Vegan, Wheat-free Mac-Sal

Posted on July 9, 2007 by Hot Knives

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The classic, wet, hot, American pool party would seem to be all about exclusivity. That sucks, a lot. So we brought a classy American side dish that tastes totally inclusive: even if you hate eggs and can’t eat wheat without vomming (we keep meaning to throw more wheat-free recipes out there). This macaroni salad tastes best after a full night marinating in its own juices, but hey, sometimes the party can’t wait. More disgusting pool potluck action on the way…

Macaroni Salad

Serves 8-10
1 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
4 cups elbow brown rice pasta
1 cup veganaise
1 Tbs. Dijon mustard
1 Tbs. whole grain mustard
3 – 4 roasted whole tomatoes, chopped
3 – 4 hearts of palm, chopped
1 cup bread and butter pickles, roughly chopped
2 green onions, chopped
2 shallots, finely chopped
1 jalapeño, finely chopped
Sea salt and black pepper to taste
1. Cook your rice pasta with enough time to chill your finished salad for at least 2, and up to 24, hours. Bring a medium pot to boil with olive oil and a dash of salt, then add pasta. Stir immediately and every couple of minutes because rice likes to stick to itself. Cook for about 8 minutes or until al dente. Rinse and set aside.
2. Mix the veganainse and both mustards. Chop all other ingredients. Once pasta has cooled for a few minutes, combine all in a large bowl. Season and store in the fridge to get chilly.

Beverage: Tito’s vodka w/ lime
Soundtrack: The Who’s “Magic Bus”

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Vegan Bullshit Alert

Posted on July 7, 2007 by Hot Knives

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Dear Readerz,
Out of civic duty — and not mean spirits — we feel compelled to respectfully call out one of the leading vegan fast food joints in the L.A. area for a sad case of misrepresentation. Orean Health Express, often hailed as the Eastside mecca of realistic meat-like drive through cuisine, is fronting, hardcore.
First, full disclosure: Hot Knives is not a strictly vegan blog, nor have we ever postured ourselves as such. Occasionally we offer vegetarian recipes that hinge on questionable ingredients like cage-free eggs, French cheese and honey (which we’d still love to open up to a discussion about vegan ethics if anyone’s down for helping us hammer out a stance on the subject of said gooey nectar). We prefer to focus on vegan food, because of the challenge posed and the golden politics behind such a diet. We know how much a clean palate and strict diet regiment means to many of our readers. And we think there’s something rotten about false advertising — in this case, posing as a vegan establishment and then serving unsuspecting diners egg and dairy products. It’s not a cardinal sin, per se, we won’t rule out eating there, but it’s certainly worth alerting others who may feel differently…
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Since first feasting on the fruits of Orean more than six years ago, we’ve long extolled the North Pasadena fast food stand as being the pinnacle of imitating the vein-clogging American pastime. The fake meats are juicy yet the clover sprouts are bountiful. The cheese melts, and has long been rumored to contain the offending casein. Still, we included them in a “top ten” vegan dish shout-out earlier this year and have used them as inspiration in vegan fast food exploits. A sign posted at the restaurant and on their website, claims to contain “no egg or milk” and to use “non-dairy cheese.” However, recently it came to our attention that many of the products they serve are Morning Star Farms brand, and thereby not only far from healthy, but completely non-vegan.
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After repeated requests for what kind of hot dog they serve (they’re scary good) one employee finally spilled the beans to us. So if you eat strictly vegan, we advise you steer clear of Orean Health Express, or better yet ask them to come clean to their customer or else buy products from Yves or other vegan-friendly companies. For any company that makes much of its profit off of vegans, its unacceptable to lie about the ingredients used. That’s our take anyway.

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Steak and Eggz

Posted on July 3, 2007 by Hot Knives

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People like steak and eggs. As we understand it. First there’s the gnarly char of a gristly piece of mediocre, trounced-on red meat. Then you top it with the ooze of some barely-above-temperature chicky eggs. Sounds to us, like kind of a nightmare. But hey, one dudes’ nightmare is another dude’s Saturday belly bomb.
Since we’ve had so much surplus seitan lying around lately (last Sunday we baked 6 loaves) it seemed the perfect time to whip up an alternative to the aforementioned greasy spoon staple.
In place of eggs we seared some firm tofu and topped it with slurpy, golden heirloom tomato slices. We’re still drawing up complicated design schemes for inserting the tomatoes into sliced tofu so look for that addition later.

Seitan and “Eggs”

Makes 2 servings
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1 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
2 1/2-inch slabs of seitan
1 yellow heirloom tomato
1 shallot
2 clove garlic
1 scallion
1 tsp. nutritional yeast
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1/2 block tofu
1 Tbs. vegan margarine
sea salt and black pepper to taste
1/2 cup mixed greens
pinch of dill
1. Add half of the olive oil to a medium sized non-stick pan, heat on high and sauté the seitan until its brown, for about 2 minutes on each side. Set aside while you prepare the “eggs.”
2. Slice tomatoes into four thick slices, cut shallots and mince garlic. Add the rest of the oil to the still-hot pan. Place back on medium heat and toss in tomatoes, garlic and shallots. Let cook for five minutes on one side so as to get a little gooey. Dice scallion finely and toss on top with nutritional yeast and vinegar (tilt pan to let vinegar cook off a little). Season with salt and pepper as desired. Then slide onto an extra plate to set aside.
3. Add vegan margarine to same pan and place on medium heat again. Cut two slabs of tofu to mimic the size of the seitan and add to hot pan. Saute the tofu for 4-5 minutes on each side while seasoning. Turn on high heat at end to get extra crispy skin.
4. Plate the seitan first, on top of a pile of mixed greens, followed by the tofu slabs, the pinch of dill, and finally the tomato with all of its juices. Dig in.
Beverage: 100% cranberry concentrate on ice
Soundtrack: Murder City Devils’ Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts

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Green Flash Imperial IPA

Posted on July 1, 2007 by Hot Knives

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There is, according to Jules Verne (among other Frenchies), a fleeting visual phenomenon that accompanies a warm summer sunset — he called it “le rayon vert,” the green ray, or perhaps more literally “the green flash.” By his description, the green ray was a split second flash of emerald light just as the sun dips below the horizon. Explored by master of the mundane Eric Rohmer in his 1986 film (the classically understated “Summer” as it was called in its American release), the green ray was quite literally illusive, and figurative for the love that Rohmer’s protagonist is missing until the last seconds of the film.
Suffice it to say, we loved Green Flash’s Imperial IPA. It even lived up to the deeply dorky metaphor that the brewery name references: the bitter bursts of this classic San Diego-style IPA were wonderfully fleeting, momentarily arresting and then — zap — gone from the palate.
First came a hint of raspberry zing, followed by the frothy alcohol sting and finally a quick, mellow effervescence, noticeably skipping the sickly sweet linger. This IPA is not an envelope-pusher exactly, but it is an iconic standard. And whereas some stronger IPAs (Moylan’s Hopsickle, Avery’s Maharajah) are tough to slug in summer heat, this one went down like hop soda pop. Which is not to say its an unchallenging bottle.
Our friend Julie, a French Canadian with a thirst for lagers and Eric Rohmer films had this to say about the hoppy green flash the beer emitted: “I’m hoping I could eat sausage right now because the fat of the sausage would take the bitterness away!”
Dairy Pairy: Morbier
Soundtrack: Brian Eno’s Another Green World

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the Summer Camp Cafeteria

Posted on June 27, 2007 by Hot Knives

With all the fun clichés of the early ’80s porn scene, and none of the cocaine ambulance escapades, the Summer Camp parties held by Little Radio at their downtown warehouse have been, hands down, the next best thing after space camp.
Free bands, ping pong, water slides, kiddie pools, astro turf, badminton courts — the only thing missing was vegan potato salad, which is where Hot Knives came in. We swindled a half-price grill and basically taught ourselves the most efficient way to feed 200 scenesters and scrape out a profit.
Now, sadly, we both have travel plans, a birthday, a bike tour and other stuff to attend to, so we’re done cooking for now. But stay tuned to see whether we’re able to pull off an August stint back at the Summer Camp BBQ. In the meantime, here’s another recipe addition from the Summer Camp menu and a “music video” of the whole sweaty month…

Frito Pie

serves 20 people
Chile con Soyrizo
3 Tbs, extra virgin olive oil
2 small purple onions, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 head garlic, minced
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
3 red bell peppers, chopped
3 jalapeños, chopped
1 12 oz. tube soyrizo
1 cup black beans
1 cup pinto beans
3 cups tomato sauce
1/2 cup vegetable stock
8 oz. tomato paste
1 small bunch celery leaves
1 small bunch cilantro
2 bay leaves’
“Pie”
Fritos
Aged cheddar (optional)
Parsley-cilantro garnish
1. In a large soup pot, add oil and sauté the onions, celery and garlic for 10 minutes. Once sweated, add balsamic and let cook off another 10 minutes.
2. Then add your bell peppers and jalapeños follwed by soyrizo and beans. Stir before adding tomato sauce, stock and tomato paste. Let cook on high until bubbling. Toss in whole celery leaves, cilantro and bay leaves and simmer for 30 minutes or until chunky. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Pour a bowl of fritos, top with cheese if desired, pour 2 scoops of chile and garnish. Let sit for 3 minutes to gel before eating.

Beverage: Green Flash Imperial IPA
Soundtrack: Darker My Love’s “Summer is Here”

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Lake’s Booch

Posted on June 23, 2007 by Hot Knives

by Lake Sharp
You may have heard of the wonder tonic kombucha. It is all the rage here in LA, people scouring the city to find a place to throw down $4 for 16oz of this healthy bacteria/yeast-poo water. Yep, the liquid is the biproduct of bacteria and yeast feeding on sugar and tea, Ashby explains it a little better. Kombucha has been around since the Qin Dynasty in China (around 250 BC) and can now be yours in the good ol’ DIY fashion of HK. It’s really easy and fun to have these little science experiments growing in your cubbard.

How to Boocha

To harness the powers of this “immortal health elixer” you need only a few things, namely, the mother. The mother is the gooey slime that forms on the surface of tea…it is the organism. In kombucha, it is often refered to as the “mushroom,” though this is purely figurative. You can buy mother and a booch kit online or from some healthfood stores. But if you are patient, you can grow your own by simply buying a 16oz bottle of your favorite brandname booch and pouring it into a glass galon jar. The strands of culture will eventually turn into a clear blob. You have to let it grow for a good month or so undisturbed, but once you feed it, the culture will go nuts and soon turn into the big brown “mushroom.”
So, the groundrules for kombucha are these:
Metal kills mother, only use wooden or plastic utensils while handling the bev.
It grows best in clean glass galon jars.
Keep it stored in a cool dark place.
Kombucha food:
12 cups of black tea mixed with 1 cup sugar cooled to room temperature.
As your mother grows, the fermentation procces will shorten, but it’s really just a matter of taste. If you like a sweeter booch, bottle after a week. Each batch I make tastes a little different. I am still experimenting with how long I let it ferment and bottling techniques to get the right amount of fizz. If the taste gets too strong after several batches, you can remove some layers of mother and either start new batches with them or give them to friends to start their own.

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Hot Dawgz!

Posted on June 22, 2007 by Hot Knives

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Tofu Pups suck. Smart Dogs are stupid. With the grill season upon us, those of you suckers for smoke and char are probably wondering to yourself, “How do I make a sweet ass vegan hot dog?” Glad you asked.
A killer dawg (one that can trick a carnivore, cuz really that’s the best litmus test) hinges on three things: good sauce, good heat, good brand of dog. With that in mind, listed below is the kind of dog we have been serving up every Sunday at the Little Radio Summer Camp cafeteria stand. We’ll be setting up shop for one more week, this Sunday, June 24. But if you miss it, take comfort in the fact that you can recreate it all with your computer and a propane grill (we do not recommend buying a lemon from Home Depot because its half-price).
Speaking of which, massive props to the sweeties in Asuza who flickr-cooked our seitan recipe and on the same day it was posted!

Hot Dawgz!

4 Yves brand jumbo vegan dogs
1 quart pale ale
4 Van de Kamp buns
1 cup sauerkraut
2 jalapeños
whole grain mustard
“special sauce”
ketchup
1. Fire up your propane grill.
2. Slice jalapeños lengthwise and add to your sauerkraut. Prepare “special sauce”
3. In a large bowl, soak the hot dogs in your pale ale. Let sit for at least 20 minutes. (By boozing up your hot dogs, you will incur much more flame from the grill, meaning the dogs will blister and pop more like meat.) When choosing a beer, go for something mildly hoppy and a little bitter: Anderson Valley’s Poleeko Gold would work well).
4. Remove dogs and slice lengthwise without actually cutting dogs in half. Brush with extra virgin olive oil and place on grill with tongs, making sure dog is diagonal on the grill bars rather than perpendicular (makes for better grill marks).
5. Roll dogs around, hitting each side for about a minute. On the last turn throw the bun onto the grill. Assemble and sauce. Top with sauerkraut and/or onions. Eat in a bikini.
Beverage: White Trash Mimosa (Miller High Life and Sunny Delight)
Soundtrack: Live’s “Lightning Crashes” (long story)

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Hail Seitan

Posted on June 20, 2007 by Hot Knives

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For this sixth month of ’07 we’ve been enrapt in a brutal but amazing ritual of acquisition, fabrication, distribution and finally worship. We rise at ungodly hours, after traversing vague and ungodly markets to concoct beastly succor for earthly…hipsters.
The following is our rosemary’s baby of fake meat. A creature that devours the mind, enslaves the tongue and dominates the stomach. Henceforth let no vegetarian shyly throw still stiff Boca burgers on meat-slicked hibachis. Kneel in awe and admiration of Seitan: Dark Lord of the Underbelly!

Ingredients

3 cups gluten flour
1.5 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
2/3-cup brewer’s yeast
3 tsp. ground coriander
4 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. cayenne
3 tsp. smoked bittersweet paprika
3 tsp smoked salt
1 tsp. ground sage
2 tbs. freshly ground pepper
4 cups water
1 ⁄ 2 cup soy sauce
1 ⁄ 2 cup canola oil
1 ⁄ 4 cup plus 2 tbs. extra virgin olive oil

Equipment Needs

1 3-4” deep bread loaf pan
1 roasting pan, at least 2” deep
Wax paper
Aluminium foil
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine all your dry ingredients and whisk to blend in a large mixing bowl.
3. In a separate mixing bowl, combing your wet ingredients one at a time in the
order listed above, whisking all the while to emulsify.
4. Rub the inside of your bread pan with 1⁄2 tbs. of olive oil. Now line the pan with wax paper making sure the entire inner surface area of the pan is covered—this will keep your loaf from carbonizing. Rub the wax paper with another 1⁄2 tbs. of oil, and grind one tablespoon of pepper into the bottom of the pan.
5. Add the wet stuff to the dry stuff. Mix with your hands, making sure to integrate all the dry ingredients into the brown blob you are creating. While the end result should be very similar to wet bread dough, you shouldn’t kneed it too intensely.
6. Dump the doughboy into its iron coffin. Sprinkle with the remaining extra virgin blood…oil, and finish with one more tbs. of freshly ground black pepper.
7. Seal the deal with aluminium foil, place the bread pan in the roasting pan, fill the roasting pan with as much water as you feel comfortable with sloshing awkwardly about in 90 minutes when its damn near boiling, and gingerly place the whole mess in your oven.
8. Bake for 90 minutes.
9. When the loaf is finished, turn it over on a cutting surface to dislodge it, and pull away the wax paper—as it cools it becomes much harder to remove. Slice and sear, sauté, grill, mash, braise, or worship as you see fit.

Evil Accoutrements While You Wait

Animal Style Onions

2 onions, minced
1 tbs. extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp soy sauce
1. Heat a nonstick pan on medium heat while you dice the onions.
2. Throw the onions into the pan. Agitate them so they don’t burn, and sauté for approximately 8 minutes or until they have begun turning brown and smelling sweet.
3. Add the olive oil and toss to coat the onions
4. Crank the heat to high and add the soy sauce. Cook it off.

Special Sauce

1 ⁄ 2 cup diced pickles
1 ⁄2 cup vegenaise
1 ⁄ 2 cup ketchup
1. Mix it.
2. Use with reckless abandon.
Beverage: Avery Brewing Co.’s Quadrupel: “The Beast”
Soundtrack: Christian Death’s Theatre of Pain

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Dad’s Little Helper: malt liquor

Posted on June 17, 2007 by Hot Knives

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Happy Fathers Day, dad dudes! It’s the only day of the year where your kids won’t give you a hard time for finishing the whole Sunday paper on the pot or commandeering the remote control! And you deserve it. But is it weird to have Richard Nixon to thank for your special day? From what we understand, the dick proclaimed Fathers Day a permanent, national day of observance back in 1972, right when Vietnam was freaking you and your buddies out.
What better way to celebrate our dads, we thought, than to toast to them — their support, their advice and all their lessons in sensitive masculinity — with a high-class glass of malt liquor.
It may just be the one day of the year where beer can really say “I love you.” Evan looks back fondly on turning sixteen in Berlin, Germany and sharing a couple of cold Warsteiners with his father, Roger, at a Steglitz beer garden. And Alex holds memories dear to his heart of dad, Billy Brown, drinking the occasional King Cobra 40 oz. (That classy brand of brew is a whole other post entirely.)
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So, this weekend we cracked a frosty brown bottle of Dad’s Little Helper, a malt liquor from Rogue Brewery — think Mickey’s brewed to strict purity laws. The kitsch value of this beer makes it as corny as our dads’ jokes: off-color and endearing. No, literally off-color: Dad’s Little Helper, true to form, is piss yellow. Held up to the sun, it looks like a foughty through and through. There’s no head to speak of, no nose save for scant scents of sweet starch. The carbonation is surprisingly subtle. And the stuff feels strong. As for taste, the syrupy corn and malt flavors hit the middle of the mouth nice and straight-forward. The result is a familiar foughty taste without the sting of acrid booze. If Rogue set out to imitate, and perfect, the actual taste of mediocre malt liquor, by George they have done it. For the most part the beer is pleasantly smooth and guzzlely, assuming it is frosty.
Even if your dad has better taste in beers than this, we think its worth bonding over. For memory’s sake if nothing else. Cheers dads!
Dairy Pairy: Chive Double Gloucester
Soundtrack: Billy Joel’s Glass House

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Beer Blogging Blow-out

Posted on June 14, 2007 by Hot Knives

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Let’s cut to the chase, get the niceties outta the way shall we? The Library Bar in L.A.’s Downtown Financial District is one of the few beacons of proper beer culture in our city. If you haven’t been, we highly recommend it.
The 7-tap, European draft system they pour from is expert; the beer choices are striking without being too showy; the bartenders are all painfully attractive and they serve their bevvies in proper glassware. If you like your Belgian ale in a pint glass, don’t bother coming here. Ruin your beer on someone else’s time. And (if it isn’t too full of suits) the swanky bookish vibe is more than pleasant to lounge around in. Which is exactly what we did earlier this week for their “Bloggers N’ Beer” event.
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Now, not to paint ourselves as drunks or illiterates or anything, but we actually showed up a little confused having read it as (no joke) “Beer Bloggers.” So here we are thinking, “Shit, we better have our game faces on right?” Neither of us are used to discussing brews with anyone except each other and our friends and the occasional beer clerk we’ve interviewed for the beer store series. We’re not kosher. We even went out of the way to ask Christina “the Beer Chick” Perozzi, who organized the event, which of the illuminati were showing up. In case we found time to cram.
You can understand our surprise when half of citysearch.com is sidled up to the bar at 8 pm, asking poor Christina why the Inversion IPA tastes like dirty socks. Turns out, the admittedly tech-brilliant PR firm that handles the Library Bar was behind the party, even sending out the evites and compiling all the blogger’s sites and everything. Hey, more power to them. But a beer symposium it was not.
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That said, it was a great idea for an event, some killer viral marketing and it actually brought us full circle in a couple ways. Back in November when the bar opened, Evan wrote about it for his newspaper. Because Christina created the bar’s beer menu, he interviewed her. Since then we’ve had her on our radar. Last time Alex spoke with her, the event came up and voila: small world. Besides managing the infamous Father’s Office, Christina has a consulting business that seems to often involve the mad genius of Pasadena: Mark of Craftsman. In our minds, one of her biggest accomplishments as L.A.’s beer sommelier is single-handedly convincing L.A. pubs to carry multiple kegs of Craftsman. That’s her legacy right there.
In any case, it was rad to finally meet the “Beer Chick” and totally amusing to peruse the random blog personalities dutifully trying to learn about beers, taking notes and snapping pictures.

Beer Tasting Line-up

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1. Craftsman 1903
2. Unibroue Blanche de Chambly
3. Saison DuPont
4. Unibroue Maudite
5. Deschutes Inversion IPA
6. Deschutes Black Butte Porter
7. Flying Dog Road Dog Porter Scottish Ale
8. Westmalle Triple
Every beer on the list, except the Flying Dog porter, is a fine choice if a bit standard. Truth be told we got psyched about a preliminary list Christina sent us that had 2 beers we’d never had — both were replaced with ones we had. Still, we totally dug swilling our way around these beers for free and toasting Christina on a job well done.
The highlight of the night, however, had to be running into the only other serious fucking L.A. beer blogger in the room (in the city, as far as we know) Dave of hairofthedogdave.com. A sweet guy with great taste, we shared a bottle of Westmalle triple and made him promise he’d participate in the upcoming Great Beer Ride we’re going to get around to organizing one of these days. If you haven’t checked his blog out, do so. To be honest, he covers SoCal beer better than we do.
As for the more, shall we say, pedestrian coverage, it’s good PR. But we wouldn’t link to it.
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