Wednesday Food Blogging

Favorite Recipes of 2009

My food blogging has slowed down this past year, mainly because I've traveled a lot and because I really don't need to create new dishes: there are already so many delicious and easy vegan dishes in my repertoire that adding new ones doesn't seem worth the effort. 

Which is why I'm so amazed when someone says being a vegan must be boring—hardly! 

But I thought I'd put together a list of my favorite recipes from this year. While I like all the recipes I've posted, some are real winners. I find myself making them over and over, and especially for company. These are the ones I'd send you if you sent me one of those recipe chain emails.

Of course I've made many, many recipes from cookbooks and other blogs that I haven't mentioned, and which are far more deserving. So take this list with a grain of salt...err, maybe a pinch, though I wouldn't recommend overdoing it.

Favorite Breakfast: 

Scrambled Tofu I make this a lot, especially on weekends. 

Favorite Appetizer: 

Maple Mustard Tempeh with Maple Dijon Sauce I could eat this every day, and not just for an appetizer. It will change your mind about tempeh, that is if your mind needs changing. 

Favorite Bread: 

Spelt Banana Bread This is actually the only bread recipe I've posted this year. But when you find one you like you stick with it. This is it.

Favorite Soup: 

Butternut Squash and Black Bean Soup I love soup. This is one of my absolute all-time favorites. I brought it to a dinner party at a friend's house on Halloween, since it's so Halloweeny colored. 

Favorite Salad:

Wasabi Potato Salad I'm not as big a fan of salads (hence there aren't that many listed here) but when I do make salad, I prefer hearty salads. This is great served warm or cold.

Favorite Side Dish:

Lima Beans with Lemon and Garlic I also don't post a lot of recipes for side dishes, since I prefer simple sides. But this one is one of my favorites, one I find myself making often.

Favorite Main Dish: 

Butternut Squash with Black Beans and Polenta Triangles This is the second time butternut squash and black beans feature in a favorite recipe. There's a reason for that: They're excellent together! 

Favorite Dessert:

Chocolate and Oreo Pudding Again, I haven't made many desserts this year, mainly because my tastes have changed. Plus, it's just the two of us often, and it doesn't seem worth the effort. This one is worth the effort. Trust me.

Chocolate and Speculoos Whatchacallits

 

We've never had a name for these holiday treats my husband likes to make. I remember my great aunt making them every year, along with other specialties. I bet lots of American families have similar recipes involving melted chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and dried Chinese chow mein noodles. 

But butterscotch chips contain dairy fat. So what's a vegan to do? This year I hit upon a solution, found in my cupboard where I keep the many jars of Speculoos I bring back from Belgium. It has a slightly butterscotchy flavor, a sweet caramelized flavor that's just perfect for these chow mein Whatchacallits. Combined with 70% dark chocolate, the Speculoos paste made for even better treats than the original.

Call them what you will. They're quick and easy to make, free-form rather than carefully rolled or sliced like other holiday treats. If you keep a room in your house unheated, like we do, you'll find it the perfect temperature for cooling off the treats and storing them. 

The amounts are pretty loose. We usually used 2 bags of chocolate chips (American-size bags, not the smaller British chocolate chips). Be sure you read the labels to find vegan chocolate chips. Alternately, use 70% dark chocolate bars (we use Divine vegan dark chocolate bars).

Melt 2 lbs of dark chocolate in a large double boiler or a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Add 1 cup of Speculoos (or more to taste). Stir in about 8 cups of chow mein noodles and 1 cup of peanuts. When the noodles and peanuts are coated with the chocolate mixture, spoon them onto wax paper and set in the refrigerator or a chilled room until they're firm. If you have extra chocolate, dip pretzels in it and chill the same way.

This makes a lot, enough for sharing. If you want to make less, cut the recipe in half.

If you live in America and haven't yet found Speculoos, try using peanut butter. I bet it wouldn't make any difference, just don't use too much or else the mixture might not firm up enough. 

And if you know what these things are called, please let me know.

Scrambled Tofu

Eggy scrambled tofu

It occurs to me that some people may think becoming vegan and giving up eggs means no more scrambled eggs. No more huevos rancheros. No more eggy burritos for breakfast.

So I thought I'd correct that impression. Medium firm tofu makes eggcelent (sorry!) scrambled "eggs". Add a dash of turmeric for color, and a dash of black salt for the eggy flavor, and you're well on your way to a hearty breakfast. 

Use medium firm tofu if you can find it—its consistency is much closer to eggs. Do not use Japanese style silken tofu, which you'll find in aseptic packages in the Asian food section of your supermarket. Save that for dessert. 

Don't add too much turmeric—you don't want it to taste like Indian eggs. Just a dash will do—it tends to become more yellow as the "eggs" cook. 

Black salt (which is actually pink) can be found at Indian grocery stores. You may also be able to find it online, if you know an Indian spice supply. If you smell it, you'll see immediately why it imparts an eggy flavor. 

I also added a bit of Cajun seasoning to mine. Of course you can get fancier, and add sauteéd onion, peppers, or even mushrooms.

Like my daughter, you may like to make a breakfast burrito out of yours. Fake bacon and vegan cheese and—horrors—ketchup wrapped up in a burrito. Or eat them with toast and grilled tomatoes, English breakfast-style. 

Update: I forgot to add, you cook these just like you would cook scrambled eggs. Saute in a frying pan with a little non-hydrogenated margarine or oil or oil spray. When the water has cooked out and they're getting dry, they're done. It takes about five minutes, just like eggs.

A cuppa green: an experiment in temperature, caffeine, and carbon

Green and white tea are my drinks of choice, but I've got issues with caffeine. I've always heard that white tea contains less caffeine than green tea, so I would switch to white in the afternoon, hoping to stave off a late-day caffeine high. Recently I noticed that white tea seemed to make me spikey, even more than the mild jolt I get from green tea. I wondered what was going on. 

Sure enough, according to Nigel Melican, one of the world's leading tea authorities, white tea, derived from buds and young leaf tips, has a higher caffeine level—as much as black tea. Green tea does, generally, contain less caffeine, but not always. Different manufacturers, different tea plants, different continents—all affect the caffeine levels of tea. 

And it's no use looking to decaf to save you. De-caffeinated tea likely has had the healthful benefits of tea, the polyphenols, stripped out. (It depends on the process, which depends on your continent, which bears more looking into.)

That's discouraging, since I really need to limit my caffeine, yet I want the health benefits of drinking tea. Plus I just like having a warm cup in my hand. 

So, it's strictly green tea for me from now on.

But how to make the best cuppa green? The article mentions that 80C is the proper temperature for preparing green tea—boiling water (100C) makes a bitter cup. I've been aware of this for some time—I always add a bit of tap water to my kettle after it boils, or else I wait a while after the kettle switches off to pour my cup. 

Interestingly, I'd noticed the taste difference several years ago, when I moved from the high desert of Albuquerque, which is about a mile in altitude, to spend time in Louisiana before moving here. I found the same green tea I previously drank tasted bitter. Of course, water boils at a lower temperature in Albuquerque than at near sea-level. So the taste was likely affected by geography. 

Yesterday I asked my husband, who is a scientist with a background in heat transfer, just how to make a cup of 80C water conveniently. We devised an experiment, of which I'll spare you the details (it involved adding my Maldon salt to ice water to calibrate the thermometer). My inexpensive electric kettle turns off when boiling is achieved, with no option for setting a lower temperature. There are markers, however, for .5 litre and 1.5 litres. The minimum fill is .5 litre. I estimated I was adding to about .75 litre of boiling water approximately 100 millilitres of tap water (actually, reverse osmosis water from a special drinking tap), which is at room temperature, or just less than 20C. It turned out this was too little 20C water to lower the temperature of that much 100C water to 80C. 

The correct proportion is 25% ambient (room temperature) water to 75% 100C (actually, it cools to around 97C when poured into a cool cup). If I add the cool water to the kettle of boiling water, the water becomes the perfect temperature. Alternatively, you could fill a cup a 1/4 full of tap water, then add boiling water, and then place the tea bag in, but I prefer pouring water over the tea bag. 

The real test came when I tasted the first cup of properly brewed green tea. I placed a lid over the cup (my Laura Ashley cup came with a matching ceramic lid) and let it steep a few minutes. When I tasted the tea, I was surprised at how much better it tasted than previous cups, even though I had previously added cool water to my kettle before pouring. I just hadn't been adding enough, and that 10 degrees or so in temperature made a lot of difference. There was none of the bitter, tannic taste that many people, including me, associate with green tea. None.

It was like drinking nectar. Seriously. 

But what about the CO2 consequences? Here, the water gets very muddy. Remember, filling the kettle with more water than you need is always a bad idea, carbon-wise. But even this depends a lot on where you live, and how you boil your water. In the UK, you're probably better off using a pan on a gas stove, since gas is better than the coal-powered electricity you're likely using. But if you live in France, go ahead and plug in your kettle, since your electricity likely comes from nuclear energy, which doesn't release CO2. However, if you're the kind of person who forgets they have a pan of water boiling on the hob, you're better off ignoring the environmental impacts and using the electric kettle anyway, since a major fire would have far worse environmental impacts than your kettle. 

But then, I've heard green tea can improve memory, so regardless of how you heat your water, you're probably doing the right thing by drinking a cuppa green. 

Suspended appetite

It's no good when a food blogger loses her appetite. For those of you who don't read my other blog, we found out a little over a week ago that my dog Bailey had cancer, and on Wednesday she died, rather unexpectedly. She was just 8 years old, an energetic and loving companion. 

I'm one of those people who can't eat while under stress. And this is stress on steroids—grief, waves and waves of grief. I occasionally feel hunger pains, but the thought of any specific food turns my stomach. 

I've been nibbling on Cheerios to stave off the hunger when it comes, half-heartedly eating toast. Right now I'm past due for my usual breakfast of cereal and soy milk, but I'm completely uninterested. (Ironically, my dog's interest in food never wavered.) 

So bear with me. There'll be no recipes for a while, as I really haven't cooked anything that wasn't rote for over a week. Maybe later I'll try to tempt my appetite into making a reappearance. Ironically, I've a house full of food, since on Wednesday I'd stocked up in preparation of staying home while my dog recovered. Hopefully it won't go to waste. 

Vegetarianism: Catch It

This past Thanksgiving was perhaps the veggiest on record. (I'm into records this month.) In my cruising around the web, which is where I get most of my impressions about the United States these days, I noticed quite a few veggie-themed Thanksgiving ideas. The New York Times and the Washington Post both featured vegetarian feasts, with the NY Times posting quite a few recipes on its health and wellness blog.

As I mentioned below, I got my hands on Gourmet magazine's final issue, and on the cover it boasted 20 veggie dishes. That's unprecedented—I'd given up reading it due to the meatiness of its covers. (Note to magazine designers: slabs of beef and bird carcasses are an instant turn-off for veggies.)

It turns out it wasn't just my impression. Kathy Freston (proving that all Kathys think alike) noticed the same thing. Here's her article on AlterNet, 10 Signs Vegetarianism Is Catching On. (Thanks, Bazu, for bringing this to my attention on Facebook.)

It's not all Thanksgiving related—obviously, the rest of the world doesn't even celebrate Thanksgiving but all over the globe people are switching to veg diets, especially as awareness increases of the impact livestock has on climate and environment. Jonathan Safron Foer, who's been all over the TV and the internet lately, says 18% of students on college campuses eat veggie diets. That's a huge increase from when I went to college. 

What's more, there are more vegan cookbooks than ever on the shelves—in the United States, at least. Again, it was Bazu at Where's the Revolution? who brought that to my attention, with her five reviews of five vegan cookbooks in five days. And new vegan products are coming out every day, at least in the U.S. MatchMeats has recently begun selling fake meat products in shops in the East Coast. The food giant Cargill has developed a dairy-free cheese process, which they claim will make commercial vegan cheeses even more like their dairy counterparts. It's tastier and more convenient than ever to be a vegetarian or vegan in America.

But the news is not all good. Developing countries are consuming more and more meat, associating it with the good life their first world brethren have enjoyed for decades. But as Foer also points out, we once changed our diets similarly—we “now eat 150 times as much chicken as we did 80 years ago,” he says, which is a perfect rebuttal to those who say we'll never change our diets: we can and we did. Why not this time go back to the diets our grandmothers ate?

Where to begin, you ask. If you're reading this blog, then you've already been exposed to hundreds of vegan recipes, all of which you are perfectly capable of replicating in your kitchen, I assure you. But if you want more advice, check out another Kathy's Beginner's Guide to Conscious Eating. It's pretty good advice, in fact, I couldn't have written it better myself.