The Lustful Vegan

Somehow today went south — Deep South. A craving for cornbread (and a hot pepper going spare) led me to this Alton Brown recipe for cast iron cornbread. I had to have it. And besides, I realized that I had that episode of Good Eats, so bonus! First it was groceries, then a half hour of watching the show and chilling, then into the kitchen to make the bread myself. Mmmmm. His version was super-easily veganized (see below), and the only addition I made was the aforementioned hot pepper, which proved to be remarkably mild. My housemate actually suggested adding cayenne next time, so that shows just how unspicy it was. Good though, especially with a little Earth Balance. The cast iron method gave it a nice, moist consistency, but with a crispy crust. Yum.

The rest of the meal? Spicy pinto bean sausages, and a side of what may be the absolute best kale recipe ever. Seriously, I’m stunned by just how good the kale was. Over the moon impressed. That said, it needs a couple important tweaks to make it perfect, and I’m out of kale, so y’all have to wait a bit before I reveal it further. (See, all this Southern food is giving me a drawl.)

The sausages were super easy to make, surprisingly light, and definitely sausagey in taste. Better than most store bought vegan sausages. I’d have to do a side by side comparison with some of the Tofurky sausages to decide. Let’s be honest though — homemade is almost always better. I’ll make these again, though I’d probably make them smaller for double the quantity. That would make them more like breakfast links. I definitely want to try the original spicy Italian version too, though I’ll just use those seasonings with Isa’s bean-based version when I make them, because I’d rather have real beans in my sausages than chickpea flour.

Incidentally, why did nobody point out Everyday Dish to me? A YouTube veg cooking series? *squee!* (Those crepes must be mine, and soon.)

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve discovered that strawberries sliced onto homemade bread and blackcurrant jam is a special treat. Omg, yum. I honestly meant to take pictures, if only to show off the bread, but I was hungry, and then there was none left.

That’s enough for now. Friday is Pi Day, so the theme will be ’round.’ I’m already plotting. And already on the round theme…

Read the rest of this entry »

In the beginning, there was the snowstorm. We’ve had 37cm of snow since yesterday evening, and the whole world is white. I did manage to get as far as the market, though, and staggered home looking like a vegetable-laden snowman. Errr, snowwoman.

Cold weather calls for hot soup. Well, hot chocolate, then hot soup. I decided to fight the chill with Isa’s Ancho Lentil Soup, because it sounded tasty and I had some leftover pineapple kicking around for once (and let’s be honest, I was eager to try out the new cast iron grilling pan I found during my rambles).

Thus began a bit of an adventure. See, I had no ancho chilies with which to make the spice mixture. Nor, for that matter, a seranno pepper. I did have chipotle peppers, though, and what I thought looked like a hungarian pepper, and even a bag of evil-looking dried red chili peppers. And if worst came to worst, I had a box of White Death (aka White Chilli Powder, which is actually made from dried green chillies — it’s spicy as all hell). Surely some of these would serve as workable substitutes?

To be safe, I did some research, and thus became Edumicated about hot peppers, their chemistry, and the Scoville heat scale. Aha, a non-subjective means of comparing different hot peppers! Excellent! Comparing Wikipedia’s chart with a variety of other charts, I deduced that my chipotles were roughly twice as spicy as the ancho chillies called for in the recipe. Okay, thought I, I’ll just use one instead of two, and the spice levels will balance out. Right? And my hungarian pepper promised to be roughly equal in spiciness to a seranno, so that left me all set for soupy goodness.

Oh, I was so very, very wrong.

I made my spice mixture (homemade chili powder, yum!) and started my soup. I added a few extra veggies, because why not? Eventually I took a taste, and *poof!*, my taste buds combusted.

*gasp gasp wheeze* Egads, the spice! And I hadn’t even added the hungarian pepper yet! I can’t explain it, but my single tiny chipotle pepper was a veritable dynamo of fiery spice. Too much spice.

Thus began education effort #2: How to neutralize spiciness in an over-spiced dish. *sigh* But hey, the internet is my friend, and I discovered some good tips:

• Add honey. Doing so definitely took an edge off the heat without actually adding any sweetness.
• Increase the volume of ingredients. Add ‘neutral’ ingredients to mitigate the spice. Hmmm. Sadly I needed to thicken my soup, and most of the ‘neutral’ ingredients these sites mentioned were dairy products. Still, I had some cooked rice kicking around, and that struck me as a potential solution. I pureed it with some water and soup, added the mixture, and the spice level dropped a few notches.
• Add a potato. Peel it, cut it in half, and drop it in. Remove it once it’s cooked. I tried it, and the potato absorbed a small amount of the spiciness.
• Add lemon juice. This I didn’t do, because the original recipe called for adding lime juice at the very end, and I figured that would serve.

The resulting soup? Still spicy, but finally edibly spicy. Even more so once I added the lime juice the recipe called for — it added a lovely burst of flavour, and took the spice down one last notch. Ha!

Then came the grilling of the pineapple, which was easily the best part. Fun, pretty, and tasty. Et voila, a very unusual twist on lentil soup — all yummy, spicy, tropical flavours.

I think I’d try it again, but hopefully with fewer spice issues. And possibly with a bit of coconut milk…mmmmm…

Read the rest of this entry »