Nom nom nom is what we do! We will write about it; sometimes there will be pictures. Would you like to nom nom nom too?
Our take on making Teese Sticks.
This was a lot of fun. We were too impatient to wait for the Teese to freeze (it was also ridiculous o’clock), so it melted very quickly in the oil. The breading also would have been better if it had some herbs in it. But even so, these were a great after-bar treat.
Some things are just a natural match. And after today’s little experiment, I’m convinced that beer, chocolate, and ice cream are such a match. Dulce de Leche flavor So Delicious is a perfect topping for chocolate-chip stout waffles.
To make the waffles you will need:
First mix the flour and sugar, then add the oil and the beer. Next throw in the chocolate chips. You do not want to put baking powder in these, as it will create an awesome, but unhelpful, reaction in the bowl. Also don’t over mix this (or any other pancake/waffle batter) lest you wind up with bricks; a few lumps are fine. Let this mixture rest a bit as the waffle iron heats up.
Pour a reasonable amount of batter for your waffle iron into it, and cook it until it is done. Opening it too soon will result in two half waffles. Too much batter and you will have a mess. If you don’t know what these quantities are, trial and error is your friend. Weird looking waffles still taste good! I decided to top my waffles with copious amounts of Earth Balance, grade B maple syrup, and a scoop of So Delicious Dulce de Leche flavored vegan ice cream.
So, the much anticipated Teese arrived on Thursday, and we had to do something with it, but what?
Well, when we were making seitan for the calzones, we noticed that the chunks looked like hamburgers. Somehow the last chunk had not been eaten yet by the time we had received our Teese order. So, we decided that the best thing to do would be to make a Teeseburger.
We couldn’t find any vegan hamburger buns at the grocery store we went to (damn honey), so we got ciabatta rolls instead. These were a bit crustier than desired, but still worked well. We did pick up some Southwest flavor Sunshine Burgers to have in addition to our one hunk of seitan.
The Teese melted excellently in the toaster oven on the Sunshine Burger, and recoagulated rather nicely, instead of remaining a runny mess like Veganrella [Liene notes: I still like Veganrella, and not just because I love soy-free weird vegan things, despite everyone and their vegan mother apparently preferring Follow Your Heart. Weirdos!]. However, to our disappointment, Teese did not melt on top of the seitan patty in a frying pan. This may be because the patty was too thick and the pan was uncovered. We eventually put the seitan patty in the toaster oven as well, and the Teese melted.
This brings both of us great hope for summertime barbecue adventures!
Or, Further Adventures With Pizza Dough! It’s all the fun of a pizza in a much more adorable form. And it makes me start dreaming of vegan hot-pocket-y possibilities.
After I threw together some calzones with actually-leftover pizza dough earlier this week, we decided that it would be a neat idea to make some dough for this express purpose. The “recipe” was a mashup of, once again, VWaV pizza dough, but this time thrown in with some Actual Calzone instructions from the New Enchanted Broccoli Forest. (*At this time I feel I must point out my profound love/hate relationship with this book, which was possibly my first vegetarian cookbook. I love the hand lettering, I LOVE and incessantly use the bean and grain charts in the back [I could hug them], and I have actually made some of her calzones before, back in the day — but there is so much unnecessary animal product usage throughout, and I have serious qualms with things Mollie Katzen has said and done since then. That is, however, another story for another time.)
So we had:
“Things to put inside” included red onions, mushrooms, garlic, VeganRella (because the Teese isn’t here yet), simple seitan from Veganomicon (which we *also* made yesterday), and a roasted delicata squash that had been living in my house for too long now. (Well, much of the squash got doused in maple syrup and put directly in our mouths, but some of it made it into calzones.)
First, the oven was preheated to 425°. Red onions got diced and tossed in a pan over medium-ish heat to soften up with some olive oil. Diced mushrooms were then added, and cooked down. Seitan was cut into cubes and thrown in, and pressed garlic was tossed in at the very end (not a whole lot of cooking happens to the inside ingredients, but I feel there’s enough that I don’t want my garlic mellowing out beforehand).
I really have no idea about amounts. Not more than half an onion. Seven or so crimini mushrooms? A few cloves of garlic. One lump of seitan from a recipe that makes three, minus the chunks we ate as “quality control.” There was probably a pinch of salt in there somewhere.
Next, we whacked the pizza dough into six reasonably-equal pieces with a knife. We formed each piece into something vaguely circle-like. One at a time, a healthy scoop of filling was placed on the top (maybe a quarter-cup-ish?), sometimes including a couple strips of roasted squash, and then the top was folded over, and the edges pressed together with the tines of a fork. Basically it should look kind of like an awesome doughy UFO at this point. Stab the top gently with the fork a few times, for venting purposes.
Put them on an oiled or greased baking sheet. Pop them in the oven for about 15 minutes. And then take them out. If, somehow, you have willpower, wait ten minutes to crack these puppies open. Otherwise, wait as long as you are able, and have at them.
Pizza Fino is a mainstream (read: serves animal flesh) pizza place in the Kenton neighborhood with some great vegan options.
They have a vegan pizza on the menu that is amazing. It starts with a roasted red pepper-cashew sauce and marinated tempeh, and then you add your choice of any three vegetable options from the menu. We chose roasted garlic, caramelized onions, and veggie meatballs. This turned out to be a great choice. The caramelized onions were golden and sweet and complimented perfectly by the roasted garlic. The veggie meatballs are vegan and made in-house and taste amazing.
Our only complaint was that the toppings were a bit sparse, but that would not stop us from ordering another one. Even if your bite has no toppings, it still has the wonderfully rich roasted red pepper sauce. But, if sparse toppings bother you, then they also have a vegan meatball sub sandwich that is highly recommended to me.
Pizza Fino
8225 N Denver Ave
Portland, OR 97217
Phone: (503) 286-2100
Sweetpea Baking company had a $10 all-you-can-eat vegan brunch on Sunday morning that was worth every penny. The brunch was advertised as being from 9am to 12pm, but they had sold out of food before 11:00 rolled around.
They had biscuits and gravy, seitan, roasted potatoes, tofu scramble, pancakes, and kale.
The biscuits and gravy were delicious, with light and flaky biscuits.
The seitan made a perfect addition to the biscuits and gravy, and was seasoned well enough to eat by itself.
The roasted potatoes were delightfully seasoned with rosemary and salt.
The tofu scramble was good, even if they did have too much turmeric.
The pancakes were my second favorite thing, with Earth Balance, maple syrup AND agave nectar (why hadn’t I thought of this combination before?).
And my favorite dish by far was the kale, not something I was expecting for breakfast, but it was a pleasant surprise.
Hell yeah!
What do you do after a night of pizzaing, when somehow there is dough left over? Make fruity brunch pizza, of course! You have no idea what you’re missing — yet. A moist fruit topping on a coconutty base with a marvelously crispy crust underneath is just what your sleepy tastebuds would like.
You will need, more or less:
Before anything else happens, preheat the oven to 425° (or 400°, or 450°, or wherever you like to bake your pizzas). Keep the bottom rack low — either the bottom or second-lowest rack, which is what we used (neither of us has/uses a pizza stone, and this oven had burned a naked pizza on the bottom rack). That way it’s close enough to the heat to get crispy, without getting burninated.
In a small bowl, add the coconut milk, a very liberal squeeze of agave nectar (maybe a couple tablespoons?), and your chosen spices (taste to adjust; you’d be surprised how mighty our friend the coconut is). Mix it up.
Grab your dough and wrangle it into a pizza-looking shape on a baking sheet. Stab it a bunch of times with a fork to keep crazy bubbles from happening. Once the oven’s hot, toss the sheet+dough in for 5-10 minutes — the idea is to get it firm enough to rest on a rack alone, not to bake it. Keep an eye on it.
Our fruit choices gave us a pleasantly tropical pizza. Try whatever you have on hand, or whatever is fresh at the store, and let us know how it turns out. We had excellent luck asking the produce guy at the store, too — they know their produce, and we got excellent advice and a perfect mango because of it.
We chopped our fruit into little bite-sized pieces so they wouldn’t pull the rest of the toppings off when we took a bite. Sticks, dice, chunks; whatever floats your boat will work marvelously.
When the dough has firmed up, remove it from the oven and take it off the baking sheet. Then spoon a bit of the coconut milk sauce onto the dough (it will thin some; this is fine), spread it out, and add your chopped fruit. Put it all back in the oven directly on your chosen rack. When the crust is a little golden and the sauce has dried out around the edges (10-15 minutes?), remove it from the oven, slice it, and put it in your belly.
Also, the sauce makes a great dipping sauce for fruits if you don’t have any dough sitting around and still want a yummy snack. (This is also an excellent way to while away the minutes as your oven is preheating, or your crust is prebaking. We certainly tried this out extensively and had plenty of sauce for the crust.)