de facto redhead

This week in kitchen adventures brings about the debut of the Paleo diet. Have you heard of this way of eating before? Darcy and I have decided to try it out for 30 days to gauge how healthy we feel afterward, to see if there is any difference on the scale, and to find out how we can incorporate healthier options into our regular diet. The basic premise of the Paleo diet is to eat like…well…Paleolithic man. What that means is no dairy, no wheat or grains, and no added sugars or salt – just plain ol’ huntin’ n’ gatherin’ sorts of foods. As you can imagine, this cuts out a large portion of what I like to eat – CARBS – but 30 days isn’t a long time, and with a little cheating with my friends on weekends, I will be able to see this thing through to the end. (I have actually discovered in the last week and a half that fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, and nuts can be mixed into some interesting and tasty combinations.) Darcy, however, is the truly devoted one in this venture, and even though he went away last weekend, he stuck to his diet the entire time! I, on the other hand, went to up to Caroline’s farm and ate chocolate chip cookies, bread, chocolate banana bread, and nachos, and drank juice, lemonade, vodka, gin, and wine. Binge alert!

Caroline and I, and solid proof of my wicked ways.

So, this week marks Week 1 of me forcing the Paleolithic diet on Ami, and our first selection from the official Paleo Diet Cookbook is the So Cal Omelet, that serves two people:

Last week, Ami and I decided to give roasted garlic a go. She had always wanted to try making it (but was scared she would burn it), and I had grand illusions of my own roasted garlic tasting like the Milestone’s appetizer, the Baked Goat Cheese & Slow-roasted Garlic Flatbread Plate. Whose dreams came true, and whose were crushed…?

Roasted Garlic (c/o simplyrecipes.com) (click on the link for step-by-step pictures!)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 Garlic bulb
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Tinfoil and muffin tin

DIRECTIONS

• Preheat the oven to 400°F.

• Peel away the outer layers of the garlic-bulb skin, leaving the skins of the individual cloves intact. Using a knife, cut off 1/4- to a 1/2-inch of the top of cloves, exposing the individual cloves of garlic.

• Place the garlic heads in a baking pan; muffin pans work well for this purpose. Drizzle a couple teaspoons of olive oil over each head, using your fingers to make sure the garlic head is well coated. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 400°F for 30-35 minutes, or until the cloves feel soft when pressed.

• Allow the garlic to cool enough so you can touch it without burning yourself. Use a small small knife to cut the skin slightly around each clove. Use a cocktail fork or your fingers to pull or squeeze the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins.

• Eat as is or mash with a fork and use for cooking. Can be spread over warm French bread, mixed with sour cream for a topping for baked potatoes, or mixed in with Parmesan and pasta.

My ingredients. Not exactly the most exciting picture…

Ami’s ingredients. A slightly more interesting picture because I am unfamiliar with the oil she decided to use. It’s the small things, OK?

My Mr. Garlicko about to get baked, man.

Ami’s garlic, wedged into its burrow.

My end result. Not bad!

Ami’s garlic that’s looking (as Larry David would say), pret-ty, pret-ty good.

Obviously, those are some of the most boring pictures EVER! But what else could Ami and I have taken photos of? The ingredients were simple, so the pictures were simple. Actually, this recipe was simple. Hurray for simpletons!

Really, though, there is nothing to discuss when it comes to the ingredients, except for the fact that both mine and Ami’s garlic bulbs were too large for our muffin tins. Our advice is to keep the size of a regular muffin-tin bottom in mind when selecting your garlic. Rocket science!

Next up is the tinfoil. I struggled a bit with getting the tinfoil to stay on to my satisfaction because my fingers were slippery after trying to wrap the edges of it down around the sides of the oily garlic bulb. Ami didn’t mention any problems, though, so maybe it was the glass of wine I was drinking. Oops.

As far as the actual baking went, we both kept our garlic in the oven for 35 minutes, and that seemed to work out well. We had some black marks on the outsides of a few cloves, but the actual garlic was, as Ami said, “A-OK.” Now, what did we like and what didn’t we like…?

Ami rates this recipe a 5 out of 5, with “no complaints,” and her positive thoughts are thanks to a pasta dish that she threw the garlic into (“quick and delicious”), and the fact that she discovered Holden loves roasted garlic (“he couldn’t get enough”). I was a bit let down because of my too-high expectations of Milestone’s perfection, but I think my final rating, all things considered, is a 4 out of 5. I scooped the garlic out with the tip of a small knife (uh, no cocktail fork on hand – sorry!), and spread it on fresh bread, topped with a bit of Boursin cheese. I did this in between making a homemade pasta sauce for my fettucine supper, and in combination with my pre-dinner glass of wine, I felt pretty good about myself. Very eat, pray, love.

Wait a minute. Did Ami and I just unlock the secret to happiness? Roasted garlic? It definitely worked for us, so what about you? Sullen to sunny? Moody to magnificent? Try roasted garlic today!

So, I went away to PEI, and while I meant to post about this recipe (and a few other things!) in the past couple weeks, I just completely checked out of the blogging world. Sorry! Ami and I are still baking and cooking, though, and the last recipe we tried out before I took off was the simply titled Baked Oatmeal, from wholeliving.com.

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

My ingredients, with my trusty laptop (i.e. “cookbook”) on the counter in the background.

Ami’s ingredients. I want her maple syrup!

I completely forgot to take a picture mid-baking, so this blurry oven-window photo had to make the cut!

Ami’s prepared oatmeal, ready for the oven!

As you can see, after the baked oatmeal came out of the oven, it was quite popular, but…

Ami’s baked oatmeal looks great, and the added brown sugar looks delicious!

Before I get going into our actual opinions about this recipe, I have to admit that because I baked it almost a month ago, this won’t be a long and involved review – my memory is fuzzy, man! But, as always, I’ll address the ingredients first:

• Ami used hemp milk, and I used soy milk in place of regular milk.
• I went with dried cranberries, but Ami tried out a mix of blackberries and strawberries, since that’s what her market had available that week.
• I stuck with almonds only, but Ami went wild and used walnuts AND almonds. She mixed in the walnuts, and put her sliced almonds on top.
• As I mentioned in Ami’s last photo, she sprinkled brown sugar over her oatmeal, which is something I wished I would have done too!

As for the directions, in addition to the multi-nut mixture Ami used, she went completely crazy and didn’t measure either her nuts OR her berries, and just went with her instinct. Flouting measurement! Gasp! Another note:

• Ami baked her oatmeal for an extra 5-10 minutes (45-50 minutes total) to ensure that it was set. She thought it was a bit more watery because she used hemp milk, but I also baked mine for about 40-45 minutes because it was hard to tell if the oatmeal was set. Turns out, it was, but the extra time didn’t hurt.

When the oatmeal came out of the oven, it smelled SO GOOD, and Darcy and I had some almost right away. It tasted great! Ami and Chris also loved the oatmeal, but the difference is that they continued to love it. Mine and Darcy’s interest dwindled as the days went by. Sure, I heated it up in the microwave, but it just wasn’t the same as fresh from the oven. Plus, Darcy grew to despise the sliced bananas on the bottom of the baking dish – they turned too “slimy” for him. Chris, however, said it was one of his favourite recipes yet! Ami said she would definitely make it again, and is looking forward to experimenting with blueberries, raspberries, etc. She also mentioned this could be a good recipe for Holden (he’s nine months old), so there’s a perk for all you mothers out there! Her final rating was 4.5 out of 5, and mine is 2.5 out of 5, for the obvious reason that I ran so hot and cold on its taste: “I love it!” “I guess I’ll eat it because I don’t want to waste it.” “Uhhhh, maybe Darcy will eat the rest of this when I’m gone to PEI.” (He didn’t, and ended up throwing it out.)

What will YOU think of the baked oatmeal?

If there’s one thing this meal is, it’s green! Basil, avocado, and, well, nothing. That’s all it took to make this week’s guacamole-coloured pesto the lovely shade that it was, and once a few extra ingredients were thrown in for texture and flavour, all was right in my carefully constructed world of pasta.

This week’s recipe is from Chef Chloe, and she is the creator of the Beach Cookies Ami and I loved so much a couple weeks ago. CeeCee is back for Week 11′s simple title (Avocado Pesto Pasta), simple ingredient list (9-10 items), and simple directions (you make the pesto while the pasta cooks). Now wait just a minute. This meal is something else other than green, after all – it’s also…wait for it…simple! Yahoo!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pound dried linguini
• 1 bunch basil leaves (about 2½ ounces)
• ½ cup pine nuts
• 2 ripe avocados, pitted and peeled
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about ½ of a lemon)
• 3 cloves garlic
• ½ cup olive oil
• Salt to taste
• freshly ground black pepper to taste
• ¼ cup chopped sun dried tomatoes (optional)

DIRECTIONS

In a large pot, bring water to a boil. Add pasta and cook to package directions. While pasta cooks, in a food processor, blend basil, pine nuts, avocados, lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.

Drain pasta. In a large serving bowl, toss pesto with hot, freshly cooked pasta and garnish each serving with a basil leaf. For an extra touch of color and flavour, top pasta with sundried tomatoes.

My ingredients. President’s Choice takeover!

Ami’s ingredients. Doesn’t her basil in her colander look farm-fresh and perky?

My pesto, pre-pestozation.

Ami’s pesto, blended (i.e. pestosized) to perfection!

My final dish, plated a la sprig au basil.

It’s green, it’s Ami’s, and it looks delicious!

For me, the adventure with this recipe began at the grocery store. I was gathering up my items at Fortino’s, and nearly dropped everything when I saw that pine nuts were being sold for $47 a pound. I actually thought it was a mistake, and scooped about a 1/2 cup into bag. Nope. That small amount would have cost me $13 had I not asked the cashier to take the pine nuts off my order. WTF? Ami informed me that Bulk Barn’s prices are much cheaper, but I didn’t have a chance to check that out for myself because I didn’t have the car the day I was making the recipe, so I had to look up a substitute. Sunflower seeds appeared to be the common Internet response to Googling “replacement for pine nuts.” So, the first and only substitution for this week is sunflower seeds in place of pine nuts. Other ingredient notes include:

• I halved the recipe, and still had too much pesto. Ami made the full amount, but, in her words, had “wayyyyyy too much” as well. Even though she used her extra pesto the next day on fresh bread, she wished she would have split the recipe in two. Take note, singles and couples!

• The measurements confused us. One pound of liguini? Two-and-a-half ounces of basil leaves? Duhhhhhhhh, me no know. Luckily, I have a spaghetti measurer that helps me figure out portion sizes, but I had to do some online conversions to find out what was equal to half of two-and-a-half ounces, in grams, since that was the unit of my basil package. From what I could tell, my package was approximately half of two-and-a-half ounces, which ended up working out great for me. Ami noted, “2 1/2 ounces means nothing to me,” and threw in her entire bunch of basil, sans roots, ounces be damned! In fact, I think this whole confusing paragraph can be damned!

• Ami found that she needed to use more olive oil than what the recipe called for, in order for her to get the right “pesto” consistency, but she also mentioned that this could have been because she played fast and loose with her basil, or because her avocados were gargantuan mutants.

• She also added the juice from a whole lemon because after an initial taste-test, she thought her pesto needed more. Wild basil leaves and giant avocados strike again?

• I added the “optional” sun-dried tomatoes, and I’m glad I did! Ami meant to, but forgot, and her dinner-time conversation went like this: Chris – “This is good…but it could use something.” Ami – “Sun-dried tomatoes?” Chris – “YES! That would have been perfect.” Hear, hear, sun-dried tomatoes, hear, hear!

To me, the final dish was delicious. To Darcy, not so much. There was a lot of “Well…it’s OK“-type comments, and he thought the avocado flavour was overpowering. Naysayer! I loved it. Ami and Chris both enjoyed their meal, too, but felt something was lacking, and in Ami’s words, “it was a little plain Jane for us.” Next time, she plans to add anything from roasted zucchini and peppers, to seafood, but for this meal, she had to settle for grated Parmesan and chili flakes added halfway through her supper.

Another word of warning – this meal is filling! Ami was stuffed, Chris didn’t eat seconds (which is apparently a rare and shocking occurrence), I was certainly full, and Darcy doesn’t matter because he didn’t like the meal anyway. Harumph! When all was said and done, Ami rated the recipe a 3 out of 5, but I am going to award it a 4 out of 5 because besides the measurement issues, I thought the recipe was amazingly simple and easy to follow, it took no time at all to prepare, and as soon as I finish typing out this blog post, I’m heading to the kitchen to make myself a bowl of this pasta! (Darcy can have his soup – see if I care!)

Learn about lamb, cook lamb, eat lamb, have a drink, repeat. This is the essence of a Culinary Adventure Company cooking class I went to last week for an article I had to write for myontarioinfo.com, and I had such a great time taking part! The class provided a few “firsts” for me – one, I had never been to a cooking class; and two, I had never eaten lamb. I’m not big on the more carnivorous pursuits of the kitchen, but I was pleasantly surprised about how much I actually liked this type of meat! Especially the meatballs! I won’t go on too much more about my experience, though, because I already wrote all about it on myontarioinfo.com, so if you’re interested in what went on, check out my article here.

The evening is off to a nice start!

Properly outfitted!

Deboning a lamb leg is not an easy task…

…and here is proof. Help me!!

Concentrating on my precious meatballs!

Look what I made!

Eating professionally cooked lamb – I’m so full here!

To be more exact, Elvis lives in Burlington, in a Tupperware container, in my refrigerator. He’s also deliciously flavoured with cinnamon, maple syrup, dark chocolate, and peanut butter. Elvis, thou art sweet and savoury.

Now, why this week’s recipe has the official name of “Elvis Granola,” I don’t know. Is there a joke out there in the pop-culture world that I’m just not getting? Does the author of Eat, Live, Run know something I don’t? (I’m sure she knows many things I don’t.) I just realized I should have been listening to Elvis while making my granola – an Elvis opportunity, wasted! Swoon and collapse and fetch me my smelling salts.

ANYWAY, enough talk. As you’ve heard by now (it was on the news, right?), this week, Ami and I made our own granola. Here are Ami’s initial thoughts on the idea:

“I actually have been wanting to try my hand at making my own granola for a while…and this recipe looks too delish to pass up. It seems like making your own granola is so easy; I always feel like a fool buying it at the store. Same with hummus. People make it sound like it is so easy to make both. Why pay for it?! So, if this recipe works out, I may just start testing out other granola recipes, and, who knows, maybe I will stop ever buying granola again!”

Did Ami’s prophecy come true? Read on…

INGREDIENTS

• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup chunky peanut butter
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 4 cups old-fashioned oats
• 1/4 cup ground flax seeds
• 1/2 cup dry-roasted peanuts
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 2/3 cup chopped dark chocolate (or miniature chocolate chips)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 275.

Bring the canola oil, maple syrup, peanut butter, salt, and cinnamon to a simmer on the stove. Cook for three to five minutes.

While that’s cooking, mix together the oats, ground flax, peanuts, and sunflower seeds. Pour hot syrup mixture over the oats and toss well to coat. Spread out granola onto two lined baking trays and bake for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally and turning trays midway through.

Let granola cool completely before adding the chopped chocolate.

*This granola will stay fresh for about a month sealed in Tupperware and kept in the fridge.

My ingredients. Like my new syrup dispenser that I bought for $2 at the Reuse Centre?

Ami’s ingredients. I want her fresh maple syrup!

My granola, all mixed up and ready to be put in the oven.

Ami’s granola. Those oats are about to be baked good. Real good.

My finished granola, looking much like it did before it went into the oven.

Ami’s granola (pictured here, complete with a poised spoon) already being consumed by someone.

All right – as usual, I’ll start with the ingredients, and how we handled them.

• Ami used coconut oil instead of canola oil (she wanted the extra health kick, and she likes the flavour more).

• I have no idea if my use of Quaker Quick Oats versus the use of actual old-fashioned oats affected my granola, but the quickies were what I had on hand, so too bad!

• I also don’t know if non-salted peanuts bought from the bulk bin are the same as dry-roasted peanuts (I don’t think they are), but I used them anyway, and if you can believe it, the world didn’t explode.

• I chopped up the chocolate myself, and even though only one bar is pictured above, I had another on reserve in case I “needed” it. I needed it.

The directions for this recipe are mostly straightforward, but I admit that I was completely flustered at one point. In my ingredients picture above, you can see that my peanut butter is not PC Blue Menu Just Peanuts Peanut Butter. I did, however, have a bit of this left in the fridge, so I used the rest of it, plus the Compliments brand, to make up my 1/4-cup of peanut butter. I had misgivings because, for some reason, the PC Blue Menu stuff never really “oiled up” (i.e. separated) in the fridge like natural peanut butter usually does. It still tasted good, but it was dry and clumpy, and didn’t spread well (and yes, I checked, it wasn’t expired). What the heck, I used it anyway. Bad idea. My syrup mixture was clumpy, too! I thought I had created the first official disaster of our cooking/baking series. But, when I poured the clumpy mixture over the oats, and broke the clumps up with my fingers, smaller pieces were left that, when tasted, were like little balls of oaty (oatie?) peanut butter (you can see them in my “finished product” picture above). I quickly mixed up another pot of the syrup mixture with the Compliments brand peanut butter, and since it looked much more like the picture on Eat, Live, Run’s blog, I figured I was good to go. Crisis averted!

After doing all the heating, boiling, and mixing, the only other thing that was a bit odd for both Ami and I was the fact that we had to use two baking sheets. I was also confused by what was meant by “lined.” Did that mean rimmed? Or lined with parchment paper? I used two un-rimmed cookie sheets, covered in parchment paper, and I placed them on the two most “middle” racks of my oven. Ami used rimmed baking sheets, but her positioning was the same, since it was obvious there was no way the sheets we had were going to fit side by side in our ovens.

Everything turned out fine, and while both of us only stirred the granola once (after 20 minutes), I forgot to turn the trays. This didn’t appear to affect the outcome, either. Success!

Ami rated her granola-making experience a whopping 5 out of 5, and while I almost agree based on taste alone, I just can’t quite get there because of my syrup fiasco, and because of what I thought was ambiguity surrounding the baking sheets and their positioning. Therefore, my royal decree delcares…4.5 out of 5. The granola is dang good, y’all!

And now for Ami’s prophecy.

• Her initial statement: “So, if this recipe works out, I may just start testing out other granola recipes, and, who knows, maybe I will stop ever buying granola again!”

• Her final consensus: “I am completely converted to making my own granola from here on out.”

Ooohhhhh, eerie! To be honest, though, I don’t think I see a reason to buy granola again, either. Carla’s kitchen is a-rockin’!

One more granola note from Ami and I – make sure you have a large Tupperware container to store the granola in because it ain’t no joke – this recipe makes granola for dayz.

Last week, Ami and I had our fun with a recipe that contained coconut, and when it came time for me to send Ami a list of choices for Week 9, I had coconut on the brain, and included a recipe for coconut shrimp. Ami mentioned that our readers (Hello? Please say you’re out there?) might be getting sick of vegan recipes, and because of that, perhaps we should try the shrimp. Our motives weren’t entirely altruistic, though – she loves the coconut shrimp at Red Lobster, and my eyes glaze over and my mouth gets slack when coconut anything is mentioned. Everyone, please extend a warm welcome to Paula Deen’s Coconut Shrimp with Orange Marmalade.

Ingredients

• 2 cups shredded sweetened coconut
• 2 cups bread crumbs
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (as usual, Kosher salt is not necessary)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs, beaten
• 24 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• Vegetable oil, for frying

Dipping Sauce:

• 1/2 cup orange marmalade
• 1 to 2 tablespoons dark rum

Directions

Last week, Ami and I had a bit of a miss, but this week, we’re back on track with a total hit! Our recipe in Week 8 (beach “cookies” that are actually more like squares) comes from Chef Chloe, and it’s also the last cooking adventure of March, which also means the end of Ami’s month of being 100% vegan. She didn’t miss much in her four weeks of animal-free eating, but is glad to be able to use butter and eggs again. Hear, hear!

I didn’t join Ami in vegan solidarity this week, and that is simply because I just used what I had at home. I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store. Me lazy.

INGREDIENTS

½ cup vegan margarine (Earth Balance soy-free non-hydrogenated buttery spread)
2 cups graham cracker crumbs (Chef Chloe suggests Health Valley Graham Crackers, which you can pulse into fine crumbs in the food processor. Feel free to do this with any vegan graham cracker or wafer cookie.)
1 cup canned coconut milk
¼ cup agave or maple syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons arrowroot
1  1/2 cups shredded sweetened coconut
1/2  cup chopped walnuts, toasted (optional)
2 cups non-dairy chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Melt margarine in microwave or over stove, and pour into a 9″x13″ baking pan. Swirl around until the bottom of the pan is completely coated.
3. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs evenly into pan until bottom of the pan is completely coated in crumbs. Pat down lightly with your hands.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together coconut milk, agave, vanilla, salt, and arrowroot. Drizzle this mixture evenly over the graham cracker layer.
5. Sprinkle the shredded coconut into the pan, then layer the optional nuts, then the chocolate chips. With the palm of your hand, gently pat the top of the cookie pan so that the chocolate chips get cemented into the rest of the cookie.
6. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until centre looks thick and slightly bubbly with very lightly browned edges.
7. Let cool, then refrigerate for a couple hours or overnight. Cut into even bars. The textures and flavours of this cookie really work best after refrigeration.
8. If you’re feeling festive, platter the cookies on a tray or dish of organic brown sugar (mock sand) and stick some cocktail umbrellas in the sugar for a “beach scene.”

My ingredients. (I had to use plain old Aunt Jemima syrup because I was out of pure maple syrup. I felt guilty about it, and the fact that I used regular chocolate chips. Am I vegan-chip convert? Maybe. Time will tell…)

Ami’s ingredients. She’s so wholesome and organized with her labelled mason jars!

Left: The top view of my squares, before they faced the heat of the oven. Right: The side view.

My finished product, laid out all lovely-like on a Pyrex plate.

Ami’s version of the beach cookie. Mmmmmmm!

This recipe is really easy to bake, and, vegan or not, finding the ingredients is simple. The combination of chocolate, coconut, graham crackers, and walnuts is pretty unbeatable, and the firm square that’s created after the pan hardens in the fridge is delicious! First, though, let’s start with a discussion of the ingredients:

• Ami didn’t substitute or change anything this week.

• As for me, I manually crushed my graham crackers into crumbs (like I did with the peanut-butter cups), and it takes a lot of crackers and a lot of crushing to get two cups’ worth of crumbs! I think I used about a sleeve and a half of crackers, and my arms were getting sore. Who knew the act of pummelling with a rolling pin was so arduous? I dare you to try it and not complain!

• I used corn starch in place of arrowroot, and I have Ami to thank for the tip that substituting one for the other is A-OK.

• I didn’t toast my walnuts, and, as I mentioned, I used regular chocolate chips and Aunt Jemima syrup.

As for the directions, instead of melting her margarine in a separate bowl, Ami just melted it in the pan, inside the pre-heated oven. She made a good point when she told me that it saved a dish, and this note was particularly poignant after I put my pan in the oven, and my kitchen counters looked like about five children under the age of six had been helping me bake.

There’s really nothing else to say about the directions, other than the fact that Ami and I both recommend eating these squares COLD. She left hers in the fridge for three to four hours before eating them, and I had mine in there for about five hours. (Well, that’s a bit of a lie – I took them out after three hours and ate one, and then put the pan back in the fridge until suppertime.) And, I think they tasted even better the next day, when the squares really had a chance to harden overnight.

Now, for the rave reviews. Ami made these for friends, and they loved them. Two people asked her for the recipe, and one commented that they were similar to “magic bars,” and that she would likely be abandoning her magic-bar recipe for the almighty beach cookie. Go, beach cookie, go!

Here is Ami’s first paragraph in her “review” e-mail to me, sent the day after her get-together: “Man, oh, man, were they tasty. I had to send Chris to work with five of them on Monday to get rid of the rest, after devouring like four on Sunday afternoon. I actually think this might be my FAVOURITE recipe so far…OK, well, tied with the PB cups (I can’t choose between the two).” Is it any surprise that she rated this recipe a five out of five (“I couldn’t find anything wrong with the recipe or that I didn’t like!! A definite remaker!”)? I am pretty addicted to them, too, and I am rating them a 4.75 out of five because I also like them just as much as the PB cups, and that’s the score I bestowed on that recipe. Oh, the power I wield!

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!