Homemade udon
Last week found me daytripping to Toronto, with the promise of a potluck at a friend’s house to round out the day. I wanted to make something fun and different, and that’s when I remembered Cookbook Catchall’s post last month about udon.
I looooove udon. Noodles in general, but udon in specific. They’re chewy and tasty and full of yum. And also, it turns out, just about the most fun thing ever to make. Why? Because you get to dance on your food!
Seriously! I used this version of the recipe, because after mixing and kneading your dough you wrap it up well in plastic and a towel, drop it on the floor, and start dancing on it. You use your entire body weight to knead it. It sounded a little complicated at first, but proved to be a super-easy recipe. I made them the day before the potluck, boiled them, then tossed them with a little sesame oil to keep them from sticking. The next day I used them in a random stirfry of beet greens, ‘frenched’ yellow and green beans, green onions, and sesame seeds, all tossed with a sauce made up of garlic, ginger, tamari, sesame oil, and vegan oyster sauce. Everybody loved it. I’ll be making these again…a lot.
Homemade udon
Recipe notes: Half the recipe fed five people handily as a side dish. The only alteration I made was in the amount of water, because my dough needed twice the amount of recommended water to shape up.
A weekend of vegetables
It was a long weekend here, and I spent much of it trying to use up the countless veggies in the fridge. There was a lot of spinach and a lot of basil, so poof! then there was pesto. This made for a lovely pasta dish topped with steamed chard. And since I still had pesto left over after that, and also a whole bunch of root veggies, I made a warm salad of roasted potatoes, turnips, and radishes, all tossed with green onions and pesto and vegan parmesan. Yum! Now I can at least fit things into the crispers, but I still have cauliflower and beets and corn and zucchini and carrots and beans and yet more potatoes to work my way through.
Zucchini cherry bread
To make a dent in the zucchini I tried making a zucchini cherry bread today. It’s really just a veganized version of this recipe, but with dried cherries in place of walnuts (I was all out). The bread turned out quite well, if a bit sweet. Next time I’ll add walnuts (but keep the cherries!), reduce the oil a titch, and reduce the sugar by a quarter or third. Cranberries might work nicely in this too — their tartness would help balance the sweetness of the bread.
Zucchini cherry bread
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup grated zucchini
- 3 T soy milk or other liquid
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp egg replacer powder
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup dried cherries
To make:
- Preheat oven to 325F. Lightly oil a bread pan.
- ‘Cream’ the oil and sugar together until a little fluffy.
- Stir in the zucchini, vanilla, and soy milk.
- In another bowl, mix together the flour, cinnamon, soda, baking powder, salt, and egg replacer powder. Stir into the wet mixture.
- Quickly fold in the cherries.
- Pour batter into the loaf pan, and bake 60 to 70 minutes.
* If using a flax egg or other egg substitute, just replace the egg replacer powder and soy milk in the above recipe.
