Food porn!

Since we're leaving for New England in a couple days, we realized we have a ton of fresh food we need to deal with. So we began a busy weekend of cooking with breakfast:

vegan pancakes with pink lady apples

boiling potatoes (yeah, I know: boring, right?)

but add some baked tofu,

and SHAZAM! it turns into something more exciting

pretty exciting: Thai tofu red curry with yellow, orange, and red peppers, onions, and zucchini

spicy Thai peanut noodles with tofu
(seeing a theme? it was actually accidental)

prepping brussels sprouts for Fresh Brussels Sprout Salad
from Earth Eats, a podcast I love.

adding green onions to the brussels sprouts

Unfortunately, the brussels sprout salad was kinda disappointing.
In fairness, I didn't have the toasted sunflower seeds or the red pepper flakes.
But I did have tofu and a hot skillet, which did wonders.

Another disappointment: Thai peanut cakes from an otherwise normally fantastic cookbook, The Gate Easy vegetarian Cooking , from The Gate vegetarian restaurant in London.

I know what you're thinking: what kinda lameass food porn blogging cooks are we that we need the "easy" version, rather than the full version ? Well, we also have the full version, and it has some amazing recipes, but the dishes can take hours, and the ingredient lists are often super complex and obscure. So many recipes might be feasible if you live in San Francisco or NYC and have hours to shop, but you'll have to trust me: it's much more difficult in Atlanta.

Why a disappointment? Well, they just didn't hold together in frying. At all. And since they're vegan, we couldn't cheat with a binder like egg. I mixed in a bunch of flour, which made them hold together better, but also took away the fluffy texture and made them taste a little more mild. I still have some of the mix, so I might try to work on them more tonight.

Three people, one dinner party: six wine glasses, five pint glasses, one small wine glass (the chef's share!), two digestif glasses.
Among other delicious libations, we enjoyed a 1.5 liter magnum of Anchor's Our Special Ale 2009 , their always delicious xmas ale. Yum.

And here's just a hint of what a three dish dinner party does to your kitchen. (It was well worth it.)

Dinner party!

Briefly alluded to in the last post: a dinner party for seven people, with six courses, and 2.5 hours to cook = eek! I can only blame myself. What J and I started discussing as having soup and bread for three out of town friends, I turned in to a monster while reading cookbooks and shopping.

The menu:

• vegetarian chili: black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, tomatoes, sauteed onions, garlic, sauteed zucchini, red wine (all organic except the wine!)
  
• pumpkin soup pureed
  
• spicy Thai peanut noodles: whole wheat spaghetti noodles, peanut butter, carrots, scallions, pan-seared tofu (all organic)
  
• sourdough bread, with dipping options: apple balsamic vinegar, fig balsamic, cherry balsamic, extra virgin olive oil, chili pepper oil
  
• stuffed baby bella mushrooms, with garlic, sauteed in a balsamic reduction and then baked
  
• spinach salad roasted red and yellow peppers, grapefruit, tomatoes, avocado (all organic)
  
• wine: three reds, a white, and a rose
  
• beer: Sweetwater IPA
  

All in all, despite my frantic cooking, it was a success. I didn't have time or mental energy to take pictures of everything, but here are a few images:

Onions. (Duh.)



Onions and carrots. (Duh.)




Zucchini, post-slicing, for the chili.




Onions, carrots, and zucchini being sauteed for the chili.




Vegetarian chili, early in the process.




Mushrooms after being wiped clean.




Mushrooms being prepped. (Stems in the bowl form a lot of the stuffing material.)




The mushroom stem and garlic mix for the stuffed mushrooms.




Post glazing, pre-stuffing, pre-baking baby bellas.




Sauteed tofu, before being pitched into the spicy Thai peanut noodles.




The balsamic assortment and some freshly polished wine glasses.




The stove isn't tilted toward the back, no matter how it looks.

Food!

Since I really don't don't have the time to do a substantive blog post, here's some recent food porn instead:

From spinach and basil:POOF! to pesto:

(Yes, it is more or less that easy. I basically chop up a few cloves of garlic and some pine nuts in the food processor, add a couple cups of spinach leaves and fresh basil, then blend with olive oil to a consistency I like.)



Sauteed tofu with fresh oregano and cilantro, and carmelizing onions, that POOF! turn into a sandwich:


Sauteed tofu, fresh tomatoes from my balcony gardening, fresh pesto (basil from the balcony garden), caramelized onions, sourdough bread.

Speaking of caramelized onions, here's a really really disgusting looking recipe from wikihow. Newsflash: caramelizing the onions bring out PLENTY of sweetness, you don't need to add sugar. A tablespoon of sugar per onion"?!?! YUCK. (Okay, okay: as many of you know, I don't like most sweet foods. But seriously? That's gross.) Every onion I've ever caramelized has been plenty sweet when I'm done.


This is a teaser from the dinner party we threw last night, with a longer post to follow. I started cooking at 4pm for a 6:30pm dinner party, with six courses, for seven people. (Handy Tip: this is inadvisable.) Fortunately, the only thing I really messed up was burning the shit out of some garlic in a skillet, minutes before the first guests started arriving.