Sourdough Pancakes, and grit yeast gravy saves a pie.

Two sorts of sourdough pancakes

I needed to use up the last of the sour dough I had prepared, and so two batches of sourdough pancakes seemed to be the solution. Fox a New Year's present, my dear friend Ghita gave me some duck eggs. Ah, duck eggs. Yum. I love eggs, and can only eat duck eggs, and so if they come to me as presents once a year, you can be sure I will eat every one. However, I did not want to spend ALL my eggs on pancakes, so I tried two different recipes. The first, the pancake on the left, based on this recipe, was very, very simple:

2 cups “heart smart” bisquick mix
1 1/2 cup almond milk
1 cup sourdough starter

Mix this all together, set aside to rise 15-30 minutes, and cook on a griddle pan.

This was actually an excellent compromise between my favorite vegan pancakes and standard sourdough pancakes. They are slightly "gummy," as sourdough can sometimes be, but I think a little more milk and flour might change that--if I bother to try. These were really quite good just the way they are, and I did not find the lack of the perfect pancake texture to be a problem at all. Very easy. Very tasty. Less need for bisquick and almond milk. I used my sourdough after it had been fed for a week; it'll be interesting to see what it's like after one day out of the fridge.

The second pancake, on the right:

1½ cups of starter with
1 duck egg, slightly beaten
1 Tablespoon of canola oil
2 Tablespoons of almond milk

2 Tablespoon of sugar
¾ Teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon (generous) of baking soda


All ingredients were at room temp. Mix all the wet ingredients, then add the dry ingredients, and stir quickly to mix. Once the baking soda goes in, the pancakes have to be cooked immediately, so don’t mix that up until your pan is ready and you are prepared to cook the cakes. Once you add the baking soda, the rise begins immediately. It’s no joke, you have to cook them up straight away. I cooked them on a moderate heat griddle. I let them cook to the point where they were nearly dry on top—like injera—before flipping. These are thin, liquidy—you have to let them cook enough to be set.
My previous experiences with classic sourdough pancakes have not been great—gummy, with too much alkaline flavor as a result of the rising agents used. This was really good, though—I ate them straight out of the pan, with no syrup, et cetera. They make a thin pancake, and yes, with a slightly gummy quality, but it seemed to me merely to be the nature of a heavy, moist bread. Much better than eating something that tastes like the gel inserts for your shoes. "MMMM, I'm gellin'!" should not apply to pancakes. ;-)

A Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie I like!

And so, with tons of grit yeast gravy left over and a yen for Shepherds Pie that is now a year-old monster craving, I decided to give it a try. Oh, what a WIN. This is mostly a note to myself that quorn crumbles, grit yeast gravy, and sauteed veggies all mixed together will be so very tasty that the lesser quality of mashed potatoes made with vegan spread and almond milk instead of butter and whole milk will be unnoticeable, and this returns to me one of my absolute favorite comfort foods. Ah, Shepherd's Pie, how I have missed thee. You don't taste the same this way, but the difference is not worth worrying about. Yay!

Sourdough biscuits & gravy

Today's breakfast: Sourdough Biscuits with Grit Yeast Gravy
Most of the time, I consider how likely an ingredient or process was to have existed before 1601 when I am cooking for experimentations' sake. The primary reason I took to sourdough baking was to make period bread--active dry yeast was simply not around back in the day. Usually, when I make sourdough bread, I make a loaf and eat it. That hasn't worked well recently because I just haven't been eating much bread, and I have not had time to wait for the rise. It's a process, after all. Feed it the night before, prep it the next morning, spend time as needed for the rise, and then spend time as needed for the bake.

Sadly, I had let my starter languish in the fridge so long that I was wondering if I had killed it. I just had not had time to do a traditional loaf of bread. However, I need that starter to live. On Monday, I pulled it out, poured off the liquid that had accumulated on top (it was tooooo sour for my taste), and began feeding it daily for a week. I planned on doing individual rolls that could just serve me as single servings of bread when needed.

Then I thought about the delicate balance of prepping, timing, and baking all those rolls. Nope. I didn't want to do that. But now I had a crap ton of sour dough to use up. It seemed to be time to try sourdough biscuits again.

Now, the last time I made them, they were okay, but I wasn't wild about them. I used a different recipe this time. I based it on the recipe found here, and when you compare the two, you'll note that my modifications are extremely minimal:

Sour Dough Biscuits:

Mix wet:
2 cups active sourdough starter
1/4 cup olive oil

Mix dry :
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbl baking powder
3 tbl white sugar
1 tsp salt

Combine the wet mix with the dry mix. Form into golf-ball sized pieces, and arrange into oiled cast iron pan or oiled clay baking stone to rise for 15-30 minutes. Brush tops with oil or melted butter-substitute. Bake at 400F after the rise, 15 minutes or until golden brown.

I've also a batch made with canola oil in the freezer; I don't expect them to taste significantly different, given that these were perfectly pleasant. Michael found them a little too "crisp" for his taste, but the flavor was fine.

Jodi gave me the recipe for Grit Yeast Gravy last summer, and with so many biscuits, it seemed like a good time to try it. On the whole, I thought it needed to sit for an hour before serving--it's a little too heavy on the soy sauce flavor for me right off the burner. In looking for the recipe online, I noted that Jodi's version was essentially identical to this one, except she left off the vegan worcestershire sauce. Further, I used almond milk rather than soy. It was very good, and it made WAY more gravy than I expected. Michael's judgement? Pretty good for a vegetarian meal.

Praise with some faint damnation, indeed. Well, he liked it, and that's what matters. :-) Why? Because I liked it, which means he's going to have to eat it again. ;-)

Black Bean Burgers.

Another attempt at veggie burgers based on the now-disappeared veggie engine. Obviously, I still have it amongst my personal documents. This time, I went New World:



Black beans, an uncertain amount, but it looks like it was at least 3-4 cups once they were cooked up.
2-2.5 cups cooked brown rice
1 11 oz can of "Mexican corn," drained.
2 small onions
4-5 large cloves of garlic
1 package of taco seasoning
Teaspoon-ish of salt
2-ish teaspoons of freshly ground pepper
1/3 cup olive oil + oil for cooking
1-ish cup of vital wheat gluten

Sautee onions and garlic in oil, and mix up with previously cooked and cooled black beans, corn, rice, taco seasoning, salt, pepper, olive oil, VWG. Form into patties, place into oiled pans, and bake to your favorite stage of done. We like them crispy, so they get cooked at 400F for 45-90 minutes, depending on how much liquid is in each patty.

I did not add any liquid seasoning to this, and left the additional liquid requirement (beyond the oil) off this time because I had cooked the black beans from dried a couple of days ago. There was plenty of bean gravy attached to the beans, so no need to add more liquid. The beans were cooked with 2 sliced carrots, chopped onions, a clove of garlic, salt, and a splash of oil.

Michael felt like this was the best batch I'd made yet, and they were quite nice even straight from the oven; the VWG flavor I usually get while these things are still hot wasn't present.

Again, the only thing I really don't like about the process is the amount of time that it takes to make them and bake them. The mixing is pretty fast, so if I was using canned beans it would go faster, but I still need to precook the rice, and it takes a significant amount of time to cook them to the stage of done we like. Whatever savings one might be getting in terms of food cost is more than offset by the fuel cost and time cost. I'll keep making them, though, because I like controlling the ingredients and having more variety than the few commercial brands available that are soy and egg free.

ETA, 2 Nov 10, 12:40 AM: The veggie burger engine has reappeared.

Curried Beans instead of another Hoppin' John!

Now, I have a ton of cook books. Once upon a time, I looked at all the books of Medieval cookery I have and decided that I needed to try a recipe from each book I owned. I managed, and then I found that online sources tend to be more useful because I can look up a whole bunch of variations of recipes across time and space, and come up with something that represents my tastes and time interests--something I really love doing--rather than following something redacted by one cook and wondering if that dish, delicious though it might be, really represents the flavors and techniques used.

Now, I love beans. And I love rice. And I love greens. So, as I have fallen in love with Joanna Vaught's Veggie Burger Engine (which is still in my recipe books despite the sad loss of it on the internetz), and realized that I have my own Veggie Pie Engine, I'm also aware that I have my own Vegan Hoppin' John engine. Now, a hoppin' john engine is not as fabulous as a veggie burger engine, but it does indicate a cooking habit that suggests that I love, love, love dishes that are greens, rice, and beans cooked with oils and spiced to please my palate and complement the primary components in the hoppin' john*. Of course, it's meatless for me, but I'm not trying to feed it to a soul food aficionado, I'm cooking it for myself.

However, although I could eat Hoppin John and all the various versions of it from all the cultures that have taken to beans and rice as a dish with a silly regularity, I don't want it all the time. It occurred to me that it was time to try some of the recipes in my vast (or, at least, larger than most folk's) library of cook books. The first to catch my eye? "Black-Eyed Pea Curry" in a book called Hot and Spicy Cooking



I liked the dish a lot. I did serve it over brown rice, because, hey, that's how I like it. Beans and rice. It would do fine over any grain, however. I did think about serving it with corn tortillas instead, but that's for next time. The celery was very nice addition.

On the whole, though, I was waiting for the hot, and it never arrived. This is supposed to be spicy? I recollect thinking. So I spiced it up, and it was better. The primary point here, of course, is that it isn't as spicy as I thought it would be, but then, I think Tabasco sauce is a needed ingredient in most dishes. Anything you make is improved by lots of hot peppers, in proportion to their Scoville rating, so you are talking about an overall heat of 10,000 to 150,000 SU in the dish. Anything less will get Tabasco sauced. This got sauced, suggesting that I didn't find it to get to 10000 SU, despite the use of chillies.

I did not copy out the recipe. Instead, I took a picture. The original recipe is here. I did make some substitutions:

Ghee => Olive oil
4 Chopped Tomatoes => Tomato sauce. Non-awful fresh tomatoes can not be obtained this time of year.

And that would be about it for the subs. It worked out well and I'll likely make it again, next time treating it as a taco filling or some such and adjusting the SU as I may. :-)

Vegan Leek and Potatoe pie, and what appears to be the birth of the Veggie Pie Engine.

Some while ago, I made a parsnip pie in a reproduction 16th c. frying pan, which I really enjoyed.

This time, I tried a potato & leek pie in a geeze gravy and a "fake stone" 10 inch pie plate. I wish I could remember the brand name of the pie plate, but I took the label off and have not seen such a thing since. The only thing I can say about it is that I think it's some kind of cast ceramic, maybe cordierite. The point, of course, is that it's a cast stone material that is supposed to make crusts extra special crispy. I've had it for a while, and it was time to put it to use.


Leesie's Leek and Tatie Pie.


It worked nicely as a savory dinner pie, and with a salad & a glass of Shiraz, it was an easy meal. It also demonstrates the value of having a few simple recipes under your belt, because if you know how to make a basic white sauce, a basic oil-based pie crust, and perform a few simple things like prep and saute vegetables, you can easily assemble any variation on a savory vegetable pie you want to assemble.

Generative cooking, if you will, based on the concepts of the generative learning model.

This used:

• 1 recipe of basic oil pie crust: use your favorite to make a double crust pie for a plate as described below.
  
• 1 recipe of geeze gravy: use your favorite fake cheeze sauce to produce about 2-3 cups of sauce.
  
• A mess of potatoes
  
• 2-3 bunches of leeks
  
  • in short, all the leeks I had in the house plus enough potatoes to slightly overfill a 10.25 inch diameter, 1.75 inch deep pie plate
  
  
• garlic to taste--cloves if possible.
  
• salt, pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350F, or adjust according to your oven's personal foibles. The point is to have it at a temperature to bake the pie upon assembly.

Wash, clean, and slice the leeks. Set sliced leeks aside to soak in water for 30 minutes or so, to allow whatever grit may still be in them to settle out. Prepare your pie crust. Roll it out and set into a cool place to keep chilled while you are preparing the rest of the dish. Wash the potatoes, peel if desired, slice, and parboil in slightly salted water; check as needed and drain when finished. If you believe your leeks have soaked enough, saute them in some olive oil with a few cloves of garlic. Prepare your geeze gravy.

Now you are ready to assemble.

Prepare your pie pan as needed to release the pie upon completion.

Mix the sauteed leeks, the parboiled potatoes, and the geeze gravy in a large bowl. Taste for spice adjustments, adding pepper, salt, and perhaps garlic and other favorite spices and herbs, as needed. Set aside.

Place the bottom crust into the pie plate( blind bake if desired, I did not), then fill with the leek/potato/gravy mix. Cover with top crust, seal the edges, and pop into oven until done.

Serve and enjoy. This basic pie was very good with cayenne pepper sauce on it, it was good cold without additional condiments, and it was good with a pepper-heavy powder forte.

Comments on what I learned:

1. Typing it out as if it was really a recipe reinforces just how much work actually went into the dish. It's not a wonder that cooking from scratch has decreased so mightily in this day and age. They may be simple processes, but it's not really simple. It's largely why I have gotten into the habit of cooking large portions of things--that way, I have 3-5 meals for all the effort.


2. My oil crust recipe is very simple--flour, oil, liquid (usually water). I almost always use a mix of white and whole wheat flour. This time, I used straight up white flour. Ah, yeah, if it is at all possible, I will never do that again. I really like it better when it is mixed grains.


3. I really like this pie plate. The crust might have been better if the bottom crust had been blind baked slightly to decrease the inner side's moisture, but the outside of the crust was everything I expected a crispy nice crust to be, and, of course, the top crust was fine. Anyway, This is an Excellent Tool. I found it at Ace Hardware, of all places, on the clearance rack. The Ace Hardware site does not list any bakeware like it, though, so I am wondering if it is out of business. Sad.


4. It is a mild savory pie. I will be very comfortable trying a lot of spices in the sauce, to see what works, what doesn't.


5. When I made the pie, I assembled it in layers: potatoes, leeks, geeze gravy. It was good that way, or I wouldn't be recording this for my future reference. However, I would have preferred the sauce to go all through; this is the way I usually prepare savory pies. In future, mix it all up first and then place into crust.

Just as an aside, I'd like to try this with a little bit of liquid smoke--I think that it might make a nice touch. Just a very little, though.

Food for Michael. And me.

First;

Michael loves moussaka. I had eggplant and was thinking of making a sort of veganized version of an eggplant lasagna I had seen at this little cooking site: Feed Me Bubbe. I'd peeled 'er up and salted 'er for that de-bittering step Bubbe recommends... and Michael saw the eggplant and turned to me with these frakking eyes so huge and weepy and hopeful that they'd make Margaret Keane cry and said, "Are you making mousakka?"

Sigh. Yes. Let me look for a recipe.

I found this one: Classic Greek Moussaka with Eggplant.

It worked out okay! It'll be easy to mod for a version I can eat, I think. I didn't have tomatoes, so I subbed 12 oz of tomato paste and 36 oz of water, and ground beef for lamb. Since I was making this for Michael, I made the basic bechamel with whole eggs rather than egg yolks, and there was no real Greek cheese to be found, so we used a mix of Americanized feta and mozzarella. Next time, not so much water with the tomato paste. Michael enjoyed it tremendously and decided that I am the Bestest. Girl. Evah. He also asked for more eggplant in it next time, and lamb rather than ground beef. And then he ate every bit of it. It was *a lot,* probably 12-15 servings worth.

I was going to make a version of it myself, with a bechamel based on nut milks and possibly nut yeast and herbs in place of cheese, no eggs, and whatever fake meat crumbles were in the fridge, but there wasn't enough eggplant.

Next time, eh? And that is why this is here. This is the base that I'll build my own version upon. :-) And I made Michael happy, so it's an all around win.

Cooking with ghosts.

Late October and early November tends to be the time when the religions typically practiced in North America tend to remember the dead. This is my mother, more than 10 years gone now, the auburn haired girl that stands beside her own mother, who is holding my aunt in her arms.

I didn't deliberately focus on a dish in remembrance in my mother while I was cooking last night, but it came to me, as I was cooking, that I was doing something that my mother would often do in her later years, make a soup for supper that used a commercially prepared beef base and whatever vegetables were in the house. She generally did this because she was, by that time, permanently disabled, and food stamps only go so far. It is one of my great regrets that I could not be financially stable enough to be of any help to my mother, despite my education, until after she passed. But that's a story for another day. This story is about this soup my mother would make.

In earlier years, she would make meatball soup, something that I would eventually take over, and this was her way of making it when she did not have any meat. Last night, we had a plenitude of veggies needing to be used and a man, Miguel-san, who has been very sick for a week. I found myself cutting all the veggies up and tossing them into a pot, with the intention of adding vegetable bases rather than beef base, and rice noodles and peas for the "complete protien" component. A mild, healing soup for dinner for the sick man.

This is what I got:



The contents are carrots, celery, peas, potatoes, onions, cloves of garlic, a packet of onion/mushroom soup, a tablespoon of vegetable base, olive oil, and rice noodles. Michael liked it just the way it was. I peppered it up for its initial serving; later bowls, after the soup had cooled and the rice noodles kind of took over the pot, I needed soy sauce to counteract the flavor of the rice starch. This was my first time cooking any rice-type noodle, and I did not know what happens when you let them stand in liquid. Next time, I'll make some sort of pad thai-inspired dish.

As I ate it, I thought about standing in my mother's kitchen, listening to her describe how she had made the soup, watcher her smile as I told her that I liked it. It is poor folks food, no doubt, and the addition of the olive oil was my little stab at trying to address the one problem of the dish, as I remembered it--the lack of fat made it less flavorful. When I make it again, I'll likely use wheat noodles--and, in truth, the dish will be a little different every time, just as it was for my mother. In a strange way, it was like my mother stood beside me as I stirred, and this living recipe is like another way my mother lives on now that she is gone.