Leaning Vegetarian

Archive for September, 2009

Peach buns are one of my favorites from dim sum.  We made our own sweet red bean paste from canned adzuki beans, but if you’ve got a well-stocked asian market you may be able to find it canned and save some time.

Ingredients – Sweet Bean Paste

Two 15 oz cans azuki beans
1 cup sugar (add more or less to taste)

Ingredients – Bun Dough

1 pkg yeast
1 c. milk
2 tablespoons sugar
3 c. flour plus 1 cup for kneading
1/2 tsp salt
2 egg whites

We mashed the beans through a strainer; next time I’m going to use the food processor because everyone’s wrists were tired by the time we finished.

Add the sugar to the beans in a saucepan over medium heat and cook until it darkens a bit and becomes glossy.

Meanwhile, start the dough by heating the milk and sugar until bubbles just begin to form around the side of the pot. Let it cool to lukewarm and add the yeast, flour, and salt. Use a mixer to beat the dough while adding the two egg whites.

Knead this, adding flour as necessary to tone down the stickiness. Let it rest for a few minutes before patting it into wrappers.

I’ll let Kaela demonstrate while she fills the wraps with bean paste:

Put these into a steamer lined with a greased bit of parchment paper – I did the snowflake thing with folds and scissor cuts to add holes; a regular hole punch would have been quicker. Don’t put them this close together or they will stick together.

Steam them for 12 to 15 minutes and roll off onto a plate. To get the peachy appearance, brush them lightly with a little bit of food coloring to resemble a peach. If you want to get creative like Kaela did below, with her fish and watermelon and turtles and zombies, use a small paintbrush and food coloring.  These are best right off the stove, but they will keep refrigerated for a few days.

Now, the first hints of changing maples on my commute are lovely, and the light chill in the morning while the dogs nose around in the damp goldenrod and poke is refreshing, but I gotta say that I hate that it’s dark by the time I get home from work.

On the other hand, longer dark and cooler temperatures mean more baking, soups, and richer dishes, so I look forward to that.

This curry is very quick to fix and works well for the ‘oh, I need to use up those vegetables’ days. I’m still working on approximating Cha Da Thai’s most excellent curries – this is close but I still have a way to go until I figure out how they get so much flavor in their green and panang curries.

Ingredients

3/4 – 1 cup Tempeh
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/4″ piece of ginger, chopped
1 green onion, sliced
1/2 to 1 cup vegetables of your choice (here we’ve got kale and green peppers chopped finely; eggplant is great, zucchini, bamboo shoots, carrots, whatever you have)
~1 tsp. green curry paste (this is Mae Ploy; I’ve used Thai Kitchen to good effect as well, though to my taste it’s hotter)
1/2 cup vegetable broth
4-5 tablespoons coconut milk
1 scant tsp brown sugar
salt to taste
couple tsp oil

Add the oil to a hot saucepan over medium heat and stir in the curry paste. Add the garlic, ginger, green onions, tempeh, and vegetables (if you’re using carrots or something sturdy, add that first).

Saute until the vegetables are just tender, and add the broth, coconut milk, and brown sugar. Add salt to your taste. I like this over rice.

When I was growing up in Denver, August meant a trip to the western slope for peaches. It’s about four hours to Palisade and Grand Junction, and a full day trip if we (ohpleaseohplease) stopped in Glenwood Springs for a swim in the huge hot springs pool. If you ever have the chance to take the California Zephyr through Glenwood Canyon, do it.

Some years we’d get cases of peaches, and other years we’d go to a U-pick, with Mom and Dad up in the trees handing down buckets of fruit. On the trip back the tiredness of the travel and full day in the sun was offset by the rich scent of peaches wafting into the car from the crates packed snugly in the trunk.

Then my grandmother would dip big peaches into the kettle – how fuzzy fresh peaches are, compared to store peaches – and slide big slices into quart jars. There would also be peach ice cream, and if she had the energy after the steamy day in the kitchen, peach pie.

There are so many recipes I wish I’d asked her to show me, but one gets wise too late. I can’t make peaches without thinking about her.

We found eight large South Carolina peaches in the discount bin at the grocery. They’re a little bruised, but hey, it’s jam. This is going to be a micro-batch of jam – there were four half-pints here.

Using a slotted spoon, place them in a pot of boiling water for a minute or two. This will make the skins slip off easily.

Peel and slice the peaches, and cut each slice into three or four pieces.

In a heavy pan, add sugar and ginger to taste. For these eight peaches, I added a scant half cup of sugar – I tend to like tart jam – and I grated a teaspoon of fresh ginger. This was enough to add a little brightness but not overpower the peaches. I also like a runny jam; if you’d like it to be thicker you could add some pectin or cook it down longer – this was on a medium burner for about 40 minutes.

Note to self: wear closed shoes next time. The jam bubbles as it thickens and it’s hot when it lands on your toes. Probably wouldn’t hurt to have a wet dishcloth at hand for the splorps that escape onto the stove and counter even when you’re trying to be careful with the lid.

To check for doneness, I put a metal tablespoon in the freezer until it was cold, and I called it done when a spoonful of jam poured onto the tablespoon dripped off rather than pouring.

I processed these jars for 10 minutes in boiling water, and am looking forward to some fresh bread toasted with this jam. It might also turn into the filling between cake layers. Hmmm…

This batch of Seitan was a plain gluten and water mixture, simmered in chicken-style flavorings of sage and thyme. Unfortunately I found out what happens when you allow seitan to boil – this batch came out much tougher than the earlier batch we’d made.

The sweet chile sauce was an experiment – mix a couple teaspoons of honey or other sweetener with a teaspoon of chile paste (we used the sambal paste here), a teaspoon of oil, and a chopped clove of garlic. That was still a bit too sweet for our taste, so I added some chopped ginger (later in the week we also added some bok choy). Fry these all together until the honey bubbles, and add some sliced seitan. The same sauce works well for chicken too.

I’d had this sambal when I lived in BC, and found it less fiery than the Sriracha sauce. I tend to forget that this difference is trivial for the rest of the crew here that likes spice but not fire, so my ‘oh, you’ve gotta try this!’ resulted in a number of spectacular dives for the soy milk and yogurt. The consensus was that it was a really tasty chile sauce – in a somewhat smaller quantity.

This dish made up another easy-to-prepare lunch. I’d never popped mustard seeds in a pan before – but I’d caught the Alternative Vegan podcast by Dino* where he emphasized adding the mustard seeds to hot oil to pop and release their full flavor, and thought I’d try it.

I added a half an onion, a large clove of garlic, both chopped, and sauteed those until the onions were soft. Then I added the lentils from the freezer.

Since this is just me eating it, I drizzled a couple good spoonfuls of sambal over the top, and a couple dollops of greek yogurt. If it’s too garlicky (if there is such a thing), well, my officemate is off tomorrow and I have no meetings.

* Lots of good information packed in these podcasts – go listen.