Recently in Friendz of Hot Knives Category

When local artmaker Fritz Haeg asked Hot Knives to be part of his upcoming book launch, we just figured we'd do our quasi-catering thang (which entails setting the bar low with the whole 'we're bloggers, not caterers' vibe and then bombing guests with insane food). Fritz had other ideas.

Known for throwing nutso art salons for years in his L.A. geodesic dome, Fritz has strong feelings about parties feeling spontaneous, not too planned, and more about DIY domesticity than any showy displays.

That basically ruled out just doing sneak attack appetizers with witty names.

Other ideas came and went -- what about a bahn mi bar, or garden-to-table cooking on site, or maybe even serve-your-own dessert cones with fresh melons instead of ice cream... but nothing felt right. (Not to mention, the art institute hosting the book launch needed a health permit approved and county health inspectors insisted on us bleaching the melons.)

We had to wrestle with a new quandary: how can food be art? And more importantly how could our eaters be engaged with the grub without letting health inspectors bleach our fruits.

So we seized on doing something experiential and process-based. Instructional, educational and open for discussion, without sucking the fun out of the cooking. We learned to pickle! Pickling was perfect because its domestic, it gives home cooks new crayons to play with, and there's plenty of lactic acid science facts to rattle off. Oh yeah, and we have enviable vinegar hook-ups.

Plus it gave us the excuse to dabble more in the dark arts of preservation, which we'd only flirted with before. Indeed, for the last month both our kitchens have been slippery with weird vinegars, funky from fermentation experiments and stocked full of giant daikon radishes. We learned a lot.

But before we give away the secret tips an proportions we found worked best, suffice it to say that the process took time. We chronicled the basics in the above video. In a few days, we'll let you know how the Hot Knives Pickle Lecture Series went over with the art types.

Our friends Ali and Evan who opened a bike-friendly, veggie-heavy café in Northeast Portland this summer recently asked us to develop the “ultimate vegan breakfast sandwich” for their expanding menu. The only requirements were that it be fairly easy and inexpensive to recreate in a commercial kitchen, that it be vegan, obviously, and that it do justice to some nutso all-female roller skating dance troupe that they were thinking of naming the sammy after.

So, last weekend the Hot Knives Test Kitchen got to work. It wasn’t hard to come up with the condiments, stacking ingredients and such. We are partial to creamy spreads, so we whipped up a dill aioli out of vegan mayo. Next came the mock meat component, where we quickly settled on maple tempeh bacon. Every sandwich needs a fresh veggie and a cooked veggie, so we went for thick-sliced heirloom tomatoes and rather than the obvious spinach, we went with sautéd kale in a little soy sauce and shallots.

Last but not least we needed the anchor of the sandwich that would replace the egg. We narrowed the field down to two variations of the same idea: a mock fried egg sandwich that relied on the gooiness of a handmade polenta and made two competing sammies: Sandwich A was a patty of firm, seasoned polenta fried off to order; Sandwich B centered around a fried tomato topped with much wetter polenta that mimicked Hollandaise. Both were sickly good, although we preferred A because it was a lot easier to eat. As for which one may end up on the Little Red Bike Café menu, well, it’s not up to us, but you can check here in coming months to see if either made the cut!

Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich Ingredients

1 Tbs. vegan margarine
4 cloves garlic, miced
4 crimin mushrooms
1 tsp. fresh thyme
3 cups water
1 cube vegetable bullion
1 cup course grain polenta
pinch of kosher salt
pinch of fresh black pepper
2 3-inch strips of tempeh
1 Tbs. maple syrup
1 tsp smoked salt
1 tsp paprika
1 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 cup kale, washed
1 shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, mined
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. vegan mayonnaise
1 tsp. fresh dill
1 Ciabatta bun, or any crispy/chewy roll

Sandwich A

1. Start by making your polenta patty. Place a medium saucepan on high heat with margarine, add garlic, sliced mushrooms and thyme and suate for about 3 minutes. Bring your water to boil in a teapot and add two cups only to the saucepan. Toss in bullion and bring back to a boil, stir.

2. Now whisk in your polenta slowly and bring down heat to medium. Cook like this, whisking every so often, for about 30-40 minutes or until thick like a rich batter. If it seems too thin, add a couple pinched more of polenta. (It will continue to thicken when cool.) Then remove from heat and immediately transfer polenta to a tall rammequin. Let it cool until firm, in the freezer it takes about 15-20 minutes.

3. In the meantime, fry up your tempeh bacon: put your paprika and smoked sat on a small plate, your maple syrup in a small bowl. Dip each slice of tempeh in maple syrup and then drop in dry spices. Then in a small pan, fry in a small amount of oil until maple syrup caramelizes to a dark brown. Set aside.

4. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil to blanche your kale leaves. Dunk them for 30 seconds and then drop them straight into an ice bath to keep them green. Then sauté your washed, cut kale leaves in the same pan with oil, shallots and soy until tender like sautéd spinach. Set aside.

5. Prepare aioli by mixing chopped dill with vegan mayo.

6. Once all components are ready, bring out your chilled polenta cake and remove from rammequin. Slice off one 1-inch thick slab and cook in your sauté pan with another 1 Tbs. of vegan margarine on medium heat just until slightly browning on outside and molten inside.

Sandwich B

1. Prepare your polenta Hollandaise by bringing all three cups of water to a boil. Add bullion cube, stir. Cook on medium heat, whisking every couple of minutes for 40 minutes. Polenta should behave like slop. Season as desired. Keep on low heat until ready to serve.

2. Prepare dill aioli, maple tempeh bacon and sautéd kale as described above.

3. Fry a tomato slice, a 1-inch thick slab, in a small sauté pan with a touch of olive oil. Season as desired. Flip and cook 1 minute on each side. Serve as main component with polenta covering the rest of the sandwich layers. Use a fork.

Beverage: Mikkeller’s Beer Geek Breakfast Stout
Soundtrack: Animal Collective’s “Whaddit I Done”

Every so often we like to turn over the blog buttons to friends who have a kitchen secret or a standout recipe. The latest comes from Portland natives and recent restaurateurs Ali and Evan. We’ve known them for years and highly recommend peeps check out their new peppermint dreamboat of a shop, the Little Red Bike Café. Hit up their bike-thru window for vegan ice cream, get jacked on Courier Coffee and savory bread puddings, or just dribble at their high-res food porn. When you go, just promise you'll smack 'em one for Hot Knives for putting so much bacon on their menu! Take it away Ali and Evan...

So, we’ve got a problem. A real bad problem. But you know what they say; admitting is the first step. So here it goes. For quite some time now we have been…sigh…addicted to mushrooms. Yes, it’s true. Button, Morel, Shitake, Lobster, Porcini, Trumpet, Chanterelle. You name it we’ll eat it. Traces of the addiction can be found throughout both sides of the family so it’s really no surprise that we wound up like this. That said, when fall time hits and we’re itching for a fix we know who to call. We have a dealer, I mean friend, we’ll call him “Todd,” that has a nasty habit of uh…illegally foraging wild forest mushrooms. In our fungus-induced haze, we aid in the smuggling by providing the “mule”, our beloved Le Creuset soup kettle. Yes, fall time is when our addiction is at its peak and it means three things in our household: wood burning fires, lots o’ red wine and soup. Here’s how it all goes down…

Vegan Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup

1 Tbsp olive oil
2 medium yellow onions, chopped
1 lb. mushrooms, sliced (any mushroom will do but we particularly love chanterelles with this recipe)
1 1/2 tsp dill weed
1 Tbsp paprika
1/8 tsp cayenne
1 tsp caraway seeds
4 garlic cloves, coarsely minced
3 Tbsp tamari
2 cups vegetable stock (Imagine’s Organic No-Chicken Broth)
2 Tbsp vegan margarine
3 Tbsp flour
1 cup soymilk/soy creamer
2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
2-3 Tbsp red wine
Fresh cracked pepper

1. In a soup pot, sauté onion in oil until soft, about 5 minutes

2. Add mushrooms, dill, paprika, caraway, paprika, and cayenne then saute for 5 minutes. Add 2 Tbsp of the tamari and stock, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

3. While soup simmers, melt the margarine in a separate saucepan and add the flour. Cook one minute, stirring constantly, then whisk in the soymilk/creamer ‘til smooth.

4. Once smooth and simmer roux (yes that’s right you just made a vegan roux) over low heat, stirring constantly, until slightly thickened.

5. Once thick, whisk in the last Tbsp of tamari and then transfer to the mushroom mixture and stir in. Add garlic. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

6. Just before serving stir in the lemon juice and red wine, finish off with cracked pepper.

Beverage: Cedar Creek pinot noir (OR bitchez!)
Soundtrack: Gotan Project’s La Revancha del Tango