totally vegan #4

Whoa, vegan feast at the house last weekend! In what is now and hopefully will remain a weekly tradition, my friend Veronica and I are teaming up in the kitchen to make vegan food basically with the intention of it being all real food with no weird food-substitutes or fake-meatless-versions-of-meat-food. No BBQ seitan sandwiches here!This weekend we perfected a recipe (basically by being concerned about presentation even the slightest bit--as opposed to last weekend, where we baked flatbreads and kinda just spread some stuff on them) for a savory vegan tart with olive oil crust, spiced lentil puree and a minted cashew creme. Here's how to make it:

for the crust:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp garlic powder (totally optional, season it however you like)

1/3 cup olive oil

1 cup soy/almond milk + 1 tbsp lemon juice

Sift together dry ingredients, stir in oil, combine soy or almond milk + lemon juice (to curdle), mix in enough milk to form a slightly wet dough ball, shape into a ball with your hands, let it rest for 20 minutes, cut into 8 pieces, roll each piece out and press into a small fluted tart pan, bake at 350 for 10 minutes, let cool before removing from pan.

for the filling:

1 1/2 cups (approximately? leftovers are good!) lentils

vegetable stock

1/3 cup chopped fresh mint

1 tbsp whole coriander seeds

1 leek, roughly chopped

salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste

basically you simmer all of these things together until the lentils are done, then puree with an immersion blender or food processor. I think a good ratio of lentils:stock is 1:2, and it takes 20 or 30 minutes for the lentils to be finished cooking. Seasoning with salt/pepper/red pepper is best done after cooking the lentils, and adjusted after pureeing.

for the creme:

1 cup raw cashews soaked in water 20 minutes

1/3-1/2 medium onion

1-2 garlic cloves

fresh mint

This is something that is done completely in a blender, and the proportions of onion/garlic/mint:cashew is totally up to you. Just puree it all together in a blender with water until a creamy consistency, like thick yogurt, is achieved.

We also made white gazpacho, with cucumber, garlic, green onion, lemon juice, veggie stock, and almond milk, as well as a mustard greens salad with sliced pickled beets. Veronica baked vegan chocolate doughnut-cakes and we made this crazy glaze using an obscure citrus fruit, agave nectar, ginger powder, and powdered sugar.

Later that night I played my first show withmy new band, which at that point had only existed for 5 days. And I came home to find that Josie and Sharp had done all the dishes! Incredible.

pizza, pizza

I went to see my friend Ariel's show on Bedford ave last week and it was wonderful as usual. As I did not have any ID on me, I was denied a beer at Rosemary's Greenpoint Tavern and just said "screw it, I'm going home to make pizza." I went across the street to Fornino and bought 2 large balls of uncooked dough, then walked a few blocks to the nearest grocery store and bought dandelion greens (finally in season again!), an onion, goat cheese, mozzarella, and some aged balsamic. Oh, also a sixer of Peroni....

I returned home to 28 Lawton to find two hungry-ish roommates about to watch Lost, so I figured I'd better get to cooking so we could have a fancy TV dinner. I made pizza with caramelized onions, dandelion greens, and goat cheese with a balsamic reduction. Here's a photo...

It was really good. The only problem was that, even though I put the dandelion greens on the top just at the very end of baking, some of them got a little too dried out and crispy in the heat. They still tasted good, but not as good as I knew they could have tasted. But I'm not one to be super hard on myself about cooking--there's no point! It's too fun! And there are infinite do-overs! Anyways, when I make pizza at home I like to bake it at 400 on an oiled cookie sheet. I also like to brush a bit of oil over the crust and salt it because....salt = yummy.

You know what else was yummy? The pizza I made a few days later! It was a white pizza with caramelized onions, mozzarella, and dandelion greens. Holy crap! I'm just sayin'....it was sorta insane. Pretty decadent, kinda perfect for a Friday night dinner kinda thing.

I made a bechamel sauce (equal parts flour + melted butter, whisk together over lowish heat in a saucepan, add scalded milk, whisk til it thickens) and put a bunch of parmiggiano reggiano in it, then spread that over the rolled-out dough, topped it with mozzarella, then added the onions. After the pizza was nearly cooked, I put the dandelion greens (tossed, this time, with a bit of oil to avoid the aforementioned crispiness problem) over top and let them wilt in the oven as the pizza finished baking. This photo doesn't really do it justice, but it evidences how great the pizza turned out since I didn't even have the wherewithal to, say, put it on a plate before photographing it.

meatball mania

a couple of weeks ago, on a cold and rainy night, I cooked beef meatballs for natalie thrall and myself to eat for dinner (along with a caramelized cauliflower gratin and roasted brussels sprouts...just sayin') because Josie and Josiah had cooked Grandma Wolfson's meatball recipe the night before and it looked so good (it had raisins in it! wtf?!). I apparently need to read more food blogs, however, because I was enough of a rube to think that Josie and I were out here in Bushwick makin' meatballs and therefore blazing some kind of new culinary trail in the comfort-foodie world, but Annie put me in my place by informing me that meatballs are already trendy.

Undaunted, I bought a pound of ground veal at Marlow and Daughters last weekend and made some really simple, really delicious meatballs in a red wine-tomato sauce the other night. I just mixed the (local, sustainable) veal with parsley, garlic, onion, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, and eggs. I don't feel I need to explain this in great detail to you, like give you measurements, because I certainly didn't use any, and if you really don't know how to make a meatball maybe you should email me and we can start with the basics, like, what a stove is, how to turn it on, etc.

I browned the meatballs over medium-high heat and then put them aside on a plate, let the pan cool down a little, then sauteed some garlic and onion in the drippings until tender. I added some sliced (local!) cremini mushrooms and let them brown up, then added some red wine and let it reduce, scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan, added canned tomatoes and a bit of local ricotta, brought it to a simmer, put the meatballs back in there, and cooked covered and at a low simmer until they were still pink in the middle but well heated through. I served them over polenta, which is so easy to make it's kind of ridiculous, as Mark Bittman can explain to you.

Madison made a delightful mixed-greens salad with avocado, diced raw beet, cucumber, red pepper, gorgonzola, and a lemon vinaigrette.

But what to do with all those leftover meatballs? I think we here at 28 lawton made the right decision, which was to hang out the next night and make meatball subs and watch 21 jump street. Not kidding.

pappardelle with roasted butternut squash puree, bacon, and gorgonzola

so my roommate madison came home earlier this week from her long sojurn to the sxsw and mtymx festivals, and I advised her to return hungry. I made this pasta that was really tasty and chock full of butternut squash goodness and bacon/cheese evil! It was pretty simple...

1) peel and remove seeds from a butternut squash

2) preheat oven to 375

3) chop squash into small, similarly-sized pieces

4) toss squash with olive oil, salt and pepper

5) roast until tender

6) while squash roasts, cook pasta and fry bacon

7) puree roasted squash with chicken stock until roughly smooth (some lumps are good)

8) drain pasta just before aldente, cook with puree, add bacon and gorgonzola before serving

But I'm gonna come clean, this post is really a back-handed attempt to get you to make your own chicken stock, and tell you how easy it is.

I made chicken stock while I was making chicken salad the other day. I had some chicken bones and fat, leeks, and thyme in my freezer just waiting to be made into stock (left over from that time I made the whole roasted chicken). So I let them thaw and threw them into a hot le creuset, browned everything for awhile, then added enough water to nearly fill the pot, salt (not a lot), and smashed garlic cloves and simmered away until it tasted satisfactory (about an hour, hour and a half). Then I let it cool and skimmed the fat from the top, put it in a ziploc freezer bag, and I have so much chicken stock to put to various uses, like making a butternut squash puree! It really is simple, you don't have to stir it or watch it or anything, just let it simmer uncovered until it has a nice color, aroma, and flavor. this shit is way better than you would buy in a box or (eek!) a can.

And it allows you to put to good use all those chicken bones you have lying around the....oh wait, no one probably has that but me. Next time you feel like chicken, cook a whole one and save the bones. k?

chicken salad; or, the Perfect Food?

Josie and I had a discussion regarding chicken salad the other day when we got sandwiches at our neighborhood cafe, Athom on Broadway. They make a damn good chicken salad, with parsley, carrot, red onion, celery, and a bit of mayo. We decided that chicken salad is kind of the Perfect Food. It's easy to make, and relatively inexpensive. Also, you can put whatever the hell you want in it and keep in line with the eccentricities (or cliches) of your personal taste. You can put fruit in it! Nuts! Mayo! No mayo! Mustard! Herbs! Spices! Root vegetables! Tomatoes! Cheeses! Vegan fake chicken instead of real chicken! The possibilities are endless, the limits only those of your imagination....

That being said, I made a fairly simple chicken salad from a half-chicken I bought this weekend with my cousin Annie, for whom I had purchased a gift certificate to Marlow and Daughters as a Christmas gift. Needless to say, we spent forever in there (and quite a bit of time sipping cocktails beforehand at Diner) drooling over various meats, both raw and cured. I also purchased a red onion, some parsley, pea shoots, and fresh spinach (among other things...details forthcoming). I ended up having this for dinner last night:

I made a simple chicken salad, mixing the chicken with parsley, red onion, and a bit of mayo, and then wrapped chicken salad and pea shoots in individual spinach leaves taco-style. So delicious! Maybe pea shoots are actually the perfect food...

Oh right, I'm getting off track.... but the key to making the chicken so deliciously tender is to roast it, skin-on, bone-in. I had basically a breast and a leg, so I rubbed a little olive oil, salt and pepper over it and roasted it skin side up at 375 for 30 minutes. It was perfectly done. When it cooled I removed the skin and any extra fat and then shredded it. I stirred in about a tablespoon of mayo with some chopped parsley and red onion, then plated a bit in between some spinach and pea shoots. And guess what I'm having for lunch today and tomorrow?

what's for breakfast?

1) Sunday Brunch

I bought some buttermilk at Marlow and Daughters awhile back, and googled until I found the perfect recipe for buttermilk scones. We had a brunch at our place a few weeks ago that was "breakfast smorgasbord" themed, and included tangerine mimosas, breakfast sausages, buttermilk scones with jam, minted fruit salad, and two types of deviled eggs!

Madison has a cookbook that is exclusively deviled egg recipes, by the way. (also, our hash browns ended up an epic fail for some reason, so I'm not going to talk about them because it makes me depressed.)

2) Buckwheat Buttermilk-Ricotta Pancakes with Ginger-infused Maple Syrup

My sister Kate, another redhead who's gotta eat, came in town to visit me for my birthday. We were hungry, and I had some buttermilk left, so we made pancakes. I had some organic

buckwheat pancake mix in the pantry, so we just jazzed it up with ricotta (made in Brooklyn from New York State milk!) and used buttermilk instead of water or regular milk. We heated some local maple syrup with some sliced ginger to sweeten the deal. Oh yeah, we also cooked Marlow and Daughters breakfast sausages.

Good god, did these end up tasty. So perfect and fluffy were they, in fact, that Kate made me get a "cross-section" photo to post here.

totally vegan #2, #3

Whoa! I haven't posted in soooo long. But I've been busy, and cooking a lot!

As I am still unemployed, I now claim my occupation to be "homemaker," as my days are filled with gardening, fixing up my new apartment, playing with my dog, and cooking. These next couple posts are going to be a game of catch-up and I thought I'd start with the vegan food...

TOTALLY VEGAN #2

Spicy Chickpea-Lemon Faux Stew

I like this recipe because it's so flexible, you can adjust it based on what's in season, what's in your pantry, etc. In the summer I like to use red pepper puree instead of canned tomatoes, but this turned out great, and kept really well to be eaten by my lovely vegan friend Veronica the next day.

I started by sauteeing some garlic (2 cloves, chopped sort of finely, who cares? this is a rustic dish) in olive oil until tender and aromatic, then added my canned whole tomatoes (big-sized can, san marzano, duh). Using my spatula I broke the tomatoes up into smaller-than-bite-sized chunks.

I then added the juice of 1/2 lemon, and maybe 1/4 cup of roughly chopped fresh dill. I thinly sliced the reserved 1/2 lemon and threw the slices in there after removing the seeds. Then I added one 15oz can of drained chickpeas, seasoned the stew with salt, pepper, 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, and about a teaspoon of turmeric, and then simmered, covered, for 15-20 minutes until the chickpeas were super tender and had absorbed the flavor of the liquid. Yum! Madison and I ate this with crackers while we watched an episode (or two...) of Daria on YouTube. Because we are adults.

TOTALLY VEGAN #3

Roasted Root Vegetables with Quinoa and Lemon-Parsley Vinaigrette

I made this as a light vegan dinner before we all went to a Coasting show at this birthday party which actually just was a 1-year anniversary party for this band called the Honey dos. This recipe could not be any easier...or any tastier...or any healthier. I kid you not.

This is it:

Get an assortment of root vegetables. I had carrot, parsnip, turnip, celery root, red cippolini onion, and rutabaga that I had purchased at my fave store, Marlow and Daughters. Peel the vegetables and cut them into similarly-sized pieces, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and roast at 375 until tender. Like, 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook some quinoa, and prepare the vinaigrette, which is just lemon juice, finely chopped parsley, spicy mustard, salt, and pepper. When the vegetables are done, toss everything together. DONE. I also added a bit of local sheep's milk feta to mine because, ahem, I'm not vegan.

Veronica also made these really unbelievable vegan cupcakes that night, so pretty, and soooo delicious. Girl can bake!