We spent the first day of the new year catching up on some much needed sleep, cracking open new notebooks, and gathering our thoughts so that could dive into 2016 with new energy. The last few months have been uncertain and tumultuous, so it’s always nice to take a step back and assess the goals that remain a constant and enjoy the progress we’ve made so far.
The Pittsburgh Public Market that Steve’s Deli occupies announced its search for a new home. While we’re excited to see what the move brings for our future as well as the PPM’s, it also brought on a wave of uncertainty that stifled a lot of our creative juices. Which brought us to resolution 1….
1. Focus on staying energized and pushing forward in areas we have complete control.
Sometimes it is hard to avoid feeling burnt out, especially with the prospect of finding a new home for the deli on the horizon.
Instead of focusing on questions we don’t have answers to, we’re resolving to focus on maintaining a schedule that helps us stay creative while building our brand and our skill set. Tweaking menu items, streamlining our business practices, and planning content in advance will help us map out our immediate goals. We plan to make an effort to post continually on our progress, helping us reflect on our achievements rather than our uncertainties.
2. Create better rituals.
We’re both diligent to leave the kitchen and the office outside of our home cleaned up and in perfect order before we leave work for the day. It is always nice to start the day off with a clean slate and we need to focus more on implementing those ideas at home. Putting away the last few dishes rather than sinking into a vegged out netflix-coma makes it easier to feel energized in the morning.
3. Waste less.
I try to keep this is as my constant resolution, but sometimes old habits die hard. Waste less time, waste less money, waste less materials. Waining produce from the deli isn’t always the easiest thing to see as showcase dinner staple, but we’ve been focusing on incorporating overstock items into our home cooking before they’re due to hit the compost bin. This has helped us scour our pantry and become more inventive while limiting trips to the store.
A hearty bowl with bold, bright flavors and an array of great textures.
Author: Disturbing the Peas
Recipe type: Veggie Bowl
Serves: 4
Ingredients
4 hard boiled eggs
1 head of romanesco broccoli
2 lbs medium red potatoes
1 large china rose radish
1 bunch parsley
3 garlic cloves, smashed to a paste with a little salt
1 tablespoon chopped anchovy
1 tablespoon chopped capers
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
Herbs to taste
Instructions
Preheat oven to 500 (broil)
Cube potatoes and boil for 12 minutes
Drain and place in oven for 10 minutes
Chop romanesco into chunks roughly 1" long and roughly the same size.
Place romanesco broccoli in microwave safe bowl with one tablespoon of water. Cover with saran wrap and microwave for 1 minute 40 seconds, or until tender. Watch the steam when you take it out.
Chop radishes
Combine garlic, anchovy, capers, dijon, vinegar, and olive oil and emulsify with immersion blender.
Place cooked potatoes, steamed broccoli, and radishes in a serving bowl. Drizzle with sauce, top with parsley, eggs, additional herbs, salt as desired.
Over the weekend, Bill from Clarion River Organics sent us home with a pound of Chicken of the Woods. We’ve been really happy with how our Vegan BBQ turned out for Steve’s Deli and were eager to try some similar techniques in a grab and go sandwich.
We browned some chopped leeks and garlic in a tablespoon of olive oil until translucent, and then added the mushrooms, lemon thyme, salt, pepper, and tarragon to the pot with a few hefty pours of white wine. We covered and simmered until the Chicken of the Woods was tender, roughly 10 minutes.
For the rest of the mixture we stayed fairly basic: Just Mayo, lemon juice, grapes, raw leeks, and a few added tarragon leaves. The texture was perfect for the most part. Both sandwiches had a one or two dry bites, not sure if it was the result of not enough liquid or just past the prime for some of the mushrooms. All in all, a solid start. Can’t wait to try more!
Maggie saw a sweet potato burger recipe somewhere that was pretty much mashed potatoes mixed with some panko and griddled. That sounded like eating a mushy desert to me, so I thought I’d try a different approach. Using the Spiralizer and then the food processor I chunked up two potatoes into small granules. A technique we saw used elsewhere to make vegetable riceish. I thought these granules looked vaguely like the little tubes of meat coming through a meat grinder.
I wanted them to keep some texture so I vacuum bagged them with some novoshape, but I assumed I used it like pectinex and didn’t add calcium. ding dong. Anyway, steam the potatoes until they’re cooked through but not mushy.
Ingredient shot of sweet potato burgers
Smash up some chickpeas with the back of a spoon, addd an egg, some flour and panko, and red onion. Stir and form into patties
Sear outside. You want crispy.
Shishito peppers are so easy to make. Add oil to pan. cook on high until they’re crusty and shriveled. Add chunky finishing salt and a squeeze of lemon.
For a great vegan shishito pepper experience, make some cashew cheese- we soak cashews for 5 days in water with a bit of salt at room temperature, changing the water daily. Apparently no one else does this, although I’m sure we looked this up at some point. I donno. I’m confused. Blend the cashews and add a bit of water, salt and lemon rind.
Top sweet potato burger with cashew cheese and avocado. Sprouts are not reccommended as a topping, unless you like the feeling of eating hair out of a burger and overbearing raw starchy taste. They look nice in the picture, but not actually good. I wonder how much people put things on food for looks on pinterest rather than for flavor. It’s an odd concept. Especially the vegan or gluten free replacement recipes where the goal seems to be more of a recreation of the look of food rather than taste, or experience. Anyway, the sprouts came off after a bite and a tomato slice went on. It was good. the texture of the patty was pleasant and it didn’t fall apart. The cashew cheese was great. probably the best we’ve made.
As winter drudges on I find myself spending my lunch hour curled up by a space heater at my desk oggling photo after photo of soup on pinterest. One recipe in particular kept stopping me in my tracks, a cluster of vegetable based soups in bright technicolor that promised to detoxify my liver. Since I have been forced to adhere to high carb diet, our pantry was stocked with sweet potatoes so I thought I’d try my luck with this alluring orange number.
I’ll cut straight the chase on this one before we dive into the particulars. When you see a bowl of food this beautiful that also promises to rid your body of any number of toxins, the author probably hasn’t actually eaten it. If they have, I’m not really sure what their definition of “soup” is. I will categorize this more as “healthy” mashed potatoes, a little too sweet for my tastes with a one note flavor that had me fantasizing about Hearty Cheeseburger Soup by the time I’d made it through a quarter of the bowl. Yeah, thats right, Hearty Cheeseburger Soup.
We made a few alterations to the original recipe as we went along, the most important of which was the cook time and temperature of the vegetables. The original recipe called to cook for 20 minutes at 329*, which after the timer went off I realized was completely insane. We upped the temperature and roasted for an additional 40 minutes. I’d recommend starting off at 400* and roasting for an hour at a minimum.
In the end I wish we had introduced more liquid and more heat to the soup. A little cayenne went a long way on making it more palatable, and I wish I had had the foresight to blend in more stock or coconut milk to improve the consistency. Overall I think it is a promising base that, while easy on the eyes, could use a bit of massaging before I’d recommend it as a memorable soup.
Fresh parsley, 1 teaspoon coconut milk, to garnish
Instructions
Heat the oven to 400*
Line a baking sheet with baking paper, add the sweet potato, carrots, parsnip, onion, and garlic, season with salt, chili, turmeric, and cumin, add the coconut oil and toss to combine.
Roast for 1 hour then transfer into the blender.
Add the warm vegetable broth, grated ginger, and cooked red lentils into the blender and process to obtain a smooth cream.
Sometimes it’s -4 degrees outside and the majority of the food in your posession is the very stale loaf of bread on your counter. Transform your odds and ends into this comfort food hit packed with kale!
¼ cup dried shitaake mushrooms (rehydrated in red wine)
1 tblsp truffle oil
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cut the bread into 1″ cubes and place in a large mixing bowl.
In a small saucepan, melt the butter and carmelize the onion.
While your are carmelizing the onion, beat eggs until they are a creamy yellow. Add buttermilk, truffle oil, salt, pepper, dill, and red pepper and whisk until incorporated.
Add carmelized onion, kale, rehydrated mushrooms, and goat cheese to the bread. Toss until evenly incorporated and move bread mixture into a heavy baking dish (we used a dutch oven).
Pour egg mixture over bread and bake covered for one hour.
½ tsp ground nutmeg, to taste (I used freshly grated)
½ tsp salt
2⅔ cups all-purpose flour
For Glaze
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
maple syrup for thinning
Instructions
Set oven to 350F
Melt the butter. Beat in the oil, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla until everything is well mixed.
Sift in the dry ingredients and mix until just blended. Do not over mix.
Grease donut pan and spoon batter into a large ziplock baggie, and cut off a ½ inch tip from one corner and pipe the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 15 minutes until risen and cooked through, you can use a toothpick to check. They will still be pale, so don’t judge by the color.
Let the doughnuts cool for a couple of minutes before removing them to a cooling rack.
Make the glaze by slowly adding maple syrup to the sugar to achieve a thick glaze texture. You can always adjust the glaze by adding more sugar or more syrup. Add the extract and stir well.
While the doughnuts are still slightly warm, dip them into the glace, headfirst, and give them a little twist as you raise them up out of the bowl. Set them, glaze side up, on the rack to dry.
Enjoy quickly, these beauties are best the day of!
