more beans have helped here? I'm guessing no. I think the number that's off is the amount of wheat gluten. Or the bread crumbs. Also, must they be dried bread crumbs? Because I used fresh....

I knew something was wrong when I was kneading. It was quite wet, and I wasn't seeing any of the gluten-y strands forming. It's dense enough that the balls can be shaped successfully, but it's certainly not firm, as I&T say it should be. So when you try to brown them in oil, they start disintegrating. Boo.

My next issue is what could only be described as a missing instruction in the pan frying version of the recipe. You are told to pan fry them in 1/4 inch of olive oil (see photo). Then, you add 1/3 cup of sauce to the pan with the beanballs, cook them fifteen minutes longer, and then serve them with "sauce." Can you picture it? That "sauce" is one part marinara to 10 parts olive oil. No one wants to eat something swimming in that!?! The missing instruction must be to drain the oil off, right?? I got out my baster, and sucked as much out of the pan as I could.

Meanwhile, the only way to get the beanballs to hold a shape was to fry them to the point of burnt. At least the burnt ones had some flavor to them... that's right: to add insult to injury, these are not  particularly well-seasoned either.

Geez, I feel like I'm being so harsh, but I had such high hopes for these being a happy introduction to vegan food for Tracy. Is there an official I&T recipe correction? Or do they stand by this recipe as written?? Hmmm.

Look at Tracy - she's being such a good sport. She even ate the beanball!

SFO: 0

(not even safe for vegans)