We clearly show a great preference to cooking with alcohol over our second favorite drug, caffiene, and its carrier, coffee. This is a perplexing fact because we imbibe coffee over beer in overly unfair ratios. We drink coffee all day (really, at all times, right now too) every day, yet it rarely shows up in our recipes. Of course, one of the best things about coffee is its ability to stand on its own and, like beer, it can be a tricky ingredient to ultilize in the kitchen.

But with the recent visit of our fave vegan baker (Portland’s ever crushable Jac Delorey) we decided to embark on some test runs of a first great departure point for Caffeinated Cookery: the coffee cake. Coffee Cake, by definition, rarely has actual coffee incorporated into it and is rather meant to accompany your cup-o-joe. We begged to differ. Armed with a pound of Handsome Coffee Roaster’s Don Medardo from Santa Barbara (Honduras) and a fistfull of Kapow Bars that Jac smuggled down from the Northwest, we hit the batter and won.

This recipie is definitivly not vegan. Actually, the vegan version that resulted from our face-off is also quite crushable it just needs some coaxing. We might’ve been a little too hungover and not amped on beans enough to pull off the right counterpart, but we think a simple switcheroo of soaked flax seeds for eggs, veganaise for sour cream makes a pretty awesome facsimilie of this fluffy bean bomb. The end result had plenty of depth from the extract-like power of the Kapow, while exhibiting sweet caramel-y, smokey bitterness form the extra addition of the coffee. While this cake totally fit the traditional mold, it had a Cafe Au Lait vibe that was destictively caffinated and gave us the shakes. In a Good way. Expect us to slip coffee into everything in 2012.

Tip: When baking with coffee treat your beans properly and be gentle. Slow extraction using a chemex is ideal, and if you let the brew come down to room temperature, you’ll tease out a lot more flavor than if you use it when its hot.

Cake
1 and 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (room temp)
1 Kapow! coffee bar
3 good eggs
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon homemade vanilla extract
2 and 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon sea salt

Topping
1/2 stick unsalted butter (room temp)
plus 2 tablespoons butter for greasing
1 cup walnut pieces (raw)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla salt
1 teaspoon choice coffee grounds
a slosh of brewed coffee

1. Brew a pot of coffee to drink throughout the process.

2. Measure out the flour, sea salt and baking soda and then sift together into a large bowl. Set ‘em aside. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.

3. Double-boil your bar: Sit a non-plastic mixing bowl on top of a sauce pot filled with a couple cups of water and place on medium heat. Once approaching a low boil, break the bar into pieces and drop into the bowl. Whisk to create a coffee syrup. Turn heat off and let stay warm until ready to use.

4. In another large bowl, beat/mash/fork the room temp butter with your white sugar (gently heat the butter if it’s still chilled). Slowly crack one egg at a time into this and whisk thoroughly. Ditto the vanilla extract. Add the coffee syrup too (warm but not hot). Finally, add the dry ingredients to this one-third at a time, alternating with scoops of sour cream, until all is combined as a smooth batter. Add a generous slosh of brewed coffee from your mug (about 1/4 cup to loosen the batter) and stir.

4. Mix the topping: Mash together the brown sugar with the remaining half stick of butter. Chop the walnut pieces into rough chunks and mix them in to form a crumble. Add cinnamon, vanilla salt and coffee grounds.

5. Use a spring form pan (8-10 inch diameter) to bake. Generously grease the pan with an extra tablespoon of butter or spray oil. Dust the pan with a teaspoon or so of flour to help from sticking. Pour your batter into the pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Add the crumble on top. Slice your remaining tablespoon of butter into 5 pieces. Plunk on top of cake.

6. Slide cake into the oven and cook for about 25 minutes on 350. Spin the cake and cook for another 20 to 25 minutes, until firm but only slightly brown on top.

Beverage: Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel
Soundtrack: “Jump in the Line” Harry Bellafonte

Lodged somewhere deep in our pink fleshy cavities sit the remnants of our holiday partying: sugar, stuffing, gravy, fresh truffles, chocolates bobbing in a sea of buttered rum, and a regretful amount of palm-oil-agave frosting from a batch of pumpkin latte cupcakes. You too? For good reason, the first week in this foul new year of our lard 2012, we were desperately seeking the restart button in our stomachs.

We found the button on our juicer.

Juice is not our usual liquid lunch (despite the juice salad diet preaching we get from our web host K. Mikey Merrill). Anything that leaves our digestive tract as a liquid clear as vodka is not substantial enough to keep you alive (and sane) for very long. [Flashback dream harp sound effect] The first time we indulged a liquid diet was for college campus politics. It was 2001 and the U.S. was busy carpet-bombing Afghanistan and we didn’t know what else to do but to pay attention to our Islamic History professor’s speed rants, fashion makeshift protest drums out of plastic tubs, and sign a pledge to eat nothing but ice for 3 days in a sign of solidarity with the Middle East. We drank water on local cable news and laid around the quad, wasting instead of wasted. This ended, as most acts of liberal arts campus radicalism do, with us playing mean dorm room pranks on one another’s feeble, carb-starved brains, followed by a depraved taco trunk binge on our third night to celebrate our noble sense of right and wrong.

The only other time we’ve ever felt so hungry was suffering through the second day of the “Master Cleanse” during a birthday party at L.A.’s famed, red-and-white-tablecloth pizzeria Casa Bianca, meanwhile shards of the beautiful, buttery cornmeal crusted eggplant pie seemed to peck at our ocular cavities like a prison shiv. Yes, one half of Hot Knives has tried (and failed) at the Master Cleanse’s chic promise of de-toxifying your body through ritualistic lemonade drinking (you can guess which half but we’re not fessing up). You’d think chugging salt water would be right up our alley…

Keeping both these caloric deprivations in mind, this week we took a different approach to juicing our insides: a frilly meal combo of fruit nectar for breakfast and soup-like jungle juice for lunch. Did we go for weeks on this stuff? No. But we see the mental appeal of a good gut breather. Without weighing in on the science of gastro-colonic vanity, we will not begrudge (much) anyone the right to slam a tart concoction that helps you blow highlighter-colored fluid out of your body. But try this instead, it’ll right the tanker ship that is your appetite for 2012.

A.M. Juice

Our alternative to a questionable lemonade cleanser is a cornucopia of California citrus plus the earth-sugar of fresh carrot juice and spiced maple syrup. We could bathe in this stuff or pour it on cereal.

1 grapefruit
1 orange
1 mandarin
1 lemon
1 lime
1 bunch carrots, peeled (about 1 cup carrot juice)
1 tablespoon mulled maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel

Juice all the citrus, juice the carrots and combine with syrup and salt. Stir and drink. (If you don’t have a juicer, simply pulse the peeled carrots in a blender with some of the citrus juice and strain to remove pulp.)

Soundtrack: LCD Soundsystem,”Dance Yrself Clean”

Noon juice

Lunch beverage provides all the brainstem-tweaking flavor cues of a Thai coconut soup. Using coconut water, it’s like drinking a blood infusion with herbs.

2 cups pure coconut water
2 shoots lemongrass
1 small bulb ginger
1 sprig of mint
1 sprig of cilantro
1 sprig of Thai basil
1 small Thai chile (green)

Peel and slice the ginger, chop the chile, clean and pluck your herbs. (Keep large enough to strain later.) Combine with the coconut water in a pot. Take the lemongrass and slam hard on your cutting board to release oils. Slice into 8 long pieces and add to the pot. Bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit until cool. Put the juice with herbs in a jar and refrigerate overnight, or for several hours. Then strain and drink.

Soundtrack: Indian Jewelry, “Oceans”

So what are you doing for the Holidaze? Visiting the ‘rents? Cooking for your own family of Urban-Orphans? Party hopping from an ugly sweater face-off to some wicked Nogathon before you hit an awkward secret Santa swap-meet?

Don’t fret pets: we have answers to all of the above. As your official go too gurus of all things booze and food related, this time of year is when all our knife tips can be utilized to their wasted best. In the annuls of our exploits you’ll find everything you need to make the yule-tide break in the right direction and keep you from freaking yourself into some kind of stress induced end-of-the-year illness (but if that happens we’ve still got you covered).

Family Meal

Wether you’re feeding a group of bloggers, bringing a dish to a potluck, or supplying the only non-meat vittles at your family holiday spread, these festive go-tos will get you down the road.

“Stuffing”
Winter Sage Pesto
Belgian Onion Soup
Figgy Pudding

Fuck the Malls

Black Friday makes for an evil reference to a punishing stout — but the irony of its hapless application to a day of zombie like shopping gives us the shakes. Don’t feel bad that you didn’t fight the hordes to get good deals for your folks, make them something for Christ sakes.

Alternatively, you can give the gift that keeps on giving: US. Buy, our, book!

Bring a Beer

Tying it all together is a special once a year beer release from Brasserie Dupont, one of the best and eldest breweries in Belgium: a brewery who’s Saison we’ve been drinking since we were sixteen. These bottles of beautification ship with the intended goal of making an appearance at your New Years bash but they generally hit the shelves in the latter part of November.

This is, perhaps, one of our favorite beers to drink. More topically: its our favorite beer to give. Avec Les Bon Vieux translates to “with our best wishes” and this bottle of bubbles literally brims with positive vibes. Sweet yeasty vibes coalesce with a dry hopped backbone into bright lemony flavors that linger and digress into dry lip smacking perfection. A dense head built of firm tiny bubbles protects this aged ale from oxidation and leaves ridiculous lacing on whatever goblet you decide to grace with its yellow glow. This is beer for any moment (so long as its celebratory). Universally friendly, this beer is the perfect match for both the heavy handed riffs on Americana that always appear in winter, and any spicy ethnic curveball that you might throw into the mix. Desserts? Cheese? Our best wishes work well there as well.

From our gullets, to yours: Best Wishes. 2012 is gonna rule.

You’re sick again? Us too! We’re pretty sure it’s an avian death bug, which the science blogs tell us has been carried from birds to humans through ferrets.

We feed colds and we feed the flu, doctors can go fuck themselves. The question is only what exactly to eat? Besides KniQuil.

Besides the obvious, “essential nutrients,” proteins and vitamin B, we swear by “fermented things.” So, like, wine, beer, bread kimchi and mold. But obviously if you feel like we feel right now, chugging wine followed by a baguette is not an option.

This week, we turned to miso. Yes, delicious rice mold. Live active cultures in the form of sweet soothing soup. Our friend Claire gave us an idea when she HeyTell’d us that she was eating eggplant soup with miso: Yeah, why not suspend the goodness of miso floaters in a roasted puree so that it can’t escape your spoon! Miso can be frustrating what with its slithery tendency to clump and plummet to the bottom of your bowl like a school of minnows. This solves that.

Quick Fix: Eggplant-Miso Porridge
Start by making broth, adding miso paste to hot water (several heaping tablespoons for about 2 quarts of water) and let it steep. Braise 4-5 small Japanese eggplants in a deep pot on the stove with some oil and additional miso paste (or miso butter… its insane). Let ‘em sear for a couple minutes then add a handful of purple cabbage leaves, some ginger, garlic, chiles and top with about half a cup of your broth, cover and simmer until eggplants are falling apart. Fish ‘em out and pulse the eggplants with as much remaining miso broth as will safely fit in your blender. Then return this eggplant-miso puree to your pot with the braised goodness, add salt or tamari. Stir and return to heat. Toss in half a cup of white rice and cook until the rice is done. If you ate it now, it’d just be soup. Wait an hour and reheat, you have a sludgy glutinous porridge. Serve with extra chiles, scallions, cock sauce, whatever else.

Beverage: Hitachino Nest Celebration Ale
Soundtrack: Psychic TV’s “Just Like Arcadia”

We’re no strangers to the 6-hour Thanksgiving dinner, as you know from our digestive musings from year to year. But this fall we’re answering the cries of those less fortunate who either have to work on Thanksgiving, or sit behind the wheel of a car for several hours to make it home for the holidays, or just don’t care to wash dishes after dinner.

To all of you sad sacks, we bring you the Thanksgiving Pop-Tart. A handheld, self-contained, no-fuss feast in hot pocket form. No, we didn’t?! Yes we did. And so can you!

This trick’s real easy: Make a simple pie dough and let it sit in the fridge to chill. Whip up some classic sides like mashed potatoes, green beans with almonds, roasted squash or pumpkin, and something sweet like sugared pecans. Roll out the dough into several rectangles roughly 3 x 5 inches. Gently stack a pastry strip with the timeline of a meal: entree, side dish, dessert. Then top with a second dough patch. To seal the deal, just crush the edges with a fork. Slide it into the oven.

Need the details? Lucky you. We’ll be demonstrating this T-Day trick at an awesome flea market we’re hosting in Hollywood this Sunday, Nov. 13., from 11am – 4pm. Anyone who brings a book to be signed or buys one at the event gets a free Thanksgiving Pop-Tart. Made by us, for you.

Our ‘Grapevine Dolma’ recipe started as a salad special we once whipped up before dinner service; it became a slightly weird blog post recipe; it morphed into a different book recipe – and it continues to evolve still (we badly wanna try it with a mix of forbidden rice and basmati to stain it a deep purple). Progress.

The current iteration (Flip to page 89 of “Salad Daze” and read along, kids) is a simple but awesome rice-packed dolma spiked with sunflower seeds toasted with Za’atar and purple grapes pickled in red wine vinegar.

When we made a big batch for a party last week, our corporate videographer K. Mikey Merrill dutifully captured the recipe in real time. Ready to ROLL?!

Our birth canal is 7 x 9 inches wider and our book “Salad Daze” is born! It’s wiggly, a little greasy, and absolutely beautiful.

Why make a book when we can blog? This is a tactile, physical, near-perfect object we were lucky enough to toss into the world’s shelves! If you like the blog, we promise you will deeply dig this – but we dare you to find out yourself. Go flip through it by hand in an actual book store. We’ve already heard reports of it being a featured book at a Barnes and Nobles, being peddled along with all the anarchist rhetoric we got siked on in college, local book shops in London and (gasp) its even being sold by Walmart. We’re told Urban Outfitters will carry it.

Even though it seems every book outlet imaginable is infected with AlexandEvanitis we still need you, dear blog fans to help us become printed page moguls. Go bug the stores for it, don’t be afraid to ask for it! Demand the fruit of our literal loins! Tell the local librarian that the kids love Hot Knives! If you see or successfully land Salad Daze at a new outlet, let us know — we’ll reward you in the afterlife!

Seriously though, we couldn’t have done anything like this without all you faithful clickers, office work procrasitnators, and evening meal time experimentalists. There’s more to come — the future will only better than the past.

This little rainbow of roots was scented with our proprietary vadauvan — a heady combo of a ton of aromatics and a ton of spices.

As we type, we are screaming our way back from an awesome interview on “Good Food” with Evan Kleiman (listen for where she calls us two of her favorite guests, smitten!) where we discussed the ins and outs of turning 4 pounds of onions, garlic, ginger and spices into a city block perfuming mass of curry jerky.

This photo ended up being a little too close to the subject, but goddamn we can see the smell these babies got slicked with through this smartphone.

A little while ago, Alex went through a phase that Evan couldn’t understand. Every time he’d come over around a meal time it seemed Alex was at the stove boiling a pot of white rice. “Want some”? he’d offer, reaching for bowls. When the kernels were perfectly cooked, he’d spoon out a little less than a cup. It’d get a slosh of good Spanish olive oil. A dash of soy sauce. A knife’s slick of sweet chili sauce. A thumb’s crunch of Fleur de sel, and half a dozen turns of the pepper mill.

It was maddeningly ideal. Hot white rice sauced just right, and taken instantly, spreads the same inner stillness and imploding comfort that a bowl of macaroni and cheese does. Same painkilling side effect that two fingers of Scotch might. Maybe it gets a shake of spice or a slap of micro herbs, either way the idea’s the same. Now white rice is the pox on both our houses – its what our constant companions want, it’s what we want, every meal – and it makes more adventurous cooking as tempting as taking out the trash in an ice storm. Stay inside and boil some rice.

Just Right Rice Bowl
(Serves two)

1 cup basmati rice
2 cups filtered water
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 pinch of fresh chives
2 pinch of fresh mint
2 pinch of minced ginger
2 spoon of chili sauce
2 teaspoons of ground black pepper
2 pinches of fleur de sel, or maldon salt

1. Combine your rice and twice its volume of water in a 2-quart pot and agitate with your hands to rinse off extra starch for 1 minute. Dump the rice into a fine mesh strainer and rinse out the pot.

2. Combine cleaned rice and water in a 2-quart pot and place on medium heat. Add sesame oil. Once the water hits a boil and threatens to bubble-over, turn low and cover. Cook this way for about 12 minutes or until water is all but gone and rice kernels lose all crunch, but before mushiness strikes. Let sit a minute or two, still covered but removed from heat until ready to eat. Fluff it with a fork.

2. Mince the ginger, mint and chives (on a tiny bias) and set aside.

3. Spoon rice into 2 bowls. Dress each with olive oil, soy sauce and top with chili sauce. Garnish with herbs.

Soundtrack: The Clash, “Straight To Hell Boy”
Beverage: Echigo Stout

Above, behold a sweet and condensed version of how we blazed for Fourth of July. East L.A. taco gutter-style. (Thanks Ian!) That’s chapter one.

Now skip ahead. This Sunday we are hickory-smoking, deep-batter-crispety-crunchety-frying, and saucing the ever loving shit out of anything, or anyone, who gets in our way. Yes, it’s our annual Backyard BBQ Mosh Pit at the Verdugo Bar.

But this time, it’s serious: the party is not just for the sake of busting guts and blowing ear drums, though there will be that, of course. We are in the throes of shooting our second cookbook “Spring Blaze” and it revolves entirely around partying. And photographing the results. We’re guest grilling for quarrygirl.com‘s monthly Vegan at the Verdugo series. We’ll be slinging all vegan barbecue from 3pm ’till we sell out. Bring a fist full of fives to trade in for the following:

1) Oyster mushroom po’boys with radish remoulade, greens and a side of pickled potato salad
2) Mesquite-smoked jackfruit hoagies with peach BBQ sauce and a side of kaleslaw
3) Summer succotash and jalapeño cornbread

Good thing it’s god damn labor day Monday, cuz Sunday your stomach’s gotta work. Wear your rattiest daisy dukes for our camera. And bring your bib!