May 2008 Archives

Maybe the marital feast we're catering next weekend, and feverishly planning for right now, has us pondering how food can bring people together. Or maybe it's the Spice Girls' "2 Become 1" on repeat. Whatever the reason, we loved giving Israeli couscous a Moroccan kick, because we needed a sauce with some heat that would slick the bloated caviar-like balls of wheat with some oily heat. We chose a mild harissa of assorted red chiles. We added toasted cumin seeds ourselves for the real kick and served it as a room temperature salad. The stuff also works under a tagine, or alongside grilled vegetables. Just make sure to let the stuff sit for an hour or two to let the flavors "marry." Har-har.

8 oz. Israeli couscous
1 Tbs. vegan margarine
1 large red bell pepper
2 shallots
1 scallion
1/8 cup flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup harissa (mildly spicy)
2 Tbs. olive oil
3 Tbs. whole cumin seeds
Salt and black pepper

1. Bring water in a medium-sized pot to a near-boil over high heat. Lightly salt the water, just a pinch of sea salt, and add margarine. Right before the water hits a rolling boil, add couscous and turn down to low heat. Gently stir once or twice to keep from sticking. Let cook for 5-8 minutes or until couscous balls are perfectly plump and not at all crunchy. Remove, drain and shock with cold water.

2. Finely dice your vegetables. Slice the red bell pepper into quarters length-wise and remove seeds. Then slice quarters into long thin slivers, turn and dice into confetti. Dice your peeled shallots into the same small shape. Wash, pat dry, and chop flat-leaf parsley like you would for tabouleh. Add all of this to a large mixing bowl, saving a couple pinches of parsley for garnish, and mix with the couscous.

3. Dress the couscous with your harissa sauce and some additional olive oil (adjust to get a slick and smooth consistency, depending on how thick your harissa is).

4. The clincher: in a small sauté pan, toast the cumin seeds for about 2 or 3 minutes or until fragrant and slightly more brown. Add the seeds to the mixture and stir well. Season to taste. Let sit for at least an hour to marry. Serve at a room temperature.

Beverage: Unibroue's Maudite
Soundtrack: Primal Scream's "Little Death"

We're back on the wedding catering warpath kiddies. Next weekend the Hot Knives crew is shipping down to San Diego for a marathon baking and grilling session for what will, hopefully, be an epic reception. The menu is done and most of the kinks are worked out, but we've been slow to post the recipes. Now, here comes the deluge. First up, possibly the greatest raw vegan edible we've concocted this year: a cold pad thai salad made not of fatty coconut flesh like some vegan "chefs" do, but out of all the veggie trappings that make pad thai krinkley and fun, dressed in a tamarind-coconut milk. We're still playing with the proportions, but you get the idea.

(Serves 4)

Coco-Tamarind Dressing
1/4 cup coconut milk
1 lemongrass stalk
5 kaffir lime leaves or the zest of two limes
1 Tamarind pod
2 tsp. rice wine vinegar
1 tsp. soy sauce
1/8 cup grapeseed oil

Raw Pad Thai
4 or 5 large carrots
1 quarter of a purple cabbage
4 radishes
1/2 cup bean sprouts
1/2 cup raw peanuts
1/4 cup cilantro leaves
4 scallions

1. In a small sauce pan, heat the coconut milk on medium heat. Beat the lemongrass against a hard clean surface until the outer laers start to split (this brings out more flavor int he infusion) and cut into manageable pieces. Place lemongrass into saucepan. Add kaffir lime. Let this heat until a rolling boil, then turn down to a simmer. Let cook for 15 minutes, then let cool.

2. Using your fingers,break open the tamarind pod and dig out each goop coated seed. Take a paring knife and carefully make an insicion that breaks through the goop membrane to the nut of the tamarind; then squeeze out the seed. Add tamarind pulp to the coconut milk mixture, blend or pulse together until smooth.

3. Combine the tamarind pulp, soy sauce and rice wine vinegar and chilled coconut milk in a blender or robot coupe and pulse until well combined. While blending, add the grapeseed oil in a steady stream to make an emulsion. Blend for an additional minute after all the oil is in the mixture and your sauce is done.

4. Roughly peel your carrots. Using a mandolin, or your vegetable peeler, slice carrots into thin ribbons. Collect in a large mixing bowl. Slice your purple cabbage in the same fashion. (Veggies should look like the garnish on a typical pad thai dish). Slice your radishes into pickle-sized chips. Add bean sprouts.

5. In a small sauté pan, toast your raw peanuts until slightly brown, about 5 minutes on medium heat. Let cool and chop roughly. Reserve 2 Tbs. for garnish and add rest to the salad.

6. Pluck individual cilantro leaves from their stem and add, as well as the scallions, roughly chopped.

7. Toss the pad thai with tongs, dress and stir until coated evenly. Chill in the fridge for at least one hour. Plate and dust with additional peanuts.

Beverage: Echigo Stout
Soundtrack: Acid Mother's Temple, "Interplanetary Love"

For the latest hot-ass recipe contribution from a Hot Knives associate, we tapped our sometime radio producer friend Meghan who has been busy baking cookies to raise money for a nutso bike tour she's doing to raise money for an AIDS donation. Last time we hung with Meghan she was building her first road bike and still getting used to riding next to cars. Now she's placing in Wolfpack biker races and riding upwards of 50 miles a day to train for her upcoming mission. We include her recipe for vegan chocolate death cookies as a gift to you all. Any words of encouragement or pledge dollars you can throw her way are whole-heartedly appreciated. Hot Knives will be making a contribution. Break a leg Meghan, show those Wolfpack fuckers how to bake! Take it away!

It's amazing to think that just 7 or so months ago, I was too fearful to get on a bike at all, and now I'm pumped to ride all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles for a great cause. Please donate what you can and forward my info to anyone you can think of. All the dough goes to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center for HIV/AIDS services, including prevention and medication. Check out my page to donate or read.

This recipe makes a crapload of awesome cookies that are super moist and may be addictive. (Vegan cookie porn photos courtesy of Gary Kavanagh)

Meghan D's Triple Chocolate Death

2 1/2 tbsp ground flax seeds
1 cup soymilk
4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cup canola oil
4 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour
1 1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup cocoa nibs
2 cups vegan chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Mix the soymilk and flax seeds together in a blender, pulse and set aside.

3. In one mixing bowl, stir together the sugar, oil and vanilla.

4. In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients, the flour, coco powder, baking soda and salt (leaving out the chips and nibs)

5. Bit by bit, stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, both the blender of soy-flax and the bowl of sugary vanilla goo. Add more flour if the batter seems to sticky/runny.

6. Mix in the nibs and chips finally.

7. Now, form the cookies into pinball-sized shapes on a baking sheet and then smoosh them down so they're more like disks. Place them on a slightly greased (canola oil or cooking spray or Earth Balance) cookie sheet.

8. Bake 'em 12 minutes.

Beverage: Chilled, organic unsweetened soymilk
Soundtrack: Tomorrow's "White Bicycle"

The most pious among us believe that if you pray long enough for something, you're bound to get it. Well, if that's the case, some sour-tongued beer geek in our neck of the woods has been prostrating up a storm, because last week we got word of three cases of Russian River's 'Supplication' hitting a couple select L.A. stores. The limited release, 14-month barrel-aged, self-described "American wild ale" has churned up impressive praise from the webby scrutinizers. It helps that its name references the nondenominational past-time of groveling before God. Not being huge fans of Russian River, but also not wanting to miss tasting the hype, we grabbed two bottles: one to slurp now, and one to save for later.

To be frank, the tasting scenario was less seriously critical than normal. The bottle got popped around 4 pm on a 90-degree Friday afternoon -- when just about any drivel will taste like the nectar of a bejeweled duke. But discerning or not, this beer has a pair of wine legs.

Russian River's Supplication

Poured haphazardly into a glimmering German pilsner glass, the stuff came out amber and hazy with a huge, watery head of the kind of froth you wanna flick on someone's nose like bubble bath suds. The glassware choice ruled, because all of the crazy carbonation traveled from the base of the glass to the surface in little unpredictable patterns, like shooting stars. That bubbly turbulence is thanks to a refermentation process allowed in the bottle, champagne styles. Despite being a brown ale, the nose was all watermelon Sour Patch kids, puckery smelling. The first hit to the tongue is sour cherries, not sweet like some, but dry -- drier than fossilized wood. Then comes an even woodsier forest taste, like biting into oak bark, followed by what we can only describe as what would happen if you madly shook Angostura cocktail bitters into a lambic. Right at the end, the sour brew actually smooths out into a buttery, vanilla tannin-sy, roll-around-on-your-tongue sensation. Consider us converted, just don't expect us to talk to a god about it.

Dairy Pairy: Petite Basque, bloomy sheep's milk
Soundtrack: Comet's On Fire's "Pussy Foot the Duke"