The "Why?" Behind Dreamsfood: Experimentation

Chef Cooks 'Dream Omelet' From Recipe That Came To Him In A Dream

So for a second leg of the Dev Cycle posts, and a nother I want to put an emphasis on another "Why?" behind Dreamsfood. This time, it is to do with Experimentation. The emphasis on charitibility is to do with the community at large; experimentation is for the benefit of the cook.

Recently, Beth Binkovitz described the Dreamsfood model as one where cooking competitions are turned on their head and made accessible. Here, you try to win money to fund cooking food using a great recipe. With most competitions, you spend money to cook food to maybe win money to maybe cover the expense of cooking the food.

Dreamsfood is a model for investing in cooking experiments and fantastical food; it helps cooks craft competitive ideas that win them money to cook

I participated in the 2011 Cincinnati ICS Fire Fest Chili Cookoff. It was a lot of fun, my friends Paul and John were involved and the camaraderie of such an event is definitely one to be appreciated. As a social event it is a boon.

As a culinary event, my impression (disclosure: partially flavored by a big, round zero for a score) was that it was a boondoggle. In spite of how well the event was run, and how fun the different elements were, and in spite of the recruitment of some fantastic judges, the event left little leeway for creativity in one's entry.

Entries not conforming to a standard Midwest Conception of chili were not only not rewarded, but to an extent punished. When we got to go upstairs and see our score, and check out the other chilis, we were nonplussed. Every chili was within such a tight standard deviation that our chili by comparison looked like some alien baby. We were not surprised that we got a zero; we were confused by the devotion to a salty, cumin-dependent (and yes, I love cumin), Red Hot inspired recipe that was refined to the point of inbred. Were we a surprised our alien baby couldn't compete with the samey soups? No, and we don't think they were bad either; each of the other chilis had their merits.

The problem with that brand of competitive cooking was that you were effectively punished for experimenting.

I also competed in the Local Matters Grilled Cheese Throw Down. And the Bacon Camp competition put on in part by Wild Goose Creative. (Both before I went vegan.) These two experiences were much more rewarding. In the case of the latter, I just went way the hell out on a limb and made a few gallons of some crazy pulled-pork chili. It was hella expensive, but it was my first comp and I didn't care. In the case of the Grilled Cheese Throw Down, it was less expensive, but still on the costly side because of the amount of food that was ultimately used up in R&D.

But the Local Matters competition helped me exeriment and come up with a truly novel soution to the age old question; "Just how do I make a grilled cheese with mac 'n cheese?"

In the course of this experimentation my friend Kate expressed an interest in competitive cooking, but with the caveat that it is too expensive to just jump into - especially if you have no idea what your chances at a payoff might be.

And that is one of the points around which Dreamsfood crystallized; my ROI for the Grilled Cheese Throw Down was high, even if a dime was not won in the process (ha; even if I didn't qualify to compete, my sandwich just wasn't Grilled Cheese-y enough, even though it was crazy good). This was not due to some monetary reward, but rather to engaging a challenge and finding a unique solution. With that as a starting point, I wanted to find a way to fund the individual discovery of cooks and remove the barrier to entry.

One of the key ingredients to an amazing Recipe Card is the willingness to go out on a limb with a concept. To try to re-compose a standard as something new and innovative is hard-coded into Dreamsfood. So, to all the cooks out there, do your damnedest to make some crazy proposals.

Deep-fried vegan grilled cheese tiramisu? If you can dream it, we'll help you bring it.

Dreamsfood Bounty #1 - Vegan Comfort Food

From the Dreamsfood section...

So the first Dreamsfood Bounty has been announced, Vegan Comfort Food. Everybody wants it right about now, and you're all going to need it in a few weeks, so let's get some planning down and get our collective wheels spinning.

• If you have a recipe and would like to join in and participate, email a recipe card to recipes@dreamsfood.org and get on board!
• If you want to vote and participate in the bounty and the dinner, email me at mfg@dreamsfood.org so I can invite you to the facebook group and get you all signed up

Even Mitt is getting in on it!We have a few subdomains right now, first there is the parent site Dreamsfood.org , and then we've also got:

• voting.dreamsfood.org - host site for the recipe cards, head on over and check out what we've got going; recipe deadline is December 4, 2011, voting starts December 5 (again, email recipes@dreamsfood.org if you want a card posted for looking over!)
• calendar.dreamsfood.org - contains the bounty board and the upcoming voting cycle schedule and the dinner meetup
• docs.dreamsfood.org - not much here yet, might be used for spreadsheets and illustrations, or an archive of recipe cards

Update on 4:19PM by mfg

Here's the offical announcement on the Dreamsfood page!

Seitan's Pie

not mine; pic for referenceSo I am going to be making a recipe that I never even have eaten as an omnivore: Shepherd's Pie. Something about casseroles must just have never fit into my family's retinue; they're convenient, tasty, and easy. So I will take one of the more classic, long-standing ones, eliminate its convenience, experiment with its tastiness, and subject it to all kinds of pitfalls to low skill.

Here's how the fun will unfold;

• I am going to follow this recipe to make the meat filling. She is making a BBQ seitan, so the elements of the recipe that would veer too closely to that I will omit; the general approach to smoking seitan, which is guess is just [simmer for 60 minutes] +[smoke for 90 minutes], is what I will be following.
• I am going to roast some nice local red potatoes I picked up yesterday at the co-op on the grill and then make some slightly underdone mashed potatoes with them
• I am going to make a mushroom gravy with celery carrots and lentils
• Mince the meat dough, mix in a flax egg, add to dutch oven
• Pour over the gravy and bits, mix a bit
• Cover with mashed potatoes
• Bake at 400'f for 25-35 minutes

Let's see what we get. So far I have started the dough and am about to prep the potatoes (basically, all I have to do is cut them up and toss them in a smidge of oil then grill them in the basket).

In pursuit of a fleshier bean curd

So following up on Seitanic Turkey Practice, and the corresponding gallery,  I posted a question on the Stack regarding the less-than-satisfactory results. I may have no real interest in perfecting fake meats, much less the minutiae of their outer wrapping. However, if I am going to follow a technique for the sake of learning it, then I must bring a certain kind of obstinacy with me.

Last Friday, we made spring rolls from yuba. They were a messy plate full of meh. Granted, I had this new spicy dipping sauce so it was more like a fingerful of meh with a chomp full of yip-jump. For בּ though, it was just more meh, as hers was a tamari based something something.

Saturday I got out the bread making hands and did up the turkey, the results? Well, let me speak for myself;

I recently tried to practice making a Seitan based vegan turkey tube using this recipe. To test results for different cooking methods, I split the final dough in half before baking, made one that was just turkey-dough and one that was a turkey-dough and stuffing roulade.

Both turkey loaves came out well. However, the recipe gives instructions on fabricating a kind of "turkey skin." Basically, once the turkey is done baking, remove from oven, place on a pan, wrap with yuba(bean-curd skin from making soy milk, similar to spring roll pastry), brush with sesame oil, and bake until browned (about 45-60 minutes, brushing on more oil occasionally). The results were basically a distracting pastry shell wrapped around a seitan loaf; it did not appear to adhere to the surface of the loaf at any point. It was difficult to cut and had a difficult texture compared to the ease of the seitan.

To give an idea of the results, here is a picture of some scraps from the plate:

The instructions did not give a specific detail as to what to expect, or really how to qualify the results of the "turkey skin." As such, I am at a loss as to how to improve the results.

So:

• Have you made or had a yuba wrapped item, where the method above was somehow applied but with a more successful result (as in, the yuba adhered to the surface of the loaf, the yuba cut easily, or had a more delicate texture that didn't contrast as much)?
• Of the three fails (adherence, cutting, texture), what methods would work to improve them? (E.G. Would brushing oil on the loaf before help or hinder yuba sticking to the loaf, would it help soften the yuba?)
• Is there any method of softening the yuba and making it more delicate before applying it? Would this be beneficial to the desired result? Why?
• Could tweaking the temp:time of baking with the yuba wrap help? (i.e. Lower-slower breaks down fats, connective tissues in animals... is there a similar compound I am shooting for in yuba?)
• Can yuba be prepared to mimic the soft-toughness of turkey skin? How?

If you have any insights on this whole scenario, or any of the questions above, feel free to hop over to the stack, or leave comments below.

Extensive experimentation averted is always ultimately appreciated, unless it's interesting. (Hooray for vowels!)

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!

Peanut Cheese: Vegan Cheese for Tree-Nut Allergies

Almond, macadamia, and especially cashew cheeses are creamy staples of raw and vegan foods. Cashew cheese of varying stripes makes guest appearances throughout many of the pages of mousse recipes and other creamy, stiffened makes.

But what if you're allergic to tree nuts?

Well, depending on the severity of your allergy, its quite possible that you will be okay with peanuts. But there's no recipe for peanut cheese. It's always cashews and other epi-pen wielding death machines.

So we started an experiment into the world of vegan non-tree nut cheese using a sub-recipe of the cashew cheese. In most cashew cheese implementations, it is either soaked and pureed straight up, or with some lemon juice. On occasion and depending on the variety desired, you might go so far as to add nutritional yeast or some other flavoring; but aesthetics aside it is a stable and creamy cheese at this preparation.

 However, this relies on unroasted cashews, which although a smidge pricey are not too hard to procure. Outside of the south, unroasted peanuts are a bit more difficult to find in your brick and mortar store. So I had some roasted peanuts; what to do?

The sub-recipe/prep we went with was a two hour soak, then a puree of the following:

• 2 handfuls (precision! I know!) of roasted, unsalted peanuts
• 2 tsp. cooking marsala
• 2 tsp white vinegar
• 1/2 tsp flax seed, milled
• 1/2 tsp salt

  

The resulting "peanut cheese" was a tasty snack. I placed it in a coffee filter to drain. Ultimately, it yielded a solid paste similar in texture to cream cheese; less creamy than cashew cheese, but more structural and could likely give that oomph to the vegan cheese cake that's not quite standing on its own despite all that agar.

Is it weird? Yes. It looks weird, tastes funny; and that's great.

Reason being? It's like that dilemma: if you have two base runners, and both make the same time from point A -> B, but one has good form and one does not; which one do you select? You select the one with bad form: that's the one with the ability to improve.

So, the wine and vinegar were not necessarily the most general ingredients to involve. I selected them to introduce a degree of solvency to the paste. Ultimately, outside of small tastes their flavor would likely be overwhelming; it was a bit too bright and acidic. That said, little nibbles along with big bites of the Blueberry Lemon Corn Biscuit Cobbler resulted in a palate on par with the most decadent peanut butter and jelly sandwich. ever.

Future experiments could involve trying different selections of peanuts; blanched, boiled, raw-raw, etc. Additional variations would include subbing the wine and vinegar for simple water with maybe ~1 tsp splash of apple cider vinegar. There's a lot of room for variation and implementation; the idea of incorporating this into a peanut sauced dish is what has been tickling my mind (Cheez-y Vegan Pad Thai anyone? Virginaia-Style Tom Yummm, with strawberries and basil?).