'ELF DAYS A WEEK'

You know, crafting blog titles from The Beatles songs is not as easy as one would think. We here in the Kinky Elfery Kitchen feel confident that our readers make that transition without too much difficulty. It’s been a busy week and we managed to crank up the new convection oven to bake 13 dozen cookies in about an hour. WHAT FUN!!

****************************

Our FatFree Vegan Kitchen recipe for this week (gosh! That seems like a year ago!) was the Mushroom and Tempeh Gumbo.

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2013/11/mushroom-and-tempeh-gumbo.html 

If you recall, last week Your Elf was whining about her ability to make a decent dry roux that was dark and tasty. Well, if you haven’t had a chance to visit The Elf’s Facebook page, we’ll walk you through the preparation and you can see for yourowns-elf.

Ever since Skye Michael Conroy (aka The Gentle Chef) instructed folks to be sure to follow the practice of ‘mis en place’ (that means getting all your ingredients together, prepped and ready to go), The Elf has done her dead level best to get her ‘mis en place’ before plunging headlong into cookin’. How many times have we gotten about halfway through a recipe before discovering that we do NOT have all of the ingredients in the Elfin Pantry. Actually the first thing we did was to cube our tempeh and make the marinade for it. The marinade was a combination of the Seasoning Mix and some soy sauce (we used Bragg’s Liquid Aminos).

 And to show you just how The Elf was a bit compulsive about this, we got a RULER and measured the tempeh so our cubes would be reasonably equal. Probably won’t do that again. Anyway, here’s the tempeh all equally cubed and soaking up the goodness of the marinade.

Then we got our ingredients together and chopped, sliced or whatever they needed to have done to them, wrapped them up and set them aside. Elfin truth be told, we wanted to make damn sure that we gave ours-elfs plenty of time to made the roux JUST IN CASE we had to make it MORE THAN ONCE or TENCE.

After what seemed like an ETERNITY of standin’ and stirrin’ the flour, it slowly began to gain some color. That’s where we usually get scared and bail on the standin’ and stirrin’, winding up with a roux that is the color of taffy rather than the deep rich brown that is so much a signature of gumbo (along with the okra, of course). So we sucked it up and kept on until we got the color Susan suggested. Once again, her showing a picture of the color was extremely helpful. The next two pictures show the actual flour after it was removed from the Dutch Oven and the lovely dark color of the roux once it was blended with stock.

 

 We actually used a dry base from The Gentle Chef’s newest book titled Seitan and Beyond. 

http://thegentlechef.com/seitanandbeyondcookbook.php 

It’s called Instant Chikun Bouillon Powder; we keep a good supply of it on hand and use it in place of vegetable stock. It’s a quick, tasty and easy fix to trying to keep liquid stocks on hand.

We sautéed our chopped veggies and then added the mushrooms as the cooking was now a full blown elf-fort to the finish. After the veggies got the right consistency, we added the roux (SO EXCITED!!) and let that cook for a while. Then the final ‘piece d’resistance of course is adding the okra.

Then it was just a matter of polishing off our pre-dinner cocktail, adding just a touch of file and dishing it up. It was most delicious and we encourage anyone who’s a gumbo lover to give this a try. Just because you eat plant based doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a good gumbo.

The recipe we have chosen for this week is one we’ve had our eye on for a while and have ALMOST done several times—Golden Potato and Tempeh Casserole.

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2008/07/golden-potato-and-tempeh-casserole.html

And don’t forget that Susan Voison’s site, FatFree Vegan Blog is just a terrific place to get great recipes that she’s developed and/or has tried. AND, the best part is that there is little to NO use of added fats.

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/

******************************

We made a really nice little plant based sausage this week as we continue to explore the recipes from Miyoko Schinner’s book, The HomeMade Vegan Pantry.

http://miyokoskitchen.com/miyoko/ 

Smoked Apple and Beer Unsausages just sounded very interesting, so we hopped on it one afternoon before realizing that it took a bit more time than we actually had. But, Big Solid’s patience held out and we eventually got to our real supper (these ‘unsausages’ needed to rest in the fridge for a while before eating to help them firm up). Anyway, we will make them again soon and take more pictures. We did take a few so here goes. The dough is rolled into sausage sized links, wrapped in foil and steamed.

After spending the night chillaxin’ in the outside fridge, they are ready to be unrolled and cooked however you want.

We sautéed one to savor with some of our favorite Pale Ale (Hi-Wire out of Asheville NC) and coarse, tasty mustard (Lusty Monk). We are not big beer drinkers but sometimes, you just enjoy a good craft beer.

By the way, that beer glass that has The Elf’s initials engraved on it is called The Beerhopper. It’s the patented invention of my baby brother, Jud. As you can see, it IS in the shape of a hops. Quite clever, we think.

http://www.kkllc.com/main.htm

******************************

And that’s about it for this really chilly Mississippi January day. We’ve got some good stuffs coming up over the next few weeks that we’re TOTALLY excited about.  Should be happening for the January 24^th blog!! Til next week, y’all breathe deep, eat plants, laugh a lot, love life and DO EPIC!!

The Elf

‘ELF-VOLUTION’

Right off the bat!! HAPPIEST 2016 FROM THE KINKY ELFERY KITCHEN and BIG Solid! 

This is the year The Elf turns SEVENTY, so we plan on making it a year-long celebration for makin’ it to 70 in the first place, bein’ relatively healthy for an old fartette, and NEVER DREAMIN’ this age would ever be real! So, with that in mind, we want to make sure that we do our best to bring good vegan recipes to you, to share the fun and health of being plant-based and to DO EPIC stuffs.

******************************

Our FatFree Vegan Kitchen recipe for bringing in the New Year was a delightful version of one of our favorite snacky foods…hummus. http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2012/09/black-eyed-pea-hummus.html 

It seems The Elf picked up a bag of black-eyed peas every time she went to the grocery over the past few weeks, so it came as no surprise that we had an abundance of peas to prepare. This hummus is very tasty and we have most certainly enjoyed it. It’s easy to prepare and whips up in no time. In Susan’s instructions for the recipe, she gives the option of including (or not) pecans to be ground into the hummus. Since Big Solid and The Elf watch our fat intake, we opted to not include the pecans. Nevertheless, it was a lovely dip and we have enjoyed it.

 We DID, as usual, include a significant helping of cayenne.

Our FFVK recipe for this week will be the Mushroom and Tempeh Gumbo.

 http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2013/11/mushroom-and-tempeh-gumbo.html

The challenge here will be making the roux WITHOUT oil!! So, keep your fingers crossed that we can pull this one off with a minimal amount of burned flour and expletives. One of the things that Susan did with the instructions/guidance for this recipe that is MUCH APPRECIATED by The Elf is a picture of the flour after its been ‘toasted’. It’s a thoughtful thing to do when some of us always wonder what the color should be. Suggestions like that are helpful…such as giving the reader an idea of just what a MEDIUM onion should be or saying that a sauce should be thick.

******************************

For our New Year’s dinner, we prepared the usual - cabbage, black-eyed peas and a new recipe that we just have to RAVE about – Unpork. The Elf got this REALLY COOL cookbook from The Dees (you know, the pajama Christmas folks) called The Homemade Vegan Pantry (the Art of Making Your Own Staples) by Miyoko Schinner

While browsing through, we spied this recipe for Unpork that is a plant-based version of pork that can be used as pulled pork or other dishes that call for a ‘kinda’ ground pork texture. And, just as the author indicates, the texture derives from the method of mixing the ingredients, primarily the liquids with the vital wheat gluten (obviously NOT a gluten free dish). To be completely honest, The Elf wasn’t sure it would work but thought it worth a try. Were we every HAPPY that we gave it a go. Here’s what the Unpork looked like before it was cooked…and it was actually cooked twice. Once the VWG (Vital Wheat Gluten) is mixed and mingled with the liquid, it gradually turns into this.

Then, we browned it in a deep skillet (we used very little oil)

 Once it browned nicely, we added enough water to cover the unpork and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. After the Unpork was drained and we were ready to finalize our dinner, we returned it to the skillet and browned it a bit more.

 We actually saved the liquid to soak and cook our black-eyed peas

and even had enough left to flavor the cabbage when we sautéed it.

  AND…it was just as good, if not better the next day for leftovers.

 Here is the link to Miyoko Schinner’s site and she also has a Facebook page—we highly recommend a looksee. 

http://miyokoskitchen.com/miyoko/

******************************

Big Solid and The Elf decided several years back that we would buy something for US as Christmas gifts and this year it was NEW OVENS!! The Elf has been pretty desirous of new bakin’ equipment ever since the ‘old’ ovens decided to go all wonky on maintaining the temperature—such as, when we would pre-heat to 350⁰, the ‘ready’ beeps would sound and the internal temperature would be 300⁰. SOO!! Here you go!! Presented by ELF-RED, the newest addition to the Kinky Elfery Kitchen.

We have a couple of batches of ‘EPIC’ cookie dough waiting to give this a workout. The top oven is convection and can cook SIX racks of cookies!! Now, the trick will be to be able to time the baking so as not to BURN THEM ALL UP!! The oven has an Automatic setting that will reduce the baking temperature by 25⁰ so all The Elf has to worry about is that pesky timing part.

****************************

And No New Year is complete without Mail Order Annie’s ringing it in herownself. This year, she chose an elegant green sequined gown and some ‘pink-ish hued’ hair along with her favorite Almond Champagne. 

So, as we start this YOTS (Year Of Turnin’ Seventy) we once again thank you for your support. We’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email us at jswearen@gmail.com or message us on our Facebook page. And as always, remember to laugh, love, stay (or become) plant-based and read The Elf in the Kitchen's stuffs. OH and DO EPIC!