Portable Shepard's Pie: Pot Pie Cupcakes - how to pt. 1

For the first Dreamsfood bounty I subimtted a recipe for Pot Pie Cupcakes. They are intended to pull together the goodness of a pot pie in a portable cupcake/muffin format.

Here's the gist; make shells | make soup | fill shells with soup | top with corn bread biscuit batter | bake | top with hollandaise sauce

Of course, being the Alpha Dreamsfood project, this is Columbus centered and vegan. The hope is to spread the message and open it up to more locations and flavors. Anyway, I'm hoping you are here for the recipe, because that's what I've got -

To begin with we will address the soups.  The first one, "Soothing Savory", had apple-smoked sweet potatoes, peas and charred corn. The second one, "Sassy Savory", had some apple-smoked seitan, leaks, butter beans, and smoked turnips. 

For the Soothing Savory, you first need to roast the potatoes (I recommend doing so at the same time as the turnips). Once you roast them and get them hot and sweaty, throw them on the grill for about two hours with some apple wood smoke and indirect heat (you will want to smoke at the same time you do the seitan). As the smoking is winding down, saute an onion, then add some garlic and build up a good soupy base. In a cast iron skillet, powder the bottom with paprika and ancho powder (and cayenne if you want some more heat) and dry toast the spices on medium then edge it toward high. Once the skillet is hot and the spices are done, drain a can of corn (actually use fresh if you can, but it's January in Ohio so...) and add it to the skillet and char the skins. Add along with a can of peas to the base of the soup. Add the sweet potatoes and *boom* you're basically done. From here on out you will be acting like a custodian more than anything. Spice it how you like it, I did my general tex-mex thing. The vegetables are the focus here, and not some spice blend so just keep in mind accenting.

Note: Using fresh corn would have been ideal, same for the peas. You can decide to drop some corn starch slurry into the mix if you'd like a thicker soup for your pies. Smoked salt, however, is one stand-out seasoning that I would say you should invest in for this and the next soup.

Sassy Savory is a smidge more intensive. For the seitan I made basically the same seitan as I had with the Seitanic Panic in the Oven Shepard's Pie. I used the same basic recipe from before, and a similar stock for simmering the seitan and for the rub. Smoking the seitan was nice and easy and done at the same time as the sweet potatoes and the turnips. So basically once you drop the seitan in the stock to simmer, cut up your sweet potatoes and turnips and put them in the oven at 350'F.

Once the seitan and turnips (which upon roasting will still have their bite, though a bit mellowed; upon smoking will mellow out entirely but still have a great punch of flavor) are done smoking it's time to build the soup. The soup starts the same as pretty much any other one I do, but in this case after you finish off the onion and garlic sauteeing, you can stock the stock with the simmering stock you used for the seitan (upcycle that salty water). Mire-poix is utterly your friend on this one, so grab some carrot and celery (and hell, add it to the other soup if you want). Originally I was going to use butter beans only but some black beans made their way in there as well. Add the sweet potatoes and corn starch slurry (if appropriate). Spice and season as you like. Reserve the smoked seitan for making the cupcakes, or just add toward the end of stweing.

Note: When/If to add the smoked seitan is an interesting problem. If you've ever baked seitan before adding it to a saucy stweing dish, you will know the effect you get. The surface becomes nice and resilient and the texture more durable. It is less likely to soak up massive amounts of liquid, and consequently flavor. I chose to preserve the acute smokiness by topping with seitan before serving (and I like the presentation aspect better); you could diffuse it (a) if you prefer, or (b) if you can't stand sharp smoked food, or (c) if you over-smoke those bad boys.

Next time, how to make the shells and build these bad boys...

My Little Abomination: Los Luciernaga Pizza

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Anyway;

Sunday my mind hatched an evil scheme. I bided my time, and executed it Monday night.

• For anyone who knows me or has been following nomfg for a minute, it comes as no surprise to hear me profess my adoration of the Jolly Pumpkin brewery. From their beautiful packaging, to the pour and the sniff and the taste and the swallow, each one of their beers is a call from the ethereal beyond.
• For anyone who knows me or has been following nomfg for a minute, it also comes as no surprise that I can't drink anymore. I'm not the best when it comes to being able to drink responsibly and deal with life; my proclivity for emotional self-medicating is quite effective.

So how does beer and not drinking make for do-no-goodery?

Los Luciernaga Pizza: Beer dough crust made with Luciernaga, with a Carrot-Cardamom flavored Parsnip Puree, topped with Carmelized Shallots & Bosc Pears, and dressed with a Roasted Garlic Luciernaga Glaze

Well;

We went down to Columbus' arena district to get some vegan lunch, but the special at the place was pulled (and has subsequently been added back, indefinitely; grats!). So we scampered over to North Market. I'm a fan of the place; no devotee to be sure, but who doesn't love a good bazaar? Anyway after a Brezel and a few samples of Cajohn's hot sauces (that Vicious Viper is aawwwesome), I headed in to Barrel & Bottle where the Braiden works to check it out. I have a habit of assessing stores by the shelf space afforded Jolly Pumpkin. I'm not sure why, I guess as some mark of familiarity.

They had a few, including one of my favorite go-to's;

Luciernaga

"The Firefly"

An artisan pale ale brewed in the Grand Cru tradition. Enjoy its golden effervescence and gentle hop aroma. Coriander and Grains of Paradise round out the spicy palate, melting o so softly into a silken finish of hoppiness and bliss! Make any season a celebration!

(yum)

It came to me in the middle of some conversation. I don't quite recall about what, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. The rest of Sunday was dedicated to figuring out how to bring this sin to manifest.

Beer Dough. It is a dirty, dirty trick. And I love it. Normally I use malty lagers and Mexican beers, or whatever I am unafraid of wasting. Instead of water and yeast being used to wet and bind up the flour for the dough, you just use flat beer and ground salt. Easy peasy.

But what happens when you take an uber unflat beer whose directions indicate that you should pour like champagne? Well for one, you get a dried out crust. The excessive air really doesn't to the dough any favors. So let it go flat, but don't skip out on the foam collar in pouring. Flatten it (8-12 ounces worth) but be sure to pour correctly to unlock the beer.

So once you've poured a beer to use in the dough, here's where we go from there; 

• Pre-heat oven to 400'f; Cut the top off a bulb of garlic, peel away papery skin, place in tight fitting oven-proof container and douse with olive oil, cover container with foil and pop in oven for ~30 minutes until cloves are delicate and easy to smoosh
• Peel and trim 10 parsnips and 1-2 carrots, cut into 1-2" segments and place in a pot, cover with water and simmer until they are soft (15-20 minutes); pour off all but 1/2 cup of water, continue simmering until garlic is done (don't turn off oven)
• Remove parsnips and 1 carrot from pot, put in food processor with three cloves of the roasted garlic, 1/2-1 teaspoon ground cardamom, black pepper, ginger
• Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon miso paste or other vegan soup base to simmering stock from parsnips, bring to a boil and give a go until it has some kind of yummy flavor
• Add 2-4 tablespoons butter and the simmered stock to the food processor and puree everything
• Halve and thinly slice two shallots. Core and thinly slice 1 bosc pear. In a cast iron skillet, start sauteeing shallots in oil (from roasted garlic = yum) until translucent, Add a pinch of cardamom, add three cloves roasted garlic and mash and stir, then add sliced pears. Toss pears until they start to soften, then pop in the oven covered with foil to continue softening.
• 
• Time for dough; sift together 4 cups flour with 1/2 teaspoon each salt and baking powder, drop in stand mixer and turn to low with bread hook. Take flat beer (put in a pouring container if it isn't in one already), pour it slowly into the flour and let it all come together (recipe works easily by hand too; just mix with your hand while pouring).
• You should have some kind of a dough ball; you can break it up into halves or thirds, either way roll out what you've got to a nice flat shell. Rub both sides with olive oil (extra points for herbs), sprinkle corn meal on what will be the bottom and flip so that side is down.
• [Working on a  peel with parchment is a tidy option; if so, preheat oven to 450 with pizza stone inside]
• Remove pears and shallots and goodness from oven and transfer the big bits to a bowl but reserve as much liquid as possible. Continue with heating the liquid goopiness on the range. Once you start to get nice little bubbles, pour on some of that Luciernaga, first the flat stuff. Let it bubble down and reduce. Add a hit of flour too and work it in for a thicker sauce. Stir frequently while dressing pizza. Be sure to use a flexible spatula to scrape the bits from the bottom.
• Spread puree over dough shell. Top with the pears and shallots (toasted walnuts or pecans would have done well at this point too).
• Once pizza is dressed you are going to home stretch that sauce or glaze or reduction, whatever you call what you make, you're going to hit it with a nice final splash of the Luciernaga and make sure it isn't to liquid-y (you want a glaze at minimum). Then transfer to a pourable container and dress the top of the pizza.
• Bake until done. (You should be able to put a spatula under the dough and spin it without it sticking, toppings should be browned slightly.)

The pizza has a lovely peppery sweet taste that at once lulls and spices. Changes I would make? Make sure beer is more flat than it was this time around; the beer itself has an incredibly collar not to be ignored, but that must be compensated for.

Making beer dough yesterday I poured the beer out into the standmixer and set it to low for about ten minutes then let it sit for about an hour. This time I was using a stout (Shell's Stout, from a brewery in New Ulm MN); it fell flat in a magnificent way. Lesson learned. 

Additional changes/adjustments? I used a bit too much cardamom. It was basically a new spice to me so I went a bit overboard and assumed that it would disipate or distribute more evenly than it did. Tasty and over the top? Yes. Ready to tame, maybe toast while glazing the pears? Peut-être.

Anyway, a sixteen dollar bottle of beer, with only 7 ounces drunk by mouth from a glass and the rest consumed in the cooking process; it may sound a bit sinful. Or maybe it sounds like a waste of beer without the gluttony. Either way, I will say it was a great pizza and the parsnip puree cardamom candied pear combo was wth the effort alone.

Pizza Day #3, and Seitanic Turkey Practice

So last night, I didn't really have a plan or much to cook that wasn't going to require a multi-hour investment. As a result I decided to make it three nights in a row with pizza.

I still had some of the Rancher sauce from Tuesday night and a shell of the beer dough. Once Beth got back to my place I basically said that I don't have anything to eat and she said that was cool and I went in the kitchen to pull something together to munch on or whatever. So I oiled the top surface, sprinkled generous doses of oregano, marjoram and basil; garlic and onion powder. Then put down the rancher sauce and some peppers in oil and sprinkled sesame seeds on top.

As a result, we ended up with an amazing pizza and I now know how to throw dough; 'throwing dough' I previously used to refer to making pizzas (at all), now I can actually toss that shell in the air. (I am not very good at it, but still...) 

This time, instead of doing it in the cast iron, I dropped in on a greased cookie sheet at 425'f for about ten minutes, then "bricked" it on the wire rack at 350'f for another 5 minutes. Having made sure the bottom was nice and floured, it came across as a very crispy dough just slightly singed. Great crunch and layering of dough.

The dough came out like a pretzel in a way. I will be conducting further experiments tonight.

Anyway, here are two modest pics.

So anyway. Seitanic Turkeys.

This weekend I am hoping to try my first specifically vegan technique that is new to me. I am hoping to make a turkey loaf from scratch out of vital wheat gluten and whatnot. Beth is calling it the Spawn of Seitan.

yuba rollsI even got the bean curd skin (yuba) to make the crispy outer shell. I'm not the type to like the fake meat things much for the sake of novelty alone. However, if it's to learn a technique I'm down.

That said, the first stuffing recipe I was going to make called for that fake sausage, so I opted to go for a mushroom and roasted walnut (and maybe a bit of chopped spinach?) stuffing with rosemary gravy.

I'm planning on doing a two way split of the loaves; one standard with stuffing on the side to see how the laf cooks up normally, and one roulade style (per recipe) to see how that one tastes and how the loaf holds up.

Anyway, have a great afternoon!

Carnitine and Greens Pizza

It's hard coming up with the worst names for food, but the challenge has been fun and I do it all for you.

So in yesterday's post on a Potato Pizza for Ranchers (why did I originally call it cowboys? stupid non-allusion to ranch dressing. seriously messed up that URL... re-named it and screwed up the SEO, good morning), I mentioned the second shell my dough would make. Well, actually, even after making another, thicker 9" pizza last night I probably have a third shell. w00t. Also, I mentioned something about spinach and tempeh as the basis for the next pizza. Well done and done. Beth and I agreed that the marinade could get a bit salty, so I will try to fix that, but otherwise it's a great pizza.

Here's the rundown;

• 1 package of tempeh
• Marinade: Soy, Teriyaki, Bragg's aminos, splash apple-flavored liquid smoke and tabasco, oil, apple cider vinegar, water, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, 1 dried and torn tien tsin pepper (play around with liquid balance to taste), 1 tablespoon sesame seed (toasted)
• 1 modicum thawed, frozen spinach drained
• 1 9" pizza shell, with flour and corn meal for dusting, oil for oiling bottom
• More flour, rosemary

So start by cutting your tempeh into little, flat'ish chunks and steaming for about 10 minutes. While steaming mix up marinade. You will want enough to almost completely cover the tempeh; not because you ever actually need that much marinade, but because you will be upcycling all of it. Add steamed tempeh to marinade and put frozen spinach in a plastic colander, run some lukewarm water through to rinse, press down on top to squeeze out some water, leave in sink to drain.

Go to figure drawing class at Wild Goose Creative. Buy watered down coffee after getting a seat from Leen O'Kaffe (seriously, I think he ran out of coffee, didn't feel like giving me back my cup with the 3-4 ounces in it for free, and topped it off with steamed water). Get tired of drawing tedious model doing crazy athletic poses (he did seem like a nice guy, I just didn't have the energy to keep up with him). Return home after tempeh has soaked for about 90 minutes.

Sautee the tempeh on medium heat in a bit of the marinade to firm up the flat sides; reserve remaining marinade. Remove tempeh, set aside. Throw a spoonful of the marinade into the pan and warm it up, start sauteeing the spinach. Add some paprika. Once you get a smidge of crispy on a squeak of the greens, pour all that reserved tasty marinade on top. Bring to a bubble and bubble it for a minute (as in, the metaphorical minute, around 180 seconds or however long you feel like it; not minute as in an actual 60-second incrrement). Remove spinach with a slotted spoon after the liquid reduces by about half.

Pre-heat oven to 350'f; grease 9" cast iron skillet with shortening.

Leave the remaining marinade in the pan. Hopefully you have about a cup or so. We're going to do one of my favorite things now. Turn it into gravy. YAY! So bring the marinade first to a good hard bubble all around, stirring frequently. Once the vigorousness of the boil breaks down and you've reduced the  marinade to about 1 cup, start sprinkling flour onto one half of the pan while tilting the other half down (forcing liquid down and dropping flour above). Using a fork or the slotted spoon or a spatula, gradually intergate the flour into the marinade (it should have enough oil to make a nice gravy) by working the liquid through the flour swiftly and vigorously. Of course you'll want to watch out for clots and graininess in the gravy (hence why making a roux in separately is ideal, but I wanted to minimize pans). Fold a teaspoon (or more!) of rosemary into the resulting gravy, let sit.

Lightly dust working surface for dough. Take your pizza shell and press it out against surface, lightly flour both sides. Flip it around to see what your working with. Press cast-iron skillet down on dough to stencil-cut the shell. Oil once (or both) sides of the dough; dust with corn meal and pat down. Put shell, corn meal side down, into pan. With a fork, tap down outline of peripheral crust, then poke holes through the center to inhibit gas pockets. Spread down spinach, then lay out tempeh.

Drizzle on gravy sauce (see note below), and pop in the oven at 350'f for about ten minutes; then up it to 450'f and leave it in there until the top of the crust begins to brown (or the bottom of the crust, however you like it). Cut with a knife. Serve.

NOTES: Now. Here is the point where I think it got salty:

• I don't think I sufficiently cut the rosemary gravy (my first time making it in any form, let alone a non-gravy gravy form); it packed a BIG teriyaki-Bragging-soy punch, that the spinach served to reinforce, and the tempeh couldn't hold back the flood.
• What to do? I should have reached for the marsala is what, or even some more vinegar, and turned the gravy into a sauce that I could have applied as a drizzle instead of what was more of a paste.

At any rate, the majority of bites were perfect and tasty and great and amazing; next time I make it I will just need to watch out for the punch of the marinade.

Potato Pizza for Ranchers, and its good for you, even if its made with beer.

I apologize straight up for the mediocre pictures, but seriously this stuff was too good to dwell on cataloging.

Okay, here's the standard beer dough recipe for people who don't like fussing with yeast: 

• Ingredients for dough
  • 4C unbleached a/p flour
  • 1T baking powder
  • 1/2 t salt
  • 12 ounces flat beer
• Equipment
  • Oven and bowls and stuff. Metal strainer, cheap.
  • Cast Iron Skillet (9" round for a personal size)
  • Fists and brain

Toss about 4 cups unbleached a/p flour with 1 not-quite-level tablespoon baking powder and 1/2 not-quite-level teaspoon salt. Shimmy through a mesh strainer (or a sifter if you're all fancy like that) into another mixing bowl, swirl around until it kind of levels itself. Grab the bottom of a bottle of Jolly Pumpkin Farmhouse Ale, aka the Bam Beer. Pour in while mixing gently into the dough. If enough was previously drunk, reach for one of Ellie's "Lab Tested" Brown Ales and keep going. You're going to have to get a feel for this on your own. The amount of beer will be between 10-14 ounces, and you will probably need to add some more flour too. Also, room-temp flat beer is typically recommended; but I used straight from the fridge in both cases, one probably flat, the other freshly opened; it came out great so no worries.

Anyway, once the dough feels like dough (seriously, you just need to know) lightly dust countertop with flour. Pre-heat oven to 350. Knead dough a bit until you can feel it has a good stretch to it (recipes will say 3-4 times, whatever that means; when it pulls and the fibers stretching seem firm but not taut you're good to go). If you over knead it will tighten up pretty bad. Flipping it end over end will give you a rough idea of where it's at; once done lightly flour both sides. Roll it out even to desired thickness; dough will rise about 50-75% while cooking. I used a Studio 35 Growler; you can use the 750 mL Jolly Pumpkin bottle, or your forearm, or a rolling pin. Whatever works.

Grab cast iron skillet. Press down firmly over area you want for crust if you want a flat dough, lift and trace with cutter; otherwise just put it down and cut around bottom with pizza-roller-slicer-cutter-majig. You now have a handy dandy pizza dough. You can put a smidge of olive oil on the bottom then dust with corn meal or flour to fancy up the crust. Columbus folks have a soft spot for corn meal, so I've been doing that lately. It's a good way to make a cheap crust seem exotic, in a very Midwest kind of way.

So grease the inside of your cast-iron skillet with shortening. Gently place or smoosh the crust into the bottom. With a fork, trace an outline for the top, periphery crust. You can also oil the top crust for bonus fat points. Add toppings.

The toppings above? Well, if you recall the Vegan Curried Pumpkin Chili, aka el Chilitoaxilitlo, I riffed on that and made a kind of chili-soup hybrid with refried beans and beans and then I added more roasted butternut squash puree, and then some cauliflower puree and a can of pureed tomatoes. Wow right? Well anyway, last night I snagged some butterbeans and a block of soft silken mori-nu and pureed those guys and created this, I swear to god, bean-vegetable-based ranch dressing. After finding out Beth is a big fan of sweet potatoes, and incidentally having one at my house, I decided to saute some scalloped  ones (those are really just thick slices, I know; don't judge me).

So, we topped the dough with the sauce and the potatoes and sprinkled some toasted sesame seeds on top and popped her in the oven for about fifteen minutes, minus one peek around the nine minute mark. And yes, I spiced up the potatoes; paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper. But you already knew that, right?

Dough came out great, toppings combination was great (it's like a pizza made of sweet potato french fries and ranch-y dressing); the slicer didn't go through the potatoes as neatly as I would have liked. I can do it with a knife next time for a cleaner cut. Best of all? The recipe yields 2+ shells. Tonight I think I will do spinach and marinaded buffalo-tempeh with some kind of crumble on top (TVP? eh...).

 *edit. title and name revised 11/3/11