Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Tamago-yaki!

After having to avoid it at sushi joints for the past several years, I spent part of yesterday making a duck egg tamago-yaki for lunch! As in previous years' batches, I followed this recipe, making the two-egg version this time (which really is too small a quantity for my tamago pan). I'm out of practice, so I made the pan a mite too hot, which is why the rolled layers of mine look so loose this time, but now that this is a viable lunch option for me again, I'm hopeful that my technique will improve. It's just as yummy as ever, I'm happy to say.

Monday, January 23, 2017

Mmmmm...homemade white chocolate

A trip to Michael's on Friday yielded a silicone chocolate mold, a purchase I resigned myself to when I had multiple failed attempts (and one, sad, lonely success) at molding chocolates in a polycarbonate mold. I'd previously consulted Ann Reardon's YouTube tutorial on How to Temper Chocolate and seemed to have gotten the knack for it, but couldn't verify that fact due to my failures at getting them to de-mold.

On Sunday, I whipped up a batch of vegan white chocolate on Saturday, tempered using a marble board, offset spatula and bench scraper, poured the mixture into my new mold, and — after setting in the fridge — de-molded successfully! Thus, I had beautiful, glossy, homemade, dairy-free white chocolate this weekend!

Friday, January 13, 2017

I believe the expression goes, "YAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSS"

A few months ago, I discovered that the Colonel's "secret recipe" was supposedly leaked. At the time, I tried it on a few chicken pieces and found that the flavour was much too peppery and heavy on the oregano. Delicious, but overpowering on some fronts.

After a nasty gastrointestinal blowout early last weekend, I spent most of Saturday and Sunday loafing around on the couch, binge-watching vegan cooking channels on YouTube. And so I was reminded of my attempt at making vegan Chick-fil-A. It was then that I resolved to hybridize the two recipes and — hopefully — end up with something greater than the sum of its parts.

This time, I made the seitan patties as previously (replacing the tahini with sesame oil), but I got eight patties out of the batch, instead of the previous four. I still soaked the patties for a little less than an hour in pickle juice, but I used the KFC spice blend recipe, with halved amounts of white pepper and oregano, plus ⅓ cup of icing sugar and 1 tsp of baking powder, as my dredge. My binder was unsweetened hemp milk. Yesterday's fry-up, pictured above, had me cutting the patties into quarters, length-wise, before starting the pickle juice soak.

Oddly, when one cuts back on the pepper in the dredge, its lack of salt becomes noteable. I will have to add a bit more, going forward. Otherwise, these adaptations are definitely on the right track!