Category: Food

Vegan Pancakes II

2C white flour
2T sugar
2T baking powder
1/4t salt
2 1/4 C unsweetened soy milk
5T vegetable oil

Basically, I cut down the baking powder and increased the soy milk and vegetable oil.

The result was less cardboardy, but still not supple, and they were too thick still.  Pamela and Lydy agreed they were as thick as last time, despite more liquid and less baking powder.

I’m also rediscovering why I hate gas stoves so much; getting the two-burner griddle to be both fairly uniform and the right temperature (especially since the front and back burners have different size gas rings) is hell, and the only thing one can really adjust based on is the visible size of the flames.

These things were sticking to an oiled non-stick griddle until I turned it up a bit.

The Smuckers boysenberry syrup is okay, but nothing special. Has more “berry” quality than specific boysenberry flavor.

Pancakes

Finally started taking action on the problem of not getting enough pancakes in my life.  As it turned out, this required a last-minute trip to the store, since the amount of soy milk in the house was inadequate.

I did a batch of vegan whole-wheat pancakes that were okay (better than today’s batch, as I remember it) a long time ago, but don’t seem to have said anything or recorded the recipe.

Last two pancakes in the batch

I don’t like “fluffy” pancakes.  I like something closer to crêpes.

The recipe as I made it today:

1 cup white flour
1T sugar
1.5T baking powder
1/8t salt
1C unsweetened soy milk
2T vegetable oil

Mix, cook on medium hot  griddle, probably greased.  Makes 2 servings.

These came out kind of okay, though a bit thick, a bit tough, and a bit flavorless (I thought they lacked salt).

For next time, I plan to add something like 1/8 cup soy milk, and take the baking powder down to 1T.  (The original recipe actually called for 2T, I reduced it before making this batch.)

Turns out baking powder has huge amounts of sodium in it, when used in this kind of quantity.  Today’s recipe had 42% of the allowable sodium intake for a normal diet.

In the long run I’ll play with grains, I think, and maybe play with vegan egg-replacer.  I’m looking for a more rubbery, less cardboard, kind of a texture.  More oil might be involved too.  I’m trying to limit the number of things I change at once for a few iterations; though I suppose I may eventually give up this recipe entirely.

I could give up the vegan route, and work  on normal pancakes.  But that leaves Pamela out, which seems like it shouldn’t be my first choice.

New Taco Bell Entrée

Taco Hell has been my preferred national fast-food since Zantigos closed, these many years ago. Mostly I have a chilito (that being an item they carried over from the Zantigos menu) and something else.

I ran into a new special item (which means, I think, that it’s being considered for a permanent place on the menu, but that’s far from certain). They’re calling them “Cantina Tacos”, and they are really quite close to the tacos we got at Tacos Blass on the corner here when they were in business.  I’d rate the Taco Hell versions as about 75% as good; which for a national fast-food chain is doing pretty well.

They come in three fillings, steak, chicken, and carnitas. And currently you can get a set of three of them (any fillings) plus a large drink for $5.19.

They even come with wedges of fresh lime (neatly wrapped into the foil so they don’t touch the food).  I squeezed one into my drink and the other two over the food.

The actual dish looks more real than the photos on the web site; in particular, the web photos show the tortillas looking half like crisp corn tortillas, but they’re not, they’re soft (and hence not as yellow).

All the fillings were pretty good.  The carnitas lacked much juniper flavor, but had no serious false notes.

They’re served with onion and cilantro, no cheese or lettuce or whatever, just like the ones at Tacos Blass were.

Thin Mint Replacement!

For years, I have been looking for a good equivalent, competitor, or replacement for the Girl Scout’s Thin Mint cookies. (Why? Well, why not? I hate being dependent on one supplier, and I had started to think that perhaps the quality was slipping in recent years.)

This week, I finally stumbled on it. If my memory doesn’t deceive me, these are better than the latest batch of the real thing that I had (last summer).

It’s the Back to Nature Fudge Mint Cookies.  I got them from the “natural” section at Cub Foods (60th and Nicollet).

The box
A cookie

450° Oven

Tonight I tried a technique that I got from Lynn on The Splendid Table last weekend (while I was driving around town alone; that’s when the radio is on). She gave it in response to a college student who liked to cook and wanted a new technique (he started with stir fry, as did I).

Worked great.

It’s one of those general ideas that can be applied millions of ways.  If I understood right, the name comes from the fact that the oven temperature is really the only thing that holds true across the whole range of things you can do with it.

Here’s what I did:

Slice about 3/4lb of pork and marinate in lemon juice, olive oil, red wine, a couple of cloves of garlic, and rosemary.  Oh, and a good squirt of oriental pepper sauce.

Preheat oven to 450°.

Peel and slice one sweet potato pretty thin (3/16 kinda).

Cut one red and one green peppers into strips.

Cut two onions so they fall apart into strips.

Cut one yellow zucchini into 1/4inch-plus slices.

Dump the veggies into a pan as big as will fit (in area; doesn’t need to be deep).  Or two.  Pour on some olive oil, quite a lot of oregano, some basil, salt, and pepper.  Mix a bit.  Dump the meat and marinade over it, and get the meat spread out.

Put in oven until done.  Was about 50 minutes this time.

We ate it wrapped in burrito-scale tortillas; sort of Italian burritos.

Lydy and I voted it a success, but there were some leftovers anyway.