KZCAKES: spicy

November 23, 2016

Chili in the Summer, Chili in the Winter...

September 10, 2013

I'd say it's that time of year again, but actually, it is several weeks earlier than that time of year. Vegan Month of Food is coming to us early this year, starting on this sweltering day during the relentless summer season we've been having. So thanks for making me turn on my oven today, everyone. I mean, it was worth it, and no one said I had to make a pizza, which demands a 500ºF oven. Anyways, Vegan Mofo was so fun last year, and I had such a great time cooking and baking for it, and reading everyone else's great entries and learning about new foods, new products, new blogs, and new people! It reminds me that there are lots of other people out there all over the world that care about what I do, and do it themselves as well. We really are a little (but growing) community that we can go to for support, for ideas, for recipes, for information, and to contribute however we can to one another. So, go us!!

I decided not to do a theme this month, because I have a lot of different kinds of recipes I'm excited to make, but I will, however, be making many pizzas. I thought of doing a pizza theme, but I just don't know if I can eat pizza every night. I might miss tacos too much. So tonight I began the pizza saga with a sweet potato mole pizza. It's a sweet potato base, sort of in place of the red sauce, and then a red mole swirl, then some roasted poblano pepper strips, then sliced green tomatoes from the farmer's market (my new apartment is across the street from the farmer's market! whoot!) then a swirl of avocado and a sprinkle of cilantro! It's colorful and beautiful and I have a lot of mole sauce left over. What on earth should I do with it? Would you like some?

I've made a lot of different mole recipes, but I didn't break one out today, I decided just to wing it with what I can remember goes in the sauce, which is a lot of things. I couldn't remember if peanut butter was an ingredient... I didn't put it in. Maybe I should have. But in the end the sauce came out amazing, spicy, creamy yet textural, with tons of flavor. It gets a lot darker as it cools. My BF came into the kitchen and was like, "Ohhh you put the sweet potato in the mole sauce" and I'm like nooo, that's just the mole sauce, and then it cooled and it was a nicer contrast of colors on the finished pizza. See?

Honestly, I'm super psyched to make more pizzas. I've told every person I know my ideas for pizzas, and my face lights up and then I start talking really loud and gesturing a lot. Also, today while skinning my poblanos, some pepper juice shot into my eye and it burned for 20 minutes. I am going to wear gloves and goggles next time I do anything with chiles but put them in my shopping cart. People think that being vegan means going pizza-free, which would be a fate worse than death, so I want to prove that vegans eat pizza. The Best kind of pizza. All fancy and stuff. No fake cheese on my pizzas. I'ma roll all naturale. Also don't call my pizza a flatbread. That sounds way less awesome.

So have fun with Mofo everyone! I can't wait for the exciting month to come.

Sweet Potato Mole Pizza:

1 pizza dough, homemade or purchased

2 sweet potatoes or yams

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 poblano peppers

2 green tomatoes, yellow or whatever is fine, sliced in thin rounds

1 avocado, sliced

chopped cilantro

1 cup red mole sauce, recipe follows

2 tablespoons cornmeal or semolina flour

Red Mole Sauce:

4 dried ancho chiles

4 dried chiles de arbol

4 cups boiling water

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 medium onion, sliced

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1/4 cup pepita seeds

1/4 cup slivered almonds

1/4 cup sunflower seeds

2 tablespoons pasilla chile powder

1 tablespoon chipotle chile powder

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cocoa powder

1/2-1 cup crumbled tortilla chips

1 cup mexican beer or vegetable stock

1 28 oz can whole peeled tomatoes

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

1/4 cup dark chocolate non dairy chips

In a dry hot cast-iron skillet, toast the dried chiles for 5 minutes, flipping every now and then.

After chiles have been toasted, place them in a bowl and cover with the boiling water. Let them soak for 20 minutes while you set the rest of the sauce going.

Add the olive oil to the cast-iron pan and sauté the onions for about 5 minutes, until the edges of the onions are browned, then add the garlic and stir. Cook together for 1-2 ore minutes, stirring every 30 seconds or so.

Add the pepitas, almonds, sunflower seeds, and tortilla chips to the pan and stir to toast the seeds and nuts. About 1 minute later, add chile and cocoa powders along with the ground cloves and cinnamon. Stir to coat the onions and seeds with the dried spices and toast for 30 seconds. Then add the beer or stock and stir to remove any dried bits from the bottom of the pan. Now add the tomatoes, salt, pepper and chocolate chips. Stir to melt the chips and mush the tomatoes a little, careful not to splatter.

Remove the chiles from the water and rip off the tough stems. Place them in a blender and carefully ladle the sauce over them into the blender. Blend until smooth, with a tiny bit of gritty-ness, as the texture if desirous in a mole sauce. Return to pan and add 1/2 cup or so of stock or water to the sauce to thin out. Keep over low heat and covered until ready to serve.

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.

Place sweet potatoes on a tray and bake for about 45 minutes or until very soft when pierced with a fork. Do this while you make the mole sauce.

Remove from oven and let cool. Once cool enough to handle, peel the skin off with your hands and drop the peeled sweet potatoes in a medium mixing bowl and mash very well. Add salt and pepper. Set aside until ready to assemble the pizza.

Preheat the broiler. Place the poblano peppers in an ungreased cast-iron skillet. Place pan under the broiler and broil for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes pull the pan out and turn peppers with tongs so that the other side can blister and blacken. But pan back under the broiler for about 3 more minutes, or until all the skin of the peppers are black and blistered. Place the peppers in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap for about 20 minutes. Alternatively, you can put them in a paper bag and roll it up tightly, so that peppers' steam loosens the blistered skin from the pepper. After 20 minutes, peel the blackened skin off the peppers and discard the seeds and stems. Slice them into thin, long strips.

Preheat the oven to 500ºF.

Roll your pizza dough into a large circle, larger than your pizza stone or tray. Rub the cornmeal on the pizza stone so that your dough never touches the stone, but only the cornmeal. You'll know after the pizza comes out of the oven if you've missed a spot :(

Place the dough over the cornmeal and roll the dough over the crust so that no dough hangs over the edge, making your crust! Now spread the mashed sweet potato over the whole pizza evenly. Spoon the mole sauce on top of the sweet potato, I like to do it in a spiral pattern. Place the tomato slices in a circle around the pizza. Add the sliced peppers, arranging them however you like.

Carefully put your pizza stone into the preheated oven. If you are using a pizza tray, just put it on the bottom of the oven, instead of using the shelf. Bake about 15 minutes, until the edges are crispy and the tomatoes are soft. Remove from oven.

Arrange avocado slices in a spiral in the center of the pizza. Sprinkle with cilantro and slice!

August 01, 2013

Lazy Pasta Miracles

April 07, 2013

The Spiciest Jambalaya with Seared Artichokes and Seitan

January 21, 2013

All You Vegans Eat Is Chili!

December 17, 2012

Shakshuka Share Time

Tonight I made a bookmarked recipe from Vegan Eats World, Eggplant Shakshuka. Now if you don't already have a favorite foreign(to you) word to say, Shakshuka is definitely your new favorite. For many years I thought my favorite foreign word was "grapadoras" but then decided it was "albondigas." Shakshuka is clearly better than both of those, so sorry spanish, but Hebrew has you by a nose on this one. Shakshuka is a Tunisian dish dating back as far as the Ottoman empire, traditionally served with poached eggs on top. But instead of eggs, Terry puts green tahini sauce, the best condiment I've ever tasted, all over the top, to compensate. It's really a big bowl of vegetables. She mentiones that she likes to serve it with pita or crusty bread, but I had neither of those tonight, and so I served it over brown rice. It rocked the house. Obviously.

I had planned to make this tonight, and picked up the necessary produce for it at the market this weekend, but after a long day at work, then a long wait in nasty traffic, I arrived home with a case of the Mondays. All I really wanted was another bowl of mac and cheeze, which I made and ate over and over again last week. I was skeptical of making too healthy a dish, afraid it wouldn't appease my irritable mood and craving for comfort food. But I decided to roll with it anyways, since my beautiful japanese eggplants were fading fast and because green tahini sauce sounded promising. The results were everything but boring, and completely packed with warming, winter-blues-curing, heat and tanginess. It's comfort food at its best, and all it is, is a bowl full of vegetables. So that means it's totally fine to smother it in tahini. You earned it, right?

I would roll with brown rice again, even though it says to mop it up with crusty bread. Truth be told, I'm not a mopper. I don't like to dip bread in stuff. Soggy bread ensues, and it's not really a good time for me. Plus, bread fills me up too fast and a food coma will surely follow. So brown rice is a great alternative to bread for the faint of starchy hearts.

I am heading home (far away from my home) to visit family and friends this weekend and shall remain there until the first week of January ends. A nice hiatus from New Jersey and from my life here. While I'm home, I will cook more from Vegan Eats World, especially for Wigilia, our Polish Xmas Eve celebration, for which I will make the spanakopita, pierogis, and a soynog cake! We will also take shots of Wisniowka, my favorite part of xmas eve. Okay, maybe it will be just my mom and I taking the shots, but whatever. My aunt cranks out some mean polish lakes that she both deglutenizes and veganizes to please both our dietary restrictions. Everyone should have a Polish aunt like my aunt. She rocks the house.

Is anyone else Polish? What are you bringing to Wigilia?

December 05, 2012

KZ Eats World

November 18, 2012

Ethiopian Night

Ethiopian has become my favorite cuisine to eat over the last year or two. It's served differently than most other cuisines serve their food, almost family style, but literally, you all share one plate. Instead of forks and knives, you use sourdough crepes to pick up the food and eat it. And damn, are those crepes good. Since the arrival of Vegan Eats World by Terry Hope Romero, I've been wanting to make Ethiopian food at home more, and since her book includes a slew of recipes from the spice blend to the crepes, I went to town. Or stayed in my kitchen. You get the idea.

The spice blend, berbere, is really fun to make, especially if you're easily amused by making spice blends. I don't normally make such blends, but it is pretty fun to make, and not difficult at all. Also, all the recipes call for a spiced oil, called nitter kibbe, which is made in a large batch ahead of time along with the spice blend. It's great and buttery and full of yellow turmeric which at any moment may strike down upon your counter and turn it neon yellow. For a while. Good thing yellow is my favorite color.

Traditionally, they make these huge (I mean really huge) crepes and serve them on a (really) huge platter with piles of stews or dishes on top of the crepe. Since, I don't have a way to produce such large and beautiful crepes, I made smaller ones and served them on individual plates. Also, crepes are kind of a bitch to make. I'm not very good at making them. I found the smaller pan I tried, the more success I had. But I still didn't have boatloads of successful crepes. I did however have some. And with those, I shoveled delicious Ethiopian food into my mouth. Purpose served.

When I get Ethiopian food at a restaurant, I always get the vegetarian sampler, because I could never imagine getting to eat only one of these dishes per visit. The more variation, the better. When you're making it at home, it results in cooking like five dinners worth of food in preparation for one dinner. So basically, it was a ton of work. But it was totally worth it, and I will totally do it again :)

I made this big spread for my friends, who seemed pleased by the authenticity of the dishes. I think it's all about the spice blend. That's what gives it that perfect restaurant-quality. From the left to right, I made ingudai tibbs, which are portabello mushrooms in berbere sauce, but'echa, which is chickpea shallot and jalapeño eggy crumbles, Seitan tibbs, which is seitan in berbere sauce, yemisir wat, a spicy berbere lentil stew, and potatoes and green beans in berbere sauce. My favs were mushrooms and the egg-like chickpea crumbles, though all were good.

For dessert, I made the Ethiopian Chocolate Flourless Torte, the last recipe in the book. It's silken tofu-based, with a little berbere spice. I made this during testing, but used cayenne for mexican chocolate cake, my fav. This worked just as well. I could taste just a hint of spice. I suppose that's how it outta be. I'm always tempted to put way too much cayenne or spice thinking I won't taste it otherwise and they turn out ungodly spicy. These tasted kind of brownie-like, which is good. Everybody like brownies, right?

Overall, I had a great time cooking, a great time eating, and a great time hanging with my friends and feeding them delicious food! I'll raise a spicy brownie to many more dinners like this one :)