1st cake of the fall

the silver lining to all of this chilly rain and gray skies (so relentless sometimes, you can feel the raindrops pelting against your very bones), is that it's finally time to turn the oven back on! the first few weeks of fall still prove to be too pleasant and breezy to have an appliance in the kitchen emitting hundreds of degrees of radiant heat. but now...now is just the perfect time to put on a jazz LP, all fuzzed out against the record player's needle, to make a late afternoon french press, and to dig up old baking recipes banished to the back of the pile.

our first cake of the fall was a truly collaborative effort. lauren whipped the cake up in minutes flat, and i improvised on the filling and the glaze. chocolate, cinnamon, apples, cinnamon, cider and rum - can you think of a dessert flavor profile more fitting for autumn?

Choco Cinnamon Cake w/ Apple Rum Filling & Black Pepper Cider Glaze
takes about 45 mins, 25 inactive
makes 2 round cakes, 2 cups of filling and 1/2 cup glaze
cake recipe adapted from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan by Dreena Burton

ingredients for the cake:

2 cups +1-2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1/2 cup regular cocoa (not dutch processed)
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/8 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt (scant)
2-2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 3/4 cup water
1/8 cup balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup canola oil

ingredients for apple filling:

1 teaspoon vegan margarine
2 medium to large crisp apples, such as gala, sliced thinly
2 scant tablespoons brown sugar
2 big splashes dark rum or brandy

ingredients for cider glaze:

1 cup of apple cider
pinch of cinnamon
3 black peppercorns

- preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

- combine all the dry ingredients: sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt, and then stir in the sugar.

- combine all the wet ingredients.

- add the wet to dry and mix until just incorporated.

- pour the batter into two round pans, lined with parchment paper. pop 'em in the oven and set a timer for 23-25 minutes.

- while the cake is baking, make the filling: put the margarine into a cast iron pan over low to medium heat, and let it melt. add the apples and stir gently until they're softened and slightly browning, about 6 minutes. slightly turn up the flame, and add the brown sugar. let it get melt-y over the apples, maybe 2 minutes. turn the heat up even higher and add the liquor. it should sizzle loudly and caramelize onto the apples. stir gently and taste a piece of apple. does it taste awesome? if so, its done, so turn the heat off. cover the pan and let the apples sit in their stew til you're ready to fill the cake. if the apples do not taste awesome, add a bit more sugar and let it cook for another few minutes.

- the cakes should be done by right around this time. test with a toothpick or knife for done-ness. put them on a rack (still in the pan) to cool.

- put the cider in a non-stick sauce pan over a high flame; bring it to a boil. turn the flame down, add the cinnamon and black peppercorns, and let the cider reduce until it's about 1/2 a cup. it should be syrupy and glaze-y. if it sits for awhile before the cakes fully cool and thickens up too much, you can re-heat and thin it out with a bit of water or more cider. make sure to fish out the peppercorns!

- when the cakes have cooled enough to safely touch the pan, gently wiggle them out of the pan.

- unlike using frosting, you don't have to wait for the cakes to fully cool before adding the extras.
so set one cake on a plate, and spread the apple filling out across the top, making sure to save a few pieces for a garnish. put the 2nd cake on top, and press down very gently. then pour the cider glaze on top, and garnish with a few slices of the apple you saved. serve immediately. this cake will be good for up to 4 days if you keep it in a cake saver!


love,
emily

quick & ease - sweet pot salad

it's a great feeling when you can tell that a new recipe is gonna be a lifelong keeper, before the food is even finished. that's exactly how i felt when rocking mark bittman's sweet potato salad, as posted on his most righteous blog bitten, in the new york times (sigh). even though bittman sure loves his meats and fishes, this spicy little salad came out of the box 100% vegan, so all i had to do is cook. using a recipe for a simple salad may seem a bit silly, but as our friend halimah put it, "they just always turn out better when you do." the secret, i think, is all in the dressing. if left to my own devices, i most likely would have over complicated it, adding extra spices or whatever that would muck it up. this one is simple as anything - just some jalapeno, garlic, lime juice, olive oil and salt. absolutely gorgeous, and adds such a lightness to the decadent roasted sweet potatoes. the completed salad is a lovely, vibrant mix of colors and textures, and takes maybe 10 minutes to make (not including the time the potatoes are in the oven). one addition that i think could be nice for a heartier dish would be some roasted crimini or baby bella mushrooms. but it's pretty perfect on its own, too...

sweet potato salad
adapted from bitten by mark bittman
see the original post here
takes about 50 minutes, 40 minutes inactive
makes a big bowl full

4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
a few tsps + 1/4 cup of olive oil
1 red onion, chopped or sliced
2 tablespoons fresh jalapeno pepper, minced
1-2 cloves of garlic, peeled
juice of 2 limes
2 cups of cooked black beans
1 red pepper, diced
handfull of cilantro
salt & pepper

- preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

- toss the sweet potato and onions in a few teaspoons of olive oil, salt and pepper. lay it out on a pan, and roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes and tender and brown around the edges.

- while the taters are cooking, chop the peppers and drain the beans.

- put the jalapenos, garlic, lime juice and 1/4 cup olive oil into the food processor. blend until smooth. taste for salt and pepper.

- when the potatoes & onions are done, toss them in a bowl with the red pepper, black beans, and the spicy dressing. sprinkle with a healthy dose of cilantro. done!


love,
emily

tiny kiwi

the vegan gourmet is always on the look out for interesting produce options. because so many ingredients are off limits, we gotta keep it fresh. i mean, really...think about it. there are hundreds, thousands, millions? of items, ranging from everyday staples (butter, cream, lard) to all forms of strange exotica that we mindfully omit from our each and every dish. so when we come across a special breed of potato (we saw some the other day at the farmer's market called "red cloud," which inevitably makes me think of floating dreamily on a fluffy cumulous of mashed potatoes), or white asparagus, or green paradise figs, we get our organic cotton panties all in a wad. new products mean new possibilities, and when you just can't face another stir fry, that is a beautiful thing.

the other day when i was walking through the italian market, i was scanning the produce stands for an interesting fruit option to adorn my morning granola. berry season is mostly over (sob! see ya next year), figs were expensive, etc etc. and then a small container caught my eye. kiwi berries! the label said "kiwi grapes," but that didn't fool me for a second.

i first learned of kiwi berries at work, and have loved the little dudes ever since. on the outside, they don't resemble kiwis at all: smooth skin with not a spot of fuzz. actually, they kind of look like - and are roughly the same size as - green cherries.


but then when you cut them open:


like a tiny kiwi! so i bought a box for a dollar and experienced the little buzz of finding something special. i bet these would be a snazzy little garnish on cupcakes or a fancy cocktail...

the wikipedia tells me that while we associate kiwis with tropical climates, kiwi berries are native to korea, china and siberia. the vines are quite hardy, and though they need a frost free period of 150 days to properly grow, they do survive temperature drops. also, the vines apparently smell like cat nip and cats love it! so next year, i'm growing these babies in my back yard, to snack on all summer long and to attract a gaggle of kittens to hunt the mice that frolick in our kitchen at night!

love,
emily

vegan mofo day 2, seattle day 3

i must admit, i sure love philadelphia but we can often lack in the way of brunch for vegans. sure there's the good old go to tempeh club, and even a recently discovered (although it seems i was the last veganin the damn city to do so) tempeh hoagie, but usually when you go somewhere you're working with one, maybe two choices. that's why i love all vegan restaurants. THE CHOICES! the "no i'm not ready to order yet, i've only looked at one column of the menu and have 4 prospective dishes in mind" dillema. wayward cafe, in university district, seattle, offered one of these conundrums, a delicious and beautiful conundrum it was.

do you know how it feels to be a (vegan) kid in a (vegan) candy store, anything you can lay your grubby little fingers on could be yours. and my grubby little fingers were feeling up on the seitan hash like it was a soft puppy dog. "scrambled season tofu combined with smokey seitan, crisp green peppers, onions and home fries, served with toast". i like this dish because it has everything i could want, tofu, seitan, home fries and when i sub a biscuit for toast (i had heard they were the most amazing biscuits, vegan or no!) you really, truely, got it all.

and then when your dining partner gets biscuits and gravy and a side of steamed garlic greens and you both go halfsies, well shit, you know how to do brunch.

ok so the picture doesn't really do it justice, because gravy is not the top model of the culinary world, but that was seriously the most flaky, buttery, herbed soft pillow of goodness i ever called a biscuit. and the fact that i didn't even turn the menu over to scope out the lunch options means i might just have to go back someday.

-lauren

quick & ease - peperonata

we now interrupt this broadcast of seattle-based adventures to talk, once again, about cooking. a few years ago, october was dubbed "vegan mofo" AKA "vegan month of food" by the blogosphere, as an impetus for all of us bloggers to write up a storm during the first real autumn month. it's a bit too easy to be lazy about cooking, documenting, photographing and writing for posts when there's no real pressure to do such, and sometimes days or a week can slip by without updating the old weblog. vegan mofo is kind of like friendly peer pressure to stay on top of your game. someone, god bless them, even designed an adorable logo (see above), meant to be shared by the virtual community at large. last october, vegan royale wasn't yet off the ground, and so this october we are please to join in the vegan mofo.

in that spirit, i want to really focus this fall on making easy, reasonable dishes for lunch and dinner. i forget sometimes that preparing meals doesn't always have to be this big ordeal involving specialty ingredients and multi-step processes. thusly, i can get overwhelmed by the prospect of cooking and end up just slapping a sandwich together. so i am starting a little VR column called quick & ease as a way of exploring this concept. a cookbook that i think will be my guide and inspiration is a new way to cook, by sally schneider. this tome, gifted to lauren a few years ago by our aunt jenny, is about simple, hearty, healthy cooking that doesn't sacrifice flavor. to clarify, this is NOT a vegan cookbook by any means. actually, many of the recipes highlight meat, and how to cook "unhealthy" comfort food in a still nutritious manner. many recipes suggest sauteeing or frying things in panchetta or bacon fat. so yeah, sally isn't a vegetarian, but there are still hundreds of recipes that are vegan or vegan-izable, and i just really like her style: sophisticated but easy and customizable to what's in your fridge on any given weeknight.

the first recipe out of this book that i made was peperonata, a rich pepper laden stew that can be used as a condiment, pasta sauce, sandwich spread, or with grilled (faux)meats. it was amazingly simple, and served over whole wheat rotini with some tofu sauteed in red wine, just the perfect wednesday night, pre-phillies supper.
Peperonata w/ Pasta adapted from a new way to cook by sally schneider

ingredients:
1.5 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion
4 - 6 cloves of garlic
3 - 4 bell peppers, sliced thinly (she suggests red and/or yellow, i used green & yellow)
1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste
4 tablespoons of water
handful chopped fresh basil or flat leafed parsley
handful chopped black olives (i used kalamata)
salt & pepper

the recipe:

- heat the oil in a heavy skillet until hot, but not smoking. add the onions and garlic and sautee for about 5 minutes. stir in the peppers and sautee for another 2 minutes.

- cover and reduce the heat to moderately low. cook the pepper-y, onion-y mixture for 5 more minutes, stirring a bit. everything should start to soften. **if you are low on time, you can leave the lid on for another 5-6 minutes, and reduce cooking time in the next step by 10 minutes**

- put the pasta water over a high flamed to bring it up to a boil. then uncover the skillet and cook everything for another 20 minutes, until the peppers are super soft.

part of the reason this dish is so low in fat but still tastes so good, is that the peppers release their juices, which emulsify with the oil and tomato paste. brilliant!

- stir in the tomato paste and the water, and cook for another few minutes, until most of the liquid is evaporated. throw the pasta in the now-boiling water.

- turn the heat off the peperonata, and let it cool for a bit. check on the pasta after 7-8 minutes. drain when al dente.

- stir the olives and herbs in the peperonata and add black pepper to taste. spoon over the pasta! like i said, i added some fried up tofu for a little extra substance, but this would be great on its own too!


love,
emily