Tofuligans

Halloween was pretty low key this year.  I had just got my house back and wanted nothing more than to spend time in it, cleaning up balls of cat hair, unpacking my stuff and hanging out with my newly mellow kitty.  It seems that being forced to live in half of a tiny house with 3 grown cats for an entire month forced her psychosis into submission.  For now.

While Halloween night was kind of lame, the rest of the weekend was awesome!  There was a party at Golden Lentils and I needed to bring snacks.  I decided that nearly a year after marking it into my notebook as “to make”, I would bake up a double batch of pumpkin cinnamon rolls.  The recipe comes from Katie of Don’t Eat Off The Sidewalk.  They take a while, what with all the rising and punching and whatnot, but they are totally worth it.  Plus, there’s nothing better to relieve stress than violent balled-fist kneading of dough.  Especially a double batch, which gives you a big enough dough ball to really beat the crap out of.  After all the punching and rolling and slicing and rising, you witness glory.

That right there is a whole lotta’ bun!  These pumpkin laced treats filled a horrible gap in my 2008 seasonal culinary experience.  I missed Thanksgiving.  It did not exist in my world in 2008.  I was in Portland when Canadian Thanksgiving dropped, and I didn’t stay long enough to try out their weird November version.  The smell of baked goods and a hint of pumpkin helped me feel all holiday like, enough to keep me going until Christmas cooking starts up.

I glazed these suckers up too, but the darkness in my evening, Northern Canadian kitchen would not allow me to capture an acceptable photograph.

The rolls made it to the gender bender party and were enjoyed by people with very realistic, painted on, drunken hobo clown beards, people dressed up as “cereal” killers who actually look like they are probably capable of murdering you in your sleep, and people with their own hair glued to their face

After nearly a week of sleeping at other peoples houses and eating other people food, I’ve finally reclaimed my house from the sublet and got back to cooking and comfort. Being in Portland for over a month I was eager to have my own space back, and to stock up on food and cook in my own kitchen again. The first thing I did to get back in the groove was stop by the Old Strathcona Farmers Market on Saturday and get some veggies!

Not my biggest haul, but pure quality. I particularily like how badass the kale looks, like he’s holding back an anxious brussels sprout while he goes to do the ass kicking himself. Kale is tough. You can almost see him balling up a fist with the other hand. Mr. Kale has been making his way into smoothies and getting sauteed since he showed up at my place. Mmmm mmm. The leeks will be finding themselves in the Legendary Cassoulet, and the brussels I bought because I promised myself the next time I saw brussels on a stalk I would buy them, so I did. They cost six fricking dollars, but look at how awesome they are! Plus, how great is it biking home with them sticking out of your backpack?

One of my return to Edmonton goals was to stick to the weekly meal planning that I’ve done off and on for the last year. It saves me so much time, frustration and money to buy all my weekly food at once rather than going to two different grocery stores every night while I’m hungry from work. Usually that ends with me being too hungry to prepare anything, and eating fried frozen pierogies instead. Not cool. So this week I made the plan, got the groceries, and cooked myself a wholesome meal. Monday nights selection was Smoky Grilled Tempeh from Veganomicon, with the aforementioned brussels sprouts roasted on the side, and some roasted blue potatoes straight out of my backyard garden! Prior to peeling, the potatoes looked like some crazy moon rock, with craters and shit. My roommate tells me they are a symtom of nutrient dense soil. I guess that means my dirt is awesome! YES!!

Once the peel is removed, you get what looks like a cartoon dinosaur egg, all purple and white spotty. Such a nice looking potato, also one of the tastiest.

I usually make my brussels Isa style, roasted with olive oil and garlic. If you think you hate brussels, give the recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance a try!

Next it was grill time for the marinated tempeh. I was really digging all the tasty tempeh I’d been having in Portland, and was eager to give it another try in my kitchen. Not that I didn’t like it before, I just wasn’t crazy about it the way I was about some of the dishes I had in PDX.

Applying grill marks is one of the most appealing things that can be done to food. Look at this effing tempeh! Lookin’ all smoky and glazey like.

I’d say this was a dang fine way to welcome myself home, and remind myself that not all the good food is in Portland.

Oh, I also got a free portable dishwasher! I sense a revolution in my cooking and baking life.

Edmonton’s idea of Mexican food is an affront to everything the cuisine stands for. Cheap, plentiful and authentically flavoured are words unknown to the purveyors of burritos and tacos in this town. Fast food chains aside, there are very few options, and the most popular of all, Julios Barrio, is such a disgrace it’s not even worth the wear on my keyboard to rant about them.

One symptom of this condition is the complete abscence of tamales. If I wanted a vegan tamale, I’d certainly have to make it myself, which I’ve always wanted to do. Unfortunately, finding the required corn husks has proven to be a challenge.

Portland, on the other hand, seemed to be filling my senses with the presence of tamales on an everyday basis. It wasn’t long before I was soaking a bag of corn husks in anticipation of making my own. I decided to use the everyday chipotle-vegetable tamale recipe from Veganomicon, which are made with a basic chipotle bean filling. I was able to get all the simple ingredients at the Alberta Co-Op Grocery, which just happens to be one of my favourite places I’ve ever purchased food. They had the masa harina flour in bulk and I loved the smell as I scooped it into the bag.

The components of tamales are really simple, basically a dough wrapped around a filling which is rolled up in a corn husk to contain it for steaming. Easy, right? I expected some trouble with the rolling part, but it took me almost to the last of the huge double batch I made to gain the required finesse to roll beautiful tamales. These are definitely the thing to get a friend with excellent manual dexterity to assist with. I found that a precise application of both fingers and teeth enabled me to tie up the tamale ends nicely without them unraveling.

After all the rolling and tying came the easy part, stuffing the tamales in a big steamer basket and letting them cook for about forty minutes. I took the time to play with the kitties, you may spend your forty minute window however you please. The absence of kitties will not affect the outcome of your tamales.

That is a heck of a lot of tamales, just as I’d dreamed. I packed them, steaming hot, into a paper bag then into my backpack for the bike ride to Susie and Maeve’s apartment. Tamales are very portable! Not like a casserole or pie, which you have to drive around on the bus. As everybody dug in, I remembered to snap an almost-too-hungry-to-bother photo of the finished product. This one broke apart a bit so you can see the filling. The dough to filling ratio was also too high, which was my mistake, but they were amazing regardless!

I love the texture the husks give the dough, so natural! Once I can find some corn husks in Edmonton, I’ll be making these all the time, probably with less effort now that I’ve figured out the finer points of rolling a tamale.