Category: cooking

cooking

One…ONE Monte Cristo pocket…ah-ha-ha!

wittychild

The combination of a stat holiday and a nasty, blustery weather system made today a doubly great reason to stay in the house and stay warm.  And the chance to warm up the oven?  Ooh, can’t pass that up!

For Valentine’s Day, I got a new cookbook: Betty Goes Vegan by Annie and Dan Shannon.  This might seem a tad unromantic, but a) I had been coveting this book since I first heard about it, and b) it was from my parents, so really, something a little more, um, personal would just have been inappropriate.  And honestly, you can’t go wrong with a cookbook anyway.  The first recipe I saw that really jumped off the page at me was Monte Cristo pockets.  Why?  Not sure.  I was never a huge meat n’ cheese freak in my omnivorous days, but there was something about this recipe…

Get it? "Comte" = "Count". Ah-ha-ha!
Get it? “Comte” = “Count”. Ah-ha-ha!

OMG…I’m so glad I tried this!  I might cut back on either the time or temperature in the oven next time as my bottoms got a little overdone (on the bright side, I didn’t set off the smoke detector), but that’s such a minor little tweak.  And for reasons unclear to me, I had a ton of filling left over – probably enough for another full batch – so I’ll likely get my chance to try that out sooner than I thought.  Blackened bits aside, this pastry is, no joke, the flakiest, most amazing stuff ever!  I’m glad I ate lunch before starting in on these, or I wouldn’t have had a picture to post.

And now, alas, I only have four…four Monte Cristo pockets left…

(Ah-ha-ha!)

 

baking, cooking

Shchi whiz!!

wittychild

Or is that “щi виз”?

Although I’m not thrilled about the cold autumn mornings, I love that the cooler weather means I can break out the soup pot again.  Honestly, I could quite happily eat soup every day, all year round, but (sigh) not everyone shares my obsession with the stuff, so the cooler weather means that the rest of my audience will be equally enthusiastic about a steaming bowl of goodness.

Much to my chagrin, I had never heard of shchi before, but when I found a recipe for it on the Post Punk Kitchen, I knew I had found my next undertaking.

Mmm…soup!  I used parsnips instead of potato or a potato/parsnip combo, and between that and the black pepper found the end result to be quite, well, peppery despite its unassuming appearance.  The dollop of Sour Supreme on top helped immensely to temper it.

But man, er, domestic goddess cannot live by soup alone, right?  Enter Garlic-Dill Bread from Julie Hasson’s Vegan Diner.  As a non-yeasted  bread it comes together quickly, using baking powder and beer as leaveners.  Sending me to the store for beer is a little like sending a nun to an adult novelty shop (Not.  A.  Clue.), but I think I did all right for myself.  I used Fort Garry Dark Ale, but can’t say I noticed either an overwhelmingly positive or negative taste.  (So, yay me!)

The very best part of it all: I have an almost-full pot of shchi in the fridge, ready to be warmed up again for supper tonight.

cooking

When eating tofu makes you a rebel…

wittychild

…you definitely need to loosen up a bit.

Okay, so my job has a lot going for it.  It has a comprehensive benefits package.  There is room for advancement for motivated employees.  It’s in a well-maintained building that is close to my bank, dentist, favourite restaurants, shopping, foxy former co-workers, etc.  They’re also remarkably understanding and accommodating at office functions re: my strictly voluntary dietary restrictions.  I am deeply grateful for that.

But…they don’t like people eating lunch at their desks.  The girl who trained me explained the philosophy thusly: “Nothing that requires a utensil!  If you’re fiddling with utensils, you’re not working.”  O…kay.  Yet Bake Club members are free to use forks to eat cake at their desks.  Bizarre.

So covert finger-food it was!  I’ve spent the past two years surreptitiously nibbling a PB&J at my desk.  Yes!  I became a walking vegan stereotype, and decided it was high time for a change.  (By now you might be wondering why I don’t just eat in the lunch room.  I tried that for a while, but prefer actually leaving the office to stretch my legs, run errands, etc.  Not unreasonable after a morning in front of the computer.)  I decided that tofu sandwiches were the way to go: whole grain and fibre from the bread, plus protein and calcium from the tofu, with only a fraction of the sugar of a PB&J.

A couple of weeks ago I made the Sweet Chili Lime Tofu from Vegan Yum Yum.  A little mustard, some lettuce, and it was delicious.  Last week, I was lazy and made Southern Fried Shake n’ Bake tofu.  I still had a package of the coating left and could have done it again this week, but I wanted something a little different.

I used the basic bread-and-bake method for the Cornmeal Crusted Chili Lime Tofu from Veganomicon, but made my own coating of panko crumbs and a Roasted Chili and Tamarind/Roasted Garlic and Peppers mix (both by Clubhouse seasonings).  It’s got just the right amount of kick, and a wonderfully crispy finish – and the only way it could be even easier to make is if it breaded and baked itself.  Seriously.

Behold, the healthy-eating rebel!

cooking

You put the lime in the coconut

wittychild

When I was just a wee tyke, the Grade 3 class in my school would learn songs from the Anne of Green Gables musical – Canada’s longest-running musical; who knew? – in music class, and as part of this curriculum, would actually get to make ice cream, just like they sang about*.  This was probably the most hotly anticipated moment of my entire educational career, particularly when my cousin, who was a year ahead of me, got to do it and I got to hear about it in greater detail than ever before.  For reasons I still don’t understand, her class was the last to do it, and I felt sorely robbed of the opportunity to waste valuable class-time making ice cream, of all the crazy things.

I eventually got over this snub, and really hadn’t had much of a burning desire to make ice cream since, because you can buy it at the store/I don’t eat dairy anymore/you can buy non-dairy ice cream at the store, too.  Besides, ice cream is just not one of those things I really crave too frequently.  But…every so often, in perusing a cookbook or website, I’d see an ice cream recipe and think, “Dang!”  Since we’re having a heatwave (a tropical heat wave), I finally took the plunge this weekend.

This product is particularly awesome for three reasons (besides the taste!):

1. It’s homemade (duh – who blogs about store-bought ice cream?)

2. It’s vegan

3. I made it without an ice cream maker

Yes!  Thanks to the Brown-Eyed Baker’s handy tutorial (found here), I was able to experiment with homemade ice cream without having to shell out for an ice cream maker that would sit and collect dust in the basement roughly 360 days out of the year.

Oh, the recipe?  Just a little gem from Hannah Kaminsky’s Vegan Desserts, “Toasted Coconut Key Lime Ice Cream”.  I’ve fiddled with key limes exactly once in my life, decided they weren’t worth the trouble, and employed one standard lime instead to get the necessary juice and zest.  It yields approximately one pint once all is said and done, which was the perfect amount to slake that cold-n-creamy craving.  The texture was nothing short of velvety, and it tested very well with omnivores.  Although the coconut milk makes it rich, the tartness of the lime provides the perfect balance.

Oh, yeah.  This opens up all sorts of possibilities….

*”Ice cream!  Is anything more delectable than ice cream?  Why, even the most respectable eat ice cream!  It’s wonderful on a summer’s afternoon in June,” etc.

cooking

Some like it hot

wittychild

I usually don’t bother making New Year’s resolutions anymore.  Oh, I understand the psychological appeal of a new, unsullied year to finally kick that bad habit or start a good one, but it’s just not my thing.  Most resolutions fail, due either to lofty goals, ill-defined goals, or zero execution plan.  For example, “I resolve to lose weight” is too vague.  “I resolve to lose 50 pounds” is ambitious – but not totally impossible, if it’s accompanied by a list of Hows, which it usually isn’t.  “I resolve to lose 20 pounds; to do so, I’ll cut out my daily can of soda and walk for half an hour four times a week” is manageable and well-laid out, but most people don’t demonstrate this foresight.

In my own case, “I resolve to become a gourmet vegan chef” is just…not…gonna…happen.  But I do have a bit of an addiction to printed matter, including numerous cookbooks.  I buy them, ooh and aah over the recipes, and then put them back on the bookshelf without actually doing anything vaguely domestic.  So, for the last couple years, I’ve had an “unspoken resolution” of sorts: I resolve will endeavour to cook at least one new dish per month.  The only catch?  It has to be “real food”, and not a cupcake or cookie recipe – something that can be eaten as a meal.  That’s only twelve instances of real cooking per year; who can’t handle that?  Some of my experiments have been…less than pleasing…but for the most part, this has been a really fun undertaking, and I’ve been motivated to try dishes I might not have otherwise.

I realized last week that I hadn’t yet tried a new recipe for June, but after flipping through a couple of books, it didn’t take me long to come up with a relatively cohesive meal plan.

Left to right: “Better Love Your Beans Bake” from Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites, and “Curried Cabbage and Peas” from Appetite for Reduction.  And before you ask, no, I’m not a professional food photographer.  😛  The cabbage dish looks way prettier in person, with curried-yellow cabbage, plus bright green peas and orange carrots dotting it.

Cross-section of the bean bake:

It looks all rich and creamy – it is! – and cheesy – it isn’t! – but the topping is reasonably healthy, with a cup of puréed chickpeas making up the bulk of it, plus some nondairy sour cream, almond milk, nutritional yeast, and spices.  I’m a little obsessed with chickpeas, so finding a new way to use them in a recipe was A-OK by me.

A note on Hearty Vegan Meals: that books is full of recipes that will satisfy omnivores.  Quite a few of them call for deep-frying, which doesn’t thrill me, but I haven’t hit a bad recipe yet out of the ones I’ve tried.

The curried cabbage is hot-hot-hot – I could have halved the curry powder and been happy – but the bean bake worked wonders to temper it.

The best part?  I get total points for cooking something that everyone can enjoy.