cakes

Everyone has a little pastry chef inside them trying to get out and this week at the Natural Gourmet Institute I learned that I am no exception.

I turned this:

Into this:

Isn’t that vegan carob cake with coconut cashew frosting a looker? Aren’t the kiwi flower and toasted coconut edges superb? Wouldn’t you pay $40 for something like that in a bakery? If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions you would be correct 🙂

On Thursday we each made cakes and decorated them on Friday. As I’ve said before, I really love baking and I don’t want this unit to end! I was happy with how my cake turned out, it was delicious and decadent, especially for a vegan cake. I wasn’t so sure how the frosting would come out since at one point it looked like this:

It may look like shiny beige plastic but when mixed together with cashew butter in a food processor it made a creamy dreamy frosting. This recipe was made of agar agar (a seaweed) that is dissolved in coconut milk and other flavorings over heat and then chilled until it sets. I was amazed at the tranformation!

I was so happy with how my cake turned out, but I wasn’t the only pro in the class. Here are some of the other beautiful cakes that my classmates made:

 

Check out the basket-weave detailing by my classmate, Jane! Her patience and steady hand paid off, her cake was beautiful!

Ellie’s gorgeous cake also made use of the basket-weave. Her carrot cake was visually my favorite of the day with it’s little carrot garnish made of apricot jam and kiwi.

I was so impressed with everyone’s decorating talent! Not only were the cakes extremely attractive but they tasted phenomenal as well and provided a substantial sugar high despite the health-supportive ingredients 🙂

conversions

There were baked goods up the wazoo today and I couldn’t be happier. Our conversion practicum consisted of us splitting into pairs and converting traditional recipes into vegan health-supportive ones.

After our class was divided into pairs, the chef randomly drew our names out of a hat to decide which order we would pick our recipe. My group mate and I actually got to pick first and we picked brownies! A good vegan brownie is hard to find so we had a tough challenge ahead of us…

We started off by making the traditional recipe for Girardhelli’s Award Winning Brownies. They had a great moist texture and crispy top but were too sweet for my taste. They were very photogenic though 🙂

Our second step was to replace the white flour with whole wheat pastry flour. The flour substitution didn’t affect the finished product much, but the accidental omission of 1/4 cup cocoa powder made our second batch lighter in color and less sweet. (It was all Ellie’s fault)

We nicknamed these the George Hamilton brownies because they looked like they got a little too tan, like George Hamilton. The difference in color is especially noticeable when compared to the original…

Our third step was to replace milk but since the recipe didn’t have any we moved on to step four, replacing the additives. The additive in these brownies is cocoa powder so we subbed Girardhelli sweetened cocoa for unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa which made the brownies much darker less sweet. For some reason they also came out super dry…

Step 5 is when white sugar is eliminated and replaced with a more health supportive sweetener. We chose to use coconut sugar but to counteract the dryness from switching the cocoa we also added some maple syrup. These brownies were delicious and a huge hit with everyone who tried them! They were remarkably moist and had a deep chocolate flavor that greatly surpassed even the original “award-winning” recipe.

Replacing the butter in step six was another challenge. Butter really adds a richness and binding ability that is not easy to replicate in dairy-free baking. We substituted the 1/2 cup butter in the recipe for 6 tablespoons of coconut oil and the result was a brownie that was so dry it sucked the moisture right out of your mouth. I was so appalled I forgot to take a picture…

We upped to coconut oil to 8 tablespoon for our next batch but were also faced with the challenge of replacing the eggs for a vegan alternative. We wanted something moist and sweet so we added something special. Any idea what this could be?

Soaked prunes! We pureed soaked prunes and raising and used them as an egg replaced. because of this secret ingredient we nicknamed these “Digestive Brownies!” The finished product was perfectly moist, rich and sweet with a slightly fruity aftertaste.

I don’t think we perfected vegan brownies but I was happy with what we accomplished. We definitely learned from our mistakes and I think with a little more experimentation we could produce something vegan and drool-worthy. Our Step 5 brownies were out of this world though! Here are all our creations side by side:

Our class is naturally boisterous and combined with lots of sugary snacks we were behaving like five year-olds at recess. To balance all the sugar Chef Elliott made us his famous miso soup which worked wonders for calming both our minds and stomachs. It was kind of freaky how well it balanced us out! It was a really great soup and I’m so happy he gave us the recipe so I can make it at home!

Other groups had similar successes and failures with thier own recipes. We had a tasting and conference about the various stages of our conversions and I learned a lot about what does and doesn’t work with baking.

The other recipes were ginger muffins, carrot cake muffins, banana muffins, chocolate chip cookies, black and white cookies, peanut butter cookies and oatmeal raisin cookies.

On another good note, I ran for six minutes at physical therapy today pain-free! That’s a new post-injury record! I’m so happy I’m improving! I better get to bed so I have energy for tomorrow because I’ll be spending another full day in the kitchen baking cakes and then helping prepare a Friday Night Dinner. I’m off to pass out in a sugar-induced coma, good night.

intro to baking

Today was the first of what I’m sure will be magical weeks of excellence because it was the first day of our baking segment! I was giddy all day and it wasn’t even because of a sugar high… that comes tomorrow 🙂

We didn’t actually bake today, instead class consisted of a baking lecture demo and then a lecture about converting traditional baked goods into vegan health-supportive ones. Tomorrow we will be converting standard recipes like Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies into vegan cookies by replacing one ingredient at a time. I’m excited!

Today we learned all about different flours.. Did you know that the climate in which wheat is grown affects the kind of baked goods it will produce? Flours from wheat grown in the North are heavier and have a higher protein and gluten content than those grown in the South. Northern wheat is better suited for yeast breads whereas the  lower gluten content in Southern flour is better for pastries. We also learned about leaveners and the difference between baking soda and baking powder. I was surprised that baking powder is just baking soda with an acid (cream of tartar) added in because I always thought it was the other way around!

The chef showed us three different cakes using the three leavening methods:

1. Chemical leaveners like baking soda and baking powder
2. Butter and sugar that has been whipped
3. Egg foams

The first cake was a vegan Carob Walnut Cake that used chemical leaveners. Carob is one of those ingredients that sounds so hippy-dippy and health-nutty that I was dubious of how this cake would taste but it was excellent. I want to recreate this at home ASAP!

I really liked it 🙂

The second cake was actually not a cake but cookies. Why did I call it a cake? It was shortbread cookies, aka The Food of my People. Shortbread contains a ridiculous amount of butter and uses the whipped butter to leaven. This shortbread uses maple crystals instead of white sugar so that’s why it’s kind of brown. I always thought that the little holes in shortbread were for decorative purposes but they are actually there for some of the steam from the butter to escape. Cool right?

I was trying to think of some way to veganize it but I don’t think there’s any way to get that butter flavor. If I replaced it with coconut oil and gave it to my shortbread-loving Scottish mother, she would probably not be impressed. The last cake the chef baked was a Genois that uses whipped eggs as the leavener.

I’m so excited to get my bake on tomorrow!

When I got home from class I drank some kombucha, went to yoga and then came home and saw this weird rash on my arm. It’s raised, hurts when I press it and really freaks me out…

I also have this weird growth on my lap… I wonder what it could be…

pasta party

Today was my favorite day so far at the Natural Gourmet for one reason and that reason starts with “P” and ends with “asta.”

The day started out with a lecture where the Chef entertained us with the history of pasta and then demonstrated how to make fresh pasta using flour and either egg or water. It’s actually really easy to make pasta even though it’s kind of messy to do from scratch, it would be especially difficult in my tiny apartment with negative counter space, but fresh pasta is 10000000000000x better than boxed stuff so I think it would be totally worth it once in a while.

After the demo we got to make out own pasta and had the option of using different types of flours or coloring ingredients like spinach, beet puree or tomato paste. Check out the pretty colors of all the pasta we made!

Once our pasta dough was made we rolled it out into shapes. First we made long lasagna noodles to be used for making filled pasta like tortellini and ravioli, and then we used an attachment on the pasta machine to make fettuccini and spaghetti. This is what a happy pasta maker looks like…

And this is what it looks like when things go terribly wrong… (the crank fell off mid-fettucini)

Purdy corn fettuccini made by replacing ½ cup flour with cornmeal.

Beet pasta!

I barely got any pictures of the finished products but I managed to snap a few.

 

Cannelloni filled with butternut squash and tofu ricotta (I made the tomato sauce!)

 

Tomato spaghetti with basil walnut pesto

Chef also showed us how to make gnocchi. Here are the little gnocchi before…

And after they were cooked in a browned butter sage sauce. I’ve been staying away from dairy recently but gnocchi has a special place in my heart and this dish was calling to me so I had to have a bite. It was divine!

I took some pasta home to cook for dinner but by the time I got home it had turned into this…

It was originally fettucini… I still ate it though and it tasted pretty good even if it was kind of dense.

Tomorrow is our first day of the baking unit and I am pumped! So is Henry, he has his paw on tomorrow because he likes to think ahead and contemplate the future.

zoo york city

Today was awesome!

Reason #1: It started with pancakes!

I’m getting really pro at flipping pancakes! I made Chloe Coscarelli‘s recipe again but I subbed banana slices for blueberries. I feasted on these babies whilst listening to Jack Johnson sing about them 🙂

I quit my job at Sox in the City so I finally had a free day to do something fun outside. I have been super antsy lately because of the nice weather but have been too busy with school and work to enjoy it. Unfortunately today was chillier than earlier in the week but I still had a great time exploring Brooklyn with my boyfriend.

I barely ever venture outside of Manhattan so for me Brooklyn is like a completely different world. It’s so much more relaxed and spacious and green! Dan and I packed lunch and went to picnic in Prospect Park, which we both decided was vastly superior to the maze-like overcrowded Central Park. I even saw a group of equestrians on a trail ride! I was insanely jealous and want to figure out how I can do that… it has been way to long since I sat on a horse! I packed Vegan Caesar Salad and some Balthazar Bakery bread with leftover mushroom walnut paté from Monday’s class. I am obsessed with this salad, it is so amazing I want to eat it every single day (and lately I do).

After picnicking and waltzing our way through the park we ended up here:

I love zoos and had a blast at the one in Prospect Park. I think we were the only adults there without kids but who really cares right? Besides, who said we’re not kids…

I saw a bunch of cool animals including porcupines, wallabies, a sea otter, gold lion tamarins (my pic sucks but this one had a baby on her back!), sea lions and red pandas!

The Prospect Park Zoo also has a section called “The Barn” where they have farm animals. I fed some alpacas and sheep 🙂

After the zoo we were wandering around and decided to stop in here since we had time to kill before dinner:

Where I read three issues of this:

I actually really liked it. I am a crazier cat lady than I thought!

After the library we walked over to Maimonide in Brooklyn, a restaurant in Boerum Hill that I really wanted to try for a while now. After the glowing review Chef Elliott at the Natural Gourmet Institute gave it earlier this week I decided I needed to go stat. Plus, the chef is a graduate of the Natural Gourmet! (NGI REPRESENT)

I actually didn’t get to take any pictures of the food since my battery ran out right after I took this picture, but it was really good! First of all, I love this place because they gave us complimentary kale chips which was AWESOME. The menu is given along with a comic book that depicts the adventures of a hip hop vegan superhero, it’s really unique and I’m guessing they print new “episodes” all the time. I ordered the Glowing Skin MOB which was an olive and sunflower seed tapenade, avocado, grilled zucchini and cherry tomatoes on top of a pizza-like crust in the shape of the Brooklyn Bridge. Dan ordered the Brave Heart MOB which is sun-dried tomato, caper and parsley pesto with rosemary grilled portobello mushrooms and lemon. We split half of each and while I liked both I think the Brave Heart was a little better. To go on the side we got olive-oil roasted yucca fries and a Brooklyn brine pickle which were super yummy. I really wish I had gotten pictures because the food was presented so beautifully! I thought the atmosphere of MOB was great and definitely want to go back to try some of the other options, they all sound so delicious. I also really liked that the food was “real” as opposed to a lot of vegan restaurants that have a lot of imitation cheese and meat products. Maimonide is all about vegetables and healthy food that tastes great which is much more appealing to me than vegan “junk food.”

The subway line we needed to get back to Manhattan was in the same building as Target! I haven’t been in Target for so long and I went crazy and bought 2 bras and a $1 hippo-shaped watering can.

BEST SATURDAY EVER

hail caeser (salad)

Sorry (if anyone is even reading this) for the lack of posts recently, it took me a while to replace my camera and then I was swamped with studying for my culinary school midterm! My entire class was super stressed about the test, which consisted of 85 written questions as well as a practical exam where we had to make a creamy soup (without cream), a salad with vinaigrette and a poached pear with apple juice reduction. I definitely didn’t fail but I don’t think I aced it either… After the exam all I wanted was a big scoop of dairy-free ice cream but opted instead for alcohol (does this mean I’m a big girl now?) A bunch of us went out for drinks after the test to de-stress and the waiter named a drink after me! It was blood orange juice and vodka, so like a screwdriver but more awesome red, and he called it the Screwing Fiona. I wish I got a picture of it, I guess I’ll have to go back sometime for a few more.

Salads, now this is what I pictured we would be making at health-supportive cooking school, not all this deep-fried bullshit. I love me some fried foods but is there anything better than a good salad? (yes, and they are called French fries.) We made this vegan Caesar salad that was out of this world and I already recreated it at home and am seriously jonesing for some now. I actually didn’t get a picture of it, but I’ll take one next time I make it. I definitely didn’t get pictures of every salad but here are a few. We’ve also had a couple classes on plating, hasn’t our food presentation improved?

Buckwheat Noodle Salad

Wild Rice and Hazelnut Salad with citrus dressing

Greenbean salad with spicy peanut dressing

booch face

You guys, I’m devastated. I feel like this pebble:

My camera broke because I dropped it. That’s why there have been very few recaps from class recently. Until I get a new one, I’m not going to be able to post much but hopefully I’ll have a camera to use later this week.

Other than my broken camera, life has been good! I love school, the weather’s been beautiful, my physical therapy has been going well and I successfully brewed my own kombucha!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE kombucha but I don’t love the price tag. At upwards of $4 a bottle I was thrilled to get the chance to make my own at home for pennies!

Other than being LiLo’s beverage of choice, “booch” is a fermented tea beverage and somewhat of an acquired taste (Mindy Kaling once said it tastes like champagne with phlegm in it), but it’s super popular in the health-conscious crowd for it’s beneficial properties. According to Wikipedia, “Kombucha producers often claim ‘kombucha detoxifies the body and energizes the mind’, although there is little published research on its health benefits. Proponents claim it aids cancer recovery, increases energy, sharpens eyesight, aids joint recovery, improves skin elasticity, aids digestion, and improves experience with foods that ‘stick’ going down, such as rice or pasta.” I personally love it and I feel good when I drink it as long as I don’t drink it too fast, which is similar to how I feel about tequila. It has natural probiotics (like yogurt), so if I drink too much too quickly it makes my tummy feel bubbly and weird.

A kombucha “mushroom” which is just a slimy ball of bacteria, is called a SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast). It looks real nasty and doesn’t get any prettier with age…

I got mine from the Natural Gourmet Institute where one of the employees, Olivia, makes kombucha all the time and agreed to give me one of the “babies.” She warned me not to go crazy and drink too much, like my mom did before I went to college, because when she first started brewing she overdid it and the kombucha leached vitamin K from her body causing her to get nosebleeds and bruises all the time. It’s powerful stuff!

After brewing some strong plain Irish Breakfast Tea and dissolving A LOT of sugar into it…

I added my scoby…

Waited for 8 days (in this position)…

And had this!

This kombucha is so much better than the bottled one’s you buy in stores, and I’m saving a lot of money making it on my own. It was surprisingly easy to make, and if you look closely in that last pic you can see I’m already brewing another batch for next week!

I highly recommend brewing kombucha for anyone who likes booch but doesn’t like wasting money. Hopefully I’ll get a new camera soon and get back to posting more pictures from class later this week!

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

These two made an appearance in class today:

Today was another day I went hungry because it was seafood day at the Natural Gourmet Institute. I’ve never eaten seafood before (except lobster ravioli once when I was 8) and I wasn’t too keen on trying it today. The thing that skeeves me out about seafood is that it’s all alive when you cook it (and some you eat raw/alive like clams and oysters). People go crazy over seafood though, so it really must be amazing and I’m probably missing out.

Steamed muscles in a white wine butter sauce with red peppers and onion.

Has anyone read Hunter S. Thompson’s “Consider the Lobster”? (you can read it here.) I had to read it for class when I was in undergrad and I found the history and anatomy of lobster really interesting. Did you know that lobster was originally considered “poor man’s food” and served to prisoners? Today it’s a very expensive delicacy! The article also goes into detail about the argument over whether or not lobsters can feel pain. The article basically concludes that while lobsters do not have the same type of cerebral cortex that feels pain as we do, they have a different anatomy that gives them the ability to suffer living in captivity and to feel pain when boiled alive or killed. Here is a picture of the lobster we had in class today posing with my classmate Rachel!

Another fun lobster fact, did you know that they are in the same family as spiders? You can tell by their eight legs! If you put your finger in between it’s toes (NOT CLAWS), the lobster will kind of pinch your finger in a cute way. I got a little too familair with Mr. Krabs here to be okay with what happened next…

The Chef unceremoniously ripped off the lobster’s claws, chopped it’s back in half while it was still alive and then decapitated it. Even if lobsters don’t feel pain (which I don’t necessarily believe) that is not a nice way to go. The claws were boiled separately and the rest of the body was pan-seared in olive oil and then flambeed with brandy before cold butter was added. It’s so interesting how the lobster is mostly black/green but turns red when cooked.

Seared scallops in browned butter sauce with capers and lemon juice.

 

Raw oyster and clam bar.

Scallop ceviche

Fried calamari

Sicialian-style stuffed squid

Blackened Shrimp

Finally done with meats! Tomorrow and Friday are all about eggs (or as some might say aygs).

what the fish

Up until two weeks ago I hadn’t eaten fish since I was fifteen years old. I always felt that vegetarians who ate fish were cheating, so when I gave up red meat and chicken I figured I needed to give up fish too. I was nervous about class today because of how torturous I found the poultry class yesterday. I feel less badly for fish than I do for chickens though. Fish is also extremely healthy for us to eat, however it’s associated with a lot of environmental issues due to overfishing and aquaculture. While my ethical reasons are not that strong for abstaining from fish, the environmental concerns definitely are an issue for me. Morals aside, I was able to handle filleting the fish so I wanted to be a good sport and try what we created.

Check out this flounder, it’s eves are both on one side! Did you know that flounders start out as round fish when they are hatched and have eyes on either side of their head and swim normally, but as they mature they start swimming sideways along the bottom of the ocean and one of their eyes drifts over to the top. So weird, right?

The chef demoed how to make poached salmon steak (served here with Hollandaise sauce).

Roasted monkfish… Monkfish is a super ugly fish that is considered the “poor man’s lobster” because it has a similar flavor to lobster yet is much less pricey. I personally wasn’t a huge fan of the texture of this fish or it’s gross slimy skin.

This is what monkfish looks like: (check out those teeth!)

Flounder papillote with salmon mousse filling

Pan-seared branzino and flounder

Salt crusted baked fish

I forgot what kind of fish this was but it looked so sad with its big eyes and pouty mouth as it was getting covered in salt so i had to take a pic.

Seared tuna (so good!)

And cod fritters. These were delicious, basically because I could just taste fried dough. When isn’t anything fried tasty?

Again, I’m happy I tried out all the fish and now know how to prepare it in various ways but I’m not sure how often I want to incorporate fish into my diet. After going without it for so long my body felt kind of off after class, it was like all the energy had been drained out of me. Perhaps the high protein and fat content was making my body work extra hard to digest. Is it possible to be a vegan that sometimes eats fish?

After class ended there was a book signing at my school for Chloe Coscarelli’s new cookbook, Chloe’s Kitchen. I’ve been following Chloe’s blog since she won Cupcake Wars and it was really exciting to meet her in person! Chloe went to the Natural Gourmet Institute as well so it was nice to meet someone successful and get some tips from her.

Plus the mini vegan cupcakes they served were DELICIOUS!

I actually made her pancake recipe for dinner. Normally I would go with something more savory and protein-packed for dinner, but after all that fish I wanted something sweet and easy to digest. These were the best pancakes I’ve ever eaten, they were so fluffy and tasty especially smothered in almond butter!

I need to go shower now because I smell like fish. See ya tomorrow!

pollo pollo

Today was poultry day at the Natural Gourmet Institute. As a vegetarian of seven years, I was feeling apprehensive about participating in the preparation of chicken but I also wanted to learn the proper techniques in cooking poultry so that I would be able to do it in a future job if necessary.

Watching the instructor clean and “dress” the chicken by cutting it up into pieces was a little nauseating. I kept picturing the little chicken running around… Did you know the average chicken only lives 3-5 months? If they are allowed to mature the meat become less tender. Worse than watching the chef hack through bones with his knife was doing it myself. I had no idea chicken carcasses were still so bloody when you bought them from the store, and that when you purchase whole chickens they come with a little baggie filled with their organs. My chicken had three hearts, that’s genetic modification at it’s best (actually it was organic chicken and probably only had one heart in reality but somehow 3 ended up in my organ bag). I never want to have to work with chicken, or any meat again! At least now I can say that I have the ability to de-bone a chicken, even if I would prefer not to.

We made roast chicken

Broiled Pesto Chicken (I made the pesto!)

Chicken Biryani

Chicken Tenders in Peanut Sauce

Pan-Roasted Chicken with a Mushroom and White Wine Sauce

Chicken Piccata

and Chicken Salad

I did not taste any of the fruits of todays labors but I brought home a doggy bag for Dan. He loves meat and always complains about my vegan food! He said the chicken tender was the best because of the peanut sauce. I did try that peanut sauce and it was AMAZING! I think I’m going to recreate it this weekend and put it on top of some noodles and tofu.

While today was not my favorite class of my culinary program so far, I learned a lot from the experience. I had wondered if I was ready to add more animal protein into my diet again but now I realize that I can’t emotionally handle it and probably never will. The chef commented how I had such great willpower to resist the food today, but honestly I think it would have taken more willpower to eat it. I’m still on the fence about fish but I will get a chance to revisit it tomorrow when we have our Fin Fish Practicum!