Kimchee Shimeji

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Hot Knives

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Lately you’re favorite kitchen hood-rats have been slammed to the gills with the rigmarole of our non-hyperspace rat races. We’ve been slumping into beers and books a little too quickly in these first weeks of January, and our innate drive to spend three hours cooking after eight hours working has been a little stunted. We’ve been making lots of quick fix meals of late and this one was at the top of the list.
This recipe was inspired by the spoils of Lake’s recent conquest of a Korean market in Torrance, the dregs of a jar of Kimchee on the verge of spoilage, and an elemental desire for Umami. The dish requires little prep time and can be made a la minute for three or thirteen in less than 20. The two more obscure items, Shisho leaves and Simeji/beech mushrooms can be found in most Japanese and or Korean Grocers.

One Pan, Two Plates

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8 oz Simeji Mushrooms
2 Leeks sliced
10 baby green or black tomatoes, quartered
4 cloves of garlic diced
½ Tsp. Sesame Oil
¼ cup Napa Cabbage Kimchee,
¼ cup Kimchee brine
2 Tbs. soy sauce
8 Shisho leaves
1. Heat a medium sauté pan on high heat while you clean your leek. Start by slicing off the roots at the end and the millimeter of white stalk they are attached to. Also, chop off the last 2-3″ of the greens at the end of the stalk (if you make your own stock, keep these in your stockpile). Now slice the leek in half from top to bottom and rinse with cold water. When you’ve washed out all the dirt and sand, make one incision from top to bottom of each 1/2 stalk and then slice horizontally as thin as you can.
2. Throw the leeks in the pan.
3. Snip the ends off of your Shimejis using kitchen shears or a paring knife, and rinse them under cold water. Pat them dry with towels and throw them in the dry pan with the leeks. Dry sauté until the mushrooms are browning and releasing their juices.
4. Quarter all your little tomatoes, and slice your garlic. Add them to the mix, with the sesame oil and the minced kimchee and toss.
5. After all the contents of the pan are nice and hot, about three minutes, add the kimchee juice and cook until the juice is almost completely gone, about three more minutes.
6. Fan out the Shisho leaves on the plates you plan on using, and make a concise pile of the contents of your pan on each set of leaves. The heat from the sautéed veggies will cause the leaves to release some of their wonderful perfume.
7. Return the pan to the flame and keep cooking until the pan is virtually dry, then add the soy sauce and cook until a viscous sludge remains.
8. Garnish your meal with the aforementioned sludge.
Beverage: Hitachino’s Red Rice Ale
Soundtrack: Boris’ Vein

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Old Ruffian

Posted on January 12, 2008 by Hot Knives

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There have been days when we’ve cursed the Rocky Mountains for keeping the Colorado beers we love (and those we think we could love, if that love were only given a chance) from reaching our beer dealers in Los Angeles — silver bullet indeed. We’re used to getting pretty much whichever beer we want, when we want it. So knowing that Avery withholds some of its seasonals and six-packs from reaching us in Los Angeles, well, it stings. And staring at pictures of Great Divide beers online and not being able to find them anywhere? Quite simply it’s torture. Of course, we know it’s not Great Divide or Avery or any other brewery’s fault we can’t drink their beer. It’s just economics and geography. Still, it makes us sad.
So, when on a recent trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico, we ran headfirst into the Great Divide section of a local liquor emporium, it was like a screechy “Oh my god, look at you!” family reunion. We introduced ourselves first to Old Ruffian, their barleywine-style ale. We got to know each other in a garage on a snowy Christmas morning. Filled to the brim from New Mexico veggie breakfast burritos, feeling awesome about wearing motorcycle gloves, we popped the top of this bad boy, literally, inside the engine of a 1957 Chevy. Albuquerque is hardcore.
And this beer is hardcore. Poured like a handshake into a frosty pint glass, Old Ruffian froths with a wavy head of hop-scented foam — like a mane of skunky hair on a Hells Angels biker. The rest of the glass shimmers like a molasses soda. Old Ruffian is the kind of badass brew that balances sugar, sweet and sour notes diplomatically without wussing out on any of them. There’s the piney hop sting at first taste, and a maple syrup throat itch while gulping. It’s a little juicy, a little boozy, and totally thirst quenching despite it’s dangerous ABV. If you’re east of the Rockies, and you can get it, don’t be afraid of this beer, deep down it’s not so rough: like a biker with a mom tattoo.

Dairy Pairy: Barbeillon
Soundtrack: George Thorogood’s “I Drink Alone”

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White Widows

Posted on January 8, 2008 by Hot Knives

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In Lieu of super traditional New Year dishes like Tamales or Posole we opted for nothing but booze this year. In the bleary eyed aftermath (the last two weeks) we’ve all been craving a little something from the solid southwestern repertoire of beans, squash and corn, known historically as the horticultural triumvirate of The Three Sisters. What to do with the top three vegan gifts from the ancients? Roasted chili rellenos.
Out of regional necessity, and in hopes of stoking the inherent human inclination towards the miniature and cute, we subbed the glorious New Mexican green chili for the lesser known White Chili, known in L.A. as Gueritos (little whities). Vibe with these little guys the next time you have taco night with your roommates and step up the revelry.

Roasted Gueros

9 Guero Chilies
1. Crank your over to 450 degrees.
2. Roast the whities for about 15 minutes, or until they have browned considerably. Remove them with tongs, brush them with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and wait for your fillings to be completed. Stab each pepper at the base of its stem with a sharp knife while they are still hot to keep them from deflating. (Leave one unpoked and watch…its kinda cool)

Anasazi Beans

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1 cup Anasazi beans, soaked overnight
1 yellow onion, diced
6 cloves of garlic, minced
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 Cups vegetable stock
2 Cups water
2 Bay leaves
2 Tsp. smoked salt
3. Saute the garlic and onion in the olive oil in a larger pot until both begin to brown. Strain the soaked beans and add to the pot; stir until the beans are at the same temperature as the aromatics (three minutes.)
4. Add the vegetable stock and bring to a boil, then add the water, the bay leaves and the smoked salt. Continue to cook until the beans are tender, around 45 minutes.

Maize Misto

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2 ears of corn, shucked and kerneled
…or, 1 can of corn that you like
1 cup picked and chopped cilantro
2 cups grape tomatoes, quartered
1/2 Tsp. ground cumin
1 Tbs. rice vinegar
The juice of two limes
5. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and let sit to marry until you are done with everything else. Easy right?

Chimayo Chayote

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1 Chayote squash, diced
4 scallions, sliced
1 Tbs. of olive oil
1 Tsp. of salt
2 Tsp. Chimayo red chile flakes
2 Tsp. diced fresh sage
6. Heat a large cast iron skillet or non stick pan on medium heat and add the Chayote. Cook it dry for ten to fifteen minutes, its liquid will steam the vegetable.
7. Add all other ingredients and continue to saute for another five minutes. Hit the squash with some balsamic vinegar to briefly deglaze.

To Serve

Carefully cut around the base of each Guero’s stem with a sharp knife and gently remove the stem and the seeds. Stuff one chili per person with each of the fillings and serve with veganaise, herbs, and your favorite hot sauces.
Beverage: Stone’s Ruination IPA
Soundtrack: The Byrd’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo

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Hash Greens

Posted on January 5, 2008 by Hot Knives

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Though we’re more than happy to sling out menu ideas to restaurateur friends when asked, we also have a secret game we play whereby every dish we cook up gets graded for whether it could one day occupy the menu of a Hot Knives restaurant. This is one of those dishes: a winter harvest hash that dresses up potatoes like a hot salad.
Obviously, hash browns are the undisputed make-or-break side of any brekky or brunch. But a good hash can be the main attraction, especially if it’s not brown at all, but rather colored with other veggies and speckled with garnishes that elevate it from cheap filler to decorative entrée. Here, we worked with what’s in season, strong green leafies, blanched to retain color, and slow cooked with awesome pee wee banana fingerlings. Plus, it’s a seasonal special that could change weekly or monthly” in spring, try pea shoots and asparagus, etc. With some artful squirts of catsup, this breakfast even looks more like an expensive dinner plate.

Winter Harvest Hash

(Serves 4)
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4 cups water
4 Tbs. kosher salt
1 cup kale
1 cup rainbow Swiss chard
4 medium fingerling potatoes
3 Tbs. olive oil
2 Tbs. vegan margarine
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 medium-sized carrots, chopped
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. fresh black pepper
1. Bring 4 cups of heavily salted water to boil in a medium-sized pot. Meanwhile prepare an ice bath in a large bowl and have ready a pair of tongs or salad spoons. Roughly chop the kale and chard, saving the colorful stems for later. Dunk the greens in the boiling water for no longer than 10 seconds and swiftly plop in ice bath to cool immediately. This’ll make your greens… green. Set them aside as well.
2. Get the water back to a hearty boil and drop in the potatoes. Cook for about 5 minutes and remove from water.
3. In a cast iron skillet with a lid, or similar large pan, heat oil and margarine on high heat. Add onions and garlic, followed by celery and carrots. Cook for 5 minutes. Meanwhile slice your hot potatoes into scalloped spheres and add to the pan. Stir thoroughly and season with salt and pepper.
4. Cook for another five minutes and then add greens to the top. Dice the colorful chard stems and add half of them as well, saving the last for garnish. Cover and cook for 10-20 minutes.
5. Once the greens are wilty and potatoes and thoroughly cooked, stir thoroughly, cook off any excess liquid from greens and plate.

Garnish

ketchup (generous amount)
hot sauce
veganaise
diced purple onion
diced chard stems
6. To garnish: squirt decorative ketchup and hot sauce on plate, add dollop of veganaise and dice the chard stems for a sprinkling on the plate. Then put hash in the middle of the plate and serve.
Beverage: Lagunita’s Sirius Cream Ale
Soundtrack: Beta Band’s “Push It Out”

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Sweet Rolls

Posted on December 29, 2007 by Hot Knives

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In preparation for the morning after New Year’s Eve, we’ve been scouring our brains and books for something new and different. What we came up with was a newfangled application for an 80-year-old organism: Madam Yellott’s heirloom sourdough start. Meagan’s used this sourdough start to make some of the best cinnamon rolls we’ve ever gorged upon…so we thought of making something a little more savory.
Once you get your hands on a solid sourdough start, this recipe is a snap and infinitely variable. Stuff the dough with whatever you like: Kale and Garlic, Chard and Roquefort, anything will be awesome.
Happy New Year!

Dough

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1 cup wet sourdough start
1 egg (optional, but somewhat essential)
1 Tsp. salt
1 Tsp. baking powder
1 Tsp. baking soda
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup canola oil
1 Tbs. Brewers yeast
1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly with your hands.
2. On a (very) well floured surface, knead the dough with vigor for about five minutes.
3. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin (or a pint glass if you haven’t one) to form a large rectangle, with the dough approximately 1/16th of an inch thick.

Filling

3 Tbs. butter (or vegan margarine)
5 shallots, peeled and sliced thin
1/4 cup cream sherry
2 Tbs. Sherry wine vinegar
1 cup of picked and chopped dill
1 cup shredded aged cheese (we used Roncal)
Salt and Pepper
4. Brown those shallots! Toast them dry in a nonstick pan or a cast iron on medium high heat, and then add the butter. When the butter is bubbling and just starting to brown, crank the heat to high and add the sherry and the vinegar. Cook until most of the liquid has evaporated, about five minutes.
5. Spread the sherry butter shallot goo all over the giant dough square on your counter. Make sure to spread evenly all the way to the edges.
6. Apply the dill and the cheese in a similar fashion; evenly distribute all the way tot he corners of your dough sheet.
7. Sprinkle salt, grind pepper all over the thing. and pre-heat your oven to 350.
8. As if it were, that’s right, a joint: carefully roll the rectangle into itself. start at the bottom and curl inwards until you have a bulging log. Use a sharp knife and slice your rolls off of the left side of the log. You can make them as thick as you’d like, ours were about 1.5″ thick.
9. Gingerly place the rolls side by each in a greased (with butter) baking pan and bake for approximately 15 minutes. You want the edges of the rolls to brown.
Beverage: Black Flag Imperial Stout
Soundtrack: Inca Ore’s Birds in the Bushes

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Stufflets

Posted on December 26, 2007 by Hot Knives

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We like to file this recipe adaptation under the ‘My-kid-just-went-vegetarian-what-do-we-make-for-Christmas-dinner?’ category. Because that’s exactly how we started making it. After all, back in the ’90s, before Food Network and Google booted the Joy of Cooking, the conundrum of cooking for a vegetarian at holidays usually meant dusting off the Moosewood Cookbook. In our case, mom seized on some god awfully named recipe for “Nut Cheese Balls.”
But ever since, a loose adaptation of that recipe has stuck with us. It’s basically a dish of nut and cheese patties twice baked and topped with a béchamel sauce. It’s fatty and far from vegan, but for those who eat dairy, or make exceptions for the holidays, it’s one more great anti-Tofurkey entrée — like a stuffing, fake meat cutlets and eggnog all baked into one… Stuffing Cutlets… Stufflets.

Nut-Cheese Balls

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1 1/2 cups walnuts, ground
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
1 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
1 Tbs. dried sage
1 Tbs. dried thyme
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
1 cup organic whole milk
2 cage-free, veg-fed eggs
1. Pre-heat your oven to 370 degrees while you prepare your nut-cheese mixture.
2. Using a food processor or blender, grind your walnuts to a fine powder and place mixture in a large mixing bowl. Next, shred the cheddar and combine with breadcrumbs to the mixing bowl. Wash and chop parsley, add it too. Season mixture with sage, thyme, salt and pepper. Mix well with your hands.
3. Now add a cup of milk and the two eggs, mixing thoroughly.
4. Grease a deep baking pan with olive oil or cooking spray. Spoon out large balls or medium-sized patties of the nut-cheese mixture. Place them in the baking pan like you would do cookie dough.
5. Cover pan with aluminum foil and bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until crisping at the edges but still gooey to the touch. Set aside, still covered, until béchamel sauce is prepared.

Bechamel Sauce

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4 Tbs. butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 Tbs. flour
2 1/2 cups organic whole milk (warm)
1/2 white onion
6 whole cloves
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
6. In a medium saucepan, put the butter on medium heat and add minced garlic. Saute for about five minutes.
7. Once butter bubbles have subsided and garlic is smelling nutty, make a roux by adding a tablespoon of flour at a time, whisking thoroughly to keep from over-clumping. Once all flour is added, slowly whisk in warm milk about half a cup at a time.
8. Cut a white onion in half so that the petals stay intact as one piece. Take the cloves and punch them through the outer layer of onion so they stick embedded in it. Add your onion half, complete with cloves, into the liquid. Season with nutmeg, thyme, salt and cayenne pepper. Bring liquid up to a slow boil and turn down heat, simmering for at least 15 more minutes.
9. When ready to finish dish, pour béchamel sauce over top the baking pan of nut-cheese patties. Sauce should almost cover them, but try to save about a half cup of warm béchamel for added garnish. Bake for another 20 minutes or just until sauce is bubbling. Serve with a squirt of fresh béchamel on the plate.
Beverage: Great Divide’s Old Ruffian Barleywine-style ale
Soundtrack: Fiery Furnaces’ “Slavin’ Away”

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Beery Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2007 by Hot Knives

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It is Christmas Eve, heathens. Time to make a chestnut fire, a batch of fresh bread and don wool socks. Of course, that can be a tall order if you have to, oh, say, work around the clock or spend Christmas apart from dudes and family. Our fallback many a winter — the only thing we’ve found that can replace the holiday cheer of mom attempting vegan cookies or skipping church to make snow angels in your parent’s yard — has been seasonal ales, big bombers of winter beer and frothy Christmas specials. At the risk of sounding like depressed alkies who lean on a bottle for Christmas spirit, consider that the perfect winter beer will offer the triumvirate mentioned above: chestnuts and fresh bread in the palate, and enough booze to keep your feet (and soul) warm. So, here’s a first stab at some of the better winter beers we’ve had this December, with more to come. More importantly, it’s not too late to run out and grab a couple as stocking stuffers…

St. Bernardus Christmas Ale

A light molasses pour, fluff bubbles with waft of carbo-buzz, subtle roasted chestnuts and malt sugar undertones — this is a safe-bet table-pleaser. Whereas some of the St. Bernardus brews are the idyllic frothy beverage emitted from the barrel around the neck of a life-saving St. Bernard, this Christmas ale is like the candy cane mead swigged by a naughty, Belgian shopping mall Santa.
Dairy Pairy: Saenkanter Gouda
Soundtrack: Dandy Warhol’s “Little Drummer Boy”

Avery’s Old Jubilation Ale

You know the old Budweiser ads with steeds pumping their sinewy leg muscles through snow and ice with a Bud sleigh behind ‘em? Now get ready for the real thing. This Colorado brewery’s winter ale is a standout for one reason: they don’t go sprinkling spices in their kegs like they’re baking holiday ho-hos — just a strong mahogany syrup made of five malts, no added herbs, and lots of nutty mellowness. One of the better meal pints this year; it won’t mess with your perfectly spiced vegan pig loin.
Dairy Pairy: Ossau-Iraty
Soundtrack: Spiritualized’s “Oh Happy Day”

Deschutes’ Jubel

Oregon flagship brewers went all ‘Peace On Earth’ with this year’s holiday brew. It’s a rare attempt at even-handed hopping and malting. Flowery juniper pine-sol hits first, crystal clear sipping upfront, then rounded out by a robust, if jumbled, baker’s chocolate and oven-scented malts after-taste. Good, not great, but still plenty worth serving to weaker-budded buddies.
Dairy Pairy: Fig cake
Soundtrack: Bright Eye’s “Road to Joy”

Alesmith’s Yulesmith Holiday Ale

It feels like just yesterday that we were scarfing blistered peanuts, diving for cover from the neighborhood kids’ firecracker wars and glugging on the red-and-blue tinted Alesmith Hoilday ale for Fourth of July. Now we’re decking the halls with their other holiday seasonal and ‘tis the mother f-ing season. This bomber pours red-copper brown like a rusty faucet and tastes like a malt wreath fell in your double IPA. Style-wise, Yulesmith is actually a bit like Jubel: malty and hoppy at once, but they pull it off with flying colors.
Dairy Pairy: Tuxford And Tebbet’s Mature Black Wax Cheddar
Soundtrack: Belle and Sebastian’s “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”

N’Ice Chouffe

How do goblins celebrate Christ’s birth, you might ask? Well the ones behind the Belgian Brewerie d’Anchouffe throw a bunch of orange peel and fresh thyme in their batches of brown ale and let it get spicy. At a recent house party we stuck a bottle of this elfin nectar in the freezer and pulled it out just as ice was starting to congregate around the bottle. Corked and poured, this beer came out a muddy, herby slurpy. The thyme coulda been stronger for us garden geeks, but the citrus was perfectly balanced against medicinal malt notes. A good 750 ml for late-night Christmas shopping runs or Home Alone-style holiday heists, perhaps, or of course outdoor fire parties with gnomes.
Dairy Pairy: Boulette d’Avesnes, washed with beer and spices
Soundtrack: Grandaddy’s “Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland”

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Belgian Onion Soup

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Hot Knives

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There are few perceivable pillars of French cooking that are as widely and voraciously loved as scalding hot onion soup cloaked in a blistering layer of melted gruyere. Like many of the epic French dishes that cannonnize the cuisine of rural folk vegetarians usually remain wholly uninvited. How does one mitigate that beef stock in every single recipe of the gooest of soups?
Simple: Beer.
After trying small batches of all three colors fo the French tricolore, we settled on Chimay Blue; a dubbel style beer thats a houshold name for boozers. We also went too far in trying an earlier version of this plot…it was bad. But the Grade Reserve, or any other basic Dubbel, can become a super substitute for reduced animal gore. The malts and sugars eaak out a strikingly similar flavor when combined with all the wonderful juices of way to many onions.

Soup

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2 Tbs. of butter
2 Tbs. of extra virgin olive oil
3 large onions halved and sliced thin
6 cloves of garlic
4 shallots
2 cups of Chimay Grande Reserve
4 cups of vegetable stock
4 bay leaves
6 sprigs of thyme
½ tsp ground white pepper
1. Heat a medium sized pot on medium heat. Add the butter and let it blister.
2. Add the onion and cook uncovered. Let them sit for about four minute and then stir. Repeat until the onions have all begun to brown.
3. Add the olive oil, garlic and shallots and stir in the same fashion as before, one every five minutes, until the garlic an shallots have caramelized.
4. Add the beer, crank the heat to just shy of high. Let the beer boil off until there is ½ as much beer volume as onion volume.
5. Add the stock, bay leaves, thyme, and white pepper. Cook until the liquid has reduced by about two finger-widths. Taste the soup and add salt to adjust. Cook for at least an addidional 20 minutes before garnishing (below). In an ideal world, you should let the soup sit a day before serving it.

To Serve

4-6 slices of a crusty bread
2 cups shredded gruyere cheese

Keeping it Vegan

The same crusty bread
1 Tbs. of brewers yeast for each slice of bread
1 Tbs. of extra virgin olive oil for each slice of bread
1. Ladle your soup into oven safe receptacles, being mindful to leave one finger-width for your cheesy or cheese-free toasts.
2. Float the toast in the center of each bowl and cover with cheese. If you wanna do it vegan; douse toast with the olive oil.
3. Pop the bowls under the broiler either in your oven or your toaster oven, and broil until the cheese is bubbly and brown, or the olive oil slicked bread turns golden. Garnish with pinches of salt, and brewers yeast if appropriate.
4. Don’t burn your tongue.
Beverage: De Proef’s Flemish Primative Ale
Soundtrack: Metal Urbain’s Hysterie Connective

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The Sandwich Search

Posted on December 15, 2007 by Hot Knives

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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

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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

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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”

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Bad Mother

Posted on December 12, 2007 by Hot Knives

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With any luck, Lake Sharp’s widely popular and totally informative vimeo has all you Hot Knives devotees bottling your own pro-biotic elixirs and feeling rad. For those of you that did, you probably have huge, intimidating fungi festering in cabinets verging on frightfully successful sizes; we have another project for you.
After a somewhat passive attempt to grow a vinegar mother from a prodigious looking organ at the bottom of a favorite bottle of acid failed miserably, we asked Lake for a snippet of her Kombucha mother. While we were all a little skeptical that the mother would take to wine, after approximately five weeks we struck liquid gold: home made pro-biotic vinegar. This stuff has all the awesome powers that a bottle of Braggs boasts, with the added bonus of deep and savory wine vinegar flavor. As authentic vinegar geeks, we must declare that we’ve never tasted anything quite like the Oedipal fruits of this shot in the dark d.i.y. Endeavor. While tart enough to evoke all that is needed from store bought acidified wine, this liquid has a low-end that has n’aer to for been experienced. Sherry vinegars mixed with 50-year-old vintages don’t have this kind of bottom line: sweetness of the original liquor is balanced by the almost meaty bi-product of the living organisims feeding on the leftover sugars from the decanted wine. Umami city. All you need is a strong starter mother, ~13 bucks to spend on wine, and 5 weeks worth of patience.
We aren’t stopping here and neither should you. In February we’ll be reporting on Prosecco, Tripel and Stout experiments of the same nature.

Ingredients

A piece of healthy Kombucha Mother
3 bottles of red wine

Equipment

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The largest glass jar you can find
A kitchen towel
Twine
1. With clean hands, give the Kombucha mother a nice rinse, and place in your giant jar.
2. Gently add the wine one bottle at a time. When it comes to selecting wines, make sure it something you like to drink. We set a cap at $4.99 per bottle, which usually will find you some decent appellations at the old Trader Joes.
3. When all of the wine has been integrated, give the jar a soft stir with a wooden or plastic spoon. REMEMBER: METAL KILLS MOTHERS, so don’t use any instruments made of metal.
4. Top the jar with a kitchen rag, and tie a piece of twine around the lid. Place the jar in a dark corner of a cupboard that doesn’t experience temperature or moisture variation. Under your sink? Not the best idea. You want to have a stable hospitable environment for your mother to flourish, without encouraging other types of mold to grow.
5. Wait for five weeks.
mother3.jpg
6. Thirty-five days later, taste your vinegar, using a wooden or plastic spoon. IF it has a pleasant acidic sting, then it’s ready. If not give it another week and try again.
If you take this plunge with us, keep us posted on your progress, and your problems. We’re on our third batch and can answer any questions you have. Take five weeks and never buy vinegar again!

Soundtrack: Five weeks of Ethiopiques
Beverage: Avery’s Old Jubilation

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