Gluten Free Vegan Masterpieces Class in Manhattan

I taught a class last night at the Natural Gourmet Institute in Manhattan.  As usual when I teach the classes at the school, it was a vegan, gluten-free, soy free baking class that also had several ingredient restrictions - such as no refined sugars, oils or flours, as well as utilizing mostly organic ingredients.  This is definitely great, but forces me to be very creative and imaginative with the recipes and ways to present the dishes.  In the class, we made 7 different recipes and I brought along a gf bread I have been working on testing.  I received great reviews on the bread, which I am very happy about, but I think it still needs a little tweaking to get it exactly where I want it to be, but it is definitely in the right direction.  I can't wait to be making it into multigrain bread, "rye" bread for my tempeh reuben (it is so ridiculously good, especially when I add tomato and avocado.  YUM!) and all kinds of flavors in between.

I'm not going to share any recipes at this point, perhaps at a later date, however, I will share some of the pictures I took, and am hoping one of my assistants in the class that took a ton of pictures will share hers with me and I can post them later.  It was a blast and I enjoyed meeting and working with everyone in the class.  Till next month, and the next baking class I teach at the school!



Coconut Raspberry Roll Cake




An aerial view of the Roll Cake




Chocolate Chip Cherry Cookies - a little blurry




Peach Coffeecake with Pecan Sucanat Struesel Topping




Chocolate Cupcakes with Coffee Frosting
Iced by almost everyone in the class!




Gluten Free Yeasted Bread test!




Pistachio Thumbprints




Lemon Blueberry Loaf




A "Sample" plate.  Looks like a plate of dessert for dinner!

Enjoy!

Koko

Homemade Lemonade

This is something the Hubbs and I have been having a lot of this summer.  Actually we can't seem to get enough of it.  It is so refreshing and not overly sweet - it's great in this hot hot heat!  I've done a lot of different things to it like adding other concentrated juices such as tart cherry, cranberry and blueberry.  I've also put the lemonade in the blender with some fresh berries, mostly strawberries and raspberries, blended till smooth and had an awesome frothy, fruity lemonade.  The possiblities are endless.  Hubbs suggested mango to try next - sounds good! 



Homemade Lemonade:

Fresh Lemonade garnished with lemon slices.

Lemonade:

1/4 cup turbinado/raw sugar

juice of 1 1/2 lemons, rolled on the counter to soften

2 cups filtered water

My mom always sends me amazing homemade canned goods from Michigan and I have also done my share of canning here in NY, so I have a ton of glass jars, which is what Hubbs and I store most of our food and all of our drinks in. 

1.  Juice the lemons and place in a jar.  Add the sugar and filtered water, cover with the lid and shake until the sugar dissolves - this will take some time because the sugar is large granulated. 

That's it!  So easy and tasty!

Enjoy!

Koko

Best Dinner Ever! Appetizers!

My Hubby and I went on an amazing vacation to Michigan to visit my family and came back to NY 1 1/2 weeks ago.  It's sad though, because it almost feels like it was a dream and that I never left ny at all.  I did actually get a little color and a disturbing flip flop tan, but that has unfortunately already disappeared.  As soon as Hubbs and I landed in MI and were greeted by my mom, dad and younger brother Danny, we knew immediately that ny was no longer the place we were meant to be.  We've been feeling for a while that we are tired of ny and ready to be around family, and it only cemented it in our minds that we need to be there.  My older sister has a 2 1/2 month old baby boy and my older brother and his wife are expecting their first baby (a girl!) on Thanksgiving.  I have never seen my sister pregnant (and this was her 3rd and final child!) and was blessed to see my sister-in-law with the bump (she's almost 6 months along).  The unfortunate thing is that I will not see my brother and his little one until she is 9-10 months old or so. Sad.  So those were a couple of the motivating factors, but certainly not all.  I miss my family.  My oldest brother's daughter is going to be 13 in November - I can literally remember the day she was born and we have always been very close. 

We are also getting close to starting our business - a vegan cafe, and have decided to open it in Traverse City, Michigan.  We have finished our menu, have tested and perfected it all, and are now working on the baked goods.  It is the most exciting and stressful thing ever, but we cannot wait to get started.  Lots of work on the business plan and lots and lots of cooking in this oppressive humidity and heat!  I have decided not to renew my teaching contract at the Natural Gourmet Institute in Manhattan when it finishes in March, and as soon as our lease is up at the end of July next year, we will be moving to Michigan!  I am so excited and cannot wait!

Until then, however, I'm gonna keep working on all the business aspects, keep cooking and baking and see my friends as much as possible.  And in this terrible heat, I do not want to be in the kitchen unless I'm testing recipes.  So dinners have been simple: a lot of sandwiches and salads lately.  This time, however, I wanted to have an appetizer dinner and just eat a little bit of this and that and it was a blast, Hubbs definitely thought it was fun, and I'm glad the only time I spent in the kitchen was slicing the cheese for him, slicing the bread and putting everything in ramekins.  Best dinner!

Appetizer Dinner:



So simple and tasty!

What I Used:

Baguette, sliced on the diagonal
Homemade dill pickles (sent to me from Michigan, made by my mum)
Assorted Olives
Earth Balance, Yellow Mustard
Sliced Cheese (dairy) for the Hubby
Sliced Daiya for me
Artichoke Salad (which for some reason was not in the picture)

Use whatever you'd like and have a super easy dinner!

Enjoy!

Koko

Burgers, "Doritos" & Pasta Salad - Summer in Brooklyn!

The weather here in Brooklyn (and all over the US I'm sure) has been hideously hideously hot lately.  Unbearably so in fact.  What Hubbs and I initially thought of as a great grilling summer has turned into a stay inside or sweat to death outside and die of dehydration kind of summer thus far.  We grilled for the first and only time about a month ago in Prospect Park when it wasn't exactly warm, but rather cool and refreshing out and had a great time.  We had veggie burgers, homemade pasta salad and those strange natural doritos-like chips they have in health food stores.  It was a simple outing with simple fare, but was a great time.  We vowed to do it again and again.  But it has been in the triple digets so much or the lowest being the low 90's, that it has not been worth it or even desirable.  I'm hoping the weather will cool slightly (mid 80's are great!) and we can bust out our tiny NY grill.  It actually looks relatively decent sized in the pictures, but if my family or friends back in MI saw the size, they would laugh hysterically!

Anyway, we had a great time and definitely want to go again soon!



Hubby lighting the charcoal, wearing the gloves
his wifey insisted upon bringing! ;)




The tasty fare: Veggie Burger, "Doritos", Pasta Salad




All the goodies piled on the burger.  Yum!

Enjoy!

Koko

Crepes with Homemade Nutella

These pictures are admittedly from the very first time I made vegan crepes for the family I was cooking for almost a year ago now.  You can tell from the first picture that the first couple were thicker than they should have been, but they were still crazy delicious!  Now you may be wondering how or why there is nutella in the middle of the crepes, since nutella isn't vegan - it contains both skim milk and whey.  That's why I made my own vegan nutella, which turned out amazingly!  It wasn't as smooth as the nutella that comes in the jar, but is was just as delicious as I remember it being, probably even more so because it was sweetened with agave and was both dairy and soy free. 

I made another  batch several weeks ago when Hubbs and I were testing smoothie recipes for our cafe.  We wanted to make a breakfast coffee chocolately smoothie and everything we had tested so far was pretty terrible to be honest.  Then I had the brilliant idea to put some of the nutella I made in it and it was crazy delicious!  Smoothie approved for the cafe!  Yay!  So, I'm not going to include the recipe for the crepes, because they came from the vegan brunch cookbook, but I am including the recipe for the vegan nutella.  Make it and soon because it is so freaking delicious!



Crepe filled with delicious chocolatey vegan nutella!


Vegan Nutella

Yields about 2 cups

8 oz. raw hazelnuts

1/2 oz. cocoa powder
2 1.2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 teaspoons canola oil
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
heaping 1/3 cup agave
heaping 1/3 cup hazelnut milk

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Place the hazelnuts on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the skins come off easily.
3. Allow the hazelnuts to cool for several minutes, then remove the skins.
4. Place the still warm hazelnuts in the food processor and process for several minutes, until the hazelnuts turn into a butter.
5. Add the remaining ingredients: the cocoa powder, vanilla extract, canola oil, sea salt, agave and hazelnut milk.
6. Blend for several more minutes, or until completely smooth.
7. Season to taste.
8. Place in a sealable container. Allow the mixture to cool for several hours in the refrigerator before using, to thicken.




Pile o' vegan crepes!




Look at that deliciousness!


Enjoy!

Koko

Dominican Okra Stew Over Steamed Rice with Fire Roasted Eggplant & Salad

This was a very simple recipe that came together quickly in this hot hot heat, which I really appreciated, because although I usually absolutely love the kitchen and want to spend hours upon hours there, it has been unbearably hot and uncomfortable.  Today the kitchen must have reached over 100 degrees, and I wanted to spend as little time as possible in there.  So before I started cooking of any kind, I prepped all the veggies for the okra stew and eggplant and made the entire salad and dressing.  Every couple of minutes I ran sweating for the ac in the living room, gulped some ice water and ran back into the kitchen.  Then I got the rice cooking, started roasting the eggplant and cooking the okra stew all at the same time so that everything would be done as close to the same time as possible.  It got really hot in there, but all finished within half an hour, then hubbs and I had a beautiful dinner.  Yum! 

That's the one thing I don't like about the summer - relying more on take out because it is just too miserable to cook.  But I'm not the biggest fan of places I don't really know or workers I don't know cooking my food - I'm weird like that.  I also don't like that I don't know exactly what is going in my food.  I might have sweat a lot, but damn did we enjoy a delicious dinner!  I think for dinner tomorrow I'm going to be making a tomato and tofu salad with a balsamic marinade.  My work is going through so much organic produce and throwing away thousands of pounds of food a day, which is sickening, and I am taking home as much of it as I can use.  So I have a lot of tomatoes, berries and eggplant (hence tonight's dinner!).  I made pico de gallo yesterday and had some nachos loaded with veggies and kalamata olives. Yum.  I could almost eat the pico as a soup it's that good, seriously.  I'll have to put the recipe up soon.

 

Green Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette, Okra Stew over White
Rice, Fire Roasted Eggplant

Fire Roasted Eggplant

Serves 2-3

1 eggplant, well washed

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons sofrito

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 teaspoons adobo with cilantro

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon boullion

1/2 cup filtered water

Okra Stew

1.  Place washed eggplant on the stovetop directly over the flame.  Allow the eggplant to cook on all sides, turning frequently, until blackened all over.  (Keep a window open-it gets a little smoky.)

2.  Place the eggplant in a medium bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  Allow the eggplant to sweat for 10 or so minutes.

3.  Once the egggplant sweats, bring it to the sink and begin removing all of the blackened skin.  If a few pieces remain, that's ok, it will only mean more flavor.  Remove any tough spots, as well as the very top.  Use your hands to mash up the eggplant as much as possible. 

4.  Place the olive oil in a medium saute pan over medium heat and allow to become hot.  Once the oil is hot, add the sofrito and tomato paste and "fry" for several minutes, stirring frequently.  Once the mixture becomes fragrant, add the eggplant, adobo, black pepper, bouillion and water.  Bring to a simmer, and cook, stirring frequently, until the eggplant is very well flavored and some of the water has evaporated. 



Fire Roasted Eggplant
(Not the prettiest thing I know, but crazy delicious!!)

Enjoy!

Koko

A Death in the Family

Hello Everyone.  I have been away from blogging for quite a while because there has been a tragic death in the family, on my Husband's side.  His older sister Kenia passed away in the Dominican Republic on Tuesday, May 22nd at the age of 28, leaving behind three young boys.  She passed away after a relatively brief, but intense battle with cancer.  She found out at about the same time she became pregnant with her last child.  Doctors told her she needed to abort to basically save her life, because she couldn't take any kind of strong medicine or do chemo or radiation while pregnant.  She was adamant about having the baby, and consequently, the cancer got terribly worse.  The doctors said she was at a stage 3.5 after delivering the baby 2 months early, and she just got progressively worse and worse.  We kept up hope, especially after the birth of her son Ranger.  We kept getting conflicting news, which caused us to hope then be scared, hope and worry.  Then we got news several weeks ago that she had an infection in her leg, which caused her to go back to the hospital and be off chemo and radiation again.  And since we're in the States and his family is back in DR, there is always the getting of the information second-hand, so we were not really understanding the gravity of the situation.  They sent her home a little less than a week before she passed, and even though my husband's brother told us she was getting skinnier and skinnier and looking weaker and worse, we kept hoping.  We thought it was a good thing she was being sent home, but we realized that she was really being sent home to pass in the comfort of her family.



Brave & Adventurous Kenia!  October, 2010



We were actually discussing when Hubby should go home, because no one knew how much longer she would last.  I told him to call her on Monday (May 21) to talk to her and kind of feel out how she was doing.  That morning we actually got a text from Hubby's brother that he should come home right away, that Kenia didn't seem like she would make it another day.  We were shocked to say the least.  We have several things going on here, so we had to be sure Hubbs could travel.  So after we got the ok, we booked the earliest flight, which wasn't until Tuesday morning.  So we packed up his suitcase, got a couple hours of sleep and sent him on his way to DR.  We were communicating the entire time while he was making his way back home.  His mom told his sister that he was on his way, and although she could no longer speak or move at that point, she was smiling and happy.  Unfortunately, she passed away while my husband and his brother were driving to see her, about 30 minutes away. 

Hubby was able to stay there for a week and celebrate his sister's life, which was incredibly beautiful.  I am so blessed and thankful to have known Kenia for the little bit of time that I knew her and am so thankful for her love and friendship.  May she rest in peace and may God bless her soul. I wish all the best for those three little boys, aged 6, 4 and 11 months.  Her Husband is taking care of the older ones while her mom is looking after the baby.  I can't wait to go back to DR and see my beautiful family and my amazing nephews.  Love to you all! 

I love you Kenia, may you rest in peace!




Kenia, Her Husband & Two Sons, before the baby was born.

Koko