Cornbread

Cornbread is one of those foods I'm consistently obsessed with. There's rarely a time that cornbread doesn't sound good. Now that the weather is turning cold, however, cornbread is sounding ESPECIALLY good! It's great with chili or soup or as a side dish, or for breakfast... or with lunch... I'm not sure there's a bad time for cornbread! This is a Thanksgiving staple as well, but do test it out before the big day... if for no other reason because it means you get to eat more cornbread!!

When I was a kid my parents always bought those Jiffy Corn Muffin Mixes. I believe it was the first Thanksgiving I was a vegetarian that I was making the stuff and happened to look on the side of the box to find it contained LARD! I was HORRIFIED! And so upset, I mean come on, my cornbread was ruined by pig fat. It was a sad, sad day. I always figured if things came in a box mix, it meant that they were difficult to make, and thought my cornbread eating days were over. I couldn't've been more wrong. Cornbread is silly easy to make, and everyone LOVES my recipe! It's mutated from a recipe I found online, and really makes a nice moist loaf. I use whole wheat pastry flour, but if you're looking to be less healthy about it, white flour will do. Use blue cornmeal for an extra colorful version!


Cornbread
3/4 cup cornmeal
1 1/4 cup unsweetened milk of your choice
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp ground flax seeds mixed with 3 tbsp water and left to sit until gooey
1/4 cup vegetable oil

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 8X8 square baking pan.

2. In a small bowl, combine the cornmeal and the milk and let it sit for about 5 minutes (This will help the cornmeal start to absorb the liquid to make a nice moist bread!).

3. In a larger bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, then stir in everything else until the batter is smooth.

4. Pour the batter into the baking pan and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick stuck into the middle comes out clean. The top will also look a little cracked.

Sweet Potato Muffins and Mutant Corn

Have I mentioned my obsession with sweet potatoes yet?

I'm obsessed with sweet potatoes.

I see no good reason why roasted sweet potatoes aren't a meal in and of themselves. In fact, they often are a meal for me, especially when I've had late lunch and aren't terribly hungry for dinner but know I should eat something.

Once I baked one too many sweet potatoes, though I forget why, and had to find a use for the remaining sweet potato, and sweet potato muffins were born. If you can have pumpkin muffins, why not sweet potato muffins too? No reason, that's why. I altered the Pumpkin Muffin recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance... then altered it some more... then some more... (people keep requesting I make these, so I do), and now I have a version that I pretty much use every time. One thing to note about these muffins is the sugar thing -- I cut the sugar way back from the original pumpkin muffin recipe. I think they're perfect like this, the boy would prefer them a bit sweeter -- but I'm the baker so guess who wins? You may want to play around with the sugar too if it isn't sweet enough for your taste. They are so moist and fluffy and sweet potatoey I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I think baked sweet potatoes work best for this recipe because the baking concentrates the flavor and sugars in the potato. Boiled would probably be too watery. Microwaved would work if you're going for the quick route to mashable sweet potato.


Sweet Potato Muffins
1 3/4 cup white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1 cup well mashed or pureed sweet potato
1/2 cup rice milk
1/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tbsp molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line your 12 muffin tin with cupcake papers (Why don't they make muffin papers? What's with all the haters? But I digress..)

2. Mix the wet ingredients well together in one bowl. Dry ingredients (including sugar) in another. Add the wet to the dry, and stir until just mixed.

3. Fill the muffin papers (ha!) 2/3 to 3/4 full of batter -- whatever makes it divided evenly into 12 spaces. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean

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Which brings me to my next order of business...
MUTANT CORN!

I found this little beauty at the supermarket this weekend
It's a CORN ON THE COB WITH TWO PARASITIC TWINS!!! Isn't it fantastic?? (Does that make it parasitic triplets? I'm not sure.) I bought it because I knew no one would love it like I do. I have this thing for mutant fruits and veggies, and produce with faces, that sort of thing (one day I'll have to post my collection of photos of eggplants with noses).


Husked, it turns out that they were TWO ALBINO MUTANT PARASITIC CORNS!!

I steamed the big guy lightly and had him for dinner with my lentils, and I tossed the other two (plus husks from these and other corns I made for the boy for dinner) in the compost pile. I'm sure there are going to be some happy squirrels tonight. They love this sort of thing too.

Crunchy Marinated Mexican Tofu and Corn Fritters

Here's how this meal evolved -- we had friends over for dinner Saturday night and at the end of dinner, I had 3 cooked ears of corn on the cob that no one ate. I rarely actually eat leftover corn on the cob unless I cook it into something else, but what? Not enough for soup, wasn't really in the mood for salad... then genius struck. CORN FRITTERS!! My mom used to make corn fritters when I was a kid out of a can of corn niblets and flour and eggs and things, and we loved them. I set out to find a vegan corn fritter recipe and found a bunch, but some just had too many ingredients, and a lot called for a bunch of other veggies, and I JUST wanted corn fritters.. so after reading a bunch of recipes from various sources to get an idea of what goes in 'em, I made one up. It turned out FANTASTIC!

... of course you can't just eat corn fritters for dinner. (ok ok, you can, but you SHOULDN'T because they aren't a balanced meal) I thought maybe tofu of some sort would go well, and decided to make up some sort of Mexican-ish marinade for the tofu, and then bread it and bake it. It also turned out absolutely delicious. I thickened the leftover marinade into a sauce that I drizzled over the top (and dipped my fritters in). I served sauteed broccoli and carrots on the side, and it was a complete, and completely yummy dinner.


Crunchy Marinated Mexican Tofu
1 cup vegetable broth
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp agave nectar
1 tsp liquid smoke
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp fresh cilantro, diced
1 lbs tofu, drained and sliced into 1/2 inch slices
1 1/2 cups panko bread crumbs
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp cornstarch

1. In a small bowl whisk together everything but the tofu, bread crumbs, salt and cornstarch. Place the tofu slices in a lidded container, pour the marinade over it, and refridgerate overnight (or until you become impatient and want to cook your damn tofu already).

2. Oh hey tomorrow! How's it going? Preheat the oven to 425. Remove the tofu from the fridge, and pour the marinade off of it into a small pot. Set aside.

3. Mix together the panko and salt on a plate. Retrieve a baking sheet and either spray with nonstick spray, or use a silpat sheet. Press each piece of wet tofu in the bread crumbs, flip, press the other side in (you're trying to stick the breadcrumbs to the tofu) and place on baking sheet. Once they're all ready to go, lightly spray each piece with oil (helps it brown and crisp!). Bake for about 45 minutes, or until firm, golden brown, and crispy.

4. Meanwhile, during the last 15 minutes of cooking, bring the remaining marinade to a boil. In a small bowl, mix the cornstarch with just enough water to dissolve it, then whisk it into the boiling marinade. Simmer for about 5 minutes, whisking often, until the sauce gets a ketchup-like consistency.

5. Apply sauce to tofu. Eat.


Corn Fritters
3 ears of corn, de-eared (about 1 1/2 cups of corn niblets if you're going frozen or canned)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup chickpea flour
1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp ground flax seeds
1 1/4 cup rice milk
Oil for frying

1. In a small bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.

2. Add the rice milk and whisk until the big lumps are gone.

3. Fold in the corn. Allow the batter to sit for at least 5 minutes before frying.

4. To fry, in a cast iron or heavy bottomed skillet, heat enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan (about 1 cm of oil). It's ready when it looks "wavy," or if you put the bottom of a wooden spoon into the oil it bubbles around the wood. Scoop 1/4 cup of batter per fritter and pour into the pan, spreading it a little as you pour. Cook until the edges look bubbly and brown, then flip, and cook until that side is golden brown. Drain on paper towels or bags, and sprinkle with salt immediately after removing from the oil.

Roasted Corn Chowder

I was thumbing through my cookbooks this weekend trying to come up with meal ideas for the week. I came across a recipe for Roasted Corn Chowder in Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson that I thought sounded good with all the nice fresh local corn we've been getting lately. I've had Vegan Planet for a while now, and I don't recall ever making anything from it. I'm surprised by that too because I have a few other of Robertson's cookbooks that I use all the time. I think when it came down to it I realized that the typeface in Vegan Planet bugged me and I don't find it very readable. I'm glad I suffered through it though because the chowder was delicious! I felt a little silly cooking soup on a late July night, but when else are you going to have beautiful fresh corn? I topped the soup with homemade croûtons and some basil chiffonade (as the recipe recommended) and it was just perfect. Not too heavy for a summer night with the sweet corn flavor dominating. The only major change I made was that I used a shallot instead of a small onion because I had a shallot and they don't bother my belly as much as onions do!

Roasted Corn Chowder

4 ears of corn
1 tbsp olive oil
1 shallot, diced
1 celery rib, diced
3 small yukon gold potatoes, diced
4 cups (1 quart) vegetable broth
1 cup plain rice milk
Salt and Pepper to taste
Basil chiffonade for garnish (just those little basil strips as seen in the picture)

1. Peel back the corn husks and remove the silks, then close up the corn again. Place the cleaned ears corn on a baking sheet and bake in a 450 degree oven for 25-30 minutes. Once they're done and cooled, cut the corn off the cob with a sharp knife. The "bowl in bowl" technique is good for this to keep the corn stable and to keep the kernels from going all over the place. Basically, you take a small bowl with a rim and put it upside down in a larger bowl. Use the small bowl to stabilize the corn and carefully cut the kernels off the cob. I thought an illustration might help:



2. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat and add the shallot and celery rib. Keep the heat medium low, cover and cook for about 5 minutes until tender.

3. Add the potatoes and vegetable broth and cook for 25 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

4. Add the corn to the soup and simmer, uncovered, for another 15 minutes.

5. Put 2 cups of soup in the blender and blend until smooth. ** Hot soup in a blender will build up steam quickly and the top will explode off ** To avoid this, open the part of the blender lid that opens or comes off so you can pour in ingredients and replace it with a folded dish towel. This will allow steam to escape and not soup. **

6. Pour the blended soup back into the rest of the soup along with 1 cup of rice milk. Stir. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.

7. Serve with croûtons and top with fresh basil as desired.

Basic Guidelines for Croûtons

1. Cube however much bread you want for croûtons. I did 2 slices of multigrain, one slice of whole wheat, and a homemade pumpernickel roll. Crusty stale bread is best.

2. Spray down a baking sheet with olive oil. Put the bread cubes on the baking sheet, then spray them with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and any other seasoning you like (tonight was basil), toss, and then spray again with olive oil.

3. Bake in a 400 degree oven until sufficiently toasty and crunchy -- about 15-20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.

Finally...
How to Keep Your Cat from Getting Underfoot While You Cook


I can't explain it. My cat Atticus loves to lick corn cobs. He doesn't eat any kernels he pulls off, but he likes to bite and lick at the cob. PLEASE do not leave your cat unattended with a corn cob because my cat is a goofball. And DOUBLE PLEASE don't ever give your dog corn on the cob because it can cause an obstruction and make your dog very very sick. Public service announcement over. You can now continue enjoying the picture of Atticus enjoying a corn cob.