Kitchen Montage: Steaks, Soups, Sautes, Pizzas and Sundaes!

Happy Groundhog Day, everyone!  Phil didn't see his shadow, so spring is coming soon!   In the meantime, I wanted to share some wintery things I've been making lately.

Dawn's Philly 'Shroom Steak with Caramelized Onions, Garlicky Spinach and Roasted Beets.  Rosemary Sweet Potato Fries. 

The Cayenne Kicker: organic cayenne, freshly grated ginger, fresh squeezed organic lemon juice, and organic apple juice.  This drink effectively got rid of a cold I wasn't trying to catch!

T

Thai Curried Chickpeas and Broccoli (I served it with Coconut Lime Rice).  I can't find my recipe notes for this anywhere...boo! It was SO good. I know I used freshly grated ginger and garlic, some spices, olive oil, etc. just not really sure how I did it.  Oh well.

Quick Matzo Ball Soup. 

There was also a great Pea Soup, very simple and delicious. 

Oh, I made some rosemary fries to go with the soup! :-)

And an amazing Spinach Linguini with Artichoke Tomato Pesto :

You can see the my CSA pesto (I used a few cubes) swirled into our CSA jarred tomato sauce which I sauteed with lots of garlic and olive oil.  

Then, I had a craving for my Lemon Garlic Eggplant and I actually found organic eggplants at Wegmans last week!

Also had me a craving for homemade vegan pepperoni, so I made me a batch o' that...almost to the exact day of last year's pepperoni making! 

And what better thing to put Vepperoni and Eggplant on than Toaster Oven Pizzas??

Toaster Oven Pizza with CSA Marinara, Lemon Garlic Eggplant, Homemade Vegan Pepperoni and I think Follow Your Heart Mozz under there.

While I was making the pepperoni and the eggplant, we had to eat something! 

(Yves Pepperoni, FYH Mozz, spices, and CSA Marinara).

And you gotta have dessert, right??

 Blueberry "cupcakes" with Vanilla Glaze 

I used a muffin recipe but don't tell my son!

Vanilla "cupcake" with Chocolate Ganache 

We had an Almost Spring Sundae Party when it was near 70 degrees here on Wednesday:

SoDelicious Vanilla Ice Cream with Soyatoo Whipped topping and Organic Chocolate Sauce and Chocolate Sprinkles!

TJ's SoyCreamy Vanilla Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberries, Soyatoo Whipped Cream and Rainbow Sprinkles.  OMG.

Tonight I made a nice batch of seitan steaks (Tami's recipe from AVK, it's amazing!) and my Crispy Chipotle Seitan Gorditas.  They'd be great for a Superbowl party or a Wow it's Sure Quiet and this Store is Sure Empty, Everyone Must be Watching the Superbowl Party.  I'm also craving something like tofu "wingz" so I might make those tomorrow and maybe some nachos, too...

Hope you guys are having a great weekend!  It's snowing here right now. 

What the heck, Phil?

XOXO

Sweet Potato Gruyere Pizza and Pizza Makin' Tips

Here is my "Thanksgiving Pizza," originally conceived by Sweet Potato Man, but modernized and executed by moi.

Sweet Potato Gruyere Pizza

Organic, Spiced Sweet Potato Puree, Caramelized Fennel, Shaved Garlic, Homemade Cashew Gruyere (Hard and Soft varieties), Basil Chiffonade, Chopped Hazelnuts, Home Dried Sage on a Rosemary White Whole Wheat Crust.

To make your own Thanksgiving Pizza, make your favorite pizza dough recipe and add 1 tsp of dried Rosemary.  You can add other spices or herbs to your dough as well (oregano, sage, thyme, cinnamon, nutmeg) but I just wanted rosemary as some other spice elements were present in my other ingredients.  I also like using King Arthur's White Whole Wheat flour, it is a whole grain and tastes great as a pizza dough.  Turn your dough out into a well oiled bowl and let your dough rise (usually about 1.5 hours for me).

While your dough is rising, prepare your toppings.

Hard and Soft Gruyere Cashew Cheeses (lighter cheese is the soft gruyere, darker cheese is the hard), Sweet Potato Puree (with added Cinnamon--Penzeys Vietnamese, a very strong and spicy cinnamon, salt, pepper, olive oil and garlic powder), Caramelized Fennel, Shaved Garlic, Home Dried Sage, Basil Chiffonade, and Chopped Hazelnuts.

I like to have my toppings all ready to be placed on the dough.  There's a spoon already in the Sweet Potato Puree.  Each loose topping gets it's own  spice bowl.  The cheese has been sliced and set out ready to be placed.

Elements I chose not to add were nutmeg, thyme or oregano, hot pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, etc.  I didn't want the spice elements to overwhelm, but any of those flavors would be great depending on what type of pizza you are going for.

Get your pizza peel ready by dusting with cornmeal.  I just use a cookie sheet, this one has two raised sides (so you can pick it up off the counter and out of the oven) and is flat on the other two sides so you can slide the pizza onto the stone/griddle.

In the last forty minutes or so of your dough rising, turn your oven to 500 degrees F (take your dough out first if you were proofing it in the cold oven!!).  Put your pizza stone or your magical Double Burner Cast Iron Griddle in the oven, too.  Once you are preheated to 500, allow the stone/griddle to heat up for 30 full minutes.  

When your dough is done rising, punch it down in the bowl.  Then, instead of "rolling it out," and dealing with sticky dough everywhere, I use a trick to shape my dough into a pizza.  I actually just push it into a pizza crust right in the bowl it rose in.  I use my fingers to push the dough right into the bowl, making a rough oval with even thickness. Don't worry that it is curved like the bowl, just get it to be an even thickness and the shape that you want.  (I should have taken a picture of this, sorry guys.  I will add one the next time I do pizza.)  Then I take it out carefully (It looks like a concave dough oval) and lay it on my prepared cookie sheet, and just using my hands/fingers, I continue to press it out into the perfect oval (my griddle is rectangular, so I don't do circle pizzas!).  The concavity resolves itself immediately once you lay it flat.  So easy!

Add your toppings.  

Work fairly quickly since if the dough is thin, the wet toppings can start soaking through and your pizza will stick to the peel.

Make sure your pizza slides around on the pan when you shake it gently.  If it doesn't, carefully lift it around the edges and push more cornmeal underneath it (the cornmeal acts as ball bearings for the dough to roll off the pan when you slide it).  You may have a stuck spot somewhere, I had one today close to the center.

Once your pizza is loaded with toppings and can slide left to right (towards the raised edges) and a bit back and forth (towards the open edge) you are ready to go.  Remove your hot stone/griddle from the oven.

Slide your pizza out the open edge and onto your (now very hot) stone/griddle.  Bake for 10-12 minutes in your (very well) preheated oven.  

When your pizza is done (it will be golden on the bottom, toppings will be cooked and starting to brown), remove it from the griddle using two heat proof spatulas.  

Or, at least, that's how I do it.

Put it back on your cookie sheet, and let it cool just a little bit.  

Lydia says now she's ready to serve!

Serve with Cranberry Sauce or Mushroom (or any other!) Gravy for dipping.

What kinds of pizza dreams do you have?

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake.  My husband asked for me to invent this, so I happily obliged.  We had a hot charcoal grill at the ready after grilling our broccoli & seitan steaks, so I whipped up this cake to throw in there while the grill was still hot.  I made it once or twice last year, but didn't write down the recipe.

It's crunchy yet chewy, sweet and loaded with chocolate chips.

 You can see how crispy the bottom crust is.  The bottom caramelized from the hot temp of the grill and the sugar and the oil in the cake.  A delicious result.  I still have to nail the exact baking time, but in a charcoal grill that's almost impossible, the heat is just super dry and super hot (and declines rapidly if the temp outside is cold).  It's much easier (but less fun) to calibrate temperature and baking time with an oven (which I will approximate below).

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

1 cup organic sugar

½ cup brown sugar (organic, TJ’s)

3/4 to 1 cup olive oil 

3 tablespoons apple sauce (4 if you use 3/4 cup oil)

2 tsp EnerG replacer powder (just the powder)

2 1/3 cups flour (white whole wheat, which is a whole grain!!)

1 tsp Vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

½ to 1 tsp salt (1 tsp really brings out the flavor, but might be too salty for you)

2 cups chocolate chips

½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Mix the wet ingredients (sugar through the EnerG powder) in a large bowl with a hand mixer or whisk.  It will become kinda like a gel in consistency, and won't look liquidy at all.  You could add non-dairy milk if you wanted, tablespoon by tablespoon if you want the dough a little wetter (don't know how that would turn out yet as I haven't tried it myself).  So, take the dough and press it into your buttered loaf pan:

Bake the sucker.  I'd guess 30-40 minutes in a 375 oven, until a toothpick comes out clean and the edges have begun to brown and pull away form the pan, or however long you'd like to try in your grill.  I'm getting a lot better at grilling with charcoal, so may have more specific advice soon.

And, I'm craving this like mad:

Guesses?

Answer:

Home Made Pizza with: Roasted Eggplant, Fresh Tomatoes, Red Peppers, Cashew Ricotta and Home Made Vegan Pepperoni.  Amazing.  Made it a while ago, but could really go for it right now!

What are you guys making this weekend?

Updates: Timer, Triops, and Tempeh

Timer: Setting the timer for the pizza dough's rise!

Here she is! Cast iron double griddle in the background.  That thing makes a MEAN pizza! If you don't mind a rectangular or oval pizza, go get one, it's so much better than a pizza stone.

I had a serious craving for green peppers and vegan pepperoni.  I doused my slices in jalapeno olive oil as well from Taste of Olive.  Fruity, grassy, and mildly spiced (really! it almost wasn't hot at all, they must have only used the flesh and not any seeds to make the oil) I can't recommend this oil highly enough.   The left half is sparsely topped to ensure last minute variables would be covered (kid says he wants plain, then pepperoni, so  had to cover my bases :-)).

Triops: Well, there's good news and bad news.  Good news is that we had two strong hatchlings from our second round of Triops growing.  Then, it was down to one (two days ago).  We think the bigger one ate the smaller one since we couldn't find his body! THEN, as the directions called for on or around Day 8 (for us, yesterday was Day 11) we tried to transfer the remaining one (he was pretty big and seemed hardy) to the tank from his little petri dish as the directions called for.  We did that, knowing he needed more room, however, we couldn't maintain the temperature of the tank water at 74 degrees, the warmest we could get it was around 70-72.  We figured we'd give it a go, and tried to acclimatize him to the cooler water in his little Petri dish first, then transferred him, but he bit the dust in a mere hour or so.  It was just too cold. Poor guy (or girl!).  We will try again when the ambient temperature is warmer (spring or summer). It's just too hard to warm water with a light bulb in winter! RIP "T," RIP.

Tempeh:

I mailed in my order for the tempeh spores! I have no idea how long it will take to get them. I'll keep you posted, haha.

P.S. I have an early birthday present to myself coming in the mail...it's cooking related (of course).  I may get it today!

Monsters, Monarchs, Marinara, and Magic

While peering hopefully at my fig tree, hoping upon hope that some of  her (probably two or three hundred) figs will ripen, my husband spotted this MONSTER fig, showing a tiny tinge of purple:

Perhaps all my figs are going to achieve this huge size, and that's why they are still not ripening. Or, it could be the extra harsh winter we had, which may have killed some of the stem tissue. I'm hoping for the former.

While pruning my garden out front, I found this guy in my milkweed:

Monarch, munching.

And, I made my very first yeast dough and then, my first home made pizza last night:

My dough after rising.  

Traditional Pie with Cashew-Basil Ricotta (Use one full cup or more of packed basil leaves instead of the 1/4 cup called for in my recipe.  Pulse the cashews and garlic, then add the basil leaves with olive oil and pulse some more, like you are making a pesto, THEN add the tofu and other ingredients to the processor). It also has Daiya Mozzarella and Trader Joe's Marinara (spruced up a little with some extra herbs).  Totally vegan. My son said it was the best pizza ever :-). He helped make the dough!

My magic trick was that I used the smooth side of a double-burner cast iron griddle instead of a pizza stone.  They get nice and hot, heat very evenly, and don't crack like some pizza stones do.  I used a cookie sheet as the peel (same rectangular shape as the pan, so worked great). Plus you can use it as a griddle (the smooth side) or a grill (the bumpy side) the rest of the time and don't have to store a pizza stone somewhere just for making pizza.  I got it to make lots of pancakes at once, and also to double as a pizza stone.  I decided to try it for pizza right out of the box and am VERY happy with it.  It is made by Lodge Logic and comes pre-seasoned (I have another of their cast iron saute pans and I love it, use it all the time).  If you don't have any cast iron cookware, get over your fears and get some.  It's heavy as hell, but amazing stuff.  Magic.

<3 Dawn

Vegan Pizza Day Approacheth!

Now, I use any excuse to eat pizza, so this works for me.  Saturday, Jan. 29th is Vegan Pizza Day!

I've been mentioning a bunch of resources on how to consume pizza, vegan style, in some of my other posts, so I will recount those for you and hook you guys up with great VPD resources!

More info on Vegan Pizza Day:
http://www.veganpizzaday.com/

Vance Lehmkuhl's article (Philadelphia Daily News):
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/features/20110127_Excellent_vegan_pizza_is_no_longer_pie_in_the_sky.html

Blackbird Pizza (6th and Lombard):
http://www.blackbirdpizzeria.com/

Another Philly shout-out (older PW article): http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/food/features/Vegans-Are-People-Too.html Grindcore House (and Blackbird) opened up right after I moved out of Pennsport! Bah! It's okay, I still plan to make it over to both establishments soon.  I'm still within 10 miles!

Great podcast by Vance Lehmkuhl: http://www.vegcast.com/ #93 is about Grindcore house, Blackbird and the PW article!

Now for more info on pizza itself:
Tony's pizza in Haddonfield is my favorite delivery pizza.  They are located at 419 Haddon Ave, and their number is 856-795-4200,  This one is a tomato pie with eggplant, roasted peppers and sliced tomatoes on an amazing whole wheat crust!

I also use my Cashew Ricotta on top of tomato pie, which I love to get with spinach:

I personally prefer tomato pie with veggies and tofu or cashew ricotta to those with vegan cheese (though Daiya is the best one produced so far, in my opinion, and it is what they use at Blackbird).

Most pizza places will do a tomato pie with any veggie toppings you like, and many have whole wheat (my now go-to favorite) or gluten free crusts for those of you who don't tolerate gluten.

My other favorite South Jersey pizza joint is Vito's in Cherry Hill. 

Vito's is located at 561 Browning Lane Cherry Hill, NJ 08003.  Their number is (856) 429-9244.  They also make a killer tomato pie.  You have to pick up from there, but it is worth the trip.

Need another reason to eat vegan pizza?? More problems with factory farmed dairy products (milk, cheese, etc.). Juiced up cows.  [Thanks to Erik Marcus of vegan.com for posting his reaction to this article].

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/26milk.html?_r=1

Kay, guys, time for me to go play in the snow.  Enjoy!