Flicking the Vs: January 2013

More store cupboard cleaning out - this time my unwilling victim was a packet of granary flour. Yep, that one had to go. I think I may have bought it last winter, and it had been glaring out at me every time I went for the baking powder or the vanilla.

Like my pierogi experiment, it took two goes to take this one down, and you don't get to see the first one because it was a travesty of baking - the sort of thing a toddler might bring home from school, and its adoring parent would still have to smuggle it into the bin because it was fricking inedible.

For my first baking misstep, I used a Delia Smith variation on my good friend, the Doris Grant loaf recipe. It came out damp, hard, heavy and unrisen. All the things you don't want in a loaf, it was those. (Oddly enough, the other half really liked it. No accounting for taste, I guess.)

Turns out, yeast can go off and lose its magical powers. Yep, if you leave it too long past its sell-by date and open to the air, it goes on strike and won't lift your bread. Did you know that? Me neither. I do now, unfortunately.

Still, that left me half a bag of granary flour needing to be taken care of. A second attempt then.

I didn't have far to look for inspiration: there was a recipe on the back of the bag. Unlike the no-knead Doris Grant, I had to put my back into this one - kneading it for 10 minutes, leaving it to rise for an hour or something.

The second time around, this happened:

It looks like a proper loaf and everything. Turns out, if you do all that proving and kneading and all that, you get a decent loaf out of it. (Or, more importantly, if you use yeast that isn't old enough to have a driving licence, then you get a decent loaf out of it. High five!

However, I was still enjoying the smug glow of clearing out something from my cupboard when the snow fell. The immediate reaction was a spot of panic buying, and I'm now the proud owner of a 1.5 kilo bag of granary flour again. Back to the drawing (chopping?) board...

bread

Using (up) my loaf

More store cupboard cleaning out - this time my unwilling victim was a packet of granary flour. Yep, that one had to go. I think I may hav...

casserole

Dad's quick frankfurter casserole

When I told my parents that I was becoming vegan, my mum cried. Seriously. It wasn't quite the reaction I was expecting, but apart fro...

biscuits

Chocolate snowballs in the snow

From the end of last week to the start of this one, there's been snow in England. Even in London, a few inches of white stuff was clingi...

capers

You can't spell 'warm potato salad' without meh

Are you sick of my smug New Year's resolution keeping yet? Well, let me help you with that. I've kicked that resolution-keeping thin...

blueberry

A first attempt at blueberry preserves

As I mentioned a while ago , one of my Christmas presents this festive season was a book on making jams, pickles and preserves. My mum was a...

Pierogi: lovely, lovely Polish dumplings or secret creeping terrormongers in a dainty dough jacket?

Clearly, it's both. Yes, I've never made a pierogi, so intimidated have I been my their majesty. I used to eat pierogi back in my pregan days at a local Polish restaurant which is now long since closed, and I've been jonesing for their sweet, sweet goodness ever since.

Despite that, I've never been tempted to head to the kitchen to recreate them. I guess I assumed that I'd have to make the dough, then fill it, then fry the pierogi in some butter-free butter, then who knows? But it definitely seemed like too much work, so no pierogi graced this kitchen.

But with my New Year resolution to feel the food fear and cook the scary dishes anyway, I made me some dumplings. They looked like this:

They were stuffed with a mix of fried onions, mashed potato and sauerkraut, and served with a sour cream (Tofutti's heroic Sour Supreme in this case) and dill sauce.

I'll level with you here: this was my second attempt. My first attempt I didn't want to share with you, mainly as it looked like something you'd find in a hospital bin. Seriously. I tried boiling the pierogi and then frying them, as I seemed to remember that's how the ones I used it eat were cooked and a number of recipes suggested I should, but the dumplings fell apart and started oozing out all their filling in a most unappealing way.

Second time around, I cooked them gyoza style - fried them, added a bit of water, stuck a plate on top and let the steam do the rest of the cooking. Second time around = success.

What's that? You reckon I didn't make the pierogi dough myself, and you think I went gyoza style because the dumplings are just ready-made vegan wonton skins with a different filling? Well, I say to you, haters gonna hate. Or, in this instance, you've got me bang to rights, guv.

Yep, I cheated. You caught me. Still, I really like these pierogi-a-likes and they weren't a million miles from the real deal either.

So, anyway, I'm still chalking this one up as a resolution kept - look, I even made myself a little laurel out of dill to celebrate my first taking-down of a food fear.

dumplings

Pierogi: Feel the food fear and do it anyway, episode 1

Pierogi: lovely, lovely Polish dumplings or secret creeping terrormongers in a dainty dough jacket? Clearly, it's both. Yes, I've ...

This year, I'm about New Year's resolutions I can cope with keeping. Last year, I only made one resolution - learn how to play mah jong - and I couldn't even keep that, despite having a rather lovely mah jong set in my possession. Nyargh.

So this year, it's all about the food. I eat food every day, so making food resolutions kind of builds in keepability. (OK, maybe I'm being a bit optimistic here, but I'm also optimistic that keepability is a word, so let me enjoy my delusions for a bit).

Here are my not-very-challenging resolutions:

1) Declutter the kitchen. Use up more of the foods that have been hanging around in the store cupboards and fridge for too long.

2) I've got two folders full of recipes I've printed out from websites or torn out from magazines. The folders seem to get fuller and fuller without me cooking any of the dishes. New Year's resolution number two - cook more of them, and ditch the failers.

3) Feel the food fear and do it anyway! Cook more recipes that I've avoided because I thought they were too complicated, or because they use foods I think I wouldn't like.

So, this post sorts out both number one and number two resolutions - it uses a recipe I printed out, and helps use up a pantry over-stayer, fermented black beans.

For MoFo last year, I tried cooking with fermented black beans a couple of times, but ignored them after October was over (through lack of inspiration, rather than lack of enjoyment, I hasten to add). During MoFo, I printed out a recipe using the fermented black beans from the LA Times site - Vegetarian Hunan-style tofu - but never got around to using it.

Time to tackle that situation. I made the recipe, but swapped out the shiitake mushrooms for other veggies (I love shiitakes, but Mr Flicking the Vs fears them).

Here's what happened:

This one is a stone-cold winner! Again, I'm kind of puzzled why, given that fermented black beans are awesome, I don't cook with them that often. Or at all since October, in fact. This recipe didn't even take too long to make, and only involved one pan. What more can you ask for? Roll on more New Year's resolution keeping!

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