Thanksgiving Cupcakes

Thanksgiving cupcakes from Whole Foods.

How could I resist a carcass-topped cupcake? And the mini-meal made me want to break out the dolls I never owned and play house.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bourbon-Walnut Sweet Potato Mash

Here’s one last recipe from Bon Appètit’s Thanksgiving issue, plus a fun little experiment. I chose the one sweet potato dish from the other five regular potato dishes in Bon Appètit’s Thanksgiving potato section because sweet potato soufflé is always on our holiday table, unlike mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes are – brace yourself – never on our table. Rice is the vehicle for all gravies and sauces on Thanksgiving and the other 364 days of the year.

Oh, you want to know about the experiment, and could care less about my lack of mashed potato consumption? OK.

Instead of sweet potatoes from the market that are breed for sweet flesh, I used the sweet potatoes from the garden center that are bred for ornamental foliage. The two plants – grocery store sweet potatoes and garden center sweet potatoes – are the same plant, Ipomoea batatas, just different cultivars.

My quest was to see if the ornamental sweet potatoes bred to look pretty in gardens are sweet enough to warrant eating. I normally toss these tubers every year when I do garden clean-up, but this year curiosity got the better of me.

I dug the tubers from three different ornamental sweet potato cultivars (Sweet Caroline Sweetheart Red, Marguerite, and Ace of Spades), threw them in my car, and forgot about them for a few weeks. So, unfortunately, when it came time to identify which tuber was which, I had no clue. A good scientist I do not make!

Confusing picture. Four potatoes, but three cultivars - last two are the same cultivar.

I boiled and roasted some of each variety, and then it was time for the individual taste tests. They were all sweet, none drastically more so than the next. And was I glad, because if one was better than the other, I was going to kick myself for letting the tubers roll around the back of my car for weeks, and not remembering which was which.

So, on to the bourbon-walnut sweet potato recipe in Bon Appètit. Trying to be a good scientist, I made a control batch from sweet potatoes from the market. Yum. A sweet, but more rustic dish than the baked sweet potato soufflé typically topped with marshmallows. I adore the marshmallows, by the way.

The mash made from the ornamental sweet potatoes, thanks to their collective white, yellow, and purple flesh, looks about as appetizing as dirty bath water. But guess what? In a blind taste test, they taste just as good as the store bought sweet potatoes bred for eating. The only thing that gives the ornamental sweet potatoes away, besides their color, is a slightly lumpier texture. But lumps can be cured with longer cooking or pureeing.

Stick with the more visually appetizing orange-fleshed sweet potatoes for the holiday table, but don’t toss those tubers from your flower beds – eat them!

Bourbon-Walnut Sweet Potato Mash
Adapted from Bon Appètit
8-10 servings

4 pounds sweet potatoes
½ cup whipping cream
6 tablespoons butter
¼ cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons bourbon
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
¾ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup toasted walnuts, chopped

• Preheat oven to 350°
• Roast whole potatoes on a baking sheet for 1 - 1 ½ hours, or until tender. Cool until you can handle, then scoop flesh into a large bowl. Mash potatoes coarsely.
• Heat cream and butter in a saucepan over low heat until butter melts. Slowly combine cream mixture into potatoes. Then add syrup, bourbon, and spices. Add salt and pepper to taste.
• Sprinkle with nuts and serve.

Urban Gardening - Ah, the Memories

Left: Early March; Right: Early April

Left: Early May; Right: Late May

Left: Late June; Right: Early July

Left: Early August; Right: Mid-September

Right: Early November; Left: Mid-November

This is my favorite part about taking pictures of the garden: looking back on the progress. I also like time-lapse photography, flip books, and boxes of chocolate. And boxes of chocolate.

I ripped out the garden this past weekend, even though we haven't had a killing frost yet. I'm tired, the plants are tired, and I prefer working outside when it's not 20 degrees.

Considering the mediocre light that reaches the raised bed on the patio surrounded by a three-story house on one side and a fence on the other three sides, I think the urban vegetable garden was a success. The tomatoes, with their light-seeking, vining habit, and the shade tolerant lettuce were the most prolific crops.

Whether or not we do it again next year is up to the boy, since it is "his" garden, after all. I would like to think that he enjoyed the produce and herbs just a few strides outside his kitchen. He has even taken to the sport of sneaking up on the rascally squirrels to snap their mugs for Philly's most-wanted lineup. Word on the street is one of them's a cop-killer.I noes eat toemater. I swearz.

Urban Gardening - Early March
Urban Gardening - Early April
Urban Gardening - Mid-April
Urban Gardening -Early May
Urban Gardening - Late May
Urban Gardening - Late June
Urban Gardening - Early July
Urban Gardening - Early August
Urban Gardening - Mid-September

Tiffin Store

How long has the Indian delivery and sit down restaurant, Tiffin Store, on the edge of Northern Liberties and Fishtown been open? And how many glowing reviews has this place received? And why have I just gotten around to trying out Tiffin?

Answers: about a year; many glowing reviews ; and my Philly outpost is – get this – one intersection and twelve row houses outside of their delivery area. How frustrating is that?

I know I can haul my ass up to Tiffin’s small store front on Girard Avenue and pick up some grub, or dine in, but Tiffin’s whole shtick is that they deliver tasty Indian food and have convenient online ordering. I want to push keyboard buttons and have Indian food magically appear at my house. No fair!

So...I finally went all the way up to Tiffin. Tiffin’s bright yellow exterior is not easy to miss. Open the door, proceed down the hall, and hang a right into Tiffin’s humble dining area outfitted with five or so bright yellow Ikea tables and black Ikea chairs (gotta love Ikea…or not), a beverage cooler stocked with American and Indian sodas, a counter and laptop computer for taking orders, and an open kitchen. The interior is not fancy, but Tiffin does most of their business through delivery, so you’re just fortunate that they even have tables for dining in.

The menu is definitely Northern Indian, so you’ll find lots of unleavened flat breads, and mild, creamy curries . Unfortunately, the bread oven was on the fritz the day of our visit, so no breads were available.

onion bhaji

We started with onion bhaji (pakora or fritter), a fried appetizer of onions, potatoes, and spinach dipped in gram flour. Mmm. Fried. I rarely eat fried foods, but, when I do, I enjoy the heck out of them. These fried balls had subtle Indian spices peeking through the grease.

aloo papri chaat

My favorite Indian appetizers are chaats, a savory snack or small dish made with varying puffed flours. We tried the aloo papri chaat made from lentil wafers and topped with potatoes, chick peas, yogurt, and chutney. There’s something about crunchy puffs and creamy yogurt paired with sweet and sour chutney and hot spices that really pleases me. It pleases me so much; I’m declaring Tiffin’s aloo papri chaat my favorite dish of the visit.

malai kofta

I admit that I’m partial to spicier Southern Indian cuisine over Northern Indian cuisine, but I do enjoy (and frequently eat) Northern Indian food. My litmus test for Northern Indian curries is malai kofta, a mild, cashew cream curry with vegetable dumplings. I’ve had malai kofta as mild as primavera sauce (tasted like it, too – yuk), but I like my malai kofta creamy, yet tangy and spicy. Tiffin’s malai kofta passed my approval on flavor (tangy, not bland) and was mildly spicy. The vegetable balls were probably the softest malai kofta balls I’ve ever had – and that’s not a bad thing.

The navratan korma was the mildest of the curries we ordered – you could have fed it to a two year-old. The sauce was thick and creamy, but bland on the scale of Indian curries. Spice – and I mean heat – levels, of course, are subjective. If you like very mild dishes, or find yourself red and dripping sweat when eating Indian food (and don’t like that), you might want to try Tiffin’s navratan korma.

baingan bharta

The baingan bharta, a curry of smoked eggplant sautéed with tomatoes, onions and spices was the spiciest dish we ordered and the tangiest curry thanks to the tomatoes and lack of cream. I found this dish pleasantly spiced and smokey, but another found it too spicy. Again, heat levels are subjective.

All of the dishes we had at Tiffin were delicious, and probably even some of the better tasting Indian curries I’ve had in Philadelphia, but, of course, I’ve got a gripe.

A kofta ball, lots of peas, one carrot slice, and, what, is that a bean?

Where were the vegetables in the vegetable curries? Yeah, malai kofta never has vegetables – just those vegetable dumplings – so that curry is off the hook. But the navratan korma had about four slices of carrot and a few beans. If the baingan bharta had eggplant, it must have been pureed, or maybe it narrowly missed the spoon that ladled our curry into the bowl. Peas seem to have made it into every curry, but that doesn’t compensate for the lack of substantial vegetables in the curries.

Tiffin’s vegetable curries are huge bowls of sauce – outstanding sauce – but that’s about it. I usually have the opposite complaint of not enough sauce on sandwiches, or atop rice or pasta. I’m not requesting less sauce, but I’d like to see more vegetables in Tiffin’s vegetable curries. And delivery to Pennsport.

Tiffin Store, 710 W. Girard Ave., Philadelphia, PA, 19123
215-922-1297

Cranberry, Pear, and Ginger Chutney

Yep, I’m still working on some of the recipes in this year’s Thanksgiving issue of Bon Appètit. I thought I’d hit up one of the four cranberry sauces in the magazine.

My traditional cranberry sauce is my absolute favorite, and I would not be without it. Really, it’s a relish, and it’s super easy. Grind up fresh cranberries and oranges (peel and all), mix with sugar and spices, and let sit overnight in the fridge. Easy.

For giggles, I decided to go with the cranberry sauce recipe – cranberry, pear, and ginger chutney – least like my traditional cranberry holiday staple. If you can tell anything from the four or five jars of chutney in my fridge, it’s that I love chutney. The strong, piquant flavors of chutneys have a hold on me, I’m afraid.

The flavors of Bon Appètit’s cranberry, pear, and ginger chutney are quite strong, so if you have any wimpy palettes at your table, you might want to skip this one. But brave soldiers will devour this chutney. That is, if you follow my suggested changes in the recipe.

The original recipe calls for ¼ cup of grated ginger, which seemed like too much, so I halved that amount right from the start.

The two cups of apple cider vinegar did not faze me when I read the printed recipe, as I can drink vinegar straight from the bottle. But after it was all said and done, I thought the chutney to be heavy on the vinegar. So did some other people who tested the recipe. I’d suggest, at minimum, halving the vinegar and replacing the other half with apple or orange juice. (Recipe below reflects suggestions.)

This brings us to the troubling question of whether or not magazines and cookbooks actually test their recipes. Personally, I think it’s a crock if a for-profit publication doesn’t test all of their recipes. I know some do and some don’t. Which one’s exactly, I’m not sure. I do know that Cook’s Illustrated bases it’s whole publication on the fact that they test, test, and retest their recipes until they get it right. And you know what; I’ve never made anything bad from them.

I’m not saying the chutney below is bad. The recipe just needed tweaking due to, perhaps, a typo or, at worst, an untested recipe. The cranberry, pear, and ginger chutney is lined-up in the fridge door with all of my other chutneys, and most likely will be enjoyed on a cracker with cheese.

Cranberry, Pear, and Ginger Chutney
Adapted from Bon Appètit
makes about 3 1/2 cups

1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup apple juice or orange juice
1 cup onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons ginger, grated
2 ½ teaspoons lemon peel, finely grated
2 ½ teaspoons orange peel, finely grated
1 cinnamon stick
½ teaspoon dried crushed red pepper (I used really hot homegrown and dried peppers, and enjoyed the heat)
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
12-ounce bag fresh cranberries
1 ¼ cups brown sugar, packed
2 large Bosc pears, peeled, cored, and cut into ¾-inch cubes

• Combine apple cider vinegar, apple juice, onion, ginger, lemon peel, orange peel, cinnamon stick, crushed red pepper, and ground cloves in saucepan. Boil mixture for about 10 minutes, or until reduced to 1 ½ cups.
• Add cranberries, brown sugar, and pears. Stir until sugar dissolves.
• Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until pears and cranberries are soft, about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally.
• Mash mixture coarsely, if at all, with a potato masher.
• Cool and serve at room temperature.
• Can be made 3 days ahead and stored in the fridge.

Los Caballitos Food Porn

A sort of enchilada casserole with eggs requested over hard.

So, here’s the dilemma I often find myself in as a food blogger: Philadelphia has a glut of great restaurants. I have barely put a dent in all of the restaurants out there (got a job and a life, even if it is paltry), and new ones pop up all the time. I savor giving new places a try, but also want to revisit my favorites. Do I grab a bite at a place I know and love (and have already written about), or take a gamble on a new place so I can report back on my findings?

This time knowing and loving won out. I’ve already written about the South Philly Mexican joint, Cantina Los Caballitos, but I do adore. Go for their weekend brunch, and, to every blogger's delight, there’s enough light to take a decent picture (unlike previous visits).

Enjoy the food porn.

Vegan tofu scramble with tortillas.

Cantina Los Caballitos
1651 E Passyunk Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19148
215-755-3550
Mon-Fri, 12pm-1am
Sat-Sun, 11am-1am
bar open until 2am

Soy and Seitan Turkey

Remember Tofu Brain? How about The Brain of Seitan? It’s turkey time again, and I’m experimenting with another faux turkey recipe. This year it's Bryanna’s soy and seitan turkey. It’s like Tofu Brain and The Brain of Seitan got together and had a baby brain. Mmm…brains!

Tofu Brain was too tofu-mushy. The Brain of Seitan was pretty damn good, albeit a little salty, but that’s easy to fix. I’ve had my eye on Bryanna Grogan’s soy and seitan turkey since this time last year, but was saving up the experiment for Thanksgiving. I wish I had hopped on this recipe earlier. (Update: here's the recipe with step-by-step instructions.)

I will tell you about my experience, and things I would (and did) do differently. The first time I made the recipe was sort of a disaster. Mid-crisis, I ran to the faux-meat-friendly Post Punk Kitchen forums to see if any one else was having the same problems. Many people had success, with only a few not so lucky. I soldiered on. The end product was fabulous, despite my crisis.Clockwise from to left: Tofu smoothie (a.k.a. wet ingredients), very wet dough, dough covered with broth, dough before being covered with broth.

First Attempt

• The recipe calls for 12 ounces of firm tofu. Every package I pick up is 15 ounces. I’m not tossing 3 ounces, so included it. This may have lead to my problem?
• My dough was very wet. I added more gluten, chickpea flour, and nutritional yeast. It was still wet. Afraid I’d make a heavy dough bomb, I quit adding more dry ingredients, and carried on.
• Bryanna’s directions give options for kneading the dough. She feels that kneading the dough is difficult, so suggests a mixer or a bread machine. I tried the bread machine since I had one. It works, but you have to clean it afterward!
• Poured the broth over the loaves and covered with foil. Stuck them in the oven at 200° (preheated first to 350° like her directions say) for three hours. Two hours into the baking, I take a peek. It looks just like the wet loaves covered in liquid that I put in two hours ago. No! This is not going to work.
• Poured off the liquid (saved it), left the loaves uncovered, and cranked the oven to 350°. Baked for about an hour, flipping a few times to get all sides brown (parchment paper really helps in flipping), and basting when the loaf dried out a bit.
• Turned out great despite the gooey, wet-loaf crisis. So good, in fact, I did it again.

And on the second day, she made brains.

Second Attempt

• Still used all 15 ounces of tofu.
• Used ¼ cup less water in tofu smoothie.
• Dry and wet ingredients actually formed a dough, and not a wet mass.
• Kneaded by hand. I’m no wimp, and neither are you.
• Baked uncovered at 350° for 1 hour 15 minutes. Then flipped a few times over the next 30 minutes to get the surfaces brown. (Total cooking time 1 hour 45 minutes)
• Turned out great, and took less baking time!

The lesson here is that no matter how wet your loaf is, just bake it dry. The proportion of gluten, flour, nutritional yeast, tofu, and seasonings makes a perfect loaf. The water content may vary (tofu drained or not, more or less water), but you can bake that off.

I eat a ton (about two packages a week!) of Tofurkey deli slices on sandwiches and rolled up for snacks. Tofurkey is my favorite deli slice, and I think that Bryanna’s loaf is just as good - that's why I made it a second time, and I'll make it again!

I love the texture of this loaf – firmer than tofu, but not as chewy and heavy as baked seitan. The flavor is turkey-like, and certainly open to experimentation and personalization. Bryanna's loaf does slice up thinly (not as thin as Tofurkey slices, but maybe if you had a deli slicer), and is perfect for sandwiches. Thanksgiving, too! Put some gravy on it.

Seitan (and this tofu seitan turkey) really is better the next day after it has firmed up. Make this loaf at least a day before Thanksgiving so it can set, and reheat in the oven before serving. Making ahead also allows you to not completely freak out if you have doubts about the end results like I did the first time.