The Postman Cometh

By Monica on May 27th, 2008

I’ve been blessed with two awesome mail deliveries recently: Bazu’s Infamous Sourdough Starter, and Amy’s Amazing Homemade Cookie Assortment.  Both of these were WAY better than the electric bill and student loan statement that I can usually thank the postman for.

I’ve been eager to play with sourdough for ages, and Bazu’s starter did not disappoint.  Within hours it was a bubbly, frothy bowl of goodness!

Thursday nights have become Pizza & Lost nights at my house, so the first thing I made with the starter was sourdough pizza crust.  I found this delightfully simple recipe that needs only 1/2 an hour to rest/rise and it works perfectly.

Up next was a sourdough rye bread that Vegan Eats & Treats made with Bazu’s starter; it looked so good I gave it a whirl myself.  The recipe made two gorgeous loaves, the only problem being that they both got eaten almost immediately!

Then I was lucky enough to win Vegan Addict Amy’s cookie contest, and this amazing package arrived a few days later, complete with an adorable whale card and cookies wrapped in biodegradable bags:

We had Oatmeal Raisin (my all time favorite cookie), Peanut Butter, Ginger, Lemon Zingers, and Snickerdoodles.

It was a very tough call, but the Lemon Zingers stole my heart.  Thankfully Amy has the recipe online here.  I strongly encourage everyone to try these out and also to encourage Amy to open a Cookie Addict store and start selling these babies!  They are absolutely of professional bakery quality and right now I’d shell out big bucks for another Lemon Zinger!

And lastly, because I need to cram rhubarb recipes into every single post for the next 3 months to catch up, here’s a basic Apple Ginger Rhubarb Crumble.  Last week Sarah Kramer mentioned such a crumble on her blog. I’m not sure if she has a recipe for it in one of her books for one or not, but she inspired this version.

Like most crumbles, there isn’t much of a recipe to follow and knowing me, I wouldn’t write it down even if there were.  I peeled and diced a 3lb bag of gala apples, and diced an equal amount of rhubarb (maybe 8 stalks?).  Into a 9×13″ pan both went, tossed with a couple tablespoons of flour, about 2 teaspoons of ground ginger, and a liberal smattering of brown sugar (~ 1 packed cup?).   Top with your favorite crumble concoction an bake at 350 degrees for about half an hour.  Drizzle with some non-dairy milk if you’re so inclined.

Again, many thanks for Bazu and Amy for their generosity!

Rhubarb, Rhubarb Everywhere

By Monica on May 14th, 2008

…And lots of pies to make.  My mother is fairly easy to please - she asked for a Strawberry Rhubarb Pie for Mother’s Day, which is also my personal favorite so of course, I made two.

Step 1: Prepare a giant batch of organic strawberries.

Step 2: Give tasty strawberry top treats to chickens.

Step 3: Question yet again, why you planted a dozen rhubarb plants when you meander into the backyard and find a rhubarb jungle.

Step 4: Return with an armload of rhubarb, and try to keep the vegan-wannabe cat from chewing on all the stalks.

Step 5: The Crust.  Make sure not to choke your spouse during this step as he constantly asks why you are getting frustrated, why the crust keeps crumbling, and why Martha Stewart makes it look so easy.

Step 6: The filling.  Double this if using an oversized, deep pie dish.  Now you remember why you planted a dozen rhubarb plants and swear your eternal love to this hardy plant.

Step 7: Cover with more crust and bake, hoping the filling doesn’t leak over the baking sheet you smartly placed the pie onto in the oven, lest you enjoy black smoke filling your kitchen & scouring your oven.

Step 8: Let cool as long as you can tolerate and then enjoy.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
Crust:
2 cups flour
1t salt
1/2 cup EB “buttery sticks”, or your favorite veggie shortening, cut into small pieces
4T EB, in small hunks
4T ice water
Filling:
2 cups strawberries, halved
2 cups rhubarb, cut into 1/2″ slices
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1T lemon juice

To make filling - mix all filling ingredients together in a large bowl and let sit while you prepare the crust.
To make crust - Add flour, salt, shortening, and EB butter to a food processor.  Pulse until the mixture forms a coarse meal.  While pulsing, add ice water 1 tablespoon at a time until the mixture forms a dough just moist enough to hold together when pressed.
Divide dough into two, and on a sheet of plastic wrap, form each into a round flat shape.  Wrap completely in plastic and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.
After cooling, roll out dough for the bottom crust and place in a 9″ pie pan.  Add the pie filling.
Roll out the second crust and place over filling, crimping edges.  Make 3 slits in the crust for venting.  Brush lightly with soymilk and dust with turbinado sugar if you like.
Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 60 minutes, until crust is golden and juices are boiling.

Buchty

By Monica on April 2nd, 2008

Buchty, Czech baked donuts, also known as “a delicious, but gross misuse of butter”. If your arteries are just too clean these days, look no further.

These donut-style mini-cakes are extremely dense and rich, and stuffed with your favorite homemade jam or preserve. These aren’t quite as fluffy as the egg and butter laden buchty I ate as a kid, possibly due to the veganization, but they are still sinfully rich, flakey, and moist, with a very sweet, crunchy exterior… Kind of a donut-croissant!

Buchty
1/2 cup soymilk
1 packet dry yeast
2 cups flour
1/4t salt
4 Ener-G eggs
1/2c sugar
3/4c Earth Balance, separated
Your favorite jam or preserves
Confectioners sugar

Warm the soymilk slightly, add yeast and dissolve.
Into a large bowl, add flour and salt.
Whisk Ener-G eggs into the yeast-milk mixture, then add to the flour. Mix well.
In another bowl, whisk together the sugar and 1/2 cup EB until it is light and creamy. Fold this into the dough. Dough will be very sticky! Cover and let rise for 45 minutes.
After dough has risen, tear off a tennis ball sized chunk and work it into a round shape. Poke two fingers into the dough to make a small well, fill it with 1T of jam, then cover up the well and pinch it closed.
Fill up all the donuts this way and let them rise for another 15 minutes.
Grease a 9×13″ baking pan. Melt the remaining 1/4c EB. Place the doughnuts close together in the pan and drizzle the melted EB on top.
Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, until golden brown. When done, tear dougnnuts from each other and serve warm or cooled, sprinkled with confectioners sugar.

In the ‘other food that won’t kill you’ category this week, we had a Mexican Pasta Casserole from VegWeb. I used TVP as the taco “meat”, added black olives, omitted the vegan cheese, and doubled the recipe to make an extra casserole for a rainy day. Easy, easy, easy!

I also found a recipe on VegWeb for a seitan “Chicago Italian Beef”. I went into this pretty skeptical. I tried the recipe as written, then doubled the giardiniera, added more garlic, and more fennel. I was still disappointed, though the seitan did improve drastically after letting it marinade in the “aus jus” for 2 days after cooking. Looks good though, no?

And then with some melted vegan mozzarella, which I am absolutely done buying. This cheez had been sitting around in my refrigerator for a long time and now I’m finally rid of the waxy, flame retardant crap. Good riddance! (The ‘beef’ was also better without its overpowering grossness!) But again, looks good, no?

Cranberry Pear Snackcake

By Monica on March 27th, 2008

This is one of my favorites from the “Grandma Files”. A versatile little cake, you can easily alter this to fit whatever you have in your pantry at the time. No cranberries? Use raisins, or any kind of fresh berry. Buy too many walnuts? Throw them in! And I truly feel sorry for those who do not have 30+ jars of homemade pearsauce in their cold cellars, but if you don’t, applesauce works too. The combination of delicately sweet pears and tart cranberries is tough to beat though, this is what I always come back to. As usual, Grandma was right.

Cranberry Pear Snackcake
1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1t baking soda
1t cocoa
1/2t cinnamon
1 cup pearsauce (unsweetened)
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries

Cream canola oil and brown sugar. Sift together flour, baking soda, cocoa, and cinnamon, then add to the oil/sugar mixture. Add pearsauce, cranberries and mix until blended. Pour into a lightly greased 9×9″ baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

In other food this week, I took advantage of affordable fresh asparagus and added it to Joanna’s Penne Alfredo from Yellow Rose Recipes:

And lastly, SusanV’s ridiculously easy, ridiculously delicious Smoky Refried Bean Soup. I have made this twice since she posted the recipe this month!