Friday, January 29, 2010

Day of Cooking 01.29.10

It took us a couple of weeks but we are back to cooking from Ad Hoc at Home. Today’s dishes were:

• Fig Stuffed Pork, which became seitan (page 69)

• Green Bean, Potato, Walnut and Fig Salad (page 158)

• Mushroom Soup with Kale and Potato (page118)

We were in the mood for fig and potato. Isn’t it obvious? We met at approximately 10:30 this morning, ran to the grocery store and then started cooking. We were finished cooking and had everything cleaned by a little after 4 pm. During this time we also had lunch, drank tea, chatted and even did a little relaxing while things were simmering or baking. While we did spend a lot of time together we cooked at a very relaxing pace.

Here is our grocery and task list:

Fig Stuffed Seitan:

10 ounces gluten
Bread crumbs – at least 2 cups
Onion, garlic, seasonings
1 fennel bulb
Garlic
Shallot
1 cup fig jam (figs, balsamic)
Thyme

Green Bean Salad:

1 ½ lb green beans
1 lb potatoes fingerling
1 cup walnuts
3 radishes
¼ cup shallot
Sherry vinegarette
2 T chives
4 figs
Lemon juice

Mushroom Soup:

2 carrots
1 leek
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch kale
1 ½ lb potatoes
½ lb mushrooms
½ cup shallot
1 T thyme
8 cups mushroom stock
6 T garlic
Red wine vinegar

Cooking order:

1. fig jam for seitan
2. soup
3. seitan
4. salad

My husband and I had these dishes for dinner tonight. He decided the seitan was his favorite. Additionally he had a good idea of adding chestnuts to the stuffing. That would be good, too bad we didn’t think of it today.

I should have at least one recipe posted tomorrow. We are supposed to get snow tomorrow, so we could be spending the day inside, warm and cozy.

3 comments:

Laloofah said...

Hi, Alicia!

I knew as soon as I saw the name and photo of that soup on your "Epic blog" ;-) that I would be lusting after the recipe! Kale and mushrooms, two of my favorite foods! (In fact, we had steamed kale with lunch today and are having portobellas with dinner tonight!) I definitely want to make this, but please to tell me... what is "mushroom stock?" I'm guessing it's a broth made from simmering mushrooms in water? Do you buy it or do you make it? I don't recall ever seeing it.

All your creations look so pretty and fancy and... well, epicurean! :-)

Vegan Epicurean said...

Lalo,

Kale and mushrooms are popular at our house too. I will try to get the soup posted tonight.

Mushroom stock is veg stock that has mushrooms added for 'shroom flavor. You can buy it, but it is very easy to make. Whenever I buy fresh shitakes I save the stems in a ziptop bag in the freezer. Then I toss those into veg stock while it simmers. You can also use dried mushrooms and add the soaking liquid (which is what we did yesterday). The dried mushroom soaking liquid adds a lot of flavor.

Alicia

Laloofah said...

Thanks, Alicia! :-)