Waffle

Gorgeous mornings call for waffles.

Waffles
Serves 3 - 4, depending on how big your waffle iron is. DO NOT MAKE THIS WITHOUT THE RESTING TIME.

SIFT TOGETHER
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup rice flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 TB sugar

WHISK
1 cup almond milk + 1 TB white vinegar
2 TB chia seeds, or ground flax seed
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup vegetable oil

SAVE FOR LATER
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Sift together the all purpose flour, rice flour, salt, and sugar. Add more sugar if you like a sweeter waffle.

In a bowl, combine almond milk, vinegar, and chia seeds. Whisk well, until the liquid gets frothy. You can use an electric beater, but it'll probably make a mess if you're not careful. Add the oil, and whisk it through.

While whisking constantly, add the dry ingredients to the wet. VERY IMPORTANT: LET SIT FOR 30 MINUTES AT LEAST. The rice flour needs time to hydrate. The chia seeds need time to swell up and stuff. If you're using flax seeds, they need time to hang out too. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.

Yes, you can combine all the things, and let it set overnight if you want. If you don't have almond milk, apple juice will do the job. Just cut back on the sugar.

When the batter has finished resting, measure out and sift the baking powder and baking soda over a piece of paper. Sprinkle it evenly onto the surface of the batter. Fold through with a spatula. Spray your waffle iron with oil, or brush it on, or do whatever you do to get the fat onto the waffle iron. Ladle on the batter into your waffle iron.

Mine took like 4 minutes or so. 

Chickpea flour pancakes

This morning was a little rushed, so I did a batch of mini Besan Puda. The recipe from Manjula's Kitchen is what I used as inspiration. I added lots of garlic (chickpeas love garlic), grated potato, and grated carrot. I used the smallest holes on the grater so that the veggies cook quickly.

Chakli

http://youtu.be/H4ZFzeCvjw0 

Watch that video on Youtube, where the ladies explain how to make slightly healthier Chakli. If you've ever eaten this highly addicting Indian snack, you know that it can frequently call for obscene amounts of fat. 


Their version involves like a TB of fat to give it a bit of crunch, and then the rest of it is made up with daal! I didn't have moong daal, so I used some red lentils I had lying around. I'm fairly certain that the recipe will work quite well with even split yellow peas or something. The bottom line is that murukku and things like that don't require very expensive ingredients or a special trip to the Indian store. I was able to pick up rice flour from the Chinese store for around $1 for a 1-lb bag. I made a small~ish batch for a party that Steve was going to. It came to about 1/2 cup of uncooked red lentils that I pressure cooked, along with 2 cups of rice flour. The spices I had at home already. The only mandatory ones are the salt, asafoetida, and cumin. The rest are just bonus.


I didn't want the dough to fall out of the press in lumps, so I ground the spices in my mortar and pestle, so as to get them more incorporated into the dough. The ladies don't do this, so I guess that step is optional. Whenever my brother makes them, however, he grinds his, so I do the same. 


Here's to hoping that your snacks come out crunchy and tasty! 

Chickpeas are awesome in general.

I was in the vegan chat room today, and got to chatting with someone from Australia, who was just starting out her exploration of the humble, yes awesome, chickpea. She's been roasting them in the oven, and spending upwards of half an hour on the process, as the oven takes its own sweet time in making the roasty magic happen. I gave her a detailed explanation on how to roast chickpeas on the stove. She seemed shocked that it only takes a few minutes!

You can hear the results of the conversation here, on the new podcast episode. It was basically me catching up with my listeners, by reading their emails, and then plunging in head-first into chickpea heaven.

You start with a screaming hot skillet, some oil, some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and sesame seeds. I get into more detail about the conditions of the whole thing in the podcast episode, and in the cook book, so either way, read up or listen up to the whole popping spices deal before attempting this. If you don't have the book, listen to the pocast which is free. Either way, you'll get the idea.

After the seeds are popped, throw in the well-drained chickpeas WITH NO AROMATICS. Aromatics kill caramelisation of your ingredients. They exude water, and increase the cooking time. This is supposed to be a quick five minute thing. Besides, adding aromatics adds to your prep time. Bother with that stuff when you don't care about time!

Then, you roast the chickpeas on high heat for about five minutes. If you want them more brown, keep going. Do not fear oil! Stove top roasting is a bit more oil intensive than oven roasting. If you see the skillet drying out, add a bit of extra oil, until the chickpeas are slightly shiny from the oil, and keep roasting. You won't get that beautiful brown unless you use a bit of oil. If you are watching your calories, read on, and I'll explain how to do them in the oven.

After the five minutes (or however long you decided to roast them) is up, turn off the heat, and let the chickpeas rest for a minute, while you contemplate how to eat them. They're excellent in a pita pocket, with some alfalfa sprouts, cilantro, and tomato. They're good over hot steamy rice. They're quite nice all by themselves, as a snack. You can use them as croutons over a salad. You can add a cup or two of water, and make it a soup (to thicken up the soup, either mash with a potato masher or grind in a blender about 1/2 of the chickpeas). I discuss other possibilities in the podcast.

If you are watching your calories, and want to reduce the amount of fat, use the following ratio for 1 pound of cooked chickpeas:

1 teaspoon oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
Salt, to taste

Mix the oil, sesame seeds, and turmeric powder into a spice paste. Toss the spice paste with the well-drained chickpeas. Arrange them onto a baking sheet, so that they have a fair bit of space between them. For me, a pound of chickpeas takes two baking sheets. Your sheets may be bigger or smaller. The idea is that you don't want to crowd your baking sheet, or else the chickpeas will not roast on all sides.

Sprinkle generously with salt, to taste. Let them roast in the oven for about 20 minutes (at 180ºC or 350ºF), and check and see if they're brown enough for your liking. Feel free to shake the pans a bit to turn the chickpeas over. Also, feel free to rotate your pans. Some ovens have "hot spots", and you might do well to move the baking sheets around your oven, so that they can all get cooked evenly.

If they are brown enough to your liking at 20 minutes, remove them. If not, keep roasting them until they're at the brownness and crispness of your liking. The longer you let them go, the more they dry out, and the more brown they get.

If you find that they are taking too long to roast, chances are that you're crowding the pan, and having them steam first, then roast. Make sure there's plenty of breathing space for the chickpeas in the pans.

Now go out and roast some chickpeas!

By the by, this whole entry and discussion with my friend on the chat room was spawned because of the mid week feast I made for Puppy. I've got the picture below and above this entry.

NYC, here we came.

We finally made it into the City on Saturday at 4:20 PM. The flight was delayed, and I was, understandably, swearing proficiently and colourfully under and over my breath. But, we made it in, and I took some pictures of our new home.

The picture below is how you see our bedroom as soon as you enter it. The fireplace doesn't connect to anything.


This is our palatial kitchen. It's freaking HUGE. It's also really pretty. It's granite floors, and marble counters. That's a hardwood table, and the appliances and utensils are all top of the line. I love my land lady.


To christen our kitchen with my mark, I created a few new dishes, and cooked. This one here is whole potatoes, tossed with some oil, and then combined with diced tomatoes, and sliced onions. I baked it at 350º until the potatoes were tender. They got crispy on the outside, and nobody needed margarine, because the oil and tomatoes and onions provided lots of flavour.


This is a dish of plantains, with the typical spices that I used to make Indian roasted potatoes, but I added crushed peanuts at the last five minutes of cooking. Very yummy, and the skins got all crispy, so the two textures of the plantains were cleanly balanced.

While I was waiting for the plantains and potatoes to cook in the oven, I dashed off and snagged a picture of Steve on the bed, checking his email and my blog.

On the way out, I snagged a quick picture of all of our luggage. To imagine that we managed to make the move with only five pieces of luggage in total is pretty darned good, I think. No need to tell you that the red suitcases are mine, as well my red purse. I hope you're all taking notes, so that you know what colour of stuff to get me!

I found some tinned beans, so I made a really quick bean soup with adobo seasoning.

I used the same adobo seasoning to give the rice a yellow tint, but then I thought it looked too boring. I quickly deep fried some onions to get them dark brown. It was still lacking. So, I sliced up a couple of carrots in thin slices, and deep fried them as well. I think it came out rather pretty. The sweetness of the carrots and onions offset the dark, earthy adobo seasonings in the rice. Quite yummy.

My landlady seems to enjoy my cooking quite a lot, and has been eating vegan since I arrived. It is her house, so I'm not going to make a fuss if she has animal products, but I think it's very sweet of her to be so accommodating. Dinner that first night gave us leftovers for a while. I froze half of the soup. In fact, I froze a lot of the leftovers, so that we don't get bored.

Now I need to figure out what to make for tomorrow!

Lazy lazy Friday

It's been one of those Fridays where I was busy at work, but not to the point of exhaustion, like some days. I figured out how to load up video to a PC computer from a camcorder, by switching the camcorder to PLAY mode, and hitting the play button, while setting the video capture thing from Windoze Movie Maker. It was pretty cool, if a bit slow. I'm guessing firewire would have been faster? I'm not sure. Either way, it was pretty neat to know that it's possible, and relatively easy to do! Mind, I'm not going to start cheating on my mac, so no worries there. She's the first lady of my heart anyway.

Steve, on the other hand, didn't have as easy a time as I did. He was there at work from 8:30 in the morning till close to 9:00 at night! On top of that, because he was in the middle of a project, he never did go to lunch. I figured that by the time he got home, he'd be exhausted, so we nixed the plans to go to see that new Pixar movie. Instead, we stayed in, and ate some bean sprouts (spiced with mustard, cumin, chili, lemon, salt, and pepper) and rice, and some fresh popcorn (popcorn, olive oil, salt). I find that when you pop the kernels in olive oil, they have a very rich and buttery taste. I love it! Also, before sprinkling on the salt, I ground it down in a spice grinder to get it very fine, so that it adheres to the fluffy popcorn more easily. It was divine.

I am pleased that we've started to get involved in doing things more often than we used to. Saturdays and Sundays used to be "let's lie around and be lazy, and pretend like we don't actually have to get up to do anything." I'm sure it was driving Steve slowly mad, because we're funny like that. He's very introverted, but still likes to get out and do things. As extroverted as I am, I prefer to mooch around in the house. Either way, we've always found ways to amuse ourselves, whether it's sitting around the house, or going out.

The kitchen needed a mass overhaul type cleaning, so I figured that when it was done, I'd give Steve a treat. In the filter of the coffee maker, I put in 1/2 cup of ground coffee, cinnamon, cayenne, clove, nutmeg, and then topped it off with the rest of the ground coffee that I needed for a full pot. I filled the coffee maker. I then poured a twinge of vanilla extract, 1 tablespoon per cup of water of cocoa powder (unsweetened), and a few tablespoons of sugar. I turned on the coffee machine, and let the smells waft throughout the kitchen. It smells quite lovely, and is delicious straight up, with nothing added. If you've read my book, you know how I feel about "omni subs" or foods that substitute omnivorous ingredients (tofu, seitan, tempeh, soymilk), so I won't get into it here. I'll maybe cover that stuff in a later entry.

I started some beans soaking, and another set of moong dal to sprout. I think it's so cool that I can increase the amount of food I can put on the table, just by adding water to my beans, and letting them soak for a six hours, then air dry after draining them. They sprout on their own, and they're so cute! I almost (read: ALMOST) am tempted to get the stuff planted in my garden, so that I'll have plants, but I can't be bothered. I'm a bit too lazy for that to happen.

Maybe some day, eh?