Lobster Mushroom Bisque, Fondue

Dinner 10/18

Lobster Mushroom Bisque
(recipe below)

Fondue

Dessert

Meyer Lemon Cheesecake

Yes, more mushroom-y goodness from Liz's WF trip -- the ever popular lobster mushrooms...

Lobster Mushroom Bisque
Serves four

2 cups of Lobster Mushrooms
2 tbs. olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 leek, white part only, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 1/2 tsp. tomato paste
1/4 cup cognac
3 cups water
1 bouquet garni
salt & pepper
1 cup cashew cream (recipe below)
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tbs. chives, chopped



Trim the lobster mushrooms, reserve and set aside the best reddish parts for the garnish. Cut the rest of the mushrooms into thin slices.

Over medium/high heat add the oil in a large pot and when it's nice and hot, cook the mushroom slices for 3-4 minutes until you start to see some color. Add the onions, garlic, leeks and celery until the onions are translucent, then stir in the tomato paste and mix well. After another 2 minutes of cooking and stirring, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cognac. Return the pan to the heat and scrape the beautiful fond off the bottom of the pan. Add the water and bouquet garni, season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer over low heat for 20-25 minutes.

Remove the bouquet garni, and carefully add the mushroom & vegetable mixture to a high-speed blender and process until smooth. Return the mixture to the pot and stir in the cashew cream (recipe below), and bring it all to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for another 20 minutes.

While that's cooking, take the reserved "red" lobster mushroom pieces and saute with a little olive oil, salt and pepper until nice and crisp.

Check the bisque for seasoning, stir in the lemon juice and garnish with the chives and lobster mushroom slices.


Cashew Cream

1 cup of water
1/2 cup of raw cashews
pinch of salt

Add the water, cashews and salt to a high speed blender and process until smooth. You may need to play with the water/cashew ratio until you get the desired consistency of heavy cream. Run the mixture through a medium strainer to remove any chunks that may remain.



As for the fondue, all that was missing was the white shag carpet ;)

The fondue ratio was 50% Teese, with the 20% Gouda, 20% Smoked Cheddar and 10% Blue Sheese mixed in. The trick is to use a microplane zester to put in the Sheese, so it'll melt. Also added to the party was a garlic clove, white wine, salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg.



And melt it did. The sterno kept the mixture bubbling along, coating the fixings (cubed pieces of Foccacia that Liz made earlier in the day, soy sausages, Melrose apples from our trip to Beckwith's Orchard last Saturday, and lightly roasted cauliflower)




For dessert, Liz knocked out a Meyer Lemon Cheesecake, a straight ahead, no-bake cheesecake that used Follow Your Heart soy cream cheese, sugar, the juice and zest of a Meyer lemon, vanilla extract, with some soyatoo whipped cream folded in. The crust was vanilla wafers, soy margarine and brown sugar.

Tags: lobster mushrooms, bisque, fondue, cauliflower, foccacia, apples, sheese, teese, garlic, nutmeg, cheesecake, meyer lemon, hezbollah tofu, vegan, food, dinner, tofu666

Seitan a la Ficelle

Dinner 4/12

Seitan a la Ficelle
(recipe below)

A recipe for Hezbollah Tofu from the Les Halles cookbook by Tony Bourdain.

This dish starts with the veggies -- leeks, carrots and turnips shown here with a bouquet garni (bay, parsley, thyme). In the original recipe, they're cooked along with the meat, but here we skipped that step, and braised them with water, salt and pepper, soy margarine along with some veg stock.



Seitan a la Ficelle (p. 122 of the Les Halles cookbook)

8 oz. seitan, cut into long slices
canola oil

8 baby carrots, peeled
8 baby turnips, peeled
2 leeks, white part only
1/2 onion studded with 4 cloves
bouquet garni
salt and pepper
1 tbs. soy margarine
water
1 cup veg stock

sea salt (fleur de sel)
1/2 cup Cornichons
Dijon mustard

Bechamel Sauce with Horseradish (below)

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Put all of the vegetable in a large pan that will fit in your oven. Add the veg stock and enough water to come up halfway on the leeks. Add the bouquet garni and soy margarine. Add salt and pepper to taste. Over high heat, bring the water to a boil, place the lid on the pot slightly ajar, and cook for about 20 minutes until the liquid has almost evaporated. Take the lid off, and place in the oven while you make the seitan.

As always, you can make your own seitan for this, but in this instance, we used the packaged type and sliced thinly in long strips. It was quickly stir-fried in a wok with canola oil.

On the plate, place the seitan in the center and position the vegetables around it. Pour some of the leftover broth from the pan around the seitan and veggies. Serve with sea salt, cornichons, mustard.

Bechamel Sauce with Horseradish (p. 254 of the Les Halles cookbook)

The bechamel sauce with horseradish is straight ahead, just whisk in as much horseradish as you like into the bechamel along with the salt, white pepper and nutmeg. We used about 2 tbs. for the 2 cups of sauce. For serving, we loaded the sauce into a squeeze bottle and let everyone decorate as they liked.



1 1/2 oz. of soy margarine
1 1/2 oz. of flour
2 cups of soy milk (rice milk, better than milk, etc)
salt and white pepper
pinch of nutmeg
2 tbs. freshly grated Horseradish root

Melt the soy margarine over medium heat. Add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon to combine with the soy margarine. Reduce the heat and cook for a few minutes, but don't allow the flour-soy margarine mixture to take on any color. Slowly add the soy milk to the roux with a whisk and mix until smooth. Season with the salt and white pepper and add the nutmeg and the horseradish. Heat on low until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

(we're of the school of hot roux/cold liquid or cold roux/hot liquid. Chef Bourdain is apparently from the hot liquid/hot roux school. YMMV)

Tags: hezbollah tofu, seitan, tony bourdain, leeks, carrots, turnips, horseradish, bechamel, vinaigrette, vegan, food, dinner, tofu666

Salade d'Seitan

Dinner 4/12

Salade d'Seitan
(recipe below)

For this recipe, we used the leftover trimmings from the Seitan Gascon, cut into chunks and marinated overnight, then sauteed the next day -- we cut down on the soy because the seitan cooking method already contained tamari.

Salade d'Seitan (p. 123 of the Les Halles cookbook)

8 oz. of seitan cut into cubes

Marinade
1/2 oz. fresh grated ginger
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tbs. soy sauce or tamari

Sauce
salt and pepper
2 tbs. soy margarine
1/4 cup white wine
1/4 dark veg stock
2 tbs. soy sauce
1/3 oz fresh ginger
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
1 sprig of flat parsley

For the salad
4 oz. mesclun salad mix
1 shallot thinly sliced
1/4 cup red wine vinaigrette (below)


Place the cubed seitan in a bowl, add the ginger, garlic and soy sauce/tamari. Cover and refrigerate overnight (or at least 2-3 hours).

Remove the seitan from the marinade and pat dry. Season lightly with salt/pepper (go easy on the salt because the soy sauce/tamari will compensate). In a saute pan over high heat add 1 tbs. canola oil and cook the seitan until it is nicely browned on all sides. You made need to do this in batches. Set aside on a plate.

Off heat, stir in the wine, return the pan to high heat, scraping the bottom with a wooden spoon. Cook until the pan is almost dry, then add the stock and soy and reduce by half. Add the remaining ginger, sliced garlic and cook for 30 seconds, then whisk in the remaining soy margarine. Return the seitan to the pan and cook for about a minute. Sprinkle in the chopped parsley and remove from the heat.

Place the mesclun in a large mixing bowl and add the shallot. Season with salt and pepper and add the red wine vinaigrette (below). Toss well and arrange the salad in the center of a serving platter. Arrange the seitan around the salad and drizzle with the sauce. Serve immediately.


Red Wine Vinaigrette (p. 256 of the Les Halles cookbook)

1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 garlic clove, smashed
salt and fine ground black pepper
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 cup extra virgin olive oil

In a mixing bowl, combine the vinegar, garlic and salt and pepper to taste. Let sit 30 minutes , the remove and discard the garlic. Add the mustard and slowly whisk in the oil, continuing to whisk until the mixture is emulsified.

(cutting this in quarter for this recipe works as well).

Hezbollah Tofu: Seitan Gascon, Steak Frites, Green Beans

Dinner 4/8

Seitan Gascon

Steak Frites (Sunday) / Green Beans (Tuesday)

We made two versions of Onglet Gascon for Hezbollah Tofu (in the Les Halles Cookbook, p. 127) -- and we actually went out and purchased a meat mallet to help pound out the seitan, which worked frighteningly well... who knew? ;)

The seitan recipe is the same as before, with a few modifications -- we only boiled it for 15 minutes and pressure cooked it for 15 minutes, due to the fact that we were able to pound the seitan out thin enough with the aforementioned meat mallet. A word of caution however -- make sure you have nothing of value nearby when you begin to pound on the seitan as liquid will spray everywhere. Better than animal blood, though!

I should point out that it does work better with plastic wrap on top or in a zip-lock gallon or freezer bag with the thick plastic -- the description above was going more for humor than actual cooking instruction ;)

If you grill it, pat the seitan dry, brush a little tamari on top -- it'll take about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes per 90° turn for the nice grill marks. For pan frying, add enough soy margarine to coat the bottom of the pan, and don't crowd the seitan pieces together as they'll just steam and not get the sear you're looking for.

But the key to this dish is the sauce.

Mustard Sauce

2 oz. white wine
1/2 cup veg stock
2 tbs. Dijon Mustard
1 tbs. soy margarine
salt/pepper

If you've pan-fried the seitan, remove it and add the wine, scrape down the fond and reduce by half. If you've grilled the seitan (as we have here), in a small sauce pan, add the wine and reduce by half. Then add the dark veg stock and reduce by half again. Whisk in the soy margarine (monte au beurre). Off heat, whisk in the mustard and adjust the seasonings. Slather on top of the seitan and serve with the Steak Frites as we did on Sunday.




The steak frites recipe is actually vegan, so there isn't any adjustments to make here.

Steak Frites

4 Idaho potatoes
2 quarts peanut oil for deep-frying
salt

Once you have your potatoes peeled and cut into 1/2" thick frites (a french fry cutter works wonders here), drop them in cold water for at least 30 minutes. Rinse them well to get rid of the excess starch.

In a wok or large pot (with a thermometer) heat the peanut oil to 280F. It may seem like a great deal of oil, but the reason there's so much oil is because the temperature stays stable when you add the potatoes -- it doesn't drop 100° and take forever to get back to where it needs to be. Fry the potatoes for 6-8 minutes until they are soft and have turned opaque. Remove with a skimmer or spider and let rest for 15 minutes on a sheet pan.

Crank the oil up to 375F and drop in the fries for 2-3 minutes. Remove and drop into a large bowl that been lined with a (paper) towel. Add salt to taste, take the towel out and toss. Serve hot.

The green beans are trimmed and blanched in salted water for four minutes. Drain, and drop into a bowl of ice water to keep the color. Wipe out the pan, turn the heat to medium-low and add a little soy margarine. Put the green beans in along with salt and pepper to taste. Heat through to coat and serve...

Tags: hezbollah tofu, seitan, mustard, frites, potatoes, green beans, bourdain, vegan, food, dinner, tofu666

Roulade of Wild Seitan, Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

Dinner 3/30

Roulade of Wild Seitan
(recipe below)

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

Another week, another Tony Bourdain recipe... this time, a vegan version of "Roulade of Wild Pheasant" p.189 (picture p.188).

Now, if we had replaced the mushroom with a tofu mousse, this would be a SeiTemFu -- the vegan version of Turducken... ;)

I won't lie, this one is a little more complicated than usual.

Roulade of Wild Seitan

Marinade

Seitan (recipe/method)
1 cup of port
2 leeks thinly sliced

Mushroom Mousse

4oz. of button mushrooms, trimmed
1 tbs. olive oil
salt and pepper

1 tbs. tamari
1/4 cup soy cream (or soft tofu)
1 tbs. port

Braised Tempeh

1 block of tempeh, cut into 4 long strips (see picture below)
water
1 tbs. tamari
canola oil

Sauce

2 shallots, thinly sliced
2 leeks, thinly sliced
1 tbs. flour
1/4 cup of port
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
1 bouquet garni (parsley, thyme, bay leaf)
1 tbs. soy margarine

Marinate the seitan overnight in the port and leeks (we used a California port style Zin made by Coturri that's unfiltered and unfined and fills the flavor profile / alcohol level as well as intense color of port very easily. Or just use port).

Remove the seitan from the marinade (save the marinade!), and pat the seitan dry and season with salt and pepper. In a wok, lightly pan-fry until golden brown. Careful -- because of the residual sugars in the port, it can possibly make the seitan scorch easily, so keep a close eye on it. Just sayin' ;)

For the mushroom mousse -- in the original it's a veal mousse -- saute the button mushrooms in the olive oil and margarine, season with salt/pepper and cook until nice and juicy. Splash the tamari in at the end of cooking and let cook another 30 seconds. Reserve about 12 pieces of mushroom for garnish. Place the rest of the mushrooms in the Vita-Mix (or blender), and puree the hell out of them, slowly adding the cream (or soft tofu) and the port. Taste for seasoning and adjust if needed. The consistency should be like light peanut butter.

Slather the mousse on the seitan with a offset spatula, covering the whole surface.



Next up, subbing the foie gras -- we went with a braised tempeh. You'll only need one strip from the tempeh, so you can either cook them all and eat the rest as a snack, or just take off one piece and save the rest.

Place in a saute pan and fill halfway up the side of the tempeh with water and add 1 tbs. of tamari. Bring to a boil, cover partially with a lid and cook, turning occasionally until the water evaporates.

Remove the tempeh strips carefully from the pan and saute in the wok with canola oil until golden brown on all sides. Splash a little extra tamari in at the end if your feeling it...

Add the tempeh on top of the seitan and mushroom mix.




Carefully roll the seitan around the tempeh (like a sushi roll) and secure with twine (or in our case, the hot pink silicone loops).



Place on a sheet pan and cook for 20-25 minutes at 375F. Remove from oven and let rest for five minutes. Gently remove the loops and cut into 3/4" slices.



For the sauce -- in a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil over med-high heat, add the soy margarine. Add the shallots and leeks and cook until they are caramelized and brown. Stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in 1/4 cup of port plus the reserved marinade. Reduce by half over high heat. Then add the veg stock and the bouquet garni. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 1 hour. Remove from heat and strain into a small saucepan. Add the reserved mushrooms slices (or truffles as in the original) and cook for two minutes. Whisk in 1 tbs. of soy margarine (monte au beurre).

For plating, add three pieces of the roulade to the plate and drizzle the sauce around the slices. Add the mushroom garnish and serve.



There is no subliminal message hidden in this picture.

Tags: hezbollah tofu, seitan, mushroom, tempeh, potatoes, bourdain, vegan, food, dinner, tofu666

Tournedos d'Seitan with Fig Confit, Braised Carrots with Tarragon, Roasted Potatoes

Dinner 3/16

Tournedos d'Seitan with Fig Confit

Braised Carrots with Tarragon

Roasted Potatoes

This is our contribution to the Hezbollah Tofu project: a vegan version of Tony Bourdain's "Tournedos d'Agneau with Fig Confit" p. 155 (picture on p. 157) from the "Les Halles" cookbook.

First, we made the seitan -- a combo of Ron Pickarski (pressure cooking method, ginger/kombu flavored broth), Isa (flavorings), and a couple of our ideas (ratio of gluten/water, jelly roll style). We rolled it into two 6" x 9" sheets, then rolled it up the long way (jelly-roll style), and pressure cooked it for 45 minutes. We also made "medallion" sized pieces as well.

We made veg stock earlier in the day and used some of it to make a little "semi" demi-glace -- brown roux + mirepoix + stock + reducing = sauce espagnole. Take that plus a little maderia (or red wine) and reduce it again.

Here's the seitan being rolled up...

The seitan after the pressure cooker, cut to size, wrapped with twine to keep the roll secure -- all though it really didn't need it, it was more for show...



The seitan was seared on all sides, then baked in the oven (375F for 15 minutes) finally rolled around in the sauce and plated with the poached figs (in the same banyuls that is also used for the sauce -- a sweet fortified red wine, or you could use port). Served along with braised carrots and tarragon as is the picture in the book.



A fun project, and perhaps there will be a few other recipes to come...

Tags: hezbollah tofu, tony bourdain, seitan, carrots, potatoes, vegan, food, dinner, tofu666