Supper Club for 6/22: Taco Taco Taco!

Happy Solstice, most excellent of people!  Down on Coney Island they're celebrating it with the Mermaid Parade.  Over in Fremont they're celebrating by wearing paint and not much else while they ride their bikes through Seattle.  And not to be outdone, we are following the ancient pagan ritual of MAKING TACOS.  Yes, just like in the deleted scene from "The Wicker Man".  We're hardcore like that.

THE BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEanS!!!

This is Brian chronicling our experience cooking in the bright, sweet sunlight.  Deb and I arrive and leap into action--Alex has finished roasting a poblano pepper and places it in a big bowl that I immediately cover with plastic.  Exhausting!  Time to retreat to the laptop.  Meanwhile Deb is cubing watermelon.

This is the smile she gets whenever she's given a big sharp knife.  I find it's best not to think about it too much.

Tonight is inspired by The Grange in Providence, a place apparently more full of hipsters than an 'American Idol' casting call is full of delusions and broken dreams, but (unlike American Idol) full of fantastic vegetarian entrees.

(Was that too little too late?  Is one more potential sponsor gone?)

WE LOVE YOU AND YOUR HIPSTERS

Jim is chopping tomatoes, preparatory to making salsa.  Those watermelon cubes?  We're pickling them!

In the blender are chickpeas and flour and other special ingredients, the filling for our BBQ tacos.

  On the stove are charring tomatoes which will be processed into a vinaigrette and then chilled

, and the BBQ sauce (Alex suspects there's too much cinnamon in it, so we add some Liquid Smoke flavoring)

.  Deb is beginning to make coleslaw!

Were you wondering where we've been the last few weeks?  No?  Just pretend you were, it'll make things easier.   While Deb and I were on the west coast making an epic road trip from Denver (high altitude!) through desert and windy canyons to Seattle (low altitude!), Alex and Jim were having adventures across New England (medium altitude!).  They did the Cliff Walk down in Newport, broke into Salve Regina to use the bathroom, and went to Wolf Hollow to meet wolves and learn about them!

Sorry, wrong wolves

Sadly, they were unable to roll around in shed wolf fur and get their scent and freak out all the local dogs when they got back to Boston, but we all need goals that are a tiny bit out of reach so we can keep on striving.   They also went to Art in a Barn, a fundraiser for an eco-preserve, (Art ON the Barn was a lot trickier, due to the steep roofs),

Sorry, wrong Art Barn

 experienced tasty tasty seafood (clam chowder and clamcakes), and got into CraftBoston's December show.  That last one might just be Jim, though it's possible Alex is going to have a performance art booth where rich people pay him to talk about neuroscience.

We talk about how this is the time of year when, if you have a good New England work ethic, we should be focusing on putting food away for the winter.  Do any of us HAVE a good New England work ethic?   ....................in some ways yes, but when it comes to canning and preserving, apparently not so much.  And I'm okay with that.

We test Deb's pablano ranch dressing; she is dubious about the afterburn, while Alex and Jim approve.  I give cautious approval but notice as I type this, four minutes later, that there's STILL some heat on the roof of my mouth.  Interesting!

Such an innocent-looking dressing...

...to cause this much dubiousness

The vinaigrette is made.  We're going to prepare the avocado for frying (!!!), prepping the slaw, and tell Paula Deen stories BECAUSE HOW CAN ANYONE RESIST ZOMG.  Wow, folks.

Speaking of white, unhealthy things that have a very public fall and cause a great deal of uproar and dismay,the mayo slips off the table, and Deb gets about 1/4 pound of it on her foot.  But at least it was wintertime so she was wearing heavy boots instead of sandalsOH WAIT

In lieu of a picture of the blob (which was pretty grody), we provide you with a picture of Deb's reaction to it

"We still have to grill the watermelon," Alex says, "so I'll make the watermelon marinade."  File THAT one under 'sentences you won't hear on "Duck Dynasty" '.  The marinade involves olive oil and honey! 

Meanwhile we test Jim's dressing for the coleslaw, and like it but agree it needs more salt and/or pepper.

It has now been 30 minutes since food last fell on Deb's foot.  We mark this event with a little shower of pepper.

Alex takes me aside and explains the extra-special dessert plans: dessert tacos!  With fried and mushed plaintains and a chocolate sauce made with condensed milk blended with dark chocolate and a little cinnamon and some powdered sugar!

<3 !!

The watermelon is being grilled and the avocado fried by Alex (Deb, btw, has been responsible for the breading of the avocados, and has excelled).   Deb is asked to prep some lettuce, and also snags some arugula for our side salad--the watermelon recipe apparently called for "petite greens", and arugula fills the bill.  For of course there's a side salad.  Jim is about to grate some monterey jack.  For of course we need shredded cheese, its taco night!

Jim and Alex team up to tear the gluten into tiny little bits and toss the bits into two frying pans.  Epic! 

Deb feels she hasn't made enough salad.  But she points out the recipe calls for "PETITE greens", not "grosse greens" or "greens du grande".  So that's fine.

These Petite Greens would have made the meal more interesting, amiright?

It's almost time to start the tortilla warming!  We're moving into endgame!  With the corn tortillas, the most important thing is the spreading of the refried beans, apparently.
GRADING

Avocado Tacos:

BRIAN  B+.  Texturally, the squishiness of both the refried beans AND the avocado was a wee bit much.  More crunch...maybe more breading?
ALEX:  A!  The thing was fucking good, man.  The textures were really lovely, the creme was soo good; I wish it was a little bit hotter when we ate it, but it was great.
JIM: A+!  I thought even though it would have been nice if it was hotter, it was amazing.
DEB:  I wasn't a fan of that one. I would give that a B...all I tasted was cold corn tortilla.  Maybe if I'd heated it.

BBQ Seitan Tacos:

BRIAN  A+.  This might have been the best taco I've ever had.  (Since I've had maybe 20 in my life, and most of them were from Taco Bell...but still.  STILL.)
ALEX: A.  That thing was so good.  Maybe even A+.  The fake meat thing that we made was a *major* win--that was some of the best fake meat I've ever had.  (The recipe was for 'crispy seitan bacon', adapted and covered in sauce by us).
JIM: A++!  That was the best taco I've ever had. Maybe because we made almost everything ourselves?
DEB: A!  Those tastes went together really well; it was extremely satisfying.  We need to spread this recipe far and wide, cuz people need to know this shit.

Grilled Watermelon Salad:

BRIAN  C.  It challenged me. I'm not a fan of cherry tomatoes, and I don't think I was ready for hot watermelon chunks with salad dressing.  I'm sorry, everybody.
ALEX: I give it a B.  There were things about it that I liked, but it didn't come together that well for me.  There was a lot going on in it, and it was hard to get the right blend of flavors.
JIM:  B+!  When I got the right forkful of watermelon, tomato, pickled watermelon and charred tomato vinaigrette it was delicious.  I don't know that it really needed the tomatoes; they just added volume.
DEB: I give it a B or B-.  The watermelon parts were really great, the tomato parts weren't bad.

Chocolate Plantain Dessert Tacos:

DEB: A!  What do I have to say about it?  I'd eat it all the time, if it weren't deep-fried.  Sad. :(
JIM: A-.  The only thing missing was some sort of crema.  Whipped cream?  Raspberry coulis?
ALEX:  A!  I kept tasting the chocolate as I was making it, and I was nervous that it wouldn't end up complimenting the plaintains and I wouldn't be able to spice it enough, and those concerns were completely unfounded.
BRIAN:  A-...I'm pretty neutral on plantains, so they just got in the way of my enjoyment of the chocolate taco.  Which was awesome.

We're on (Season 4 Disc 4) of True Blood, "Spellbound" and "Let's Get Out of Here".  Elements of note about these episodes:  creative use of a wolf pelt's tail to cover up someone's genitals,

NO, SERIOUSLY

 and another moment of genitalia blurring that *must* have been CGI.  Oh, and also a 'secret meeting' between two people that, within three or four hours, got talked about more and drew more passersby than Woodstock. 

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Normally this is where I'd meander to a stop, folks, but this time I actually have recipes.  ALL the recipes!  But like a game of telephone, these were written down on scraps of paper which were then photographed and THEN transcribed, so...be careful, is all I'm saying.

 Just to make sure everyone's keeping track, we review: corn tortilla + refried beans + fried breaded avocado = Taco 1.   Flour tortilla + bbq sauce + coleslaw + homemade seitan = Taco 2.  And flour tortilla + chocolate ganache + fried plantains = Taco 3.  Grilled watermelon + pickled watermelon + grilled tomatoes + Pizo de Gallo = our salad.

COLESLAW
Whisk 3/4 cup mayo, 1/4 cup sour cream, 1T vinegar, lemon juice from 1/2 lemon, a little mustard, sugar, and some evoo.   Add to bag of slaw.  (In other words, chop up cabbage and other solids until you feel you have a decent amount, then add this dressing).

BBQ SEITAN
Put 1/2 cup chickpeas, 1/4 cup gluten, 1/4 cup bread crumbs, 2T nutritional yeast, 2T maple syrup, 1T (?) sundried tomatoes and 1 big garlic clove in a food processor.  Process until one big ball of dough.  Break up into little bite-sized chunks. Sautee; eventually add BBQ sauce.

BBQ SAUCE
1/3 cup ketchup, 1/3 cup tomato sauce, 3T brown sugar, 3T red wine vinegar, 1tsp butter, 1tsp "bacon" bits, a pinch of cinnamon, "Tony's to taste".  Mix, simmer on low heat until gently bubbling, add to the aforementioned Seitan.

GRILLED WATERMELON
1) Make the marinade by combining 1/2 cup evoo, 1/6th cup vinegar, 1/2 T honey and a pinch of salt.
2) Cube red watermelon and grill to mark sides.
3) Chop cherry tomatoes in half.  Dress with marinade.
4)  Add tomatoes, watermelon, some greens and pickles.  Spread charred tomato on the plate.

PICKLED WATERMELON
1) Boil 1 cup water, 1 cup (? word looks like "cheap") vinegar, 1/2 cup sugar, 1T salt.
2) Halve the watermelon.  Save the red part for grilling.  Cut the white part into strips and boil until translucent and soft.

GRILLED TOMATOES
1) Cover 2 tomatoes in salt and Evoo.
2) Cook on hot grill until "charred and soft".
3) Put 1/2 cup vinegar, 1 cup evoo, 2T honey and 1 shallot in blender with tomatoes.
4) Salt to taste and cool in fridge.

FRIED AVOCADO
1) Slice avocado into 8 pieces
2) Salt avocado
3) Prepare three bowls: 1/2 cup flour, 2 beaten eggs, 1 cup panko.
4) Dredge slices in flour, shaking off excess
5) Coat with egg
6) Press into panko
7) Fry at 350 for ~3 minutes

POBLANO RANCH DRESSING  (a dipping sauce for either of the savory tacos)
Grill chile on grill until skin is blackened.
Put in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap for 15 minutes.
Seed the chile and then chop.
Whisk into 1/2 cup buttermilk, 1/4 cup sour cream and 2T fresh lemon juice.  Add 2 chopped scallions.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

PIZO DE GALLO
Seed four tomatoes, roughly chop.
Roughly chop 1 small onion, 1/2 cup cilantro, and 1 jalapeno.
Pulse in food processor with 1T fresh lime juice.
Add salt and refrigerate.

DESSERT TACO
Mix cinnamon and cayenne and melted chocolate and sweetened condensed milk. Amounts?  We dunno, just eyeball it!
Dredge chopped plantains in flour, then beaten egg, then coconut milk, and fry.
Spread chocolate sauce on a flour tortilla, add plantains, combine into a makeshift taco.  Sprinkle powdered sugar all over the top of it because why not!

Happy Solstice Weekend, everyone!  We'll see you when the days grow shorter.

Flash! Bam! Alacazam! Orange on EVERYTHING!

Hello, beloved readers! Alex had a moment of bliss this week involving a strong desire for perfect abs, a stringent diet and the most delightful orange of his life, so his theme for our Supper Club tonight is something along the lines of PUT  ORANGE ON EVERYTHING!

(There are a lot of songs out there that feature oranges, by the way. I know because I just spent an hour looking for a good one that would lend its lyrics to our title. Jim suggested "Orange is the color of my true love's hair..." but as far as I can tell orange is exactly NOT the color of that songwriter's true love's hair and he made quite a big point of it. So the search continues. There are lots of sad orange songs out there: soldier songs, agent orange, bitter oranges...that Bon Iver song is my favorite of the milieu, but it seems a bit sad for a cooking post celebrating the gorgeous flavor of a perfect orange. Also, with lyrics like "you can gaze out the window get mad and get madder," my cooking club buddies will start assuming I have unresolved issues I need to discuss and geez... awkward. There are quite a few ambient/trance orange songs out there, too, but there all spacy and slow and crap. Hmm, well, I'll keep listening to songs while I'm writing this post. )

Prepping 

The guys are busy zesting oranges and preparing asparagus. Tonight's menu includes Tofu Marinated in Orange Sauce. The marinade is made out of ...you guessed it...orange juice, soy sauce, lemon juice and red wine vinegar. The tofu is going to get fried and put on a bed of asparagus and covered with another orange sauce.

Bri has already finished a simple crust for the Orange Bars (Alex's reinterpretation of Lemon Bars.) The crust smells delicious. I ask what's it in, and Alex says dryly, "Flour and fat." Um, yum?

(Sheesh, you wouldn't think you could make a song with a title like Sweet Orange Sunshine into a dirge, but they did... )

The particularly weird thing we're making tonight is Orange Crackers. Alex found a general Bittman recipe for crackers (1 cup flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 tbsp sesame oil, 1/2 c orange pulp. Roll it out, sprinkle with sesame seeds and hot sesame oil. )


This is how we got the pulp.

Once we mixed the dry ingredients in, then rolled it out and baked it, the crackers looked like this:

Funky looking, but tasty.

Jim is dazed from slaving away for the last few days in front of a pottery wheel. He was admitted into CraftBoston and now he's ramping up production to have enough pottery to sell there. (You can find examples of his work here.)


Cooking Club Pun Battle: Brian and Jim are trading puns about oranges.

Brian: Alex had an epithany.
Jim: I pled the pith

As Jim makes the crackers, Alex tells us that he's only recently been able to eat oranges. It's one of those flavors like coffee that he despised before, but can now mysteriously tolerate. Some sort of bodily chemical change? A brain alteration? Metamorphosis?

Meanwhile, Alex is frying tofu and Brian is putting together the Orange Salad Dressing. The dressing included: silken tofu, orange, balsamic vinegar, salt, lemon juice and olive oil, and as you can see from the reviews below, I loved it.

I think I've found the musical theme for this cooking blog. It's a surprising song, perfectly conveying the surprising tastes we experienced tonight. Listen to 30 seconds of this at least. I like how they yell: This is it! This is it. I.T. it!  I want to get that on a t-shirt and wear it to work (where I do IT stuff).

Tonight's TV entertainment includes one episode of True Blood (Season 4) and one episode of Lost Girl (Season 1). The latter is because we got tired of the plot of the former. Between you and me, I'm not sure if we're going to make it to True Blood Season 7. Not if I have anything to say about it...

 Rilke said: 
... *..In order for a Thing to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon which your laborious and exclusive love is now placed at the center of the universe, and which, in that incomparable place, is on that day attended by angels.

And that's how we feel about oranges tonight!  It also happens to be related to what Jim has on his t-shirt.Can you guess why?

Our Orange Salad included arugula, tomatoes, cucumbers, cashews, orange slices, avocado slices. Sadly, no picture of it seems to exist.


Tofu with Orange Sauce:
Jim: A- little more hot sauce would improve things. It was a tiny bit too sweet
Deb: A I loved it and it amazing in the salad. Delicious.
Bri: A-. The goal of being citrusy was achieved, but it would be nice if there wan another flavor note. Alex: A. Thought the sauce was so citrusy and flavorful. The tofu texture could have been a little bit better.

Orange Crackers: 
Brian: A+ Perfect. If you put a plate of crackers in front of me and told me that was all I get, I would eat all them and be happy.
Jim: Taste an A+, Texture gets a B-. Overall, it was an A. Texture-wise it was a little off, not crispy.
Alex: A- I liked the taste. I enjoyed eating it. The texture could have been better, but I REALLY liked it. It was a splendid delivery vehicle for the sauce.
Deb: A. There was nothing wrong with these crackers.

Asparagus: it was the same roasted asparagus that we always eat, but IT WAS SO GOOD WITH THE SAUCE. The crunchy tips of the spears were an extra bonus.

Orange Salad: 
Deb: A. I loved that salad! OMG, it was the best salad ever. I want to recreate it immediately.
Jim: A-. It needed more tartness or sharpness. The dressing was good by itself, but the oranges with the dressing was a little too sweet for me. Every dish tonight was delicious, but they were all a little sweet. Alex: A-. I love oranges and avocado together. It's such a lovely combination. Some elements didn't work together, and there are other things that could go into it that would make it more exciting, so there's room for improvement.
Brian: B-, Meh, a salad is a salad.

Orange Bars: 
Bri: C+ The crust was horrible. It was less a crust than a crumble. The filling still didn't feel solid. Maybe it needed a couple of hours in the fridge. It had the consistency of jello. I never had to eat a lemon bar with a spoon before, but this came close.
Alex: B+ While the crust did not stick together well, I found the flavor very nice and ...maybe I'm biased, I haven't been eating very many sweets lately...I loved this thing. But I agree with Brian that it was a very problematic arrangement. The top didn't settle enough. We should retroactively call them Orange Tart Squares. Or Citrus Tarts, since they have lemon in them.
Jim: C. I get a weird aftertaste. 
Deb: B I liked it a lot, but it needs to be tarter, but maybe I am just trying to turn in to a lemon bar in my mind.

April 27: Gin and Veganishness and Sara and Gin

Happy Saturday, friends and neighbors (and people who meant to go to deepspacesparkle.com and got here by mistake)!  Brian here, blogging Jim’s night (though it’s strange to call it night as the sun shines down outside).  Jim’s stretching himself and trying a meal that’s 99% vegan! (And I'm putting things in parentheses ((a LOT)) ) .

Our menu tonight consists of: 

*Lemongrass broth with dumplings

*Kale Kale Salad  (with a wee bit of parmesan parmesan because we’re not barbarians)—note, this one is taken from a very fine restaurant in Harvard Square named Tory Row.  Props to our culinary inspiration homies!

*Agave lime grilled tofu

*Black pepper shortcakes with blackberry basil sauce & cinnamon cream

Our first questionable moment comes as Jim’s unpacking the groceries from the Chinese market; he was looking for pea shoots and saw something that looked like them, but were labeled “bean leaves”.   Pfeh, who pays attention to signs anymore?  He also was unable to find any ‘kaffir lime leaf’…but to be fair, none of us would even recognize one if we saw it.  

We have a special guest, Sara!  She arrives with Alex, and mixed drinks begin to get made.  OUR HERO!  We take a look at our potential ingredients: lemons, limes, gin, vodka, fruit juice, vitamin water, an orange…and Sarah begins improvising like a boss.  Alex, meanwhile, ponders making cashew cream. Not, it should be noted, for a beverage.

Deb’s chopping lemongrass for the broth, and then hammering the stalks

As sayings go, "When you have a hammer, everything looks like a lemongrass stalk" never really caught on.

(I’m sure there’s a culinary reason and not just that she finds it cathartic); Jim is putting together the marinade for the tofu; Alex is turning the cashew into a gooey paste; and Sara has come up with a tasty basil-vodka-vitamin water creation called a Basilto that tastes like licorice and success.   So far so good.  We discuss it; the basil didn’t come through like she wanted to, but we agree it has potential.  (We also agree not to give it a grade during the end of the night).  We add a little lime juice and discover an improvement.

*CLINK!*

We note here, gentle reader, that today is not just Jim’s menu, it’s Jim’s BIRTHDAY WEEK.  He’s…um…32?  I have no idea really.  But he’s a Distinguished Gentleman.

Random note seen on the desk beside this laptop: “verdigris UFOs”.   Oooookay…

Jim tastes the marinade, thinks it’s too sweet, and then realizes he’s got brown sugar all over his tasting finger.  But since it’s his birthday week, we still back him up!  Good catch, Jim!  

Jim in his natural habitat: holding a book, pottery all around him, and Alex by his side.

Sara and Deb put their heads together trying to decipher the broth recipe…the problem is that they’re relying on a photo of the recipe on an iPad, and the photo’s blurry, so its like watching them play a game of Telephone as they peer at it and try to decipher each new word. Games of Telephone are a lot more high-stakes when they're about the food I’m going to eat.  *fret*  

New obstacle: there’s no soy cream for the dessert.  We compensate by mixing a little milk with the cashew cream.  Veganness of the meal now at 92% and falling!

Alex confesses he does not like lemon thyme, because if you smell it, it has an identical scent to Lemon Pledge.  We decide that as long as he doesn’t snort any of tonight’s meal, he should be okay.  

For the black pepper shortcakes, the recipe calls for some Earth Balance that’s very very cold, leading Alex to portion some out, chop it up, and pop it in the freezer. (Note to readers who don't have it available in their area--Earth Balance is basically the hipster, healthy-for-you version of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Earth Balance people, feel free to use that in your next ad.)  

"I Can't Believe It's Marginally Healthier Than the Alternatives" was a rejected title.

Deb tries to cut the amount of sugar in the broth recipe in half, and gets caught by Sara!  It’s Trust the Recipe vs. Too Sweet is Wrong, the culinary equivalent of a Lincoln-Douglass debate, except everyone agrees to wait a few minutes and see.  And, also, the country won't go to war if Deb wins.

Sara moves on to the kale chip-making, which involves cookie sheets and oil and kale crisped so crispy that it's nigh-unrecognizable as a vegetable.  On a side note, doesn’t calling them “cookie sheets” give you unconscious false hope?  Why not just call them flat pans?  It’s like calling every lottery ticket you buy a “winning ticket”, or calling every blind date a "George Clooney date".

THE COOKIE SHEET IS A LIE

We use the internet to check what temperature the oven needs to be for kale chips.  I help!!  350 for 10 to 15 minutes.  Sadly, none of this turns kale into delicious cookies.

Alex is grinding pepper for the dessert shortcake, a task he finds tedious; through the miracle of technology we turn to a coffee grinder, which makes his life much easier. Amishness of this meal, 2% and falling.

Sara and Deb team up again to start the dumplings, and commiserate over how hard and puzzling it is to wash mushrooms.  How do you ever know when they’re done?  We nearly turn to technology again to mince the mushrooms, but Sara + cleaver = getting the job done.

We question ourselves—what, exactly, went wrong the last time we made dumplings?  One theory is that we cooked them too long, another theory is just that it was an unlucky night. Or possibly it was the thickness and/or consistency of the wrappers. Really, when you think about it, it's amazing any food ever turns out right.

“I like my job. I just have to stay one step ahead of Sara”—Deb

We note with puzzlement and consternation that this is also an onion-less meal! This might just be the first time in the history of our cooking club.

Deb declares her decision to rabidly support a soccer—sorry, FOOTBALL team, A.C. Milan, based on the coolness of one particular member “who goes to womens prisons just to hang out!”, whose name she can’t remember.  She feels that I should support a rival team and we can have a fun competitive thingie going on. I google "shaolin soccer" and am sad to discover it is not, in fact, based on a real team.

Seriously, though. This would be epic.

“10 to 15 minutes for kale chips is a LIE!  Put that in the blog!”--Jim

Alex is having trouble with the part of the shortbread recipe that calls for the dough to be an inch thick…first it’s too thin, then his second attempt is a little too fat.  It should be noted, for posterity, that he has a finger injury that “basically means I’m working one-handed!”  

Sara experiments on a second drink, a gin and tonic with a touch of basil.  A quick taste test reveals positives and negatives: on the down side the tonic is flat, so basically it’s a Gin & Water; on the plus, side, though, there *is* gin.  

The shortbread calls for the “cream” to be brushed across the top of them; Alex is doing that.  Meanwhile the fillings for the dumplings are almost ready to go, and the wonton wrappers are being laid out across the countertop.  We note that Jim’s obtained the firmest tofu money can buy—they come out of the marinate like very pale lego blocks, or very blank dice, or very deformed teeth...I could do this all night, folks. 

It’s been about 30 minutes for the kale chips; Sara checks them, but confesses that she’s not the best person for the job as she wants to snack on them all right now, now, nownownow.  Deb mentions that her hunger is raging and she wants to eat an entire pan;  Alex sets the completed chips right next to me, thinking they’ll be safe here.

“He’s not sighing; he’s just so happy all the joy can’t fit inside him!”—Sara about Jim, after she and Deb request more counter space.

Deb proposes that we have a Working Song for these nights.

We talk about mental disorders involving limbs! As you do. We're able to think of three: Phantom Limb Disorder, the disorder where you think a limb is actually another person’s, and the one where you think the puppet you’re wearing is a totally different personality (okay, I got that one from Batman)…

For the movie version, I'm thinking Stephen Colbert and Bob Hoskins

The consommé has been poured, the kale chips are out, the tofu has just come out, and we have three different pots bubbling on the fridge.  Meanwhile, not that I’m a lightweight or anything, but the gin has kicked in bigtime!  Deb is working on the dressing for the salad, and making faces like Calvin when he’s forced to eat spinach.  “A little lemony” is her comment.  This is her “a little lemony” face:

“The ratio of dumplings to consommé is once sagain too big”, opines Alex.  It’s noted that we can take turns tooking the dumpllings and nt cook them all a t once.  

All the cooks collaborate on how to improve the dressing.  An egg?  A little tofu?  More fat?  More cashew cream?  A little salt?  The issue seems to be that it’s TOO lemony, but there’s even some disagreement about that.  Deb rejects the thought of either salt or oil on philosophical grounds, but tries a little tofu, reducing the sharpness abit, rendering deliciousness by concenssu.s. us.

Virgin At lantic has a commercial featuring a brain with legs hopping off a couch. Which explodes.  Either that or I’m much, much drunker than I thought I was.

The grill is active—it’s a sign of immiment summer!  Lex ges the brush, and starts giving the tofu the grill treatment.  The pepper shortbread is out, and looking very whole wheaty.

Sara is struggling with grating the brick of parmesan for the kale kale, as it is bricklike in its hardness and thickness and difficulty in being grated.  And yet, its DONE, and the salad has been put together.  Deb has retreated from anything food-related and is setting up the television for True Blood.  The dumplings are going in the connssom cnoasnm  in the broth.  

It is noted that Tory Row cuts up all the kale in their kale kale salad so that the crips cale chips and the raw kale are the same size and indisistughweuisable all the same size..  Sara jumps on this culinary challenge, cutting up te salad to teeny bits.  Of bitness.  (THAT WA SGOOD GIN.)

Meanwhile Team Dumpling is leaping into action…at the same time Team Mixed Drink is improvising a vitamin water & vodka drink that tastes like watery cherry vodka, which….I wouldn’t serve it to the Queen if you know what I’m saying, but, still, it has a certain je ne sais quoi which might also be considered je ne sais drunk, so there.

Food ready, tv watched, vampires and witches and alligators observed!

RATINGS OF THE FOOD TYPE THINGS:

Lemongrass broth with dumplings

BRIAN  A…the broth was hot & sour soup-y and the dumplings were delicious, if a little large and sploshy.

DEB A-…the dumplings were difficult.  Taste-wise it was fabulous; the dumplings were big, and hard to get in your mouth.

JIM A…I thought the flavor was really good.  I agree that ten minutes is probably too long to cook the dumplings, and they could have been crimped together to be a bit more secure.

ALEX  A-; the broth was really good.  It didn’t taste as well-balanced as I remember it from last time, but still delicious.  

SARA  What if we deep-fried the dumplings?  They need to have more substance somehow.  A, though.  Flavor-wise it was so delicious.

Kale Kale Salad

BRIAN  B…the raw kale completely overshadowed the kale chips.  The dressing was nice; the cheese was not an active presence.

DEB  Did you guys put the kale chips in there?  That was brilliant!  I’d give it a B+ because it was really lemony; I’d really bring that down in the dressing.  Probably the healthiest kale we’ve ever had.

JIM  A-; I think we needed more baked kale, and I think it was a little lemony but I still really liked it.

ALEX  I’ll give it a B.  I’m biased because I’ve had the real kale kale salad, which is a lot better.  One of the reasons is the texture; the real one is really crispy, and this was a little soggy.  Maybe the chips sat in with the salad too long.  (Note: we mixed ours in together, which Tory Row does not.  Our mistake.)

SARA  B; great idea, sogginess factor.  The texture wasn’t so great, but it was still delicious.

Agave lime grilled tofu

BRIAN  B…the closest I’ve ever come to tofu leather it was so firm, but the marinate was yummy.

DEB B, I guess…the flavor was fabulous.  I think if we’d made it thinner.  It was dry but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I really enjoyed it.

JIM  I give it a B-.  I thought the marinate tasted fantastic, but it didn’t transfer into the tofu as well.  It needed to marinade longer, but it’s worth playing with again.

ALEX  I’ll give it a B.  It was too dry.  When the tofu’s too firm maybe it’s too dense to absorb things.  For all the work it took, I wasn’t too impressed.

SARA  C.  Too dry.  The texture was not good.  Maybe I just don’t like extra-firm tofu, though.

Black pepper shortcakes with blackberry basil sauce & cinnamon cream

BRIAN   D…too peppery, and cashew cream is, well, cashew cream.

DEB   D-, not a fan.   It tasted like a dry English muffin with something that didn’t make up for it.

JIM  F!  I do not like pepper in my dessert, apparently, and I just didn’t like the texture or the flavor.  

ALEX  C…I can see why someone would want to go in this direction.  The black pepper was pretty overwhelming and there was a weird aftertaste, maybe from the spelt flour or from too much cinnamon in the cream.  It was also not nearly sweet enough.

SARA  D.  I liked the pepper flavoring, but it needed actual cream, and a sugary addition.  The texture was so boring; if we’d even just kept the blackberry seeds in that might have helped.

Deb's Night - Vegan with Vengeance!

Greetings internet!  We almost didn't make it to cooking club today, because it is so nice and Springlike outside, but alas, our commitment to blogging trumps any sort of prehistoric human desire to enjoy nice days.  Lucky you!

Anyway, it's Deb's night, which means we're all vegan and shit.  Today's cookbook of choice is Vegan With a Vengeance - written by Isa Chandra Moskowitz of Veganomicon fame.  In other words, this meal is going to be full of fat and freaking delicious.  I'm stoked!

We're making a strogonoff, which is made with seitan.  Seitan, by the way, was almost purchased at our local Asian palindrome number market (Super 88), but looked a little too sketchy, so we're going to make it ourselves!  Well, Deb, was going to just skip it, but I bullied her into it.  Whoops!  Anyway, seitan is made by boiling vital wheat gluten in a soy sauce broth, then slicing it and frying it.

"I don't want to be culturally insensitive, but anyone who makes this should be shot."

Much like Brian, this young man has
experienced stinky tofu.

Should we roast the vegetables, or sautee them?  Deb advocates for roasting, because it's more delicious, but I hold that sauteeing can also be delicious.  As long as you're not boiling (or "water sauteeing") it should be fine!

Tahini dressing

Jim is making Tahini dressing, which consists of blending tahini, garlic, parsley, balsamic, lemon juice, paprika and olive oil.  Should be good!

Wet recipe!

Brian enquires about arrowroot powder, which needs to dissolve in water before being used.  It's a light starch which has been used for centuries to thicken sauces, substitute for gluten, and otherwise amaze with its starchy goodness.  We're going to use it in the stroganoff to thicken the sauce!

Meanwhile, Deb amazes with her ability to follow the recipe for seitan, microplaning garlic like a boss. Unfortun

ately, the recipe follows her as well, right into the soy broth...

Brian, having completed making cake batter, is now shalloting for the stroganoff.  This is a very, very involved stroganoff, it seems!  In my brain, somehow stroganoff means 'pour condensed soup over noodles and bake it'.  I don't know if this is the same thing as stroganoff, but it sure as shallots didn't get this fancy.

Jim prefers Kale to Collards!

Deb reveals that while we are having stroganoff, the main dishes are actually the Kale, Asparagus and Brussels Sprouts.  Who knew?

The asparagus will be cooked (supposedly) by sautéing garlic and sesame oil and adding red pepper flakes and soy sauce.  While this deviates from the One True Way (roasting, see our illustrious past), it is following the recipe (we've also tried this before, with mixed results).

As everyone chops vegetables, we chat about Justin Bieber, and his latest string of delightful oddities.  Case in point:

Justin Bieber and...his monkey?

Why does this manchild have a monkey?  Why did he decide to take it with him to Germany?  Amazing.  It's only a matter of time until he starts to do some MJ or Britney Spears.  The Biebs needs a "barometer of normal" - shockingly, Deb has volunteered!  Huh.

"I like MGMT and long walks on the beach."

In completely unrelated news, my colleages in hippieville are planning a FLASH MOB choreographed dance (flash dance?) of Robyn's Call Your Girlfriend.  The dance involves a lot of ground humping and rolling around, so I suspect that this mob may be a bit challenging to organize, but potentially very, very awesome.

What is really amazing about Robyn, however, are her very, very bold outfits.  Check out this spectacular garment, described as "ghetto baroque".  It's a corset-belt made out of underwear waistbands.  Wow, lady.  You can read the details on this very style conscious blog.  I'll confess to owning pretty much just one pair of pants now, which I think might have a better claim to the term "ghetto baroque", but that's just me.

While I was on that little tangent, we had another cooking club disaster.  There aren't very many flat spaces in the Debri Kitchen, which means that when left to their own devices, sometimes things find the final available flat space...

Shit.

Vitally wheatly glutinous, it's seitan!

Fortunately, we still have two main vegetable dishes that haven't been destroyed yet.  The stroganoff continues it's shallotey journey, and now the mushrooms and red wine (??) have gone into the prostroganoff.  Next up is the seitan, which has boiled and now needs to cook, to replace the beef which normally goes in stroganoff.

So...the asparagus, which was going to be sauteed, is now being roasted...because, hey, then we don't need to use another burner.  And, it is the one true way, anyway, so hey!  Victory!

Breaking news, French Vanilla soy creamer just entered our stroganoff.

And, this is where my live blogging ended.  Let me reflect back to that moment, where you taste something and realize that you have fucked up SO HARD.   Like, worse than when we dropped the brussels sprouts on the ground.  Because once you go French Vanilla, there is no 5 second rule.  Epic fail.

Anyway, I took this opportunity to try to "save the day", which in this case, consisted of rinsing off all of that delightful fat and red wine and cooked shallot bit in order to get rid of the vile French Vanilla.  It was sort of OK.  We added it back in with some cream (sorry, vegans!) and tried to reinfuse some flavor.  You'll just have to wait and see how we did.

Anyway, we sauteed the kale and stirred it up with the Goddess dressing, and put our roasted asparagus on a plate, and here's what it looks like:

VENGEANCE IS OURS!

Oh yeah, remember that cake?  Well...uh...I don't, honestly.  It's now been a few weeks since we made it.  There was some pouring of things on top of cooked cake.  It was kind of pudding-y and vegan.  And a bit forgettable.

You know what else we did?  We made Vitamix Ice Cream!  How did we do it?

	Deb	Bri	Jim	Alex
Stroganoff	A.  Tastes like the real thing to me!	Hmm...the sauce is an A, the seitan is a B+, the noodles are...whole wheat.	B-.  I can still taste the vanilla.	B.  The first bite with the seitan and the noodles and sauce was good.  However, the seitan lingers...
Kale	Not 100% thrilled with it.  What is that?  To me it’s undercooked, but I like my vegetables cooked more.  Maybe I didn’t put enough sauce on...B-	B-.  The tahini sauce is pretty good.  It can’t hide the face that it’s kale, though.  I’d pay as much as 4.95 for this...	B.  The kale would have benefitted from marinating in lemon juice.  That would have brightened the dressing a little.  The dressing was pretty good!	A-.  I like kale.  I like the dressing.  They go well together!  The longer the cooked kale sits, the shittier it gets.  I think this is reflected in the prior grades.
Asparagus	I barely remember the asparagus.  B+ maybe?  There wasn’t enough salt...	A-.  It’s tasty - I enjoy asparagus in general.  It’s sopping up the above sauces, too!	This is the only way I would eat asparagus.  It needs more salt and withery dessicated.  A-	B.  It was pretty much an afterthought, so I don’t think I got to eat it while it was hot and fresh.  Also, could use salt...
Cake	It wasn’t...y’know...bad...but it was a B- overall experience.  It needed some raspberry or something.	B-.  It’s gooey.  If you’re going to use maple syrup you might as well make something dedicated to maple syrup.  Butter and eggs are pretty essential in a decent cake...	C-.  I don’t even think raspberry would help it much.  The parts that were well baked didn’t have delicious flavor.	C+.  It tastes very vegan.  Too sugary and not rich enough.  It reminds me of Snackwells Devil’s Food Cakes
Ice Cream	C- for sure.  It was pretty much a failure I never want to experience again.	I’d give it a D.  I am tapping an ice crystal with my spoon and making an audible noise.	I would give it a D.  It was runny ice milk.	Making the vine was so much fun!