This is what I had for lunch today. Leftover brown rice, chopped little gem lettuce, leftover caramelized lemongrass tofu, mandarin orange segments, and sesame-soy dressing.
Pretty good for 5 minutes, right?
Normally I make a big batch of hummus on Sunday, and have that for lunches throughout the week. But I decided to change things up a bit this week, and I made a batch of caramelized lemongrass tofu instead. It keeps beautifully in the fridge-- I actually prefer the toothsome texture of cold tofu to the squishy one of warm tofu-- and I've been putting into pho and rice noodles salads and now this for lunch.
What did you have for lunch? Leave me a comment and let me know!
P.S. Thank you all for your comments on my "why veganism?" post. I'll address that topic again sometime soon!
So, I wasn't going to blog today. I'm tired, it's raining, the pictures wouldn't come out right...but then I realized that it's the 29th of February, and I won't have the chance to blog on this day for 4 years. Plus, I made the best, chewiest oatmeal cookies I've ever had, and if that doesn't deserve some sort of mention, then I don't know what does!
Oatmeal cookies are my favorite kind of everyday cookie, as long as their chewy. I've tried so many recipes, and none of them have ever really come out right. I spotted this recipe from Nick Malgieri via David Lebovitz's website a while ago, and I knew I wanted to try it. First, because it's David Lebovitz and his blog is totally cool, and oh yeah, his recipes ain't bad either. And he says they're chewy. And the whole batch only has 2tbsp of fat! Most oatmeal cookie recipes call for 1 cup of butter!
Well, I was not disappointed. These are as chewy and delicious as any I've ever had. There's no way anyone would ever guess that they're actually (sort of) healthy. The search for the best oatmeal cookie is over!
I made these as written, with the substituion of a little flax for the egg. (Sorry, David. It's not like I substituted tofu for the oats or anything!)
And oh yeah, this is my 100th post!
Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (makes 24)
1 cup flour (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons margarine, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
substitute for 1 large egg
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups rolled oats (not instant)
1/2 cup dark raisins (or dried cranberries)
2 baking sheets lined with parchment paper, foil, or silicone mats
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and set the rack on the lower and upper thirds of the oven.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and granulated sugar until smooth. Mix in the brown sugar, then the egg, applesauce, and vanilla.
4. Stir in the dry ingredients, then the oats and raisins.
5. Drop the batter by rounded tablespoons 2-inches apart on the baking sheets and use a fork to gently flatten the dough.
6. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they "look dull on the surface but are moist and soft". Rotate baking sheets during baking for even heating.
Don't bake them until they look golden brown. Really! Resist temptation!! Take them out of the oven as soon as they look slightly blond and are no long wet on the top. Otherwise you'll have crunchy oatmeal cookies. Blech.
Storage: Once cool, store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.
Mmm, caramelized peppers and onions. I never used to like bell peppers, but a few weeks ago I realized that cooking them slowly over low heat until they're golden and caramelized and meltingly sweet turns them into something all together wonderful. Since then, my kitchen has been seeing lots of bell peppers.
This lovely, light soup comes from Suzanne Goin's Sunday Suppers at Lucques (highly recommended!). She instructs you to chill the soup, but I didn't. It was delicious hot, but it would also be nice cold as a light starter for a late summer or an autumn meal. The red peppers are a nice change of pace from tomato-based soups. If you'd like to make this a bit heartier, I think that navy beans or those big, white broad beans would be a good choice.
Don't forget to add the sumac and basil-- they really make the soup! I also added a little bit of tahini to the yoghurt, because I don't exactly dig soy yoghurt.
Red Pepper Soup with Sumac, Basil, and Lemon Yoghurt (serves 4 as a starter or light lunch)
Olive oil
1 small sprig rosemary
1 chile de arbol, crumbled (I used crushed red pepper)
2 cups diced onion
1 tbsp thyme leaves (or 1 tsp dry)
1 3/4 lbs red bell peppers
2 tsp ground sumac
1/4 tsp granulated sugar
1 cup (soy) yoghurt
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp sliced basil
Kosher salt and black pepper to taste
Heat a large pot over high heat for 2 minutes. Add some olive oil, the rosemary, and the chile. Let them sizzle a minute or so, then add the onion, thyme, 1tsp salt, and a good dose of pepper. Reduce the heat to medium-high and cook about 10 minutes, stirring often, until the onion is soft, translucent, and starting to color.
While the onion is cooking, cut the peppers in half lengthwise, throught the stems, Use a pring knife to remove the stems, seeds, and membranes. Cut the peppers into rough 1-inch pieces.
Rase the heat back to hight, and add the peppers, 1 tsp sumac, sugar, 1 tbsp salt and more freshly ground black pepper. Saute for about 5 minutes, stirring often, until the peppers start to caramelize slightly.
Add 6 cups water and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to low, and simmer about 30 minutes, until the peppers are cooked through and tender but not mushy.
Puree the soup (I used an imersion blender).
Meanwhile, stir the yoghurt, lemon juice, and 1/4 tsp salt together.
Garnish the soup with dollops of yoghurt, a sprinkling of sumac, and the basil.
I think I'm happier as a vegetarian than as a vegan.
At any rate, I could NEVER even think about eating meat, but it's pretty easy for me to think about eating dairy. (Actually, I've had dairy on several occasions since I started this blog and my vegan diet last year.)
But just writing that made me feel horrible and guilty.
Ugh.
(Edit: I should probably write up a whole post about this, because it's been something I've been thinking about for a while. But the guilty part doesn't have to do with other people or what they think. It's just that I think that veganism is probably better for the environment (which was actually my primary reason for the vegan diet) and, of course, for the animals, which has become more important to me as time goes on. But I still really want to eat cheese from time to time. Not a lot of it, not every day, but sometimes-- yes. I feel like this is a case of "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak". Hence the guilt.)
Cinnamon rolls are one of my favorite sweet treets. I've been looking for the perfect cinnamon roll for a long time. (These are fantastic, but sometimes you just want a plain cinnamon roll, you know?)
Well, I found it.
These Swedish cinnamon rolls (Kanelbullar) are perfect. Which is to be expected, since cinnamon rolls are somewhat of a national obsession in Sweden-- they've even got a national Cinnamon Roll Day (Oct. 4th.) They're very light, and not as sweet and heavy as typical American cinnamon rolls. There's a hint of cardamom in the dough, and-- very important for their authenticity-- they're baked individually in muffin wrappers and topped with pearl sugar. Think of them as a more elegant version of their American counterparts.
Anyway, here's the recipe. I hope you'll try it! (And yes, the really do only take 10 minutes to bake.)
Swedish Cinnamon Rolls (makes 12)
18 g fresh yeast (or 2 tsp dry-- but fresh yeast is so much better!)
2/3 cup (soy) milk, warmed
2 tbsp yoghurt
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup margarine, in small pieces
Crumble the yeast into a bowl. Mix in the warm milk, and stir to dissolve the yeast. Add the remaining ingredients, and knead for about 10 minutes, until a smooth, soft dough has formed. Cover and let rise for 30 or so minutes, until doubled in size.
Make the filling by mixing together:
2 tbsp margarine, softened
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
Put 12 muffin papers on a baking sheet. Roll the dough into a 12x10 in rectangle. Spread the filling over the dough. Roll the dough up starting from the long side, and cut into 12 1'' slices. Place each slice in a muffin paper. Cover and let rise for 60 minutes, or until doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 425 F. Brush the cinnamon rolls with (soy) milk, and sprinkle with pearl sugar. Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown.
Hello again! Thank you so much for your suggestions about cooking and such. I finally got sick of a steady diet of pb, toast, and apples. This week many big salads full of whatever vegetables I could lay my hands on were consumed. Not the most creative cuisine ever, but it's much healthier than toast and pb!
Anyway, I made a sort of meal plan for the coming week, so now I HAVE to cook. It's not the healthiest stuff ever, but I have some vegetables to use up, and not much time this week. It's the last week of the semester here in Germany, and I have two exams. Then I have two months of no classes, but I'll have to write two papers (one 15pg, the other 25-- in German!) during this time. But I'll certainly have more time to cook.
And-- my daffodills!! Aren't they pretty? I bought them exactly two weeks ago for less than 2 Euros. They were about 10 cm tall, and just two weeks later, they're about 30cm and in bloom. Pretty nifty. They live on my windowsill. (That's the view from my window, the street where I live.)
Ok, guys. Help me out here. Ever since coming back from winter break, I've had no motivation to cook. None. Nada. Zip zap zero. What's going on here? Seriously, I made a huge pot of soup last week, and a stir fry a few days ago, and that's all the cooking I've done. I've been living off of bread and apples, and I'm kind of sick of it. Ok, I'm really sick of it. This is not like me at all-- I usually cook pretty well and semi-fancily-- and it's kind of upsetting to be eating store-bought bread 3x a day.
How do you get your cooking muse back when it's gone? Any cool recipes I should try out?
Thanks!
(Isn't "remembrance" such an official sounding word?)
In 2007, I...
...really became committed to vegetarianism (though I'd been vegetarian for 5 years)
....discovered food blogging
...became really interested in veganism
....started a vegan blog
...starting thinking about how my choices affect the environment
...got a wonderful internship at a first-teir national magazine and learned quite a lot
....worked 60 hours a week at 3 jobs in the summer
...realized how hard some people really have it
...had a summer with absolutely horrible moments, but some really nice ones too
...moved to Germany for my junior year abroad
....after looking forward to it for years ended up thoroughly hating the first few months
....then decided it wasn't perfect and wasn't exactly what I wanted, but why not enjoy it anyway?
...started learning another language (one that has a different alphabet and is written from right to left and that is totally impractical for me!)
...spent NYE at home sick!
In 2008, I plan to....
...do more for the environment
....travel to a new country in a new continent
...learn to take better pictures
...knit more
...more books, less internet
...listen to more new (for me) music
...eat healthily, insert usual resolutions here
...get another magazine internship
...try more new things that I think I won't like
...think about other people more
...do more things instead of just thinking about them
(I'll probably proptly forget about most of these plans, but oh well. It's 3 am and I'm sick, so I decided I'm allowed to post gratuitous, self-absorbed lists on my blog!)
2007. It came and now it's gone.
Happy New Year! Here's to hoping this is a peaceful, happy, healthful year for all of us. I know I'm excited to see what this year has in store.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting on my little blog over the past year. I've had lots of fun and I can't wait to see where my blog goes in the coming year. "Discovering" food blogs was definately one of the highlights of 2007 for me-- I've loved reading and learning from your blogs.
Hi! Remember me? I haven't been posting much, but I've definately been cooking...seven kinds of cookiies, to be precise. I feel like Martha Stewart or something.
See? This stuff is xxx, people!
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp ground ginger
3 1/2 cups flour
2/3 cup warm water
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup raw sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup soy yoghurt
Mix the yeast in the warm water along with the spices and 2/3 cup of the flour. Let the mixture stand for 10-20 minutes. Whisk the sugar, salt, oil, yoghurt, and pumpkin in a large mixing bowl. Add the yeast sponge. Stir in about 2 cups of the remaining flour, then start incorporating the rest with your hands. You might need a bit more or a bit less. The dough should be soft but not too sticky. Knead for 10 minutes. Dough should be smooth. Place the dough in a clean, oiled bowl, cover, and let it rise in a warm place until it has tripled (2-3 hours).
Punch the dough down. On a lightly floured surface, cut it into 6 equal balls of dough. Roll each one into a rope about 3/4'' in diameter. Try to make the ends of the ropes taper. Braid into a 6-strand braid-- see link above. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and rise until at least doubled in size, about an hour.
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Brush the loaves with soymilk, and bake then for 40-45 minutes, until they are deep golden brown and hollow when tapped on the bottom. Take them out of the oven and brush them again halfway during baking.
Enjoy!
Hi. Have you all recovered from Thanksgiving craziness?
My Thanksgiving wasn't really a "real" Thanksgiving, but the food was pretty good nonetheless. I ended up making (you can assume I made appropriate substitutions if needed):(Tasty. But brown.)
Happy Thanksgiving to those of you that celebrate it! I hope you're all having wonderful, food-and-fun filled days. Don't stress out about the food-- it will be delicious even if it isn't exactly like you might have planed. I can't wait to read your blogs and see what you've made.
Today isn't a holiday here, of course, so I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving on Saturday. (That means that I'll get to peek at your menus beforehand, and make last minute changes to mine if the inspiration strikes! Right now my big dillema is, David Lebovitz's amazing, most requested ginger cake, or Lucque's pumpkin streusel cake. Hmmm.)
There are so many things I am thankful for...not the least of which is the very dilema I just mentioned. I know I sometimes forget what a priviledge it is to have the luxury of ample food and, indeed, so many choices I don't know what to make!
Posting every day for the entire month of November?? What was I thinking? For the last few days I've been eating but not really cooking, and no one wants to hear about endless pieces of bread with hummus or strange salads composed of things I found lurking in the back of the vegetable drawer.
I love Thanksgiving. I think it's probably one of my favorite holidays. It's not as stressful as Christmas, and I love Thanksgiving food. Stuffing...pumpkins...apple pie. Yum! I know that a turkey is usually the star of the Thanksgiving table, and obviously I wish people wouldn't be eating turkey, but I know most people don't share my opinion and I don't expect people to ditch the turkey just because I of me. I just take more of the yummy side dishes.
Anyway, I've been planning my Thanksgiving menu for far to long. Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in Germany, of course, so it will just be me and one or two friends. And we'll be eating on Sunday, not Thursday, but oh well.
This is what I think I'll make:
Green salad with balsamic vinaigrette and dried cranberries OR beets with roasted chickpeas and a dijon vinaigrette
Roasted garlic mashed potatoes
Stuffing
Stuffed mushrooms
Roasted, balsamic-glazed Brussles sprouts with apples and onions
Cherry relish (can't get cranberries here)
Caramelized onion gravy
Pumpkin Streusel Cake from Sunday Suppers at Lucques
Apple pie, if I can be bothered
Ok, so I need your opinions: which salad do you think I should make? And, I know this is enough food, but do you think it will be "satisfying" since there really isn't a main dish? Let me know! And tell me what you're making for Thanksgiving!
...are really, really, really good. Do yourself a favour and go make them now! I follwed the recipe exactly, except for the glaze: I mixed tofu cream cheese with pumpkin butter and used that instead of a powdered sugar glaze.
(Excuse the bad pictures...it was dark by the time I finished these.)
Sometimes I really think that professors assign homework for their own amusement. (Bazu, is this true?) For example, in one of my classes today the teacher was giving out the homework assignments. Then he paused, smirked, and said, "And your last assignment is to write a fax to the Wailing Wall, i.e. to G-d" (in Hebrew). Then, when the whole class said, "oh no" all at once he just sort of laughed. How do teachers even think of these things? I guess it's more fun to correct than grammar exercises.
Anyway.
I'm always discovering wonderful new (at least new to me) blogs, and I thought I'd share some of my newest favorites tonight. Check them out if you haven't already. I hope you'll find some new favourites of your own, too! What are your favorite blogs?
Arabic Bites -- a wonderful blog about Arabic/Middle Eastern food, by sisters who live in the Arabic Gulf
My Mom's Recipes and More -- tasty home cooking, all the way from Israel!
Smitten Kitchen -- where to even start? All beautiful, all delicious, all the time. Really. Incredible.
Vegan Visitor -- this is the most beautiful vegan blog I've ever seen. I'm surprised it isn't more well-known, because it totally deserves to be!
Shutterbean -- just too cute. And delicious and crafty, too. Plus, she loves Trader Joe's as much as I do!
I've never been the kind of person who had to polish off a bag of chips all at once, or who couldn't stop until they'd eaten the whole batch of cookies, but this cake was really, really hard for me to stop eating. It's so simple and so good, and you probably already have everything in your pantry, so it's perfect for cake-necessitating emergencies. Because I know you have these kinds of emergencies all the time, right?
This is a lightly spiced apple cake-- really, the apples are the star-- that was inspired by this post at La Tartine Gourmande.
Simplest Apple Yogurt Cake
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
3/4 cups sugar
2/3 cups plain soy yogurt
1/3 cup oil
2 tbsp apple sauce
1/4 cup apple juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
2 tbsp raisins
1 tbsp boiling water
1 tbsp rum
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease an 8" or 9" springform pan. Put the raisins in a small bowl, and add the boiling water and rum
Mix the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl. In another bowl mix the wet ingredients. Add the we ingredients to the dry and fold with a rubber spatula, until they are almost mixed, about 3 strokes. Add the apples and fold a few times to distribute the apples evenly.
Spread the thick, apple-filled batter in the prepared pan. Sprinkle the soaked raisins on the top of the cake, and bake for 40 minutes, or until a tooth pick comes out without clumps of raw batter on it.
Enjoy!
Snack time! Aren't these apple slices beautiful? To be honest, apples and peanut butter isn't one of my favorite snacks-- I far prefer salty to sweet-- but it's fast and, at the moment, mostly-seasonal.
What are your favorite snacks? Leave me a comment and let me know!
Finally, a real recipe! This is one I highly recommend. It tastes a lot better than the photos look, really, I promise.
I've been having the biggest craving for chocolate bread for quite a while. And not just any chocolate bread. Specifically, a yeasted, not-too-sweet chocolate bread with a tender, fine crumb and a very dark-chocolate taste. I'm not really sure why, because I don't think I'd ever had a bread like this before. But, you know, cravings are your body's way of telling you what it needs (ha!), and they are not to be ignored. Especially not when they are for delicious things like chocolate. So chocolate bread it would be.
Of course I couldn't find a recipe for the bread I wanted. I did find one that looked somewhat close, a recipe for Balthazar's chocolate bread. So my recipe is a very loose interpretation of their recipe.
And it was really, really good.
This is a slow rise bread, which gives it a really great, almost brioche-like texture. But please don't let that scare you! It really isn't any more difficult than an ordinary bread. I promise.
Oh, and if the mention of "chocolate" wasn't enough to convince you...this tasted really, really chocolatey, and as far as chocolate goes, it was actually pretty innocent calorie-wise. And you can let it rise in the fridge over night, and just pop in in the oven when you wake up in the morning. Thirty minutes later you'll be enjoying a piece of warm, tender chocolate bread, studded with little pockets of melted chocolate. Yum.
Ok, enough with this restaurant-menu description stuff. Get cooking!
(Oh, and it really is important to use good quality chocolate, and for the chocolate to be chopped, not in chip form! )
Chocolate Bread
Starter:
1/2 cup + 1 tbsp flour
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1/8th tsp yeast
Mix all ingredients and let them sit at room temperature for 6 hours. The mixture should be bubbly and have expanded somewhat.
Dough:
the starter
approx. 2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa
6 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp yeast
1 1/4 tsp salt
scant 1 cup lukewarm water
2 tbsp margerine, cut into small pieces
4 oz. 70% chocolate, chopped
optional: 1/2 cup dried cranberries or diced dried apricots
turbinado sugar for sprinkling on top of the bread
Dissolve the yeast in the water. Put the starter and all dry ingredients through salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the yeast water and begin to knead, either in the bowl if it's large enough or on a board lightly dusted with flour. Sprinkle on the margarine pieces, and knead them in. Knead for 10 minutes. Just before the dough is done, sprinkle on the chocolate chunks (and dried fruit, if using) and knead them into the dough.
Cover the dough with a cloth or plastic wrap and let rise for until doubled in size, about 3 hours.
Now shape the bread. Line a baking sheet with parchement. Gently punch down the dough and cut it into 8 pieces. Shape each piece into a smooth, round roll. Place the rolls into the pan. It's fine if they are touching a bit.
You could also bake this as a boule, or you could bake it in two small, greased loaf pans.
At this point you can either let the dough rise for 2 hours at room temperature, or you can cover it and let it rise in the fridge over night. Just let it sit out at room temperature while the oven preheats the next morning if you do that.
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Brush the dough with soy milk and and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Reduce oven to 350 degrees. Bake until the bread has a slightly hollow sound when you tap tops with your finger, 40-45 minutes. Turn the bread out of the pan, and put it on a wire rack; let cool completely. Wrap tightly in plastic and store up to 3 days or freeze up to 1 month
Isn't brunch a wonderful invention? Sure, I know, it was probably invented for commerical reasons, but still. It's so nice that for two days of the week other people finally understand that it's ok to eat "not-breakfast" foods for breakfast! Or that it's ok to have your eggs (in this case, scrambled tofu) at 3pm if that's the way you roll. Every coupe of weeks New York Magazine does 21 question interviews with interesting/semi-famous New Yorkers, and one of the questions is "Brunch: pro or con?". I just don't get the con-sayers.
Anyway, this is what I had for brunch today: home fries, guacamole, mushrooms, tomotoes, and rolls. Not pictured are the waffles and the chocolate cranberry bread (though I think that last one might be making an appearance here tomorrow...just sayin'.)