Life is short, have a kolach.

By Monica on January 6th, 2008

Perhaps the most famous Czech food item, and certainly its’ best known dessert, I have probably eaten my own body weight in kolache over the years. They come in many forms, shapes, and sizes. Some use raised dough (like the photo above), mine do not. All of them are delicious and must be given away immediately once they emerge from the oven, or they have a tendency to be eaten like popcorn and disappear within minutes (relocated straight to your ass & thighs).

They can be filled with farmer’s cheese, fruit fillings, poppyseed, or a variety of other temptations. My favorites were always the raspberry or apricot kolache, so that’s primarily what I make at home now. Solo makes a brand of fruit filling under the label “Bohemian Kitchen” that I’ve always used, if you can’t find this, use your favorite preserve or make an easy cream cheeze filling.

Instead of the raised dough variety, mine are the very light, flaky, pastry crust version. While this makes the dough hard to work with, they practically melt in your mouth. Like pie crust, the key to this dough is to get it, and keep it, very cold.

Health conscious vegans, look away from this recipe! These delicious suckers are comprised entirely of sugar and fat. They are easily veganized with non-dairy cream cheese and Earth Balance, but are still atherosclerosis on a plate! I reward myself with these only once per year because in all seriousness, we eat 2 full platters within 24 hours. It may as well be cocaine dusted on top of them instead of powdered sugar, though that might be a tad more costly.

Czech Kolache
12 ounces Tofutti cream cheese
2 cups Earth Balance
3 cups flour
Confectioners’ sugar
Filling of your choice (2 jars Solo filling, or about 16 ounces of your other choice)

Using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat together EB and cream cheese until light and fluffy, (2-3 minutes).
Add flour, one cup at a time, until well combined.
Dough will be a little sticky. Divide into thirds, shape into flat circles, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours, overnight is even better.

Remove one round of dough at a time from the refrigerator and roll out to 1/8″ thickness on a lightly floured surface.
Cut into 1 1/2″ squares (a pizza cutter works best).
Drop 1/2t of filling into the middle of each square.
Fold two opposite corners of each square over the filling to meet in center. Smooth them together, or give a little pinch so that they stay joined.
Place on a greased or parchment lined cookie sheet and bake at 350° until lightly golden, 10-12 minutes.
When cooled, dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Makes about 5 dozen. That number will impress you even more once you realize you’ve eaten all of them.

Vánočka - (a.k.a. Hoska)

By Monica on January 2nd, 2008

I must be glutton for punishment, because this Xmas, I set forth to make a Hoska, a traditional Czech Christmas bread notorious for being difficult and time consuming to prepare. Making matters worse, my recipe was an old family one, loosely interpreted into English from Czech. I had to make educated guesses as to what some of the steps were, like what “make sponge” meant. After making it myself, I understand why hoska was made only once per year and why it has this devious reputation - it took us all night and day. How did my grandmother do this every year?!

According to Wikipedia, the silly bread is so temperamental that there are customs and superstitions involved in making it like: “you must think of everyone dear to you while making it”, “avoid touching silver or metal to the Vanocka”, and my favorite “the creator of the Vanocka must not jump up and down while the dough rises”.

Well, we didn’t jump up and down, but we did have a great time making it. Everyone giggled when the bizarre batter started fermenting and farting, and a hearty chuckle was had by all when the dough rose so much it mushroomed out of the bowl and started taking over the kitchen.

Here is one of the loaves rising for the 10,000th time, after we finally figured out how to arrange the dough:

Hoskas in the oven!

Hoskas out of the oven! (You’d think they’d be done now wouldn’t you? But they aren’t! Silly hoskas.)

Finally, hoska totally done, sliced. Insert Earth Balance here.

The easiest part of this experiment was the veganization. Simply substitute veg-friendly replacements for the butter and eggs. As for the rest of it, well, having instructions in English will probably make your experiment easier than mine. Maybe!

Vánočka
1 yeast cake (0.6 ounces)
1/4 cup warm water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup Earth Balance
1 Ener-G Egg
1t salt
2 cups +2T warm non-dairy milk (I used rice), seperated
6 1/2 cups flour, sifted
1/2t ground ginger
1/2t ground mace
Zest of one orange, or lemon
3/4 cup raisins
3/4 cup candied mixed fruit (use dried fruit pieces if you can’t find candied)
1/2 cup slivered almonds
2T powdered sugar (optional)

1.) Dissolve yeast in warm water.
2.) In a large bowl (preferably the bowl of your stand mixer), cream sugar and EB. Add the Ener-G egg and salt. Stir in 2 cups of milk, then the water/yeast mixture. Add 1 1/2 cups of sifted flour and beat until the batter is smooth.
3.) Cover with plastic wrap and let the batter do its’ thing for 1 hour. (Mine fermented, bubbled, made noises, and firmed up like a loose gelatin after an hour).
4.) Stir spices and zest into the batter. With your dough hook attachment, slowly add approximately 5 cups of flour to make a dough. Knead until soft and elastic, either by hand or with your mixer. Knead in raisins and candied fruit.
5.) Place in a very large, lightly greased bowl and let rise until doubled, about 2 hours.
6.) Divide dough into ten equal portions and roll each out into a long snake, about the length of a standard cookie sheet. Let these rise for 15 minutes.
7.) Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper, one for each loaf. On a cookie sheet, start making a braid with 3 of the snakes: Start your braid in the center and loosely braid towards each end. Pinch the ends together.
8.) Take 2 more snakes, and loosely twist them. Place the twist on TOP of the braid.
9.) Repeat assembly for the 2nd loaf.
10.) Brush each loaf with the 2T non-dairy milk. Sprinkle sliced almonds on top and sides. Let the loaves rise again for 1 hour.
11.) Bake loaves at 350° for 38-45 minutes, until lightly golden on top. (Baking time will depend on how thick you make your loaves.)
12.) Transfer loaves to a wire rack and cover with a light towel until completely cooled. Sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar if you like.

Xmas - Part 1

By Monica on December 27th, 2007

Hope everyone had a great holiday, whether you spent it surrounded by friends and family, or spent it like us - in pajamas, just the two of us, doors securely locked with a stern ‘go away’ sign posted. It was heaven. But we did have the obligatory familial gathering the weekend before, so there was still plenty of food and festivities.

Where to start? Appetizers, of course! As a kid, I distinctly remember this delicious, congealed glob of secretions my father called a ‘cheeseball’. The cream cheese and shredded cheddar inside not having enough saturated fat for him, he coated it in some sort of chipped luncheon meat. I had written this off as something best left to omnivores when Ahisma from VeggieBoards posted her recipe for the very same thing, sans lunchmeat which I added just for nostalgia. And wouldn’t you know it, same exact taste, a glorious vegan cheeseball. Absolutely delicious, and still very bad for you!

I also made Sauerbraten Neatballs, one of my favorites.

In previous years I served a few different main courses, typically everyone got to pick his or her favorite and I was kind enough to make them all. This year I made my favorite and told everyone to eat it or go hungry. Bah-humbug. Big surprise, everyone ate it. What we have here is the veganized version of my Babi’s Czech Beef & Dill Gravy. Seitan, dill, gravy, dumplings, damn right they ate it.

So that was dinner & then it was time to take our brandy spiked Silk Nog into the den for the American-Consumer portion of Giftmas. Ray & I made a very diligent effort to keep buying down to a minimum this year and I think we did alright. Ray bought me only eco-friendly, handmade, vegan-friendly items, and I bought him only one item he really wanted instead of 50 trivial widgets.

I do have to show off the necklace I got; I absolutely love it. A delightful vegan in Dallas creates these in various animal forms and sells them on Etsy, fully customizable.

If you’re waiting for dessert porn, you will have to wait a bit longer. I do have the dessert porn, lots and lots of seedy Xmas dessert porn, but this post is approaching novel length already and I still have to post recipes. So stay tuned, finish up your left overs this week, and I’ll get to the recipes!

Ahisma’s Cheeseball Treat
16 ounces vegan cream cheese
1 package Vegan Gourmet, flavor of your choice, shredded
1t garlic powder
1/4t pepper
2t umeboshi vinegar (or apple cider vinegar, or lemon juice)
1t Red Hot sauce
1 bunch fresh scallions, diced

Combine the spices with the cream cheese. Mix remaining ingredients with a fork. Combine the two. Line a suitable sized bowl with plastic wrap and pack the cheeze mixture into the bowl. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours.

Sauerbraten Neatballs
I used Bryanna’s recipe for “Saucy Neatballs” for the balls. I highly recommend it, but use whatever no-meat meatballs float your boat, and this recipe is for the gravy.

1T vegetable oil
1/2 yellow onion, finely diced
1 cup water
1/2 white vinegar
6T packed brown sugar
1t ginger
2 bay leaves
2T flour
2T water

In a sauce pan, heat the vegetable oil and saute the onions until soft. Stir in water, vinegar, brown sugar, ginger, and bay leaves. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Mix flour and water together, then add to gravy to thicken. Add your Neatballs to the gravy, simmer for 10-15 minutes, and serve!

Czezh No-Beef & Dill Gravy
(I’m doing this from memory, this is one of those dishes I never wrote a recipe down for, so bear with me!)

“Beef”
8 ounces seitan chunks, any kind
6 cups veggie broth
Tops and leaves of one bunch of celery
1 onion, quartered
2T peppercorns

“Gravy”
8T Earth Balance
8T flour
~4 cups reserved veggie broth
1 container Tofutti Sour Supreme, or Better Than Sour Cream
1 cup packed fresh dill
1T lemon juice
1T sugar
salt
pepper

“Beef” - To a medium pot, add the 6 cups of veggie broth, seitan chunks, onion, celery, and peppercorns. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer for one hour. Reserving the broth, drain the mixture. Discard the veggies and peppercorns.

“Gravy” - When “beef” is done, melt the EB in a large, straight edged saucepan. Add the flour, making a roux, and cook for about 1 minute. Add approximately 4 cups of reserved veggie broth, +/- 1/2 a cup to form a gravy consistency. Add the sour cream, dill, lemon juice, sugar, and salt & pepper to taste.

Add seitan chunks to the gravy to heat throughout. Serve over dumplings, of course.

Back to real food!

By Monica on December 6th, 2007

As promised, we will now return to food that did not come frozen, pre-made, or neatly wrapped in plastic packages inside of another plastic package.

This was a very exciting weekend for me as I finally made seitan that came out right! Thank you Bryanna Clark Grogan! I skeptically watched the Soy and Seitan ‘Pork’ Tenderloin cook in the oven, just waiting for it to blow up like bread, or somehow disfigure itself. But it came out perfect, and Ray even peeked his head into the kitchen at one point and asked me “why does it smell like pork roast?” Success!

I added some caraway seeds to the mixture, and coated the outside with them as well. I have to say, it totally fulfilled the craving I’ve had for two years for my beloved Czech pork roast, served with some dumplings, homemade applesauce, and saurkraut.

For dessert I finally made Celine’s Banana Pumpkin Quiche, topped with a little bit of whipped maple tofu. I stole Celine’s photo for this because mine was awful. There is no sunshine in Illinois in the winter, all my photos are stinking!

The next night we had Mustard Grilled Tofu Sticks and some dilled baby taters. This recipe came from somewhere on the interweb, but I didn’t write down from where, so if it’s yours please claim it! The recipe is below.

And finally, Pumpkin Cheesecake from La Dolce Vegan! Cheesecake is Ray’s kryptonite so he was like an impatient toddler while I was making this. He was heartbroken when I told him he had to wait a full 24 hours to eat it. Actually, I told him to talk to Sarah Kramer if he wanted to challenge her instructions. So Sarah, if you received strange emails demanding permission to eat cheesecake prematurely, I apologize.

Once we were able to eat it, we most certainly did not sit down with the pan and eat half of it either. Nope, I deny it!

Mustard Grilled Tofu Sticks
1 package firm or extra firm tofu
1/2 cup sweet & hot mustard
1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs
Pinch of chili pepper
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Olive oil

Cut tofu into three equal sections lengthwise. Cut each section in half lengthwise so that you end up with six “tofu sticks.” Press out all the moisture from each tofu stick.

Using a brush or knife, coat the tofu sticks on all sides with mustard, place single layer in a pan, and let marinate overnight.

After marinating tofu, place seasoned breadcrumbs on a plate, add chili pepper, cayenne, and mix together with a fork.

At this point you can either grill them or saute them (I sauteed). Either way you’ll use a little bit of olive oil to keep them from sticking.