Deb's Night: Mushrooms and Pretzels, vegan style

Our official menu tonight:
Soft Pretzels (The Joy of Vegan Baking)
Mushroom Soup (Veganomicon)
Radish, Corn, Avocado Salad (The Conscious Cook)
Jelly Cupcakes (Veganomicon)

"Money is Never an Object For Cooking Club"

Walking into cooking club today, I was greeted by a tremendously organized kitchen, a la Stations of the Place, but today it's even better, because the blogging station has also been set up.  Epic.  Anyway, Deb takes a very healthy approach to cooking club, where she, you know, plans ahead of time, and apparently spends as much  money as is necessary to follow the recipe.  You know what that means?  Chantarelles.  (!)  Who are we that get to eat fancy pants mushrooms?  I like it.  Even in spite of being mostly sick.  Sniffins (Sarah) is here, which is fitting, because she totally got me sick.  She's on cupcake duty, and her mise en place is epic.  Epic!

Soft Pretzels

Bri is on the pretzel station, and Deb got his mise en place set up in a pretty thorough way beforehand.  Just like Grandma did, apparently.  So the yeasted dough was made ahead of time, and then all Brian had to do was form the dough into lumps to rise more, and finally get turned into pretzels.

As it turns out, 'turning into pretzels' requires more panache and skill than was expected, so the job was turned over to Jim.  Jim, working with pottery, has lots of practice in this sort of thing, so we passed the job on to him.  Sniffins, who hates being told that she can't do something, then decided that she could do it too.  And finally, Deb gets a go, too, so we can compare everyone.  Some pretzel recipes call for boiling the dough in baking soda water, but this one just calls for dipping in the baking soda solution.  It's ambiguous whether you dip before or dip after, and also ambiguous whether it calls for an egg wash.  Sniffins decides that egg wash is the way to go, so it happens!

Here are some helpful examples of how to/not to make pretzels.  I let you decide on your own preference.

Jim

Deb

Brian

Sara

Pro-tips for pretzel making:

• the longer roll you make, the easier it is to pretzel them.
• sea monster pretzels look pretty awesome
• recipes are for chumps

Salad

Today's salad is going to be pretty special - it appears to involve fresh corn, avocado, arugula and agave radishes.  Agave radishes?  Yes.  Jim is patiently slicing radishes, which will then be blanched, and soaked in agave with ice water. Green beans also got blanched and chopped, and the collection of vegetables looks pretty wonderful.  The dressing is supposed to be a vinaigrette, but we were discussing previous dressing successes to perhaps do instead.  My personal favorite is to blend things into a dressing - herbs are great, of course, but lately I've been smitten with blending a whole orange into a vinaigrette.  So good!  We'll see if I can convince these crazy people that are so into following the recipe...

Actually,  our dressing was made by straining the corn out of some delicious corn salsa from Trader Joe's.  Take that, boring vinaigrette.

Deb: "What are these herbs for...oh yeah!  The salad!"

Fresh basil - oh, man, what an intoxicating scent.



Mushroom Soup

So Deb has a collection of fresh mushrooms from the Farmer's Market, as well as dried Chantarelles from the Whole Paycheck.   Garlic, Onions, Wild Rice and homemade stock went in, too, and now we're letting it cook.  And cook, and cook, and cook.  Wild Rice, as it turns out, takes a long time to cook.  And cook and cook.  Fortunately I can use this time to write the blog, and listen to the gang talk about Ira Glass, lucid dreams and NPR.

Jim: "the rice is done."
Deb: "but it's all wet!"
Jim: "...it's a soup..."


Cupcakes

Sniffins is on cupcakes, which I think are supposed to be weird vegan cupcake versions of jelly donuts.  It's from the Veganomicon, though, which is really a pretty delightful cookbook.  So we're not at all skeptical, no.  Anyway, Sniffins mixed the ingredients, and after a snafu involving a cup of corn starch, which was fortunately early enough that we didn't stay committed to a cup of corn starch.

An aside, there is apparently a town in China called "Usa", so that people can say things like "made in USA" and not technically be lying.  Yup.  The shirts at the Hempest that say "Made in Boston" on the front are in fact made in China.  Bleh.

Anyway, the batter ended up a little lumpy, but not so bad.  I can tell you, since I...uh...ate the batter out of the bowl.  Yup.  So we discovered that the best way to pour into the cupcake cups was using the bowl with a pouring spout.  These jelly donut cupcakes involve putting jam on top of the cupcake batter, with the notion that the jam will seep in to the cupcake as it cooks.  We ended up with raspberry jam, which is going to perhaps be too fancy for a jelly donut, but we're fancy people, so we'll just make it work.  The most mysterious part of the recipe is that we're supposed to let the cupcakes get stale (?!) before eating them.  Follow-The-Recipe-Deb is following the recipe.  Stale cupcakes it is.

Pro-tip:  The jam just stayed on top.  It would probably be easier to fill the cups up halfway, add the jam, and then put a little more on top.


Final Results

Golden cooked pretzels with sea salt.

Salad, in all its glory!

Cupcakes with powdered sugar.

Mushrooms soup with wild rice.

Reviews

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim	Sniffins
Salad	B+  The fresh oregano was overpowering, but I love the avocado!	B.  But only because I don't really care for arugula.  But!  Tasty!	A-. I would definitely make it again but I need a creamy dressing.	A-.  I think it needed more dressing.  Even the radishes were edible (read: high praise)	A-.  Fresh oregano: wacky.
Pretzels	B  Fresh bread is good, but, you know, it wasn't a pretzel.	As pretzels go they made really great dinner rolls...B+  (hey!  salt!)	C- but what Brian said.  I'm just harsher.	B.  They were delicious rolls.  They needed to be boiled.	B-.  They were delicious dinner rolls, but not pretzely.
Soup	C-  All I tasted was the rice.  It needed more salt, more fat, and more flavor.  Maybe some soy sauce?	A.  I would make it again, and I would encourage other people to make it again!	C-.  It was bland somehow, and I really just tasted wild rice.  PS, I put no salt in.	A-.  I think it would have benefitted from larger chunks of mushroom.  Just something...some little extra flavoring.	A-.  More broth!  I thought it was so good!
Cupcakes	B  They weren't so bad!  I liked them.	B-.  I liked it better than I expected.	I definitely wouldn't make them again.  That's like a B-...they tasted like breakfast.	B+.  I think they're fairly decent, but they could be improved.	C+. Undercooked -- I think they needed frosting.  Also, they jelly should have been buried!  It would have been easy!

Farscape:

Sniffins:  That shit's so terrible.
Deb:  We're taking two weeks off.
Bri:  Meh.
Jim:  I wanna...shoot the TV or myself.
Alex:  I was happy to be blogging the whole time.

Alex's Night: Cake! Quinoa! Croquettes!

Hello, readers! It's Saturday the 14th and Boston Marathon Weekend, AND both Deb and I have had to work before coming here, so tonight is going to be Special.

Rommy the Wonder Dog quickly notices that my arms taste good, and devotes his full attention to me for the first five minutes after my arrival. Um, yay?

Tonight's Menu:

Root Vegetable Croquettes with Goat Cheese and Golden Raisins with Mint Creme

Quinoa-Spinach Torte with an Avocado-Orange Coulis
Tomato Cake

First thing we make: Tomato cake!

Tomato batter

Note one: The recipe calls for a can of condensed tomato soup. Ha! We've blended up our own roasted tomatoes to create a soup-consistency tomato 'soup'.

Tension rises when we measure flour: Alex wants to do it the way described by, oh, every cook and recipe book ever, while Deb is instinctively suspicious of "quote-experts-unquote". It's Alex's night; we measure it his way.

Alex can't remember where he got the inspiration for this...Deb wonders if the pepper jelly from last week was a subconscious influence, and it does seem possible.

Batter stage now, and there are lumps. We fear the lumps. But we cross our fingers, and the cake goes in the oven.

Sidenote one: Is prostitution legal in Colombia? None of us are sure. It's not a pressing issue (though maybe I should note that I'm just assuming that), but it's the part of the news story about the Secret Service scandal that we're all puzzled by.

Sidenote two: Deb is off her juice fast! Hello renewed interest in solid foods! Yay! Hello new determination to make healthy low-calorie vegetarian meals for both her and her spouse (me) to eat! (Um...yay?)

Spinach, we assume

Sidenote three: We are all stymied, utterly STYMIED, by the question of whether or not a certain leafy green in the fridge is spinach or not. It's one of the (few) downsides to getting local organic (and unlabelled) stuff. We're going to use it, don't get us wrong, we THINK it's "spinach tree", but for all we know we're about to make the world's first quinoa-cilantrolery torte.

At what point did the sidenotes get bigger than the post? Let's just forge ahead. As the sky darkens over scenic East Boston Deb is getting the quinoa ready for the torte as Alex works on the spinach and Rommy licks my elbow. To every thing there is a season, turn, turn, turn.

We now have a debate over whether something is a potato or not! It might be a yam, or maybe a sweet potato....then we have to pause and figure out whether there's a difference between a yam and a sweet potato. Yes, it's that sort of night.

"If I were the body of this, where would I be?" asks Jim, as he looks for the mixer. There's a brief mental struggle to turn that into a "That's what she said!" joke, but it's not quite possible. :(

Mixing the vegetables for the croquettes

Jim takes a brief break from making mashed root vegetables to put Fiona Apple on MOG. As she brings us '90s flashbacks in the background Jim gets Deb's opinion with an Excel problem, part of his coursework. Alex, meanwhile, sautes the quinoa over on the stovetop. We move on to making the root vegetables into little breadcrumb-coated patties, preparatory to frying them.We "go a little nuts with the breadcrumbs". We have Panko, and we're not afraid to use it!

Croquette dredging!

Pre-fried croquettes

Update to sidenote one: Prostitution *is* legal in some parts of Colombia. Knowledge is power!

Alex is taking the quinoa-spinach delight out of the frying pan and into a prep bowl, and then into a baking dish, as Deb grates cheese for the croquettes.

Deb is trying to tell me something through sign language and lipreading that looks like "I have a hand that's very large". I'm not sure that's right, somehow. A minute later she manages to grate part of her finger, but when it comes down to the possibility of the food taking longer to be ready she WILLS the blood back inside her body and keeps on prepping the cheese.

Alex knows a surprising number of Fiona Apple lyrics by heart. I'm just sayin'.

Jim is enforcing mise en place rules in a hardcore way! He's also describing the plot of an episode of 'Bridezillas'; just hearing about it raises Deb's stress level. Deb prepares the mint, and we all commiserate with Alex over his having to work on Patriots Day. (Note to out-of-towners: many folks in Boston have Patriots Day off, due mostly to the fact that the Boston Marathon runs right through the middle of town and shuts down pretty much every major roadway.)

Jim and Deb compare notes about growing up Catholic, and manage to make it sound (to this former Nazarene who still has his 1st place trophy from 5th grade Competitive Bible Quizzing ((Book of Matthew, boyee! )) ) like an astoundingly Bible-free time. Scandalous! Alex, to round out the religious training, describes the sermon he had to give as part of Hebrew School.

We try a sample root vegetable croquette, and it's nummy! And HOT, ow ow ow the hot oil burns my hand ow. But we're definitely on the right track.

Deb praises the orange--it's *perfect*, and she feels sad that Jim won't have it any more after we chop it up for the coulis. Jim, who has different priorities, is okay with this.

Alex being cheffy

Jim working and Brian...

Deb takes a break from hanging over my shoulder to take pictures (which you are probably looking at right now! Well, not RIGHT now, you're reading this, but you've been and/or will be exposed to them very very very shortly). "Do something cheffy, I need an action shot" is overheard.

It's noted that the pottery you're seeing in these pictures was made right here in this very apartment! Jim is an excellent potter as well as a scholar. And nothing says 'Happy Solstice' like a new mug or platter. YOU know what I'm talking about.

"Sea of Love" comes on MOG. Does anyone else remember the Honeydrippers and their version of this song from the mid-80s? Every time I heard it, I felt my soul die a little, like salt falling on a snail. I'm not saying this version is worse...it doesn't have a backup chorus singing "BUM bum bum"....but. But.

We now do something Alex calls Ridiculous: we are RE-BLENDING the coulis! (I'm glad I'm sitting down.) The food processor leaves chunks, you see, and Alex demands smoothness. We shall not rest, we shall blend it over the stove, we shall blend it on the beaches, we shall blend it in the streets. And then hold onto your britches, because after our blending has triumphed we're going to put it in a squeeze bottle and get Artistic on this.

Jim Goes There, by saying that there's no difference between Fiona Apple and Alanis Morrisette. A million Canadians weep.

It's time to assemble our plate!! We have, unfortunately, used every single mint leaf in the house leaving none for garnish (where was the Lorax to stop our reckless ways?)

Dinner is served! On the left Quinoa Torte, on the right, Vegetable Croquettes

One meal later.....

Brian's notes: I expected to like the root vegetable patties, and I did, but the real pleasant surprise was the quinoa. YUM.

Alex's: He really liked the croquettes; the goat cheese inside mixed with the potato was really good, and he thinks the thing that would have made it even better was if there had been more golden raisins. Each time he bit into one was a moment of happy delight! The mint stuff was very elegant; it was fluffy and had a subtle flavor, which he thought paired well. The quinoa, he felt, was pretty good. B or B+; it could have used a little more spark. It was solid.

Jim's: Croquettes were awesome! He liked the mint sauce a lot more than he thought he would; they were good with the orange and avocado; he would make them again in a heartbeat. Quinoa was also pretty darn good--B+ for that one.

Deb's: C- on the croquettes, not a fan. They tasted like bread and cheese. The quinoa, on the other hand, gets an A...she'd make that again right away. She loved the avocado-orange sauce! It would make a great salad dressing. The mint dressing, she feels, would have been better with more mint and more blending. (She doesn't like things that taste like cheese or fried foods, she says, so YMMV on the croquettes).

Note on the cake: the tomato coulis was mixed with baking soda; the tomato being acidic, this caused immediate foaming action! The tomatoes were roasted first in an attempt to bring out their tomatoey flavor...the baking seems to have taken this flavor largely away, though. We make it a two layer cake, with a little pepper jelly in the middle.

Cake notes:

Fugly cake, hidden tomato!

Deb: It tastes like a breakfast cake. Which is good! Cakes are overrated! This tastes like a muffin! (Alex: "Ouch".) Deb says: I'm not sure why you're not into the 'black beans in a cake' idea. (Jim: "Because it sounds horrible") Later addition to her review: This is really good with a lot of frosting and the jelly! This is basically like the innards of a cannoli. B+, liked it a lot! Not sure she'd make it again like THIS, though.

Alex: His frosting job makes it look like a tombstone, he says. He liked the cannoli frosting, thought the cake was too dense; the tomato taste was forgettable. C+....he DID have seconds, note ye, but it was mostly a frosting delivery vehicle. Could he have done the soda and powder wrong, he wonders? He notes that he made herb butter to enhance the flavor, and it was all lost, lost!

Jim: He gives it a B-. The flavor was alright but the texture was too tough.

Myself: B-, but with potential...it's like it gave a tiny hint of what it COULD have been, but there wasn't enough flavor (read: pepper jelly) to overcome the blandness. More spices! Of course, you could also cut the tomato and just make a spice cake and I'd be happy, so maybe my advice isn't what's needed.

Our Farscape episodes tonight: Season 2's "Look at the Princess", parts 2 and 3. There's disappointment with an escape in the first of the episodes, which leads to debate about how long someone unprotected can survive in vacuum, which leads to googling astronaut deaths in space, which...is not really the road you want an upbeat cooking club night to go down, amirite?

Brian's Night: House de Mouse II: Or how none of us should do math

Our official menu tonight:



Jollof Rice A Rissotto-ish rice and beans from West Africa

Corn Pudding A spinach & corn pudding from East Africa
Honey Cake with a honey brittle center

Jollof Rice

Boma - Flavors of Africa

Animal Kingdom Lodge

Yield: 16 servings
Ingredients:
16 ounces Chickpeas/Garbanzo Beans. wash off brine
16 ounces Kidney Beans, wash off brine
2 quarts Coconut Milk
2 quarts Water
2 pounds Onions, diced chunky
Canola Oil
2 ounces Ground Turmeric, toasted
2 ounces Ground Coriander, toasted
2 each Cinnamon Sticks
4 quarts White Rice/Jasmine/Basmati, washed
8 ounces Sugar
1 ounce Chopped Cilantro
To taste Salt and Pepper
Method of Preparation:
1. Prepare the chickpeas and/or Garbanzo beans according to the directions on the package. Set aside. 2. Heat oil and sauté onions. Add turmeric, coriander, and cinnamon

sticks.
3. Add rice, coconut milk, and water.
4. Add sugar, salt and pepper.
5. Continue stirring, and add more water as needed until rice is cooked.
6. Add in chickpeas/beans at the end. Cook long enough to heat the beans through. Serve.


The Disney recipe serves 16, which is even too much for Hungry Deb, so we cut it down to 4. Math isn't our strong suit (we're studiously ignoring the fact that Alex math's for a living.) How If we are supposed to use 1/4 of an ounce, how many teaspoons is that? My head hurts! I'm glad I get to sit here and snark and not have to cook!

Corn Pudding

Sweet Corn and Spinach Pudding
Boma, Animal Kingdom Lodge

Ingredients:
½ cup Onions (diced)
1 tablespoon Butter
½ teaspoon Thyme (fresh picked then chopped fine)
2 cups Fresh corn kernels cut from the cobb
½ gallon Milk
1 quart Half & Half
1 quart Water
1 pound Polenta (ROLAND, raw but par cooked)
¼ cup Yellow Corn Flour
2 tablespoons Salt
2 tablespoons Sugar
½ cup Parmesan Cheese
SPINACH (ADD AS DESIRED)


Method of Preparation:
Saute onions with butter in a heavy bottom pot. Add corn kernels and Saute a few minutes. Add milk, water, and half & half. Mix the polenta and corn flour together dry and set aside. Bring just to a boil and whisk in cheese, salt, pepper, sugar, then the polenta/corn flour mixture in a steady stream. Keep whisking to ensure a smooth mixture. Turn stove off and whip a little longer to keep smooth as it thickens. Taste to ensure flavors are balanced, and enjoy!!

Honey Cake

I don't seem to have the recipe, but honestly, the cake was just ok. The ends where it got nice and crisp were pretty good, but the rest of the cake was a little tough. The Honey/Tea Whipped Cream was just AWESOME. I would not have thought adding tea to a whip cream would be a good idea, but it was. I'm betting the left over whip cream was super duper A1 in Bri's morning coffee.

I'll try to get the recipe and update it later.










For those of you wondering what happened to our first excursion to deepest darkest Africa (well, Disney's version of Africa) the embarrassing answer is I'm still working on it. I'm a bad blogger and Bri deserves a better chronicle of his nights . Hopefully soon.



Alex and I arrived at Bri&Deb's bearing gifts. Diet Coke and a TV. Well, the DC was really for me, but why can't I have nice things? The TV was left in the lobby of my building and we grabbed it for them. Their TV had volume issues and this one worked so we snagged it. Should I mention that we almost got arrested putting it in the truck? I think I'll let you stew on that and wonder if it's dramatic license or not.

Things were a little tense tonight at times for a number of reasons. Deb was having a bad week with her juice fast, We were forced to alter pretty much every recipe and Deb & Bri believe that people make recipes to be followed. Alex and I were attempting "to be good" and not make total pigs of ourselves. The biggest reason was probably because we're all bad at math. [We're studiously ignoring the fact that mathification is a central part of Alex's job] Some of it was forgivable (how many tbls in an ounce, etc.), but really, we should be able to cut a recipe in half. We're all really smart people. Allegedly.

Quotable Quotes:

-- Should we make 4 servings or 8 of the the rice? [Thank little baby cheeses we had a appetizers that we only made 4] See below for why.
--Oh, hungry Deb, it's so good to see you again. [Believe it or not, Hungry Deb stayed through the entire evening.]
At least I didn't wash my hands over the soup.
-- Will the pudding curse come back to haunt us [It did not!]
-- you better not be taking a picture of my crotch.
-- I am, but only because it's near the honey brittle.

For those paying attention, Bri and Deb share custody of the Greendale Community College hoodie. Apparently it's Bri's week. And this is the cutest picture ever. Apparently Honey tea Whipped Cream brings out the schmoopie.














All in all, we had one really good thing (corn pudding), one perfectly fine thing (the cake) and one awful wretched terrifically evil thing (the Jollof rice). Combine that with some plot development in Farscape, and I'll count the night a qualified success. ~Jim

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Jollof Rice	Not Good. F	It was, believe it or not, a D. It was as pleasant as any other dish we've made with beans and chick peas. D	I didn't even finish it and that says enough - Hungry Deb	Like Rice Pudding with Kidney beans and Tumeric. How could you go wrong? Many, many ways and we found all of them.
Sweet Corn & Spinach Pudding	B- I thought that there were some flavor notes missing. I compare every corn pudding to the one in the Veganomicon. It was good though.	A It was a gamble but it paid off. I liked it, even with the spinach.	A- It was really good.	A it was nummy and Alex is far too harsh a grader.
Honey Cake	B- I thought the honey flavor was really good and the addition of the tea was unusual and enjoyable but it could have used some tartness.	B The honey whipped cream is something that I'll have to revisit, but the cake needs a little work	B If I met this at a party, I'd think, "hey this is a pretty good cake." A servicable cake	B I think the honey whipped cream was awesome. The cake needs a little work

Farscape: There was actual plot development. 'Nuff said.

Jim's Night: Passage to India

Our official menu tonight:

Indian Summer Stew
Palak Paneer (Paneer recipe is from Artisan Cheese Making at Home)
Jim's Curry Chocolate Cake

Hello!

Welcome back, dear reader(s). Deb here, on blogging (and sitting-on-my-ass) duty. Tonight we're testing out a menu that Jim put together and I'm super excited to hear that it is Indian food, because that is one of my favorites. Just to add some suspense to the evening, I'll tell ya that I've been on a juice diet again since our last Cooking Club, and I'm determined tonight to NOT eat everything in the house, as I did last week.... we'll see how that goes. While the guys are chopping vegetables, we have to catch up on movies. Jim LOVED 21 Jump St, which totally makes me want to see it. Alex says I will appreciate it because it is a comedy of non-stop dick jokes ( Brian recently revealed that my sense of humor runs that way). Bri also exposed that I hated the movie Bridesmaids, so I had to explain to the room full of horrified people that I cannot handle the social humiliation movies. I don't have the courage to get through the awkward scenes. I think I bailed when the main character went up to give her second toast. Remember that part? My tastes are far more stress-free than that-- I really want to see John Carter, for example-- "the biggest flop of the year," as Jim puts it. But my sci-fi lovin' friends loved it, and you got trust them more than reviewers, right? Right?

Appetizers
Our first course should really be called Cheating and comes courtesy of Brian who stopped at the Australian meat pie place down the street (KO). The miniature meat pies (for Bri and Jim) and veggie roll (for Alex) were tasty and I'm sure helped take their usual feral hunger down a notch. Me? I'm drinking a spinach kale juice and still feeling virtuous.

Main Course

While the guys are hard at work chopping onions, our guest star Sarah walks in with Rommy! It's nice to have her here for her witty conversation, but also, she's taking care of dessert for us. :) Sarah, Jim and Alex spent the day at Craft Boston on the Seaport which sounds like it was a great time. Sarah bought these cool earrings and a t-shirt.

Rommy, the big sweetie, has taken up his usual position Right In Our Way, so everyone is carefully stepping over him as we go on. Dogs always win in our kitchen.

We're going to make our own cheese tonight!

"What are these two things, cocoa powder and butter?" Sarah interrupts, confusing everyone in the room, since she had just been talking knowledgeably about the baking properties of gluten. I still don't know what she could have meant (I was too busy writing it down.). But that's how I find out we're having chocolate cake for dessert! My juice is getting less appetizing as the evening goes on...

Sarah is almost done with the cake and the guys have barely gotten started on anything...oh, they are waiting for the milk to heat up for the paneer. It's taking forever, it's 5 quarts of milk and they're supposed to heat it up slowly. Alex is waiting for the frozen butternut squash to simmer so he has time to explain to me the traditional Indian method of making a stew which consists of simmering a bunch of vegetables together and then in a separate pan, frying up the spices to add to the stew later at the end. On the left, you see the beginnings of the Palak that Jim is making: onions and tomatoes and spices. It smells delicious already.




 Dessert
This chocolate cake is advanced, yo. I just watched Sarah put ginger and coconut milk into it. I finally got a hold of the recipe- it's from... somewhere online, but it turns out that Jim has reworked the whole thing anyway. He is testing his entry into the Food Experiments, which is an actual food competition here in Boston. Jesus, I'm watching Alex POUR GARAM MASALA AND CAYENNE PEPPER INTO OUR CHOCOLATE CAKE BATTER right now. Wow. Does it get crazier than that? This cake is intense. In fact, after Sarah put the cake in the oven, I was surprised to see that there are 2 more pages of instructions to follow.

"

Meanwhile, Brian is impatiently waiting for the milk to curdle and it is not happening. We might just be eating Palak Without Paneer tonight....No! they added some more vinegar and lemon juice than the recipe called for and it is slowly coagulating. After getting to 195 degrees, Brian will let it ripen for 5 minutes and then carefully ladle the cheese into muslin to drain. It drains for 20 minutes and then we press it and, finally, cut it into blocks of paneer.


A discussion ensued about why we write this blog. My original intent was to to create a record of our cooking adventures just to help us remember what worked and what didn't work, but it turns out Brian, Alex and Jim want to write a cookbook and become rich and famous. [Brian here to correct a huge misrepresentation--I just want to become famous.  I'll settle for rich, though.]

The kitchen is starting to smell sooo good. I can feel my hunger levels rising...were-Deb is coming out...soon they'll see fangs...   Jim is finishing up the Palak and Sarah is making cream cheese frosting for the cake...apparently massamam curry paste is going into our frosting! I tasted it, it was hot. Not sexy hot, burn your tongue hot. Hot frosting!




Waiting...

This meal is taking forever. We forgot to put the lentils in early enough, so we're waiting for them to get cooked and the paneer needs to be pressed for a half an hour (after draining for 20 minutes). We actually had time to clean up the whole kitchen before we ate, which never happens on our Cooking Club nights.  OMG, so hungry....

Finally! Here's the way everything looked at the end...you have to imagine the cake fully frosted, because we forgot to get a final picture of the cake. Jim face here expresses how we all feel about this...

Reviews

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Palak Paneer	B It needed different seasoning. It wasn't salty enough, maybe, ?	A- Proud of how good it came out.	A Didn't exactly taste like Indian restaurant palak paneer, but it was quite tasty. It tastes like hippy co-op Palak Paneer.	B+ Tasty
Summer Stew	B+ The recipe is awesome. It was so flavorful...I think it was the mustard seeds, and other spices at the end.	B- I think we should leave out the lentils next time.	B+ This would be a good recipe to keep working on. I thought it was almost perfect. I didn't think the lentils were too crunchy.	B- Crunchy lentils suck
Dessert	B+ Maybe I'm easy [room erupts in laughter], but I thought it was good. Nice flavor. I value novelty really highly and this was very unexpected.	C Combination of flavors didn't work for me.	B I loved the curry accents. I think they could have been even stronger.	B It's got a lot of potential.The consistency of the icing could be improved.

Farscape, Season 2, Episode 7: Home on the Remains. 
Brian: OMG, the name of the main villain was a shout out to Boss Hogg from Dukes of Hazzard.
Deb: It was flat out awful.
Alex: Ciana the ho.
Jim: Australians trying to do US southern accents, goes beyond funny to just plain sad.

Farscape: Season 2, Episode 8
So depressed from the complete crappy-ness of the earlier episode, we decided that we couldn't face the next one, which looked even worse. A planet of lawyers. Really? Sarah bolted, probably thinking the rest of us were crazy for putting ourselves through this misery every week. The rest of us began to argue about whether we should ditch the whole Farscape series. Brian and I have seen most of the series before and we promised it would get better. Deep inside, though, even we were worried. Does it get better? Or were our tastes just really that crappy all those years ago? I argued that we should skip all the episodes that look like boring filler, but it turns out that the episode where everyone switches bodies (which strikes the rest of us as an awful premise)  is one of Brian's favorites... Soooo, we'll have to figure this out next week. It's a time of deep reflection in the Deep Space Cooking Club.

Deb's Night: Healthy Enchiladas

"Would you call this...a bunch of spinach?"

The problem with Deb's cooking nights is that we have to follow the recipe.  So a bunch of spinach means...erm...well, it depends if you ask Hungry Deb or Full Deb.  This month's Deb is on a juice fast, though, so basically anything that requires chewing is the best food in the world.  And as a result, all the food is still trying to follow a healthy theme, and mostly comes from health food blogs.  The bad news is that it's health food.  The good news is that we have the recipes!  And the links to the original pages, too.

Colcannon Puffs

Ingredients

• 1½ pounds potatoes (you can peel if you want, but I didn’t)
• 6 ounces kale

• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons soymilk
• 2 tablespoons potato starch or corn starch

Instructions

1. Cut the potatoes into small cubes (about 1/2-inch), put them in a large pot, and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are tender.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, remove the center stalk from the kale and slice the leaves into strips. When the potatoes are done, lift them out with a slotted spoon and place in a large mixing bowl. Put the kale into the potato water and cook for 6 minutes or until kale is tender. Remove kale with a slotted spoon to a food processor. Add 1/4 cup of the cooking liquid and pulse to chop fine.
3. Preheat oven to 425 F. Mash the potatoes and add the kale and all remaining ingredients. Stir well. Using a well-rounded tablespoon, form into balls about 1 inch across. Place them on an oiled baking sheet or, preferably, a baking sheet covered with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Bake for 20 minutes. Carefully turn over and bake fore 20 minutes more, until lightly browned.

Here are the half-cooked colcannon
puffs before going back in the oven.

A colcannon puff, in case you're not Irish, or an Ireland-enthusiast, or a reader of the ridiculously buff firemen who read this recipe from fat free vegan, is a potato-kale ball that involves a lot of boiling.  And if that doesn't sound enticing...then you're just not hungry enough.  Hopefully the powdered goodness of nutritional yeast, onion powder and other seasonings will make it extra delicious.  Barring that, well, that's what health food is for.  Nourish your soul with healing energy and your body will...um...who cares about your body if your soul is nourished?

"How'd you get kale on your forehead?"

After lots of mashing and spicing, you get to roll them into balls, which is always delightful.  Hungry Deb made some gigantic balls, in that not-at-all-sexual-but-actually-just-really-very-hungry way.  Yeah.

And mysteriously enough, we managed to get the salt wrong (or was this an especially salty recipe?)  It might have been smart to taste before baking, especially since they were all vegan-y and didn't have anything that required cooking...

Served hot, the puffs should be crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.

 

Enchiladas

Ingredients

• ½ large yellow onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, diced
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• ½ teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• Some cumin and cinnamon
• 1 can diced tomatoes (or ½ box Pomi crushed tomatoes)
• 1 can black or pinto beans
• 1 can corn
• ½ bunch greens (spinach, collards, chard or kale)
• 8-10 lightly steamed corn tortillas

Instructions

1. Sauce: Preheat oven to 400. Line the bottom of a rectangular baking dish with parchment paper. In a skillet sauté the onion and bell pepper on medium-high with a little water for 5 minutes. Add spices and mix, followed by the diced tomatoes, beans and corn, and cook for another 5 minutes. Add in greens and cook for 2 more minutes, and turn off heat. Place 1 cup of sauce into a blender and blend until smooth; set aside.

2. Rolling enchiladas: Fill each steamed tortilla (so they won’t crack) with ½ cup of sauce and roll tortilla snugly, placing it seam side down in the baking dish. Continue until dish is full of rolled enchiladas, all placed closely together. Pour the blended sauce over the top, and bake uncovered for 20 minutes on the center rack. When done, let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

3. Guacamole topping: With a fork, mash the avocados with the lime juice, cumin and garlic powder. Mix in cilantro and tomatoes. Spoon mixture on top of enchiladas. Garnish with green onions and pumpkin seeds (optional). You can make this ahead of time if you like, so that the flavors mingle.

Recipe from StraightUpFood.

One of the dangers of making super healthy vegan enchiladas is that only super healthy vegans can be really, truly enthusiastic about them.  Thus, Jim and Brian made meat (meat?!?) to put in their enchiladas, and Jim brought cheese.


An interesting facet of this recipe was steaming the tortillas.  Normally, people steam them in that magic box at the burrito joint that you pump on and melt your slice of American cheese, but barring that, you actually have to do it on the stovetop!  It looks goofy, but it seems to have worked out alright.  Apparently, not steaming the tortillas results in them turning all crispy-sad in the oven.  Sounds right to me!

Steaming tortillas is almost as fun as eating them.  Right, Bri?

The most important part of the enchiladas was definitely the sauce, and I thankfully was figuring out how to blog this entry while that sauce happened, so it's a mysterious mystery from where I stand!  The sauce ended up getting cooked on the stovetop, but the beans got added before the blending of the sauce.  End result?  Kind of a hummos-y bean-y topping for the enchiladas, rather than a sauce-y topping with a bean-y filling.

Enchilada sauce - definitely
good with some extra hot sauce!

The guacamole that goes on top required ripe avocados, which the supermarket didn't have.  (Somehow, avocados aren't in season in Boston?  What?)  So we have vacuum sealed guac, and we're fancying it up with tomatoes and fresh cilantro.

It seems like maybe we should have ended up with a lot more sauce to smother the enchiladas - there was some exposed tortilla in there at the end.

The toasted pepitas on top of the
guacamole made for a delicious addition!

Chocolate Cherry Cake

Ingredients

• 20 frozen pitted cherries (about 1 cup)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon rum extract (optional)
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/2 cup unbleached flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tablespoons soy yogurt
• 1/4 cup vanilla soymilk (or other non-dairy milk)
• boiling water

Instructions

1. Cut the frozen cherries in half (it’s easiest to do this while they’re frozen). Put them in a bowl and stir in 1 teaspoon sugar and rum extract, if using. Allow them to sit at room temperature until they’ve completely thawed and become juicy, 1-2 hours.
2. Oil or pan spray 4 7-ounce ramekins. Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix together the brown sugar and 2 tablespoons cocoa powder and set aside.
3. Pour the juices off the cherries into a measuring cup. Press lightly on the cherries to get all of the juice (I had about 1/4 cup). Sprinkle the corn starch over the cherries and mix well. Divide the cherries equally among the 4 ramekins.
4. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa, and baking powder. Stir in the vanilla extract, soy yogurt, and soymilk. (Mixture will be very thick.) Drop by tablespoons over the cherries in the ramekins, dividing equally among them. Smooth to cover the cherries.
5.  Sprinkle the brown sugar mixture evenly over the batter, about 2 tablespoons per ramekin. Use a spoon to level the tops.
6.  Add boiling water to the cherry juice up to the 3/4 cup line. Pour or spoon it gently over the brown sugar in the ramekins, about 3 tablespoons per ramekin. Place the ramekins in the oven and bake for about 25-30 minutes, until tops appear mostly dry (they should be streaked with darker, wetter looking areas) and sauce is bubbling around the edges. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes before serving.

"I've been waiting for this all week!" --Hungry Deb

What this translates to in real life is that Bri has to sort through the frozen mixed berries and isolated all of the cherries.  Mixed berry cake?  No.  Cherry cake!  Poor Hungry Deb then discovered that she was supposed to thaw those berries for several hours...so much for the recipe!  Into the microwave they go!

Afterwards, Deb had the fun job of squeezing juice out of the cherries, and then mixed the rest of the ingredients, including greek yogurt.  Unfortunately, Deb also...uh...had  no ramekins.  It's a little...experimental.  And the cake certainly has a lot of moving parts!  Pouring boiling cherry juice onto brown sugar on top of cocoa'd yogurt?  That's bold, yo.  Well, no matter how bad things get, there's always ice cream.

The cake texture was nice, but the whole
cherries inside has a kind of weird goo-like
property.  Did I mention ice cream?

Farscape

Deb: "Oh my God, so weepy."
Jim: "Pilot's entrails look suspiciously like cable covers."
Bri: "As flashback episodes go, it was pretty good."
Alex: "I watched maybe 40% of that episode."

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Colcannon Puffs	Maybe next time, we can make cheesy potato puffs...	They were...they were potato puffs.	Way too salty, but they have potential.	Even I thought they were salty.  They were Irish (read: bland)
Enchiladas	Maybe next time, we can make cheesy enchiladas...	The meat and cheese made those enchiladas!	Really good, but they didn't come together right, taste-wise.	They needed a lot more sauce!
Cake!	I think it has potential.  Maybe next time, we can make a cake WITH FAT.	I don't like the pieces of cherry either.  Buried under ice cream you can make pretend that it's not a very good sundae.	I don't like it.  I don't like the pieces of cherry.	Meh.