Vegan for Lent: Fuschia Foods

Okay. So I am well aware of all the "You eat first with your eyes" mantras. And I am well aware of how poorly my camera-phone does at making 97% of my posts appear appetizing. This dish is for people who like gaudy, neon lights and day-glo track suits. If you have some odd idea of the future that hasn't changed much since those of the mid/late 80s, this is a dish for you.

Fuschia Food, a not Cotton Candy Stew

This Fushia Stew of magenta mmmms is hearty, bright, sweet, hot and smooth. It looks bizarre and tastes great. I'm counting this one under the vegan junk food as it looks like cotton candy. Doesn't taste anything like it, but it is starkly beautiful.

Begin by roasting a nice average size butternut squash (clean, slice in half, scoop out seeds, brush with olive oil, put face up on a sheet pan in an oven at 400'F). While doing so, roast one beet and one parsnip, diced small (total ~2 cups) and tossed in olive oil. You can safely leave the beets and parsnip in as long as the squash, about thirty minutes. The more beet you add the brighter the color and sweetness.

Towards the end start sauteeing an onion. Dice some garlic (I did about 5 cloves), and about an inch of ginger (about 2-3 teaspoons minced). Puree the diced squash, beet, parsnip, a can of full fat coconut milk, and a package of soft silken tou. Pour in the puree once everything is nice and soft in the pot. Stir.

Start adding some Bragg's Aminos/Tamari/Soy Sauce and sesame oil for savory. Spice with a curry bias; turmeric, garam masala, ground red pepper, cumin, allspice, ancho or chipotle powder, and ground mustard. I also added oregano and thyme so there would be a subtle slide hinting at the stockiness of the oil present from roasting all of the vegetable.

Slice and dice about 6 vine tomatoes, and add to the pot. Cover and let simmer.

Wash and dice two to three sweet potatoes (I used garnet yams, actually), toss in oil and salt, and roast in oven at 350'F until tender, about twenty minutes. I typically sprinkle with spices while doing so, in this case I used onion powder, garlic powder, ground sage, cumin and ground red pepper.

Once done add to the pot. Grind some pepper in there, about 2 tablespoons. Taste for balance. The point of this soup is to have a nice delicate sweetness suspended between the heat of the ground red pepper and the bright acidity of the tomatoes.

• To up the sweet, add more roasted, pureed beets. You won't need much for them to be effective
• To up the acidity, cut it with some balsamic or apple cider vinegar
• To up the heat, add ground hot peppers or whole cayenne, tien tsin, or birds eyes.

The main flavors should be in place. Depending on how much you salt the veggies as they roasted, you may need to add some at this point. The earthiness of the parsnip and beet will also help anchor the stew in place. Serve with toast points. In the pic below, the graininess of the surface is from some vegan parmesan cheese (mostly nutritional yeast and ground walnuts).

Vegan Gnocchi in Buttery Balsamic Beet Glaze

Last night in the kitchen, Ms. Fraulein and I made the following -

They were like sundaes made of flour and sweet potatoes and beets and cauliflower and squash and butter and vinegar. Hungry yet?

So the ratio for gnocchi is 1 cup potato to 1 cup flour to 1 egg. This recipe calls for 2 cup Japanese sweet potato (baked, peeled, mashed), 1 cup roasted butternut squash (pureed), 1 cup steamed cauliflower (pureed) to 4 cups (plus more) flour to 2 flax eggs. You can easily just keep changing the exponent to this recipe as it scales well for OAMC. Note the change in binder though, Japanese sweet potatoes are quite starchy and as such I cut back on the binder; you should play around to figure out where you like your binder level then scale out from there. More binder should make the dough faster to form and a bit more dense; I like mine doughier as when they freeze, or are served as leftovers, they will toughen up.

We went with the following;

• Begin by baking (microwaving is fine, probably preferred since it will  likely dehydrate the potato more), then peeling, then mashing the potatoes (we used four small)
• In a large mixing bowl, mix potatoes with roasted butternut squash and steamed cauliflower purees (I already had a tupperware of this ready to go, not that everyone does), stir in flax eggs and make sure all large clumbs are broken down and mixture is well-blended
• Start a large pot of water to boiling
• Start making dough by gradually folding in the flour (by a 1/2ish cup at a time), we used all-purpose, but using whole wheat may minimize the amount of flour needed
• (Side-step: take potato peels, toss in cast-iron skillet with a bit of sesame oil and vindaloo curry powder, sprinkle on some sesame seeds, fry until crispy, and nom nom nom...)
• Peel two-three cups of beets (used a mix of white and red beets, all 12 about the size of a ping-pong ball), throw into the boiling water once its ready
• Once the dough is semi-wet, but sticks more to itself than your hand, it is basically done. Flatten ball into rectangular shape with one side the width of your hand. Cut into 1" wide strips with a pizza or other dough cutter.
• Roll strips into snakes that have a diameter about the size of the gnocchi you like (bigger = doughier, smaller = less texture variance through dumpling), sprinkle tops with flour. Cut to preferred mass.
• Pick up each baby dumpling, roll in hand to coat with dough (this prevents them from sticking together while in the bowl I am about to mention), press fork into them to flatten and imprint, toss in wooden bowl
• Remove beets from boiling water once you can pierce with a fork; the water should be all magenta
• Begin dropping batches of gnocchi dumplings into the water, skim off when they float consistently (they tend to easily drift upward and then fall back)

Now once you have removed the beets and they are cooling and the dumplings are cooking up, you will want to begin your butter sauce. The quantity of gnocchi in the ratio above obviously yields a lot; 8+ cups makes many gnocchi, and that's before they soak up some water. The amount of butter sauce is dependent on how much your plating, so bear that in mind.

Anyway, take about 5 tablespoons of earthbalance and melt down. Press (or add) four (minced) cloves garlic into the butter; once garlic is soft, slice the beets and toss them in there. Add some balsamic vinegar and mirin. Spice and season at will.

Hopefully you have a good reserve of gnocchi at this point; well, enough to plate anyway (toss soon-to-be leftovers in olive oil). Once the beets are all glazed and terrific looking skim off the beets and put them on top of plated gnocchi. Add more butter if necessary. Now add a splash more of balsamic and a splash of something like Tamari or Bragg's, then thicken the remaining sauce a little bit with corn starch (slurry) or flour (not as effective since there's not much fat at this point); we added enough to glaze it over into a near jelly (pectin might be fun to play with here). Bring sauce to a bubble; pour over dish.

Freeze your leftovers (no sauce, just enough olive oil to keep them from sticking together while you nom nom) in single serving ziplock bags in a larger gallon size freezer bag

For bonus points, if you have some extra of the potato/squash/cauliflower puree lying around, you can scoot it around the bottom of the sauce pan to pick up the extra bits of beet and then plate like a little minaret. Do this step just before adding thickening agent to sauce.

Also, when you add any spices to the dough (i.e. garlic/onion powder, pepper, etc), you would add a 1/2 teaspoon of beet powder to make your gnocchi all pink, or up to 2 teaspoons to really push them. After that the taste may take a (not-necessarily-bad) swerve.

Perhaps I should have added some of those dried cranberries or cherries to the sauce? Oh well. There's always tomorrow!

So enjoy. It's an incredibly filling meal. As was promised; making it is therapeutic, eating it is narcotic.

BTW: It was a bit cold and rainy this morning. As such, my lunch quickly became my feel-good 9am breakfast. Seen above in the blue bowls are the gnocchi tossed with more of the potato beet mixture. YAY for vitamins and starch and butter.

Update on 1:10PM by mfg

gallery slideshow to follow of entire process thanks to Ms. Fraulein, documentarian

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!

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

Super Weekend Mega Fun Shiny Time

food, massivelySo I have a few things to accomplish this weekend. My PBS for the weekend is busy-body mode. I did hazy-lazy a few weeks back, it was great. I have practical household items to do, as well as a bunch of recipes I want to make (bottom segment of list).

Here's the objectives, qualified with priorities;

• I need to clean the house top to bottom, per usual starting with dishes. Hopefully the lawn will be dry enough for a mowing at some point, though it rained a ton last night. [PRIORITY UN]
• Get thermostat working in house, or call landlord [PRIORITY DEUX]
• I got 30 gig of music from one laptop to the other, and all of my images. I need to figure out how to get the other 80 gig off my desktop (which is all torn down) and onto the laptop.
  • What follows from that is needing to then perform some kind of reconciliation of the files, and a merge, and what is sure-to-be some nasty tagging unpleasantness.
• Afterward, I should be able to format the NAS I recently got, and throw both the image and music libs on there. Right now I think I'm going to be doing 2T in JBOD; but if I set my NAS up for something a bit more special I may need to flip to a RAID. Unfortunately the device runs some flavor of *nix and I will need to do some EXT3fs magic to get it to play nicely with windows 7. bah. [PRIORITY TROIS]
• Set up NAS to stream media, perform weekly backups of new laptop HDD
• Conjure scrobbling music library magic
• ---------------------------RECIPES-THAT-SOUND-AMAZING-TO-ME-RIGHT-NOW---------------------------
• Make nom noms in bulk and freeze;
  • butternut squash soup (I already have a few quarts of the stuff, I think I might extend with another squash and block or two of tofu) [PRIORITY TRES]
  • caulifower-potato soup, (maybe a hybrid)
  • cumin roasted cauliflower (with yogurt?)
  • There Will Be Baking.
  • Make spinach-broccoli quiche. [PRIORITY UNO] maybe a normal quiche too. maybe.
  • make Rye Bread (!?)
  • pies. ZOMG, YES pies, more pies... asdf. [PRIORITY DOS]
  • cookies? dunno, probably fuck em up using a tart recipe that ends up miraculously coming out like creme brulee. is that a plan i hear knocking?
  • EAT THE RAINBOW Black Bean Soup (I think halving beans and adding lentils would be a nice shift of gears. Besides, with a name like that I will be victorious on monday if anyone asks what I did over the weekend)
• go for a freezing cold bike ride; gotta get ingredients somehow
• Consider a haircut, then decide against it for this pay-period
• Clean out bookshelves
• Maximize open spaces
• Put rugs in basement or on floors, some-the-fuck-where-anywhere
• Consider buying a comforter, also then decide against it for this pay-period; then maybe double-cross self and get it anyway? 

For the EAT THE RAINBOW BLACK BEAN SOUP!

Update on 10:44AM by mfg

I may not have won the weekend, but it was amazing nonetheless;

• I need to clean the house top to bottom, per usual starting with dishes. Hopefully the lawn will be dry enough for a mowing at some point, though it rained a ton last night. [2/3 Accompli]
• Get thermostat working in house, or call landlord [Accompli, needed new batteries; thanks Glen]
• There Will Be Baking.
  • Make spinach-broccoli quiche. [done, twice over; excellent results! thanks PPK].
  • Blueberry Cobbler with Corn meal stylin' buttermilk biscuits. [rad, thanks Vegan Pie in the Sky]
  • cookies? dunno, probably fuck em up using a tart recipe that ends up miraculously coming out like creme brulee. is that a plan i hear knocking?
• go for a freezing cold bike ride; gotta get ingredients somehow [wasn't freezing, but got it done]
• Consider a haircut, then decide against it for this pay-period [done, refrained from haircutting]
• Consider buying a comforter, also then decide against it for this pay-period; then maybe double-cross self and get it anyway?  [came to a decision to buy one once i get the money]

Texture Tickling Vegan Butternut Squash Cauliflower Soup

butternut squash and cauliflower soupHere is my addition to the lexicon of butternut squash soups out there. These squash are abundant in farmers market all over, as is cauliflower. So in trying to add an extra dimension to butternut squash soup I came up with this li'l gem.

begin by roasting your butternut squash. preheat oven to 400F. cut off the ends of the squash, then halve and quarter the remainder. scoop out the guts and discard. coat with some melted earth balance, some salt; maybe go the extra mile with spices. lay skin side down in oven. bake for 45-60 mins; until flesh is browned lightly and separates easily from skin.

while roasting squash, start a normal garlic onion saute base. minimize the oil as much as possible as it will tend to separate a bit later. add some diced celery and carrots. fortunately i went to the farmers market and, in addition to already having a celery heart lying around, had full stalk carrots with the green parts on there too. all i had to do was bundle the celery heart and the carrot greens with a twist of celery ribbing and lay it in there to make my own stock. well that and add spices. salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper, ginger, mustard, oregano, thyme. let your stock boil, simmer, bubble for about 45 minutes then remove the celery/carrot greens bundle. at this point you can either puree the stock, the bits in the stock, or leave it whole, that is up to you. i had diced everything finely enough that the textures weren't at odds with the rest of the soup so i left it whole.

right about 15 minutes into roasting the squash you will want to put to boil a pot of water large enough for most of a head of cauliflower to boil in. then when it starts boiling after about 15ish minutes, drop in your cauliflower and let it cook until tender. drain the cauliflower. proceed to puree (to whatever consistency is the middle ground between your stock and the fully pureed creamy butternut squash) it batch by batch. and set aside once you decide if youre going to puree the stock. if not add it: if so add it after.

Now so far its a pretty basic recipe. Stock, Squash, Cauliflower. The real trick to this recipe is getting it to be the right balance of textures. You really do want your squash to be creamy. No real other options there. The cauliflower can be really chunky, or incredibly creamy (make it smoother by adding stock while pureeing); I opted for a medium where you still get a tickle of texture. and the stock was still light, but the celery and carrots had been prepped in such a way that they would be sure to cook through and through. obviously you might end up with coarse chunks of carrots. but you might be into that.

Anyway. Some finishing maneuvers: top with sour supreme and oregano (shown above) | or before you start roasting the squash take a shot glass, fill the bottom with a tablespoon of fresh chopped basil and then add an ounce of olive oil, stir periodically, and then when the dish is done you'll have a basil drizzle (wish i wouldve remembered this little bit of an idea) | top with tahini and couscous/roasted pine nuts (next time?).

Update on 3:18PM by mfg

For More Butternut Squash Recipes as their season draws its last breaths:

Vegan Gnocchi in Buttery Balsamic Beet Glaze 

(Japanese sweet potato, butternut squash, and cauliflower dumplings)

Pizza Day #3, and Seitanic Turkey Practice 

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

(both using some kind of a Vegan Ranched out Butternut Squash puree instead of sauce/cheese)