de facto redhead

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be cooking my own onion rings, let alone taking on vegan ones, but here I am, blogging loud and proud. If you’ve been following De Facto Redhead’s kitchen adventures this month, you’ll know that my partner in all things culinary, Ami, has gone completely vegan for the entire month of March, so after the success of last week’s vegan chocolate peanut-butter cups, I showed my support again by also “going vegan” for Week 7′s onion rings. We were both really pumped up about this recipe. Said with much exclamation this week were such things as: “huge onion ring fan!” “we love onion rings!” and “I’m excited!” Here is the Post Punk Kitchen recipe that had us so worked up:

INGREDIENTS

2 Vidalia onions (about a pound), or other sweet onion like Walla Walla

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons corn starch
1 cup cold almond milk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons olive oil

Cooking spray

DIRECTIONS

Slice onions into 3/4-inch-thick rings. Separate the rings and place in a bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel or something, to keep the onioniness out of your eyes.

Preheat oven to 450 F. Line a rimmed 12×18 baking sheet with parchment paper, spray with cooking spray, and set aside.

Now you’ll need two bowls for batter and breading. If you’ve got large, wide cereal bowls, that’ll do the trick. In one bowl, dump in the flour and corn starch. Add about half of the almond milk and stir vigorously with a fork to dissolve. Add the rest of the almond milk and the apple cider vinegar, and stir to incorporate. Set aside.

In the other bowl, mix together the bread crumbs and salt. Drizzle in the oil and use your fingertips to mix it up well.

Assemble the onion rings:

Get a conveyor belt going. From left to right, have the onions, the flour mixture, the bread-crumbs mixture and, lastly, the baking sheet. Dip each onion slice into the flour, letting the excess drip off. Transfer to the bread-crumbs bowl, and use the other hand to sprinkle a handful of bread crumbs over the onion, to coat completely. This may take a bit of practice. Carefully transfer each onion to a single layer on the baking sheet. Make sure you use one hand for the wet batter and the other for the dry batter, or you’ll end up with club hand.

Spray rings lightly with cooking spray, and bake for 8 minutes. Flip, and bake for another 6 minutes. Rings should be varying shades of brown and crisp. Taste one to check for doneness. Serve as soon as possible.

My onion-ring-ready ingredients.

Ami’s onion-ring-ready ingredients.

My onion rings, ready to be oven-baked until brown and crispy.

Ami’s onion rings, pre-baking and post-battering.

My supper – not just your regular greasy burg ‘n’ rings.

Ami’s rings, looking well-plated and perfectly placed!

Ami made her onion rings before me this week, and by the time I finished reading her “review” e-mail, I was feeling a little less “excited” about tackling the recipe. Why? Well, she started out with these enthusiastic and motivating words: “So, I made the onion rings tonight. They were all right. Definitely my least favorite of all the recipes so far.” Uh-oh – our first failure? Let’s start from the beginning, with the ingredients.

• I didn’t make any substitutions, but Ami used rice milk instead of almond milk (for no other reason than that’s what she had in her fridge), and she used arrowroot flour/starch in place of corn starch because it’s less processed and easier to digest.

• I had never heard of a “Walla Walla” onion before, and since I couldn’t find a specifically labelled “Vidalia” onion bin, I just used regular ol’ sweet onions. Neither Ami nor I used the entire two onions – some rings broke, and others were too small, etc. – but there was still plenty to go around as a side dish for two people.

• I wasn’t sure where to find whole wheat bread crumbs, and Ami suggested Bulk Barn. Success!

• I also thought apple cider vinegar was going to be a challenge to locate (simply because I had never heard of it before), but finding it was laughably easy, considering I bought it at Walmart.

• A personal note about my salt (pictured above) that I know you’ll find thrilling (like, head-explosion thrilling) – it came with Darcy and I from Edmonton! Go, salt! You da bomb!

Next up, Ami and I criticize the cooking directions:

• “Separate the rings and place in a bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel or something, to keep the onioniness out of your eyes.” Neither of us did this. What was the point? All the work of slicing and separating took place on the cutting board, and there wasn’t really a way to avoid the “onioniness,” towel or no.

• “Add about half of the almond milk and stir vigorously with a fork to dissolve.” Ami had issues with clumping in this step, and after stirring for five minutes, gave up. Her worry was that the lumps had something to do with her substitutions. I have to say there might be some truth to that. I used almond milk and corn starch, and my flour/milk mixture was completely clump-free.

• “…bake for 8 minutes. Flip, and bake for another 6 minutes.” And here we have the biggest discrepancy. In order to get her rings to a crispier crispiness, Ami had to bake them for about 20-22 minutes in total. She wondered if it was just her oven that caused the time difference. Nope. I completely agree with her, so unless BOTH our ovens are faulty, we recommend baking your onions rings for at least 20 minutes, and then keeping an eye on them for browning and crispiness. (I also broiled mine on high for the last minute of baking, and I would do that for longer, next time.) Leaving the rings in for the 14 minutes the recipe recommended would have left them soggy and blech.

And now, for the final product…

• Some of Ami’s key words were “dry,” “crumbly,” and “decent-enough,” and her rating was a 2.5 out of 5. Her most damning sentence, though, was this: “…with a little ketchup I could ALMOST fool myself into thinking they were the real thing, if I closed my eyes. I just can’t give them a higher rating, though. I am of the mindset that healthy food (even vegan and vegetarian) should still be yummy and satisfy your cravings…these just fell short for me.” Ouch. I do agree with Ami that the onion rings were dry (I likened certain bites to sawdust in my mouth), but I felt they were worth eating for what I thought was the delicious sweetness of the baked onion. And, not ALL the rings were dry – the ones that managed to crisp up well were pretty good. Therefore, my rating is 3.5 out of 5, which takes into account my comments above, as well as the fact that there is room for improvement (i.e. CRISPIER, CRISPIER, CRISPIER!).

• Another note of mine is to not take lightly that the recipe says to “serve as soon as possible.” These wily onion rings cool down fast, and by the end of my meal, any rings I had left were cold, which was kind of disappointing.

• An observation from both Ami and I: men seem to enjoy this recipe. Chris liked the onion rings, and told Ami he would eat them again; Darcy delighted in the onion rings, seemed impressed that they turned out looking like they did, and asked me to make them again the next day! (I didn’t, but I will try them again as an alternative to our staple side of homemade sweet-potato fries.)

So, what about you? Are you intrigued by the temperamental vegan onion rings? Will you try them? Let us know!

As I mentioned last week, Ami has gone vegan for the month of March, and her ambitions, combined with my new interest in cooking, led me to the cookbook section at Chapters on Friday. I was in Toronto for a meeting, it was a sunny, warm day, and I thought a leisurely browse seemed like a good idea. First, I looked at the cooking magazines. Too much in price, and too much in selection! Next, I gravitated toward the healthy-eating, vegetarian, et al. section, and it took me about two minutes to feel overwhelmed – again – with all the choices. Annoyance was next, so I settled on buying the newest Toronto Life, and then left and went to my meeting, after which I came home, had a nap (Toronto and transit is tiring!), and made the easy decision to conquer this week’s recipe, which I also went vegan for. Hello, Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups!

INGREDIENTS
1⁄2 cup Earth Balance butter
3⁄4 cup crunchy peanut butter (preferably unsweetened and unsalted)
3⁄4 cup graham cracker crumbs or 10 graham cracker squares, crushed
1⁄4 cup maple sugar or other granulated sweetener
1 cup grain-sweetened, non-dairy chocolate or carob chips
1⁄4 cup soy, rice, or nut milk
1⁄4 cup chopped pecans, almonds, or peanuts

DIRECTIONS
Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
Set aside.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
Stir in the peanut butter, graham cracker crumbs, and maple sugar, and mix well. Remove the mixture from the heat.
Evenly divide the mixture, approximately 2 tablespoons per cup, among the muffin cups.
Combine the chocolate and milk in another pan.
Stir over medium heat until the chocolate has melted.
Spoon the chocolate evenly over the peanut butter mixture.
Top with chopped nuts.
Place in the refrigerator to set for at least 2 hours before serving.

My ingredients – all vegan! (Well, at least I HOPE they’re all vegan; I couldn’t find any graham crackers/crumbs that fit the bill, so to speak, and these HoneyMaid ones seemed acceptable, judging from the ingredient list…)

Ami’s ingredients, and a peek into Alicia Silverstone’s cookbook, The Kind Diet, where our recipe came from.

The bottom peanut-butter layer of my cups. Greatness awaits.

Ami’s cups, also steps away from greatness.

My cups, all finished, and screaming at me to get chilled, y’all.

One of Ami’s peanut-butter cups, sprung from the confines of the muffin tin.

As far as the directions for this recipe go, there isn’t much to criticize because they’re so straightforward. I put a bit too much of the peanut-butter mixture in the first half of the cups, so the back six ended up a bit smaller in size, but that obviously didn’t end up affecting the taste…I’ll talk further about taste in a minute. Other thoughts: Ami made her cups before me, and she warned me that they would seem REALLY runny – she was right, but since I knew what was up, I still felt confident, and now you can, too, thanks to our dual test-run! The chocolate mixture also ran a bit thin (meaning there wasn’t quite enough), and Ami’s completely ran out, so she had to quickly make a second batch, but you can decide what to do based on your love of chocolate.

Once ready to set/chill, Ami and I agree that skipping the fridge and heading straight for the freezer is the way to go. The cups are bit on the soft side if kept in the fridge, and but stay firm and DELICIOUS if set and kept in the freezer. They also don’t melt, once you take them out, versus the more rapid softening that occurs if coming from the fridge.

There were no substitutions this week because we chose a vegan recipe that we both used vegan ingredients for, and while I did buy graham crackers instead of crumbs, they were easily crushable by way of a solid beating with the rolling pin.

Now, the score. Ami rated this recipe a 4.75 out of 5, and the reason for the docked 0.25 points was because of her scramble to melt extra chocolate to cover the rest of her cups. I would rate it the same because while I ate five in 24 hours, I also had the minor issue with the uneven peanut-butter layering of the cups. But really, we’re nit-picking. Ami’s batch of 12 cups was gone the next day, and Chris was begging her to make another dozen within 24 hours. And for me, my foray into vegan eating was well-received. The use of Earth Balance butter, soy milk, cane sugar, and vegan chocolate chips produced no discernible difference in taste, and while I joked to Ami about my worry that the vegan chocolate chips might taste like dust, I can now eat some humble pie and admit the success of my vegan peanut butter cups. Make them and love them!

What the flag says.

I know there are plenty of people out there celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with carbohydrates of another variety (the variety that involves green dye, hops, and alcohol), but here in the De Facto Redhead brewpub, Irish soda bread was our top o’ the evenin’.

If you chose to participate in today’s “holiday,” I hope you had (or are having) a fun day. As for me, in about five minutes, my fun time of the day is about to involve a plate, a knife, some butter, a chunk of bread, and American Idol, followed by Shameless. C’est delicieuse et decadent, mes leprechauns.

I love pancakes, you love pancakes, we all love pancakes, so let’s eat pancakes every day! OK, maybe not every day, but definitely once a week, which is the pancake schedule I try and restrict myself to. Because I love pancakes so much, and sometimes lose control and eat them twice a week, I have started omitting the chocolate chips I like to include, and instead adding ground flax seeds. I also use skim milk, egg whites, and pure maple syrup. I’m even giving up on Aunt Jemima – last week I bought PC Blue Menu’s new Whole Grain Pancake and Waffle Mix to try and healthy things up a bit more.

This past week, though, saw Pancake Tuesday come and go, and while I had regular ol’ pancakes on that day, I got to eat my and Ami’s fantastic recipe of the week on Saturday, when I cooked up a batch of walnut pancakes with maple-glazed apples for breakfast for my visiting brother Darcy and his girlfriend Kayla. Ami made her pancakes for dinner, on Pancake Tuesday, and the whole pancake idea was so appealing, Chris asked her, “Why don’t we have pancakes more often?” Why, indeed!

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup finely chopped toasted walnuts (*see note below)
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 tablespoon maple syrup
Canola oil

Maple-glazed Apples
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 apples, such as Macoun, Jonathan, Delicious, or your favorite variety, peeled (optional), cored, and cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices (I did not core my apples – I just cut slices off the apples, around the core)
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons maple syrup, plus extra for serving (optional)

Directions
1. Make the pancake batter: In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, walnuts, baking powder, and salt and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk the egg. Whisk in the buttermilk, butter, and maple syrup. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and blend until just incorporated, using a light touch. Set aside and let sit for 15 minutes. (If making ahead several hours, cover and refrigerate until ready to cook the pancakes. Bring the batter to room temperature before using.)

2. Meanwhile, prepare the apples: Melt the butter in a medium skillet set over medium heat. Add the apple slices, sprinkle with the allspice and nutmeg, and cook for one minute, gently stirring. Add the maple syrup and cook for two minutes, gently stirring, until the apples look glazed or caramelized. Remove from the heat and set aside. (I would leave these on the stove low heat for the rest of the cooking time, so the apples are warm when you use any leftovers for garnish)

3. To make the pancakes: Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Heat a large skillet or griddle over medium heat. Brush it lightly with the oil. When the pan is hot, add 1/4 cup pancake batter to the pan. Add another two or three pancakes, depending on the size of the skillet and making sure not to overcrowd the pan. Place three or four of the apple slices on top of each pancake, gently pressing them into the batter. Cook two minutes or until bubbles begin to surface and the pancakes appear golden brown on the underside. Gently flip the pancakes and cook another two to three minutes, or until the apples are caramelized and the pancakes are golden brown. Serve immediately or place on an ovenproof plate and keep warm in preheated oven. Repeat with the remaining batter and apples. Heat any remaining apples in the skillet until warm and serve on the side or spoon on top of the pancakes. Place one cup of maple syrup in a small saucepan and warm over low heat. Serve the warm syrup on the side, if desired.

Makes 8 to 9 pancakes (NOT TRUE! See our comments below…)

*Note: Lightly toast the nuts on a cookie sheet in a 350-degree oven for about 10 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and pulse in a food processor or blender. You don’t want the nuts to be like sawdust; they should be just finely ground. If you buy finely chopped walnuts, toast them in a 350-degree oven for 10 minutes, or until very lightly toasted.

My ingredients.

Ami’s ingredients.

Ami’s batter (and look – it’s in a Pyrex bowl!).

What things looked like on my stove.

My finished product!

Ami’s final presentation that looked glazed and lovely!

Ami and I both agreed that our pancakes turned out really well, were delicious, and were worthy of a repeat appearance at our tables. My experience was pretty straightforward, since I followed the recipe almost exactly. The only thing I did differently was to double it, because Ami warned me that while the recipe says it yields 8-9 pancakes, it’s actually more like 6-ish (and, in the end, I concur – a doubled batter made about 14 pancakes). Ami, however, is going vegan for the month of March, and therefore had a few substitutions. She used:

• Almond milk with a squirt of lemon juice to create her own homemade (and vegan!) buttermilk
• 1/4 cup of applesauce in place of an egg
• Earth Balance vegan butter instead of regular butter

Other non-vegan-related switcheroos:

• Ami didn’t have allspice, so she used a equal-amount combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
• She also didn’t press the apple pieces into her pancakes because she knew from previous experience that vegan pancakes aren’t as heavy as regular pancakes, and there was reason to assume the slices wouldn’t stay in place very well. As an easy fix, she just used her cooked apples as a topping/garnish. However, I also found the slices a bit awkward because they, in combination with the walnuts, made the pancakes lumpy, so I really had to take care to make sure the pancakes were cooked through (which also increased the cooking time from the 2-3 minutes per side to more like 5 minutes per side).
• I chose to use four Red Delicious apples, and Ami used two Pink Lady apples and two McIntosh apples.

When all was said and done, Ami rated this recipe a 4 out of 5, and I agree with her. It was really good (positive comments all around my breakfast table, and from Ami’s husband Chris, there was an exclamation of “Good call!!” in response to the affirmation of the presence of walnuts), but a point was docked from Ami because the pancakes weren’t the absolute BEST ever. My criticism is that the recipe took a long time (about an hour and a half), and there were a lot of dishes to clean up afterward. My counters looked like a bomb had gone off.

An interesting note from Ami, is, of course, that these pancakes can definitely be made vegan-style (and still turn out deliciously!), and my tidbit is that they’re pretty good leftover the next day! The nutty flavour remained strong, and the apples that were cooked into the pancakes still actually tasted good (this was my biggest leftover fear). I heated up the pancakes in the oven this morning for 20 minutes, and I was good to go.

Oh, pancakes, don’t ever leave me – I love you so!

When Ami and I pick our recipe for the week, we take turns in our selections. I send Ami a list of four or five recipes, she chooses what looks interesting, and a final decision is made based on our mutual agreement. The following week, Ami sends me her picks, and everything works out vice-versa. Last week’s recipe was from Ami’s list, and the winner was sushi. Here is an idea of what happens in our e-mails:

Me: The writer who made the sushi makes it sound so easy, and I have to admit that I’m intrigued – sushi is something I have never tried to make on my own, but I love going out to eat it!

Ami: I am intrigued by the sushi too! I actually have been dying to try making it. I (like you) love going out for it, but have never tried making it myself. That is the best and easiest-looking step-by-step instructions I have ever found. I think we should try it! I also love that you can basically fill them with whatever you want. I have been wanting to try making it myself since I saw Samantha do it in Sex and the City. Haha.

Me: When it says to wet the edge of the nori, do you think that means both edges of the roll, or just the last edge, that you’ll reach once you have everything rolled up? I have never bought or cut up an avocado before – any tips? I am going to have to seek out a bamboo sushi mat! And by saying that, I guess that means I’m officially in for the great sushi experiment of 2011! I thought of the SATC movie, too, when I began thinking about making sushi myself, and then I thought, “They took a workshop, and I’m going to attempt this myself??!!” Haha.

Ami: As far as wetting the edge of the nori…I think they mean the last edge, the side that will be folding over.  However, I have cooked with nori before (just not for sushi) and I don’t think it will matter if you wet both sides.  It is pretty pliable and forgiving.  I would just wet whatever you need to to get it to stick closed. I can’t believe you have never bought or cut an avocado!!!

Me: Do you think the sesame seeds have to be roasted/toasted? I bought raw ones in bulk from Whole Foods, but I saw roasted ones in a jar at Fortino’s, which made me doubt my purchase. Also, is rice vinegar the same as rice wine? There was rice wine at Whole Foods, but it was expensive, and I didn’t think I would use it that much to warrant the purchase, so I looked again at Fortino’s, and they didn’t have it all, but they did have rice vinegar, which had a picture of sushi on the front of it and ended up convincing me that it must be the same thing…?

Ami: I would toast the sesame seeds…probably not necessary per se, but they definitely taste better that way. It’s really easy to do yourself though…just throw them in a skillet with a LITTLE oil for a few minutes until they brown up a little (or do the same, but in the oven). You can even YouTube it to see a video, I am sure there are tons of them. I often toast nuts and seeds for salads and they taste way better. My bottle says “rice vinegar” too… so lets hope it’s fine. Haha. I think they are the same. This is the kind I have: http://www.marukan-usa.com/Product_New_Detail.html. I have used it for other Asian-type dishes before and it’s been fine.

Over the past few weeks, these types of exchanges have been typical. Although, as you might have noticed, it’s me asking all the questions, and it’s Ami with all the answers! Haha! Here is the recipe we used, from A Healthy Passion:

Ingredients:

2 cups water (I didn’t follow this – I just poured in what my rice package said to use for 1 cup of rice)

1 cup brown rice

3 large carrots, peeled and chopped

1 large cucumber, peeled

1 avocado

2 tbsp sesame seeds (toasted ones!)

1 tbsp rice wine (rice vinegar is perfectly good, too!)

3 sheets nori

Directions

Cook rice according to package directions, fluff with a fork, and pour into a large bowl. Cool and stir in rice wine. (I kept my rice in the fridge while I cut up the vegetables). In the meantime, peel and cut veggies into strips. Cover your sushi mat in Saran wrap, and lay a piece of nori down, covering it with rice. Lay down 3 strips of cucumbers, 3 pieces of carrot, and 3 pieces of avocado. Sprinkle with sesame seeds, wet the edges of the nori, and roll. Using a sharp knife, slice the roll into 1-inch-thick pieces.

My sushi ingredients.

Ami’s sushi ingredients.

My cut-up vegetables. They look tasty!

Ami’s creation before she attempted the ambiguous rolling of the sushi mat.

Ta-da! This is Ami’s roll, and mine looked more or less the same.

My sushi in its completion. It’s not the best picture, and this fact is magnified when you see Ami’s final shot…

I think her plating and food display turned out a bit better than mine did!

From our first attempt at sushi, we learned a few things, and our lessons began with the amount of vegetables to cut up. Read: WAY LESS than what is called for. I used about one cucumber, roughly half an avocado, and one-and-a-half carrots. Ami’s experience was pretty much the same. I had to throw out the unused avocado because I didn’t realize it would turn brown within a day (even when kept in a container in the fridge), but I just saved the rest of the veggies for Darcy’s lunches. Ami, on the other hand, had put her unused vegetables in a bowl, to be stored away after dinner. While cleaning up, Chris asked her if they were scraps, and she said yes, thinking he wanted to eat them. Nope, he wanted to throw them out, so in the garbage they went. Noooooooooooooooooooo!

There are words of wisdom in that paragraph. Use them as you will.

Onward, and into the nori. Ami and I thought  it seemed super-brittle, and that couldn’t possibly be right…could it? Well, it was, as we both found out it becomes much softer and more pliable once the rice is spread over it. Also, for me, 1 cup of rice yielded enough for four rolls (i.e. four sheets of nori).

Other notes from our sushi experiment include:

• The bamboo sushi mat. How do you use it? What is its purpose? We had no idea, because it seemed like you could just roll the sushi on your own, without the mat, but I made the sushi again later in the week, and I discovered I could make the beginning of the roll a lot tighter by curling the mat around the first “hump” of nori, rice, and veggies, and then pressing inward with my clawed fingers. Does that make sense?

• For wetting the edge of the nori, I kept a little bowl of water on the counter, and just dotted the edge with my wet finger. Ami and I agree that wetting the edge really does make a great seam for the sushi roll!

• Substitutions/additions made in our recipes were: a red pepper in Ami’s sushi, and canned tuna with hot sauce in two of my sushi rolls. Darcy came home halfway through my preparations, and decided the vegetarian sushi wasn’t going to quite cut it for him, so the solution was to mix up some canned tuna and hot sauce for his own at-home version of a spicy tuna roll.

• Both Ami and Darcy thought the carrot in the roll was odd – they thought it was too hard/crunchy, so if you don’t like carrots, or prefer a softer roll, take heed!

All in all, Ami rated her experience and the recipe a 3 or 3.5 (so, 3.25?) out of 5 because she had issues with the rolling (damn the mat!), and she felt like the sushi was missing something, which means next time, she wants to try adding tuna, crab, or a sauce to inject some life to what she and Chris thought was a rather “boring” meal, even though it was served with soy sauce and wasabi. Darcy also had wasabi with his rolls, but I just ate mine plain, because that’s the way I like them. My rating of the recipe would be a 3.75 because while I enjoyed the rolls very much, I was already looking forward to what else I could put in them, which means there is room for improvement.

The biggest thing to point out about this recipe, though, is that it’s EASY! Making my own sushi had never even crossed my mind until Ami suggested it. If you give it a try, too, let us know!