I tend to cook all day on Sundays. I generally begin the day baking bread, making tofu, and usually one or two other things, such as pizza today, then later I make something fairly involved for dinner. It’s my domestic day. Today started off strong – I got my tofu mojo back – but I started getting what I suspect may be a sinus headache and all I wanted to do was read the rest of the afternoon. So all my plans for an extravagant dinner went out the door and I instead made something very simple and very comforting, although since it simmered for so long, it still felt a little bit like I was putting a normal effort into it. Really, though, prep time for this is next to nothing if you have seitan on hand. I had some in the freezer, so I was good to go.

Simple Seitan Stew

1 lb seitan, chopped into bite-sized chunks
wine or sherry for deglazing, optional
4 small cooking onions, peeled but left whole
2 huge carrots, chunked
4 small to medium potatoes, chunked
4 cups vegan “beef” broth
1 cup tomato sauce
1 Tbsp Marmite
1 tsp Kitchen Bouquet
2 bay leaves (I used 4 because they were fresh and young and I think less potent)
1/2 tsp (or to taste) freshly ground pepper
2/3 cup frozen peas
1 Tbsp malt vinegar, optional
2 Tbsp cornstarch + 3 Tbsp cold water

Brown the seitan in some oil in a heavy Dutch oven, deglazing the pot with wine, sherry, or broth. Place the rest of the ingredients except the frozen peas, vinegar, and corn starch into the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are soft, probably 45 minutes to an hour. Add the peas and the malt vinegar if you wish – mine tasted sort of sweet and I wanted to cut that a little bit. Remove the bay leaves. Whisk together the cornstarch and cold water in a small bowl, then stir into the stew and simmer another minute or two until thickened. Squish any onions that are still whole to break them up.

Serve with crusty bread.

What’s that you say? You won’t leave without a kitten photo? Well, I guess I can scrounge one up for you this time. Gomez has taken to helping me cook.

Wow, have I been busy in the kitchen this weekend! I’m not someone who ordinarily slows down as far as cooking goes during the summer; Mark runs the air conditioner constantly, so it’s usually not too hot for me to cook. So I don’t know if it’s just coincidence that Hurricane Earl brought us a cool Labor Day weekend – an upper 70s reprieve (and very sunny skies! no hurricane here; the weather is amazing!) from the summer-long near-100-degree days – and I ended up cooking even more than usual or if cooler temperatures were somehow responsible. Yesterday I made sauerkraut and kimchi, and for dinner, seitan ham, cooked fresh lima beans, and barley. Today I’m making pain au levain and I made tofu for the first time in months (it didn’t turn out very well; I guess I need to get back into the swing of it), and I even saved the okara to make Zoa’s chicken-style okara seitan. This morning I also made split pea soup; the great thing about which being I used up a bunch of leftovers doing so.

Split Pea and Barley Soup

1 onion, chopped
4-6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 carrot, chopped
1/2 cup fresh lima beans
7 cups broth, chickpea cooking water, or a combination of both (I had saved the water leftover from cooking chickpeas a couple of days ago)
2 cups green split peas
1 cup diced vegan “ham”
several splashes liquid smoke
1 cup cooked barley, or 1/3 cup uncooked
1 tsp salt, or to taste
freshly ground black pepper

In a Dutch oven over medium heat, saute the onion in some olive oil until translucent.

Add the carrots and garlic; saute for another 3 minutes.

Add the remaining ingredients, except the barley if cooked, and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for an hour to an hour and a half, until peas are done. If using cooked barley, add it 5 to 10 minutes before the soup is ready.

Serve!

This was my lunch today.

So as not to drive Zoa insane with curiosity, the book is Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. The bread is a baguette from the farmer’s market, sold by a real live Frenchman, who spoke French at me for a full three minutes and made me feel bad about myself – after feeling good that I’ve been understanding Josiane’s French tweets – because I only understood a single word (“français”). Le sigh. I don’t buy much bread because I bake my own, but since I usually bake on Sundays, I’ve been picking up a baguette on Saturday mornings to tide us over. I’ve been taking one of my baguette bags so my Frenchman doesn’t need to put it in a paper bag – another great use for the bread bags! (I got a lot of compliments on the baguette bag yesterday. The Frenchman also commented on it, but I don’t know what he said. What did those five years of high school and college French get me?!?)

Also pictured above is my first batch of water kefir. Actually, I’ve made it before but didn’t keep up with it, but I got more grains this week and am going to try to maintain it better this time. So far so good; it tastes great! I made the mistake(?) of telling Mark it was probiotic when he asked what it was, so he refuses to drink it. More for me! I also found this great water bottle in my favorite antique store. It’s the perfect size for chilling my quart of water kefir, and it has this awesome valve lid that is shut when it sits upright and opens when you tilt the bottle to pour. I love it!

The cool weather is energizing the kittens; they – well, mostly Torticia – have been getting into trouble this weekend. Here she is attacking Hamelman’s Bread book.

She’s not the only one who likes cookbooks a little to much; earlier in the week Gomez was lounging on Veganomicon …

… until he decided to eat the cheesecloth covering some fermenting pickles.

But then they do this. I love them.

Wow, have I been busy! I was thinking earlier today that it has been a while since I’ve made a post and lamented the fact it seemed it’d be even longer until I’d have a chance to do so, until I decided to make burritos for dinner and realized I could use and then write up my pickled jalapenos! Which I was trying for the first time and which turned out fantastic! So here goes! (I’m addicted to exclamation points today!)

Pickled Jalepenos

1 pint jalapenos
1 small carrot, sliced on the diagonal
3-4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp Mexican oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp peppercorns
white or cider vinegar to (just barely) cover other ingredients (about 2 cups)

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until jalapenos are soft, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Transfer to a clean glass jar.

Refrigerate for at least three weeks.

That’s it! The hardest part is not eating them for the three weeks. I actually ended up waiting four, but they were worth the wait.

Tonight I minced up a few …

… and stuffed them into a burrito. They were REALLY good! I don’t know why I’d ever buy pickled jalapenos again.

The second hardest thing about the pickled jalapenos was getting a picture of them that didn’t involve Gomez, who kept getting between the peppers and the camera. This picture was taken with Torticia climbing atop me as I squatted on the floor. SO MANY KITTENS!

Nona, if you’re reading this, I really do think he looks like a baby Crookshanks.

So. In other news. Boston. It’s full of Australians and vegans! Mark and I accompanied this handsome Australian fellow to Boston:

We stayed with a friend Smucky’s known “since birth”, Nick, and I’ve decided that all the Australians I know are the greatest people in the world. I’ve never met an Australian I didn’t love! And on top of that, I met a vegan! This is very exciting because I’ve never actually MET a vegan in real life, other than Mark, who converted after I met him and probably because I met him, and this girl who lived in the apartment above me in one of my places in Baltimore (who was probably my biggest inspiration when I went vegan because I figured if she lived in the exact same place I did and she could do it, I could do it). I’ve ALMOST met other vegans numerous times but this is the first time it actually transpired. Not only that, but Smucks, Mark, and I knew him through Twitter for reasons completely unrelated to veganism. So we met up with him on Saturday and he took us to The Other Side, where I ordered the raw Mock Chicken Salad:

Zach promised to take us to Peace O’ Pie on Monday, which I was extremely excited about, but then it turned out they are closed on Mondays and I shed tears of pain and grief (as we were leaving on Tuesday). Apparently the entire city of Boston shuts down on Mondays. Smuckalert asked us to walk along the Charles River with him so he could take pictures on Monday and I told him it was probably closed. (It wasn’t, but it was very, very, very hot. I thought Boston would be an escape from the heat?!) Zach mostly redeemed himself by suggesting we go to Addis Red Sea instead, which was conveniently located right down the street from Nick’s place, and although it took forever the food was fabulous (although not quite DC Ethiopian fabulous; that’s one thing DC does right). I LOVE Ethiopian food, so I was about to burst with excitement, as well as hunger. I was so hungry and excited, I quite forgot to take a picture of the grub, but I DID take this picture, which I wanted to submit to The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, but it turned out too blurry.

Not too blurry for my own blog though! (Which may soon turn into the Blog of Unnecessary Exclamation Points.) It says, “Hi! My name is ‘MESOB’. I am serving you as a ‘TABLE’. Please do not lean on, I am very fragile.”

Busy upcoming weekend; it may be another few days before I’m able to post again, but I found a vegan grill cookbook in the library, so I’m looking forward to grilling up a bunch of stuff in the very near future and I’m sure I’ll have my camera in hand. Until then, mates, g’day!

So, the kittens, Mark, and I all survived the weekend, which was an issue because we hosted a party for a bunch of people we don’t know. Which was especially difficult for us as a group because I’m extremely shy, Mark’s a member of the People Who Hate People Party, and the kittens are just baby kittens who’ve never experienced the turmoil of a bunch of strangers invading their home at one time. See, our friend Matty has graduated from college and is at long last on his way to becoming a sign language interpreter. And Matty needed a place to have a party because he lives in an apartment, and as everyone who sets foot in our house feels at home there (something I take pride in, but it’s as much this house just having some crazy great vibe as it is anything I do), he wanted to have it here. Matty has a lot more friends than I do, however, and knows a lot of people I don’t, meaning I knew maybe 10% of the guest list. It also meant this was not a vegan party. I generally throw one or two smallish parties a year, which are completely vegan, and which I completely cater. But I wasn’t about to tell Matty he had to have a vegan party and I didn’t have time to cater it either. So Matty bought a grill and he and his friends made hamburgers, and each of the guests brought a dish. I did buy a bunch of snack foods, though, and I went to the farmer’s market that morning and got a bunch of veggies that I cut up for dipping in my homemade ranch, tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro, garlic, and onions that I made into salsa, as well as tomatoes and onions for the very non-vegan burgers, and I made nacho dip, baked beans (in the crockpot), hamburger noodle bake, sourdough bread, and five grain levain rolls. Oh, and chocolate mousse ice cream. And iced tea. I didn’t intend to make that much food, I just can’t help myself. I didn’t take any pictures since most of what I didn’t make wasn’t vegan and you’ve already seen most what I made. I think I’m going to have to do a post on those rolls, though, because I got a ton of compliments on them. People seemed rather amazed by them, in fact. So maybe I’ll do that this weekend.

Anyway, everyone was very nice and I didn’t have a nervous breakdown or anything. I really am VERY shy around people I don’t know (although Matty and many other people have expressed surprise at this assertion), but I think having the party at my house actually helped because either I was too busy to be shy, or I figured since it was my house, people were obligated to be nice to me. The heat index was 110 degrees (43 Celsius for you non-Americans) Saturday, which made grilling very pleasant, I’m sure. The kittens were a huge hit, and they behaved exactly as I had hoped: too scared to leave the bedroom (and therefore not running outside or getting underfoot), but not so freaked out they wouldn’t come out to play for small groups of people who came to see them. There was a ton of food left over, all of which Matty packed up and took home with him (he won’t have to make himself dinner for a month), but he left the grill behind. So now I have a grill. Which is cool because I’ve always wondered if I’d like a grill, but never wanted to invest the money in case I didn’t.

In typical Renae fashion, I read the grill instructions front to back Sunday morning, then today came home from work feeling like a grilling master. Although I thought Mark might kill me for playing with fire when I’m home alone and have no idea what I’m doing, I decided I was going to grill dinner while waiting for him to get home from work. Today was a mere 89 degrees (32 Celsius) – seems practically chilly in comparison to this weekend; time to unpack the sweaters! – so it seemed like a good day for it. For my inaugural grilling, I made a recipe from the grill instructional manual, which must have been designed to kill anyone who eats it: Stuffed Hot Dogs. Wrapped in bacon. Seriously. You stuff hot dogs with cheese and relish, then wrap them in bacon and grill them. That’s it. I renamed it Grilled Heart Attack, although I don’t think the vegan version is going to cause any heart attacks. I thought I had relish, but I didn’t, so I made some, and a recipe for that follows.

Grilled Heart Attack, or Stuffed Hot Dogs

vegan hot dogs
vegan cheddar cheese, grated (like Daiya)
dill relish
vegan bacon

Keep in mind I have never worked a grill before in my life and I was doing this alone, so I could have been doing this all wrong…. but here’s what I did:

I made a pyramid of charcoal briquets, doused them in lighter fluid, and set them on fire.

I let them burn, then smolder, for about 15 minutes, until they were mostly covered in white ash.

I made a little pan out of aluminum foil, put it in the center of the charcoal rack, then used tongs to move the hot coals into a tight circle around the pan.

I let that smolder while I prepared the hot dogs. I cut each almost but not quite all the way through, then stuffed with relish and a bit of Daiya cheddar.

Then I wrapped a slice of vegan bacon around each one and placed it in my foil pan.

I also put some water-soaked corn (which I had de-silked) on the grate above them, then closed the grill.

I turned the corn a few times, and let it all cook for about 15 minutes, toasting some hot dog buns during the last couple of minutes.

I dressed the finished hot dogs with mustard …

… and served with left over baked beans.

I was unsure if I would, but I definitely did discern a unique grilled flavor in the veggie dog. Mark agreed. I’m not sure it would be worth going through the trouble just to grill a packaged veggie dog, but overall it was a successful foray into grilling and I’m eager to try more exciting things. I don’t think the corn was well done enough, though.

I was hoping to get some input from my wonderful readers – I’ve always gotten great answers when I asked for advice, so: what do you guys grill? Any tips or pointers? I picked up a pretty nice grill wok for $6 at Wegmans; it seemed like something I should have. Obviously I’ll have to make veggie kabobs, but what else is good? The more exotic, the better!

I told you I’d also show you how I made a quick dill relish when I realized I didn’t have any. I might make a fancier one down the road, but I wanted something super fast, so here’s what I did:

Quick Dill Relish

1 small jar dill pickles, minced
1 shallot, minced
3/4 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
1/2 tsp mustard seeds, crushed
1/4 tsp dried dill weed
salt and freshly ground pepper

Grind the coriander and mustard seeds in a mortar.

Mince the pickles and shallot.

Place all ingredients in a small bowl and mix.

Refrigerate for a while to allow flavors to blend.

This is a horrible picture, but here’s what happened when I tried to eat my dinner:

And here are the kittens on a lazy summer afternoon:

It occurred to me tonight that it’s been a week since I’ve made a post and may well be another week before I’m able to make another. I have a lot going on right now, including hosting a large party this weekend, and I’m probably not going to be cooking anything new, let alone taking pictures of it. In the meantime, please enjoy the kittens and I’ll be back in a week or so.

Do you see the orange M on Torticia’s forehead? I’ve been reading about cat genetics and apparently orange in cats is always tabby; what appears to be solid orange in some cats is really striped. That goes for the orange in tortoiseshells. Additionally, tabbies almost always have an M on their foreheads (both Tigger and Brachtune, as well as every other tabby I’ve ever known, did). So although most of Torticia’s colouring seems to be entirely random, in many places, her orange appears as tabby stripes. It’s particularly obvious in the orange bands around her front legs (totally adorable), but I missed her orange M for a couple of weeks. Once I spotted it, though, I can’t NOT see it. Mark claims the M stands for Mark; I claim it stands for my last name.

Gomez’s black-on-black stripes (not really visible in this photo; I love that you can only see them sometimes) are called ghost stripes. I had a black cat, Dracula, growing up (I have a tattoo in his honor), and I’ve been friends with several other black cats over the years, but Gomez is the first black kitty I’ve met with noticeable stripes, though apparently it’s fairly common because the gene that suppresses the tabby stripes in solid cats doesn’t always manage to fully suppress it. You can make out a faint M on his head as well, but it’s much harder to see than Torticia’s scarlet letter.

It’s hot here in the DC metro area.

It’s been hot for weeks. Personally, I’m loving it, so you’re not going to hear me complain. I’ll take 100 degree temperatures over a blizzard any day. I might feel differently if we didn’t have air conditioning, but frankly, Mark keeps it so cold at home, and our building management keeps it absolutely frigid at work (I actually sometimes use a space heater; how ridiculous is that?), and I’m cold when I leave the pool at the gym, and it’s always freezing in stores, so I actually consider it a relief to go outside. Our pool doesn’t work any more, so I don’t spend nearly as much time outside as I used to, unfortunately. Anyway, although I don’t feel all that affected by the crazy heat (watch our A/C break now that I’ve said this), I’ve been feeling a bit summery in the kitchen. That is, I eat a lot of pickles during the summer so I’ve been making a lot of pickles. Actually, I make and eat a lot of pickles all year round, but I’m trying to make this post topical. Also, I have been making pickles from stuff I get at the farmer’s market, so that’s seasonal. In fact, I have a pint of yellow jalapenos that I think need a vinegar bath. And a huge bunch of radishes. But today I present you two very easy, classic refrigerator pickles that I made a couple of weeks ago and am now ready to eat.

Refrigerator Dill Pickles

1 cucumber (really, 2 or 3 pickling cucumbers would probably be better, but this is what I had)
1 cup vinegar
1 cup water
few sprigs dill
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp pickling spices
pinch red pepper chili flakes
1 small clove garlic, lightly crushed
6 drops stevia or 1 Tbsp sugar

Chop the cucumber(s) into spears and lightly smash the garlic with the side of a knife. I also sliced the majority of the seeds off the cukes.

Put the rest of the ingredients except the dill into a large jar, cover, and shake to combine.

Put the cucumber spears, garlic, and dill into the jar. Top off with water if necessary to cover the cucumbers.

Refrigerate for at least a week (10 days is better).

Eat.

Spicy Pickled Green Beans

1 lb green beans, trimmed
1 jalapeno
few springs dill (optional)
1 1/2 cup water
1 1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp red chili flakes
1 small clove garlic, lightly crushed

Trim the green beans. Lightly crush the garlic with the side of a knife. For extra spicy green beans, make a cut in the jalapeno. Add all ingredients to a large jar, topping off with water if necessary to cover the beans.

Refrigerate for at least two weeks (three is better).

Eat. (Don’t forget to eat the jalapeno too!)

In kitten news, my mother sent the kittens and me a care package. I got a ton of tea and the kittens got exactly what they needed: more toys. They took to the Turbo Scratcher right away. Torticia literally throws herself into playing; she’s so rambunctious and adorable:

Gomez is a bit more laid back, although he does leap around and act just as nutty. I think his philosophy is to sit back and let Torticia tire out their prey and so he can go in for an easy kill later. I don’t have the heart to tell him Turbo Scratchers don’t tire out.

For those of you who didn’t see it on Twitter, here’s my hilarious joke – it’s the Large Cat Toy Collider. We’re hoping to find the Gomez boson.

I don’t know why this surprised me so much, because they sleep together a good 80% of the time, usually in one of their two cat trees, but I was taken aback for a second to find both kittens on the back of my chair. I guess it is because both Tigger and Brachtune liked to sleep there but there is no way in hell they’d ever both be there at the same time. This picture somehow hides the fact that Gomez is now a full 25% larger than Torticia. He’s an enormous giant.

When I was in high school, I worked in a local grocery store. It was the cool place to work; everyone in my high school worked there. When I applied, I assumed that like all of the other female teenage employees, I’d become a cashier. I was a little disappointed when they told me I’d be working in the bakery, because I thought I wouldn’t see all my friends, all the females of whom were cashiers. It didn’t take long for me to realize that working in the bakery was the very best assignment possible. The bakers, who all started at some obscene hour like 4 a.m., went home about half an hour after my weekday shifts began, which meant I was working with no supervision all night long. Shortly after I started, one of my best friends applied to work in the bakery with me and was also hired, which meant we spent every night goofing off, decorating donuts with cake icing and putting them out to sell, decorating cakes with our own ridiculous drawings, and chasing around and being chased by the produce guys, whose back room was connected to ours. I guess we somehow managed to do our work as well because I got along very well with the bakers, with whom I did have to work on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

This is me behind the bakery counter, selling my donut wares.

This is my friend, Dawn, looking at me through a cart of “trayed-up” frozen rolls. We had to do “tray-up”, which involved lining frozen rolls and breads on trays, putting them on a cart, and pushing them into the freezer, every night. I used to leave the bakers stories about the Tray-up God on the backs of the tray-up checklists. I’m very curious now to know what the heck I wrote, but one of the bakers told me at the time she saved them all. I’m sure they were ridiculous.

Anyway, if you’d have told me when I worked in the grocery store bakery that I’d one day consider being a baker, I’d have called you crazy. I couldn’t fathom the hours, for one thing (really, I still can’t), and it just didn’t seem very me, as much as I did like my after-school job. Culinary arts weren’t something I aspired to or had any interest in. Then when I went vegan and started teaching myself how to cook, I tried baking bread a few times and never had any success, so I gave up for several years, although I did get a bread machine. Eventually I got tired of the bread machine – it made funny shaped loaves and the paddle kept coming off and getting baked into the bread – and I tried my hand at baking by hand again. This time I for some reason had success, and after baking several breads from recipes off the internet, I got The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I don’t want to sound overly dramatic by saying it changed my life, but in a way it did, because I always thought I just didn’t have a knack for bread, but after buying that book, I did have a knack for it. Or, more likely, Peter Reinhart is just really good at teaching bread baking, even through a book. And his breads taste amazing. If you have any interest in bread baking, I can’t recommend his books, particularly this one, enough. After my huge successes baking nearly every bread in that book and his others, I fell in love with it so much I have considered working in a bakery – baking this time, not washing dishes and arranging frozen rolls on trays.

We’re not doing much for the Fourth of July this year – just hanging out with the kittens and taking care of some stuff around the house – but I usually try to at least loosely follow tradition for holiday meals, so I decided I’d make homemade veggie burgers today and I decided to make Peter Reinhart’s kaiser rolls for them. These kaiser rolls taste amazing. They are definitely the best kaiser rolls I’ve ever had. I never fail to think of the frozen kaiser rolls I used to tray up in high school and always think how much better these are.

I’m normally hesitant to publish Peter’s recipes because I really do want you to buy his books, but I found the following online in several places (including Google Books). The only change I’ve made is I substituted En-R-G egg replacer for the egg he calls for, though I suspect you could just leave it out entirely. Also, I doubled the recipe in the book, which made six rolls, because if six rolls are good, a dozen is even better. They freeze well. The measurements below are Peter’s original for 6 4-ounce rolls, but you’ll see my doubled measurements in the pictures.

Finally, I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Weigh your ingredients. If you are at ALL interested in baking, buy a scale and use it. I’ve included the volume measurements because I’m a nice gal, but it is very hard to consistently measure ingredients – especially flour – by volume.

Peter Reinhart’s Kaiser Rolls
From The Bread Baker’s Apprentice

Pate Fermentee
5 oz (1 1/8 cups) all-purpose flour*
5 oz (1 1/8 cups) bread flour*
.19 oz (3/4 tsp) salt
.055 oz (1/2 tsp) instant yeast
6-7 oz (3/4 cup to 3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp) water

* Peter says you can use all all-purpose or all bread flour if that’s all you have, but that this combination seems to yield the best results.

Rolls
8 oz (1 1/2 cups) pate fermentee (half of the above recipe)
10 oz (2 1/4 cups) bread flour
.2 oz (3/4 tsp + a pinch) salt
.17 oz (1 tsp) diastatic barley malt powder OR .33 oz (1 1/2 tsp) barley malt syrup
.11 oz (1 tsp) instant yeast
1 Tbsp En-R-G egg replacer + 4 Tbsp water, whisked
.75 ounce (1 1/2 Tbsp) vegetable oil
5 – 6 oz (10 Tbsp to 3/4 cup) water
poppy and/or sesame seeds, for topping

The night before baking, make the pate fermentee. I didn’t take pictures of this, but all you need to do is add all the dry ingredients to the bowl of your electric mixer (or a regular bowl if mixing by hand), then add 6 ounces of the water and mix on low speed or stir for about a minute until everything comes together in a coarse ball. Add the extra water if there is loose flour left over. Then mix on medium speed for 4 minutes, or knead by hand for 4 to 6 minutes, until the dough is, in Peter’s words, “soft and pliable, tacky but not sticky”. Lightly oil a bowl, roll the dough in the oil, then cover the bowl with a plate (in lieu of the plastic wrap Peter calls for). Leave the bowl out at room temperature for an hour or until the dough has risen to 1 1/2 times its original size, then refrigerate overnight or up to three days.

When you are ready to bake, remove the pate fermentee from the refrigerator.

Remove it from the bowl and use a bench cutter (or a serrated knife) to cut it into about 10 small pieces.

Cover with a tea towel and let come to room temperature for an hour. When the hour is up, add the flour, salt, malt powder, and yeast to your mixing bowl. Add the pate fermentee pieces, egg replacer, oil, and 5 ounces of water.

Mix on low speed for a minute (or stir by hand) until it comes together in a ball. Add the additional ounce of water if there is still loose flour.

Mix on medium speed for 6 minutes (10 minutes by hand), adding flour if needed, to “make a dough that is soft and supple, tacky but not sticky”. I like to finish it off by hand for a few seconds for a smooth dough.

It should pass the windowpane test.

Lightly oil a large bowl – I use this dough rising bucket from King Arthur Flour – roll the dough around in the oil, and cover with a large plate or lid.

Let sit at room temperature for two hours. If the dough doubles before two hours are up (mine had doubled at one hour) …

… remove it from the bowl, knead very lightly to degas (you don’t want to “punch down” dough as old recipes tell you to do; it’s too harsh), and return it to the bowl.

When the two hours are up or the dough has doubled again …

… remove the dough and divide it into six 4-ounce (or nine 2 2/3-ounce for small rolls) pieces. Because you may have had to add flour or water when kneading the dough, I like to weigh it before dividing, then divide the weight of the dough by the number of rolls I want. I’m always very excited when the dough weighs exactly what it should. Mine weighs exactly 48 ounces! (Remember, I doubled the recipe.)

Here I am weighing the individual rolls.

I was surprised, however, when the last roll weighed in at only 3.75 ounces, even after I’d weighed the first eleven twice each and they were all exactly 4 ounces. What this tells me is my scale is not as precise as I’d like it to be. I just took about .05 ounces off the five rolls that looked the biggest and added it to the runt.

Form the pieces into individual rolls. To do this, pinch the dough together on one side …

… creating and smoothing a seam, whilst creating surface tension on the opposite side.

Turn over and smooth into a round with your hands, seam side down.

When all the rolls have been created …

… cover with a tea towel and let rest for 10 minutes. Prepare a baking sheet by lining with parchment or a Silpat and misting lightly with oil.

Shape the rolls into kaiser rolls by using a kaiser roll cutter or by using this shaping method. (It was very hard for me to get pictures of this, so I suggest you read the book for a much better explanation.) Roll each roll into a rope about 8″ long.

Tie the rope into a simple knot.

Tuck the ends of the knot into the middle of the roll. (I didn’t get a good picture of this.) Tray the rolls, cut or prettier side down.

Cover with a couple of layers of tea towels and let rise for 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit at this point. Turn the rolls over. If you want to seed your rolls, mist lightly with water and sprinkle with poppy and/or sesame seeds.

Cover again, and let rise for another 30 to 45 minutes, or until doubled from their original size.

Peter recommends spraying the walls of the oven with water just after putting the rolls in, but I used a different technique of his and instead poured 1 cup of hot water into a cast iron pan I keep on the bottom shelf of my oven. If you go the water-in-pan method of creating steam, make sure the pan was preheated with the oven. Put the rolls into the oven and steam using one of those methods, then bake for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, rotate to the pan and reduce the heat to 400 degrees, then bake another 15 to 30 minutes for large rolls (less for small rolls), or until golden brown.

Transfer to a cooling rack and cool for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Here are the veggie burgers I made; I baked them in the toaster oven.

A closeup of one of the rolls …

… and the crumb.

And here’s my burger …

… and my whole meal.

As you can see in the last picture, I also made Bianca’s deviled eggs, and they are amazing! They really do taste like the real thing and were at least as easy to make.

I probably can’t get away without posting any kitten pictures, but since this has been such a long, photo-heavy post, I’m going to restrain myself to just one.

Okay, two, because Gomez started to yawn and it was funny.

I hope all of my fellow Americans had a happy and safe Fourth of July.

A trip to Penzeys on Sunday resulted in an abundance of mustard seeds, so it seemed appropriate to make mustard. This was based on a recipe by Emeril, even though I’ve made it before and wasn’t wowed. I thought maybe the sherry would make a difference, but frankly I don’t really taste the sherry over the mustard and I probably wasted what was actually pretty nice sherry. So I think I’ll continue to play around with this recipe – it’s good and it’s mustardy but it’s not amazing – but in the interest of recording what I did this time for myself (and as an excuse to post more kitten pictures), I’ll post it (and also accept suggestions from any veteran mustard makers).

Sherry Mustard

3 Tbsp yellow mustard seeds
3 Tbsp brown mustard seeds
1 shallot, minced
2 Tbsp cream sherry
4 Tbsp (1/4 cup) sherry vinegar
6 Tbsp water
1/2 tsp salt
pinch tarragon
1 tsp brown sugar

Place all ingredients in a jar, close, and shake.

Refrigerate for at least 24 hours.

Put in a blender, coffee/spice grinder, or food processor.

Blend until as smooth or grainy as you like. Add additional water (or other liquid) by the tablespoon if necessary.

I taste-tested it on some Sheese and crackers.

And stored (some of) it in the adorable mustard pot my mom gave me.

I have a couple of mustard pots (courtesy of Mom), but this is the only one that has a built-in spoon in the top. Cute!

Speaking of cute (I think you know where this is going)…

I had the flash on my camera, pointed to bounce off the kitchen ceiling to take pictures of the mustard, when I noticed the kittens being cute in the living room, which was positively flooded with early evening sunlight. So I turned the flash off and tried to get pictures of them, but instead of looking at me, or toys, or chessmen, or each other, they kept staring intently at the ceiling and walls, emitting tiny Tribble noises of excitement. Turns out the sun was reflecting off the flash and sending dots of light dancing all over the walls of the room, driving them mad. Torticia is so intent…

She and Gomez apparently went crazy with the chess set today; chessmen are all over the place.

It’s not too obvious in this smaller version, but in the full-size version of this photo, you can actually see the chessmen reflected in Gomez’s eye.

When going through this set of photos, I almost deleted this one with all the other blurry ones, but then I decided it amuses me, and anyway this is actually what Torticia looks like most of the time as she’s constantly in motion (unless she’s asleep, and when she’s asleep, she’s dead asleep).

These kittens are way too fascinated with this glass coffee table (which actually belongs to Fortinbras). One of them is always trying to play chess from the wrong side of the glass. And here Gomez is trying to get Torticia’s tail…from the wrong side of the glass.

Another farmers market purchase was yellow wax beans. I used some in a soup that also incorporated the rest of my lima beans last night (yes, it was 100 degrees here yesterday and no, I don’t believe in “soup season”), but I decided to showcase the rest in a wax bean-intensive dish, which I based off this recipe on The Crispy Cook.

Yellow Wax Beans with Tomatoes and Shallots

2 cups yellow wax beans, trimmed
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 large shallot, thinly sliced
1 or 2 healthy splashes champagne or white wine vinegar
flaked sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Boil the beans in water to cover for 5 minutes or until just past crisp-tender. Drain and run under cold water. In the same pot, heat a little oil, add the shallot and cook until soft, then add the tomatoes and cook for another minute or two. Add the beans and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Serve warm, at room temperature, or chilled.

We got home a bit late tonight and, having been at a not-overly-vegan-friendly conference all day, I was starving, so this was quickly put together and served with Gardein Crispy Tenders, a cucumber salad I made yesterday, and a few pickled radishes.

Gomez and Torticia are proving to be mighty popular with readers, so I wouldn’t dream of making a post without pictures, but when we got home they were WOUND UP, and it is very hard to take pictures of kittens that are running around like lunatics, especially with a flash that has batteries that need to be recharged (and is therefore taking a while to cycle between flashes), and especially when one is starving and trying to cook dinner at the same time. So these pictures may not be very good, but they do capture the essence of An Evening With Gomez and Torticia.

The day before I brought the kittens home, I spent close to $200 buying them supplies, which included a number of toys. They also inherited toys from Tigger and Brachtune. Then last weekend, my mom and aunt came to visit and singlehandedly more than tripled their toy supply. What I’m trying to say here is these cats are NOT hurting for cat toys. Naturally, their favorite thing in the world is pipe cleaners. This picture amuses me because it looks like the pipe cleaner is a squiggle I rather inartistically added in GIMP (which, I’m afraid, is how I do everything in GIMP), but really Torticia is tossing it into the air. (The pipe cleaner used to be wound up in a nice spiral.)

I love, love, love it when cats carry their toys around in their mouths.

Torticia managed to lose the red pipe cleaner so I gave her a new yellow one, which she again carried around in her mouth because she knows how to make me swoon with her cuteness.

Speaking of losing toys, at the exact same time the red pipe cleaner went missing, Gomez lost HIS toy under the heater. At least he seemed to; he tried to retrieve it for so long I interceded on his behalf and there was absolutely no toy there. No idea what he did with it.

Poor Gomez.

I found him a new toy but he wasn’t sure if it was a fair trade for his pawn.

You can’t tell here but his final decision was whatever Torticia was playing with.

Finally, Torticia surrendered her toy to Gomez and invaded my dinner.

Well, an unexpected but welcome benefit of having kittens is I can go to the Saturday farmer’s market. If that seems like an incongruous statement, let me explain. In the past, I’ve had a tendency to sleep through the farmer’s market on Saturdays. Which has been a bit frustrating this summer because it’s also been hard for me to get to the Wednesday market I went to last year because I’ve been going into work earlier in order to swim every day after work. The kittens, however, don’t share my love of sleeping in on weekends and feel 5 a.m. is an appropriate time to arise. I guess when you’re a kitten every day is exciting as Christmas morning is to a 6-year old. So although I obviously didn’t get up at 5 a.m., I was up early enough yesterday to go to the farmer’s market. And immediately kicked myself for not going prior weeks, because it was awesome.

One thing I bought was a pint of fresh lima beans. Which may also seem incongruous considering I hate lima beans. Or rather, I used to. I hated them as a child, although I was far from a picky eater and ate pretty much everything else. Then last year I made myself Garlicky Chipotle Lima Beans and loved them. So that proved I liked dried limas. But what about fresh? It seemed time to find out.

There is a lot of conflicting information about lima beans on the internet. According to some people, they aren’t lima beans at all but butter beans. And some people say to cook them for 10 to 15 minutes, whereas other insist on a couple of hours – yes, even for fresh. It seems fresh limas aren’t very common to begin with as nearly every recipe calls for dried or frozen. So I decided to cook them simply, as I prefer my side dishes anyway, and let their lima flavor shine through to either wow or disgust me. Fortunately for me, they did the former.

Simple Fresh Lima Beans

1 1/2 cups fresh shelled lima beans
water to cover
1 Tbsp vegan powdered bouillon
salt and pepper to taste (I used smoked Maldon)
drizzle of olive oil

Put the shelled lima beans in a small, heavy-bottomed pot and cover with water.

Bring to a boil and add the bouillon, salt, and pepper.

Boil for 15 to 30 minutes. I tasted them at 15 minutes and they were about done, but the rest of the meal wasn’t, so I let them simmer for another 15 minutes, after which they tasted pretty much the same and didn’t feel much more cooked (somewhat surprisingly).

Drizzle with olive oil and serve.

I also bought a pint of radishes at the market, being on a bit of a radish kick. I wanted to pickle some of them, but also wanted to try something new with some as well. I got the idea to braise them from this Rachel Ray recipe. I read that cooked radishes taste like mild Brussels sprouts (yum!), but I thought they tasted like artichoke hearts. What they did NOT taste like was radishes. Unfortunately, my insistence they tasted nothing like radishes did not convince Mark to eat any. I forced him to eat a tiny bite and he made one of those awful faces he makes when he feels tortured by food. Oh well, more for me. I heated up some frozen corn for his second vegetable.

Braised Radishes

1 cup radishes, trimmed and halved
1 cup vegan stock (vegetable or “chicken”)
2 tsp white wine or champagne vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt (I used smoked Maldon)
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Trim the radishes and cut in half.

Put all of the ingredients in a small saucepan.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes or until fork-tender.

Serve.

Here are both dishes, served with some fried seitan with a mustard sauce:

Meanwhile…