Roasted Cauliflower. And Leftovers.

Yah, I eat a lot of earth-toned food. Yes, yes I do. And I never think about a photo until its impossible to get a good one.

Be that as it may, this piece of a picture features a couple of things I do all the time (1. make something via the fried rice engine, this time, using carrots, onions, and mushrooms and 2. make lentils) and one new thing. It's the new thing I want to mention.

I tried roasted cauliflower. It was wonderful. I did look over multiple recipes, as there are tons of them, and decided that this one was the starter recipe for me.

Except I subbed nootch for Parmesan cheese. And I left off the vinegar. It's all good and stuff, but I was just wanting the veggie and the spices. My modification:

* 8 cups 1-inch-thick slices cauliflower florets
* 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 tablespoon fresh marjoram
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* Freshly ground pepper to taste
* 1 t nutritional yeast
* 1 t garlic


Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 450°F.
2. Toss cauliflower, oil, spices in a preheated, great big, cast iron frying pan. [Don't burn yourself!] Spread on a across pan and roast until starting to soften and brown on the bottom, check and stir every 15 minutes until done.

Yum. This was certainly Cauliflower FTW! and I expect the regular recipe is quite nice, too, but I wasn't interested in missing the flavor of the spices by tossing with my exceedingly expensive and super flavorful 18-yr-old Balsamic.

Product Review: Living Harvest Hemp Frozen Desert

People who know me know I love Living Harvest's tempt hemp milk. It's more expensive than my usual almond milk, and it's less frequently available (when I finally ran out of my stock pile, I went to my right well beloved Outpost and hunted the aisles, only to learn that they only carry it when the state-wide, loosely associated food cooperative system has it on sale. Because they have to, then.)

So I get it once in a while, and I stock pile it, and have it as a treat.

I found another treat:


Oh, my goodness.

I tried the mint and the coffee biscotti. This was completely delicious, and even the Baby K and the Baby Ry loved it: high praise indeed. I'm glad to have found it, as it makes a wider range of non-dairy deserts available to us. It is denser that the Luna & Larry's coconut frozen desert, which is nice, but each desert has its own merits, so it is about on par for taste and mouth-feel. Yum.

Beer and Tsardust

or, The Fried Rice Engine.


... what was I wanting to share about beer? I forgot. Other than I collected a multiple number of beer based recipes that I want to try, of course.

Anyway, I took a run out to Penzey's. Very soon I'll be off to Pennsic, and so I don't want to invest in too much as far as cooking spices go (saving my money for Auntie Arwen), but I did feel the need for smoked paprika, based on one of the beer recipes I've got hanging around. While there, I found a spice blend with the enchanting name of Tsardust memories. The ingredient list read like a typical period receipt (salt, garlic, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, marjoram--so, salt, garlic, marjoram, and poudre forte, all found in medieval European cooking) and so I had to bring a jar of it home with me.



This is what I did with it, that first try, and I quite enjoyed it. I do tend to throw vegetables into leftover rice for a quick meal--really, really often, as it happens. Like any bit of cooking that's really more a process than a measured out recipe, it's a little different every time, and, frequently, once the brassica family gets involved, so does some sort of oriental sauce--schezuan, usually, just a little something drizzled over the stir fry.

The usual sauce mix for it involves:

1 T nutritional yeast
1 T Maggi seasoning (or soy or worchestershire--vegan or regular)*
1-3 T olive oil

Into this goes an onion (and thence, sauteed), the rice, and whatever vegetables I decide will complete my meal today. Today, I tossed in a couple teaspoons of the Tsardust memories. It was nice! Nice enough for me to write it down to make sure I try it again.... and can find what I did when I am ready to try.

Many a tasty dish is lost to me because I forgot to write it down.

Roasted Eggplant

Briefly, a note about a portion of a recipe that worked well:

I ran across several recipes I would like to try on EatingWell.com, and I decided to try this one: Spiced Eggplant-Lentil Salad. Unfortunately, it depends largely on a fruit that I pretty much hate: mango. Still, it seemed easy enough to just leave the mangos off and go from there.

Unfortunately, the lentils got cooked way past the "individual lentils" stage, and so that got carried on into the usual lentil stew I make myself. Good thing I like them that way!

What I did get to try was the roasted eggplant bit:

# 4 tablespoons peanut oil or olive oil, divided
# 2 teaspoons chili powder
# 2 teaspoons curry powder
# 2 medium eggplants (3/4 pound each), trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes

# Preheat oven to 500°F.
# Combine 1 tablespoon oil with 2 teaspoons each chili powder and curry powder in a large bowl. Add eggplant and toss well. Spread the eggplant on a large, rimmed baking sheet. Roast, stirring once halfway through, until tender, about 15 minutes.

Unfortunately, my oven takes far longer than 15 minutes to roast eggplant cubes to what I consider done, so in future, I'm going to have to remember to throw some potatoes and other vegetables in there, as well. It's a shame to waste all that fuel on a couple of eggplants.

The eggplants were very good, though, and I think I would like this even better if I subbed out the spices listed here and subbed in some of my many, many spice blends.

ETA, much time later: I tried the above with Auntie Arwen's "Sheik of the Desert Ras el Hanout" blend instead of the listed spices. OMG. So good. Must remember that.

Notes for ROUS pie, first, easily supportable version.

These are just some links I want to save, some quick notes on the whole ROUS pie thing; it works kind of in conjunction with having finally made the Sage Onion Fava concoction to my satisfaction and, while looking for the recipes that were going to support it as a Reasonable Substitution For Vegans Seeking Nosh for SCA Events, got reminded of the ROUS Pie Project.

Because I found a receipt that makes me want to laugh: "If you want to make pies that have the flavor of cheese." Circa 1300 France, the very basic steps are thus: grind roe and bread with almond milk, and put it in your pies to give the flavor of cheese.

I've been working the geeze gravy thing for a while, and haven't yet come up with anything that is significantly better than any other nootch fake cheese sauce recipe online, although I'll eventually get around to sharing them here, if only to ensure that I always have access to them. And, of course, every Lent, folks in the Middle Ages would become experts at substituting out all animal products aside from sea creatures. But it makes me laugh to find this recipe--apparently, I'm not the only one ever had this issue.

Oysters in Gravy is popular across centuries and cuisines, and, if you are willing to use the word unguent as a loose synonym for gravy, wipes out 2 of the 4 letters--the other 2 then become easy, using the "For to make fysche tartes owt of Lent" (here) from form of curry: Rice and Spices. It's a simple as pie redaction/recipe bash/compatible cookery bit. I still want to do it as an Oyster/Eeel/Shrimp/"Rarebit" pie, but I want to see what I can do with the limits imposed by these two recipes, as well.

One of the things that's kind of a kick about the medieval cookery database is that it's done by hand, so you never can be sure that you've found everything you mean to find. It pops you up a lot of treasures when you don't expect it, but one of the reasons I had to save the links is so that I can go back and print off a hard copy of the recipe sometime in the next few days. I have found, much to my chagrin, that I sometimes need months to again find a recipe in the data base if I wasn't paying attention to the keywords I used to find it the first time.

Product Review: So Delicious Coconut Yogurt and Milk/Beverage

I miss yogurt so much. There are plenty of soy-based substitute products, and rice based substitute products, but, of course, what I have been looking for is an almond based substitute. And, when I was dragging myself around Outpost the other day, not only did I find the Coconut Bliss, I also found this:


This product is not as new to the market as I thought, but it's certainly new to me. And it was good. I tried several flavors, the sharp, berry-based flavors I tend to prefer. The texture was smooth, thick, and the sweet of it is acceptable, although maybe a little more than I'd like.

However, its cost makes it something that I do not expect to eat regularly. That is a problem. Given that it's price puts it in the "treat" range, and regular yougurt is cheaper, I'm not sure I am going to be buying this often.


Also tried, by this same company: So Delicious Coconut Milk. It's not bad, but it was thin, and had a sharp taste to it; I don't see myself switching to this from almond milk. I didn't care for it on my cereal and it didn't cook as well as almond milk in any form--cold case, UHT packaged--or easily, locally available brands--Blue Diamond, Silk. It also is not as lovely as Living Harvest's Hemp Milk, which is only occasionally locally available. It was, however, much better than any rice milk I have tried. It is also far more reasonably priced than the coconut yogurt, so price was not an issue here.

FWIW, my preference is for Blue Diamond Almond Milk. You may have noticed. The coconut beverage will not be replacing, or even supplementing, it. However, if my only choices are the So Delicious or Rice Dream, it's So Delicious for the win.

I'm going to have to get to work on a recipe for almond based yogurt. Just as other bright people came up with a coconut milk creamy desert, surely someone else out there has already tried.

Product Review: Coconut Bliss

I totally frakkin' love ice cream and frozen custard. I have not tried the soy frozen deserts because, well, they're unfermented soy, and one single go round with rice-based cheese was enough to make me scream yuck and swear off rice-based "dairy" forever and ever amen. There are some frozen deserts that I have once in a while--fruit juice bars, some brands of gelato--but nothing quite takes the place of something creamy.

After a while, it seemed to me that making my own with a pudding recipe and coconut milk would be a quick fix. And then I found this recipe, proving yet again that great ideas never occur in a vacuum, and even better, she figured out the steps, saving me the trouble of doing so myself.

Well, today I took a quick trip to my favorite local grocery, my well beloved Outpost Coop. I just wanted a bundle of vegetables for supper, but I was so hungry! Never a good idea to shop when hungry. But I'm not sorry I wandered around, because, first, I didn't spend st00pid amounts of money, and second, I found this:



Pricey, of course. But less expensive than the Turtle Mountain version. And it has a reference to the moon! And neato graphics! Whee, such decision making! I bought the Chocolate Hazelnut flavor, figuring that if the coconut flavor was noticeable, it would work well. And I totally love chocolate with hazelnuts.

And I have to say, it's nice. It doesn't have the same sort of body that ice cream has, but it is creamy and delicious. And yes, my first impression was that of chocolate coconut with some crunchy nuts. The texture is pretty light, but there is plenty of coconut fat in it, and that's completely what makes it a win as a frozen, creamy dessert. I'd like to try a few other flavors, too. At some point, I'll want to make my own, but this will be quite nice for my replacement frozen dairy craving until that point in time. Might even try it to flavor coffee. That might be a win, too. Yay, win!