Ceremonies: May 2007 Archives

This recipe is safe for work.

Every Friday, Evan’s co-workers take turns bringing a breakfast spread. We have a list on a bulletin board and an email system whereby you’re reminded kindly that it’s your week. Also, you are given the option of not participating (though really, how is that an option?)

One time the accountant brought a quiche and some Sunny D, another time 30 breakfast burritos (one no meat!) got dumped on the staff kitchen counter. But mostly, everyone goes with the safe standard of two-dozen bagels from the admittedly premium New York-style Brooklyn Bagels down the street, some light whipped cream cheese and some onion, tomato and smoked salmon lox.

Recently, I got the reminder email and so we decided to challenge the status quo a bit with some mildly spicy, greasy A.M. Mexican food — shaved veggie chilequilles with rice, beans and roasted salsa from scratch. It’s a platter that doesn’t require a full recipe run down here, but we thought it’d be a perfect time to detail how to make easy red chile sauce for enchiladas, hash or burrito drownings. This sauce mirrors the kind you can buy for a buck or two in cans, but it has more of a bite, a wonderful “from-the-ground” rustic spice to it. It’s also dirt-cheap and you save the can. Obviously, the further from the Southwest you are, the harder it is to find reliable dried red chile (like cayenne but redder and richer and less spicy) that doesn’t suck. But if you know someone in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas or Colorado, we’re sure you can figure something out.

Red Chile Sauce

1/4 canola oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 white onion, chopped
4 Tbs. all purpose flour
1/4 cup dried red chile
2 cups vegetable stock (warmed in microwave)
2 Tbs. sea salt
2 bay leaves

1. Heat a medium saucepan with the oil on high. Add the garlic and onion. Cook and stir for 5 minutes.

2. If it seems like the onion has used up or absorbed much of the oil, add another tablespoon or two before adding the flour slowly while you stir with a wooden spoon. This will make the oil and flour clump together in a rue.

3. Then add the red chile and let the clumpy mixture toast for 1-2 minutes before dumping in the broth. Once the sauce is up to a rolling boil, if it still seems thin (check the consistency of the sauce by running finger along wet wooden spoon) add 2 more Tbs. of flour while whisking thoroughly. Once it cools it will also thicken a bit.

4. Season and let simmer for 20 minutes.

At the risk of over reminiscing, suffice it to say that we do brunch a lot (a lot) and rarely does it turn out as picture perfect as the recent Urban Honking feast in Portland two weeks ago. Diners ranged from small babies in Easter hats to scummy folk punks, all sucking down asparagus appetizers with a gorgeous 4-part brunch plate.

We’ll recreate the recipes here for you now, but don’t expect the vibe to translate. Unless you invite 25 of your closest friends and bro-down hard with this food. Thanks again to Claire L. Evans and Mikey who made it happen and had the foresight to grab a camera. Video footage follows...

Wild Forest Tofu

Tofu Scramble
1 block tofu, extra firm
1/4 cup olive oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
6 shitake mushrooms
1/2 basket of crimini mushrooms
6 sprigs thyme
1 leek, cleaned and chopped
1 bunch celery leaves (optional)
2 Tbs. Bragg’s or soy sauce

Truffle Salad Topping
1 cup arugula
1 Tbs. whole grain mustard
2 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
2 Tbs. white truffle-infused olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 beet
1 Oregon truffle

1. Press your tofu.

2. Briefly sauté the mushrooms to bring out woodsy flavors: Slice shitakes in thin slices; quarter the criminis. Heat a large pan with 1 Tbs. of olive oil and the 5 cloves of garlic. Once hot, add mushrooms and thyme, and cook for 3-4 minutes or until starting to get juicy. Salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

3. Using the same pan, add half the remaining oil and sauté the leek and celery tops. Unwrap your tofu and slice into big slabs.

4. Once leek is translucent, add the tofu and use a wooden spoon to scramble into mush. Season with Bragg’s or soy and let cook 8-10 minutes or until tofu is slightly brown.

5. Whip together the salad dressing of mustard, apple cider vinegar, truffle oil, salt and pepper. Toss the arugula and set aside.

6. Once scramble is fully cooked, add mushrooms again for last minute.

7. Slice beet and truffles super thin. Plate the scramble and top with dressed arugula. Then place one beet shaving and one truffle shaving on top.

Beer Braised Soyrizo Chili

4 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
2 leeks, cleaned quartered and sliced
4 heads green garlic, chopped
2 stalks celery, minced
4 ripe Roma tomatoes, chopped
12 oz. Deschutes Black Butte Porter
2 cans great northern beans, drained
1 tube Soyrizo
¼ cup ketchup
1 Tsp. ground cumin
2 Tbs. salt
2 Tbs. ground pepper

1. In a larger pot, heat the olive oil on medium heat. Add the aromatics and vegetables in waves: first add the leeks until they begin to wilt, then the green garlic until it wilts, until you’ve added the tomatoes. You should sped around 15 minutes sautéing.

2. Now add the beer and cook until it reduces by ½. Add the beans, Soyrizo, and ketchup. Cook for an additional 10 minutes and then incorporate the spices. Adjust the flavor with salt and additional ketchup if necessary.

3. Reduce heat to low and let bubble for an additional 15-20 minutes. Serve with crusty bread.

“Baked Potato”

8 baby potatoes
3 Tbs. vegan mayonnaise
1 Tsp. ground black pepper
1 Tsp. Finishing salt
1 Tsp. Smoked paprika
1 Tbs. bacos
1 sprig fresh dill
1 small bunch chives, minced

1. Scrub all your potatoes under cold running water. Look at your potato as if it were an egg. Slice the skin off of the length-wise edges on the left and the right sides of your theoretical ovum. Need another analogy? Make two slices on either side of the potato as to make the apex of parenthesis into plateaus, () = {}. Whatever.

2. Now, slice each potato in half right down the middle, as to make the now completely exposed face the “top” and the sliced face that you jut figured how to do the “bottom.” Using a metal measuring spoon (teaspoon size preferred), or a melon baller, gently scoop out a ½ sphere in the center of each potato’s “face/center.” Be careful to not dig too deep or your potato cups won’t hold much. Repeat until your 8 baby potatoes become 16 potato cups.

3. Now place all the potatoes in a large pot and cover with cold water. Salt the water liberally, and then turn the flame on high. When the water boils, your potatoes are done.

4. Mix the veganaise with the black pepper.

5. Using a spatula, or a pastry bag, fill each potato cup with the peppery mayo. Pick the tips off the dill so you have pretty little sprigs, and plant one firmly in each cup. Sprinkle each potato with chives, salt, paprika and bacos in the most artful manner you can muster.

Beverage: Rogue’s Imperial IPA
Soundtrack: Random dudes YouTubing U2 songs.

Spring is essential; you gotta get refreshed, reborn. But because the seasons have been unnaturally fucked in Los Angeles, where the city’s been burning, it’s been hard to do here. So, last weekend we decided to celebrate the rites of spring elsewhere, and the extended Hot Knives family hopped a flight to Portland, Oregon, our homepage away from home — where the season of rebirth still means something.

It just so happened that shit was going down in a major way thanks to Urban Honking co-founder Jona Bechtolt. The multi-media music maker was celebrating his record release last weekend, with the party of the year: Yacht on a Yacht. So we knew that everyone involved in this little web community that we’ve wanted to meet would be in top form.

Originally the plan was to show up to cater the Yacht party, a 120-person vegan extravaganza. But due to some seriously unprofessional shenanigans on the part of the promoter our vegan banquet budget was slashed. We had to cancel. And while the prospect of a weekend party vacation in the City of Roses was still rad, we’d both gotten hyped on the notion of flying up with a mission, to get stressed, cook our hearts out and get drunk. So we were bummed. For a while it looked bleak.

Nevertheless, Hot Knives made it up to Portland for a Bacchanalian whirlwind. Our fast friend Mikey “made it happen” (his radical pet motto and mission in life) and organized a vegan donut tasting, a coffee face-off, a manly beer excursion and a massively successful Urban Honking brunch party, where Hot Knives got to whip up a 4-part plate for 25 hungry, hung-over people.

Early Saturday morning, we took a tour of the infamous downtown Portland farmers market, easily the best we’ve ever been to. Beside running into the master brewer for Hair of the Dog beers, we got to investigate some seriously fresh Oregon produce and come up with an intricate brunch menu on the fly. It was a nice test. There was basket after basket of fresh morels, ramps, curlicue ferns and hedgehog shrooms. But most were outside our budget. We zeroed in on the wild amounts of asparagus, fresh shitake mushrooms, Oregon truffles, spicy arugula and still-muddy baby potatoes.

So after sailing the mighty Willamette River on the Crystal Dolphin and watching Jona do his thing for hundreds of adoring fans, Hot Knives got to work and whipped up a monument to spring in the form of a meal. The asparagus went out as is, just blanched quickly and served alongside a vegan remoulade garnished with thyme flowers. The mushrooms ended up in a tofu forest scramble topped with arugula and white truffle salad. Baby potatoes became mini-baked potatoes dressed up in vegan sour cream, bacon bits and pyramid salt. Loaves of crackly French bread acted as bread bowls for a white bean, soy chorizo chili.

Judging from the aftermath of awesome documentation (always a given when dealing with the Ur-ho crowd), the meal was a success. Later this week we’ll post the recipes concerned, but it goes without saying that the food itself was secondary to the feeling. We saw some old friends, other old friends, and made a shit ton of new ones and generally were reminded what the point of cooking is, to us: to encourage friendship and add to a tangled web of vibe where everyone contributes what they can to a greater good. Thanks Portland!