food

Tis the season!

it has become an obsession but in my opinion aloe vera would pair well with tofu and lemon or with seitan but before trying I wanted to look for recipes because I’m not good at experimenting. I can’t find anything online and it seems strange to me, so I ask here. Does anyone know any recipes? Or have you tried something successfully?

Image getting like a chopped onion and tofu sub with all the fixings and sauces for like a buck and change. It'd be so Joever.

When me and my partner make our weekly bread, we always make about the same amount of dough for it. We make two 800g breads from it and are typically left with a leftover piece that varies in size.

We always make some sort of treat from it. A pizza, separate bread buns or some sort of flatbread that fits with our dinner that day.

This week I made focaccia, the classic version that is heavy on garlic and olive oil. Some dried rosemary and seasalt on top as well. Here it is, ready for the oven after work today:

It's just the most delicious thing, especially when the dough is sourdough made of spelt which gives it a much more complex, slightly tangy and nutty flavour.

It's the only time in my life I've liked junipers or golf courses. I made my coworker stop the truck when I spotted them, and then for some reason nobody else trusted a bush zucchini. More sketchy vegetables for me.

About a month or so ago, I turned two lovely, fresh, full heads of red cabbage, straight from the veggie patch, into a decent sized pile of sauerkraut. Not only does it look like precious stones with a beautiful rich translucent colour, it also tastes amazing and has the most incredible, funky stank going on. One of the better things I've ever made, and only my second try at sauerkraut! Obviously I'm pretty happy with myself, but we have one more cabbage left! I want to do something more interesting with it than sauerkraut, though. Any suggestions for other pickled cabbage based foods? I have a nice big porcelain fermenting/pickling crock which is currently empty so it's the perfect opportunity. One head will only fill it about a quarter or so, so there's plenty of room to fit more stuff in. I would do something kimchi-inspired, but one of the people who'd be eating it Does Not do chili. I also have loads of carrot available so that might be an option (dad has done the pickled cabbage + daikon that's often put in banh mi which turned out really well when I made some baguettes for a banh mi lunch for extended family)

Thoughts?

Coconut milk and Thai red curry paste turn up the heat

Are you for real NYT, Thai red curry paste IS NOT SPICY. What heat?

https://archive.is/RS4AY

Had some vegan gingerbread dough and vegan royal icing leftover from a work Christmas party so made some today, still had 1/4 of the dough leftover to freeze for Christmas. Loving the unicorns especially:

The dough here has a lot of bitter orange in it, along with the common cinnamon, glove etc. Also added some cardamon to it this time, thanks to a tip from a comrade here. It is so good.

Made some Hexbears, some communist propaganda and other cute things. Making everything political as one should.

how the vegan cheese looks, I'll post the recipe in a bit just vibin rn

Instead of a weekly tart post, this week I made some vegan goodies for an office Christmas party.

I made a chocolate sheet cake. It had to be gluten free as well and the flour mix I got was a bit shit, so the cake ended up being a little on the crumbly side and pretty flat. But it was delicious.

I used a recipe for what is called a depression cake. My mom used to have a recipe book with a cake like this in it that she had gotten as an exchange student in the 70s and I used to make it as a teen when our family was pretty poor.

The icing is just cocoa powder, coffee, oat cream, powdered sugar, vanilla and vegan margarine. I always wing the indgredients for an icing, because I've made them so much in my life that I don't need a recipe for them anymore.

I packed it in boxes in bite size pieces, my co-workers loved it despite the crumblyness.

I was also in charge of the gingerbread dough and royal icing. I made a vegan royal icing from aquafaba (chickpea brine) and it turned out just wonderful and dries really well. There is no need to use eggs for making royal icing.

The gingerbread is also vegan, I made one dough gluten free and the other with all purpose flour. This is a picture of us making them together last night. Wasn't able to get a pic of the decorated ones because we ate them pretty much right away.

I seriously cannot remember where I heard this but it works. A good pinch of cardamom in a recipe that has cinnamon, especially a really cinnamon forward recipe like many holiday baked goods, really pops. Makes the cinnamon flavor more bold and fresh tasting without being overpowering. It's like a magic trick.

Bake on, comrades.

Also, I guess share some baking or cooking tricks in here.

Do you really need 1200mg (AmeriKKKan guidelines) or even 500-700mg per day? Because as a vegan it seems a nearly impossible amount to reach without supplementation (which I am a bit afraid of, because of the kidney stone risk)

That plate got messy!

Tofu:

• 1 block of tofu (firm, extra-firm, or super-firm)
• 2 tbsp of neutral oil (I used vegetable oil)
• 1 tbsp of cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp of garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp of onion powder
• 1/2 tsp of paprika
• 3/4 tsp of poultry seasoning
• 1/4 tsp of salt
• 1 tbsp of teriyaki sauce (I used a store-bought thin teriyaki marinade, but regular soy sauce or tamari works fine, too)

Sauce:

• 1/4 cup of hot sauce
• 3 tbsp of agave
• 1 tbsp of neutral oil
• 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder

Instructions:

1. Press the tofu if you are not using super-firm tofu. If you do not have a tofu press, wrap the block in a clean towel and stack on top a pan with some cans inside for about 30 minutes. After that, cut it into whatever shape you want.
2. Coat the tofu in the neutral oil and gently toss it. After that, put all the seasonings and toss it again. After that, I put the tbsp of teriyaki sauce and did one more toss until it was nice and evenly coat.
3. Preheat the air fryer to 400°F (200°C) and air fry anywhere from 12 to 16 minutes (depending on how crispy you want it). I did 16 minutes, and make sure you flip halfway through!
4. The sauce I prepared by mixing everything together and then microwaving. I heated it up for 40 seconds and stirred halfway through at 20 seconds, and then I stirred again after it was done microwaving. After that I put the tofu in the same container and tossed it to coat. Even after coating, I had some residual sauce that I used for dipping. You can either pour that leftover sauce over the tofu once you transfer it to a plate or dip like I did!
5. Enjoy!

Washed flour seitan is a PITA. There must be a way to make it easier to prepare large batches.

As I see it there are are 2 main issues:

1. It is labourous to massage the dough, particularly in large quantities
2. Significant volumes of water involved make it messy and space consuming, especially if saving starch

Optimising (1) involves using more water, like you could just hose some dough on a grating for ages.

Optimising (2) means more manual work.

There seem to be the following avenues for improvement:

1. Improved tools for washing the dough
2. Automatic water circulation
3. Automatic reclaiming of water to reduce the volume needed

Looking into patents industrial processes do not seem directly translatable to the home, involving heavy and multi-stage machinery.

My thoughts at this stage:

1. stand mixer + automatic water circulation with cheap diagraphram pumps. Uses a large volume of water to be settled. High volume stand mixers are expensive, there is the potential for a lot of messy splashing.
2. Using a posser and a big bucket. Manual but cheap.
3. Water circulation + using a modified paint roller to push the dough against a grating. Maybe cheap but still less labour intensive?

Weird pipe dream shit:

1. Could you use something like a sluice to settle the starch and recycle the water. Essentially trading speed for just washing it for ages while you go and do something else?
2. Some sort of cyclonic separation to reclaim the water from the starch as above?
3. Is there an easy way to make some sort of food safe low velocity mega stand mixer from common salvaged tools?

I would appreciate any insight or constructive criticism from the more mechanically minded, or people who know how peasants did this shit without going mad.

They really enshittified the internet so hard that it’s more convenient to have these bulky ass (expensive too if you don’t get second hand…) books that you have to flick through and find room to store and try not to spill shit on and stick little bookmarks in to save commonly used recipe, god damn.

For years I used a search engine, and used Pinterest a lot too to save recipes and categorise them. But the SEO slop, the AI slop, the ads…. It’s just become horrific half the time. I did try downloading a few eBooks and pdfs but the format is really not great for cookbooks.

If anyone has any recommendations for sites or apps that aren’t fucking terrible I would love that. Especially ones.

don't talk to me about the crust or the filling overtaking the pecans...i was high as fuck. does anyone even like pecan pies (i just chose it because it is an easy pie I know how to make off the top of my head and I have a friendsgiving to attend)

(Picture isn't mine. It's just for display. I got it from here.)

I feel ashamed for liking something as Brtsh as beans on toast.

I have been eating a lot of homemade baked bean sandwiches with sprinkles of nutritional yeast on top. It has honestly become of one of my go-to meals because it's cheap, easy to prepare, and pretty damn tasty.

Here is the recipe I use:

• 1 can (15 oz) navy beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can (15 oz) pinto beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 cup tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup vegetable broth
• 3 tbsp agave
• 2 tbsp some kind of storebought BBQ sauce
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp yellow mustard
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp paprika
• Salt and pepper to taste

Basically, I just mix this all together in this big-ass container I have and microwave it. I then put it on sliced white bread and sprinkle nutritional yeast on top.

What are some of your favorite bean sandwiches to enjoy?

This weeks daily bread for our household. This time the dough was in the fridge overnight as I was too tired to shape the breads last night.

This is our trusty oatmeal (porridge), spelt & wheat sourdough. It's just flour, oats, water, salt and olive oil.

The slices are going into the freezer, left the other loaf to be eaten first.

I love using pre-cooked oats in a bread recipe. The method has it's own word in my language and the closest word for it in English is "scalding". It makes the bread nice and soft and extends shelf-life.

Baking

I've developed a new baking interest, tarts and pies. I tend to have these relatively long cooking & baking eras that revolve around a certain group of food, a method or spesific cooking or baking skills. I've done the sourdough thing, started that in 2018 and it went all the way to starting a microbakery in our tiny Soviet block apartment kitchen, it wasn't sustainable, lol. Then there's been the cake era, fermentation era, laminated dough era, traditional local food era, eras with foods from spesific areas in the world and many more. Now I seem to be very much into tarts and pies, learning all the different forms of shortcrust and other doughs.

I started with French tarts, mostly because they are pretty delicious to me. Today I made a big sheet onion pie, called Tarte à l’Oignon Alsacienne in French. It is basically a French onion soup baked into a pie crust. The crust is very flaky and delicious, a shortcrust called the Pâte Brisée (all-butter-crust) that I made for it yesterday.

Here's the whole thing, it's pretty huge and will feed us for days. It's delicious.

Ate it with a green salad:

Last weekend I made a caramel and chocolate tart to learn making the Pâte Brisée better. It also turned out delicious, but the crust was a bit hard. The one in todays tart is a lot better already. Still a tasty treat:

I also made a classic Quiche Lorraine last weekend for dinner, there is no cheese in the original recipe. It was very good as well.

Plan for next weekend is making a Flan Parisienne and then I'll just make all the tarts and pies that I find interesting until the era runs out of steam. I love that after these I always end up with so many new or better skills and get to kind of travel the world in flavour without going anywhere. Been meaning to make filo pastry pies again for the longest time too, maybe I could tie that into this tart era towards the end. Making a good galaktoboureko has been a plan of mine for years, but I never remember to make it.

Expect a lot of tart posting in the coming months.

A plant-based counterpart to what is most commonly known as "honey chicken" at American Chinese takeout restaurants.

This was homemade in the air-fryer. Here is the recipe:

Tofu

• 1 block firm (or extra-firm) tofu
• 2 tbsp soy sauce (tamari if you are gluten-free)
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• Pinch of black pepper
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil

Sauce

• 1/3 cup agave
• 2 tbsp soy sauce (tamari if you are gluten-free)
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar (apple cider vinegar should work, too)
• 1 tbsp ketchup (tomato paste should work, too)
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp sriracha
• 1 tsp cornstarch mixed with 1 tbsp cold water (slurry)

Instructions

1. Press the tofu. If you have a tofu press, you can use that. If not, wrap the tofu in a clean towel, take something heavy like a pan, and put the pan on top with cans inside. Do this for anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. The more water you get out, the better the texture.
2. Cut the tofu. Any size and shape you want is fine, but the way I did it, cutting it up into little cubes, worked great!
3. Season and coat the tofu. Do this in a container with every ingredient from the "tofu" section above (soy sauce, cornstarch, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, vegetable oil). Shake everything up to make sure it gets all spread out.
4. Air fry. I did it by preheating to 400°F (200°C) and cooking for 16 minutes, shaking halfway through.
5. Make the sauce. What I did was I combined every ingredient from the sauce section except the slurry. I microwaved that combination for 90 seconds, I stirred the sauce while pouring the slurry in, and I microwaved for an additional minute, stirring again every 20 seconds. Of course, you can do this on a stove top, too.
6. Toss the tofu and sauce together in a container.
7. Enjoy!

I put sesame seeds on top as you can see. Of course, this goes great with rice, noodles, mixed vegetables, or whatever you have in mind.

I have been traveling and today I present to you...the thing I saw in the Frankfurt airport.

Is it efficient? Undeniably. Does it probably work better than the normal way? Oh certainly. Produce less of a mess? Probably?

But the existence of Condiment Udders gives me a deep, aghast disquiet.

https://bsky.app/profile/beebrookshire.bsky.social/post/3m3s2gw7lbc2b

For anyone keeping track of my Friday night beer brewing festivities: here's my lager from around two weeks ago.

I fermented under pressure (12 psi) in a keg with a floating dip tube so it was drink ready a week ago. Some quick stats: single malt (pale malt) and a single hop variety (fuggles). I used 34 70 yeast which is a beast. No clearing agents like gelatin - if it lasts it'll clear some on its own. Rough math: 20 dollars or so in fermentables and hops for 4+ gallons of beer.

The wife loves it. I'm pretty happy with it. The spawn still thinks beer tastes weird.

And yes, we're carving a pumpkin today.