Curried squash udon noodles

The Internet has become a terrific resource for cooks. Not only are there endless recipes online (cherry white chocolate cookies, white chocolate and cherry chocolate cookies, cherry macadamia chocolate cookies...), but now there's social networking. For example, we bought an acorn squash earlier this week. I'm not a huge fan of the sweeter squashes or potatoes, so I was struggling to figure out a way to make it exciting to eat. I posted a Facebook status asking for advice on how to prepare it. Within half an hour I had four friends respond, all posting delicious-sounding recipes. I took Mark's cue to curry the squash and made this udon noodle dish.

Curried Squash with Udon Noodles

1 acorn squash
2 tbl sesame oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp yellow Thai curry powder, or more to taste
1/2 block tofu, cut into squares
2 single-serving packets fresh udon noodles
1 shallot, sliced
garnishes like chopped scallions, Thai basil, and cilantro

Slice squash in half (saving seeds to toast in oven!) and place cut side down in a baking dish. Fill an inch or two with water and microwave for 10-15 minutes, until squash is slightly soft. Remove and let squash cool for a few minutes.

In a medium pot, saute onion and garlic in sesame oil. Scrape flesh from squash and add it to the onions. Add curry powder. While squash is cooking, heat a frying pan with vegetable oil and fry tofu, draining on paper towels when brown.

After squash and onions have cooked for 5-10 minutes, add soy sauce and let cook for 2 more minutes. Cover squash with water, then cover pot and simmer over medium-low heat while you are cooking the tofu. Once the squash is soft, blend with an immersion blender until smooth. Add a teaspoon or two of cornstarch to thicken if necessary. Salt and season to taste. Add udon noodles and cook until they are broken apart, three to five minutes.

In the vegetable oil, fry the sliced shallot until crispy. Drain on a paper towel.

Top noodles with tofu, fried shallots, cilantro, basil, scallions, and any other condiments. We bought some black vinegar at the Asian grocery and it goes really well with this dish. I also made some crispy kale with black sesame seeds as a side to these noodles.

Now I'm working on cooking all of the other recipes my friends suggesting on Facebook. Who knows, I might find myself a squash convert!

Meatatarian Musing: Pho

I figured I'd chime in on this one, since I've been largely absent from the Chronicles for several months. I've got to say, this was one of the best Asian dishes Kate's made in awhile, and that's saying a lot coming from me — I don't have the same proclivity towards brothy noodle dishes that she does. Perhaps it's because I've never been a huge soup person. Throughout my formative years, the only soups I knew came from cans and were usually served to me when I was sick. Furthermore, with soupy Asian noodle dishes, I often find it hard to understand what you're actually getting. When we go to Happy Noodle House in Boulder, I usually have a very good meal, but I can never figure out what the hell it is I've ordered.

The same goes for Pho. I've had it a number of times, and it is still really hard to describe. The earthy, sweetish flavor is at odds with the saltiness and spice that is also present. Another weird thing about it is the number of toppings you put on the soup — probably about six or seven different things. I guess it's kind of like a soup version of a hotdog or something — you just put on as much as you like. Either way, it tasted great and I enjoyed it. It's amazing to think that if I never knew Kate, I'm certain I would never ever have eaten a bowl of Pho. I guess that even though I'm way more adventurous than my parents in terms of food, I still have a fair dose of their conservatism, so it's always good to push the limits!

Pho from scratch

I made some veggie pho again. This time, I made my own broth from this recipe instead of using pho cubes. It was delicious!

Garnishes: (clockwise from top left) fresh Thai chilis, Thai basil, limes, green onions, cilantro, bean sprouts

Broth with noodles and thinly sliced, fried tofu

Last harvest before the snow

Last week marked our first few frosts in Boulder. It was time to take stock of what was left on our balcony garden. I harvested nearly all of the carrots (I tried a couple of heirloom + convential varieties and found the Little Finger variety grew the best in our shallow containers), beets, jalepenos, cilantro, and what was left of the basil. I made a soup with the carrots and a sauce with the herbs

Curried Carrot Soup with Pickled Beets


1 Tbl olive oil
4 cups chopped carrots
1 cup chopped celery
5 cloves clopped garlic
2 Tbl curry powder
1 tsp cayenne
1/2 can coconut milk
salt to taste

2 small beets
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 tsp salt

In a medium pot, cook carrots, celery, and garlic in olive oil over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add enough water to cover carrots by an inch or two. Add curry powder and cayenne. Simmer until carrots are soft, about 15-20 minutes. While carrots are cooking, use a mandoline to shave beets into thin slices. Combine vinegar, agave nectar, and salt in a small bowl and add beets. Using an immersion blender or regular blender, puree soup until smooth, adding water if too thick. Add coconut milk and salt and puree to blend. Garnish soup with beets and a sprinkle of cayenne powder.


Roasted Chicken and Potatoes with Tangy Jalapeno Lime Herb Sauce


1 cup packed cilantro
1/2 cup packed basil
1/4 cup olive oil
2 limes, juiced
1 jalapeno pepper
salt to taste

2 chicken breasts (real or fake)

5 small russet potatos
olive oil
sea salt
rosemary

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Puree herbs, olive, juice, pepper, and salt in a food processor until smooth, adding more oil if thick. Set aside.

Cut potatoes lengthwise into wedges. Arrange on a cookie sheet lined with foil. Drizzle with lots of olive oil and sprinkle with salt and rosemary.

Put chicken in a baking dish lined with foil and cover with herb sauce. Fold foil together to cover chicken. Cook for 20 minutes or until done, uncovering for the last 5 minutes.

Turn potatoes after 10 minutes to brown their other side. Remove when brownish and crispy.

Cauliflower steak

Roasted cauliflower steak, garlic mashed potatoes, seared spinach, and curried lentils BookCliff Vineyards Lucky Twenty White Table Wine

Cauliflower
Adapted from a recipe in the September Gourmet, this is without a doubt the most delicious cauliflower I've ever eaten. It's perfect for converting cauliflower skeptics (myself once among them.)
Slice a cauliflower head into 3/4-inch slabs, drizzle with oil, and roast for 10 minutes on a sheet pan at 425 degrees. Flip, season with good salt and caraway seeds, and then roast until slightly brown on top.

Potatoes
My bread didn't rise in time for dinner, so I had to make a starch on the fly, and I don't do instant rice (it's reserved for the dog).
Microwave some potatoes (stab them with a knife first) for about 8 minutes. Meanwhile, briefly cook some garlic in olive oil in a medium sauce pan. Coarsely chop the potatoes and toss with the garlic. Add lots of butter, salt, and pepper and mash with a potato masher over low heat.

Spinach
Get a frying pan hot. Add some olive oil and a little minced garlic and the spinach. Toss a bit and then let the spinach sear. Toss again until spinach is wilted.

Lentils
Heat a bit of olive oil in a small pot. Add lentils and swirl the pan to coat them in oil. Let them toast for a minute and then add yellow curry powder. Toast for a few more minutes and then add coconut milk, water, salt, and a little sugar. Simmer until lentils are tender, adding more water if necessary.

late harvest dinner

We had an unusually rainy and overcast weekend in Boulder. It was the perfect weather to spend some time harvesting from our container garden while planting fall and winter/early spring plants (lavender, bulbs, and garlic.) I picked some heirloom carrots and some green garlic to thin out the crops. I decided to make a soup to complement the cool weather, using the carrots and a gorgeous butternut squash from my coworker's garden.

I briefly sauteed some garlic in olive oil in a big soup pot, and then added the chopped squash, carrots, and a granny smith apple. I also added some thyme from our garden and some smoked Spanish paprika. I covered the veggies with water and simmered them until they were soft.


After the veggies were done cooking, I pureed it with an immersion blender until it was smooth, adding water when it seemed thick. I finished it off with a slab of sage butter from the freezer.

Lindsey came over and we had the soup with some homemade bread (sourdough starter commenced this weekend...I'll let you know how that goes) as well as some DELICOUS kale from this article. I added some chopped green garlic to the "A la Kate" recipe Molly writes about. To drink we had a bottle of '08 New Belgium La Folie, which paired really well I thought.

Weekend food adventures!

[Sorry, only a few iPhone pictures to enhance this post. I left my real camera at work over the weekend.]

Spencer's sister came to town on Friday, and we had a weekend of delicious food discoveries.
Saturday started with ginger peach pancakes at Snooze for Meredith while Spencer and I did a photo shoot for our bike team.

Wishing we were at Snooze...

Next was some excellent espresso and iced coffee from Vail Mountain at the Tattered Cover.

Then we headed to Federal Boulevard for some lunch. We wanted to stop at a Hatch chile stand, which litter the street at this time of year. We chose Mile High Chile. The vendors were super nice. We ended up with a bag of roasted chiles ($5) and some ground red chiles ($2) too. We asked the best place for lunch, and they directed us to El Rancherito.

Ashley and Sara joined us for lunch. Everyone's meals were delicious. Meredith had some green chile smothered tamales, Spencer had tacos, and me some guacamole tostadas.

Then we walked next door to a Mexican party shop to gawk at the amazing pinatas. I bought a hibiscus (jamaica) popsicle...best popsicle ever! Who would have known flowers taste so good.

Ashley and her pinata

Later we made gin and tonics with the first lime from our lime tree (!) and some CapRock organic gin from the Western Slope. For dinner we had some buffalo burgers with Hatch chiles mixed in and Field Roast smoked apple sage grain sausages.

Sunday morning I tried making some vegan donuts. I made glazed and chocolate risen ones. They were pretty good, but not perfect. I'll have to work on my donut skills throughout cross season.

Sunday night for dinner we grilled some chicken with rosemary Meredith brought us from Prague. We also roasted corn on the cob and topped it with butter, salt, and some of the chile powder we bought on Saturday. AMAZING. To drink we had some Czech beer and a bottle of Vermentino that Spencer and I brought back from Italy. We also picked some carrots, basil, and parsley from our porch containers and cooked them with green beans, toasted almonds, olives, truffle oil, and sea salt.


And to think, we didn't even make it to the Peach Festival, dinner out on Pearl Street, or any other culinary events of the weekend!

Ramen

Lately I've been eating a lot of ramen. Yep, the instant kind. No, I didn't lose my job.

Surprised? It's actually pretty good--if you ditch the seasoning packet and add your own ingredients. It's also a great way to use up whatever vegetables are lingering in the fridge...think mushrooms, broccoli, green beans, etc. I also like to toss in leftover proteins, like the vegan chicken I grilled the other night. It ends up being super convenient but still super cheap and is one of those dishes that is so tasty I'm always in the mood for it.

When I'm in a hurry, I'll just microwave the noodles with water, veggies, and my own seasoning (vegetarian ["Chay"] Pho boullion cubes if I'm craving some serious umami, or ginger and soy sauce if I'm feeling healthy.) If I have a bit more time, I'll heat some sesame oil in a pot, saute the meat and veggies and garlic or ginger, splash them with soy sauce when they are soft, and then add the noodles, seasoning, and water. My favorite toppings are sliced serrano or jalapeno peppers, Thai basil, cilantro, and hoisin sauce.

While this dish is neither authentic nor particularly healthy (at least the noodles aren't), it aces the trifecta of taste, cost, and convenience. Give instant ramen a try if you haven't since college or your last camping trip!

Grilled pizza

Yet another pizza post...but this time it's different, I swear! We got our 'merican on and bought a grill on the Fourth of July.

Grilling pizza is way easier than I expected. Don't bother with a fancy pizza stone, you won't get yummy charred flavor with it. Just brush the dough with some oil and it won't stick. It's actually quite amazing that it doesn't stick.

On high grill heat, cook one side of dough for 1-2 minutes, until you can lift it off the grates with a spatula. Remove from grill and top with grill marks facing up. Don't use toppings that are extra thick or raw, and don't expect your cheese to brown. Brush underside with oil (if possible), cook on main rack for a couple more minutes, then move off of heat to an upper rack to let toppings cook a bit more.



Spencer puts the dough on the grill. You have to kind of slap it on there. My pizzas are finishing up on the top rack.




Have your toppings and a bottle of oil ready to go. The dough cooks fast!




"Eh, that's the pizza like my mama makes!"




Have sheet trays ready for transporting the pizza.




My pizza. The baby spinach is from our container garden. The pesto is homemade with basil we grew, and the pizza sauce is made from scratch too (but with canned tomatoes.) Just imagine it with cheese!

Condo gardening

Our container 'garden' is thriving. The basil is bountiful, the mesclun magnificent.

Potatoes!

This spring on a whim, I planted a few sprouted potatoes from our pantry. I gave them a 90% chance of being immediately consumed by the giant squirrel-cats that scavenge our yard. When some vaguely potato-like leaves started growing a month later, I crossed my fingers that my experiment had worked. Finally, yesterday Spencer convinced my to pull up a plant to see if it really was potatoes.

Behold, the first potato!


Our lease on our current apartment ends at the end of June. I'm hoping the rest of the potatoes can grow a little bit more before then!

Guest video post: Huevos Rancheros

Let the kid from Moab show how it's done.

Huevos Rancheros from Mat Barlow on Vimeo.

Farmer's Market pizza

On the way home from work today, Spencer and I decided to meet up at the Boulder Farmer's Market. There are a lot of reasons to avoid the market these days (monster strollers, bad crowds, uber expensive produce, bad hippie music, dirty hippies, dirty hippies singing badly, etc), once in a while we check it out because it's so close.

Today, we picked up a grab bag of mushrooms from Hazel Dell and then a bunch of green garlic, which is essentially immature garlic bulbs.



Clockwise from top: green garlic, King Oyster mushroom, Lions Mane mushroom, Blue Oyster mushroom, shiitake musrooms, and Cinamon Cap mushrooms.

I pureed the green garlic into a pesto with walnuts, pine nuts, olive oil, salt, lemon, and cheese (for Spencer). It turned out to have a wonderful taste, more delicate and soft than adult garlic.

We topped some cornmeal pizza dough with asparagus, spinach from the garden, green garlic pesto, sauteed sliced mushrooms, and cheese (vegan mozzarella for me, regular for Spencer).


The toppings all worked perfectly together, although the delicate taste of the various varieties of mushrooms was a little lost, so I was sure to taste a few before they went on the pie. We paired it with a bottle of Avery's Brabant, a wild ale aged in Zinfandel barrels for 8 months. It turned out to be a fantastic combination of local products!

Garden update

We are fortunate enough to have a garden plot at our current apartment. With surprisingly little work and money on our part, it's been producing some tasty vegetables.

The lettuce (right) has been the most impressive crop of the bunch. We've had big, fresh salads for ten days now and it's still going strong with just one sowing. Those are potatoes on the left, I think.

The spinach has been bountiful too. Those are carrots beneath it. I hope they get big enough to eat before we move in a month.


I planted some cilantro late last summer, just for kicks, and it came up again this spring. This guy bolted, unfortunately. I didn't buy the fancy slow bolting variety...I suppose you get what you pay for with seeds. Still, the leaves on this bolted plant are super flavorful and less tough than regular cilantro, so I'm not complaining.


Here's some more cilantro I planted this spring that hasn't bolted (yet.)


This is our communal herb plot that has gone totally crazy after the last few weeks of rain. There's spearmint, mint, sage, chives, dill, and tyme. The mint is doing the best, right in time for mojito season.


Because we're having such an awesome experience with gardening so far, we had to figure out how to keep at it at our new condo, which doesn't have a lawn for a garden. We decided to plant a bunch of containers yesterday, which will go on our patio. I hope they will be as, if not more, successful than our traditional garden. We planted four varieties of heirloom lettuce, spinach, three varieties of heirloom carrots, easter egg radishes, heirloom scallions, candy cane beets, cilantro, and three varieties of hot peppers. I caught a squirrel-cat digging in there this morning, hence the repurposed screen. Fingers are crossed for a late summer harvest!!

Finally, a good cinnamon bun

My numerous efforts at making vegan cinnamon buns have all been lackluster. However, I know a good vegan pastry exists, thanks to City O' City. Today, I made this recipe from VeganYumYum, and it turned out the best yet by far! The only change I made was increasing the butter in the dough by 50%. Also, I cooked half of the batch in muffin tins lined with parchment (a la Martha Stewart and Tee & Cakes); the rest of the dough, I put in a springform pan and froze for later. I drizzled a little bit of melted butter down the sides of each parchment wrapper after I put the dough in. This also gave me the chance to show off the cute new cupcake tower I found at Target today!

L-B-L Brunch

On the rare spring mornings when were not up and out of the house early for a road race or an epic trail ride, we get to indulge in Cycling.tv and lots and lots of breakfast food. Here's a big breakfast we made while watching Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

We made some blueberry scones by mixing frozen blueberries into my vegan biscuit recipe and then rolling the tops of the dough in sugar. The nice thing about these scones is that you don't have to take the time rolling them out and then cutting perfect circles; drop biscuits are perfectly fine and taste just as good.



Then we made some hashbrowns. They key is to soak grated potatoes (organic yellow taters preferred here, please) in water to remove some of the starch. We used a big nonstick griddle to cook these, but a big frying pan works too, so long as you don't overload it. Some Spanish smoked paprika and good garlic powder sprinked on top does wonders.


I also made a fruit salad with a vanilla bean-key lime dressing (toss fruit in sugar, vanilla bean paste, and key lime juice.)



A gorgeous macchiato from Spencer to go with the fine words of Sean Walling.



The only thing better than this big, relaxed weekend breakfast would have been cutie-pie Andy Schleck at the table with us!

Tacos Round 2

Because those tacos Spencer made while I was out of town were so righteously delicious, we're planning on making them a whole lot this spring and summer.


I bought tomatillos for the first time ever and decided to make a salsa. I oven roasted some peeled and washed tomatillos, half a sliced onion, a quartered jalapeno, a couple cloves of garlic. I drizzled them in oil and chili powder before roasting them at 450. Grilling would be even better.


Once the tomatillos are soft (30 mins max), I blended them in a food processor, adding some salt, cilantro, and a teeny bit of lime juice and white vinegar. I also made the untraditional addition of some granny smith apple.




Then I sauted some onions and vegan steak strips. Spencer passed on those.



Besides the homemade green salsa, the best part of this taco was the fresh avocado. Yum!

Tacos — Flying Solo

As you can probably tell, the distribution of labor in our house works out like this: Kate cooks, I eat and clean. Well, that all gets thrown out the window when she's gone and I am thrown to the lions. It's not that I hate cooking, I just hate how it stresses me out. I think that happens more often when I'm cooking for other people, but I still get pretty flipped out when something goes wrong, even if I'm just cooking for myself. I enjoy the product way more than the process. That's why I usually stick to recipes, but every once in awhile, I make something up on my own, and even more infrequently, it actually works. These tacos are a rare example of one of my triumphs.

Taco filling:
1 can great northern beans (but you're probably better off with pintos)
garlic clove
mushrooms
half a small can of chile en adobo
chili powder
salt

cook for awhile in a little pot

Relish/salsa
equal portions of chopped mango and corn
chopped red onion — about a 2:1 ratio compared to the corn and mango
chopped cilantro
1/2 squeezed lime
salt

mix together thoroughly

Now here's the trick that I think makes these tacos really good: I took the soft corn tortillas (way better flavor than flour) and fried them into the classic "V" shape of hard shelled-tacos, a little trick I learned from Efrain's restaurant here in Boulder. I didn't fry them super-crispy, but you can do whatever the heck you like. I found that it was easiest to use tongs and hold each half of the "V" in the oil separately to get it to fry in the right shape. Takes a little experimentation. I was glad to have some super fresh tortillas from the farmer's market, thanks to my lovely lady.

I think this is a great flavor combo. The chile en adobo is very strong and spicy, and it pairs nicely with the crisp and tangy flavors of the relish. I'd say these are the best tacos I've ever made.


The relish... probably good enough to eat on its own.

Southwestern Tofu Steak

One of the most heated issues of vegetarian cooking is whether or not vegetarian food should replicate meat. "If you don't like meat, why do you eat fake meat then?" is a frequent question from carnivores. I've heard some people say that if it's not real meat, then it shouldn't be named after a meat product. So no "veggie hot dogs" or "vegan chicken wings" if you subscribe to that school of thought. Honestly, when the texture of veggie meat products comes too close to the real thing, I get grossed out. At the same time, it's tough to just eat slabs of marinated tempeh every night. Fake meat products add much-needed variety to the vegan's protein options. Yet, they tend to be expensive, kind of defeating that whole economical rationale for not eating meat.

Tonight, inspired by a cilantro bunch on its way out, I whipped up a beautiful vivid green cilantro sauce, which turned into a entire southwestern-flavored dish. For the protein, I experimented with breading some super soft tofu I had. I ended up creating exactly what I would call a "tofu steak." It doesn't resemble steak in the least bit (Bad or good? You decide.), but it's this deliciously giant (and cheap!) chunk of protein and fat. A big hunk of real meat (or poultry) could go just as well in this dish. It took me about 30 minutes from start to finish...the beans are a wonderfully quick starch.

Southwestern tofu steak
serves two


Tofu Steak
1 pack super soft tofu
1 cup canola oil
1 cup unsweetened soymilk
1 Tbsp Ener-G egg replacer
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 cup flour
1 cup plain panko breadcrumbs
1 tsp kosher salt

Heat oil over medium heat in a medium pot. Cut tofu into 5x5x5 cm cubes (you should be able to get two cubes out of a normal block of tofu.) Soft tofu is super delicate, so handle it carefully. Blend soymilk, egg replacer, and xantham gum until smooth, thick, and creamy. Mix flour, panko, and salt. Once oil is heated, dredge tofu in liquid and then in flour, turning carefully. Fry one cube at a time, turning once each side is brown (I had to turn six times per cube). Until the first few sides have been fried, it's easiest to brave the oil splatters and turn it with your fingers. You can use a big spatula once the cube has strengthened by cooking a bit. Drain on a paper towel.

Cilantro sauce
1 bunch cilantro
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp white vinegar
1/2 lime, juiced
1/2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp agave nectar
1 Tbsp olive oil

Blend all ingredients in a food processor until smooth.

Garlicky mashed black beans
1 Tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp chili powder
1 can black beans, drained
1/2 lime, juiced
1/2 cup beer
salt to taste (I used smoked salt here)

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, saute garlic and chili powder in olive oil for three minutes. Add black beans and mash coarsely. Turn heat up a bit and cook for a few minutes. Add lime, beer, and salt. Cook for about 10 more minutes, or until beans thicken.

Grilled asparagus
~15 medium asparagus stalks
1 Tbsp olive oil

Either grill asparagus or sear in hot skillet.

Spring soup

I tend to favor food that tastes good over food that looks good. Particularly with vegan food, teeny, gorgeous little plates of refined food just don't satisfy. I got this wonderful cookbook for Christmas called Great Chefs Cook Vegan, which is full of vegan recipes from the best chefs in the world. While I find most of them creative and gorgeous, food that refined just isn't my style. However, once in a while, I like to step back and be a bit more light-handed with my cooking. This spring soup is definitely more elegant than my usual fare. It was inspired by a soup I had at The Kitchen last spring.


Spring Vegetable and Pasta Soup

serves 2

-3 Tbsp olive oil
-1/4 white onion, diced
-6 cloves garlic, minced
-1/4 cup carrots, diced
-4 white mushrooms, halved and sliced thick
-1/2 can chickpeas
-1/3 cup peas (frozen is fine)
-6 asparagus stalks, sliced on the diagonal into 1-2 inch pieces
-2/3 cup star pasta (or any smaller style...macaroni is good here)
-1 lemon, zested and juiced
-3 small red potatoes, cut into squares
-pan with canola oil for frying potatoes
-1 slice white bread, cut into squares
-pan with melted butter for frying bread
-small bunch chopped chives, for garnish
-salt and pepper to taste

In a medium pot, saute onions in oil over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add garlic and saute until onions are soft. Add mushrooms, chickpeas, and carrots and saute for 3 more minutes. Add 1/2 tsp salt and a few pint glasses of water. Turn heat up to high and wait for water to come to a boil. Add pasta. Once pasta is halfway through its cooking time, add peas. With a few minutes remaining, add asparagus. Taste broth and season if necessary. Once pasta is cooked, add lemon juice and stir.

While the soup is cooking, prepare the potato and bread squares. Fry the potatoes until crispy and garnish with kosher or sea salt. Fry the bread squares in a bit of butter until brown and crispy on both sides (flip them once the first side is done).

Garnish soup with lemon zest, chopped chives, and potatoes and croutons.

Non-vegan option - use Parmesan rind to flavor broth (remove before serving) and top soup with grated Parmesan

Chips, guac, and (vegan!) queso

Now that summer spring has sprung in Colorado, it's time for weekend afternoons filled with sun-drenched patios, cold beers on said patios, and delicious snacks to go with the beer. Tortilla chips and guacamole is an all-time favorite here at the Scheider-Powlison Cave. We've grown accustomed to Boulder restaurants' fresh made chips and guac to the point where it just doesn't feel right to buy the hermetically sealed King Soopers version. Whole Foods' guacamole is delicious but tough to swallow at $9/pound. When we have a little time to kill, there's nothing like homemade.

Guacamole is pretty easy to make, so I won't bother with a recipe (our version is nothing special...no fancy name-written-in-chili-powder stuff here.) One comment I do have is that ripe avocados and good, fresh chili powder make a big difference.


Next up is the tortilla chips. When I was a kid, homemade corn tortilla chips was a special treat my dad would make once in a blue moon. While store-bought tortilla chips are really good these days, it's hard to beat a basket of warm chips that were just fried. They're surprisingly easy to make...they don't burn very easily or splatter much oil. Simply quarter a stack of small corn tortillas, fry in a pan of 1-inch deep vegetable oil, drain on a paper towel and salt immediately. For you salt-addicts out there, this part is awesome because you can drench the chips in as much salt as you want.

The aroma of freshly-cooked corn tortilla chips rivals that of baking chocolate-chip cookies.

Mmmm....salt!

The most exciting part of my chips and guac session this afternoon was making my first ever vegan queso. Queso is a spicy, tomatoey, hot cheese dip of which the lack of is a more regrettable part of eating vegan. I'm not saying my version is a stand-in for the real stuff, but it came way closer that I ever imagined it could. Here's how I made it:

Vegan Queso

1/2 block Follow Your Heart brand vegan mozzarella (this is the only edible brand and flavor of soy cheese out there; the rest are disgusting and/or contain milk byproducts)
1 tsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp salsa
~1/4 tsp salt, to taste
1/4 tsp chili powder, optional

Combine ingredients in a ceramic bowl and microwave until melted well. Stir well.

Sorry, I know the presentation in this photo is horrible, but who can be patient when there's hot queso on the table!?

Our brown ale

We're racking (i.e. transferring from primary to secondary fermentation) our pale ale tomorrow.

Homemade beer and popcorn

Friends who read this blog (all three of you) often ask us how we have time to cook so much. We usually answer it’s because we don’t have a TV, but the truth is, most of the dishes we cook don’t take all that much time. Almost all dinners are on the table within 20 or 30 minutes. But, occasionally, we like to take the time for a food project: making a dish from scratch that we’ve only ever bought pre-made, or setting aside time to cook something more time-intensive. These food projects are generally worthwhile regardless of how successful they are—there’s always another chance—but it’s just so f-ing exciting when they work out on the first try.

Sunday night we cozied up to some Internet television with two completed food projects: homemade microwave popcorn and a homebrewed brown ale. One was a long time coming (the beer), and the other was a spur of the moment experiment (the popcorn.)

I’ve been wanted to brew my own beer for years before I could legally buy it. Finally, I have the space, time, and companion to do it. We decided to go with a prepackaged box of ingredients for our first attempt, rather than a recipe. We probably would have been able to get away with forgoing the beginner’s kit and moving right to the real stuff, as the brewing process was far simpler and foolproof than expected. But it wasn’t without trouble.

After one week of primary fermentation, another of secondary fermentation, and one week of letting the bottled beer sit, Spencer and I popped open our first beer in eager anticipation. As I decanted it into a pint glass, I noticed that something was wrong. There was no white head on top, no bubbles releasing from the glass’ bottom. It was flat, like beer tea. We opened a second bottle and it was the same. Then another. And another. And another. We went back over everything we had did, making sure we didn’t forget any steps (we didn’t.) Worried that we had just wasted $40 and three weeks, I frantically searched the Interwebs for an explanation for “flat homebrew.” Luckily, homebrewers spend a lot of time on online forums. Numerous other newbies had tearfully posted about having a problem like ours, and the veteran homebrewers were happy to instruct that the solution was simple: give it some time. Like, at least another week or even two. Apparently our yeast just hadn’t had enough time to convert the sugar we added before bottling to carbon dioxide (and alcohol! Woot!) The cold temperature at which we left the house while on vacation for the last few days didn’t help either: the ale yeast we used needs to be close to 70 degrees to work their magic.

So, we bought a six-pack and waited it out. After two more weeks (five weeks total: two in fermentation and three in bottles,) our beer was finally ready to drink. We celebrated our success at being yeast wingmen and took our first sips. Good, not great, but definitely drinkable, especially for a malt extract-based kit. The brown ale was what I’d imagine drinking in an English pub a few decades ago—a bit watery, astringent, and chalky with a teeny noble hop presence—not your typical rich Mountain Sun brown ale. Truthfully, it’s not my type of beer, but it’s my beer. A Corona would taste good if I had brewed it myself.

Despite being a bit overeager, we had succeeded in creating a beverage that lots of people drink but few are willing to make. There is something magical about brewing your own beer. It’s not like making orange juice, where the final product is easily obtainable from the initial. It takes time, chemistry, heat, and lots and lots of steamy microbe “sex” to get from barley, hops, and water to beer. The process is invisible for the most part, heightening the anticipation and magic.
This same concept of invisibility causing magic applied to our other successful food project, microwave popcorn. We had bought some popcorn kernels to decorate our Christmas tree but never got around to it. After an unsatisfyingly small dinner at Radda, we came home looking for a snack. Spencer decided to try popping some popcorn in the microwave, and, well, it worked! All we did was put about ¼ cup of kernels in a brown paper bag, fold up the bag, and cook it for about the same time as a regular store-bought bag of microwave popcorn. We experimented with mixing the kernels with some oil and salt before popping, but it seemed to work best topping the popcorn after it had popped. I usually go with (vegan) butter and truffle oil on my popcorn, but since Spencer doesn’t like truffle oil (the horror!), we used olive oil, which was delicious and really highlighted the oil’s flavor. (We used a cheap grocery store extra-virgin, so good olive oil on popcorn must be heavenly!)

So here are two food projects for you to try. If brewing your own beer looks like a pain, come over and try some of ours. I’m sure there will be some new, delicious, American-style brews in the works soon. They will go great with popcorn.

Valentines Day Dinner - Caesar and pizza

Caesar salad

I used the recipe from Veganomicon with a few changes: I didn't have silken tofu, so I substituted some fimer tofu and some Veganaise; I used some vegan Worcestshire sauce and reduced the capers and caper juice; and I only used 2 of the recommended 4 garlic cloves. It was delicious!

Crisp, fresh, cold romaine is key.

So are homemade croutons. I used sliced white bread for these and they still came out fine! Tossed them in olive oil, kosher salt, and HBI garlic powder.

Delish!

Pizza

I tried the dough recipe from the January (?) Gourmet issue. It came out much better than last time. Letting the dough knead in my stand mixer for at least eight minutes instead of two helped, as did not pre-cooking the crust like we normally do.

Can you believe this pizza is vegan? Best toppings ever for me. I made a basil oil by pureeing olive oil, fresh basil, fresh garlic, salt and pepper and drizzled it on top of my pizza. It really improved the vegan mozzarella, which doesn't melt well due to its lower fat. Thanks to the basil oil, it melted like real cheese (and tasted great too!) I also sharpened my knife so that I could slice my Italian sausage super thin, pepperoni-style.

Happy Valentines Day!

My favorite new ingredients

Here are some of my latest favorite ingredients.

Agave Nectar - Even though agave nectar is highly touted as a vegan substitute for honey (some vegans don't eat honey), I had never tried it until recently. I've been loving its clean, sweet flavor for marinades and dressings. It works awesome as a glaze for chili toasted pepitas (toast pepitas, chili powder, sugar and kosher salt over low heat for 5 mins, drizzle agave syrup and toss, toast for another 5 mins). I'm not big on cocktails, but I can't wait to try it in some summery concoctions.




HBI Garlic - I found this puppy at Savory Spice Shop. HBI (High Bulk Index) garlic has more of a true garlic flavor than regular garlic powder, which I use often for its convenience even though I hate the artificial taste. According to Savory, "HBI garlic allows 100% of the flavor to be released in about 2 minutes. Standard dehydrated garlic will take up to 30 minutes to release about 90% of its flavor." It's fantastic for adding a bit of flavor to a dish that is almost finished. It also works great on oven garlic fries.



Scallions - Okay, so scallions aren't new to me. Recently, though, I just can't get enough of them. I used to find them a bit too intense when eaten raw, but now I find myself wanting them on everything. They are so versatile! Asian, Mexican, Indian, French...scallions seem to fit in so many of the cuisines we frequent. My favorite new dish with them is a Banh Mi-influenced sandwich: fresh baguette, grilled artisinal grain sausage sliced lengthwise, sriracha, cilantro, mayo, tomatoes, and scallions sliced lengthwise.

Pho!

We made pho, the classic Vietnamese noodle soup, tonight for the first time. Neither of had much (well, any) experience with pho. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. Typically pho is made with a beef broth and lots of beef parts, so it's tough for me the vegan to have had authentic pho. But, I found an exciting way to cook tofu so that it has the same general look as sliced beef parts. I cut it real thin so that it was almost ragged looking and then cooked it in hot oil for a while so that it got nice and crispy but still chewy once it is covered in broth.

I took a shortcut with the broth by using some veggie pho bouillon from the Asian grocery. I'm sure that homemade broth with fresh spices would taste better, but we kept it simple for our first time.


To make pho, cook thick (XL) rice noodles, drain, rinse well with cold water, and set aside.

Boil water with bouillon and thinly sliced onions, carrots, mushrooms.

Fry thinly sliced tofu in veggie oil until brown.

Once veggies in broth are cooked, put a handful of noodles in a bowl, top with tofu and boiling broth.


Serve with a side of beans sprouts, cilantro, Thai basil, sliced jalapenos, limes, and scallions.


Top pho with green stuff, and add sriracha and soy sauce to taste.


Oh yeah, we made Vietnamese spring rolls too, with a peanut sauce and sweet chili vinegar sauce for dipping.

Homemade vegan cheese

This was our first attempt at intentionally making our own pizza crust. It came out alright, but a bit too bready and crumbly for the recipe to be worth sharing. The highlight for me was making my own vegan cheese for the first time. After getting food poisoning from vegan cheese from the store, I decided to try making my own. It was creamy and ideal for pizzas and lasagnas. It also makes a good, hearty dip.

Here are some not-so-great pictures of the not-so-great pizzas (the toppings were good though!)

Mine (spinach, basil, onions, "shark-eye" olives [as Spencer likes to call them], cherry tomatoes, smoked sundried tomatoes, vegan Italian sausage [Field Roast brand], vegan cheese, red pepper flakes, good olive oil, pink sea salt, dried Italian herbs [Savory Spice Shop])


Spencer's:

Vegan Italian Cheese
This cheese's texture recalls a ricotta, so it's best in Italian dishes like pizza and lasagna.

1 cup pine nuts
1 cup walnuts
2 cloves garlic
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup basil (optional, though nice)
1 cup water

Blend all ingredients except water in a food processor. Add water through top gradually and blend for a few minutes or until creamy.

Chicken Pot Pie

Oh boy, I've been so off-the-back on this one. If you can believe it, I made this back when Kate made her dinner buffet special. So here it is...
I took the biscuit dough that Kate made and put it in some large ceramic bowls. We don't have a legit pie pan, but this seemed to work pretty well. Then, I added some left over chicken and veggies that I had baked a few days ago. I really had to chop all of these up to make them smaller, and I added some more broth to make it juicier. Then, I pretty much just baked it up. Sorry I'm not being more detailed about it, but I honestly forget a lot of this, since I made it several weeks ago.

As for the rest of our recent delicacies:
-I must say that the sweet and sour cabbage salad is awesome! It's really easy to make too. I never thought much of cabbage, but I think that was mostly because I had always had it steamed with corned beef, which I hate anyways. This is nice and crispy!
-The Aebelskivers are good, but I'm not sure if I like them as much as traditional pancakes. What I like about "normal" pancakes is that they act as sponges and basically absorb a ton of maple syrup. Aebelskivers are more doughy in consistency, which I'm not sure if I like. They taste pretty good and look lovely, but I'm not sure I'm 100% sold on them. We'll have to tweak the recipe a little more
-The ice cream is quite impressive. It really does taste a lot like non-vegan ice cream. I'm not the hugest ice cream fan, so it doesn't drive me wild, but still I'm very impressed. The chocolate chunks are my favorite part, I think.

Banana Bread Ice Cream

For my 16th birthday I got what every teenage girl dreams of. No, not a white BMW convertible. An ice cream maker, of course! Along with it came a Ben & Jerry's cookbook, which I totally exhausted over the course of a summer. Through my teen years, my tough little Cuisinart ice cream maker got quite the workout. Then--(dunh dunh duh)--I started eating vegan. With the disappearance of butterfat in my diet, my trusty ice cream maker went the way of the graveyard. I tried making "ice creams" from soymilk, but they always ended up hard and icy. Discovering coconut milk helped richen my vegan ice creams a tiny bit, yet I still missed the rich, creamy homemade creations of my childhood. Fat is what makes ice cream thick and rick. Fat and/or additives. Substances like carrageenan and xanthan gum are what make cheap ice cream taste rich. (They are also what allow it to mysteriously keep its shape after melting.) Fed up with the idleness of my ice cream maker, I decided to use these ingredients to make good, rich vegan ice cream. Canola oil (flaxseed would be ideal but I didn't have any) stood in for butterfat's richness, and xanthan gum gave it a smooth, thick, creamy texture. Not only did my vegan ice cream work, but I also found a ridiculously awesome flavor inspiration: banana bread.


Banana Bread Ice Cream
A base that tastes like banana bread batter straight from the beaters is made even more delightful by toasted walnuts and stracciatella-style chocolate.

2 ripe bananas
2 Tbsp Earth Balance margarine, chopped into smaller pieces
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cup soymilk (I like Silk's Very Vanilla for its smoothness and sweet flavor)
1/4 cup canola oil (any flavorless veggie oil would work here)
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla (if you have it, vanilla bean paste is awesome in ice creams)
1/3 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup walnuts
1/2 cup dark chocolate

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Slice bananas into 1/2-inch thick slices. In a small oven-proof dish, top bananas with margarine and brown sugar. Roast for 30 minutes or until bananas are soft and starting to caramelize. Slowly add 1/2 cup of soymilk, a little at a time while stirring, to temper caramelized bananas. Let cool a bit. In a blender or food processor combine banana mixture, soymilk, sugar, oil, vanilla, salt, and xanthan gum and blend until smooth. Chill for at least an hour--the longer the better. While the base is chilling, roast walnuts over low heat and chop coarsely. Once the base is chilled, freeze it according to your ice cream maker's directions. When the ice cream is just about as frozen as you'd like it, heat the chocolate in a microwave for about two minutes, stirring after the first minute. Drizzle slowly into the ice cream as it is turning. Finally, add the walnuts and process until just combined. Freeze immediately.

Aebleskivers!

For Christmas I got an aebleskiver pan. Aebleskivers are these Dutch filled pancake balls. I had never made them before, but I thought they looked cool. Not only are they cool looking...they're delicious too.

I'm still getting the batter recipe down. This might be one of the foods where real eggs and butter can't be matched. (Some might contend that is true all of the time.) You are supposed to put a bit of butter in every aebleskiver depression before adding the batter. Real butter browns and adds a nice nutty flavor that you can't get with vegan butter. Also, I'm having trouble getting my egg substitute to beat up nice like egg whites would, so the batter ends up being runnier than it's supposed to. Despite my batter shortcomings, the pancakes still taste freaking amazing. Plus they look like balls, which is always funny to me.

Ableskivers

After adding butter, fill the holes with a bit of batter and then your topping. I chose homemade strawberry jam and Nutella.



I found a vegan hazelnut spread at an Asian grocery and had to hold back tears I was so happy.



After filling the pancakes, add a top layer of batter and cook for a bit, until the edges look dry.



Now comes the fun part: flipping the balls. Because of all the butter, the pancakes slip around quite easily. I use chopsticks to help move them around.



Let the batter cook a little more and then remove. Yum!

Japanese Noodle Soup

Typically what dictates what we cook is simple: look in the refrigerator and try to use anything that will spoil soon. Sometimes this tactic produces pretty unrefined dinners that I don't plan to make again; other times we end up pleasantly surprised with a new and tasty dish. Yesterday we had one of those good nights, where a low-key and utilitarian approach to cooking rewards up with a delicious, simple dinner. It was so low-key that I forgot to take photos...oops!

Japanese Noodle Soup
Kinda like a chicken soup but with more mojo. I'm eatin this next time I get sick.

serves 2-4

1 Tbsp sesame oil
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1/4 head Napa (Chinese) cabbage, chopped into fine strips
1 carrot, sliced thinly and at an angle
2 stalks celery, preferably the smaller pieces inside
1 Tbsp veggie bouillon paste (I love vegetarian soup bases from Asian groceries)
1 tsp powdered ginger (or 1 Tbsp grated fresh if you have it)
1/2 package soft tofu, cubed
1 bundle soba noodles
2 crushed Thai dragon chilis, optional

In a medium pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add the garlic (and ginger if it's fresh) and stir. After a minute add chopped veggies and stir to get the garlic away from the bottom of the pot. Saute for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add bouillon paste, ginger (unless it's fresh, then add it with the garlic), and soy sauce. Stir and saute for another 5 minutes. Turn heat up high and add three or so pints of water (not cold). Bring to a simmer and add tofu, soba noodles, and chilis (if desired). Let simmer until the soba noodles are cooked. Serve immediately.

Tasty Asia

We cook Asian food at least a couple times a week, despite having little training. (Oh, how I wish my grandmother was Thai.) I basically try to replicate dishes I've had in restaurants, with a little help from the Intertron. I'm sure that my methods are pretty inauthentic, but most of the time the food ends up tasting good so I don't fret too much. Our dinner last night was especially delicious, while also being packed full of vegetables and healthy stuff.


Chinese Sweet and Sour Cabbage
Cabbage is really, really good for you, keeps forever, and is freaking cheap. I had this dish in a dumpling bar in Kansas City (it was served as an appetizer/condiment). I hadn't bought cabbage for years, and this reminded me how delicious an ugly vegetable can be. I'll take this over mixed greens with balsamic vinaigrette any day.

serves 2-4

1/2 a cabbage head, coarsely chopped
1/4 c. sugar
1/2 tbsp. kosher salt
1/4 c. rice wine vinegar
1/8 c. water
2 Thai dragon chilis, crushed (optional)

In a medium-size bowl, toss the cabbage and salt. Let sit for a few minutes. In a small mixing bowl, mix the vinegar, sugar, water, and chilis. Heat in the microwave for 1-2 minutes, until warm. Drizzle over the cabbage and toss to combine. Refrigerate, tossing every 5-10 minutes or so. The cabbage should be picked after half an hour or so. Serve cold.



Tom Kha Soup
I love this classic Thai soup. The bright and exotic flavors of lemongrass, galangal, and kaffir lime contrast so well with the silky sweetness of coconut milk. Luckily, it can be easy to replicate at home if you buy some Tom Yum paste at an Asian grocery. The Dragonfly brand makes a vegetarian paste (most contain fish sauce or shrimp paste.) I tried adding the coconut milk at the end--more like a garnish--instead of blending into the broth like you're supposed to. You can make this soup with whatever veggies you have on hand; I prefer mushrooms, carrots, and green beans. If you have a Tom Yum paste, it's super easy and fast soup to make. Just boil water, add a couple spoonfuls of paste (follow directions on jar), add veggies (carrots first, then, later, faster cooking ones like mushrooms) and tofu (or chicken), and then rice vermacelli noodles. It takes about five minutes for the rice noodles to cook. When they're soft, I like to chop them up a bit so that the soup is easier to eat. Garnish with chopped cilantro, scallions, Thai basil (if you have it), coconut milk, and sriracha (if desired). Sometimes I add a little soy sauce too.

Not the prettiest presentation, but it tastes damn good!

Top Beers of 2008

I posted this on my personal blog, but since it is food-related (beer is food, after all), I figured I'd add it here.


Living in the "Napa Valley of Beer" gave me another year full of great new beers. Trips to the East Coast helped to round out my beer drinking experiences, although I never got to a number of beers I miss or wanted to try.


Great Lakes Brewing Company Dortmunder Gold (Dortmunder Lager) – I discovered this beer after having arrived way too early to the dinky Akron/Canton Airport. It turned me onto German-style lagers, a style I had never really liked but that grew to be my favorite by the end of the year. Just in time for a return to the Great Lakes region for the holidays, where I downed plenty of these smooth, perfectly balanced brews.

Vermont Pub & Brewery Ambergris No. 1 (Herbed Beer) – Although this year I've veered away from "extreme" beers and towards more drinkable brews, this herbed beer from VT made me realize that experimentation is a good thing (especially when things go right). This "floral-weiss" is brewed with clary sage, chipotle-meco jalapenos, American ginseng and sandalwood. Despite loving spicy food, I hate chili beers and was expecting to spit this beer right out. But it was amazing! The aroma and flavor was both vegetal and earthy, with a strong fresh green bell pepper/jalapeno element. The heat from the chilis came out at the end, but it was never overpowering. Extreme beer done well.

De Proefbrouwerij De Proef Signature Les Deux Brasseurs Ale (Belgian Strong Pale Ale) – The aroma on this beer was so good that it took odd looks from my dining companions for me to stop smelling it and start drinking. Complex, funky, awesome. It's co-brewed with Jason Perkins from Allagash.

Three Floyd’s Pride and Joy (Mild Ale) (aged 1 year) – This Mild Ale made my 2007 beer list. I let some sit for a year and it improved ten-fold. It seemed to lose some of its carbonation and off-flavors, and the hop profile stayed just as delicate and unique as originally.

Del Norte Manana (Mexican-Style Amber Lager) – Even the beer geek in me can’t stomach a rich craft beer with spicy Mexican food. When it comes to burritos, you just can’t beat a cold Mexican lager alongside. This Mexican-style Amber appeared on the shelves in Colorado this year. It’s brewed locally and tastes a hell of a lot better than a Corona, solving my Illegal Pete’s beer conundrum.

Lost Abbey 10 Commandments (Dark Farmhouse Belgian Ale) – A few hyped SoCal breweries finally made it to Colorado this year. Spencer and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary at the Kitchen Upstairs with this sour, rich and complex wonder.

Founder’s Kentucky Breakfast Stout (Imperial Stout) – If there’s a beer to drink at breakfast, it’s this. Unless you don’t like coffee (which makes me doubt you’d be drinking beer for breakfast).

De Proefbrouwerij Beersel Lager (Czech Pilsener) – Had this at The Publick House in Boston. It's refreshing with lots of bitterness initially but a nice malt and hop balance after that.

Nogne O Pale Ale (American Pale Ale)

Brasserie Thiriez Thiriez Blonde (Saison)

Southern Sun Cleveland’s Brown Ale (Brown Ale)

Vermont Pub & Brewery Beetlejuice (Bavarian-style Weizen), Burly Irish Ale (Irish Red Ale), Munich Dunkel, Forbidden Fruit (Raspberry Ale), Bombay Grab IPA (American IPA), Absinthe (Herbed Beer), and Handsome Mick's Irish Stout (Export Stout) – All awesome and memorable beers. I took notes on all of them, but figure I'd best not bore you with more.

That's it for 2008. Hopefully next year's list will include some of my own creations!

Buffet Food

After a Sunday of skiing, Spencer and I decided to make some real American comfort food. I call it "buffet food", because it always grosses me out a bit. I made a roast, gravy, biscuits, and green beans. Spencer made a chicken pot pie.


I made the biscuits from my Thanksgiving post. They came out so much better than the first time I made them. (Scott and Lisse--sorry for feeding you those hockey pucks!) I had frozen some gravy from Thanksgiving and used it here. The Celebration Roast only took 15 minutes to cook...way easier than a real roast. Frozen (they're actually pretty decent) green beans rounded out the meal.

The one thing I realized making this dinner it how incredibly satisfying it is to baste and carve meat. Kind of odd, I know, but it just feels good!

Pizza!

One of the few things that irks me about Colorado is it's lack of good pizza. The crust is usually cardboard-like, not crispy enough, the cheese is usually kind of gooey, it lacks seasoning and is, overall, quite disappointing. What cracks me up is that some pizza joints, like Beau Jos, actually promote the fact that they make "Colorado" pizza. Wow. Not smart in my opinion. Anyways, enough ranting. I made my own pizza that is way better than any of their's!


We had some dough left over from making breadsticks, and I used that. You can see an earlier post for details on that.
The pizza itself is pretty straightforward (which is why it's one of the few things I make).
Stretch the dough as much as you can... the thinner the better, and place it on parchment paper on a cookie sheet with corn meal underneath.
Brush with olive oil and bake until it is very lightly brown. I also like to poke the air bubbles along the way because I prefer a flatter crust.
Then, put on the cheese! I used mozzarella, Parmesan, pecorino with pepper corns in it, and Gorgonzola (mostly leftover cheeses from the dinner party.
I put about 2/3rds of the cheese on, then put sliced tomatoes, diced kalamata olives and diced garlic, along with crushed red pepper flakes and salt before adding the rest of the cheese.
Put it back in the oven and cook until the crust is as brown as you want it to be. Mine got pretty crispy... maybe a little too much, but it was still great. Add more salt and red pepper flakes as desired.
Then, I like to let it cool a little before cutting it, because otherwise it doesn't have time to set up.

Beer Tasting Party

Some beers in my cellar were reaching their peak, so we decided to have a party.

Left to right (pictures courtesy of Sara K):

Delirium Tremens and Ommegang Three Philosophers (from Mat and Abby)
Grand Teton Oud Bruin (paired with a Fontina)
Allagash Dubbel Reserve (Gouda)
Grozet Gooseberry Ale (Elizabeth's Gooseberry Jam)
Avery Ale to the Chief DIPA (Pecorino)
Three Floyds Dreadnaught DIPA (olives and grissini)
Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA (fried chickpeas with smoked paprika and sage)
Goose Island DIPA (garlic frites, consumed in this photo)
Sierra Nevada Barleywine (Gorgonzola)
Schlafly Reserve Russian Imperial Stout (Roquefort)
O'Fallon Smoked Porter (chocolate covered bacon with alderwood smoked salt)


The chocolate covered bacon was a hit, even among non-bacon lovers. I dipped some high-quality bacon in semi-sweet chocolate, then sprinkled some alderwood smoked sea salt from Savory on top. Apparently it paired perfectly with the smoked porter.


Of course no Christmas party is complete without lots of chocolate. I made two family cookies: buckeyes (bottom right) and holly wreaths (top left). Spencer and I also made chocolate covered sandwich cookies and chocolate and peanut butter pretzels. We used Ghirardelli's Semi-Sweet Chocolate, which is great because it is creamy yet vegan and is not too expensive.

Baked (?) Frites

Now that the racing season is over for a few months, I have to start being a little more cautious with my food preparation methods, which typically involve a lot of frying. We decided to bake some Yukon Gold potatoes for part of dinner last night. Rather than being bland and something only salvageable with copious amounts of bacon pieces, creamy toppings, or ketchup, the potatoes came out looking like they were straight from a restaurant's deep fryer (even though I used much less oil).


The secret to delicious oven fries lies in how you treat them while they are cooking. If you don't use enough oil, or distribute it unevenly, they get mushy. You have to toss cut potatoes in a big bowl with the oil before you put them on the pan. If they still look dry, I use a spouted bottle (filled with homemade garlic-and-herb-infused olive oil) to drizzle a bit more oil evenly and lightly over the fries.

I was trying to duplicate the Kitchen Upstairs' garlic fries, so I added thinly sliced garlic cloves and garlic powder to these fries. The garlic slices ended up burning a bit, so next time I might add them after the fries have been cooking for a while.

The other secret besides even oil distribution is frequent tossing once the fries are almost cooked. After letting them go for 20 or so minutes at 425 (or until they starting to brown), I turn the oven to a low broil and remove the fries every few minutes or so to toss them. This way you don't end up with soggy fries in the center of your sheet pan and black ones on the edges.

Once they are nice and brown, toss with sea salt and serve immediately!

p.s. Cutting thinner fries by hand is totally do-able. With a long chef's knife, slice a Yukon Gold potato lengthwise in 1-cm slices. Then take half of the slices and cut them into 1-cm slices again (if you just do half or even a third of the potato at once, the slices shouldn't slip around). Repeat with the rest of the potato. Careful knife work here makes your fries look like they were cut from a restaurant's slicer...it's a nice touch.

Meatatarian Musing: This and That

Let me see here... once again, Kate is outpacing me with the food blogging. Believe me, it's way easier to eat this stuff than it is to find time to write about it! Anyways, let me try to break down my impressions of a few delicacies that I've sampled over the past week.

Thanksgiving Stout/Baileys Cake
Excellent! This isn't a very Thanksgiving-ish type of desert, but it is awesome! Very chocolatey and rich. The alcohol flavors really come out when it is warm (my first bite was straight out of the fridge. What can I say? I couldn't wait.)

Potatoes Anna
I had these after a very early flight home from seeing the family in Michigan. I was tired, hungry and definitely a bit over eating meat at every single meal. These definitely hit the spot, but poor Kate burnt her hand on the pot taking them out of the oven. That's the price you pay for eating well.

Tortellini
How often do I out-cook Kate? Mmmm... never?? Well, it turns out I have a knack for tortellini, or at least more patience with the Pastabike (as they call the cutting wheelie that is used to make the pasta squares). However, Kate deserves some props for the cauliflower sauce which was perfect for these! Also, we had a nice Spanish wine, which went well with the dish. I may have to start a semi-regular post about wine. Maybe something like "Time to Whine," or something catchy like that. Stay tuned.

Tortellini

We moved on to a new pasta shape last night: tortellini. Spencer used the tortellini cutter to form his, and I made mine freehand. His looked waaaaay better. We used the fingerling potato and acorn squash filling we had left over from the last time we made ravioli. I made a cauliflower topping that went really well with the nontraditional filling.


Cauliflower topping: Cauliflower can be downright gross. I like finding ways to make it taste deeelicious. I used some frozen herb butter that I had made during the summer.

2 cups chopped cauliflower (I used frozen)
3 cloves minced garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon sage butter
1 Tablespoon thyme butter
2 Tablesoons balsamic vinegar (white would be ideal but I only had dark)
1/3 cup pine nuts
fresh basil for garnish

Cook cauliflower. Over medium-low heat, saute garlic in olive oil. Add cauliflower and herb butters. Saute for 5-10 minutes. With a potato masher, coarsely mash the cauliflower (it can still be pretty chunky). Move cauliflower over to one side of the pan and add the pine nuts to the other side (so that they can toast for a bit). After a few minutes, toss the mixture together and turn up the heat to medium-high. Saute for a few more minutes and add the vinegar. Cook for 5 more minutes and add salt to taste. Serve over pasta and garnish with chopped basil.

Scrambled Tofu and Potatoes Anna

I burned the bejesus out of my hand making these potatoes, so they had better be good (they were).


Potatoes: Well, they are not really Potatoes Anna because I used olive oil instead of butter and added garlic, onions and hot smoked Spanish paprika. It was the closest description I could think of.

3 cloves minced garlic
1 yellow onion
1 Yukon Gold potato
2 Tbs olive oil
smoked paprika
salt
chopped parsley for garnish

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Over medium-low heat, heat olive oil in a large (9-inch), deep skillet. Saute garlic. Using a mandoline, slice potato into thin, translucent slices. Slice onion on a slightly thicker setting. Layer bottom of skillet with potato slices, dipping both sides in the oil to disperse the garlic. Add a layer of onions, a little salt and then another potato layer until all onions and potatoes are gone. Sprinkle paprika and salt on top and drizzle with a little more olive oil. Bake for 25 minutes and flip (using a dinner plate here helps). Bake for 15-20 more minutes or until crispy on top. Let rest for 5 minutes, garnish with parsley, slice and serve.

Scrambled tofu: It looks surprisingly egg-like. I like adding onion, garlic, scallions, tomatoes or diced red bell pepper, but you can really use whatever you have in the pantry or fridge. I used used crushed Thai chiles and garlic powder here. Basically, use a fork to mash tofu ("soft" works the best) with some seasonings. Tumeric gives the tofu a nice yellow color. I like curry powder also. Then cook in a skillet with some oil or butter for 5-10 minues, stirring occasionally.

Tofu Crack

Back when I lived in Wash Park, there was this little Asian restaurant in my neighborhood called Crazy Asian that had the best takeout. They made a sesame tofu dish that convinced many of my omnivorous friends that tofu is edible, perhaps even tasty. It was crispy on the outside and cover with a sweet glaze. My old roommate, Ashley, starting referring to it as "crack" it was so addicting. I've always wanted to be able to make tofu as good as Chinese restaurants like Crazy Asian do. I think a lot of it has to do with their tofu itself, which tastes way better than any I can find in a grocery store. But the other part is the crispy, batter-esque coating. I tried dredging pressed tofu in cornstarch before frying it, and I think I got it!

Thanksgiv'r

Thanksgiving revolves around food and family. Unfortunately, I didn't end up spending this Thanksgiving with my family. The upside was that I got to do a ton of cooking...a fantastic yet self-indulgent way to spend a day. I tried a number of new dishes, or at least ones that I had never made vegan before. It would be hard to live up to last year's epic Thanksgiv'r, but I sure had fun trying.

I ended up making gravy, biscuits, and a cake. I still have some time until I head over to the Gordon's for dinner, so there might be some additions :)


Gravy

I made this to put on the Celebration Roast I bought (which, hopefully, will be much better than a Tofurkey.)

Heat 1/2 cup of olive oil in a medium-sized saucepan. Add 1/2 a chopped yellow onion and 4 minced cloves of garlic. Saute until onions are translucent (3 mins).


Add 1/2 cup of flour and a tablespoon of smoked salt (or 4 tablespoons of soy sauce). Stir to make a paste, and then add 2 cups of water gradually, constantly stirring. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Add pepper, 1 tablespoon chopped dried rosemary and 1 tablespoon chopped dried sage. Whisk until smooth. Slice 3 white mushrooms and add to gravy. Simmer for 10 minutes.





Biscuits

The ultimate comfort food. I was pleasantly surprised at how flaky and buttery these turned out to be!


Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Combine 2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a large bowl. Cut in 4 tablespoons vegan margarine and 2 tablespoons vegan shortening. Add 3/4 cup unsweetened soymilk and combine. Turn onto a floured surface and knead for 1-2 minutes, adding more flour if sticky. Roll out to a sheet about 1/2 inch thick and cut into circles using a cookie cutter or a drinking glass. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden.



Carbomb Cake

Okay, so I haven't officially sliced into this cake yet, but I was able to sample while constructing it and it tastes amazing!! The idea came from an opened bottle of Dogfish Head's 2007 World Wide Stout that we were unable to finish last weekend (due in part to its CRAZY 18% ABV!) The beer was too good (and expensive) to pour down the drain, but it had gone flat, so I decided baking might be a good use for it. The chocolate stout cake came out really, really well; but I figured why stop there?! I concocted a Bailey's-inspired frosting (real Bailey's liquor has dairy, hence the "Irish Cream" title) with freshly brewed espresso and real whiskey to mimic a famed (and un-P.C.) frat boy drink, the Irish Carbomb.


Chocolate Stout Cake (someone else veganized this recipe, originally from Bon Appetit)

• 1 cup stout (I would avoid a weakly flavored Irish Stout like Guinness and go for a heavy-hitter like an Imperial Stout, plus Guinness isn't a vegan beer as it is clarified with isinglass)
  
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Ghirardelli tastes 10 times better than Hershey's but isn't all that more expensive or hard to find)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1.5 t baking soda
• 3/4 t salt
• 2 replaced eggs (I used En-Er-G Egg Replacer...a potato starch and tapioca powder blend)
• 2/3 C silken tofu, blended with ~1 T lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350°F. Oil & flour a 9-inch round cake pan with high sides (I used my new springform purchased yesterday!)

Bring stout and oil to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to blend.

Blend the tofu and lemon juice together, and then add the egg replacer powder and water.

Add tofu mixture to the stout-chocolate mixture pan, and beat just to combine.

Add chocolate mixture to flour mixture, and stir/fold batter until completely combined. Put into pan. Bake until tester inserted into center of cakes comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Transfer cakes to rack; cool 10 minutes (or more?). Turn cakes out onto rack and cool completely.

I cut my cake into two layers so that I could frost inbetween them.

Irish Cream Frosting

• 1/2 cup nonhydrogenated vegan shortening
• 1/2 cup nonhydrogenated margarine
• 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/8 cup cooled espresso
• 1/8 cup whiskey (Irish or whatever you have in the booze cabinet)

Beat the shortening and margarine together until well combined and fluffy. Add the sugar gradually and beat for about 3 more minutes. Add the espresso and whiskey and beat for another 5 to 7 minutes until fluffy.


I topped my cake with some dark chocolate forms I made by whirling melted chocolate onto a silicone baking sheet, letting it cool, and breaking it into pieces.

Meatatarian Musing: Fake Meat

Well, I got a little behind on my musings, but then it occurred to me that I could probably lump the last two meals together into one post, since they both prominently featured some "meat" that wasn't really meat at all. In fact, both the tofu dish and seitan dish were to my liking. I'd say this was especially surprising in the case of the tofu. I'm really not a fan of it's flavor or texture, but thanks to some breading and frying wizardry, I found it quite palatable. The seitan also took me by surprise. It has a very unappealing appearance, and if you think about what it is (wheat protein or something), I'm still not sold. However, the texture is very chicken-like and the flavor is tolerable, especially when combined with all of the other good stuff. It's pretty surprising. Nowadays, I don't really eat that much meat. Never really planned it, but that's how it's been, and it's not that big a deal.

Braised Seitan with Mushrooms and Spinach

I found some beautiful, flawless white button mushrooms grown in Alamosa at the grocery store and was inspired to make this dish from Veganomicon. I used red wine instead of white to braise the seitan, just because we had an old bottle of red I wanted to finish. Braising the seitan gives it a wonderful texture...tender yet not rubbery.


Braised Seitan with Mushrooms and Spinach

serves 2

1/2 a package of seitan strips, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 a yellow onion, sliced into thick half-moons
2 Tbs. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
dried herbs (I used a mixture of thyme, rosemary, sage, lemon balm, and basil from my garden)
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 cup chopped spinach (I use frozen, a guilty pleasure)
salt
pepper
1/8 cup wine
1/8 cup vegetable broth

Saute seitan in olive oil until brown on edges (5 mins). Add onions, cover pan, and saute until soft (5 mins), stirring occasionally. Add garlic, herbs, and mushrooms and saute for 8 mins. Add salt, pepper, wine, broth, and spinach and cook for 10 minutes or until liquids are reduced. I added a splash of dark balsamic vinegar and some lemon sea salt for more flavor. Serve over rice. Garnish with chopped parsely and a lemon wedge.

Curried rice noodles and tofu

It's not really a traditional dish, more of an amalgamation of Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, and Japanese dishes. It's a hearty meal that doesn't take very long to put together. Next time I'd add shredded coconut to the tofu breading and some crushed peanuts to the garnish.

Curried rice noodles and tofu

Tofu- Heat vegetable oil (1/2- to 1-inch deep) in a deep pan. Whisk 1 tablespoon corn starch into 1 cup unsweetened soymilk. In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup plain panko breadcrumbs with 1/2 cup flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and a few crushed dried Thai dragon chilis or 1 tablespoon chile powder. Slice a package of extra-firm tofu in 1/2-inch thick slices and cut slices diagonally into triangles. Once oil is hot, dip tofu in soymilk, dredge in breadcrumbs, and fry until golden brown, flipping once.

Noodles- Heat water for medium-width rice noodles. In a separate pan, saute chopped yellow onion and minced garlic. Add 3+ tablespoons Madras curry powder to onions. Add green beans to saute. Once noodles are cooked, drain and rinse them in cold water, then add them to the vegetables. Sear them a bit, then add 1/2 a can of coconut milk, 1/4 cup brown sugar, and 1/8 cup soy sauce, and stir to combine.

Top noodles with tofu and garnish with chopped lettuce, cilantro, chili sauce, and lime wedges. Goes great with Lefthand's Jackman Pale Ale.

Meatatarian Musing: Cake

Whew! This cake was awesome!! The only bummer was that it wasn't vegan, so Kate was all nervous about whether it was good or not. But it was. I had to bring it into the office to get some help finishing it off. I think I like it best as cupcakes because that way you always got a bit of icing with every bite. The licorice scottie dogs were tasty too, but they got stuck in my teeth, which was annoying. I think more than anything, I was super-impressed by the presentation. Everyone else seemed to be similarly amazed that it was homemade. Best birthday cake in awhile!

A Birthday Cake!

I tried my hand at a non-vegers Devil's Food birthday cake for Spencer. It is going into the IMBA office for a taste test today...we'll see!


We didn't have a cake pan so I had to bake it in a cooking pot. It worked surprisingly well! I had silicone cupcake cups for the rest of the batter. They are decorated with Scottie dog licorice because Spencer loves licorice and Scotties are cute!

Buffalo Seitan Wings

Because a plant-based diet is inherently lower in fat and protein than an omnivorous diet, I have to make more of an effort to balance out my carbohydrate intake. My body usually takes care of this for me in the form of incredibly intense cravings for specific fat- or protein-rich dishes. For the past few months, my craving of choice has been City O' City's Buffalo Seitan Wings. But because City O' City is in Denver, and a 45-minute drive for some wings is a bit unreasonable, I decided to try making them at home. I haven't been able to replicate COC's version exactly, but they still taste pretty darn good and are a rich source of protein.

Buffalo Seitan Wings
1 package seitan strips, wing sauce (make sure it doesn't have real butter), vegetable oil, celery or lettuce for serving

Heat oil in a deep pan, fry strips until brown, drain. Heat sauce under low-medium heat (don't let it boil). Dip seitan strips in sauce and toss for a minute. Remove and serve with lettuce or celery.

City O' City serves these with a vegan blue cheese dressing. Don't know how to tackle that one...

Meatatarian Musing: Ravioli

This ravioli was amazing! It was quite a headache to make, but well worth it. We kept having trouble rolling the pasta because it would start wrinkling, which would make it too narrow to fit on the ravioli tray. Eventually we got it. Cooking always stresses me out. Good think Kate's a lot mellower about it.

Anyways, the ravioli was really nice. It had a pretty sweet flavor to it, which suits my palette. It needed a bit of salt to balance it out, and I was a bit disappointed that the Gouda flavor didn't come out as strongly, but the crispy sage leaves were awesome! Overall, a delicious and hearty meal. One of our personal bests, I think!

Homemade Ravioli, Round 1: Acorn squash and fingerling potato ravioli with fried sage and caramelized red onion

When my parents came to town Halloween weekend, my father insisted on buying us a pasta maker. We picked up a ravioli maker too, and decided to try it last night. In order to make vegan pasta, we simply replaced the egg with olive oil. Spencer kept his ravioli vegetarian.

Pasta: 1 cup flour, 1 egg (or 1 tablespoon olive oil), warm water



We're still learning how to make this, but for now we've just been been kneading the ingredients to combine and rolling it though the pasta machine.


Filling: 1 acorn squash, 8-10 small fingerling potatoes, 3 cloves garlic, vegan butter, smoked salt, ground ginger, nutmeg, and allspice


I cooked the squash in the microwave (cut in half and place cut side down in a casseroll dish filled with water, cook for 15 minutes or until soft), boiled the potatoes, and roasted the garlic in the oven (drizzle with olive oil and wrap in foil) along with the squash seeds. One the squash was cool enough to handle, I scraped out its flesh and pureed it with the rest of the ingredients. I used a light hand with the spices in order to avoid a pumpkin pie taste.

Sauce: 1 small red onion (sliced), 20 fresh sage leaves, olive oil, vegan butter dark balsamic vinegar

I fried the sage leaves in a mixture of butter and olive oil. (Vegan butter won't brown, sadly.) Remove them after they get brownish and crispy (30 seconds or less), then saute the onions in the olive oil/butter and add balsamic to caramelize them. While the sauce is reducing, I cooked the ravioli in boiling water (5 minutes or less) and then transfered them to the sauce pan to get a little crispy on the outside.

Spencer topped his with shredded Gouda from Haystack Farms and a little bit of parm. I added some more smoked salt and some pepper. Finish with the fried sage.

non-vegan (above), vegan (below)