The Jolly Fox
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Birthday Cake for my Bro + So Much to Love.
Oh my, look at me, I’m MoFoing on time! Yay. No recipe today, but I did just make some kind of amazing Eat the Love cookies last night that are definitely getting their very own post (hopefully tomorrow). Today I wanted to share a couple of things:
First, it was my brother’s 30th on Sunday! Do you know what it means that my brother has turned 30? It means I am almost 30 now too! Eek. Not worried about it yet, but time is trippy and I cannot believe how FAST it goes by. I can’t spend too much time thinking about it or my brain freezes up and I start feeling lots of emotions and start thinking about the universe and all of my unanswerable questions. That ish is cray. That’s all. So for now, let’s just look at cake.
Sorry for the crappy photos. My DSLR died right before I left for the restaurant. So, the iPad and iPhone it was. I made my bro an apple cider cake with the last of my fresh pressed, chemical free cider that I got while apple picking. Apparently the guys who work on the farm can press cider so fast that it still looks green for a few seconds when it comes out–the brown color is from oxidation.
Rather than fill the cake with frosting, I decided to use homemade apple butter for the center filling. Sometimes I like to switch it up in regard to the filling rather than using frosting. Frosting is so sweet, so sugary, so fatty that personally, I thought it would be refreshing to have something sweet, but healthy in the middle. The family seemed to like it. We had so many people at the table that I served the entire cake–which was splendid so I didn’t end up on the couch eating leftover cake by myself later that night. 🙂
I also wanted to just give a shout out to one of my favorite vegan companies, So Delicious. They are truly the best. I have been using their products for a while now. They make my favorite non-dairy milk, creamer, yogurt and ice cream. One of the things that I love and appreciate about So Delicious coconut milk and almond products is that they are soy free. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some soy. But I consume soy in many other foods like tofu, tempeh, miso etc. So, whenever I can avoid using excess soy, I do because I don’t want to overdo it and develop an intolerance or allergy (like I did with crab/shellfish in my pre-vegan days).
My two favorite milks are the unsweetened almond+ and the unsweetened coconut milk. Both are fabulous for drinking, cereal, baking etc.
I also love using their creamer and their yogurts, (both the Greek style & regular are equally great). While I love to use their yogurts for just eating, I also love adding them to baked goods and smoothies.
Also, let me just say that I do not work for So Delicious or Turtle Mountain. I just love what they make and think they’re the best!
CJ’s Pumpkin Ranch & Pumpkin Pie.
I’m breaking all kinds of MoFo promises! I didn’t get a chance to post over the weekend because I’ve been too busy pickin’ pears and celebrating birthdays and getting ready to go to Maui this week! Yes. Maui and I are getting together on Friday and hopefully having a nice, slow love affair together with lots of yummy tropical food, beer, beach, surfing, spa day, farm visits and more. I’m SO EXCITED. This is the first vacation I’ve taken in the past 100 years and it could not come soon enough. This entire year has been difficult and stressful in a rainbow of different fashions (thanks for mixing it up, universe) and I just want to turn it around before the end.
Thank goodness for farm trips because they have been helping me keep my sanity this year. I feel so at peace when out on a farm, surrounded by dirt, fruits, veggies, flowers and beauty in general. I could just stay there all day transfixed in admiration, awe and respect. I went pear pickin’ this past weekend, but before that, I went pumpkin pickin’. I found a sweet little farm in Corona that grows all kinds of amazing varieties of heirloom pumpkins for eating and carving. There was a variety that they told me was great for making pies called “Yellow of Paris”. I knew that was one of the pumpkins I needed to have and I spent the better part of our time there searching for the perfect “Yellow of Paris”.
I wanted every pumpkin I laid eyes on, but I settled on these:
The farm had also grown strawberry poppin’ corn, so of course I took home a bunch of that as well. It’s so cool–you can place the whole cob in a brown paper bag and pop in in the microwave or remove the kernels and make it on the stovetop or in a popcorn maker. Love.
One of the first things I did when I got home (after making Oktoberfest) was to bust open my “Yellow of Paris” and roast it in the oven. I scooped out the innards and blended it up. It was a bit watery so I had to drain it in a colander for a while. I then proceeded to enjoy the finest pumpkin smoothies. I saved just enough puree to make a pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie with fresh pumpkin is the best!
This MoFo = crazy. I will hopefully find time today to write a couple of more posts and to catch up on some of my favorite blogs!
Razzles.
Razzles! This has been a bad MoFo week for me. My crazy life is getting in the way of my blog. How dare I?!? I’ll try to add a weekend post to make up for it, but who knows. On a random note, I just picked up the Hot Knives cookbook and it looks pretty smashing. Sorry I haven’t given it a thought until now, but now that I have it, it looks deliciously rad. There are some dishes that include cheese, but that’s easy enough to omit or sub something vegan in its place.
So I don’t have a recipe for you today, but soon though. Here are some things that I’ve made or am working on but aren’t deserving of their own post yet.
That there salad was a vegan version of a meat salad I saw that looked pretty good. I made some “beef style” seitan and marinated it in fresh squeezed orange juice and garlic. The rest of the salad is sort of a hodgepodge of things; garbanzo beans, artichoke hearts, Dr. Cow, scallions with a citrus-garlic vinaigrette.
I made this pizza to try out the buffalo mozzarella from The Cheese Issue of VegNews, which I think was taken from Miyoko Schinner’s Artisan Vegan Cheese. I made the cheddar as well, but my cheddar never solidified to a sliceable solid cheese. It remained a spread…..a delicious spread. This cheese went exactly according to plan. I have to say I loved everything about it…..except the taste. The taste wasn’t terrible…but it didn’t taste like mozzarella to me at all. It was missing the salty savory quality mozzarella can have. It had a great, creamy texture though just like traditional mozz and looked great too. I may try to mess with the flavor just a tad to get it to taste a lil more like mozzarella. Underneath the cheese, I made a puree out of corn and garlic to spread on the pie. Topped it with fresh basil and heirloom tomatoes.
Then there were these pumpkin cream cheese truffles I made from a recipe posted by Whole Foods. Very unvegan, but I thought a vegan version would be super easy. The inside is a mixture of gingersnap crumbs, graham cracker crumbs, fresh citrus zest, white chocolate, pumpkin and vegan cream cheese. Then they were dipped in melted white chocolate and had more crumbs sprinkled on them. These weren’t bad, but they were so cloyingly sweet I could not handle them. I imagine some people would find these lovely and delicious, but I don’t know, I’m not a candy person I guess. I do enjoy chocolate, but with everything going on with these, they were not my fav. Plus, you have to eat them quick as they will start to melt on your fingers.
I should have written up a recipe for this one. It’s another adaption of a non vegan dish from Sunset Magazine; Chicken Fricassee with parsley root and chanterelles. Fricassee is a French comfort food and I think it refers to a technique of braising meat. I used Gardein for the chicken and made everything else according to recipe, subbing out any dairy for an awesome non-dairy choice. The sauce was a little bit too sweet (primarily made of white wine) so I think I’d tone it down a bit next time. But when you really got a good bite with a piece of everything on your fork, it was pretty delicious.
And then….and then there were these Cornflake Marshmallow cookies adapted from the infamous Momofuku Milk Bar recipe. Non vegans love that Momofuku! Some of the concoctions such as the “Compost Cookie” sound a little too over the top for me, but this cornflake marshmallow cookie sounded intriguing. I thought a vegan version would just come right together. Cookies are usually one of the easiest things to make vegan, but these were interesting. First, I did do a couple of edits to the original recipe…The recipe calls for you to sweeten the cornflakes and bake them–I wanted to skip this because cornflakes (organic Trader Joe’s cornflakes that is) are so dang sweet already. This was a mistake because, in retrospect, the flakes need to be baked to get them extra crispy and to keep them crunchy. My flakes didn’t get soggy in my cookie, but some were crunchy and some were chewy. I also need to mess with the ratios on this one a bit. The original recipe instructs you to pretty much find the fattiest, richest butter ever and well, you know, I used Earth Balance. I could try a mix of Earthy B and coconut oil in the future…there’s always shortening too, but I generally like to keep that stuff out of my cookies. In the end, these were still delicious, but they need tweaking to get them where every cookie-loving vegan would want them.
Alright bloglings, I am off now. If I have time later tonight, I will write up some posts for tomorrow and Sunday. I have a Strawberry-Habanero pie that need its picture taken….and a pumpkin pie made of fresh heirloom pumpkin–that I picked myself of course. I do have lots to post, so let’s hope I get ‘er done!
Apple Sour Cream Pie.
This MoFo has started to get the best of me. I am le tired! But so many posts left to do. What really helps me is writing my posts in advance and then just pasting them here when I’m ready. I never think recipe writing is lengthy until I actually sit down to do it. Enough of that. I took the last of my apples from apple picking and made them into pie and German apple cake. You’ve seen the apple cake, but now for the pie. I saw a sour cream pie over on Eat the Love that I really wanted to make, but haven’t gotten around to it. It’s blueberry-rhubarb which sounds incredible, but blueberries are over and I didn’t freeze any. I may still use frozen….those frozen organic wild blueberries a Whole Foods are actually quite delicious. Okay, apples, I’m talking apples. Apples and vegan sour cream. A relatively gross sounding combination which turns out to be crazy delicious all in your face.
Apple Sour Cream Pie
Oktoberfest.
Oktoberfest; as good as any other reason to have people over for beer and a German style feast. My new apt can only house so many, but it was a good turn out and the friends seemed to enjoy the spread. Sorry for the shit photos. It’s pretty amazing I remembered to take photos because when I’m cooking for others I typically forget.
Vegan Currywurst: Veggie Beer Brats in Homemade Currywurst Sauce (aka curry-tomato sauce)
Homemade Soft Pretzels….they were so puffy. I also put out various mustards for dipping.
German Potato Salad w/ Tempeh Bacon. Nice and blurry. Chives were from my porch garden. Represent.
White Asparagus w/ Hollandaise. One of the grosser looking photos I think! BUT….it wasn’t so bad. 😉
Dessert x2. German Chocolate Cake and German Apple Cake….which look a little silly when next to one another…
Prost!
Pear-Bourbon Gingerbread Handpies.
I’m so busy! Forgot to MoFo on Friday, so here is a Sunday post. I should be back to regular posting tomorrow. 🙂
It’s that time again. Time for another Eat the Love creation done vegan style! I have wanted to make this recipe for a while and was hoping to pick my own organic pears this season to try this recipe out with. Unfortunately, all of the u-pick farms I know that grow pears pretty much had tiny crops or no crops at all because of frost. Sad face. Hopefully they’ll all be back in full swing next year. After I was forced to buy pears that I did not pick myself, I got into this recipe.
My vegan version of the crust went awry somewhere. Wonderfully, wonderfully arwy. I mixed all of the ingredients my usual way. Subbed out the butter, omitted the salt and omitted the egg. My dough mixture was SUPER dry. It didn’t have enough moisture in it, I’m guessing because I didn’t replace the egg with anything and it was needed for moisture. Eggs have so many different purposes in traditional baked goods. They bind, they build they add moisture and textural elements. Sometimes when I’m not entirely sure what their purpose in a recipe is, I can goof it up. With things like meringue and chiffon cake, the purpose is obvious, but with other things I spend a few minutes thinking….now why is that in there? Anyhow, fast forward to my dry ass dough. I went straight to my fridge and grabbed the nearest non-dairy milk and started adding it in while my stand mixer was running. My dough came right together after that, but was super soft. It never did get very firm in the while I refrigerated it, but I was still able to work with it.
I then made the filling, which was super easy. I did leave a few chunks of pear in the filling though because what can I say? I like it chunky. So, I baked these thinking that there was a chance the crust could melt or just be wrong in some way….but MY GOD. The mouthgasm…..was….ridiculous. The crust was soft and delicate, but the outside has a crispy, delicate crunch to it—almost like the top of a reaaaalllly good brownie. It was amazing. I don’t know—Irvin’s formulas are so good that even when you mess them up a little you still have something completely and utterly delightful.
I’m referring to these as hand pies rather than toaster pastries as there is not a chance in hell that the things I made would have held up in a toaster.
Rutabaga Hash w/ Peppers & Tempeh Bacon.
So I told you about my search for rutabagas. At one point, I was really frustrated. I have never found myself looking so hard for something that I usually see everywhere and never care about. Sigh. Anyhow, it was delicious hash in the October issue of Sunset magazine that inspired me. The recipe was a simple mix of garlic, Anaheim and jalapeno peppers, onion, cilantro, rutabagas and tempeh bacon. Sauteed together (cilantro added at the end) and with a fresh crack of pepper and sprinkling of salt. Perfect.
Lobster Mushroom & Corn Risotto.
Last week I needed some rutabagas for a recipe I wanted to make. I was a little surprised that I couldn’t find them ANYWHERE. I couldn’t find any at the farmer’s market, Whole Foods, 2 other grocery stores….They are supposed to be in season now, so I was confused and didn’t know where else to look. Then, the internet suggested Jons. Ahhh….Jons…..how could I forget about Jons? Turns out Jons has a surprisingly amazing produce section with a lot of extremely cool items. They have key limes, they had parsley root, they had all kinds of things. They had rutabagas (finally!!!) and then I saw some purple basil. Man, purple basil at Jons in October. I never would have guessed.
So, I bought up some of that purple basil to add to Lobster Mushroom and Corn Risotto. Fresh herbs make everything better right? By the way, if you haven’t tried lobster mushrooms, you are missing out….if you like mushrooms that is. They are delicious and beautiful. I like to use them in place of where others may use, you know, actual lobster. 😉
Lobster Mushroom & Corn Risotto
Ingredients:
3 tbsp Earth Balance, divided
2 shallots, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic minced
fresh corn from 2 ears
1 1/2 c Arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
1 c lobster mushrooms, chopped
1 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
1 tbsp fresh chives, chopped
about 5 c vegetable stock
sea salt & freshly cracked pepper to taste\
Daiya, cheddar style shreds or wedge (optional)
Method:
Heat 11/2 tbsp Earthy B in a medium sized saucepan. Add lobster mushrooms and sauté over medium heat until the mushrooms are soft and have released some of their liquid. Remove from heat and set aside.
I usually make risotto with my stock at room temp rather than heating it because I hate making another pan dirty just for stock. BUT, to make risotto the right way, go ahead and add your stock to a saucepan and put it over a low flame to keep it nice and warm.
Heat remaining Earthy B in a large pot or dutch oven. Add the shallots and garlic and sauté for a couple of minutes. Add the corn and the rice and toast for a few minutes until the edges of the rice begin to look translucent. Your rice should have a white dot in the middle—then add the wine. Stir until all of the liquid is absorbed. Now start adding your stock, one cupful or ladleful at a time. Stir after each addition, until all the liquid is absorbed, but make sure you don’t let your risotto become dry and just remember to keep stirring. You should continue this process until you have used up all of the stock. Before you remove the risotto from the heat, add the lobster mushrooms and mix them in. Cook for another few minutes until mushrooms are warmed through (if they got cold). Add optional Daiya at this point and stir to incorporate. Remove from heat. Add fresh herbs and serve.
Blue Hen Vietnamese.
It’s been a weird year. A lot of shit has gone down. I’ve moved three times. Someone had better by me a gravestone in my immediate area because I’M NEVR MOVING AGAIN. Ugh. But when you’re moving about in LA, one of the few positives is discovering what kind of delicious vegan food is lurking around the corner. Because, no doubt, any neighborhood you move into in Los Angeles has at least one vegan or very vegan friendly restaurant in very close proximity. Bless you Los Angeles, bless traffic ridden soul. So far, within my immediate area (currently Highland Park) I have 4 places to score some super delicious eats. There’s Cinnamon, an all vegetarian/vegan Mexican place. There’s Figueroa Produce Market which is an actual market, but has the dopest, most authentic vegan deli sandwich I’ve ever tasted. It’s a full service deli with meat and cheese, but there is a separate little vegan corner with faux meat, Daiya and all the fixins. You can also order Match Meat by the pound when they have it in stock. If you’re in the mood for something a little bit more fancy, there is Fatty’s. Fatty’s is deserving of its own post, so I won’t say too much…..except that I ate there for the first time about 2 weeks ago and it’s definitely a contender for best vegetarian/vegan restaurant that I’ve been too. Love that Fatty’s.
And now most recently I’ve discovered Blue Hen. Blue Hen offers delicious Vietnamese made with the finest local, organic ingredients. They are VERY vegan and gluten-free friendly. I stopped by and ordered the special, which was a veggie pho and also ordered some curry. I took both meals to-go and they were both really great. Flavorful and satisfying. Healthy too!
Blue Hen Vietnamese Kitchen
1743 Colorado Blvd
City is Los Angeles, Neighborhood is Eagle Rock
(323) 982-9900
ps. I have some mega mofoing to do. I need to write some new recipe posts, catch up on my fav blogs, make comments on the delicious I’m sure to find and also respond to some comments made on here! MoFo go! 🙂
Shoo-Fly Pie.
That was a nice weekend off. I think MoFoing will continue to be a weekdays only type of thing for me. But it’s Monday again so on to delicious things!
I’m told that shoo fly pie is traditional among southerners and the Pennsylvania Dutch. Quick side note, Pennsylvania Dutch is not synonymous with Amish. From what I understand Pennsylvania Dutch refers mostly to a dialect that people speak; a form of German. The Dutch part of Pennsylvania Dutch relates to the word deutsch and like many things, has changed over time. If you read further into it, you can learn all about how Germans got to be called Germans and so on and so forth and how all of this relates to Amish people. Geography mostly.
Enough history and such, on to pie. I don’t remember where I had heard of this pie. I certainly have never seen one on a menu in a restaurant or eaten one. I’ve never even heard people talk about it….with one exception….I did meet a guy from Ohio who knew and loved shoo fly pie. Figures he knew what it was being so close to those Pennsylvania Dutch and all. 😉 Shoo fly pie is made primarily of molasses so I figured it would be easy to veganize.
I decided to do a take on this recipe by Alton Brown. I love Alton and I’m sure he would not approve of making his pie vegan (OMG there’s tofu in it) but all the same, the pie was made and it was a success.
I really didn’t have to make too many changes to the original recipe, so rather than post it for you, I’m going to give you the edits. First off, I did not use Alton’s pie crust recipe, although I’m sure it’s great. I have already come to love the single (and loving it!) pastry crust recipe from Vegan Pie in the Sky. If you don’t have that book, well, how dare you. Seriously though, even if you’re already a pie master (looks at self) this book is still wonderful and you should get it. Lots of good bits of info and the recipes are good too.
Okay, on the real edits:
1. Get yourself and single vegan pie crust or veganize Alton’s. To do that, just sub out the butter for equal part Earth Balance, sub out the lard (gross Alton!) for high quality vegetable shortening and omit the salt completely or just add a small pinch. Again, I used Isa’s crust, which was a great choice. It does have sugar in it though, so if you’re looking to not add sugar to this pie, make Alton’s or one of your other favorites.
2. For the crumbs, omit the salt and add an additional tbsp of Earth Balance for 3 total tbsp.
3. For the filling, replace the egg with ¼ c pureed silken tofu. I used extra firm—remember the key word here is silken. Use the aseptic Mori-Nu box stuff as the stuff packed in water will probably not work here.
4. Make sure you weigh the molasses. I know it says 8 oz, so you’re tempted and you just want to pour a bunch of molasses into a 1-cup measure. If you don’t have a scale, I would suggest using ¾ c molasses and seeing what happens. After reading some of the comments though, I felt like I needed to be really precise with this pie and so I weighed everything and followed instructions exactly.
That’s about it. Just follow the instructions given and you will have delicious shoo fly pie in no time. Keep an eye on your pie toward the end. Alton describes how it will start to look dry and crack just a bit and that’s how you know it’s done. When my pie had that look, I took it out and I think it ended up perfect. The texture was soft, a little bit velvety and ever so slightly chewy. It holds up well the next day too.
My pie didn’t taste burnt or like licorice or any of the weird things that some of the comments mentioned. What it did taste like though, is molasses, so if you’re not a fan of that flavor, this pie is not at all for you. The only issue I had was that some of my crumbs absorbed into the top of my pie and some of the drier parts did not absorb, so I wasn’t super thrilled with the look of the finished product, but it did not affect the taste or texture at all, so I guess I can’t be too upset. J
The Jolly Fox 