crack the plates

I once read a recipe for BBQ tofu that called for a bottle of commercially-prepared barbeque sauce.

Did you catch that? Someone actually published–in a book!–a BBQ recipe that called for a bottle of Heinz. “Yeah, I’m lazy” was the author’s aside. Now maybe it’s just the deep-southerner in me hollerin’, but BBQ sauce ought to be made fresh, and out of everything but the kitchen sink. Bottled barbeque sauce, like boxed cookie mix, pales in comparison to the real thing. It ain’t fit for company.

One of my favorite recipes is from (surprise, surprise) Vegan With a Vengeance. I know a number of my friends haven’t actually tried it, though, because it calls for an esoteric ingredient: pomegranate molasses. I’ve made several adjustments to the recipe that should make it accessible & easy in most kitchens. Here’s what you’ll need:

Kitchen-sink barbeque sauce, adapted from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s BBQ Pomegranate Tofu (original recipe’s ingredients in parentheses, where applicable)

• 2 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil               (1 tablespoon peanut oil)
• 1 cup onion, chopped fine                                  (1 cup shallots, minced)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced (can use prepared if you’ve run out of the real deal)
• 1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder or 1/8 tsp each ground cinnamon, cloves, ginger, freshly-cracked black pepper
• 2 cups vegetable broth (or one vegan bouillon cube dissolved in two cups steaming water)
• A few grinds of fresh black pepper
• 1 6-oz can tomato paste
• 3 tablespoons all-natural peanut butter            (2 tablespoons)
• 2 tablespoons blackstrap molasses                   (2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses)
• 2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
• 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
• 1.5 teaspoons hot sauce (more to taste)            (1 teaspoon, more to taste)
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke                                    (this is a must! You can get it in the grocery store on the sauces aisle)

For the tofu:

• One block of tofu, drained and pressed
• 2 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
• 2 tablespoons tamari

Press a pound of tofu between two cutting boards to remove excess water. It’s up to you how long you want to press it. The difference between a few seconds and a half an hour is essentially how firm & chewy the tofu will get. I don’t usually press mine very long, but some people press an hour or more.

Slice the tofu about 1/2-inch thick (see below). Preheat oven to 350. In a 9×13-inch (preferably glass or ceramic) baking pan, turn the tofu in two tablespoons of oil and two tablespoons of tamari or soy sauce. Swish it around, coat on both sides. Bake for 15 minutes at 350, then flip the slices and bake 15 more. Should look about like this when done:

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. In a cast-iron skillet over medium heat, saute the onions in the oil for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and five-spice powder (or cinnamon, cloves, ginger and black pepper) and saute 1 minute more. Add the broth and bring to a simmer. (This step will go really fast if you used already-steaming broth.) Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently.

At this point, your tofu should be done baking. Smother the tofu with the sauce:

Return to the oven and bake 15 minutes more. Remove from oven.

Reserve the corner pieces for your favorite person–that’s where the sauce has caramelized the best.

If you want to be a real meat-and-potatoes vegan, simply serve with a pile of fluffy mashed potatoes. But peas & broccoli are nice additions.

It’s good to get into the practice of reading the entire recipe completely through before starting. Doing so means no surprises partway through. A+ for mise en place: measuring all the ingredients out beforehand.

Good Ol’ Vegan Biscuits: beginner’s delight*

2 cups all-purpose flour (unbleached, organic if possible)

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons vegan shortening** (make sure it’s all vegetable, no lard! I like Spectrum organic.)

2 tablespoons vegan margarine (We love Earth Balance!)**

2/3 cup unsweetened soymilk

1 to 1.5 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (experiment with more if you like a sour, buttermilky flavor)

Pre-heat the oven to 450. Grease a sheet pan with shortening.

• *A slightly more advanced biscuit recipe may be addressed in a future post. For now, this is perfect.
• **EIGHT tablespoons of fat, you gasp? Well do you want fluffy biscuits or not? If you’re that worried about it, don’t eat ten at a time.

Step one: sift all your dry ingredients (2 cups of flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon of salt) into a big bowl:

Step two: Cut the cold Earth Balance into small pieces and put into the flour. Same goes for the shortening, though it’ll be too soft to cut. Just toss it in the bowl.

Step three: Work the Earth Balance and shortening between your fingers and palms til it looks about like this:

Step four: Make your “buttermilk!” If you’ve never made vegan buttermilk before, this is a great trick to have up your sleeve. Simply add a small amount of apple cider vinegar (in this case, at least a tablespoon) to unsweetened soymilk, stir gently with a fork, and let it sit for a minute. Voilà! Vegan buttermilk.

Step five: Make a little well in the flour and pour your wet into the dry.

Step six: MIX! Depending on the humidity, your dough may be a little on the wet or dry side. Either way, don’t freak out! If it’s a little wet, just make sure your hands are well-floured. If it’s a little dry, it’s probably fine. This is a picture of some rather wet biscuit dough:

Step seven: Cut your biscuits. Now, my mom is such a pro that she shapes them perfectly in her hands. I prefer to use a small glass to make cut-outs. Take a look at the picture below. Dust your (extremely clean) countertop with some flour. Gently knead the dough into a ball and then roll it out about a half an inch thick. You can use a rolling pin or, if you don’t have one or like me, can’t find it, just use the side of a smooth glass.

Unfortunately, I was once accused of serving (HORROR OF HORRORS) canned biscuits because mine were so perfectly shaped. Good thing I forgot who made this blasphemous accusation.

Step eight: Lay the biscuits on your greased pan. It is important that the biscuits touch one another! I can’t tell you why because I took my mom’s word on faith. You should take mine similarly. Do not space your biscuits. Do not be afraid of them crowding. Permit them to nuzzle:

Step nine: Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the bottoms are lightly browned:

Lovely. Biscuits are so versatile! You can munch them plain or with some kind of jam; put them on top of a vegan pot pie:

Or, as we’ve seen, use them to make a true breakfast treat with tempeh bacon:

See? Biscuit-making is easy.

Let’s contrast it with building a sukkah. The highlight of my day was meeting up with folks at Earlham’s Jewish Cultural Center to construct the symbolic wilderness shelter of Sukkot, a joyous holiday which starts tomorrow and goes through next Wednesday. Sukkot has been described as a happy harvest festival, a time of leaving the comforts of home to join others in eating, living, and praying in the sukkah.

My friend Aaron Miller puts it thusly: Sukkahs are temporary structures with three walls (one wall has to be open to receive guests) and a roof left uncovered enough to see the stars at night. Sukkot is a fascinating holiday, so let’s turn to Rabbi Michael Strassfeld to find out more:

“The vision of universal brotherhood (ahem–and sisterhood) is reflected in the sukkah, whose door and roof are open to all. The sukkah, in turn, evokes a vision of God’s sukkah as a house of prayer for all nations. In that future, God will spread a sukkat shalom – a shelter covering made of peace and harmony.

And yet the sukkah, while evoking the image of God sheltering us in the future, raises another, opposing image: The sukkah as a temporary structure, open to the winds of autumn, cannot help but remind us of the Jewish people’s experience of the last 2000 years of exile and wandering. Are we not the prototypical alien – the wandering Jew? Are not the forty years in the desert- the period Sukkot commemorates – the archetype of our 2000 years of wandering?

The sukkah, then, evokes opposing sets of images: rootless and home, wandering and return, exposure and shelter. From exile to eternity and back again – this, too, is contained in the four walls of the sukkah.”

Awesome, eh? And I was lucky enough to get to help build one!

Collecting branches back campus.

After sawing, drilling, and doing a bit of affixing, we set the frame upright.

Sizing it up.

Reinforcing the frame.

Gazing upon it a bit more.

Laying boards across the top to support the branches; securing them with twine.

Throwing branches over the top.

The view from below. Will definitely be able to see stars.

Sorting out the sheets.

All done! Good work, friends.

Now go make some biscuits.

Oh man, have I made some yummy stuff in the past 48 hours. This post is probably going to seem ridiculously decadent. It is. But in my defense, yesterday was the first day I could cook in a week!! You may already know that I’ve been suffering in a major way on account of poison ivy. The long and short of it: last Saturday I was taking a GRE practice test on our screened-in back porch when Unix escaped (exploiting a vulnerability in the screen and tearing it further). She was gone for five hours & came back bearing the toxin urushiol… well, you know how this story ends. By Monday evening I had broken out on my wrist, hand, ear, eyelid, cheek, lips, hip, and lower right leg.

I’m still in a fair amount of pain, but it’s healing. My wrist has been the worst–impossible to cook, painful to type–but it’s looking a little better. And my appetite is coming back. Something about poison ivy just wrecks my appetite! Most days I just had a couple bowls of cereal and a bunch of watermelon for the vitamin C, if that.

So basically, I’ve been making up for lost time.

Yesterday’s late lunch was barbeque tofu & mashed potatoes. I love this picture because the taters look so ethereal… reminds me of the last scene in a favorite childhood book, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

We had dinner with Lindsey & Chris at their place. My favorite part was discovering that their apartment abuts a huge children’s library! I’m praying that they ask me to apartment-sit at some point. Aren’t they cute?

Lindsey made a fabulous sweet potato dish with lots of fresh veggies from the farmer’s market. It reminded me of the sweet potatoes at Ghyslain, only better.

To thank Nate for cleaning the kitchen floor on his hands and knees this morning, I made him pancakes and tempeh bacon (recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance) for brunch.

The marinade recipe is as follows: 3 tablespoons soy sauce + 1/3 cup apple cider + 1 teaspoon tomato paste + 1/4 teaspoon liquid smoke + 2 cloves of garlic (+ one 8oz block of tempeh). I quadrupled it for three blocks of thinly-sliced tempeh. Allow the tempeh to marinate in the fridge for at least an hour or overnight.

In the pan:

On the plate:

Since I don’t keep apple cider around, I picked up a bottle of Sammy Smith’s Organic Cider for the marinade and just drank the rest last night as we watched the IT Crowd. Mmm, mmm.

While writing Liz today I was reminded that one of my favorite childhood breakfast treats was (don’t laugh!!) my momma’s fluffy biscuits with sausage & mustard. I figured some of the more thickly-sliced pieces of tempeh could stand in for sausage (the flavors are mighty similar) so I baked a pan of biscuits this evening for dinner. Our friend Patrick, who came over for after-dinner games, heartily approved.

Perfection:

For those of you looking for recipes: I’ll be doing special posts for the barbeque recipe AND the biscuits tomorrow and Tuesday.

I grew up in the country, in a town of just over two hundred. As I child, I sometimes rued the isolation of our rural plot–but now I see how lucky I was. My sense of compassion for the earth and non-human animals was nurtured as I gardened with my parents & made best friends with chickens. I witnessed firsthand the passionate desires of the land and its animals for harmony & stability. These desires resonated; we were easy allies.

I was also lucky because foodwise, my momma went easy on me. If I absolutely refused to eat something, she didn’t press the issue. But she never quite understood why I wouldn’t eat her meatloaf. “Just smother it in ketchup,” she’d urge. An excellent cook, she probably thought meatloaf was one of her tastiest dishes. Everyone raved about it–so why wouldn’t her darn kid eat it?

To start, I hated watching her make it! I remember looking up at her working the ground animal in her rough, wizened hands and thinking, I’m never going to do that. Was I simply grossed out by the texture, the color, the sounds? Did I despair over its origin, a life-loving creature like myself? Honestly, I can’t say. But to this day I’ve never cooked with animals. Going vegetarian at 14 meant I never had to suffer that feeling in my hands: I depended on my mom for meals pre-veg & figured out how to cook for myself afterwards. The closest I came to touching blood & guts was while passing poorly-packaged meat products over my scanner as a grocery cashier.

One of the reasons I LOVE being vegan is because I can make all of the dishes I enjoyed as a non-vegan, except they’re tastier and free of cholesterol, saturated fat, and cruelty! Traditional southern recipes, soul food, I rise to the challenge: I once made a pot of fordhook lima beans that were so flavorful & “authentic”-tasting that my mom couldn’t believe they were vegan. But for obvious reasons, meatloaf was never anything I wanted to veganize. Sure, I saw the recipes in my cookbooks… but the childhood trauma lived on!

‘Til recently, that is. Having made peace with the fact that it’s still going to look disgusting, I tried the recipe from the Grit cookbook. And oh lawdy, it’s a winner. Made with tofu, veggie ground crumbles, walnuts & nutritional yeast, and seasoned well enough to please a roomful of Southern grandparents, I’m glad to add it to my repertoire. Best of all, Nate rechristened the dreaded dish “meetloaf”. Only one letter difference, but I love it because it makes me think of meeting up, hanging out, loafing around–things all mammals, not just we humans, enjoy!

A regular blue-plate special, this one:

I baked it in my big cast-iron skillet (the same that sauteed the veggie ground “beef” and peppers, if you check out the recipe) and served it to Lindsey & Chris for our first Thursday evening co-op dinner. They gobbled it up. Here’s the recipe, with some minor modifications. Thanks, the Grit!

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 small onion, minced
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 or 2 small bell peppers, minced
• 2 cups vegetarian ground “beef” — I re-hydrate the dry stuff from Dixie Diner because it’s more economical than getting Boca Brand (or something similar) frozen at the grocery store.
• 2 tablespoons vegan Worcestershire sauce (Kroger’s is naturally vegan, or you could make your own)
• 1 15-oz block firm tofu, crumbled (the more-common water-packed kind)
• 1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
• 1 cup walnut pieces
• 4 tablespoons ketchup
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/2 cup soy sauce (you can use low-sodium, I suppose)
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon or so freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons rubbed sage
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon celery seed, if you just happen to have it hanging around.

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a large casserole dish OR just plan to use the same large skillet that you prep the “beef” and peppers in, as I did.

Heat the oil in large cast-iron skillet and add onions, garlic, and peppers. Saute five minutes or so, stirring often. Add the vegetarian ground beef (re-hydrated in “beef” or veg broth if you’re using dry) and Worchestershire sauce. Cook on medium heat, stirring often, 5-10 minutes (20 minutes if you used frozen crumbles).

In a food processor (I know, Sorry!), combine remaining ingredients and process til fully blended. Combine ALL ingredients and mid well. Pour and press into your casserole or skillet. Bake 15 minutes, remove from oven, turn in batches, return to oven, bake 15 more minutes. Bake an additional 10 if you think it needs it. Let cool for five minutes or so and then serve to smiles!!!

Shana Tova! Rosh Hashanah tashlikh – we tossed stale challah (symbolizing our sins) into the water outside Temple Israel Dayton. regretful of my wrongdoing in the past year, I scattered a big handful.

the geese were thrilled to eat our “sins”

searching for more trouble.

the view from the water

on the way back, we strolled past the community garden

Eid Mubarak! up bright & (too?) early for Eid prayers at the Islamic Society of North America in Plainfield, Indiana

such a blessing to spend my day with these wonderful friends.

quiet van en route home.

dozens of dark chocolate cookies with black raspberry centers for vegan pizza party & Eid celebration

ALL of this food is CRUELTY-FREE! thanks VEGFUND for helping us at Earlham Animal Advocates United throw an amazing pizza party for our community!

…and, of course, to master vegan chef Donnie for pulling it all off. (He’s real busy right now working on a fellowship app, but he may eventually surface & update his blog at blackveganism.wordpress.com) Look at that brilliant multi-tasking!

Donnie makes pizza like nobody’s biz. Thanks DAIYA for donating TWENTY POUNDS of your amazing cheeze! Folks went bonkers.

Eid Mubarak! Party at Russell house!

And an impromptu night ride with Jabani.

couldn’t ask for better.

Hot-sauced-glazed tempeh from Veganomicon is a recently-tested and very highly recommended recipe. Here it is with some kale & extra-sour cornbread:

Recipe by Isa & Terry, with only very minor changes: 1 package tempeh; 1/2 cup vegetable broth, 1/4 cup of hot sauce, 2 tbsp oil, 2 tbsp soy sauce or tamari, 3 tbsp lemon juice, 2 cloves of crushed garlic, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1/8 teaspoon cayenne.

Whisk all ingredients in a bowl large enough to accommodate the tempeh slices. Cut tempeh in half widthwise, then cut each of the resulting squares diagonally in order to form four large triangles. Poach the bitterness out of tempeh by bringing a medium-sized pot of water to a boil and simmering the tempeh for ten minutes. Gently remove the tempeh from the steaming water and plunge it into your marinade. Allow to sit at least one hour, flipping often if the tempeh is not completely submerged.

Four large triangles = four pretty thick triangles. Accordingly, I suggest marinating for 24 hours OR slicing the four triangles widthwise once more. The issue with this second option is that tempeh, a vulnerable, crumbly piece of food, can lose its shape in the cooking process. See:

Best to just marinate extra-long or be real careful handling and turning.

Since I don’t have a grill or the implements to create a grill effect inside, I kept the skillet’s heat high to kind of sear the tempeh & caramelize the outside. You can do this for about ten minutes, flipping often, pouring on more of the marinade as you go. (Whisk the marinade before ladelling it on to discourage separation & loss of flavor.)

The last pro-tip I can think to offer now is, don’t forget to shake the hot sauce bottle before you pour it into your measure. Hot sauce separates, and if you don’t shake it up well, there’ll be a lot less heat. Can you tell I made this sad mistake?

Cat perl had a bath this morning. Here are some recent pictures to honor her on her difficult day.

Perl as superheroine.

As scary monster.

As hieroglyph.