vegan chocolate mousse (and cake)

For Food & Fitness class we had to do a project on a healthy cookbook of our choice. I chose 500 Vegan Recipes because they had a recipe for chocolate mousse that I found intriguing.

It involved avocado (ripe, 1), tofu (firm, 1 pound) and agave syrup (1/4 cup).



I pureed the tofu and agave syrup first, then added melted chocolate (dark, 2 cups). It was a little grainy, but I think it would've worked if the tofu was the soft kind. I wanted to try without avocado because Whole Food's vegan chocolate mousse is really good and all it is is chocolate, tofu and brown rice syrup.



After I added the avocado the mixture became smoother/creamier.



I wanted to serve samples to the class, so I made a vegan chocolate cake to accompany the mousse. This was my first foray into vegan baking and I had no idea to expect. The cake came out dark and dense, like bread almost. Besides having no egg, no dairy, it also didn't have sugar. The only sweetness was from the non-dairy yogurt and applesauce that I put in.

The cake by itself didn't taste very good, although it did have the texture/chewiness of a regular chocolate cake.



Thankfully it tasted better with the mousse. I cut the cake into little squares and placed them in little sample cups, then piped mousse over.



The mousse actually set at room temperature, to a ganache-like consistency. Definitely didn't expect that. Also the dark chocolate taste was too strong (and I'm speaking as someone who loves dark chocolate). If I were to make this again I would use a milk/dark chocolate mixture, and/or cut down the amount of chocolate in the recipe.

If anyone has any vegan dessert recipes to share, please let me know! I'd love to try other stuff.

fusion cabbage rolls

This is a fusion comfort food dish I dreamed up. It started with albondigas, or Latin meatballs. I've made regular/Italian meatballs and Chinese dumpling before, but never albondigas. I figured it was time to try, but I didn't want to just do meatballs, so I thought about using it as a filling for cabbage rolls.

So here is the filling: 1 pound ground beef, 1 cup cooked rice, 2 eggs (beaten), 5 cloves garlic (minced), 1/2 onion & 1 carrot (small dice), cumin, oregano, salt and pepper. Testing the taste/spice level meant microwaving small bits at a time and tasting/adjusting accordingly.



For the cabbage part I chose to use napa cabbage - it's crunchier and I was curious how it would taste. Boiled the leaves in chicken broth until they softened.



Filling was spooned on was the leaves rolled up. Then the rolls went into the oven to cook, for about half hour or so until the meat was done.



To serve, I didn't want to do rice because there was already rice in the filling. So I decided to do orzo, which is like rice-shaped pasta. The marinara was kind of a lazy man's marinara: cooked mirepoix in chicken broth, pureed it, then added tomato sauce, Italian seasoning, bay leaf, salt & pepper.

The chicken on top is optional - the dish is good with or without it. But together the whole thing is very comfort food. The cabbage rolls are great though - juicy and crunchy and filling. You could easily make this a soup dish too, more like traditional albondigas, and it'd be just as filling probably, with some tortillas.



There was leftover filling, so I added finely chopped cabbage and scallions and converted it to dumpling filling. Nothing went to waste :)

yummy granola bars

The most yummy thing that we've made in Food & Fitness class to date has been these granola bars. I made them at home with the recipe modified to my liking.

First, the wet mixture: 1/2 cup butter, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup honey, 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.



Then the dry mixture: 2 cups puffed wheat cereal, 2 cups rolled oats, 1 cup dried apricot (chopped), 1/2 cup salted almonds, 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips.



Combine the two mixtures and drop into a greased 9 x 13 pan. To press the mixture down without getting your hands all sticky, use a greased piece of parchment paper.



Bake in a 350F oven for 20 minutes or until golden. Then let cool for at least an hour before attempting to cut it. Mine didn't cut very well but you might be able to avoid that problem with either a little more honey, or a little more hardcore cooling (in the fridge or freezer).

Feel free to substitute with your own favorite puffed cereal, dried fruits, nuts/seeds, etc!

thai red curry paste

In Sauces class we deviated from the classic cream/butter sauces to do something herb/spicy (the other mode of getting flavor). Specifically, Thai red curry paste!

I've only made Thai curry a handful of times, and always with packaged pastes. So making this from scratch was really exciting.

I started out with the dried spices - 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, 2 cardamom pods, 1/2 tsp black peppercorns, 1/2 tsp salt.



Ground all of that with the mortar & pestle until it was powder.



Next were some ingredients I haven't worked with before: galangal (similar to ginger), lemongrass, what is supposed to be kaffir lime (but was actually just regular lime), and what is supposed to be coriander/cilantro root (actually just the stems and leaves). Even in culinary school we have to do Americanized substitutions, haha.



We did get authentic shrimp paste though. This stuff is potent.



The recipe called for 10 dried chilies and 10 fresh chilies (I assume red bird's eye chili), but we made do with what we had. From left to right, I used 10 dried guajillos, 1 fresh fresno and 3 green bird's eye chilies.



Then there was a lot of mincing of the fresh ingredients. Clockwise from the top: 2 teaspoons lemongrass (lower portion), 1 teaspoon lime peel, fresh green chili, fresh red chili, 3 tablespoons shallots, 3 tablespoons garlic, 1 teaspoon galangal, 1 tablespoon cilantro stem, and 1 teaspoon shrimp paste in the middle.



Everything went in the mortar and pestle and was ground up. The dried chilies had to be soaked in water, de-seeded and pureed before it could go in though. All in all the yield was about 5 tablespoons.



For each tablespoon, you sautee it with some oil, add 1/2 cup coconut milk, then a dash of palm (or brown) sugar and fish sauce. We cooked chicken with red bell pepper, basil and kaffir lime leaves. It was delicious.

marzipan figures

As part of the sculpture I'm working on at my internship, we needed little people figures. Chef ordered a whole box of modeling marzipan expressly for this purpose.

My first task was to make a bunch of different marzipan colors. There were some colors left over from last year that had dried out, but became workable once heated (in the microwave for ten or so seconds) and incorporated with new marzipan.

I portioned out the same amount for each color.



Used food coloring and kneaded the marzipan to get the right color and consistency.



After repeating this process a dozen times (and getting my hands dyed different colors), I had a whole "crayon box" full of colors.



For the figures, I made torsos, legs, hats and shoes. In all the colors.



The faces got eyes, noses and ears.



And then I made marzipan Oprah. (Chef was doing a bunch of celebrities.)



And then we needed monsters, so I shaped whatever my fingers felt like. Didn't know I had that much imagination! (They became Oprah's new friends.)