Day 141 - Olive Marinara Sauce and Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

One of my side adventures has been in the realm of sourdough. After failing at creating my own, I went and bought a starter online, which came in dry form, and I "grew" it, which involves a lot of discarding of perfectly good dough. So I found a pizza dough recipe that uses the discarded starter! And I needed a sauce to top my sourdough pizza!

Olive Marinara Sauce

Like the default marinara recipe, this is quick and easy and tastes pretty good. I don't think there's anything else to say, although I do note that there is no sugar in this recipe, and particularly in this olive variation, I thought that a little sugar might have improved the flavor here...

SFO: 10

Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

Who doesn't love an oatmeal raisin cookie?

I'd heard reports from friends who'd tried this recipe, unsuccessfully, and I was anxious to see what the issue was. While I didn't have the same terrible results my friends had, I think I understand their frustration.

This recipe creates and incredible dry and crumbly dough. It's quite challenging to form these cookies. It almost feels like you're just piling the ingredients on top of each other, more than forming dough balls. In the end, the cookies that come out of the oven are cohesive if slightly crumbly, but they're definitely less cookie-like than your average oatmeal raisin cookie.

The flavor, however, is great.

As I usually do, I combined all purpose flour and whole wheat pastry flour for this recipe. It occurs to me that maybe there should be liquid adjustments built in when incorporating WW flour. I can't help thinking that a little extra liquid would go a long way in improving the bind-ability and texture of these cookies. Maybe a touch more oil and soy milk to compensate for WW flour?

Also, I think that these cookies want to be cooked longer than the 10-12 minutes in the recipe. But that's always my instinct with these vegan cookies. I tried regular and extended cooking times, and while the regular were chewier, the extended were more satisfying overall.

This is not a definitive oatmeal-raisin cookie recipe, but it's a respectable one.
SFO: 8

Day 138 - Hazelnut-Anise Biscotti

Hazelnut-Anise Biscotti 

Remember my ritual Chinatown/Little Italy dinner with Ryan and Judith? Well, tonight was the night. And even though we were eating dinner out, at House of Vegetarian (HOV), I thought I'd bring some Veganomicon goodies to replace our Little Italy cookie dessert.

These biscotti are just as delicious as the almond variety! I did the half and half APF and WW flour combo, to equally good results. I had the same timing issues I had with the previous batch, i.e. the second bake took longer than expected, but otherwise, this recipe is rock solid.

SFO: 10

Day 109 - Maple-Mustard Dressing, Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe with Rotelle, and Chewy Chocolate-Raspberry Cookies

Seth is back, braving the vegan wilds. And coincidentally, the main event is tempeh again.

Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe with Rotelle

By and large, this is a great recipe. Great interplay of flavors, textures, a little on the dry side, but if that doesn't bother you, you should be happy here. I just have a couple of quibbles.

First of all, typo alert. In the instructions for the tempeh steaming liquid, the vinegar is omitted, so don't forget to add that 1/2 teaspoon of vinegar to the tempeh liquid.

Secondly, I+T seem to think that broccoli rabe is the same thing as broccolini, and I disagree. The vegetable I've seen sold as broccolini has a broccoli rabe appearance but unlike broccoli rabe, it is very mild tasting, like American broccoli. 

Seth commented that this dish was very familiar-tasting to him, reminding him of the sausagey version. That bodes well for the SFO score....

SFO: 7
Even though this rang a happy sausage bell for Seth, I'm still downgrading a bit, because I think dyed-in-the-wool meat eaters will still balk at the tempeh substitution.


Maple-Mustard Dressing

In my opinion, this dressing carries an overly heavy maple wallop (not unlike that crazy pesto), but at least this is edible. And paired with the right salad fixin's, it satisfies. But don't kid yourself. This dressing is sa-weeeeet. Not something I see myself repeating, FYI.

SFO: 10
 

Chewy Chocolate-Raspberry Cookies

This is a dense little cookie! As I+T say in the recipe, there's no spreading when baking, so whatever shape you create when you put them in the oven, that's what you'll be taking out of the oven.

The flavor is good. Good. Not great, but good. And strangely, the raspberry participation is all but obliterated by that loudmouth, chocolate. We had to fight hard to find any berry presence. 

SFO: 10

Day 104 - Almond-Anise Biscotti

Almond-Anise Biscotti 

I was going to a party and I thought, what can I bring from the book? And since this group was celebrating a trip we had taken to Italy, this was an easy pick!

As with every recipe in this book where there's an option to substitute whole wheat pastry flour for white, I opted for a half and half mix. My guess is that using all whole wheat flour would really skew the results, but could I get away with a recognizable biscotti with a 50/50 blend?

Survey says: yes! 

The one factor that is really off in the recipe is the baking time for part II. (And maybe part I could have been extended too.)

I did the first bake for the suggested 28 minutes, and the dough was still somewhat soft, even after the cooling period. Hence, my slices were not easy and/or perfect. But workable.

Then, for the second bake, after 12-15 minutes, they were nowhere near ready. Some pieces went for almost twice that long. I definitely recommend turning them for even crispness and keeping an eye on them, since as they near doneness, they can tip over into overdone relatively quickly.

The whole wheat flour makes these a little drier and crumblier than an all-white batch, but these are qualities you'd expect in a biscotti, so they're not unwelcome. The flavor is great, and as long as you cook them long enough, so is the texture.

SFO: 10

Day 92 - Pistachio-Rose Water Cookies

Pistachio-Rose Water Cookies 

If I didn't already have a nickname for Alysha ("Scary"), I would dub her "Rosey" because she does love a rose-flavored thing. When I taste roses, it brings me right back to my grandmother's bathroom, not something I care to think about when I'm eating. But when she tastes roses, she swoons. So whenever I'm cooking up a rosey something, I want her here.

These ingredients are easily combined. The fun part for me was rolling the dough into balls and then pressing them into the chopped pistachios. It's a very effective method of covering the tops of cookies with chopped nuts! (So basic, but I'd never done it before.)

As for cooking time, I've had my experiences with other Veganomicon cookies where I think I've undercooked them, but once cooled, they seem well-timed. In this recipe, I&T write: "Bake for 13 minutes; they will be soft but that's okay, they will firm up as they cool." So I thought, I'm going to override my concern that they will be underdone. I'm going to take them out at 13 minutes. 

Big mistake. They were significantly underdone. In the lead-in to the recipe, these cookies are described as "light and airy, chewy and crispy all at once." No, no, sort of, and no. In the future, I'll go by my friend Barbara's baked goods doneness radar: Can you smell them from outside the oven? Then they're done.

As for taste, they're actually pretty good. What seemed like an egregious amount of rosewater actually balances out nicely with the vanilla and lime flavors, and cardamom, which usually kills a sweet for me, exists peacefully in the background. 

That terrible aftertaste I've been complaining about I now think was caused by baking powder with aluminum. (I did a little googling to see if anyone else had the same complaints, and aluminum seemed to be a common culprit.) I switched baking powders, and so far, no aftertaste! Yay!

I should add that Alysha's a fan of underdone baked goods (see Rosewater Pound Cake episode), so these totally worked for her. And I'll bet if I had left them in another couple of minutes, I'd have been a fan, too.

SFO: 10
(even with my quibbles, there's nothing here to prevent an omnivore from maximum enjoyment)

Day 73 - Wheat-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Wheat-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oops, no picture of these! I was just feeling like I needed to make some cookies today, and my friend Sue, who's wheat-free, is coming over tomorrow, so I thought it would be nice to be able to offer her one or five.

I didn't have oat flour on hand, so I put some rolled oats in my Magic Bullet, and voilà! It's kind of amazing that ground oats will substitute for flour in a cookie recipe. That said, the consistency of these cookies is unique, sort of like a lace cookie and veering toward tuile.  Not a complaint, just an observation.

The instructions say to bake these for 10-12 minutes. My first batch looked so underdone at 10 that I went to 12, but after letting them cool and tasting one, I wondered if maybe I should have taken them out earlier. The second batch only went for 10m, even though they looked not quite ready. Both batches were completely edible, but in the end, I think I preferred the 12m batch. These benefit from a bit of crunch, vs. more chew. Maybe 11m is the answer.

After rereading the recipe, I wonder if maybe I made these too small. I&T describe them as dense and crumbly. Mine were thin and either crispy (12m) or chewy (10m). Also, they say the recipe yields 18 cookies and I had more like 30. That should have been a tip off....

SFO: 10
(no one passes up a cookie)

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 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 3 - Lentils and Rice with Caramelized Onions and Spiced Pita Crisps, Sautéed Spinach and Tomatoes, Peanut-Ginger-Sesame Cookies, Peanut Butter Ice Cream, and Open Sesame Ice Cream Sandwiches

Knowing I was going to have a couple of new veggie friends, Uli and Joe, over for dinner tonight, I thought I'd try out one or two recipes on them. But then I realized that I had miscounted the total recipes in the book. I originally thought there were 309, but today I caught my mistake, which revealed the true total as 333. Yikes! That means I'll have to average almost one a day this year! So I decided to go to town and knock out six recipes in one day, buying myself some time off further on down the line....


Lentils and Rice with Caramelized Onions and Spiced Pita Crisps

The good: 

• This dish can be served at room temperature, so it has good make-ahead potential, something I look for in a dinner party recipe, so I'm not spending the whole party at the stove.

• The rice and lentils component of this dish is very straight-forward and labor-light: boil water, add rice and spices, cover and simmer for 15m, add lentils, cover and simmer for 45m, let sit for 10m, fluff, fold in onions, done. 

• The spices are really fragrant and yummy.

The bad:

• The caramelization of the onions took waaaaaay longer than suggested. I&T say it's a 20-30 minute job at 400°. But hand to heart, it took me one hour and 30 minutes to go from 

this

  
to this.

• How do I say this delicately? This is not a cute dish, not even a little. All those pretty li'l red lentils lose their color, and what you end up with is a clumpy beige-a-palooza.

• There is not a grain of salt in this recipe, which strikes me as strange. I tasted it after adding the onions, and I couldn't bring myself to serve it without at least a little bit of salt, so I gave it a quick sprinkle. But honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a savory recipe with NO salt in it! (I love salt.) 

• At room temperature, the consistency is not terribly inviting. It's neither wet nor dry, neither creamy nor fluffy, nor smooth and mash-like. Let's just say, it's a unique animal....

That said, the spice combo delivers, and the onions taste amazing, which almost compensates for the lack of salt in the dish. Personally, I think a generous adding of salt would really elevate it, but that's just saltaholic me.

Visually, a little bit of color would have gone a long way here. I can't remember if it was Joe or Uli, but someone suggested green peas. Not a bad idea...

SFO: 2
(Most non-vegans will think there's no "there" there. Plus, the appearance doesn't help.)  


Spiced Pita Crisps

This is a fun way to bring some sparkle to the average pita. I tried both the garam masala version and the garlic powder, cumin, cayenne, and salt version. I think my theory about salt holds up, as the latter flavor was universally preferred. My guess is that if I'd salted the garam masala version, the two flavors would have been neck and neck.

SFO: 10
 

Sautéed Spinach and Tomatoes

I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like this one, because I'm generally not a fan of tomatoes and ginger together. But I have to confess, this is a super recipe. Lots of bold flavor in a really attractive, easy to make package. 

This is the kind of dish you make just before serving, so I had prepped ahead all the ingredients (diced tomatoes, chopped onion, grated ginger, minced garlic), and at cooking time, it came together in a flash, literally in about five minutes! I used baby spinach from one of those 16 ounce containers, which I'm mentioning because even though it's way more than six cups, you should go ahead and throw the whole thing in there. I used about 3/4 of the container, but you know spinach. It wilts down to nothing, and another 33% wouldn't have upset the proportions of the dish, in fact, it would have been perfect.

For the record, I did not have peanut oil on hand, so I used grapeseed. I know I&T don't pick their oils randomly, so I can only assume it would have been even more delicious with peanut oil, but it tasted wonderful with grapeseed.

I will definitely make this again...

SFO: 10
(Neither Joe nor Uli believe in perfect 10s, but they loved this, so they gave it a 9.8. I'm rounding it up, so there.)  
 

Peanut-Ginger-Sesame Cookies

This was my first vegan baking experience! No butter? No eggs? Can it possibly work?? Yes it can!!!

I&T suggest any one or combination of three kinds of flour, so I opted for half all-purpose and half whole-wheat pastry, and I was very happy the results. In fact, I was completely unaware of a whole wheat presence.

I&T describe this cookie as "shortbreadlike." I don't necessarily agree with that... the candied ginger is such a strong textural presence, so the dominant experience is chewiness, versus a shortbreadlike crumb. Speaking of which, finely dicing five ounces of candied ginger is a more complicated job than it sounds (sticky knife!) so I suggest planning some time for that.

It's interesting, I've become accustomed to following recipes by Martha and Cooks Illustrated, which are very detailed, even fussy and exacting sometimes. I&T are so laid back. In fact, at least once in each recipe, you'll probably find a multiple choice option (i.e. swap in any flour/herb/vegetable you want) and an overall, very relaxed way of putting it together. I thought I would be frustrated by this, but instead I'm finding it very liberating and fun. And creative! I'm getting to help write the recipe!

In addition to the design-your-own-flour option, this recipe also encourages you to choose your own sesame seed color or combo. I opted for segregation. All black cookies and all white cookies. (Don't worry, I integrate later....)

You also get to choose the consistency of the cookies based on how long you leave them in the oven, 10-11m for chewy, 14m for firm and crunchier. I went for right in the middle, because I knew I was going to be using these for ice cream sandwiches, and I wanted them to have equal parts give and structure. Success!

I should mention, I made this recipe using the electric mixer with the paddle attachment. I creamed the shortening on high, then added the first set of ingredients and beat on high again, then switched it to low and added the flour and ginger. What a breeze! Also, instead of greasing the baking sheets, I covered them with parchment, which works just as well.

This is a really interesting cookie, very sweet, with a complicated blend of flavors that TOTALLY work together. I'm a believer!

SFO: 10
(absolutely no whiff of vegan here)   


Peanut Butter Ice Cream

So easy! Dump a bunch of ingredients in the blender, mix, and voilà, ice cream batter. No custard, no tempering, no straining, no ice bath. I'm going to like doing these ice creams!

Meanwhile, I'm wondering if I got the coconut milk thing right. I&T said to put a can of coconut milk in the fridge overnight, then carefully open it and scoop 1/2 cup of coconut "cream" off the top. I definitely scooped 1/2 cup off the top, but I was expecting the "cream" to be the most solid part, like cream is to milk. But when I emptied the rest of the can of coconut milk (to freeze, just like I&T told me to do... I'm such a teacher's pet), what was left in the can was the denser, more solid part of the coconut milk. Did I do this wrong? Anyone?

Flavorwise, the ice cream is spot on. Like the cookie, very sweet, but appropriately so. And the texture is totally convincing, quite dairy-like. I&T, how did you figure all this stuff out?? I'm so impressed...


SFO: 10


Open Sesame Ice Cream Sandwiches

The Open Sesame is one of I&T's custom ice cream sandwich creations, bringing together both of today's sweet treats into one hyper-dessert.

I've never tried to make an ice cream sandwich before, and what I learned is there's basically one minute when the ice cream is firm enough to be pressed in between two cookies and not so melty that it starts disintegrating. This is when I was glad I had gone for a more structured cookie. When I was pressing down on the hard-ish ice cream, it was nice to not have to worry about the cookie crumbling from over- or under-cooking.

I was supposed to roll the edges of these sandwiches in toasted sesame seeds, like a tire across the plate, but since I hadn't been precise about mushing the ice cream beyond the edge of the cookies, I had to figure out another option, i.e. manually sprinkling the seeds on the exposed ice cream. As you can see it worked out OK. Also, here's where I integrated the black and white seeds.

Uli (pictured here) and Joe were very excited about this dessert! When I described it earlier in the evening, Joe was sure he was going to hate it, but in fact, he couldn't have loved it more. For me, the combination of sweet cookie with sweet ice cream was a little overwhelming because I'm not a sweet freak, but I'm sure I'm in the minority here. 

What was notable was how beautifully both the ice cream and the cookies behaved in sandwich form, defrosting together at a perfect rate and staying glued together perfectly. Texturally, this just really, really worked. Well done, I&T!

SFO: 10