Vegan Shabbat Dinner

Our friend Jessica, who is vegan, joined us for Shabbat dinner last night. She assured me that I could merely do a vegetarian dinner, but I liked the idea of trying to create a fully vegan meal. I decided on challah, manicotti, pureed cauliflower, steamed asparagus dressed with sea salt and a spritz of olive oil, and a chocolate strawberry cake.

My normal challah recipe is Maggie Glezer's Chernowitzer recipe, which is nearly as rich as brioche. But I've been wanting something less decadent for a while now, and thought this would be a great excuse to fool around with a water challah recipe. Incidentally, I use King Arthur flour and Florida Crystals sugar in all my baking. They are vegan, having not been bleached with bone char. After playing for a bit, here's the recipe I came up with:

1 envelope (2 1/4 teaspoons) yeast
4 cups flour
225 ml (1 cup minus 1 tablespoon) warm water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Mix the yeast, salt, and one cup of flour in a bowl. Add the water, whisking until a smooth sort of sludge forms. Allow it to sit for about 10 minutes, or until it looks rather puffy. Then add the remaining ingredients. Knead either by hand, food processor, or stand mixer until a smooth, satiny ball forms. It should be slightly sticky, like Play-Doh. Sprinkle with some more warm water if too stiff, or a few tablespoons of flour if too sticky.

Place dough in a clean, warm bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise about two hours, or until at least doubled in size. A good idea is to run the dishwasher, then let the dough ferment in the wet heat with the door shut after the cycle is done.

Shape the dough as desired (I do two three-strand braids) and allow to proof on a baking sheet. The loaves are ready when they have roughly tripled in size, and the dough doesn't spring back when poked with a finger. Bake for 20 minutes at 350F.

The results were so good that this now going to be my new go-to challah recipe. I may try baking it at a lower temperature though, maybe 300. I'm also eager to see how it works with whole wheat.














Now the manicotti. Naturally, I wanted a filling that would be reminiscent of ricotta cheese. I thought a combination of silken tofu and cannellini might do the trick. I drained and rinsed a can, then added them to the food processor with a block of silken tofu. I also put in one tablespoon each of dried oregano and dried basil. My daughter sampled the results and pronounced them "too beany." Alas, I had to agree. It was disappointingly hummus-like. So then I used a potato masher to roughly crumble a block of extra firm tofu. I folded the crumbles along with two teaspoons of unflavored almond milk into my bean puree. Success! The texture was awesome, and the flavor was mild, herbal, and ever so slightly sweet. Next time, though, I think I'll just puree half the silken tofu and crumble to other half with the firm.














I boiled the manicotti for 7 minutes then drained and rinsed them. Using a pastry bag, I filled 14 with my faux ricotta. I then spread about a cup of tomato sauce (I like Muir Glen's basil one when I'm too lazy to make my own) over the bottom of a 9x13 glass pan. I nestled the filled shells in, then topped them generously with more sauce.














Because I made them early in the day, I covered the pan with foil and stuck it in the fridge. I later reheated the covered pan for 30 minutes at 350. The results, if I may say so, were delicious. My son at two shells and my daughter ate three.

Pureed cauliflower is one of my favorite sides. It has a similar comfort-food quality to mashed potatoes, but without the starch and fat. The flavorings are a matter of personal taste,but here's my favorite combo.The measurements are approximate.

Begin by thawing two 1-pound bag of frozen cauliflower florets. Put them in a pot with about 1 cup of vegetable stock, and simmer until the cauliflower is tender but not soft. Add the stock and cauliflower to the bowl of a food processor, pureeing in batches if necessary. Add the juice of one lemon, 1/4 cup olive oil, pepper, and a pinch of kosher salt to taste. Puree until smooth. Serve warm.














I knew I wanted a decadent chocolate cake for dessert. I had once read a recipe for a vegan chocolate cake in a 40's cookbook (eggs and milk were scarce) and remembered it being extremely moist. I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder for the cake and frosting, as the dutched powder adds so much depth and flavor, a particularly good idea when not using eggs or butter.

I found this recipe online, and it is identical to the one in that old cookbook. I doubled the recipe and made it in my Kitchen Aid. I poured the batter into two round 9 inch pans, and baked it for 30 minutes. The top was quite sticky, but a toothpick revealed the crumb to be firmly set.

The frosting was a bit trickier. Many vegan frosting recipes contain margarine, which I strongly dislike. A little hunting turned up this one, which seemed quite promising. After reading the user comments, I decided to turn the burner off as soon as the mixture came to a boil so that it wouldn't get too thick. This turned out to be a wise choice, as it was sill slightly thick and required thinning with a bit of almond milk. But I must say, the flavor was excellent and the texture silky-smooth. I could detect some of the corn starch flavor, but no one else picked up on it. Still, I may try it again with 5 tablespoons instead of six.

I spread one cooled layer of cake with the frosting, then added a layer of sliced strawberries.













I added a very thin layer of frosting to the top of the strawberries for glue, then placed the second layer of cake on top. I covered the whole thing with frosting, the decorated the top with fresh strawberries.














It was an outstanding cake. It was velvety and moist with rich, fudgy frosting and a lovely crumb that sliced beautifully. I advise trying it even if you're not vegan.

In Which There Is Gelato And Also Langoustines

Partly because I tend to buy expensive food and partly because I hate wasting things and partly because I sometimes like to pretend I'm on a Food Network hidden camera show called Suburban Freezers, I save odds and ends of things in my freezer. When the tomatoes start to look elderly or the blackberries begin to take on a withered appearance, they go into the freezer for later use in sauces or jams. Fallen cakes await conversion to trifle, stale bread to French toast. I have containers of au jus, bagged poultry carcasses, and the occasional avocado.

But, for all my frugality, I loathe clutter. This extends to the freezer, and so on Saturday morning I went prowling through the big freezer in the basement in search of inspiration. I found it in the form of half a bag of frozen strawberries, three frozen mangoes, and a frozen banana. I recalled some buttermilk in the fridge, and decided that gelato was the order of the day.

A note on mangoes: they can sometimes be very starchy and fibrous, so be careful. I prefer champagne mangoes for this reason. And, because mangoes are annoying to cut up, be aware that Trader Joe's carries packages of halved ones in their freezer section. One package is about the equivalent of what I used here.

In the warmer months I always keep 1:1 simple syrup on hand. I make it in big batches, then store it in glass bottles in the fridge. It's nice to have for ice cream making and for mixed drinks, but it's also nice for making cold drinks like lemonade or sweetened iced tea because the sugar is already dissolved.




















To make this gelato, I thawed the fruit in the microwave, but not entirely. The colder your starting mixture, the better resluts you'll get with your ice cream maker. Here's how much fruit I had, plus the banana. I'd estimate it at around 5 cups fresh, and around 3 thawed.














I then took 2 cups of simple syrup (in retrospect I think I might reduce the simple syrup to 1 1/2 cups) and combined it with the fruit in my food processor. I left some little chunks intact, but you can puree it as much as you like. I then added 2 cups of low-fat buttermilk (plain European or Greek style yogurt would do nicely as well) and the juice of 5 seedless lemons. Once everything was combined into a beautiful peachy color with ruby highlights, into the ice cream maker it went. After about 30 minutes in the ice cream maker, I scraped it into a plastic container and put it in the freezer to harden.














Because it was sultry out, I wanted to have a light dinner on the deck to complement this dessert. I pulled out a bag of langoustine tails. Langoustines are like teeny lobsters and the meat is very tender and sweet. AlmondBoy loves lobster but langoustines are cheaper, easier to work with in the kitchen, and much less fuss because you can buy bags of them at Trader Joe's, where someone has thoughtfully killed and packaged them for your convenience. I thawed the langoustines, then tossed them in a mixture of olive oil, garlic, sea salt, dried coriander, basil, and Greek oregano. I left them in the mixture for about thirty minutes while I got everything else ready.














I boiled half a box of whole wheat penne in salted water and let that cook while I cut a fresh pineapple into 8 long pieces. I put the pineapple on the grill and returned to the pasta. After draining the pasta, I added the langoustines and their juices, half a package of English peas, the juice of 2 lemons, and returned the pot to low heat. I wasn't quite happy with the results, so I added a quarter cup of Greek yogurt and found that it bound everything together perfectly.

Returning to the grill, I checked on the pineapple. It had been grilling for about 5 minutes and so I flipped it to let the other side finish. Grilled fruit is one of my favorite warm weather side dishes, and pineapple is one of the best. The charred spots have a deep, caramelly sweetness that goes wonderfully with the tart acidity of the fruit. As soon as the pineapple was charred to my liking, we ate. I had a lovely piece of Parmigiano Reggiano stravecchio, which we grated over the pasta. It was so good that I kept breaking off chunks to eat alone. The cheese was wonderful and nutty with delicious crunchy toffee-like crystals studded throughout. I luuuurve cheese.















For dessert, I served mugs of the gelato topped with Trader Joe's plain European style yogurt, drizzled with mesquite honey, and ornamented with a mint leaf plucked from the plant on the deck. It was heavenly. The sour, astringent creaminess of the yogurt was a perfect complement to the light, fruity gelato, and the sticky-sweet honey hardened from the cold into delicious chewy strands.