Fluffy Compromise Brownies

These sort of split the difference between this vegan brownies recipe, which was my jumping-off point for the numerous vegan brownie explorations I’ve done, and this non-vegan brownies recipe.

Preheat th’oven to 350F. Add these things to a (floured? I didn’t try this; also my pan is nonstick so I didn’t grease it; if yours isn’t, grease it before flouring it. I don’t know whether mixing things straight up in the pan will cancel out these preparatory actions, but they seem worthwhile, as the brownies tended to stick to the pan as I made them) pan in this order:

1. 1 cup canola
2. 2 cups sugar
3. 1 tsp vanilla
4. 2 eggs
5. 3/4 cup baking cocoa

Then mix those things all together. Add:

6. 1 cup water

and mix it in. Add:

7. 1 1/2 cups flour
8. 1/2 tsp baking powder

and mix them in. Put the pan in th’oven and check on it after 30 min, and take it out once, you know, once it seems done. Delicious.

Winter Veggie-Pile

I don’t know what else to call it right now. It’s another one of my sautés.

1. Sizzle up some olive oil.
2. Add to the pan in this order:
   1. 1 chopped leek
   2. 1 to 2 chopped portabellas or the equivalent
   3. a bunch of sliced-up red cabbage
   4. a handful of sliced almonds
   5. 1 can of chickpeas
3. Add more oil as necessary throughout the cookage. Seasonings I used, modify as you like:
   1. Soy sauce
   2. Black pepper
   3. Chili powder
   4. Tarragon
   5. Nutmeg
   6. Sesame oil
   7. A handful of wheat germ (thickens it up and wholens the grain, as I had it on white rice)
4. Serve over rice, pasta, or whatever kind of starchy-starch you enjoy. Makes approximately 1 buttload.

Note that this dish is vegan. You will be surprised how bloated your stomach will feel despite this if you eat a bunch of it like I just did.

Cilantrosplosive Rice-Veggie-Cheese Thing

Dang guys it is seriously dumb not to post on a blog for over six months. Luckily I am here to reverse the trend and explicate my dinner of this evening, which was rather delicious. Since I improvised this and only thought of recording its making after the fact, this recipe will contain few quantities. But here’s what I used:

GREDIENTS

• olive oil
• salt
• black pepper
• minced garlic (I got it (the garlic) out of a jar; if you want to keep it (general “it”) realer than me, squish it (the garlic) out of a garlic press)
• coupla chunks of rice (I used short-grain brown rice, which combines my two favorite rice attributes)
• Chihuahua queso para fundir (tastes pretty much like a saltier provolone) (note: the queso comes from Chihuahua, not from Chihuahuas, luckily, if you catch my drift)
• diced tomatoes (from a can (a tin can))
• eggplant, maybe 1/2 cup, chopped into 1/8″x1″x1″ sticks or something near that
• leek, about the same amount as the eggplant, chopped
• a goodly quantity of cilantro

GENERATIVE ALGORITHM

1. Cook some rice.
2. Chop the eggplants and leeks.
3. Heat up some olive oil in a pan; dump some salt, pepper, and garlic in there.
4. Put in the eggplant and leeks and let ‘em simmer and soften as you get the subsequent stuff ready.
5. Put in the queso and let it melt.
6. Insert the rice and mix it all in. Make sure the queso is getting well-integrated and not balling up all by itself.
7. Add the tomatoes and mix them in.
8. Once everything’s all lookin’ good and cooked, add the cilantro and mix it in, but don’t let it overcook.
9. SERVE

I’ll put a picture up once my home internet connection is working again? (I am posting this from the studio.)

Spring Break

It turns out that Cornell’s spring break matches up with the first week of Williams’ spring break.  I’m pretty much expected to stick around and do research (going well, by the way!) but I was thinking of taking off to go visit my sister at Williams on the weekend of 16 March.  She can show me the new-Baxter and I can redeem my little free grilled honey bun coupon and then she’ll go gallivanting off for break and I’ll go back to work.

Just a little shout out to see if anyone else has anything similar in mind.

Knock-You-Nakeds

I totally forgot about EphHampton for a little bit, but in the meantime I got the recipe for Williams’ famous KYN’s from Joe Gangestad. Since Jono’s been posting recipes, I thought I might as well share this one, which is of particular value to us Ephs!  I tried them out and they actually came out pretty darned well–just be sure to get plenty of caramels and be careful melting them.  You don’t want to scorch them into the pan, and you want enough to make a complete layer.

By the way, my sister reports that the New Baxter (aka Paresky Center) is pretty freaking awesome. I’m thinkin I might go visit her when her classes are finishing up for spring break (around 16 Mar) and go redeem my little grilled honey bun coupon. I hope maybe I get to run into a few of you there!

Brownies

Daaaang these are chocolatey and awesome. Also vegan (read: cholesterol-free).

DO THESE THINGS AND YOU WILL ARRIVE AT BROWNIES

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Mix together:

• 2 cups white flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup baking cocoa

in something (maybe right in the pan, that’s what I did, and then you lose exactly zero chocolate)

3. and then add:

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup veggle/canola oil

and mix it all up good.

4. Pour it all into the pan if it ain’t already there.

5. Bake it. Poke at it with forks starting like 20 min in and take it out when it’s not runny anymore.

The result is (1) extremely chocolatey, (2) quasi-caramelized on the bottom and maybe a little light and crispy on the edges but dense in the middle, and (3) having only sugar as what is such as bad for you in it. Mmmmmmmmmm. This recipe adapted from here and the changes I made were to halve the baking powder (if you want to make a yummy dense cake then use more bp than I call for here) and use 4/3 the cocoa called for.

Terra Cotta Soup

Welcome to the 2007 edition of Jono’s De Facto Recipe Blog. It is time to explain how to make a newly improvised soup named after a thing that has a similar color. The photo unfortunately makes it look oranger than it really is.

INGREDIENTSTRUCTIONS:

• Water — fill up a pot about halfway and bring it to a boil.

• 1/2 buttload of salt, stir in & dissolve. Add more salt to taste through the rest of the process.

• Quite a bit of pasta but only enough to absorb like half the water. Add once the water’s boiling.

• 1 onion cut semi-fine. Stir in.

• A few mushrooms, thinly sliced. Stir in.

• Approx. 3 sloshes of tomato puree. Slosh them in.

• 1 can black beans. Stir in. The black beans and the tomato combine to give the soup its terra cotta attitude.

• Garlic powder (or real garlic, lah-de-dah) to taste.
• Oregano to taste.
• Basil (dried) (or real (aren’t we special)) to taste.

Let it all cook till the pasta and onions are in a state that is pleasing to you. Serve. Veganlicious!

quickest bread EVER

Dang people I am on a roll! Tonight I had a hankering to bake some bread, but there was no yeast and I hadn’t the time to make a yeast bread anyway, so I looked up some quickbread recipes online and then improvised my own recipe while running:

2 cups flour
1 to 1 1/2 cup water (not 3/4 cup as I wrote before, that is inadequate)
1 tbsp baking powder (I’d hazard a guess that baking soda would work fine too)
1 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp salt (this is if you want it savory; lower the amount or skip it or add sugar if you have different designs)

Pour all this ish into a big bowl and mix it up thoroughly (EDIT: mix the dry ingredients together first, then mix the water in, then the oil. Water before oil.) I used a fork. The oil should make it not stick to the bowl too bad. Light a fire under a pan and pour the dough in and flatten it down into the pan. Let it sit for a bit and check the underside occasionally with a spatula; once it’s possible, take (continuity alert!) two spatulas and flip it over to let the other side cook. Yeah! After a while maybe flip it again, flip it a few more times for kicks, slice it in the middle with one of your two spatulas to see if it’s become bread. Once it is, indeed, bread, remove it from the pan and eat it by itself or in concert with other nutriment.

röschti recipe

Dang, what has this listserv become, like Jono’s Quarterly Recipeganza or something? Anyway, I just made a classic Swiss potato au gratin flippy thing called röschti for the first time and I think it’s pretty much a failsafe and pretty quick. And delicious. Also it’s vegan with the ingredients I used, and yet immensely rich and stick-to-the-ribs.

INGREDIENTS

2 normal-sized tates or 1 honkin’ tate, or up to 5 puny tates
canola oil (is what I used; other oils should be fine, but canola is quite healthy)
1 onion
a few field mushrooms
salt (seasoned? I used Aromat, a Swiss seasoned salt with MSG)
black pepper
other seasonings thatchu like

‘STRUCTIONS

0. If you want, peel the tates. I didn’t because I saw no advantage to this. If you don’t peel them, though, wash them thoroughly, preferably with a scouring sponge. I know I did.

1. Coarse-grate the tates into a bowl.

2. Pour enough oil into a large fryin’ pan to cover most of the base, and heat it till it starts t’get feisty.

3. In the meantime, cut up the onion as fine as you, in general, like your onions cut when they are cooked, and ditto with the mushrooms.

4. Mix the onions & shrooms into the bowl with the tate-grates and add the salt, pepper, and seasonings to taste, and mix it all up good.

5. Put the mixture into the pan; it should sizzle deliciously. Stir it all around to really get the grease up in.

6. Let it sit for a few minutes and then stir it up; repeat this a few times, to get lots of browning in the interior of the röschti. You want as much browning as possible because browning is delicious.

7. Once the onions & mushrooms are cooked and the tate-grates are sticky and awesome, let the thing sit for an amount of extra time so the undersurface gets good & brown, and then:

8. with probably two spatulas, fold one half of the röschti over onto the other half, so you end up with both sides browned, and transfer it to a plate as best you can with both spatulas. That is, if you are eating the whole thing yourself: this recipe makes enough for 1 large (e.g. post-long-run) serving, 2 temperate servings, 3 smallish servings, or 4 morsels. So adjust quantities accordingly. Just you don’t want the mixture too thick in the pan.

I found it needed some extra flavor and so I did some cuisine-fusin’ and put soy sauce on it, which worked great. Other ideas for further additions in the pan include:

1. cheese (preferably a Swiss Swiss cheese like Emmetaler or Appezöller)

2. MEAT FLESH KILL BLOOD SPURT BURN WELTER DRIP AARG maybe some sausage or bacon? that’d probably be tasty

3. other veggies that cook well

4. spices, if you like stuff spicy, such as cayenne pepper, for just a little tasty burn

Here’s a picture of my finished product ready to eat; the presentation and lighting make it less than legendary-looking, but rest assured it is FANTASTICALLY TASTY. And it doesn’t look as gross as some things I’ve “cooked” recently. The take-home lesson here (or keep-at-home lesson in my case, I suppose) is that potatoes fry up sumpn’ good. Who knew!

rice/quinoa thing

Delicious, easy to make, and wicked wholesome! Note also, for more foodity, the gauntlet of sauces that I threw down earlier.

I just improvised this and am eating some of it right now. I don’t have any exact quantities because I threw it together as I went along, as I have been doing all the time recently. Just use common sense and personal preference as far as quantities go. I used a big pot. Modify the veggies and spices as you see fit, and you can add meat or eggs into it if you want but that will render it non-vegan. The instructions are:
1. throw everything in the pot, starting with the water, rice, and quinoa; maybe put the spinach in last, so it stays as green as possible.
2. cook it until the rice and quinoa have a texture that you like.
3. stir it around enough that it doesn’t get stuck to the bottom of the pot too bad due to the cornstarch.
4. if the cornstarch makes it gluier than you want, add water.

HERE ARE THE INGREDIENTS THESE ARE THEY
water
brown rice
quinoa
firm tofu, diced small
finely sliced onion
chopped tomato
chopped bell pepper
baby spinach
chopped shrooms
a prudent (read small) quantity of cornstarch dissolved in cold water
soy sauce
curry powder
chili powder
garlic powder
salt