Home again
Well I’m back from Boston and Toronto, and still a little brain dead from the travelling. Boston was gorgeous though, and I already miss everyone in Toronto. Plus there was some spectacularly nummy food! (Reviews to come sometime soon-ish.) No matter, it’s nice to sleep in my own bed again, and cook in my own kitchen. Nothing fancy has come of that so far — just enough granola to supply several Boston trips, a stab at a seitan version of tasty tempeh ribs, and some cabbage-potato slow cooker comfort food. Oh, and the best pancakes ever. Hmmm, maybe I haven’t been as slothful in the kitchen as I thought since getting back two days ago. 😉
On a completely unrelated note, today I read that Oprah is doing a 21-day cleanse that involves going vegan, and giving up caffeine, alcohol, sugar, and gluten. Hardcore! More on her goals here. I’m interested to see what kind of response she gets, and how well she does at making the change seem easy, appetizing, and worthwhile. So far I’m a little hesitant, because the few recipes already posted to her site may prove daunting to someone new to the veggie lifestyle. Will readers know where to find kombu and tempeh? I take tamari and nutritional yeast for granted, but maybe they could use some introduction for newbies? Anyway, I hope her challenge works out well for her and any others who decide to try it.
Learnin’
Know what I never look at in bookstores? Cooking magazines. At best there are maybe two veg-focused magazines on display, and they rarely excite me. The others…the others are full of things I don’t eat, so why bother?
Or so I thought. Um. I’m an idiot. Yes they’re full of things I don’t eat, but I kinda get a kick out of ‘veganizing’ recipes, so why should that prove an obstacle? And besides, they’re not just full of things I don’t eat…they’re also full of information. *swoon*
I like learning. Nah, I love learning, and cooking is one area where I certainly have a lot to learn. Imagine my delight, then, when yesterday for the first time in many ages I wandered into my local bookstore and checked out the cooking mags. I left with two. The one that got me all excited? Cook’s Illustrated. If you haven’t seen it before, it’s kind of a cross between a normal cooking magazine and Consumer Reports. The people who create it run a test kitchen, and they take a methodical, scientific approach to cooking. They tackle culinary questions like “what’s the best way to cook baby spinach” or “what’s the best chocolate cake recipe,” and try every variation imaginable until they find the answers. (It’s almost exhausting to read the descriptions of their labours.) Then they publish the results, complete with recipes. And yes, a lot of those results apply to vegan cookery just as much as to non-vegan cookery.
A five minute read-through of my copy felt like a three-hour cooking lesson, minus dinner at the end. But lunch…lunch I could do. The best way to learn is to apply lessons while they’re still fresh, right? And I can see myself trying and adapting a lot of the things in this issue.
But back to lunch. There was an article on making the best oven fries, and there were a couple of articles involving baked chicken. I went with those, because yum, fries! And also because I’ve tried making crispy faux chicken a few times in the past few months and haven’t been happy with any of the results — the coating always turns out a bit soggy, and I don’t care how tasty it is — soggy just isn’t acceptable.
Here’s the gist of the oven fries article: For the absolute best results, [1] Cut russet potatoes into wedges, [2] soak the wedges in hot water for 10 minutes and then drain and dry them, [3] in a baking pan season 4T of oil with salt and pepper, [4] spread potatoes evenly, [5] bake covered tightly with foil at 475F for 5 minutes, [6] remove the foil and continue baking 20 to 30 minutes, turning once.
Honestly? I burned mine. My bad — I cut my potato into too many wedges, so that they were too thin and cooked super-fast. Also my baking sheet is thin and crappy and doesn’t heat evenly, so that some fries did okay while others burned. C’est la vie. (Besides, I have thirteen more potatoes to play with!) The soaking and steaming did create a noticably better texture than I’ve managed with my usual oven fries recipe though; there were no ‘hollow’ fries. And seasoning the oil rather than the cut potatoes? Sheer genius. I was skeptical, but it worked perfectly.
Now for the chik’n. I used a PC meatless chik’n breast. It occurred to me that maybe past attempts hadn’t done as well because I hadn’t thawed the faux meat fully before prepping the meal, so this time I let the cut thaw overnight and made sure it was dry to the touch before starting. I think fake meats tend to hold more moisture than real meat, which may add to the challenge of creating a crispy coat. Anyway, I sliced mine in half to create two thinner cutlets, and then I breaded them. To do this I prepared one flax egg (1 T ground flax whisked into 1/4 cup hot water), and dipped both sides of each cutlet. Then I pressed these into panko (japanese breadcrumbs) seasoned with 1 T of nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper. The two tricks I picked up from Cook’s Illustrated were these: [1] Cook the chik’n on a rack set over a baking pan, and [2] spray the breaded cutlets lightly with oil before baking.
The results? Best breaded chik’n so far — crispy and lightly browned. The rack made a big difference in ensuring that both sides crisped up. My only excuse for not thinking this up myself is that my normal baking pans don’t have racks. Fortunately my housemate pointed out that my wee toaster oven pan does have such an insert, so I used that and it worked perfectly. I did forget two things while making these — I didn’t dredge the cutlets with flour before breading them, and I didn’t spray the baking rack. Neither proved major issues, and the finished product tasted wonderful topped with a raw tomato sauce (half a tomato, diced; a few basil leaves, minced; one garlic clove and one teaspoon capers, squeezed through a garlic press; salt and pepper to taste).
As lunches go, yum. As learning experiences go, likewise yum. And I still have a bunch more recipes and techniques eyemarked for trying. Is it dinner time yet?
Hawt!
Okay, first off? Raw parsnips really do taste like particularly awesome little carrots. I don’t know why I never tried eating them raw before. It seems likely that the big ones are less sweet and tasty than the little carrot-sized ones I had lying around, but still — why did nobody tell me I could eat them this way?Anyway, tonight I made my own horseradish, and then used that to make Roasted Parsnips with Horseradish (as lusted after earlier this week, and easily veganized). I’d never had horseradish before, and was surprised by the tasty heat of it. I have Sooper Sekret plans for the remainder, involving lots of garlic and a fresh baguette. Stay tuned.
Speaking of garlic, Lee Valley’s nifty-looking ‘garlic twist‘ isn’t as easy to use as a garlic press. I was kind of disappointed. Their kitchen calculator, however, makes me very happy indeed.
I digress — back to those parsnips. They were fantastically easy to make (even allowing for the unexpected DIY horseradish necessity), and even my housemate R liked them. They were kind of spicy and sweet and savoury at the same time, but the flavours were very well balanced. They’re hard to describe — go make’em for yourself and see. 🙂 The only change I’d make is to use a little less Earth Balance next time. And I’d make more, because there are none left.
Along with these I made the baked potato chips I mentioned in my last post. Thank goodness for my cheapo plastic mandoline — slicing the potatoes was surprisingly easy. My only problem was that they cooked unevenly, so that I wound up with many overdone and a few underdone. They were tasty, though not that much better than good store bought chips. If I make these again, I’ll use small yams instead of regular potatoes, and maybe some other tubers. Also I think they’d be fabulous tossed with wasabi salt. See? Each kitchen experiment spawns a half dozen others!
Last on the dinner plate were a couple slices of faux tuna, sauteed in sesame oil. I’m a sucker for new ‘fakes’ — I love taste-testing them, seeing how well they hold up in a range of dishes. This particular faux tuna (by Kuan Yin Hsiang Vegetarian Diet Co, in Taiwan) didn’t taste much like fish, but there was a slight sweetness that did kinda, sorta remind me of tuna. Overall the flavour was very nice, and completely without the strong gluten aftertaste that puts me off of many fake meats. So yes, while it didn’t make me scream “tuna!”, it was much better than many others I’ve tried. I devoured most of it in yummy wraps over the past two days (‘tuna’, tabbouleh, red pepper, shallots, and baby spinach). It held up well in ‘steak’ form too. I’ll definitely be picking up more the next time I’m in Toronto. (It’s available from the little store in King’s Cafe restaurant, in Kensington Market.)
The Lustful Vegan 