NOM NOM NOM

We've Moved!

2009-02-15T10:10:00.006-05:00

For continued adventures in noms, please visit

http://allmannerofdouchebaggery.blogspot.com/

See you there!

APPLE QUINCE PAH, KITTEN

2009-01-29T21:41:00.006-05:00

Ok, I'm gonna be brief. This specimen is actually my contribution to Thanksgiving dinner! It's been languishing on the old comp and I've been too busy to get in there and talk about it. In fact, I'm still too busy. So, like I said, brevity:

Homemade vegan butter crust.

A couple of peeled, sliced green apples (local, organic, and I got lazy and didn't peel all of them. I like a little peel anyway. Fiber!)

Quince paste. Quince paste? Yeah, you get it in the cheese section, of all places. Normally it's unholy expensive, but Harlem Citarella has smiled upon me once again, and a 10-ounce container cost but a fiver. Anyway, half of this container goes on the bottom of your crust in a big, luscious schmear.

The other half of your quince paste gets cooked down with water and a little sugar until it's melty and liquidy. This gets tossed with your apples 'til they're coated in goodness.

Dot that shit with Earth Balance, lots.

Drape on your top crust, seal everything by crimping with a fork, stab some holes in there. Bake or some shit.

Nom 'til you can't no more.

This was a big hit, most of all with me. I made the crust pretty thick, since this is one of my fave parts of a good pah. I love apples, am not a big cinnamon lady, and hate nutmeg, so it was really nice to taste apple pie with a different flav angle. My other favorite part of a good pie? Eating it cold for breakfast, the day after Tofurkey Day. This was done, with awesome results.

Also, it's a kitten on a cabinet thingy! Being cute and dainty! How'd she get up there?

GARLIC-Y ROSEMARY FAUX-CACCIA

2009-01-11T18:00:00.010-05:00

There's nothing really faux about this here 'caccia, except for the awesome, faint cheese-y taste (cheesy bread!!), but everybody knows I can't stay away from a stupid pun. This recipe is adapted from the "blitz bread" recipe found on one my fave baking resources, the King Arthur Flour Bakers' Banter blog. I know it's a blogvertorial(?) designed to make me want to purchase crap from them, but I already like and want to purchase their crap! And, I am a baker, who loves banter! So we are really a match made in heaven. Anyway, it's a good place to go to geek out about sourdough starters, baguette pans, exotic flours and the like. So, I was craving an herb-y, umami-y treat, and this is what I hatched from my noggin:

Garlic-y Rosemary Parm Focaccia

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon shallot salt
1 teaspoon vegan parm
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon rosemary powder (I got mine here)
1 tablespoon yeast (instant, rapid-rise, whatevs, I've used many kinds in this recipe, and all have worked fine)
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups warm water

Optional but awesome topping:

2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove fresh garlic, finely grated and left to infuse in the olive oil while the dough rises (see below)
a big pinch of rosemary powder

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Here's the best thing about this recipe (well, if you have a standing mixer, that is):

Dump all the above ingredients, minus the awesome topping fixins, into your standing maker, fitted with the, uh, batter-mixing attachment.

Mix on high for about sixty seconds. The dough should be elastic and sticky.

!!! How easy is that? Easy is right up my alley these days.

Cover in plastic wrap, set in a warm place (like on top of your pre-heating oven) and let rise for an hour.

Press dough into a pre-greased 9 x 13 inch pan. Poke a bunch of pokes in it with your finger, so it's got lots of dips in it to absorb the oil and spices.

Drizzle on the olive oil/awesome toppng, and/or any spices you want up in there.

Bake for about 35 minutes, or until the focach is golden brown.

I'm not gonna lie; this came out pretty rad. One of our homies blogged about Maldon sea salt a while back, inspiring me to invest in this fancy-pants condiment, and it definitely shone in this recipe.

The BF and I eated an unseemly quantity in one sitting.

APPLE FRITTERS N COOKIES

2008-12-02T21:07:00.007-05:00

I don't have too much to say about these apple fritters, except that they were whipped up by me, on a whim, when the bf requested them one morning for breakfast. As per usual, I hit the Google with the standard "vegan + recipe I want" formula, and apparently struck gold. I stumbled upon this recipe, doubled it, and veganized it, using two different egg substitutes commonly used in vegan baking - flax seed meal mixed with water, and soy yogurt - and the results were delicious deep-fried goodness.

The original recipe calls for a sugar glaze, which sounds like it could only lead to further awesomeness, but it was early and I was feeling lazy, so a plain old dusting of confectioner's sugar did the trick lusciously. So lusciously, in fact, that when my awesome friends over at the Hit Factorie informed the gang that there was to be a cooking-themed Hit Book!, a Hit Cook! if you will, I knew these bad boys had to be in there. Plus, since it's my most favoritest cookie of all time, and another best case scenario for veganizing a classic recipe, I threw my Peanut Butter PMS Cookies in the mix for good measure. Behold! The final Hit Cook! lineup:

An extra-special thanks must be given to the bf, who is an extremely skilled deep-fryer, and was therefore charged with realizing the apple fritter dream.

I LIKE BIG BREADS

2008-10-24T12:36:00.006-04:00

And I cannot lie!

I wasn't as on top of documenting the many stages of the bread-making process as I normally would be, but please accept my most solemn pinky-swear that these whole wheat rosemary loaves rose perfectly the first time around. On the second rise, I apparently ran into some trouble, trouble of the flattening-out-and-fusing-into-an-ass-of-bread variety.

Well, maybe I'm putting the cart before the My Little Pony here. Yeasted bread dough pretty much always needs about an hour to rise, usually doubling in size during that time, and then depending on the shape/type of bread yer bakin', a second rise is often required (seasoned bread bakers out there, correct me if I'm wrong). Such was the case with this recipe, which I got while trolling the 'Net for cooking tips for the, you know, poor. It's not that the economy hitting the shitter has any direct affect on me, as I have no assets (hur hur hur), but I anticipate tough times ahead and generally just want to make everything from scratch anyway, so, yeah, that's what I did.

The recipe, which comes from the informative thirty dollar a week blog, is supposed to yield two, uh, good-sized round loaves. You make your dough, which I of course did in the standing mixture with the dough hook attachment. Once the dough has been sufficiently kneaded (It should be smooth and elastic, and you should able to touch it with it sticking to your hands too much), you pat it into a ball, place it in an oiled bowl, kinda roll it all around 'til its coated in the oil, and then cover it and let it rise in a warm place for, in this case, at least an hour, 'til it doubles in size. So, you'll just have to take my bloggin' word for it, but this part went off without a hitch for me.

Once this part has happens, you uncover your dough and punch it down. This part is pretty gratifying. It's all sticky and light and full of air, yet it completely collapses with a fart-like sigh of defeat under the lightest of girl-punches, such as mine. It's like what I picture beating up the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would be like. Next, you break up your dough into two chunks, shape them into balls, and set them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment for the second rise. Signs of this dough's bread-ass destiny should have been painfully apparent at this point:

But it wasn't.

In fact, I decided to just stroll right out of the NOM NOM NOM lair, leaving my rising dough unattended. I had an hour to burn, I figured, so why not run some errands and just watch the clock? Well, for whatever reason, when I got back home, two sad, flattened disks awaited me. They had not yet met in buttcrack-like unison, but I had a pretty good idea that there was a bread rump in my future at that point, since, amazingly, these bastards had not tried to eat it.

Anyway, long story short, this was a delicious but unfortunate looking fuck-up. I truly have no idea what I did, but I reckon I'll stick closer to home and maybe watch the clock a little better next time there's yeasted bread to be made. Oh, and I couldn't let things lie without a photo shoot featured lewd and potty-humored bread ass pix. You'll be spared the "CultWife Gets a Prosthetic Ass" series, but check out this wicked case of the caper shits!!!

Oh! So wrong dude!

MAPLE OATMEAL SAMMICH BREAD

2008-10-23T14:44:00.011-04:00

Whoooooo doggie! I'm a little rusty on this blogging about deliciousness hustle, so please bear with me. I have a backlog of things that I've been baking/roasting/cooking/pickling/deep-frying that I want to discuss with ya'll, but this loaf of bread has captured my heart, taught me how to love, shared its traveling pants with me, etc., and so I must begin with it. Maple Oatmeal Sammy Bread, bitches. It is so good! Celine of Have Cake, Will Travel adapted an epicurious recipe and made it back in like February, and it looked so awesome that I filed it away for eventual baking and consumption. What is my problem! I can't believe it took me so long to get my act together and make this. It's soft, whole-wheat-y, slightly sweet and maple-scented. When toasted and buttered for breakfast, it inspires Homer Simpson drool-y noises.

Maple Oatmeal Sandwich Bread
(recipe from Have Cake, Will Travel, my comments in italics)

makes 1 loaf

1 cup + 2 T warm pure water [about 105F]

2 T ground flax + 3 T warm water, whisked vigorously until viscous

This takes the place of the egg called for in the original recipe, and adds some sweet Omega-3 goodness to your loaf. Don't be a dillhole and use an egg! Try it like this first.

2 T vegan margerine

1/4 cup pure maple syrup

1/2 t maple extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups white whole wheat flour

1 cup old-fashioned oats

4 t vital wheat gluten

My friends, vital wheat gluten is the main ingredient in seitan, and is also used in all manner of processed foodz as a binder or stabilizer. It's basically just wheat flour where the starch has been magically dissolved out of the equation, leaving only the gummy, sticky gluten part of the deal. While I have decidedly mixed feelings about seitan, in baking it can definitely help provide a dense, rich texture without the use of eggs. Anyway, long story short, this could possibly be an optional ingredient. I don't know, try it sans VWG and let me know how it goes!

1 t sea salt

2 t instant rise yeast

Place all ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer attached with the dough hook, in the order written above.

[If you don't have a stand mixer, just do it all by hand, it'll work fine too.]

Beat at low speed until the dough is smooth. If it is too sticky, add more flour a little at a time. Beat for about 8 minutes.

Remove from bowl, shape into a ball. Place in a large bowl greased with a little vegetable oil, move dough around until it is covered with oil.

Cover tightly with plastic wrap and towel. Place in a warm, non drafty area and let rise for 90 minutes.

I just set it on my stove, with everything turned off, and the warmth from the pilot light totally does the trick.

Prepare a 9×5x3-inch loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray and flour.
“Butter” up a plastic wrap in advance to use for covering up the dough’s second rise.

Punch dough down once it is ready, knead for a couple of minutes on a lightly floured surface, if need be. shape into a log, place into greased pan. cover loosely with “buttered” up plastic wrap, let rise in a warm, draft-free area for another 45 minutes until the center of the dough reaches about 1 1/2 inches higher than the pan.

How cool is this?

Before:

After:

I like how the plastic wrap is straining against the massive pressure of twice-risen yeasted bread, like, "eeeehhhnn..."

Preheat oven to 350F. Once the dough is ready, remove plastic wrap and let bake for 30 minutes, or until a thermometer gives a read of 180F when inserted in the center of the bread.

You'll totes be able to see/smell when it's ready.

Remove from pan and let cool completely.

So, not content to be standard, buttered-toast-nomming chubs, the BF and I drizzled a tiny bit of maple syrup on the bread for double maple-y goodness. If you like delicious things, I highly recommend this!

C U NEXT TUESDAY

2008-08-28T11:46:00.006-04:00

As you might have guessed, I've been taking the summer off. However, one member of my household has not taken the summer off from being a human-food-stealing bastard, so my other blog is still happening at a steady clip. I'll be back soon with hare-brained baking ideas and food porn a'plenty. See you in September!

SWEET CHERRY PAH

2008-07-18T08:53:00.008-04:00

There are a couple of items on the agenda today. First, I have not adequately given snaps to the BF for what might be the best birthday present ever received by me. A Fucking Pink KitchenAid Standing Mixer! That's right people. Fucking. Pink. Gone are the days of creaming Earth Balance and sugar together with a fork and some goddamned elbow grease! The other day I made the BF cookies (to thank him for doing basically all the household chores, as per usual), and it took like ten minutes! A whole new world of possibilities has just opened up to me. I never thought I would be the owner of an actual fancy-pants kitchen appliance such as this one. Well I'll be a monkey's uncle.

Second, here is an actual success story involving pie. I found this recipe for sweet (as opposed to sour, I reckon) cherry pie on the excellent cooking blog smitten kitchen. It looked really straightforward and num-nums, but what really sold me was the excuse to purchase a kitchen gadget for under $20, namely, a cherry/olive pitter. Oh, and it was straightforward and extremely nummers. The crust was easily veganized (I think I actually commented on it on the above-linked blog) with my old pal Earth Balance, and a special guest star appliance.

Cherry Pah

For the crust:

3 cups all purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup chilled Earth Balance vegetable shortening, cut into pieces

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) chilled Earth Balance ("Buttery Sticks" works best for this - it's calibrated with tablespoonage, just like buttah), cut into pieces

10 tablespoons (about) ice water

Sift together your dry ingredients. Cut in your EB product family until a course meal forms. If you have a food processor, you should do all this in it, btdubs. Next, gradually add the ice water until you've reached doughitude. The ten tablespoons number is an approximation - it may take a little more or a little less. Do what feels good. When the time is right, you'll know what to do.

Gather your dough into a ball. Cover thoroughly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour at least, or ideally overnight. This is a great thing to do if, like me, you are having a weeknight din party and want to throw everything together after work (please see the olive oil incident over at our seester blog to hear more about this).

To make the pah itself, I offer smitten kitchen's recipe, which worked lusciously for me:

4 cups pitted fresh cherries (about 2 1/2 pounds unpitted)

4 tablespoons cornstarch

2/3 to 3/4 cup sugar (adjust this according to the sweetness of your cherries)

1/8 teaspoon salt

Juice of half a lemon

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1 tablespoon cold Earth Balance (Deb used unsalted butter), cut into small bits

Gently combine the above ingredients, except the butter.

Halve your dough. Roll the larger of the two halves, if there is one, out with a rolling pin. I actually can't provide much insight into this part of the recipe as I basically suck something awful at making crust. I mean, this was probably the first time I've made one since I was five and "helping" my grandmother. I defer to the originator of this crust recipe for tips n' tricks. Basically, roll it out, get it into your pie plate, bam.

Spoon in the cherry mixture. Discard any excess liquid.

Dot this with buttah.

Repeat pie crust assembly with top crust. Drape it over the whole deal, stab with fork, or make cute star-shaped cutout. I contemplated busting out my unicorn cookie cutter, but was getting too stressed by the whole affair, so didn't.

Crimp edges together. If you're going to be like that and make an egg wash (which can totes be achieved without eggs, although that's for another post), now would be the time to brush it on. Also, sprinkle at little extra sugar on top of the crust.

Bake in a preheated 400-degree ov for about 25 minutes. Bump the heat down to 350 and bake for another 25-30 minutes, until golden and sexy. Cool. Try not to eat in one sitting.

BLUEBERRY LAVENDER CREAM PAH

2008-07-16T09:27:00.014-04:00

OMG ya'll I did it! I veganized a recipe I'd been admiring from afar, with only some vegan recipes and the old noggin as my guides! Well, except for the pie itself was kind of gross. Still, not to sound like a douche, but I feel the process itself was kind of an accomplishment.

It all started when the awesome and addictive cooking blog, The Kitchn, posted this here recipe a while back, and I was like, damn I'd hit that. I'm a fan of unusual flav combinations, so this one seemed right up my alley. Also, I procured some cooking lavender a while back, with a vague plan to make lavender shortbread, ala Vegan Yum Yum, but my plan never came to fruition, and my 'der languished unopened for quite some time. I don't know what precipitated it, but I recently snapped the hell out of my baking dry spell, and decided this was just the harebrained baking project needed to ease back into things. Anyway, before I give you the recipe, here's some blather about my approach, the outcome, and the things I'd change (sorry people, I'm in summer school at the moment, in case you can't tell by the poor writing and grad-school-esque musings.)

The Kitchn's vision for this pah was one that featured a delicate lavender flavor punctuated by berries, and gorgeously berry-colored to boot. They wanted a not-too-egg-y custard kind of situation, so I figured, if I just cut out eggs altogether, who'll miss 'em? That's where my baking frenemy agar-agar comes on the scene. Basically, agar-agar is a seaweed-based gelatin substitute. Let's say you're vegan and you want Jello, eh? This has actually never happened to me. Anyway, take your favorite fruit juice or bev, add some agar-agar, cook it for about seven minutes, and chill it. Hoof-less Jello, people! This is your friend when you want to impress some vegan drunks (we totes exist) with some sweet sweet Jello shots. Or, when you want to vegan-ize something custard-y. Thus, I figured, sub out the milk and cream, get my agar-agar on, I should be good to go.

Well, my plan didn't quite pan out in the taste department. The pie was a) too agar-y and firm; b) too soy-y, and c) WAY too lavender-y, bordering on bitter and grandma-y. I think part of my problem was that, in my head, I combined The Kitchn's recipe with one of Isa's, and the former involved baking while the latter was no-bake. Thus, I could have gotten away with way less agar-agar and still had a finished product that set. I think it's a vegan baker thing to just assume that whatever you're making will be too squishy or won't set or whatever, and to subsequently overcompensate. Sigh. Anyway, here's the recipe, followed by my Vision of The Future of Pies:

Lavender Blueb Pie, NOM NOM NOM style

2 cups soy creamer (soy milk is awesome in baked things, because it sort of breaks down and gets kind of sweet and mild-tasting, but I think the taste was too strong in this. Maybe try coconut milk? Almond milk even? Vegans, discuss!)

1 cup soy milk (see above)

two pints blueberries, anal-retentively picked over to eliminate rejects (should yield about two and a half cups)

3 tablespoons lavender (definitely tone this down to 2 tablespoons)

3 tablespoons agar-agar powder (same as above - should be toned down to 2 tablespoons. I'm not sure how it would go down if you used agar-agar flakes, but I'm guessing you'd want to use less)

1/2 cup (generous) sugar (maybe next time use confectioner's sugar?)

1 tablespoon Earth Balance

Combine your soy milk and soy cream. Bring to a simmer, add the lavender, remove from heat, and let steep for 25 minutes.

Cook the bluebs in the tablespoon of Earth Balance until the berries are just bubbling and giving off their juices. Set aside in a fine-meshed strainer rest on a bowl, so you can collect the juicy berry goodness later.

Once the lavender soy cream mixture is done steeping, strain out the lavender and return the cream to its original pot. Bring up to a simmer again, add the agar-agar, and cook until dissolved, about seven minutes. At some point during this time, dissolve about a tablespoon of cornstarch into the strained berry juice, and add to the cooking soy cream. Total time on the stove should be like 7-10 minutes, and the cream should get noticeably thicker and more custard-y.

Turn off heat, add your bluebs, pour into pre-baked (or crappy store bought) pie crust.

Refrigerate for at least three hours.

So, yeah, this was gross. You'll notice in the above pictures the weird agar-y sheen that something acquires when it's too firm. Totally not cool. In fact, it kind of turned my stomach a little. I ended up kinda picking out the blueberries and scraping off the crust. Behold:

Eeeew. Weird, no?

So, rising like a phoenix from the gross, Jello-y ashes is my vision for the future. I like this fruit and custard and flowery pie concept, so I was thinking of taking in it in an Indian direction (as I basically always am) and making a mango-coconut milk rosewater pah. Check it:

Bake instead of no-bake

Coconut milk custard instead of soy cream custard

2 Tbs agar, not 3

Mango instead of bluebs

A small splash of rosewater instead of lavendar

Lime poppy-seed shortbread crust (to bite Isa's style in Veganomicon)

Thoughts?

GO SHORTY

2008-06-07T19:25:00.012-04:00

I bake a lot for other people. That's why birthdays can fill me with stress and anxiety, because, well shucks, I care about my homies and fam and want them to have tasty cupcakes on their goddamn special day, and what if I make something gross? What if I become the friend that makes gross things that everyone eats out of polite obligation and respect for my fragile feelings? That would be so lame! Anyway, I realized, what the fuck. On my birthday, the pressure's off and I'm going balls to the wall and making something for me, me, ME! Just because!

This is actually not the first time I've engaged in such selfish acts of baking. Last year, after a highly successful birthday throwdown, the BF and I staggered out of the bar, through the park, and over to our conveniently nearby pad. It was around three or four in the morn, and the BF made haste with the drunken snoozing. I, however, decided that the one thing missing from my awesome birthday celebration was a cake. Totally shitfaced, defying all logic and reason, I preheated the oven to 350, lined a cupcake tin with cuppie liners, and fucking threw together some maple cuppers with cinnamom icing like you would not believe! The next morning, the BF was like, holy shit, I can't believe you drunk-baked these last night, they are so good.

So gang, this time around I was prepared, and even had sobriety on my side. I figured it was time to lay down the smacketh with some coconut cake. I lurve coconut, and I had a long-neglected recipe from my favoritest cookbook author involving a whole mess of coconut milk, unsweetened shredded coconut, and all the usual good stuff. I also was feeling saucy, so I got some Rose's Lime marmalade to be the filling, and then busted out some coconut buttercream frosting.

Now I know we've talked about my unfortunate trend towards fucking things up around these parts, and of course my birfday cake was no exception. While I'm most comfortable making cuppers, I've been really trying to branch out into other formats of deliciousness, so I was on a mission for some layer cake action. So far, from what I've gathered in the midst of my otherwise completely inept experimention, the name of the game is not over-filling your cake pan, and also greasing the hell out of it.

And so I did. The above cake went off without a hitch - it baked through perfectly, was moist and not too done on the edges, and slid right out of the cake pan. Awesome, I thought, I finally nailed this shit down! Layer cakes will abound! Oh, but wait. Then this beaut came out of the ov:

Well now will you look at that. I don't know, man. I did grease the hell out of the pan, and I think it was just a shitty pan. Also, cake-bakers out there, riddle me this: should these bad boys cool a bit in the baking pan before you transfer then to a cooling rack? I've always thought that was a bad move, but clearly I have some things to learn about the dark world of cakery.

But see what I mean? Guess which pan the wonky broked-ass cake came out of.

Anyway, I got up the next morning and made the world's fastest single layer of cake, which only partially fell apart, and with a little frosting surgery and a lot of swearing, my birthday cake was done. At the end of the day, it was no looker but was totally tasteh. I for one got drunk as a skunk, had some good old-fashioned birthday fun, and saw my homies. Thanks to everyone who made the trek up to NOM NOM NOM HQ!

ICE CREAM OF REDEMPTION

2008-05-10T15:58:00.017-04:00

Hot on the heels of my wave of baking fuck-ups came a desire to parlay the fuck-ups into things that could be remotely construed as edible. I mean, for fucks sake. Those of you who know me know I'm hardly a picky gal, nor is the BF known to turn down cosmetically-heinous-but-still-tasty items. So, if something's salvageable, why not just do it to it?

Sitting in my fridge for a day or two was the burntish first layer of a chocolate cookies n' creme layer cake. While it was burnt and wrong on the outside, it was still num nums and moist on the inside. I actually had designs on using it to make a "Cake cake," a concept which I learned of from my friend Zach. Zach has the good fortune of knowing a culinary genius, who once mixed cut-up pieces of Hostess snack cakes into cake batter, thusly creating the first known Cake cake. I applaud this cutting-edge innovation, and was hoping to replicate it, vegan-style.

However, I had fired up my ice cream maker and was itchin' to use it. To do so, I had to freeze the internal bowl-y part of the ice cream contraption for at least 24 hours in advance, so actually making ice cream with it takes some premeditation. Now, I happen to have no complaints about vegan ice cream. Even in pre-vegan days I could totally get down with some Turtle Mountain brand outrageousness. But I'm not gonna front. I miss the shit out of some coffee ice cream. So, when I consulted my handy copy of Veganomicon and discovered that yes, of course, there is a recipe for coffee ice cream up in there, game was on.

So there you have it. Cake shrapnel and coffee ice cream: you do the math!

If you have the below-pictured ice cream maker, I recommend just freezing the hell out of all detachable parts of that sucker in addition to the aforementioned bowl-y part. The colder, the better. Also, patience is truly the name of the game with this apparatus. While the "manufacturers instructions" might lead you to believe that it take 20-30 to make ice cream, you should anticipate 45 minutes of churnin' time.

Coffee Ice Cream with Chocolate Cake Chunx

Serves two fatties

1/2 cup coconut cream

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 a 12-oz package of Mori-Nu silken tofu

1/2 cup soy milk

1/2 cup cold, strong coffee, or, better yet, espresso (which is what the recipe proper calls for and which, of course, I did not have on hand)

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate cake pieces

Blend together the first six ingredients in a blender or food processor until totes blended. Dump into your ice cream maker and prepare according to your machine's instructions.

When the ice cream is almost done, dump in your cake chunkage. If this is not easy to do, just wait 'til the ice cream is done and ready for serving and/or storing and mix it in then.

I'm really running out of superlatives here at NOM NOM NOM HQ, but hot damn you guys. This was fan-freakin'-tastic. I've had few successes making homemade ice cream have the actual consistency of real ice cream, even back in the day when I was a lactose-tolerator, and this was one such success. The taste was mild and coffee-y with a surprisingly harmonious coconut taste underneath, and the chocolate cake chunkage really brought it to that stoned-teen level of ice cream flavor wrongness that we all know and love. The BF and I ate a shameful amount in one sitting, and I again nommed far too much the next day when sitting down to blog about the good stuff.

Also, homemade ice cream stores well in the freezer just left to its own devices in the bowl-y attachment part. Just cover tightly with plastic wrap and freeze!

FUCKUPS ROUNDUP

2008-05-04T14:16:00.017-04:00

So, maybe I was putting the cart before the horse with this whole blog about baking things. Maybe it would have been helpful for me to learn how to bake first. While I've had some moderate successes and shot-in-the-dark achievements in nomming, I've had far more fuck-ups than I can count go down at NOM NOM NOM HQ. So, for your consideration, here are some baked goods that time and common sense forgot:

1. Strawberry Rhubarb Peach Cobbler.

My little sister's birthday went down in recent weeks, and in preparation for the corresponding family din, I asked her if she had a special request birthday cake flava which I would make for her. The answer was a resounding "Cobbler! Any kind!" So I was pumped. Cobbler is easy and delish when ripe and beautiful fruit abounds, and while April is still a pretty desolate month on the produce front in New York, I was cautiously optimistic. When I found inexplicably cheap and nice-looking rhubarb at my local Citarella, the deal was was sealed. Thinly sliced with equally awesome strawberries and frozen, organic sliced peaches, things were shaping up pretty nicely. Then it all took a turn for the crappy.

There are two schools of thought on cobbler: some folks cook their fruit mixture on the stove with sugar, spices, water, cornstarch and (depending on the fruit) a squirt of lemon juice, then dump it in a pan, add the topping, and bake. Other folks just toss their fruit with sugar, cornstarch, spices and lemon, slap the crust/topping on, and bake it like that. Although I'm usually a pre-oven cooker, I decided to try something new and just bake it all together. I was loosely following a few different recipes, and apparently my end product was a synthesis of everything you shouldn't do. I like cobbler topping to be basically a sweet biscuit, and so I threw together just that. I tasted my fruit mixture and it was badass. I tasted my biscuit topping dough - also badass. However, I don't know what happened, but let me tell you it was less than badass. Basically, the fruit cooked beautifully, and the topping browned and seemed great, plus everything smelled great, and I find that with baking the nose knows! So, I took it out of the oven and served it up for the fam. The taste was ok, but the fruit needed a little more sugar and spice and the topping, while it baked through, had somehow dissolved throughout the cobbler in an ugly and unappetizing way. Fuuuuck! Mediocre taste, ugly as hell. Bummer.

2. Popovers.

How sad is this? Let me set the scene for you: a sexy, talented young vegan baker chances upon a recipe for vegan popovers. The vegan baker sexily grew up in Connecticut and has many fond memories of this egg-y, buttery, flaky New England version of Yorkshire Pudding. Holy hell, thinks the vegan baker, I need these in my tummeh! The recipe calls for black salt, which for some reason is pink and which I promptly renamed Fart Salt. I did so because black salt has a very high sulfur content and is prized by egg-free bakers for the eggy taste it imparts on all that it touches. But it smells like a fucking jar of farts. I made the BF smell it and he was like, what the hell dude, why did you make me smell that, what's wrong with you? Anywho, I was stoked and confident that this assemblage of vegan exotics (including blended firm tofu and vital wheat gluten) were going to yield delicious popover awesomeness. But you know what happened instead? I LEFT OUT THE FUCKING TABLESPOON OF BAKING POWDER needed to make the popovers actually pop over. This was like Baking 101 idiocy: read your fucking recipe! Don't leave shit out! And how could I forget my friend Baking Powder, who's always been there for me to make shit rise and be delicious? Plus the taste was totes off. Not buttery at all, and totally, ironically, needed more salt. Instead of popover goodness, it was like a soggy, tofu-y hockey puck wrapped in a thin layer of flaky bread. Boo me!

3. The Chocolate Chop Cookies That Weren't.

This was just pitiful. Before I discovered the magical PMS cure that is peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies, this was my go-to menstruation helper. So one evening, after a rare long day at the old office, I swung by a bourgie, overpriced Columbia student deli and quickly grabbed some chocolate chips for this purpose. I typically read labels carefully, but I was tie-tie and saw a familiar brand name - Ghiardelli - and was like, oh, those shits are vegan, cool, and was on my way. EXCEPT THEY WEREN'T. This detail, however, was completely lost on me until I had already painstakingly assembled the entire recipe, and just needed to fold in my lil' chippers. Imagine my disappointment when there was no menstruation cure in sight. This was not awesome. In an attempt to not waste food, I froze the dough, and saved the chips as a snack for the sugar-loving, non-vegan BF, but the dough eventually wound up in the garbage. A sad day in baking indeed.

Not pictured/discussed here are: maple walnut scones, millet-currant soda bread, and three separate stabs at converting a Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World cupcake recipe into a layer cake. While all signs point to "hang up your apron," I vow to keep on nomming, against all odds, and even in the face of adversity and my own dumbass tendencies. Stay tuned!

CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER FREEZER PAH

2008-05-03T14:18:00.010-04:00

Well, all that fancy, high-falutin' talk about pumping iron and getting huge was nothing but a sham. I'm still nomming! And once it became like 80 degrees here for a week, I decided it was time to dabble in icebox and frozen confection-making. So, I've fired up our ice cream maker, procured some ingredients, and Chubwatch 2008 is just gonna have to have to wait, ya'll!

So this recipe (scroll down a ways) comes to us from the excellent baking blog, have cake, will travel! and it caught my eye because a) it involved chocolate and peanut butter and b) it looked easy as shit, and that's about all I can handle right now (get ready people, because a fuck-ups anthology post is in the works).

Basically, you take a box of silken Mori-Nu tofu, pop it in the blender and, well, blend it until it's super-blended (this takes like a minute). This aseptic, shelf-stable 'fu is some interesting business. It's a great vegan pantry essential to have on hand because it goes in all things mousse or cream-sauce related. Don't smell or nom this raw material when it comes out of the box (also, handle with care - it's reeeeally silky), because it will taste disgusting and have you convinced that whatever it's going in will taste tofu-y and wrong, but hush now because this is not going to happen. I've successfully fed silken tofu products to my parentals completely unbeknownst to them, so just chillax about that and let's see where this tofu-pah journey takes, mm'kay?

Combine your blended-til-smooth silken 'fu with melted bittersweet baking chocolate. I love me some chocolate, so I used about eight squares, aka the entire package of the above-pictured baking chocolate, melted in a makeshift double-boiler. Then mix in a cup of organic peanut butter, four tablespoons of agave nectar and a teaspoon vanilla extract. Mix 'til good and blended. Pop into freezer. Nom cold or slightly thawed.

This was an awesome not-too-sweet pah. I feel like it could be a good jumping-off point for sweeter, more tricked-out freezer pahs if one wanted to throw in fruit, nutz, chopped cookies, a crazy-ass candy-bar crust, etc., but for me this was the perfect marriage of peanut butter goodness and knock-you-on-your-ass chocolately numminess. The crappy store-bought chocolate graham cracker crust was a nice thing as well, because it stood out as a sweet, crumbly mess against the simple, straight-ahead goodness of the pah. The texture was pure Denny's-style magic: creamy yet firm, substantial yet soft. Definitely hit this next time it's really hot and gross out yet you still need something delicious and bad for you in your tummy!

CHUBWATCH 2008

2008-04-22T11:45:00.005-04:00

Dearest reader(s?), you may have been wondering what I've been up to lately, and where I've been. Maybe you haven't; I'm gonna tell ya either way. Two major factors have come between me and my beloved baking hijinks: 1. Spring has sprung! Who needs to drown their sorrows in baked goods when there's frolicking outdoors to be had? and 2. I'm going to be a bridesmaid in August, forcing me into a situation where, to my horror, I will be photographed. I grew up in Westchester county, where festively disordered eating habits are a way of life and everyone is better looking than me, and even though the old pals and I "weren't like that," I feel like there's a tacit assumption that I will shed the proctective layer of blubber built up from such favorite indoor activities as heavy drinking, reality-tv-induced ass-sitting marathons (curse you, DVR!), and frequent cold-weather comfort nommings. Anyway, it's not so much that I'm baking and nomming less, but I am hitting the gym in a big way, you know, bulking up, getting huge, pumping some iron. Once that starts, you get all pumped and think that you want smoothies and shit, and it's really just caused my baking activities to take a seat. And because I'm a purist, I can't really deal with the thought of turning all "low-fat baking" on a bitch, and like, putting ground prunes and diet Dr. Pepper in brownies and other such grossness. So I won't. Thus, my baked treats reporting is going to drop off for the next few months. To throw ya'll a bone, I'll be putting up some pictures of recent aborted or fucked up or nommed-too-quickly items. Also, please feast your eyes on some awesome inanimate object nomming, as pictured above, courtesy of these folks right here.

BUTTERSCOTCH PUDDIN BREAD

2008-04-08T00:06:00.008-04:00

The BF has a ginormo sweet tooth, and so sometimes he just straight up requests a sweet. Like, sometimes, I come home from work and he's all hanging out doing something in the kitchen and he'll just kind of cryptically point to a bunch of bananas like "You. Muffins. Today!" Then I'll urge him to "use his words," and he'll usually elaborate and get some sweet banana muffins out of the deal. Other times, I'll propose some ideas to him for stuff I want to bake n' blog about at some point, for kicks, and he'll be like, "Um, yeah-ha, except now!" This was one of those times.

This recipe comes to us from the talented young purveyor of vegan treats, Hannah Kaminsky. Homegirl is just 18 and busting out with some stupid delicious vegan baked goods! This recipe in particular caught my eye because of its pure unadulterated awesomeness, and because I am a friend to all things butterscotch-related. Since it's got the word butter in its name, I don't really get to nom on such things all that often, so I was big into this. And like I said, when I mentioned to the BF in passing that I was wanting to bake this at some point, sensing its potential for pure sugary magic, he was like WANT.

Btdubs, apparently my kitchen is at a slight angle...

A lot of interesting shit goes down in this loaf. For example, did you know that chocolate chippies float to the bottom of your loaf pan during the baking process? Isn't that just adorable? Plus a thick, almost-too-tough-but-not crust forms around this bad boy, which at first made me think I'd fucked up yet another seemingly simple recipe, but then I realized that the crust is where it's at. Maybe we're insane, but the BF and I both thought the crust was a tad saltier than the rest of the the loaf which, coupled with its chewy toughness and starkly contrasting super-soft inside, made things eeenteresting. Also, the taste is of course awesome. I say of course because of the cup of sugar that this recipe calls for, in addition to the puddin' mix, which I'm pretty sure is packin' a sucrosular punch of its own. The butterscotch flava is totally subtly there, and the chocolate chips kind of punctuate the otherwise mild taste with a little something something. Wanna see?

And how did the BF like it? Well, I'll tell ya: it's like crack to him! If our shared concern about becoming fat bastards weren't so prevalent, I'm pretty certain we'd hit this shit on the regular. He also dropped some knowledge on my hiney by pointing out that this is kind of like bread pudding bread: all crusty and cronche-y on the outside, and then soft and mushy on this inside. This also describes my soul. Anyway, this brought to my attention a crazy notion. Hear me out: butterscotch pudding bread bread pudding! Too much, or just totally right? Anyone? In conclusion, the BF happily nommed a whole mess of this bread before I started pawning it off on friends and loved ones [sorry BF, your supply has taken a hit!], so that was good.

'ROTS N RAISINS

2008-04-06T17:00:00.009-04:00

This recipe has sat like a turd, unloved and overlooked, in my copy of Vegan With a Vengeance for about the past year and a half. The reason for this is that I don't really like raisins all that much, and c'mon, carrots in muffins? You're gonna put carrots in something that's not carrot cake? Dude. Let's just say, much like the banana wheat germ muffs of yore, these were totally not the prettiest girls at the party, and the carrot-raisin combo just seemed inherently gross and lame to me. WELL, just throw that preconceived carrot-raisin disdain right out the window, people! Because you need to DAIN them! These were so good. I finally got around to baking them the other day, when I woke up to a beautiful sunny morning and a near-barren, breakfastless pantry. Since the talented and awesome-seeming author of said cookbook hyperbolically praises these muffs for their ability to wake and revive even the crankiest, most sleep-lovin'-est people, and that would definitley be The BF and myself, I thought, let's do this. Good idea, self!

Carrot-Raisin Muffs
[from Vegan with a Vengeance [with my notes like this]]

Makes a dozen teeny weeny muffs

1/2 cup raisins

1 1/2 cups flour [I used my bestie, whole wheat pastry flour, with awesome results]

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup rice or soy milk

1/4 cup canola oil

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 cups grated carrot [I used storebought, pre-grated 'rots - see below - but I bet sucking it up and grating two cups of carrots would make for a super-moist, nommable muffin. That said, I would probably never get my shit together to grate two cups of anything, so, meh I guess]

Preheat the ov to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a muffin pan with canola oil or Earth Balance.

Soak the raisins in hot water. Set aside. [This, for me, is what really made these bad boys more than just edible, which is generally how I feel about crap with raisins in it. The hot water gets all up in there and softens the raisins, so they're sweet and juicy and actually good-tasting. Don't skip this step, or your muffins will be total losers!]

While the raisins are soaking, sift together your dry ingredients [and by sift you mean, scramble them all together with a fork, right? Because that's what I did.]. Make a well in the center and pour in your soy-or-rice-milk, canola oil and vanilla extract. Mix it will a wooden spoon, real gentle-like, so it's just barely combined:

Then, fold in your carrots. [Now, when you do this, it's going to seem like, holy shit this is a lot of carrots is this seriously how much the recipe calls for but, just, sssh... sssh... don't worry your head about it. It's gonna work out great!]

Drain the raisins and fold them in too.

Bake for 18-22, until a toothpick blah blah blah comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

By the way gang, I always thought the wire rack was some stupid kitchen-gadget nonsense, but I've recently acquired one and don't know how I've survived this long without it. First of all, they're cheap, like five bucks, and second of all, when you take something out of the oven, it's hot! That means, it's still baking. Even if you transfer your baked goods to say, a plate, the lack of ventilation traps in the heat, and the moisture that's given off from the heat, and can cause everything from toughness to mushiness to sogginess, depending on the sitch. Before I had one, I used to be a bum and try to balance everything on an all-the-way opened veggie steamer, but let's just say that was not so optimal. Anyway, if you're looking to expand your baking-supplies arsenal, I highly recommend picking up one of these bastards.

Oh, and the money shot. Toast, butter, and nom...

SHAMROCKZ N SHENANIGANS

2008-03-30T21:15:00.016-04:00

When I was in high school, I had this kind of awesome English teacher, Dr. D. Freshman year, he thought I was a brainiac and writing machine and was really nice and encouraging to me in that rare genuine, non-sleazy way. Of course, being a youthful snot, I though he was "weird," and probably also "annoying," and so I totally didn't appreciate it. Anyway, I had him again my senior year and he really stepped up his game as a teach and all-around ok influence, although my head was regrettably no less up my ass then. My point is, in addition to being an all right teacher who learned me many things, he turned me on to two items of major importance: Harold and Maude and Irish breakfast, both of which he unleashed on a classroom full of mainly worthless and unappreciative English students on our last day of high school.

Although I abstain from the animal products, the glory of Irish breakfast remains fully intact for me, even if it is kind of a festival of carcass. Traditionally, and I guess it varies depending on the region, it's just a big ole "fry-up," featuring lots of traditional gross Irish meats, taters (such as boxty, champ, or colcannon), and veggies (really just tomatoes and mushrooms), all hanging out on your plate like a happy, greasy family. Add Irish coffee, various boozes and stouts, tea, baked treats with lots of butter and jam and marmalade, and life is pretty good. And people love getting together and drinking on Sunday afternoon! Holy shit do they love it. And really, who isn't half/part/all Irish, and what's funnier than making fun of the spectacle of corny-ness that is Irish-American pride? Nothing!! So starting about seven years ago, me and my friend Sam were the originators of Irish breakfast. The basic menu usually includes bangers, rashers, various puddings (snausages), a shitload of taters, scones, tea, baked beanz n' booze. We cooked it all up and people came over with beer and whiskey. We ate and drank ourselves silly, got shitfaced, and usually ended up playing Nintendo 64, watching a movie from the Leprechaun horror franchise, and then going out to drink some more.

Sorry for waxing all kinds of nostalgic, but it's a freakin' awesome tradition you guys! My point being, this year was no less awesome. The BF has very capably taken the reins of all things carnivorous, and this year made the pilgrimage to the The Butcher's Block in Sunnyside to procure the much-loved thick Irish bacon, aka rashers. We usually have bangers, which are technically more English, but this year we opted for more rashers at the expense of the bangers. They were out of black pudding, so he only got white. Still, the meaty line-up looked pretty solid (I somehow neglected to photograph it). To add to the awesomeness, we had the additional culinary skillz of a certain magical kitchen leprechaun, who basically saved us from the brink of insanity. Thanks, dude!

For my part, my competence at baking took a major beating last week, and I seriously almost served a big heaping trayful of nothing at the party. First, I tried making vegan Yorkshire puddings, kind of a daunting task to begin with, but that quickly became a moot point when I did something I never do and totally carelessly left out a kind of important ingredient, and they didn't rise and were gross. Then I burnt a big, beautiful soda bread. THEN, I fucking burnt the most moron-proof thing to make ever - scones. I was seriously stressing, but managed to rally and get my shit together and make:

Beer Bread with Currants and Millet

This little guy was easy as pah to make, and is the hybrid of a recipe from Veganomicon and one from Edible Brooklyn.

Basically, you heat a tespoon of canola oil in a pot. Then you toast half a cup of dry millet, til it gets... uh... toasteh (like two or three minutes, says Veganomicon). Then splash in a cup of boiling water in dump in one and a half cups Zante currants (you know, the not crazy expensive kind) and cover that bad boy right up. Cook the mixture over low heat until the liquid is absorbed, about 18 to 20 minutes. [edited April 5, 2008: the currant-millet mixture in the above lazy recipe is good for two loaves of bread, not one! So if you're just making one loaf, halve this bad boy and you're all set. Sorry for the lazy recipe blogging!]

Meanwhile, back at the lab, sift together one and a half cups each white all purpose flour and whole wheat pastry flour. Mix in one half a cup sugar. Crack open a 12-oz bottle or can of beer (I used a Yuengling Black and Tan, but it can really be anything), and mix that on in there. Mix in two tablespoons melted butter, and fold in [half! I suck!] your cooked and cooled millet-currant mixture. Pop in a preheated 350-degree oven for about an hour, opening the ov but once, about three minutes before done time, to melt a little more butter on there. Cool, slice and nom...

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. HOLY CRAPPER these were good! If I do say so myself. Like, maybe my faves ever. There was a super cocoa-y crumb topping layer hiding under all that glorious powdered sugar, and a redonkulously moist chocolate cupcake, made with vegan stout, underneath that. (I looooove Samuel Smith Oatmeal stout. So nutty and chocolatey and awesome. Nooom... )

Oooh, and I almost forgot! More rosemary oven fries. I'm developing an addiction to both making and eating them. Damn.

Some decor. We like a good theme.

Oh, and we took a break from the Leprechaun this year and watched our favoritest movie ever, The Wicker Man. It's of course Scottish, but we play fast and loose with our Irish stereotypes. We also eased up on the House of Pain this year in favor of the sweet sounds of Mellow Candle. I think (hopefully) a bloated, drunken good time was had by all.

WELCOME BACK JEEBIS

2008-03-24T20:36:00.013-04:00

It was an Easter miracle this year, with my family making the trek up to Harlem (from Brooklyn and the Upper East Side) for a humongoid Easter din. It's weird because we're all a bunch of godless heathens, but like most ethnic Catholics, we feel a strange obligation to make a big meal and hang out together on most big religious holidays, so that's what happened. But enough about that. Let's talk about this dope fucking berry lime cheezcake:

I actually don't remember where I got this recipe from (sorry vegan blog land!), but it was described as tried and true and universally loved, even by vegan treat haters. I had all the ingredients on hand, so it fit the bill for Easter din. It was super duper easy: you just throw two containers of Tofutti cream cheese, two cups of powdered sugar (!!!!), and 8 tablespoons lemon or lime juice into a blender (I did mostly lime and some lemon - the recipe called for all lemon, but my Dad is a big key lime pah fan, so I thought this would be good). Meanwhile, back at the lab, you mix two tablespoons of cornstarch with four tablespoons of Tofutti sour cream, add that to the business in the blender, and blend a bit more. Then, splash in a teaspoon or so of vanilla extract, or better yet the smashed-vanilla-bean equivalent, and blend that shiz 'til it's good and...blended. Then pour it into the crumb pie crust of your choosin' (I went with a storebought graham cracker pah crust, but I bet a homemade crust, like made with, say, those Anna's Swedish gingersnap cookies, would be super nummers). Pop it into a preheated 350 degree ov, and bake for at least twenty minutes, but as long as it takes to "set," i.e. not be all wiggly in the middle. For me, this took almost an hour. Plus, the batter yielded more than I could fit in my pah shell, so I filled two lil' ramekins and baked them in a baño María alongside the big poppa. These served as a delish test run situation for me and the BF to nom on while we watched a really good movie and recovered from our late night cleaning and dish washing marathon on Saturday.

The one downside to baking it for so long was that, although it finally set, the top looked ugly as sin. And on Easter, no less! That's when Mister Berry Compote topping layer comes to town. I just winged it for that: I took a bag of frozen organic mixed berries (this yielded way too much by the way, one could definitely halve it), thawed 'em a bit, put them in a saucepan with just enough water to barely cover them, brought that to a low boil, added some blueberry jam, a squirt or two or three of agave nectar, and a few spoonfuls of cornstarch, and simmered it all until it was all bubbly and num nums. At some point during this whole production, the BF got in there with the immersion blender (he loves to immersion blend) and pureed it so it would spread evenly over everything. Then, I let it cool to room temp (it thickens a bunch when you do so) and poured it on my cheezcake. After letting it sit in the fridge uncovered for about twenty minutes, it was ready for familial nommings.

The result? Definitely creamy yet light in that vegan junk food way, this bad boy molests your teeth with its sugary wrongness, almost even a back-of-the-throat-tickling-sweetness, but with some real nice tartness from the lime and berry action. The one downside was that it wasn't quite cheesecake-y in terms of the texture. The taste was rad and luscious, but it could almost pass for a traditional key lime pah, which sure isn't a bad thing, but I'm anal and my quest for perfect cheesecake mimicry will have to carry on. Also, I was an Iron Chef and made several other items to nom on, including:

Rosemary ov Fries

Balsamic-glazed 'fu [public service announcement post to follow, and thanks to Muffin, my carnivorous friend, for learning me bout this marinade!]

And the ever-popular sproutz

Also, if you go to last fm and select "calypso tag radio," your parents will probably go bonkers. At least they will if they're anything like my 'rents. The old folks love calypso! A good time, therefore, was had by all. Happy second birthday, Jeebis!

BLOGGA LOGGA DING DONG

2008-03-22T13:45:00.007-04:00

So, I'm elbow-deep in this nom nom nomming endeavor, and rather enjoying it, but I recently realized that there's an underlying trend happening that may require its own blog. And being the dedicated follower of trends that I am, I'm gonna oblige these changing times and birth a new blog.

So wontcha take a gander at Stuff my 'Puff Eats*, my new blog devoted to catching my piggy howler monkey cat in the act of eating foodz and other substances, documenting my findings, and then making fun of him.

What put me over the edge? Well, so far he's half-eaten a mouse, leecked an olive-oily cookbook, and he just had major nommings on some edamame. Yeah you heard me. Like, the legume. I was conducting a hare-brained home planting experiment involving martini and pint glasses, shelled edamame, and water, and the stinker decided he could not resist those tasty vegetal morsels. And this, by the way, is only what we've captured on film. The following additional items, among others, have passed through his monster gullet:

corn on the cob
seitan, homemade
tempeh
curried tempeh salad
ice cream, both soy and dairy
Earth Balance
coffee grounds
parts of our Christmas tree
olive oil
canola oil
kalamata olives (his all-time favorite)
the mail
muffins, several varieties
soymilk and cereal remains
moo milk and cereal remains
cardboard

Also, a disclaimer: we do not feed our animal people food, and if he's going after something particularly dangerous for a kitteh, like onions or chocolate, we immediately make it not happen for him. Plus, as he is a fatty, we do try to keep his weight in check so's he's a happy and healthy 'Puff. However, he goes to some bizarre and comical lengths to get the people foodz, so in spite of our vigilance this happens pretty frequently. We try to be good animal parents, but if something adorable happens I'm sure as shit gonna photograph it, mm'kay?

Hope you all enjoy it.

*'Puff is short for Snugglepuff. Believe it.

BIRFDAY CUPPERS

2008-03-16T12:25:00.010-04:00

I've been wanting to do something with rosewater for a while now. I was first inspired by the Indian-themed dinner [with a sadly truncated menu] that the BF and I hosted for our friends and nabes, the Harlem Homies. I always get this hare-brained notion that I can totally just come home from work and, you know, whip up some homemade bread and a rosewater pound cake in like, ninety minutes, and clean our house and put on mascara and throw together a bitchin' din party playlist while I'm at it. You may be shocked to learn that I am repeatedly and frequently frustrated in such endeavors. So, after some aborted scallion flatbreads [required too much kneading for a school night] and some holy-shit-I-don't-have-this-one-ingredient-time-for-plan-b vanilla cupcakes [the missing ingredient was fucking vanilla soy yogurt. Apparently the local health food store is up to its ass in gross blueberry soy yogurt, but would it fucking kill them to stock something actually edible and practical? It would seem so. Then, the organic evaporated cane juice-style sugar I used to make the plan-b cuppers made for a wonky-looking finished product, although the taste was okay, but still, goddamn it!], I was itching to redeem myself in the kitchen whilst utilizing my new BFF, rosewater. The opportunity presented itself this weekend when birthday drinks for one of my favoritest Pisces took place.

For a recipe, I turned to the time-tested, unfaltering source of numminess that is Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which has a rosewater cardamom n' pistachio cupper recipe that I've been wanting to try. I left out the pistashes, since some people have attitude about them, plus I was worried that the whole package would just be too rich for bringing to a barful of drunken buds.

This was my first time using soy yogurt as the binder in a recipe and I really likied. It made these bastards super moist, and they got this nice golden-y thing going on that you don't really see with straight canola/soymilk-bound cuppies. I definitely need to get my shit together and make that rosewater pound cake real soon. Nom...

Anypoo, my rosewater and cardamom finally got a workout, and I was pretty okay with the results. They were moist, sweet, and flowery, with a little spice hanging out in there, but it didn't beat you over the head with its flava, which I always worry about when I'm making something new. I also made a rosewater glaze out of confectioner's sugar, Earth Balance, soy milk and uh, rosewater, but that tasted way too flowery, so I busted out the hand-held mixer and got nasty on a mixing bowl with some fluffy vanilla buttercream frosting. Once you commit and whip out the necessary appliance, it's actually pretty easy to make, and it proved a nommable blank canvas of sugary goodness against which the flowery-spicy thing really shone. Happy birthday, Pisces folk!

ROASTIN

2008-03-11T14:02:00.010-04:00

On recent bitter-assed-cold winter days, I've tried to hang out by the oven as much as possible, and thus have turned my attention to one of my fave culinary activities: roasting shit. And by shit, I mean vegetables. I've been going nuts on some brussels sprouts and cauliflower, both of which I used to find totally gross until I discovered that if you pop 'em in the oven and roast the hell out of them, they transform into a magical one-way ticket to Yum Town. It turns out they're actually in the same family, which I of course did not know, but it doesn't surprise me a ton as both acquire a similarly awesome nutty / smoky / woody flavor from roasting.

Here's how you roast some 'sprouts (recipe from my favoritest cookbook here):

Preheat the ov to 400. Slice those bad boys in half. Toss them with like two tablespoons of olive oil, some salt-n-pepa.

Spread them out evenly on a baking sheet, cut side down.

Roast 'em for 15-20 minutes.

If you're adding garlic, which I really think you should, pull out your baking sheet halfway through, flip 'em, and sprinkle on some finely minced garlic (I loff garlic, so I use like three cloves per batch).

They should be brown and crispy when you get through with them. If you see dark burny parts, don't sweat it - they're extra num nums.

Roasting cauliflower is not much different. You pretty much do the same thing to a head of cauliflower that's been sliced into little florets, and no flipping is necessary. I like the flavor so much that I don't even mess around with garlic here - just olive oil and salt n' pepa. I also like to err on the side of twenty minutes with cauliflower, so that they're extra brown. Me and my seester were roasting one the other day, and she was all like, oh, it's been twenty mintues, let's take it out. Since she's a Cautious McGee, I acquiesced, but normally I just wait for it to be a toasty brown all around - if you've got an all-white cauliflower situation in parts, leave it in. If you really want to class up the joint, throw some lemon juice and capers up on those florets. YUM.

I've also been on a quest for the perfect oven fries. After many failed attempts, my quest is over! Here are some oven fries I made the other day, with some broccoli and my fave faux meat product of all time, the Gardenburger Riblet [wrapped in tin foil and baked for 20 minutes].

I've tried bazillions of methods for making oven fries, and routinely fucked them up, and in the end I've come to terms with the fact that you really just have to spread your taters way the hell out and give them lots of room to bake. If you don't, they won't crisp up properly. It took me a few tries to absorb this factoid and put it into practice, but once I did, life became great. Just cut up some Yukon Gold taters (skins on), toss them with olive or safflower oil and the spices of your choosing (I used Cajun spice, but I bet rosemary and salt and pepper would be good, too), spread them out on a lightly greased cookie sheet or two, and pop 'em into a 400-degree oven for 10-15 minutes. Pull 'em out, flip 'em with tongs or a spatula, and roast for another 10-15 minutes.

And, in honor of the BF's awesome new blog, let's hear it for this beautiful dish of roasted veggies that he made himself. I know, I know - around these parts he's often revered for his skilled dish-washing tactics, but he's also an excellent cook in his own right. Here we have golden beets, fennel, cherry tomatoes, and red onions, all sliced and hanging out with some olive oil, basalmic vinegar, salt and pepper... holy yummers.

PEANUT BUTTER PMS COOKIES

2008-03-10T21:35:00.010-04:00

Holy Schnikes you guys, menstruation is for the fucking birds. Here's what happens: I get wicked bad cramps, my immune system goes down the toilet, and I run a low-grade fever, which never stops weirding me out. I've had some ovarian dramz in the past, and still occasionally have to bail on work or fun because of it, and as you might imagine, I get in a nice fuckin mood to match. It varies, but generally there's like a day or two where I just want to like cry and die and punt a toddler and call it a fucking day. Not much can alleviate this spectacle of estrogenal misery. Not painkillers, not red wine, not snorgling The Little Dude, not torturing the BF. Really there's only one thing that can put a dent in my state of crappiness. Actually, to get all specific on ya, it's the combination of two things. That thing is this:

I love chocolate plus peanut butter like Joanie loves Chachie. I don't even know what that means, but I assume it's a lot, as they got their own spin-off based, apparently, on their love. Anyway, I don't know. I just love the shit out of some chocolate/peanut butter combinations, always have, always will. So, when I saw this recipe, from this here cooking blog, which I learned about from esteemed fellow nommer Muffin, I was like hell to the yeah. It's weird, but I never really went in for the classic peanut butter cookies, those ubiquitous, cross-hatched little fellas. They were always too sweet and bland and kind of just made me want plain old peanut butter. BUT, throw some chocolate chunks up in there and that, my friends, is a horse of a different color!

Now, this lady's recipe is adapted from the "More from Magnolia" cookbook, but I of course veganized it and added my basic NOM NOM NOM style to the mix. Here's what I came up with:

NOM NOM NOM HQ PB PMS COOKIES

1 1/4 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour (or you can do 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry and 1/2 cup all-purpose, which is what I did)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup (or 1 stick) Earth Balance, softened to room temperature

1 cup peanut butter, softened to room temperature

1 1/4 cup sugar (that's right, and I don't want any lip about it, neither)

1/2 tsp molasses

2 tablespoons ground flaxseed + 3 tablespoons water, vigorously mixed together until what is known as "flax goop" has formed. This here little concoction is equivalent to 1 egg, but don't play me and just go and use an egg. The flax brings some extra numminess to the table, goddammit! Just try it.

1 or 2 tablespoons soy milk

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate chunks. Not chips, people, CHONX!

Preheat the oven to 350.

Sift together your dry ingredients in a large bowl. Set aside.

Beat the Earth Balance and peanut butter together until they're nice n' fluffy. Mix in your sugar and drizzle in the molasses, beating to combine.

Add in your flax goop, which by the way you should assemble before you begin the recipe so that it has a little time to achieve maximum goopyness. Mix in the soy milk and vanilla.

Add in your dry ingredients, in batches if you want, mixing 'til everything's real nice and combined. Fold in your chocolate chunks. Oh, also, if you're feeling saucy, and want to add some unsalted roasted peanuts or peanut butter chips (alas, a vegan urban legend), let's just say I won't stop you.

Drop rounded teaspoons of dough into a shallow dish of sugar (that's right) and then place on cookie sheet. I did this the first time 'round, and actually abstained the second time and kind of liked it better that way, because then the chewy melty-ness became the main attraction. So try it either way. Totally up to you. Anyway, once those bastards are down on the cookie sheet, allow some space for spreading, and bake for ten minutes and no longer.

Jesus H. Christmas, these were good. Super soft and chewy, thanks to our friend flax, with big melty bursts of chocolate - what more could you ask for from a cookie? For best results, take these lil' guys out after no more than ten minutes, even if they look like they need more time - they don't, trust me, just learn to trust!!! Then, just let them sit on the cookie sheet for a minute or two. The bottoms will be all golden-y and the rest will be nice and chewy, with a gratifying sugary cronche on top. You will cronche these and know that your efforts to do lots of yoga and drink lots of water and be healthy and not destroy your teeth are just totally going down the shitter. Don't fight it. These are truly tasty.

BLACKBERRY OAT MUFFS

2008-03-03T12:09:00.009-05:00

I loff berries, and oats, and since both have definite dump-inducing properties, I decided, in light of my quest, that it was time for them to get together in muffin format. I am currently fighting off the Shady Outbreak-Style Flu That Everyone and Their Mom Has Already Had, so I feel and sound like a crotchety wheezing granny right now. When this happens, I want comfort food. And let's face it, people. If you're getting sick, you should be trying to pee and poo it out! Lots of liquids, and lots of whole grains n' fruits n' veggies. Ideally, something that's tasty, but not too strenuous on the old depleted tastebudz. So, I knew what had to be done.

Now, this is the part where I'm outed as a casual follower of the Skinny Bitch malarky. Here's my two cents on that. I'm gonna say it once, and then we never have to talk about it again. I'm actually kind of ambivalent about it. Yes, on the one hand they're some sexist-assed losers, it's true. The whole "female body as a source of shame / cartoony 'chick lit' packaging / retarded Sex in the City / what up girlfriend, math is hard" thing is obvy deplorable and makes me vom. However, I know like three people who have eased up on the meat consumption after reading that hootchie chicken scratch. Those jokers who wrote those books care about the animalz! And their lame angle garnered a shit-ton of readers, and ultimately kind of put one over on these folks by confronting them with some basic factoids about where burgers come from, and I think that's great. On the culinary front, by the way, they're also pretty wack. They pretty much espouse tossing all your processed carni food in favor of processed vegan food, which is of course a whole mess of nonsense. Anyway, in conclusion, yeah they suck, but they've occasioned a rare moment of public acceptance for the vegetarian folk, amidst an otherwise pretty pervasive period of veg backlash, and that's all right by me.

Where am I going with this? Their cookbook, "Skinny Bitch in the Kitch," (ok, that title's kind of funny to me) has a lot of duds, but it does have a "Basic Fruit and Nut Muffin," recipe, which I've used a few times with modifications, and that's how I got my ass out of bed yesterday to make some life-restoring Blackberry Oat muffs. I am a weirdo, and I don't like blueberry or corn muffins, but I sure do love a really whole-grain-y, fresh-fruit-y baked good in the morning, and these little monsters worked it out for me! Anyway, sorry for the long, ranting preamble, but you know what dude? THIS IS A BLOG. Here's the recipe:

Blackberry-Oat Muffins, NOM NOM NOM style

1/4 cup canola oil

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup organic sugar or Sucanat

1 tablespoon ground flaxseed meal (I just buy it pre-ground. It acts like the egg and binds these suckers together!)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 1/4 cup soy milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 heaping cup frozen organic blackberries, thawed or partially thawed

1/2 cup rolled oats

Preheat the ov to 375. Grease a muffin pan or line it with, uh, muffin pan liners.

Mix together all your dry ingredients, except the oats.

Whisk together all the wet ingredients (I was a bum and mixed them right in the measuring cup, since the BF will kill me if I create more dishes that I intend to never wash)

Combine your wet and dry ingredients, mixing 'til they're barely combined.

Fold in your berries and oats.

Dump into muff pan.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, depending on the frozen-ness of your berries. Just do the toothpick or butter knife in the middle deal to check for doneness.

Git your NOM on!

Oh, and these were incredibly, awesomely tasty the next day, toasted on our cast-iron grill and slathered with some Earth Balance. Check it:

LET'S GET RE-CHARD-ED

2008-02-28T21:59:00.001-05:00

I love me some cooked greens. Plus, I've been feeling kinda sugared-out lately, so the time was nigh to make a num-nums savory chard tart. I know what you're thinking. I was incredulous too! Until I saw that my old friends olives and capers figure prominently in this recipe, which came from a Williams-Sonoma "regional" cookbook, courtesy of the BF's family (part of our haul from the other weekend). Oh, and it turns out that when Williams-Sonoma says "regional," they mean "Dump half a bottle of olive oil in everything you make. Trust us, it totes won't make you fat! This is how they roll in Ye Olde Europe!" So, yeah, a little more needlessly fat-ful than I would have liked, but as you all know, I'm anal and have to follow a recipe to the letter even when it's against my better judgment.

I knew my chard would cook down a whole bunch, but once this actually happened, I realized that I was potentially up shit's creek on the veggie-to-olives-ratio. I had purchased but two large bunches of Swiss Chard, one regular and one rainbow, and removed the tough stems and ribs as the recipe instructed. It soon became apparent that I probably should have gotten three, or possibly even four bunches. I was stressing about this when I remembered that I love olives so very much that eating an olive pie seems to me like a totally reasonable and delicious thing to do, and then I was like those ladies at the end of Thelma and Louise, like, "fuck it, let's just keep going."

Even when I realized that this mother-effer was SMALL. Bizarrely, I do not own a rolling pin, so I got all bootleg and used like, a smooth-surfaced jar to roll out my crust. Don't judge me! I don't need your stupid high-falutin', new-fangled kitchen gadgets! Well, except, I do kind of need a rolling pin.

The end result, though it could have handled a bunch more chard, was fantabulous. BF and I nommed it down so fast I could barely commit the results to digital posterity before it was gone:

Oh, and apparently I spilled some olive oil on the cookbook and then failed to mop it off sufficiently before putting it away. How do I know this? Because here's our bastard-cat licking the cookbook! Little Dude, no! Git off my cookbook!

Savory Tart with Swiss Chard

Filling:

Salt
2 lb Swiss chard or dandelion greens, stems and ribs removed
6 tablespoons [!!!] extra-virgin olive oil [I eased up on the olive oil and still felt gross and wrong]
2 cloves garlic, crushed [I used 3 and minced 'em]
1/4 cup capers, rinsed and drained
3/4 cup brine-cured pitted black olives, drained and chopped [I used kalamata. Kalamata + oregano = YUM]

Pastry:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 dried oregano
1/3 cup [!!!] extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
3 tablespoons dry white wine
1/3-1/2 cup water

[allegedly] Makes 6-8 servings

To make the pastry, mix together your dry ingredients. Make a well and dump in your olive oil. Rub the oil and dry ingredients between your fingers until the mixture resembles wet sand. Add the wine and sprinkle in enough water, 1 tablespoon at a time, so the mixture forms a loose mass when stirred with a fork. Transfer the dough to a clean, lightly floured surface and knead by hand until the dough becomes light and silky, 10-15 minutes. Shape dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or overnight.

To make the filling, boil your greens in lightly salted water until tender, about 8 minutes [I did 5 minutes]. Drain in a colander and set aside until cooled. Squeeze/pat dry, then chop 'em up. [I actually chopped mine beforehand, while waiting for the dough to be ready, and that worked out fine.]

Warm the copious amount of olive oil called for in a heavy-bottomed frying pan. Add the garlic and sauté for about a minute. Add the greens and sauté for another 3 minutes. Add the capers and olives and cook, stirring frequently, until all the liquid has evaporated, about 7 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.

Take out your dough and divide it into two balls, one slightly larger than the other. On a clean and lightly floured work surface, roll out the larger guy into a 12-inch round. Gently lift the dough and drape it over your tart pan, pressing the dough into the edges of the pan. [Which by the way should be lightly oiled and floured!]. Trim the edges of the dough, if necessary, until 1 1/2-2 inches of overhang are left. Spoon in your filling and spread it around evenly. Roll your second ball of dough into a 10-inch round, and drape it over the filling. Moisten the edges of the bottom crust and crimp the edges of the two crusts together with a fork to seal everything in. Pierce the tart with a fork in several places. [I completely forgot to do this, and it seemed to still be fine.]

Bake in an oven preheated to 375 degrees, until the top is lightly golden, about 25-35 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, if you have one, and the patience.

O.P.P. (Other People's Pastries)

2008-02-18T20:00:00.000-05:00

The BF and I have had the winter blues something awful lately. After your standard crappy, drizzly, boring February work week, our 'tudes were in the shitter and we decided a change of scenery was in order. So, we rented a car and headed down to BF's homeland, where the mission was to do nothing but cook, watch TV, sit on our asses drinking beer, and patronize the local big box stores, Salvation Army, and dive bars. We were successful in our mission. Although it's not the most far-flung or exotic destination, it was time to get away and re-charge the old batteries, and it was great.

Usually, we're visiting multiple households for huge, drunken, elaborate meals where even the veggies are slathered in butter, and thus I often feel obliged to bring a whole meal for myself plus a baked good for the fam. Portable baking is a pain in the ass. I've gotten smart and started pre-mixin' all my dry ingredients, and pre-measuring all the wet, but any way you slice it, baking without home court advantage is a risky and joyless operation, and this week I just wasn't feeling it. So, in preparation for the trip, I did the old "google the name of where you're going plus the word vegan," routine, just for kicks. And, behold! The interwebs saves the day AGAIN! Who fucking knew that this magical place was but a mere fifteen minutes from the land of BF's birth?

I have enjoyed their cake products at many vegan establishments here in NY, but I've never been to their actual HQ, nor did I even know they had an HQ. I don't want crap over them too much, but I will say that if you can't get your mits on some homemade baked treats of goodness, this is seriously the next best thing. YOM. Pictured here up top in the extra-nasty food porn is (from the left): a pumpkin effin cheezecake, a chocolate cake, and a peanut butter mousse bomb. These were brought to the BF familial manse and happily consumed by the whole crew.

Also, as a footnote, I won't go into too much detail because it's totes off topic, but the place we stay at is kind of enchanting and debaucherous yet weirdly wholesome, all rolled up into one crazy package. The BF often refers to it as "The Museum of Amazing Crap." I feel like this picture kind of hints at the greatness:

BANANER MUFFS

2008-02-15T08:19:00.001-05:00

These banana muffs are straight outta the awesomely awesome Veganomicon. I don't think I'm allowed to re-post cookbook recipes, or the cookbook people will keel me, but here's some baking porn nonetheless:

You see, I am on a quest for the perfect "dump muffin," or, how shall I put this, muffin that will make me poo a ton. I'm a pretty healthy gal, but let's just say sometimes I've got problems that need to be addressed with muffins of this nature. And I know I don't have to tell you that doodying keeps you healthy and happy, and muffins are yum, so the end result of my quest will clearly be a win-win. I plan to document my quest at length right here at NOM NOM NOM HQ (don't worry, I totes draw the line at turd documentation).

Anyway, these muffs feature the poo-power triumvirate of whole wheat pastry flour, mashed bananer, and wheat germ. I haven't seen wheat germ since the 80's during one of my mom's fad diets, so I was a little worried that these might be gross in that dry, depressing diet cookie kind of way, but my concerns were unfounded. They were the perfect degree of moistness and sweetness, with a lovely crumb. The texture was soft, almost cupcake-like, but with lots of banana-bread style flava. All's it takes to hold these bastards together is some soymilk and canola oil, nothing exotic or freaky-deaky, and you just mix up your batter real gentle-like so that they're extra-soft. Next time, I would maybe throw in some chopped walnuts or pecans, but otherwise, these were a definite home run.

A bit about the ingredients: whole wheat pastry flour is basically your new best friend. It's pretty much very fine-ground whole wheat flour, identical in texture to white pastry flour, but it adds a little bit of healthy, higher-fiber snazz to your baked goods and overall has little to no discernable taste. Depending on what you're making, it can 100% sub for white flour, or if you're really worried about something tasting too whole-wheat-y (like, say, yellow cake), you can do half whole wheat pastry, half white all-purpose. It ain't always cheap, but if this were a Visa commercial, it would say: "Whole wheat pastry flour: $4.99 / five pounds. Taking a monster dump before work and feeling great all day: priceless."

By the way guys, speaking of financial matters, it's time to stop dicking around with cheap, crappy vanilla extract. If you're a grown-assed person, you need to just to bite the bullet, shell out the $12, and get the good shit. It totally makes a difference! I mean, yeah, it's not the cheapest thing going, but c'mon, like, what are your other baking expenses? White flour for $1.99? Sugar for a couple dollars (less if you buy the Domino's bone-char processed shit)? Baking soda for like 59 cents? If you feel dirty about spending so much on a little bottle of vanilla extract, just average everything out to justify it, and you're good to go! Plus, make it fair trade while you're at it, then you can totally feel ok.

As for the dump factor, they made it happen! Not like in a crazy, "I can only eat this like at least two hours in advance of leaving the house," kind of way, but just in more of a stepping in and regulating crazy times kind of way. You know what I mean? In conclusion, if things are a little lackluster for you in the craphouse, give these puppies a whirl.

As a judge on Iron Chef America once said, "she's not the prettiest girl at the party, but you're glad she came." Am I ever!

WALNUT PAH, TAKE 2

2008-02-12T00:37:00.000-05:00

I made the walnut pie again for Sunday night dinner with my fam, and I have some updates to report. It's really a public service announcement. It seems what I told you before is a pack of lies. I did not follow the recipe to the letter, as I usually do because of my anal ways. I had a gut feeling that the sugar/water ratio was gravely lacking on the water side of the equation in that guy's recipe, so I added more than a tablespoon - maybe like three tablespoons (I eye-balled it), and the results, as we discussed, were dope. At first, I thought it was too gooey, but then I was like wait, how is that bad? This is actually awesome.

But of course, being a perfectionist, I decided on Take 2 to follow the recipe exactly to the letter just to see how it panned out. And you know what? I did not pan out to my liking, you guys! It was reeeeeally caramel-y, like rock-freakin-solid. Like I held some Paydays over the open flame of a Bic lighter and dumped the results into a pastry shell, and maybe, like, froze it for good measure. All that was missing was a nice Epoxy-sugar glaze on that whore of a pie. My family and BF, being nice people, politely sawed off a few bites, but I found it pretty inedible, which was kind of a bummer. I guess the upside is that I know I can trust my gut and disagree with a recipe if I want, and it'll be fine, and the other upside is that ya'll are totally gettin' homemade caramels in your Xxxmas stockings, since I've clearly mastered that. So in conclusion, if you're going to make this puppy, up the water content!

Anyway, since I don't have baking porn to offer you, behold the sweet sweet deep-fried parsnip ribbons that the BF made for our Monday night din. These 'snips were up to no good!

WALNUT PAH

2008-02-06T23:27:00.000-05:00

If the Superbowl is the Olympics of deep-fryin' and dip-makin', then Valentine's Day is totally the Olympics of baking. The BF has a monster sweet tooth, which is kind of atypical of dudes, and great for me. I like baking a whole bunch, but I can't really handle the enormous amount of sugary goodness that is the end product of my baking endeavors. That's where the BF and Valentine's Day come on the scene (the other thing about him is, if you give him food, and it's yummy, he will automatically like you forever. Like, I made him a bastardized, poor man's lechón in my pre-vegetarian days about four and a half years ago, he still talks/thinks about it. I often worry that people will get wise to this lovable quirk of his, and start trying to steal him away from me with like grilled meats and cookies and shit). Last year, I made him chocolate cuppers, with yum black cherry filling and a vanilla buttercream frosting scenario, and that seemed to work out well. This year, I've got a few plans up my sleeve.

I'm going to start, as a test run anyway, by making a Frenchy-French walnut pie. BF's Francophile ways, plus a nutty, caramel-y, tooth-humping-ly sweet thing = a home run, or at least that's what I'm thinking right now. He's just finished two and a half days of sleeping off a horrible flu-like super-cold, and he's had no sense of taste for a while, so I'm hoping that (he and) his taste buds will be coming out of it soon and longing to get slapped around by some serious sugar action, so this pie will roll up on them like DAMN!

This recipe is pretty idiot-proof to veganize, and so I think it will be a good intro to veganization for those who think we vegans use like, ground-up grass and a fucking amulet to make brownies. Really, it's super-easy to do. In fact, if you're an NYC-dweller like myself, and live in close proximity to a Regional Yuppie Delicacies (RYD) deli, you can probably score everything you need to make this in one shot. So let's do this! I'm gonna write out the veganized version of this business, with my additions or changes in italics.

1 stick Earth Balance "Buttery Sticks," plus more for smearing on tin foil

There is seriously no substitute for Earth Balance. Sooooo so good. I'm telling you, dude, my parents, who are awesomely supportive but completely dubious of and grossed out by my vegan ways, are hooked on this shit. And they are some dairy-loving 'boomers, man! This magical concoction serves as a 1-to-1 replacement for butter in any recipe, any time, any place.

tin foil

1 pre-made, unbaked pastry shell in a 9-inch pie pan (It's a school night, people! I think when I for reals make this, I'll make a pastry shell from scratch, but hello, Project Runway tonight!)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup Silk Soy Creamer, plain or vanilla flavored (probably just plain old soy or almond milk would be fine for this). Like with the Earth Balance, this is a perfect 1-to-1 replacement for the cream called for in the original version of this recipe.

2 1/2 cups roughly chopped walnuts (there should be large chunks)

Salt to taste.

Preheat oven to 400. Tear off a piece of foil twice as large as crust. Fold it in half and smear it with butter; lay buttered side onto crust. Weight foil with a pile of dried beans or rice (these can be reused for this purpose), or pie weights, or a tight-fitting ovenproof skillet or saucepan — anything that will sit flat on the surface. I used some sticky rice, which used to live in a bag that exploded all over our pantry:

Bake 12 minutes, then remove foil and continue to bake at 350 degrees, until crust is a beautiful shade of brown, another few minutes. Remove and let cool on a rack while you prepare filling. Mine was getting kind of puffy and weird, so I just turned the heat off and let the crust sit in the oven until it cooled, then it was all good.

Put sugar in a heavy 6- or 8-inch saucepan or deep skillet with a tablespoon of water and turn heat to medium. Cook, gently shaking pan occasionally, until sugar melts; then cook, stirring occasionally and scraping sides with a heat-proof flexible spatula, until mixture turns golden. This whole process took about ten minutes, but really reinforced my fear / hatred of cooking. I've had so many shady botched caramel experiences in the past that I was totally apprehensive about this, but BF actually was on standby as my caramel consultant, since he's really the cook of our relationship. I guess my point is, don't stress, just watch the pot and be patient and don't worry if it looks like shit at any point during this time.

Turn heat to low, then carefully add butter and cream. Cook, stirring constantly, until butter melts and mixture is uniform. Stir in walnuts and a large pinch of salt if you like, then spread on crust. Refrigerate for about an hour, then sprinkle with a little more salt and serve.

8 to 12 servings.

So, this was a big hit with the BF. Here's my re-enactment of us sharing a piece of pie:

ME: Mmm, damn. Damn! This is good. You can't have it anymore. It's mine now.

BF: Hey, I thought you made this pie for me.

ME: Well, yeah, but things change, man, people change...

BF: No, get away, it's mine. YOU can't have it anymore!

BF: Mmm... Mmm! Whoa!

ME: Holy shit yum!

BF: Yeah!

[BF chugs glass of water from insane sweetness]

[I chug glass of water from insane sweetness]

And so on.

In conclusion, this was awesomely yummers, and took all of 40 minutes to make. I highly recommend!

LITTLE DUDE, BIG BUTT

2008-02-04T20:58:00.000-05:00

Baking operations at NOM NOM NOM HQ were recently suspended on account of a varmint. That's right, people. We had an EFFIN MOUSE in our HOUSE. And, it turns out that the whole "cat and mouse" thing is totally based in reality. They really do just fuck with it for hours and then only kill it once they get good and bored.

We first noticed that something was up when our pet potbellied pig was found halfway immersed in our garbage, which is actually not all that unusual being that he's a piggy, always on the prowl for anything even slightly edible. But then I went to grab him and pull his front half out of the garbage can, and he was NOT ABOUT letting go. This was unusual because he doesn't like being manhandled too much, and usually when I tell him to say, have some self-respect and stop licking flour off the floor, he kind of skulks off all shamed-like. So this seemed weird. Then, he went BACK into the garbage, dude! And then, once I sufficiently de-garbaged our pad, he was in a little mood, sitting about a foot away from me and the BF, givin' us the stank-eye while we tried to drink some wine and do some joyless debate-watching in peace.

So, in the end, it turns out The Little Dude was trying to get his hunt on and I was cramping his style. He ended up catching the varmint the next morning, having his way with it for a few hours, and finally the BF killed it so's we could get on with our lives and leave and go to work. Now, I'm totes scared to go in the kitchen, and thus, there will be no baking until further notice. In the meantime, here are some pictures of The Little Dude's big butt sticking out from under our kitchen rug while he was doing the deed:

[Edited February 7, 2008: Dude, seriously. Can we talk about that badonkadonk? Crikey!]

And then here he is looking longingly out the door after we disposed of the carcass:

[queue Boyz II Men version of "It's so Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday," montage of mouse-torture]

IMA GONNA PICKLE YOO

2008-01-29T21:36:00.000-05:00

So, I'm going to start things off with an anomalous cooking post. I hate cooking and it stresses me out, but as someone who loves to eat, I am sometimes put in the vexing position of having to make myself food that can't be made in an oven. It's a bummer.

Let's talk about pickles for a minute. Pickles are the shit. I've nommed on a lot of pickled things in my day, and I pretty much love them all. I also happen to be stressing out right now about our imminent Super Bowl party, and trying to make as much crap in advance as possible so's I'm not all sweaty / disgruntled / sober / crotchety on the day of. Thus, PickleFest 2008 was born. Last night I pickled the shit out of some bourgie pre-cut Citarella carrot sticks*, and then went to town on some sweet sweet red onions. I also got some string beans and radishes to pickle, just for poops and giggles. Behold!

Actually, the onions were kind of a bust. I think I picked crappy onions. In addition to handling cutlery like a three-year-old, I'm only just starting to wrap my mind around picking good produce. At the store, these bastards looked shiny, un-gnarly, and in the prime of their lives. Upon chopping them, I discovered that they were pasty and lame instead of purple and sexy. While my recipe promised that my onions would totally turn the color of "a pink piñata," my onions are looking more like a "pink pony," or perhaps even a "pink unicorn." You know, like a paler pink.

The carrots, however, came out pretty awesome. I trolled the Interwebs for a good pickled carrot recipe, and none were really doin' it for me, so I just kind of figured out the basic ratio for brining those sons of bitches and then added the spices I thought would be good. Here's what I came up with:

Pickled Carrots NOM NOM NOM - style

A whole mess of carrots (And just what the fuck is with recipes being like, oooh, just get a pound of carrots. Oh, ok, a pound of carrots. Since I know what that looks like, I will do that. Do you have a scale in your kitchen? 'Cause I actually do not. So I just used a shitload and hoped for the best.) [Edited February 4, 2008: I suppose I could have just said "See picture above." Yeesh.]

4 cloves garlic, sliced or pressed

About an inch of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced

2 cups white or apple cider vinegar (I used white, but I bet cider would be good, too)

2 cups water

1 cup brown sugar

2 tsp. pickling spice

2 tsp. garam masala

1/2 tsp. cumin

Several shakes hot sauce (I used that awesome 85-cent Indi-Pep stuff) (optional if you don't go in for the spicy)

Lay out your carrots in glass or tupperware vessel of some sort.

Sprinkle the sliced garlic and ginger evenly over the carrots.

Combine all the other ingredients in a pot and bring to a boil. Lower the heat a bit and simmer that business for about five minutes.

Remove from heat. Let the brine mixture cool for a bit, if you have the patience. I did not.

Pour that sweet brine over those carrots. Cover (ideally in an airtight kind of situation) and refrigerate overnight.

Now, I think a good 24 hours of hanging out in the brine is all they need. However, my BF, who

hates pickled things, really dug these and even thought they should be pickled a little longer. I'm on the fence. I say, you be the judge.

Now, these may look like shit warmed over, but don't be fooled - they are YUM!

So, PickleFest 2008 continues tonight. I've still got to settle the score with some radishes and string beans.

*That's right, people. I'm not above shelling out the big bucks for the pre-cut shiz. I know the fancy-pants culinary folk out there are thinking that's pretty lame, but listen. I am a shitty, shitty cook and a completely inept handler of knives. It's seriously miraculous that I have fingers left at all.

OH HAI

2008-01-28T23:13:00.000-05:00

This is my blog of baking goodness. What I'm gonna do is bake things, eat them, and talk about them, probably with visual aid and descriptive language punctuated by cuss words and lewd innuendo. I will sometimes use LOLcat-speak, and pretty much everything on here will be vegan, so you're just gonna have to handle that. Anyway, everything in here is going to be highly yummy, nom nom-able, and animal-free. Whenever possible, da food pornz will be included. Also, I will routinely discuss pooping. kthxbai!