Homemade English muffins

I used Chef John's recipe, doubled, using a whole duck egg in place of two egg whites. These are intriguingly fluffy and hit the spot with an over-easy duck egg for brunch today.

Homemade common-allergen-free bibimbap!

Not gonna lie: having this many food allergies and sensitivities sucks. Since Kara was born, my body has lost the ability to process chicken eggs, soy, and bananas. Add that to all of the other things my body hates and the only common food allergen that I can still eat without consequence is wheat (which is good, 'cause my only meat-like substitute these days is seitan — and I'm trying to eat that sparingly, lest I develop a sensitivity.

But yeah, I missed the simple, quick and easy meals I had next-to-no-time to throw together when Kara was a baby, like egg sandwiches or — in my predominately Korean neighbourhood, with grocery stores to match — bibimbap.

So it was a revelation to discover, just before Christmas of last year (i.e., about 3 months ago) that people with chicken egg allergies can sometimes eat duck eggs without difficulty. That was around the time that I picked up a 6-pack from the local Chinese grocery and tried it in my baking, thinking that having trace amounts of a single egg across a batch of shared baked goods would be a good litmus test for sensitivity on my part. I'm happy to report that not only did it work out, but that I've since been able to branch out into making duck egg-intensive foods like tamago-yaki without ill effect.

When you factor in the fact that I've recently been mainlining episodes from Maangchi's YouTube cooking channel, it's not hard to see how I might've arrived at the conclusion that I ought to try my hand at making bibimbap. And so it was that I had a common-allergen-free bibimbap as my early lunch today. This one features short-grain brown rice, blanched spinach with chives, and "sweated" and stir-fried carrots, zucchini, cucumber, and red bell pepper. It was topped with an over-easy duck egg. Everything was seasoned with salt, sunflower seed oil, and garlic.

I began the vegetable prep work last night to minimize the amount of time that'd take today. It was fairly time-intensive, but I think the results were well worth it. I had an unbelievably delicious, nutritious, and quick-to-assemble meal option today and still have plenty of the vegetables left over for later in the week.

Tamago-yaki!

After having to avoid it at sushi joints for the past several years, I spent part of yesterday making a duck egg tamago-yaki for lunch! As in previous years' batches, I followed this recipe, making the two-egg version this time (which really is too small a quantity for my tamago pan). I'm out of practice, so I made the pan a mite too hot, which is why the rolled layers of mine look so loose this time, but now that this is a viable lunch option for me again, I'm hopeful that my technique will improve. It's just as yummy as ever, I'm happy to say.

Mmmmm...homemade white chocolate

A trip to Michael's on Friday yielded a silicone chocolate mold, a purchase I resigned myself to when I had multiple failed attempts (and one, sad, lonely success) at molding chocolates in a polycarbonate mold. I'd previously consulted Ann Reardon's YouTube tutorial on How to Temper Chocolate and seemed to have gotten the knack for it, but couldn't verify that fact due to my failures at getting them to de-mold.

On Sunday, I whipped up a batch of vegan white chocolate on Saturday, tempered using a marble board, offset spatula and bench scraper, poured the mixture into my new mold, and — after setting in the fridge — de-molded successfully! Thus, I had beautiful, glossy, homemade, dairy-free white chocolate this weekend!

I believe the expression goes, "YAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSS"

A few months ago, I discovered that the Colonel's "secret recipe" was supposedly leaked. At the time, I tried it on a few chicken pieces and found that the flavour was much too peppery and heavy on the oregano. Delicious, but overpowering on some fronts.

After a nasty gastrointestinal blowout early last weekend, I spent most of Saturday and Sunday loafing around on the couch, binge-watching vegan cooking channels on YouTube. And so I was reminded of my attempt at making vegan Chick-fil-A. It was then that I resolved to hybridize the two recipes and — hopefully — end up with something greater than the sum of its parts.

This time, I made the seitan patties as previously (replacing the tahini with sesame oil), but I got eight patties out of the batch, instead of the previous four. I still soaked the patties for a little less than an hour in pickle juice, but I used the KFC spice blend recipe, with halved amounts of white pepper and oregano, plus ⅓ cup of icing sugar and 1 tsp of baking powder, as my dredge. My binder was unsweetened hemp milk. Yesterday's fry-up, pictured above, had me cutting the patties into quarters, length-wise, before starting the pickle juice soak.

Oddly, when one cuts back on the pepper in the dredge, its lack of salt becomes noteable. I will have to add a bit more, going forward. Otherwise, these adaptations are definitely on the right track!

Homemade mini-baguettes

Yesterday, using ChowTown's recipe for Vietnamese-style baguettes as a jumping-off point, I made my very first ever batch of (mini-)baguettes! My recipe follows:

• ½ cup warm water
• 1 T. sugar
• 1 T. Fleischmann's Traditional Yeast
• approx. 390g white bread flour (I needed a little less than ¼ cup more)
• 1 T. vital wheat gluten
• 1 ½ t. salt

Dissolve the sugar into the warm water, then add the yeast. Allow to foam. Meanwhile, thoroughly mix the bread flour, vital wheat gluten and salt. Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture and knead — adding flour as needed to reduce stickiness — until you have a smooth, moist (not wet, sticky or shaggy) dough ball. Leave to rise in an ungreased bowl in a warm, draft-free place for ~40 minutes.

"Punch down" the dough and turn out onto a lightly-floured countertop/work surface. Cut the dough into four, approximately equal-sized, parts. Pull each dough ball into a rough rectangle, then roll tightly into log shapes. Leave to rise, well-floured, for ~20 minutes under loosely-laid plastic wrap.

Preheat oven (preferably convection) with pizza stone to 400°C. When oven has come to temperature, gently lift each loaf and place on pizza stone. Slash vents in tops of loaves, then mist liberally with water before closing oven door. Bake until your house smells like fresh-baked bread, or when loaves are a mouth-watering golden brown.

If you've got the willpower for it, allow to cool, raised on a cooling rack.

I used mine to assemble pseudo Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, made with leftover French-style braised beef, chopped red bell pepper, chopped shallots, Daiya provolone slices and Follow Your Heart Chipotle Vegenaise (which is not only soy-free, but much akin to crack cocaine, I imagine).

Happy Birthday, Matt!

Matt isn't shy with his opinions about pie. I admit that I made a very authentic (and painstaking and time-consuming) coconut cream pie early in our relationship, only to discover that authentic wasn't what he had in mind. And yeah, he makes no secret of the fact that cherry pie is his absolute favourite, but that he's had enough failed attempts at it that he's wary of attempting it anywhere unfamiliar. So, naturally, I thought I'd try my hand at it.

Lo, my cherry pie! Honestly, it's actually my go-to pie crust recipe with canned cherry filling in it (the local grocery store wasn't stocking frozen cherries). And I'll be surprised if it isn't exactly what he's looking for.