666 is the number of the entree

I have a very mixed history with food pretending to be other food – or, at least, non-meat pretending to be meat. Historically, I’ve disdained it. It’s like the bread and cereal and other items that appear around Passover so that you can still have your Cheerios for breakfast without eating chametz. If you’re going to give something up – especially for a non-medical, non-required reason – then give it up and stop weaseling with technicalities.

But that was a position staked out largely before I gave up pig products, which explains why I have a vegan chorizo recipe photocopied and waiting to be tried. Also, it explains this post.

This is technically my second experiment with seitan, the first being the little curds I picked up the other month and tried to figure out how to use without any sort of directions or suggestions on the package. In my vegetarian Thai cookbook, there is a recipe for making seitan from scratch, the end steps being to either deep fry (preferred) or bake the results. I got something edible out of toasting the store-bought version, so I figured I’d try again.

These may put anyone on the path to carnivorous behavior. They felt exactly the way they look – like rubber.

Thankfully, they look a little more like food and less like mistakes from the tire factory after toasting, even though I believe this type is supposed to be steamed:

As for what to do with them, I opted to go for a Chinese-Thai mishmash (it’s not elegant enough to be called a fusion): a Thai green curry stir-fry.

This is my new-ish wok, by the way. It’s one of those flat-bottomed types for western stovetops. I actually have a proper Chinese wok, complete with a crown that rests on the burner grate, but this is easier to work with. It was originally a bright, shiny stainless steel, but while my seasoning has been irregular, the important part – the bottom – is well done. It’s gigantic, though, and one of the reasons my next home cannot have a tiny stove.

Food that looks exactly like what it’s supposed to be. More or less; the coconut milk is reconstituted from powder.

This is a lot of food and yes, I was eating it all week.

I didn’t make it as soupy as a Thai curry that you get in a restaurant would be – I love that style, but that’s an awful lot of coconut milk to be consuming. It was saucy enough, though, and very tasty.

Dessert was from the other end of the globe: a poppy cake made with the remainder of the mun filling from the Purim hamantaschen. 

cinnamon snaps & benne wafers

Purim was the other weekend, which means I spent a few evenings making hamantaschen in between my enthusiastic efforts to cough up a lung. A few days later, I was informed that the dinner I thought was scheduled for next weekend was in fact the day after tomorrow. More cookies were clearly required.

(But first I had to buy a $2 pineapple.)

I’ve made both of these before and they came out a little differently each time for reasons I can understand and learn from.

 

For the cinnamon snaps, the one thing I must most strongly exhort: use good cinnamon – or at least use fresh cinnamon. Don’t use the stuff that’s been sitting around since the Clinton administration. If it smells only faintly of spice, like an old scratch-and-sniff sticker, treat yourself to some fresh cinnamon and hold this recipe until then or else you risk your other spices overwhelming the tired cinnamon. You want something that’s got a little zip.

I got the recipe from here and didn’t change it appreciably, so I will just point you to the original.

They are icebox cookies, more or less, and while they are not complicated to make or require much in the way of hands-on time, they do take time overall, so not a great choice for a last-minute cookie-baking itch. On the other hand, they freeze fabulously and require next to no defrosting time, so they are a great choice for keeping in the freezer for last-minute cookie-eating itches.

I still haven’t quite figured out how to make them round. Actually, no, I have – wait until they firm up a little and then roll them until the logs are cylindrical – but that would require remembering to do so.

 

On the other hand, these have character.

Benne Wafers are sesame cookies from the Carolinas. They, too, freeze fabulously – and taste pretty darned good straight out of the freezer, too. They’re pretty quick to make and require no resting, so they have that in their favor, too.

 

Benne Wafers
(adapted from the King Arthur Cookie Companion)

1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 oz) unsalted butter [you can use as little as 2 oz]
3/4 cup (6 oz) brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup (4.25 oz) all-purpose flour
1 cup (4.5 oz) toasted sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Cream together first five ingredients. Add flour and mix until well combined. Add sesame seeds and mix until well incorporated.

Drop the dough by the teaspoonful onto greased/papered/silpatted sheets, leaving a lot of space in between — at least two inches. These spread. A lot.

Bake 13-15 minutes, until deep golden brown. Start checking around 11 minutes for the first batch because they go from ‘pleasantly golden’ to ‘char’ pretty quickly when they’re that thin.

Let them sit for a moment on the sheet, then transfer to a rack to cool.

 

Now here is where I have to confess that my pictures don’t quite reflect the recipe that is printed above. And it wasn’t until I typed out the recipe that I realized why.

The first time I made these (sadly undocumented by pictures), they came out flat like florentines. This time, as you will see, they are fully 3-D, although they were still tasty and perfect in every way.

The difference? I accidentally halved the butter. I read ‘4 tablespoons’ instead of ‘4 ounces’ and used only half a stick of butter instead of the full stick. So I accidentally made a light version of these cookies. But since they did come out so well with half of the butter, I might consider doing it on a regular basis.

Even with half of the butter, they still spread:

lentil soup with caraway

Last month’s Saveur was full of all sorts of good things, but what did I immediately decide I was going to make first? Any of the glorious maple syrup recipes? The Sicilian fare? The lentil soup.

It’s perhaps also just as telling that I had caraway seeds and coriander seeds to hand, but had to wait until I went and bought a carrot.

 

Lentil Soup with Caraway
(adapted from Saveur)

1-2 tbsp. canola oil
2 medium yellow onions, roughly chopped
1 carrot, roughly chopped
2 tsp. coriander seeds, toasted and finely ground
1 tsp. caraway seeds, toasted and finely ground
2 cloves garlic, crushed
6 cups stock
1.5 cups red lentils, rinsed and drained
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

 

1. Heat oil in a good-sized pot. Add onions and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 10 minutes. Add coriander, caraway, and garlic and cook, stirring often, until fragrant, 1–2 minutes. Add stock and lentils and bring to a boil; reduce heat to medium-low, cover with a lid, and cook, stirring occasionally, until lentils are soft, 15–20 minutes.

2. Using a blender or food processor, purée until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

There’s a shallot here, you might notice. I had a few extra and my onions were tiny.

I toasted the caraway and coriander on the stovetop until they were fragrant, then tossed them into my non-coffee grinder.

These are the lentils that look pretty dry and then lose their color once cooked. I used these because I had them, but I think next time, I will just go with the regular brown/green ones and just cook everything longer.

All done but the shouting (or the immersion blender). The original recipe calls for vegetable stock and I used chicken – half bouillon and half rich homemade. The end result was definitely a little meatier than what you would have ended up with just the bouillon or straight veggie stock. I think for warmer weather, I’d go with bouillon or veggie stock.

This is not a soup one makes for looks or texture. 

The original recipe calls for mint and greek yogurt, which is certainly an option. But I thought an apple (a pinata apple!) was a nice complement – sweet and tart.

candied grapefruit peel

There’s a story about a tornado, wonky internet, wonky graphics cards (again!), and inertia, but nobody cares. On to the fruit!

 

Candied fruit is pretty straightforward – boil in water, boil in simple syrup, dry, sugar.

When I did these with orange peels, I shaved off some of the pith after the boil-in-water phase. The grapefruit peel was much thinner, so I didn’t bother.

After boiling in simple syrup – equal measures of water and sugar – for 45 minutes, the peels are translucent. And sticky.

Part of the way through the sugaring process, plus the leftover syrup.

After they’re sugared, they have to dry in open air for at least a day, two or three even better. Tap off the sugar and store in an airtight container.

cakes of woe: a tragedy

After posting about a cake that divides easily and tastes fabulous, it’s time to delve into a cake recipe that… did not turn out quite as planned. Abject failure would be closer to the truth.

The local library had a copy of Small Batch Baking, which features cakes, pies, and cookies reduced down to one- to two-person portions. I wasn’t so interested in the cookies – if you’re going to turn the oven on for two cookies, might as well make the whole batch and freeze the rest. But for cakes and pies, things that are both not meant to last as single or double-consumption items (or are dangerous when left lying about as temptation), it’s a pretty nifty idea. Even my half-sized blueberry cake gets a little soggy by the end when there’s only me to eat it.

The clever factor of the little cakes is supposed to extend to the preparation. Some of it does seem quite clever – using an individual loaf pan as a mock jelly roll pan for a roulade, using giant muffin tins as small cake pans, etc. And some of the individual cakes are made in cans. Regular small-sized (15 oz) cans, each of which gets through two or three turns before being replaced, which is simple and easy, since everyone uses cans… except I don’t really. I use canned tomatoes and, when I lack foresight, canned chick peas. But other than that, there are no cans in my repertoire. Which means I had to wait a bit before being able to make one of these recipes; fortunately, I remembered not to recycle the chick pea cans after a spur-of-the-moment curry.

The test cake was a white chocolate cake; you can see the white chocolate (actual white chocolate, not white “chocolate” – never cook with the fake stuff). The experiment came out to an auspicious beginning in that the batter came together easily and looked and tasted perfectly normal.

Even if it didn’t come out to much.

Around here is where I started wondering if I was going to have trouble getting the finished cakes out because of the lip on the cans. The BFF has a can opener that takes the entire top off so that there’s no lip, but the cake was getting frosted, so anything imperfections would have been covered up.

… and now you see why I put the picture at the bottom instead of at the top.

Getting them out wasn’t too much trouble – it was sort of like getting tennis balls out of the old-style cans – but that turned out to be the least of the problems.

These little darlings, which despite appearances were fully cooked, were inedible. “Leaden” is probably the best adjective. I ended up throwing them away with extreme prejudice, lamenting even the small amount of ingredients wasted. I’d toyed with the idea of picking up 2” cake pans if these had looked like cakes I’d want to make regularly, since the pans are cheap enough and I’d never use that many cans, but that turned out to be a moot point.

I ended up returning the book to the library without either buying cake pans or, for that matter, buying the book (which I could have gotten for $3 on Amazon). I don’t want to make two cookies at a time and, well, after some less than successful cake attempts, I’m back to learning how to make do with 6” pans and the wonderful world of freezing what you can’t eat.

blueberry buckle

One of my weaknesses in the summer is to empty my wallet on berries. The two places by work where I buy my fresh produce often have good sales on berries – 3-for-$5, the odd 4-for $5 for blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries depending on the season. It’s not unusual for me to splurge twice in one week, not when berries go so well with the morning cereal or on yogurt or on salads or… Let’s just say I eat a lot of berries in the warm-weather months.

Oddly enough, though, I never really get around to cooking with them. I have never made a blueberry or blackberry pie, have never made a raspberry torte, have never made jam or preserves out of berries or even a simple fruit sauce or coulis. They don’t last that long. I think the sum total of my fruit desserts can be a failed cake and a couple of clafoutis, all made in the dead of winter with berries I’d frozen.

This summer, however, I finally got around to cooking fruit I’d just bought. It was by accident, more or less, because I was flipping through my little cake book and stumbled upon a recipe that appealed. And so I grudgingly spared some of my fresh bounty from being inhaled au naturel and tried it out.

I’ve made this cake three – four? – times already. I’d say it was a keeper except it would be a bad pun considering the recipe comes from Cake Keeper Cakes, which I purchased back when I’d bought myself the cake stand.

As for the book itself, it’s been hit and miss; I’ve made three cakes from the book, all chocolate-related, and haven’t been amazed by any of them. This one, however, is certainly in the ‘hit’ column.

The cake has a couple of things going as far as I’m concerned, above and beyond fruit, which always improves a cake.

First, it divides well. I can split the recipe in half, making one six-inch cake instead of one nine-inch cake, without any ill effects and it comes out splendidly.

A bonus, since not everyone is a lapsed mathematician like I am, is that there are no strange measurements involving complicated fractional division not covered by your average kitchen measuring cups. The hardest division is turning 3/4 cup into 3/8th cup and you can do that by eyeballing with your 1/2-cup measure the way you would with your cup measure.

Ingredient-wise, the only complication is to halve the one egg, which is a non-problem for me because I keep egg substitute in the fridge and just measure out one ounce for half an egg.

Secondly, and non-trivially, the recipe’s not butter-heavy. Anything with a streusel on top is going to be adding a ton of butter and sugar, but this is actually pretty mild. The ‘full’ recipe only requires a stick of butter total for both cake and streusel, so half a recipe is just half a stick of butter, which is pretty fair.

Thirdly, it’s flexible. I don’t own a six-inch springform (although I’m considering it), but I can get away without one with some deft maneuvering. A springform pan definitely would help here, but it’s not like it’s a cheesecake or something else that just won’t work out in a standard one-piece pan.

Fourth, hey, it’s really good and it’s really simple and it has fruit and that’s pretty much what’s important.

 

Blueberry Buckle
(adapted from Cake Keeper Cakes)

makes 1 9-inch cake (halve for 1 6-inch cake)

Preheat the oven to 375F.

for the streusel

1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tb (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix, either in a mixer or with a fork or fingers, until the consistency is of wet sand and the flour is absorbed. A few lumps are great, just make sure none of them are solid brown sugar.

Cover and refrigerate until needed.

for the cake

4tb (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 egg [1 oz egg substitute for half a recipe]
1 tspn vanilla

2 cups flour, divided
2 tspn baking powder
1/2 tspn salt
 
1/2 cup milk

3-4 cups blueberries, rinsed and dried carefully.

 

Put the blueberries in a bowl or large container with a lid and add 2 tb of the flour or enough to thoroughly coat the berries. This is to keep them from all sinking to the bottom when the cake bakes, so be thorough. Shake gently (if using a covered container) or fold gently if using a bowl, then set aside. Give it a shuckle or two while assembling the batter.

Combine the rest of the flour with the baking powder and salt and set aside.

In the mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add the egg and vanilla and continue to beat until the batter is lemon-colored and smooth.

Starting with the dry ingredients, alternately add the flour mixture and the milk in segments: dry-milk-dry-milk-dry, letting each component thoroughly incorporate before adding the next.

Fold the blueberries (including any remaining flour) into the batter gently with a spatula. Try not to mash too many of the berries in the process.

Grease a 9-inch springform pan and dump the batter in gently.

Deposit the streusel on top, making sure that it’s relatively even and no streusel mountains exist.

Bake for 55-60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. You may need to poke more than once not to hit a blueberry.

When it’s done, leave the cake to cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes on a baking rack, then remove from the pan and let cool on the rack directly.

Serves 8-10.

take me out to the ballgame

Citi Field is supposed to have a wealth of fine stadium dining opportunities. It has a Shake Shack, Blue Smoke, high-end sushi, Korean barbecue, taquerias, and dozens upon dozens of other options including the old standbys of dogs and fries and pretzels.

I finally got to Citi for a baseball game last weekend. It was my first at the new stadium, but I seem to have brought my old habits with me. I packed dinner.

This is my big bento. It says on the bottom that it holds 1.1 liters (37+ ounces), but I’m a little dubious because the big compartment fits maybe a tablespoon more than my 10-ounce capacity thermos. Anyway, it’s still too big for lunch unless I’m going to put salad in the big compartment, so I don’t use it that often.

Contents:

Tea-and-chili chana curry, made properly this time, and basmati rice.

Some of the cucumber and poppy seed salad and then a pluot and some blueberries.

I heated up the curry and kept the salad and fruit in the fridge until it was time to go. I checked with Citi Field’s rules about bringing food in – they’re more worried about liquid and bottles, but clear food containers are apparently fine. I say apparently because while I had to get on the line to get felt up/patted down by the female guard, the look into my backpack was cursory at best and I was not asked to unwrap the bento, which was covered in a tea towel and clear plastic bag.

All in all, it might not be as trendy as Shake Shack, but I think it worked fine for ballpark food.