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!!
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