Aquapatys

Yes, I fail at Vegan MoFo, but perhaps another recipe from the fourteenth-century Forme of Cury will make up for my lapse. This one is basically a fairly simple recipe for whole boiled garlic cloves. Sure, you’ll stink after this, but I promise it’ll be worth the stench. The original reads, “Aquapatys. XX.III. XV. Pill garlec and cast it in a pot with water and oile. and seeþ it, do þerto safroun, salt, and powdour fort and dresse it forth hool.” My method was to first brown the whole garlic cloves in a bit of olive oil, add water and bring to a boil, simmer until they’re tender.

The “powdour fort,” or “strong powder,” bit requires a bit more imagination. Powder forte was a blend of spices that occurred in quite a few medieval and renaissance recipes, but the exact composition is a little obscure. Samuel Pegge, the eighteenth-century editor of Forme of Cury, speculated that it was a mixture “of the warmer spices, pepper, ginger, &c. pulverized: hence we have powder-fort of gynger, other of canel [cinnamon].” It probably included also a few spices that are today a bit hard to find, such as grains of paradise, a relative of cardamom, and cubeb pepper, sometimes called Java pepper.

For this incarnation, I just blended up the warmer spices I had on hand: cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and loads of freshly ground black pepper. I added salt and a pinch of ground saffron, tossed the boiled and drained cloves in the mix until well coated, and then ate them spread on slices of baguette. The boiling really cuts the harshness of the garlic in case you’re a bit wary of eating whole cloves, and they become nicely creamy and spreadable. Good times.

Late Night Gruel

Looks disgusting, I know. But forget oil painting or the printing press, this was the best thing ever to come out of the fifteenth century, perfect for when you’re laboring late on an autumnal evening over some tome of ancient lore:

Taylours. Take almondes, and grynde hem raw in a morter, and temper hit with wyne and a litul water; And drawe hit þorgh a streynour into a goode stiff mylke into a potte; and caste thereto reysons of coraunce, and grete reysons, myced Dates, Clowes, Maces, Pouder of Peper, Canel, saffron̄ a good quantite, and salt; and sette hem ouere the fire, And lete al boyle togidre awhile; And alay hit vp with floure of Ryse, or elles grated brede, and cast there-to sugur and salt, And serue hit forth in maner of mortrewes, and caste there-on̄ pouder ginger in þe dissh. (Harleian MS 4016)

The simplified, roughly translated version? Pour some almond milk in a small saucepan, add powdered cloves, mace, pepper, cinnamon, salt, a pinch of saffron. Throw in some raisins and chopped dates, bring the whole thing to a simmer for a bit. Then stir in a little rice flour. You don’t need a lot. I’d start with a tablespoon, maybe two, let it thicken for a minute, and then add more as needed. It turns into a gummy gruel fairly quickly. Stir in some sugar, sprinkle on some powdered ginger. Consume.

The end result is somewhere between hot cereal and a big steamy bowl of spiced cookie dough. It’s great in the morning as an alternative to oatmeal or cream of wheat, or in the evening if your insomnia makes it difficult to tell your dawn from your dusk…

I’m a lazy MoFo…

So, I’ve totally slacked off this week on the Vegan MoFo posting, but I’ll try to make it up. In a previous life, this little picture frame has held photos of a romantic interest or two, but mostly sat in a shoebox empty.

Then one day, when I was enjoying some Cinnamon Puffins, the thought occurred to me: You know, girlfriends come and go, but breakfast cereal, that romance lasts a lifetime. I love that bird and his tasty nuggets of cinnamon infused awesomeness…

Peanut Rice

I’m feeling like doing fuck all for dinner tonight. Besides finding out I’m unqualified for yet another part-time, minimum-wage job, I want to kick the whole Internet squarely in the junk. So, here’s one of my staples for when I’m too pissed off at the world to make anything decent. I usually eyeball the ingredients, but this is close-a-damn ‘nough:

2 tbsp creamy peanut butter
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp curry paste
Dash of hot sauce
A bowl of cooked brown rice
Salt and black pepper to taste

Mix up the peanut butter, soy sauce, curry paste, and hot sauce in a bowl. Add water a splash at a time and whisk together with a fork until you have a pourable but not runny consistency. Pour over rice. Add salt and pepper if you want. Done. Use any curry paste you want. I usually use Thai Kitchen green curry paste. Tonight, I’ll be using some leftover vindaloo paste made from the recipe in the Cafe Flora cookbook. It doesn’t really matter.

‘Shroom Carnitas

Okay, so I know these aren’t the prettiest things ever, even cleaned up with a little Photoshop magic. I’ve realized that if I’m going to do this Vegan Month of Food thing properly, I’ll have to actually attempt to make food during the daylight hours to get proper, sharp photos. But here you go, tacos with mushroom mock-carnitas.

It’s weird to me that even though I was pretty much the only anglo kid on the block growing up, I still grew up with the strange idea that proper tacos involved prepackaged hard shells, ground beef seasoned with packets of mysterious “taco spice,” and heaps of shredded cheddar.

My first experience with authentic tacos was in my late teens at a little taco stand in Mexicali, during a church excursion to convert the heathen foreigners to happy-clappy megachurchianity. Despite the fact that I’m now a heathen myself, I did take away a lot from those trips. One, my first realization of the ridiculous extent of American affluence. And second, an idea of what real tacos were like.

I attempted to replicate those the other night with a fair bit of success. I got the idea from this blog entry about vegan pozole to use shredded mushroom stems to replicate the texture of shredded pork.

I used fresh chanterelles since they’re actually cheaper up here at the moment than shiitakes, but either works. You basically just crush the stems into shreds between your fingers, marinate them with a bit of oil, liquid smoke, cumin, chili powder, paprika, you get the idea. And then lightly pan fry them.

It wasn’t too shabby, definitely something I’m going to experiment with again, perhaps with cheaper crimini mushrooms. Another option for replicating the texture of carnitas, if you haven’t tried it already, is using jackfruit, as Melisser explains over on The Urban Housewife. Anywho, see you tomorrow, MoFo fans…