New Vegetarian Recipe Sunday: Over-the-top edition

[sabotabby]

Keep checking this post; if all goes well, I'll have recipes for everything posted here soon.

EDIT: New recipes from zingerella and captainmushroom now posted!
EDIT II: mycrazyhair's awesome vegan pot pie recipe now posted!

The menu

Hot and sour soup: sabotabby
Purple mushroom gnocchi: captainmushroom
Vegetarian pot pie: mycrazyhair
Upside down lemon meringue tart and bonus vanilla shortbread cookies: zingerella





This is basically the easiest soup ever. It's adapted from Cooking for Today: Simple Chinese Recipes, Whitecap Books, 1997
Serves 4.

What you need

* A bunch of mushrooms. I used enoki namokes because we had some.
* 4 oz firm tofu
* 1 cup canned bamboo shoots, rinsed and drained
* 2 1/2 cups vegetable stock
* 1/3 cup frozen peas
* 1 tbsp dark soy sauce; I used mushroom soy sauce
* 2 tbsp rice vinegar
* 2 tbsp cornstarch
* salt and pepper
* sesame oil
* 1 tbsp Hot and Dry Mother Sauce. Okay, what is that? It's this Szechuan chili and bean sauce that is so good that you can't even translate it into English. If you happen to be in a Chinese grocery store, look for the jar with the red label and a picture of a pretty but stern looking woman on it. I assume that's someone's hot and dry mother. If you can't find it, use whatever chilis you can find to put the hot in the hot and sour soup.

What you do

Cut the mushrooms, tofu, and bamboo shoots into long, thin strips. My bamboo shoots were pre-sliced, which is awesome.

Bring the stock to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the mushrooms, tofu, bamboo shoots and peas. Simmer for 2 minutes.

Mix together the soy sauce, vinegar, and cornstarch. Stir into the soup. Bring to a boil and season with salt and plenty of pepper. Simmer for 2 minutes. If it's too thick, add more water or soy sauce.

Drop in a shot of sesame oil and the Hot and Dry Mother Sauce. And you're done! The only way this recipe could be more easy would be if it were instant noodles.

Everyone else was more ambitious.

zingerella bought purple potatoes and Captain Mushroom had blue mushrooms, so he got it in his head to make motherfucking gnocchi from scratch. Here's how it went down:

For the gnocci, Captain Mushroom used a recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. We were fortunate that mycrazyhair was over, because she has an Italian grandmother, and knows the Way of Gnocci.

For the gnocci, you take a pound of potatoes (Madison suggests using russet potatoes; if you don't have purple potatoes, I suppose russet potatoes would be as good as any), and you cook them (we bought four more potatoes, so we had a total of eight). Captain Mushroom did them in the microwave; we were supposed to bake them, but didn't start early enough.

Once they're cooked, peel the hot potatoes. If you don't have small children in the kitchen, it's okay if you swear a bit while you're burning your fingertips peeling hot potatoes. Swearing was invented for activities like this.

Rice your peeled potatoes. If you don't have a ricer, you can push the cooked potatoes through a colander. With purple potatoes, the result looks oddly reminiscent of something you might have done with Play-Doh when you were much smaller.

It looked like brains at one point.


mycrazyhair has an Italian grandmother so she knows how to do this.

Let the riced potato cool for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with 1 1/4 cups flour and some salt. Gently work the mass with your hands until you have a smooth, soft dough. Don't overwork it. At this stage, Captain Mushroom found that he needed a bit more water—that far from being sticky and needing more flour, as the recipe suggested he might, the dough was a bit dry and crumbly. So he added a couple of teaspoons of water, which helped things stick together nicely.

Put a large pot of water to boil.

Roll about a quarter of the dough into a long rope. It'll tend to crumble, and be a bit delicate—do not freak out, though if mycrazyhair is around, now would be a good time to look a little concerned, so that she will come and show you the next step. If you don't have mycrazyhair handy, cut the ropes of dough diagonally into pieces about 3/4 inch long. Roll them against the times of a fork, and set each on a floured baking sheet.

At this stage, even if you don't have someone versed in the Ways of Gnocci handy, you may want to acquire a third hand, or a second pair of hands, attached to a willing assistant, because things will go much faster if someone can keep shaping gnocci, and someone else can cook them.

When your water is boiling, add a small number of gnocci to it (you don't want to add them all at once, lest they turn to splooge in the water, which, I'm informed can happen rather more often than anyone would prefer). Stand by with a slotted spoon, because you want to fish them out of the water as each rises to the top, and dump them into a handy bowl. When you've fished each batch of 10 or 15 gnocci out, add the next 10 or 15.

At some point in this flurry of activity, you can start the sauce:

Mushroom-Sage Sauce

• some delicious gourmet mushrooms. Captain Mushroom used blue oysters, yellow oysters, and, I think, cinnamons.

• some butter—rather more than I generally use, so let's say about 4 tablespoons

• juice of half a lemon

• garlic—about 2 cloves? (I was occupied with dessert, and not paying quite enough attention at this stage)

• a cup or so of white wine (Sauvignon Blanc, in this instance)

• several leaves of sage


Melt the butter in a large frying pan. Add the garlic, sliced mushrooms, and sage, and sauté everything. Add the lemon juice and wine.

Toss the cooked gnocci with this and some grated Parmesan cheese.

Pre-boiling.


The final result. Which was purple and yummy.


Pot pie! Which had potatoes, carrots, and fake mutton. Fake mutton is currently one of my favourite things; I just bought a big package of it that I can't wait to use.

Here is mycrazyhair's recipe:

Veggie Pot Pie

1 large onion, chopped coarsely
3 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
2 cups white mushrooms, sliced thick
3 large carrots, chopped approx 1/2 inch thick, on the diagonal. I could have used more.
2 cups potatoes, chopped into cubes about the same size as the carrots
3 cups water + 1/4 cup water
3 Tbsp corn starch
1 to 2 tsp thyme (maybe more - I didn't measure)
salt, pepper to taste
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 cups fake meat (approximately. I used the fake mutton from King's Cafe in Kensington)

Biscuit crust
1 cup all-purpose whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground thyme
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons Earth Balance margarine
1/3 cup soy milk

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil on low-ish heat until the onion turns translucent. Add mushrooms and cook about five minutes. Add carrots, potatoes, 3 cups water, soy sauce, thyme, salt and pepper. Simmer until veggies are slightly undercooked (about 12 minutes). While this is simmering, saute the fake meat in a bit of oil, and make the crust, below. Then add the meat to the stew. In a separate bowl, whisk 1/4 cup water and the corn starch. Add to gently simmering veggies, and cook another 3-5 minutes, until the sauce thickens. Remove from heat and transfer to an oven-safe casserole dish.

(If you have left-over stew that doesn't fit in the casserole, this is not tragic. Call it stew and eat it for lunch.)

Crust
To prepare crust, combine flour, baking powder, thyme and salt in a large bowl. Cut in margarine until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in soy milk. Form a ball with the dough. Add a bit more flour if dough is too sticky. Roll on a floured surface to fit top of casserole. Place dough over mixture. Prick several times with a fork.

Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, until crust is golden brown. Let cool 5 minutes before eating.

And then there was this.


NOM NOM NOM

Here's zingerella on how she did it:

I adapted this from the recipe for "Lemon and Fresh Blueberry Tart" in Anne Lindsay's Smart Cooking (MacMillan of Canada, 1986).

Merengue Crust
• 2 egg whites (save the yolks; you'll need them for the custard)
• Pinch cream of tarter
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 tsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• dash cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 300ºF. Line an 8- or 9-inch pie plate with foil, and butter the foil. Shake some flour over the butter, and discard whatever doesn't stick. Set this aside.

In a large glass or metal bowl (if you're so fortunate as to have a copper bowl, you likely know what to do with it), beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Beat in the sugar, one tablespoon at a time, until stiff, glossy peaks form, then beat in the vanilla, cornstarch, and cinnamon. You really want stiff, glossy peaks, so don't stop beating until you get them.

Spread the merengue on the foil-lined pie plate, covering the bottom and the sides, and bake at 300ºF for 90 minutes or until firm and dry (if, after 90 minutes, the merengue is not firm and dry, return it to the still-hot oven, turn the heat off, and leave it in there to dry out; you don't so much bake merengue as dry it out, anyway.) When the middle is firm and dry, remove it from the heat, remove the foil, and replace the merengue in the pie plate. Set this aside while you deal with the custard.

Lemon Custard
This had some truly scary mucusoid moments. Do not fear the gluey stages—have courage, a whisk, and strong wrists, and all will be well. It really helps to have your ingredients pre-measured and right to hand, especially if, like me, you have custard issues.

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 5 tbsp cornstarch (you may want to sift this)
• 1 1/2 cups hot water
• 2 egg yolks (see, you knew you'd need 'em)
• grated rind, and squeezed juice from one large lemon
• grated rind of 1/2 orange (or one tangerine, 'cause that's what I had)

In a non-aluminum heavy-bottomed saucepan, mix sugar and cornstarch. Stir in water, and bring the resulting gelatinous glorp to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Reduce heat, and boil gently for three minutes (in my case, two Tanglefoot songs).

In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks lightly. Whisk a small quantity of the gelatinous stuff from the pot into the yolks, then a bit more, then slowly pour the yolks into the saucepan, stirring constantly (it helps if you can get someone to stir while you use a spatula to assist the yolks out of the bowl). Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes (one and a half songs), then remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice, lemon rind, and orange rind. Let this cool slightly, then pour it into the prepared merengue shell. I let it cool a bit too much, and had to spread it a bit.

For the berry topping, I departed entirely from Anne Lindsay's recipe, which would probably have resulted in a more attractive dish. For one thing, I'm not entirely fond of blueberries; for another, I had some strawberries that needed using up and some mixed berries in the freezer; for a third, I was just plain wanting to do something more familiar.

Here's what Lindsay suggests:

Blueberry Topping

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tsp cornstarch [more cornstarch!]
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
• 2 cups fresh blueberries [I'm betting frozen would work okay]

In heavy saucepan, combine sugar and cornstarch. Stir in water and lemon juice. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until mixture thickens, comes to a boil, and becomes clear. Remove from heat and add blueberries, stirring to coat well. Spoon blueberries over lemon filling. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Here's what I did:
Mixed Berry Sauce
I used the 1/4 cup granulated sugar, and about 1 cup of strawberries, hulled and sliced. I put these into a heavy-bottomed saucepan with 1/3 cup water, and added about 1 1/3 cups frozen mixed berries (strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries). In other words, I completely ignored the idea of making a glaze and using that to cover intact berries, which, as I mentioned, would probably have been prettier, but seemed too difficult. I also squeezed the juice from the tangerine whose peel I used in the custard. I let all this simmer in a lovely, red, glorpy liquid, added 1/4 teaspoon cornstarch in a belated effort to thicken it, then decided to add some brandy. I contemplated candying some slivered almonds to sprinkle on top of the mess, but decided against it.

Let the jam-stuff cool, and poured it on top of the pie. I didn't refrigerate it, because there's no space in our fridge.


The boys subverted the patriarchy by doing the dishes.

Everyone's recipes worked splendidly. GREAT SUCCESS.