Nearly Vegan

I have been sort of MIA recently. Last month I did the Integrative Medicine Elective Rotation through my home school, the University of Arizona. It was an incredibly inspiring experience and I met some amazing people. It would be difficult to sum up what I learned and how it changed me in a blog post, so you'll just have to trust me on this one.

Currently, I am doing my family medicine sub-i, so that leaves me very little time to do things outside of work. To makes things even more difficult, JC has been off doing his rural thing in Tuba City so it's been just Kuma and I to fend for ourselves at home. This means I make a big batch of a recipe and eat the same thing for the next couple of days.

During the IMER, I was introduced to nutritional yeast. I had never tried this peculiar substance before. It's a yellow powdery/flakey ingredient that has a savory/cheesy flavor. Apparently it is great for vegans or vegetarians because it is a source of protein and often fortified with vitamin B12. I picked some up in bulk from one of the local grocery stores and I wasn't completely sure what to do with it. So I dove into the vast array of vegan blogs in search of a recipe. I should note here, in no way, shape, or form am I a vegan/vegetarian. Generally, I don't eat meat on a regular basis only because vegetables are so much easier to cook. I have nothing against those who don't eat meat, as long as you still have a well-balanced, nutrient rich diet.

Caution: nutritional yeast is not the same as regular baking yeast! If you use baking yeast in this recipe, it is going to be incredibly disgusting. You've been warned.

I noticed vegan mac and cheese came up multiple times on my nutritional yeast search, so I picked a recipe that sounded easy and delicious. This recipe is really simple and doesn't call for any odd-ball ingredients--other than the nutritional yeast. Surprisingly, the dish comes out tasting pretty similar to cheese...similar is the key word, it's not not exactly like cheese. It's never going to replace a good old blue box of Kraft mac n cheese, but this is definitely way healthier. It's packed with B vitamins and the anti-inflammatory super spice turmeric. This would be great with some veggies mixed in like broccoli, and the turmeric gives it an amazingly vibrant yellow hue.

Confession: This is nearly vegan mac n cheese. You need a bit of some sort of butter substitute. The recipe recommends buttery spread (aka earth balance), but I'm not particularly fond of these spread used for anything other than spread on toast. If you need a true vegan dish, you can sub the buttery spread, but I'm a butter girl.

Vegan Mac & Cheese
from Love and Lemons

• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 c. vegan butter or regular butter
• 1/4 c. flour
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• squeeze of lemon
• 1 c. coconut milk
• 1/4 c. nutritional yeast
• 2 Tbsp dijon mustard
• 2 Tbsp tomato paste
• 2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 8-12 oz pasta
• 1-2 c. pasta water
• salt and pepper

Heat butter in a medium pot over medium heat. Add onions, a few pinches of salt, and simmer until translucent (about 5 minutes). Add flour and whisk to thicken. Add garlic and cook for a few more minutes on medium-low. 

Add a good squeeze of lemon and stir to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan. Add coconut milk, nutritional yeast, mustard, tomato paste, turmeric, paprika, and a few more pinches of salt. Let simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, cook the pasta. 

Vitamix the sauce together to make the sauce really creamy

Taste and adjust seasonings. In a large bowl stir together cooked pasta, some of the sauce, and optional veggies. Stir in pasta water as needed to thin the sauce. 

Tis the Season

It's that time of the year. The music is playing, lights are going up on houses, trees are being decorated, and the kitchen smells like delicious baked goods. Yes, it's Christmas. This should come as no surprise, but my favorite part of the holiday are the baked goods. There are so many festive treats to make and plenty of reason to package them up and share with loved ones. This weekend, I have a holiday party to go to, giving me a reason to bake some treats. Today, I tried out a recipe for walnut snowball cookies. They remind me a lot of my favorite cookies at King's Hawaiian Bakery in Torrance, CA--except theirs have macadamia nuts which is much more fitting. I found this recipe in a Food & Wine magazine and it looked so simple. A traditional shortbread recipe with walnuts, baked and rolled in powdered sugar. The results were amazing. Light, buttery cookies that have just the perfect amount of sweet with some crunch from the nuts. As the recipe suggests, you can easily change this recipe to add a different type of nut, some cardamom, or any other flavors. It's a great basic cookie. And how much more festive can you get than eating a snowball?

Walnut Snowball Cookies
from Food & Wine Magazine

• 1 1/2 cups walnuts (6 ounces)
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped (OR 1 tsp vanilla extract)
• 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups all-purpose flour

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line 2 large cookie sheets with parchment paper. Spread the walnuts on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool, then coarsely chop. Reduce the oven temperature to 325°.
2. In a standing mixer fitted with the paddle, beat the butter with the vanilla bean seeds at high speed until pale, about 2 minutes. Add 1 cup of the confectioners’ sugar and beat at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes, scraping down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula halfway through. At low speed, mix in the salt, then gradually add the flour and walnuts and beat just until the cookie dough comes together, scraping down the side of the bowl halfway through.
3. Roll level tablespoons of the dough into balls and arrange them on the prepared cookie sheets. Bake the cookies in the upper and lower thirds of the oven for about 17 minutes, until they are lightly browned on the bottom; switch the sheets from top to bottom and front to back halfway through baking. Let the cookies firm up on the sheets, about 5 minutes, then transfer them to a rack to cool slightly.
4. Put the remaining 1 cup of confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl. Roll the warm cookies in the sugar to coat and return to the rack to cool completely. Roll again in the sugar.

MAKE AHEAD The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

These are Corn Cookies

I have kind of been on a Momofuku Milk Bar high recently. After discovering The Mind of a Chef, there has been a lot of influence from David Chang in our cooking. JC attempted to make his top ramen gnocchi, and today I made Milk Bar's Christina Tosi's Corn Cookies. What are corn cookies you ask? Basically, a cookie with lots of corn that tastes absolutely wonderful. Lots of butter, sugar, and corn (does that count as a vegetable serving?). It reminds me a lot of Captain Crunch, but better. The hardest part of this recipe is finding freeze dried corn. I went to Whole Foods and called Sprouts with no luck. After doing some internet searching, I found that local grocer Basha's carries the Just Corn product, so I stopped by and stocked up. Even if you don't use all of the corn for baking, it makes a great snack and you can use it for plenty of other things like soups, stews, anywhere you would normally use corn. For the cookies, use the Just Corn product and zap it in your food processor to get a powder. The recipe also called for corn flour. I didn't know exactly what that was, so I just substituted finely ground corn meal and it worked great.

Tosi also says you can squish a few cookies into a pie crust and fill it with strawberry ice cream. I thought it would be easier to scoop out some strawberry ice cream and sandwich it between two cookies. Yum.

**You can watch Tosi make the cookies in this episode of The Mind of a Chef: Sweet Spot (it expires on 12/21/12)

Corn Cookies

by Christina Tosi from Momofuku Milk Bar

Makes 13 to 15 cookies

225 g butter (2 sticks), at room temperature 

300 g (1 1/2 cups) sugar 

1 egg
225 g (1 1/3 cups) flour 

45 g (1/4 cup) corn flour 

65 g (2/3 cup) freeze-dried corn powder 

3 g (3/4 teaspoon) baking powder 

1.5 g (1/4 teaspoon) baking soda 

6 g (1 1/2 teaspoons) kosher salt 

1. Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the egg, and beat for 7 to 8 minutes.

2. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour, corn flour, corn powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix just until the dough comes together, no longer than 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

3. Using a 2 3/4-ounce ice cream scoop (or a 1/3-cup measure), portion out the dough onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Pat the tops of the cookie dough domes flat. Wrap the sheet pan tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 1 week. Do not bake your cookies from room temperature--they will not bake properly.

4. Heat the oven to 350°F.

5. Arrange the chilled dough a minimum of 4 inches apart on parchment- or Silpat-lined sheet pans. Bake for 18 minutes. The cookies will puff, crackle, and spread. After 18 minutes, they should be faintly browned on the edges yet still bright yellow in the center; give them an extra minute if not.

6. Cool the cookies completely on the sheet pans before transferring to a plate or to an airtight container for storage. At room temp, the cookies will keep fresh for 5 days; in the freezer, they will keep for 1 month.