Chicken And Waffles Vegan Style!!!

 One of the most popular dishes right now is chicken and waffles. This Amish Sunday dinner and famed Black dish is being made throughout the US.I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and make it. The only problem? It has to be vegan.

The vegan chicken part was easy.It was simply air frying Gardein's chicken tenders in the air fryer.

This was the easy as pie part. It was just air frying the tenders at first 400 degrees F for eight minutes, then  turning. They were finished at 360 degrees F for five minutes.

The next part was hard.

I used Bisquik's gluten free mix which gives the finished product s dense texture. 

To make the waffles vegan it was adding two cups of almond milk which produced a creamier batter (the recipe called for a cup and a half but that was a mistake. The batter looked like wallpaper paste). The recipe called for three tablespoons of vegetable oil along with one egg. I used Vegg's Uncaged egg baking mix for the egg substitute. One teaspoon of the mix is mixed with half a teaspoon of granulated sugar and a quarter of a cup of milk. This is thoroughly mixed before added to the batter.

I chilled it for half an hour, simply because I needed time to prep the waffle iron and air fryer.

I used my batter distributor to evenly pour the batter onto the iron after spraying the plates with cooking spray (I used Stop and Shop's butter flavored one).

This is the batter precooked.It looks like gooey toast.

This was the first batch which was sorely disappointing. 

They were half cooked and stuck to the plates.

I didn't cook them long enough. Bisquick recommends cooking the waffles for five minutes.

 Depending on your waffle iron I'd say ten minutes should do it. This was the third batch.

They're not deeply golden but they are perfectly formed. Both were served with maple syrup which is an interesting add on (but not one I particularly like. There has to be another sauce to put on both)

Would I try this again? Maybe. I may  add soy cheese to the waffles to make them more savory and nix the maple syrup.Maybe a barbecue sauce????)

Chicken and waffles are the latest thing right now. I will try them again, - maybe less sweet and more sandwich like for the chicken. The best part is that it was all vegan, 

Stretching Your Stock

Times are still hard. There are more closings and layoffs thanks to spikes in the Corona virus. Pantry staples and fresh produce go all too quickly. How can we make our food last? By stretching it into several different meals and a variety of different ways for one product. It's an easy and economic way of saving what we have.

By now everyone has beans in their pantry. They're one of the cheapest to buy yet are possibly the most versatile.Try them as burgers as a nice breakaway from beef. Bean burgers are easy to make. You can make them without egg and dairy too for a really inexpensive meal. It's taking black beans, walnuts and rolled oats, the last too, equally as economical and mixing them with soy sauce, scallions and a variety of different spices. There's also maple syrup added along with paprika to give the savoriness balance. You can add garlic if you want along with red wine vinegar. Can beans be made into a loaf?Yes! Again black beans come to the rescue along with their versatile cousins, chickpeas!. Pulse and mix the two with cornmeal and liquid smoke. Save the chickpea liquid or aquafaba for binding.It's then adding sauteed onions along with different spices, and then molding a loaf. It's put into a parchment lined load pan and baked. Of course chili is  a must make. It can easily be made in a crockpot and eaten just with crackers or polenta. Use the leftovers for chili dogs or even poured over nachos for a treat.Go the English route and have beans on toast, a really cheap way to enjoy them.

Always remember that veggies as just as versatile as beans. Take advantage of when your grocery stores have a two for one or buy one, get the other half price. This is starting to happen with broccoli and cauliflower right now. Both veggies are good as soups and best of all you can double the batch for freezing. Broccoli proves to be a great ingredient for quiches and omelets too, adding color and nutrition. It's great by itself as a salad, giving your family one last taste of summer. Cauliflower makes for surprisingly good steaks. The recipe is easy.It's removing the leaves and cutting the head into large slices then drizzle with olive oil. This gives the steaks a lovely golden hue as well as making them crispy.Sprinkled on sea salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder for more flavor. The good for you veggie is also good riced or creamed. Potatoes have sustained generations for decades. It's also one of the least expensive veggie than can be made into all sorts of dishes. A fun twist are loaded baked potatoes. Fill them with leftover chili or leftover chicken and broccoli. Have healthy ones filled with beans and tofu and a light salsa. Try them twice baked, loaded with cheese and bacon or in a creamy soup. Freshly mashed potatoes are always a plus because the leftover can be fried into tasty puffs.

There will probably tough days ahead. Learn to stretch your pantry during these times. You'll still be able to have nutritious dishes along with the variety you and your family want.

Halloween Home Parties

 Halloween may be different this year but you can still have the same fun and foods. The parties will be smaller and there may only be family around. That doesn't mean a boring night. Make it fun. Make it delicious.

You can start with breakfast with some scary and tasty dishes. Think sausage links wrapped in dough to resemble mummies. Add some maple syrup in ramekins for dipping.Another idea is taking bacon and arranging it in a spiderweb shape.You could places this over an omelet for a delicious background. Cook the strips in the circular pattern and then gently lift onto a large plate or eggs. Eggs can also have a creepy vibe. Add a trickle of ketchup and a dash of hot sauce to simulate blood. Serve orange juice in jack o' lantern decorated scooped out oranges or make virgin Bloody Mary's kid style, with a glass of tomato juice complete with celery stalks. leave out the spicy Tabasco and Worcester sauces. You could even have a breakfast dessert with cinnamon raisin bagels  topped off with squeeze bottle cream cheese. Ice the bagels so they look like wrapped mummies and use blueberries for the eyes. As for lunch , make it fun too. English muffin pizzas can take a frightful look by cutting the mozzarella cheese in ghost shapes. Add olive bits for eyes. Coffin sandwiches (!) are another Halloween themed lunch , Get a dark bread such as pumpernickel and cut into coffin rectangles. Fill with favorite fillings and serve with potato chips.

Of course it's the evening when the festivities amp up. Imagine a spaghetti dinner with your meatballs staring up at you. These are meatballs with mozzarella rounds and olive slices put on them to resemble eyeballs.  Another bone rattling dinner or party idea is a spinach dip , made to resemble old moss studded with tombstones. This last is simply cutting tortillas into tombstones and baking for three to seven  minutes in a 350 degree F oven. Even more gruesome are handburgers. This is not a misspelling but patties formed in the shape of little hands. You can mold them yourself or use a hand cookie mold both Etsy and Amazon sell this). Cover in ketchup when served.What would go with these? Severed hot dog fingers. Cut out pieces of the tops to resemble nail beds and score the dogs at equal distances to resemble knuckles. Accompany these with cheese eyeballs. Use cream cheese mix with powdered ranch dressing, forming into one or two inch balls. Make them bloodshot with a sprinkle of paprika and top with sliced olives. How should the evening end? With a candy apple bar , of course. Have already coated and sticked  apples in front of bowls of M&Ms, cinnamon sugar , sprinkles and gummy worms. You can also use crushed or broken Halloween candy too for decoration. Bat brownies are another fun and sweet treat. Bake brownies and cut them into rounds. Halve chocolate wafer cookies for the wings and decorate with candy eyes and red icing for the fangs. 

Yes, Halloween will be different this year. Yet the parties and the gruesomely fun food will be the same. Go wild for breakfast, lunch and dinner and celebrate this fun holiday!!!!

The Importance Of Food Pantries

 Food pantries are a vital part of our lives today. Without them even middle class families could starve.Yet those in one of the hardest hit cities, New York have survive and still thrive because of it. 

Nikita Stewart and Todd Hesiler covered New York City's food panties in Wednesday's New York Times Food section. Ms. Stewart, a Times reporter who usually writes about social services conducted the interviews, Mr. Heisler, a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times photographer got into the various kitchens to photograph home chefs working with their food pantry  choices. It's inspiring yet at the same time saddening and disturbing. There is a bravery to these people as there is a bravery to the food banks such as City Harvest who manage to survive despite the overwhelming need for food. The same goes for the Bronx's Bronxworks. Before the pandemic, this last only served under five hundred a month . Now the numbers are up to four thousand per month, thanks to job loss or office  downsizing. The influx also has to do with the closing about one third of fellow pantries and soup kitchens closing due to lack of funds or lack of workers. Many quit afraid of catching the Corona virus.Sunset Park and Flushing Queens, two of the hardest hit areas have the biggest spike in food pantry visitors.

People do persist and survive. There is Jose Gavidia and his wife Leyla Moale, who manage to create dishes from their native Peru, thanks to their food pantry. Going there became part of their shared schedules and where they can get the ingredients to make limena, tuna between layers of potato. Leslie Johnson and her six year old daughter , Trinity, weren't going to go to a food pantry at first, letting others take the needed food. Yet they were in need of it themselves. Ms. Johnson was able to make chicken cutlets on her George Foreman grill, wishing she had learned how to make her mother's West Indian recipes. The Patel family of Flushing, Queens made a chichpea chole, a favorite stew from stretched out ingredients. They're not strangers to their local food pantry  at the nonprofit South Asian Council for Social Services. Before the pandemic they could select items bit now they have to accept prepackaged bags. In another section of Queens, Yuliya Matveyeva creates much clamored for tacos for her five year old daughter, Marie and a friend's children. The food comes from Masbia, a Jewish food pantry that also serves meals. This is an appointment only pantry which has angered some people. Ms Matveyeva also uses recipes from her native Belarus and fuses them with American cooking. 

Hopefully, the strain on food pantries across the globe will lessen as the virus abates. For now they are a vital part of our lives. Please donate or give to them. They need whatever help they can to deal with the vast amount of neediness.

An Aussie Favorite For American Tables

Every country has their comfort foods. We may have our meat loaf and chocolate chip cookies but the Australians have something a bit tastier - sausage rolls. This kid classic is loved  Down Under and with good reason. They are a flavor and texture explosion, perfect to make at home for a fall lunch or dinner.

Regular contributor Melissa Clark dedicated her entire A Good Appetite to them in yesterday's New York Times Food section. Sausage rolls were to Aussie school cafeterias as meat loaf and mashed potatoes were to ours. The school made ones weren't exactly made from the greatest ingredients according to Paul Allam, owner and baker at Bourke Street Bakery. Ms. Clark interviewed him, along with also getting his best recipes for them. Most school cafeteria rolls are composed of cartilage with the more upscale ones adding celery. His are different, a spin of the classic English sausage roll which is a puff pastry filled with sausage and sometimes an egg. His bakery sells ones with such fillings as a fennel scented pork  along with a turkey and cranberry, a riff on our Thanksgiving dinners. There's also a rotating menu of vegan ones stuffed with eggplant and chiles and spinach and feta. As far as the crust, the flakier the better. Mr. Allam uses his own recipe,a daunting feat but one that can be made at home.

What makes a sausage roll delectable is the crust. Ms. Clark found a  good all butter brand of puff pastry (you can use Trader Joe's store brand or Dufour's for this) but you can also use your favorite pie crust recipe or try your hand at making your own puff pastry. The fillings are mouth watering. There is aforementioned pork and fennel, plumped up with classic comfort food veggies like, peas, carrots and onions. You can use ground pork but ground chicken or turkey is just as good, Vegan meat crumbles are also recommended for  hearty vegetarian fare. Fennel seeds are used for flavor and also fro decoration as they're sprinkled on top. For a Middle Eastern spin there is a lamb and almond one, zinged up with harissa paste, a smoky blend of chiles. There's also couscous and currants added, the last to give it a kind of tangine vibe.Poppy seeds decorate the outside. Vegetarians will love the flavorful leek and mushroom roll.Any kind of mushroom is used and two large leeks. Tomato paste is added for more taste and color and almond butter is also included for creaminess and more substance . There's also garlic and soy sauce added too.

Sausage rolls are the perfect meal  for these cool days ahead. They are the perfect comfort food, filled with tasty flavors and textures. They may be Australia's comfort food but they sure' to be America's too.

Bruschetta For Coleridge's Birthday

 Samuel Taylor Coleridge never went to Italy but I have a funny feeling he would have loved any dish  of Italian food for his birthday today Bruschetta is one of those dishes.It makes for a great lunch or dinner. It can be used as an appetizer or hors d'ouevre. A big plus is putting your own spin on it  - which I did.

Double layers bruschettas are not widely made.I decided to give it a try, using a white bean bruschetta and the traditional tomato. 

I couldn't find cannelini beans at Wal-Mart where I bought all the ingredients so chose Goya's white beans. I drained them and mixed them with a drizzle of olive oil. It was then slightly pureeing the mix iwith the immersion blender.

It was a bit creamier than what I expected. Next time I'll use a potato masher instead to produce a chunkier bruschetta. The next step was creating the tomato one. This was dicing the tomatoes and milling the basil in the herb mill. I used  four tomatoes and a handful of freshly picked basil. Then it was mincing one clove of garlic.

All this was mixed with a good glug of olive oil and a capful of red wine vinegar.It was then adding just a bit of sea salt and a grind of freshly ground pepper.

I should have used the pretoasted rounds but opted for Italian bread slices. These were a bit soft but not bad.

I sprinkled the tops with  Parma vegan Parmesan cheese for more flavor and crunch. It wasn't a bad mix and I plan on making it again. The recipe will be tweaked to make it more flavorful and the bean bruschetta less runny.

Would Coleridge have preferred this to his Devon cream tea as a birthday dinner? Hopefully. It's tasty and different, packed with flavors and textures.

Special Days Special Meals

 It is tough to celebrate anything these days. Restaurants have only limited capacity or offer dining in bubbles or tents which may or may not have heating. Your best bet is creating a birthday or anniversary lunch or dinner is at home. It can still be festive with special recipes and treats. Best of all you can control the menu for the small event.

The one thing about creating a special meal is deciding what you want. If you love grilled steak, then get the barbecue out and start grilling,. Make the cuts fancier with a round of garlic or herb butter melting on top. This is an easy mix of pressed garlic or milled herbs blended with butter and then the whole mix is shaped into a log and chilled until serving. It's then slicing the roll into half inch thick coins to be put onto the meat. You can also make these flavored butters for lobster or shrimp too as well as for salmon or tilapia. What to serve with the steak? Hasselback potatoes!! These glammed up spuds are the perfect accompaniment and can be easily made. You can use any potato for them, from Yukon Golds to Russets to Red Blisses. It's then  continually slicing each one twelve to fifteen times right before you hit the potato's bottom. Each slice should be about a quarter of an inch wide. Brush the entire spud with melted butter and season with salt and pepper. Bake for thirty minutes and then brush them again with more melted (or flavored butter) to ensure crispy edges. Add a side dish of string beans almondine for added lushness. This classic French dish is the perfect marriage of slivered almonds and green beans with garlic and lemon zest. Finish with a rich devil's food cake with a ganache topping and whipped cream or a cinnamon laced apple or pear galette.

Of course a birthday or anniversary can be fun.One of the easiest fun dishes to make is bruschetta. This , in in its' simplest form, is chopped tomatoes mixed with basil, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. This is spooned over oiled and toasted rounds of Italian and French bread. You could liven it up with a few hot pepper flakes or sweetened with chopped bell peppers. A variation involves cannellini beans and sun dried tomatoes or just the beans and grated lemon zest mixed with olive oil. Another idea is a charcuterie platter, perfect for a family of four or five. A board or large plate can hold a variety of different cold cuts. Think favorites such as salami and mortadella along with the fancier prosciutto. Have cheeses everyone likes, such as sharp cheddar and Brie. You could serve all of this with water crackers but they taste delicious with Italian or French . bread. Sparkling wine such as Prosecco works but you can also crack open whites wines and light bodied reds. Mexican food is a fun and tasty way to elevate any celebratory dinner. Think about shrimp or London broil stuffed fajitas or tacos instead of the usual ground beef or chicken. These two meats can also be incorporated into a big cheesy nacho dish too.End with spicy Mexican chocolate cupcakes and Kahkua spiked coffee.

You don;t need to eat out to celebrate a birthday or anniversary. Fancy and fun dishes can be made at home . They're even better than any offering from your favorite eateries..