So I snagged the Emeril deep-dish pizza crust recipe, subbed out semolina flour for half corn meal and whole wheat flour, and made the 12" recipe on a 14" pan (you get roughly the style of pizza I gre up with in Youngstown except that it has a nice bit of crunch (typically our doughs didn't have anything along the lines of coarse flour or corn meal at all, I like the addition).
Friday while at work, I had decided to set out and build some junk food pizzas. I saw some post extolling the virtues of Daiya, and bored with it and Daiya, I thought to myself I might as well plop down some money on a hefty hand of constipation and sodium and knock out some junk food pizza.
With the exception of the Daiya, I didn't particularly junkify the pizzas. In that respect, I failed. I even had too much fiber in the foods for the Daiya to do its nasty gastrointestinal dance. (Man, I hate Daiya. Not like, for real. I just don't like talking about it. Or hearing about it actually.)
So basically, the dough recipe yields two 14" shells of a nice thickness (not deep dish, but thick crust). I sauteed a large white onion, added four cloves of chopped garlic, and mixed half with a can of refried beans and the remainder of some chili paste I had made fresh. The other half I incorporated into a butter bean paste that I smoothed out with a smidge of lemon juice and some olive oil. Butter beans are nice as they can be processed into a thick, creamy sauce similar to silken tofu but a bit more hearty and more taste neutral. Additionally I toasted some spices and made a quick curry and added that to the puree. So those are the two sauce-bases.
Next up was braising some sliced garnet yams in my cast iron skillet with a few of the onion and a dose of the curry. Once the water had steamed off and everything was nice and softened, I tossed it in a pyrex and then the fridge once cool. I fried up the gimme lean breakfast sausage chub in rounds until they were nice and firm. Took them off and dried excess oil off with paper towels. Cut them into bite size chunks. Those are the two toppings.
I wanted a middle ground between the base and the toppings, a sauce-topping if you will. I took the easy road on that one; a can of vegetarian (vegan) chili (the shame) and a can of Sarson Ka Saag (green curry saag made with spinach and mustard greens). I did little in the way of seasoning either; added cumin to the chili and nada to the saag (there was plenty of curry between the puree and the potatoes).
I made the saag pizza first. I like using my 9" cast iron for deep-dish, but this was just thick crust so I used my 14-Inch Pizza Pan. First I grease the pan with Crisco; hey, it's how I learned and it adds an awesome crunch to the crust. Basically the dough, once risen, you cut in two and pan. (I set aside the other half of the dough in the saran wrap that was used to cover it while it rose on top of the oven to see if some more light heat would help it rise a smidge more.) On top of the shell you spread the beans, (mix in a bowl to improve flow and then) pour on the can of saag, and drop by hand the potatoes. Sprinkle on some mozzarella daiya. Bake at 375'-400'F until the dough smells yeasty and has browned nicely.
Same deal basically for the chili pizza. This time though I had actually decided against the separate bean base and sauce-topping layers and mixed the refried pinto beans with the chili directly. I made a chili with refried beans previously and liked it so it seemed like a safe bet (it's the chili that won me a girlfriend, in a way). Also, I added a can of diced tomatoes to up the acidity. So to get the chili to cook down, and the spices and refried beans to incorporate, I heated it up in a pot until it was at a pretty thick consistency. So you just put a few ladles of the chili on top of your next shell, top with the crumbled/chunked sausage, and hit it with an extra solid dose of daiya.
I am going to need to continue testing deep-dish pizza dough recipes. I got some semolina flour, and am hoping to get a new pan soon that is about two inches high. Look forward to more pizzas and formats.
Man, next up for my junk food explosion, I am hoping to do a new variant on my mac and cheese that hinges on shiitake, artichoke heart, and sun-dried tomatoes. Stay tuned. Let's see how long it takes a vegan to need bypass surgery. (And with all that Daiya, I don't think it's going to be a cardiovascular one!)
Saturday there was a chili cookoff. This is my first chili cookoff, and first time making chili at all (I know, QQ...) since, since turning vegan.
Frankly, I have been intimidated of relying on my newer skills to attempt something like this. Chili was my favorite meaty meal. In the few months of being vegan I have encountered many tacitly solicited opinions on the things people could never give up. Obviously at the top are bacon and cheese; personally, it is over-medium eggs for me, and I still have longings when I see them.
But the thing that, before the jump, I thought I could never give up cooking was chili. Just flick through that tag. I have made every variant of chili worth making. Ham Stock (the Youngstown Brown), Brisket, Pulled Pork, and Venison having been my favorite mediums, I have nonetheless almost always had a vegan counterpart when bringing a crock somewhere. At the Huffman's chili cook off, I had a Texas Red, French-Onion & Mushroom Brisket chili next to my vegan Curried Pumpkin Chili.
While I have always loved my darling vegan chilis, and given them every ounce of care and attention I gave to the meat chilis, they were always simpler. Fewer steps, less prep, less clean up; easier. There is an obsessive demon in me that would pursue tesselated and 3-d flavors in the meat chili that was never satisfied by the gastronome's admonition that ingredients should taste like what they are. It exorcised itself when working with meat, but not without.
I have a kind of discomfort with not going everywhere and saying everything all at once with my chili. Granted, working with Paul for the ICS Fire Fest and being with Beth has taught me to improve my sense of what urgently goes with what, and to be sympathetic to having a very clean palate (rather than bland, mine usually take a turn for muddy or hyperactive).
So what's wrong with veg*n chilis? Nothing. In most cases they're as good as most meat chili; terrible.
I am a snob sometimes. I am as egalitarian as it can get frequently. But I can really be a fucking snob on occasion, especially if I have some inordinate love for whatever it is. It's not a good thing and it makes it difficult to just do some things. And one of those things is making chili.
So I came up with an approach to chili that can engage me. Here's the rough sketch; Red Pozole styled chili, using a smoked seitan 'meat' to sub for pork; it didn't pan out exactly in that way so here goes.
The Clintonvillain's Pozole (Vegan; sorry, no human flesh like the traditional recipe calls for);
I.1) Begin by making your chili paste. Put 8-12 dried peppers (ancho, pusilla, mulatto, guajillo varieties) in a hot iron skillet and toast on each side until they start to get really fragrant. Cover with water and simmer for 30 minutes. Pour off water, reserve; put peppers in a colander and remove the pith, seeds, and stems.
I.2) Dry out your cast iron skillet and heat back up, dry toast your spices for your chili paste. I relied on ancho powder, paprika, cayenne powder, cumin, cardamom, allspice, cinnamon, clove, mustard, turmeric, and cumin.
I think in whole there was something like a half cup of spices toasting up nicely in there.
When done I added it to some additional no-pepper chili powder I had made earlier in the week. It was similar, but had a cup of toasted pepitas and two tablespoons milled flax seed (omega 3s and thickening agent).
I.3) Now you will puree the peppers to a nice thick paste, adding some of the reserved 'bitter water' from the simmering to keep it smoothing out. You should end up with something like this depending on your water to pepper to spices ratio. Add the toasted spices to this.
As for the chili itself, I started with a pretty standard build;
II.1) Begin - Saute a few cups of diced yellow onion until soft and translucent. Add a few cloves (I went with six large) of fresh diced garlic. Once all of this is good and gooey an lovely, add a nice big dollop of the chili paste so you can get your bearings. Then cover with 6-8 ounces of Yeti Stout (oak-barrel aged, chocolate and espresso infused stout). Definitely take the time to taste this stuff; do yourself a favor. Pour over a cup of strong coffee and a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder. Bring to a simmer and let those stickey strands get going.
II.2) Build - I used one large can of skinned, whole plum tomatoes (crush and shred in your hand then drop in), one large can of tomato puree, and one large can of diced tomatoes (drain then add). Stir it up and cook it down.
II.3) From here you are going to get the herbs and seeds started. First taste to make sure the chili paste is still kicking. Add more as necessary. In all I think I had about a cup and a half of it in 6 quarts. After, add some fennel (aids indigestion) and bay leaves (mine were all very small so I shoved them in a cloth teabag and add them, could also have added some whole cloves this way). Add 3-4 whole dried cayenne peppers, and 3-4 cups tart dried cherries, and 1/4 cup of dried bird's eye peppers.
You should know by now that I don't hold to times very much. Especially in the case of chili. It's done when it's done, and you just need to learn that. That said, if you're not sure and you have time, go longer.
II.4) I added the hominy about two or three hours into cooking, with another 90 minutes to go. I like to add beans at the last minute, so that they retain their natural texture (i.e. don't turn to mush, especially if it is going to be in a crock pot for three more hours). Hominy is resilient enough to hold on despite hours of cooking.
III.1) Salsa - This is a vegan chili, so it is not high in fat. I used olive and toasted sesame oil while building i up, and there is some fat in hominy, but relative to your run-of-the-mill ground beef chili, it has next to zero fat. So what? Well, that means you have little buffer against the capsaicin. Adding sugar and starch to the chili masks it, vinegars can carry and cleanse it (there were Apple Cider Vinegar, Bragg's aminos, and White vinegar in there); but you need oils (esp. solid ones) to dissolve the capsaicin. Combining these things allows you to enjoy more hot without being overwhelmed by it. We add it with healthy fats via a salsa.
The salsa was simple; three plum tomatoes (fresh), one lime, and one red onion diced in nice big chunks, with four fresh avocados cubed up nice. [Beth taught me this: If you want nice clean cuts to your avocado, slice it in half, twist and remove the seed; with a knife cut a grid into the meat while in the shell, then scoop out with a spoon.] Pour over some apple cider vinegar, lime juice, lemon juice, a smidge of toasted sesame oil, some olive oil, and finish with a generous splash of the Yeti Stout. When tossing avocado in salad or guacamole, best practices would have you add lime juice to prevent browning; however this oxidation process can be prevented by coating it with any mildly acidic liquid.You are going for a thick dressing to the salsa, not some runny water-y scurf. Finish with additional herbs as you see fit, best practices for any salsa include a generous helping of coarsely chopped cilantro (which I omitted from the chili itself for the sake of any tasters who hate cilantro).
IV.1) Finishing - So the chili should be chugging along pretty good. When you are nearing the end of the stove top time and are getting ready to transition to the crock pot, start adding your herbs and verify that the chili paste is still topped off. The crock pot can be a good place for this as well, but I like to have it pretty much in forget-about-it mode by then. The big punch for both the salsa and the chili is to take some ground up plantain leaf and add a tablespoon or two to the 6 quarts of chili and a teaspoon or so to the salsa (after which put some saran wrap over the top of the salsa and refriegerate). Add a 1/4 cup of some oregano to the chili and transfer t crock pot.
IV.2) Plating - For taster size portion about 4:1 is the ratio of chili to salsa you're going to want to hit. Too much salsa and it's too tart. Too little and they get robbed of those tasty avocados and their soothing fat. Top with sour supreme if you so desire and a twist of pepper and some smoked salt.
This chili is not your garden variety chili. It is a bit awkward and utterly unexpected. But in spite of everyone's trepidation, there were a good many surprised grins that slid out from under the weight of furrowed brows. That's my favorite reaction, where you can watch someone go from wtf to omg to holy shit. This stuff is hot hot. and its bitter and tart and sour, its sweet and more toothy than any veg*n offering you've likely ever had before.
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...).
There are a few items to cover that I have noticed going over in my brain.
Ohio and Yuengling: Yuengling, good for you, you burst your cherry and you're distributing in Ohio. I am glad that you think your beer is fantastic. I grew up in Youngstown, OH and regular trips were made by many of your advocates and apologists to Sharon, PA in the interest of procuring your goods. Based on regular exposure from ten years ago, and sporadic exposure subsequently, I feel confident saying that your beer is not bad, but not much in the way of superior to anything Coors or Miller or Budweiser regularly do. Your product is just marginally less generically formulated. I await the Rolling Rock Reckoning you one day will face.
Gaddafi: So a terrorism supporting newsmaker who wore crazy clothes died. No big deal. But what I am curious about is this, when will there be a Charles Krafft Bone-China Teapot in his memory a Memento Mori? Furthermore, if these are using human bones, are they cruelty free?
Chili: I have done so much with chili, but talking to ב yesterday I realized that most of my work was done in meat based chili. She had mentioned people talking about foods as being a symphony of flavors. Granted, I don't think I am around anyone who describes food precisely like that, but it seems like a nice ideal to shoot for. Now I'm not portraying some false modesty; my chili is tasty and long-winded and complex. It's more in the shape of a jazz sextet than an orchestral anything though. Nonetheless, I haven't mastered bringing this technique to my vegan offerings so well. Must work on...
First, I recommend anyone interested participate next year; the organizers were not only organized and well-seasoned, but they were incredibly personable and relaxed and eased even my nerves.
So I didn't walk away with either the basket for People's Choice or Judge's Choice, but I got to see a good number of spoons (dba. votes; the crowd gets a spoon, tries all the chilis, then drops their spoon in the box in front of their fave chili) drop in my chilis' boxes, and I got a good chance to talk to the respective purveyors a good deal. A nice amount of shock and delight came out of both crock pots, so my personal takeaway was pretty good. (The only problem I had was with my crock pot for the vegan chili; it didn't wholly heat up and served tepid samples the first quarter of the way through.)
Let's get straight to the bones. Actually, I'm going to drop the carnivore rundown at the end; I don't want to scare of my vegan friends.
I will just refer you to the original post for the full recipe. As with any chili recipe, it's all about the time you can set aside for the chili. The longer the better. Also, remember to toast your curry / chili powder and use fresh ground everything that you can get your mitts on. As for toasting, I did it halfsies because (a) I like the smokiness of just-toasted spices in chili, and (b) I like the piquant sharpness of not toasted spices. You may prefer one over the other, or detest one. Either way, it's up to you.
Also, I had added too much bragg's/tamari it seemed, but once I added the refried beans it happened to be about right. Since you don't need to keep either bragg's or tamari in the chili to marry their flavors, I would recommend waiting until after adding (esp. the refried) beans to figure out what your measured dose of savory will be.
On to the omnivore's event (a.k.a. "here contains the meat of this post"), what I am calling the Youngstown Brown Brisket, Bitches;
take seven pounds briskett
2 cups stock, pan drippings (4 - 6 cups, should fix to be something akin to french onion soup) from brisket
standard base for chili, skewed toward jalapeno and roasty-toasty
simmer down
You may recall the post about the Youngstown Brown Chili. Suffice it to say I didn't feel like making stock, so I hacked a shank and made a kind of bastard brown sauce/stock. I'm sure I'm slaughtering the nomenclature, feel free to mock me in the comments. Basically, I picked up where that chili left off; instead of fried up pork chops and ham shank stock, I roasted a brisket and made stock with cow femur.
Per usual, I turned to my shelf reference, that fantastic Homesick Texan for how to do brisket right, but without needing to hassle with smoking it (c'mon, I was doing two chilis).
Before I get into the specific resources I drew from, I must point out that a blog saved my life. Yes. Homesick Texan's speaking directly to the 'what' and 'why' of Texas Red as a distinct style of chili has changed how I make chili. Apparently, due to the extent of reduction to the finished product, I had one person say that it scarcely qualified as chili (under his breath, to lady with him). I politely (actually I'm sure I seemed like a smug fuck, but whatever; I did not miss him spooning me) explained the distinction between Texas Red and the Midwestern Red he was used to, principally the reliance on beans and broth, and that this was of a different style.
Now according to her Chopped brisket sandwiches are in some sense a Texas thing; cool, I'm sure they do it different. But when I saw the pic of that biddie I knew it was time for me to knock brisket off of my omnivore's bucket list. My beginning point was HT's explanation of how to do an oven-baked brisket; I then spun off and increased the amount of liquid and used a significantly larger than necessary roasting pan (it was one of those massive catering pans, and took up my whole oven). I also added carrots and two packs of mushrooms (note: you are going to have mushrooms simmer in beef juices and soy and whatnot, they don't need to be expensive, but don't use canned, that's just gross).
The end result was a catering pan with 7 pounds of amazing meat, baked over the course of 13 hours to that smooth succulent moist bubble. So what did I do with that half day? Well, I had already made lunch for my friends visiting from Akron. And I was in cooking overdrive mode. So first off I made and then got the pumpkin chili under pot. While doing that, I roasted the cow femurs (sliced to around 1" height) until the were nice and crispy ooey-gooey. I then made a stock with them. The mistake I made was over-stirring and under-skimming; so basically I did everything wrong but keep the heat on. Still, i got a cloudy broth, and this was going in chili so it wasn't some big deal.
So standard chili build, cayenne/jalapeno/thai hot pepper base. Incorporated what was basically a jalapeno / french onion soup stock into the chili for body, a few diced tomatoes, a had a minimal simmer. Good stuff.
Haven't had a chance to compile a full post on Huffman's Chili cookoff, but I will say it was fun and a great opportunity for some face to face with the people I was sharing the food with.
It reminded me of the best part of BaconCamp; the part where we stood by our respective dishes and served it to everyone and had a chance to explain what went into it.
As for pie-making, I got the little book last night and have been going through it trying to decide which one to make first. I am a devotee of mousses so that may color my choice, along with the fact I wasn't quite able to nail mine with the Oreo Pumpkin experiment. I have received some subsequent advice and cleared up some loose ends about vegan thickening agents, so I am looking forward to whenever my next attempt occurs. For the landslide already documented, check out the gallery of pics.
Yesterday I had a run-in of sorts. I can't quite talk about it I suppose. Suffice it to say it was a [mfg not follow dirs]. mfg explains why, says;
Anyway I am likelier to say nothing, in 90% of scenarios.
This one fell into the remaining 10% I guess. Now I am the kind of person who won't tell someone they're doing something wrong unless there is a substantive impact beyond what they're doing. In other words, if 10 people are going to do something; it is realistic to expect that, within a certain standard of deviation, they will do it the same but with variances based on their perception of what are optimizations.
Variations should not be encouraged, and when they extend beyond the standard of deviation they should be curtailed. However, they provide people with autonomy that allows them to better perform a task. Enter a command-interpreter; when you have ten people banging away in shell they all need to `diff`the same way or they will end up with irreconcilable parses. So when it trickles down that the command-interpreter is having sufficient difficulty with my flavor of `diff`, and it's because Property X is causing them difficulty, I am more than happy to get back in line.
I would be happy to do the things I do standing on my head if that was what was required. I am happy to not only go along to get along, but to be supportive in doing so. What I have difficulty with is being told I am wrong flatly because I didn't follow directions. I also have difficulty with inflexibility. Perhaps my assumption, that when you ask multiple people to do the same task they will achieve the same results but inevitably with variances in how they get there, is not well-grounded. However, even if what I was doing was sufficiently wrong that it merited up-ending (granted),what makes that seem pointless is when it seems the preferred tact to take is micro-management. Specifically, I asked if there could be a compromise that preserved the flow of the command-parser but was able to grant the users to perform the task set with a degree of autonomy.
The answer was no. This is where I became stressed out. It's one thing to point out the problems in my work; it's another to insist that another one is in any way better. Those are two separate claims with different barriers for their burdens of proof. When an impasse was reached on why the "agreed-to" method was "better", it became better a priori by the form (a) it is in place, (b) what is in place is better; (c) other method is better.
I don't want to be participating in a 'you're wrong', 'no you're wrong' game. But if I am confronted about how I am doing something, and a solution is presented that is no more structurally sound, this creates a disincentive to pour in the extra work required to implement it. Obviously I will do it. And I will be happy I did it.
Happy to say after a good conversation on the matter that i am feeling better about everything. I would be exaggerating to say I was seething, or even upset really. However, I am typically prescient enough to acknowledge that an impasse has been reached without getting frustrated by that. It seems that an impasse had been reached prior to my realizing it, and when i became frustrated I was attributing it to something other than the impasse.
Communicating and communication skills are definitely something of a chimera for me. I can advocate well, and listen well; and I can miss the boat entirely sometimes. This was mostly an instance of the latter. I am working to improve my footing so that I can redress this failure on my part, and hopefully add a constructive element.
2:18PM
So I snagged the Emeril deep-dish pizza crust recipe, subbed out semolina flour for half corn meal and whole wheat flour, and made the 12" recipe on a 14" pan (you get roughly the style of pizza I gre up with in Youngstown except that it has a nice bit of crunch (typically our doughs didn't have anything along the lines of coarse flour or corn meal at all, I like the addition).
