Pumpkin Mousse Pie with Gingerbread Cookie Crust: Because Pilgrimsby Randi / November 27, 2013
Well, it’s a few days after Thanksgiving, so what does that mean, dear Friends? It means it’s time for the Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich! Every Thanksgiving, Monica would take her leftover turkey, stuffing, gravy, and whatever else she made that year, and stuff it into a huge sandwich for Ross. I believe that the below clip shows Ross at his absolute best, freaking out (rightfully so!) when his boss “mistakenly” eats this special sandwich. Featuring Monica’s trademarked gravy-soaked bread called “The Moistmaker”, this sandwich was apparently worth screaming at your boss and losing your job over. Now that’s a good sandwich.
“YOU YOU YOU YOU THREW MY SANDWICH AWAY? MY SANDWICH? MY SANDWICH??”
Don’t remember the details? Can’t watch the videos at work? Good, I have an excuse to transcribe:
Ross: Hi.
Joey: What’s wrong, buddy?
Ross: Someone at work ate my sandwich. 🙁
Chandler: Well what did the police say??
Ross: My Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich! I can’t believe somebody just ate it!
Chandler: Ross it’s just a sandwich!
Ross: Just a sandwich?! Look, I am 30 years old, I’m going to be divorced twice, and I just got evicted. That sandwich was the only good thing going on in my life! SOMEONE ATE THE ONLY GOOD THING GOING ON IN MY LIFE!
You know what, it’s too good. Just watch it the whole thing. Your boss won’t mind.
You know, there are plenty of “Friends” moments in which Ross is clearly in the wrong yet acts insanely entitled and, well, insane. But this isn’t one of them. He’s so right! Oh my goodness, I would be so upset if someone ate my lunch. Like who does that? Seriously! What kind of sick bastard knowingly eats someone else’s lunch? Bastard. For Ross’s (a.k.a. Mental Gellar) sake, we’re going to make The Moistmaker with our Thanksgiving leftovers. Bring it to work tomorrow and write a little caveat on it so no one steals it, something like “Hey, keep your mitts off my grub.” Or something not quoted from “Annie”.
Before we get to assembling Our Sandwich, let’s make some stuffing! I made this stuffing for my family dinner, and it was awesome. I recommend it for all of your stuffing needs.
Before we get to assembling Our Sandwich, let’s make some stuffing! I made this stuffing for my family dinner, and it was awesome. I recommend it for all of your stuffing needs.
VEGAN SAUSAGE & SAGE STUFFING
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Bring the dish to Thanksgiving dinner and save a serving so you can put it on more bread for your sandwich! |
So pretty! 
Stirring the veggies in the stockpot 
Before cooking: Gross wet bread with seasoning! Ew! So gross! 
After cooking: Mm, hot bread with seasoning. |
SOMEONE ATE THE ONLY GOOD THING GOING ON IN MY LIFE!!!
THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS SANDWICH WITH “THE MOISTMAKER”
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The gravy is the most important part. Really. Of anything. 
Bread, seitan, stuffing. 
Gluten trio covered with cranberry sauce. 
Here comes the gravy! |
Oh oh really? Did you confuse it with your own turkey sandwich with a Moistmaker?
Man alive that’s some good sandwiching. Who cares what time of year it is – make some Thanksgiving-y food and then make this sandwich! Poor Ross didn’t get to eat his. I feel so bad for him, especially because he was essentially fired for his reaction. He didn’t do anything wrong! I would have punched Donald, not because I care so much about the sandwich, but because Donald was SO WRONG. I punch wrongness in the face. That’s life. Enjoy!
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Delicious Baked Polenta, Two Glorious Ways!
I can never have enough polenta. Isn’t it the best? It’s so cheap, it’s super easy to play with, and it’s Italian. Most importantly, it’s insanely versatile. You can make it straight for a plain side dish, fry up ready-made pieces, use it for dessert, and bake it in a pan with a variety of interesting toppings. Like a pizza or flatbread!
Recently, I went to London’s polenta-based restaurant called La Polentaria (review coming soon). I loved that polenta was front and center for all the dishes (obviously). I also loved that the walls had interesting information about polenta, like that it has more protein per serving than an egg! (So the wall said. I am not checking because I want that to be true.) Here are two recipes, one for a cheesy mushroom baked polenta casserole-sort-of thing, and one for classic polenta bruschetta. Both dishes would be great for entertaining company, although I prefer to hoard the entire casserole pan myself.
Recently, I went to London’s polenta-based restaurant called La Polentaria (review coming soon). I loved that polenta was front and center for all the dishes (obviously). I also loved that the walls had interesting information about polenta, like that it has more protein per serving than an egg! (So the wall said. I am not checking because I want that to be true.) Here are two recipes, one for a cheesy mushroom baked polenta casserole-sort-of thing, and one for classic polenta bruschetta. Both dishes would be great for entertaining company, although I prefer to hoard the entire casserole pan myself.
First, the bruschetta! Lots of bruschetta will use a raw tomato and garlic mixture, but that’s nothing special, really. If you want that, you can easily just chop up some tomatoes and mix with garlic and basil and olive oil. Easy peasy. But it’s winter so I wanted a warm cooked tomato topping. It really pays off to make your own and not use store-bought tomato sauce or any crap like that. I mean you could; you can put literally anything edible on top of hardened polenta and it would be delectable. But when it comes to sauce, this is the way to do it.
POLENTA BRUSCHETTA
Remember: it’s a hard ‘k’ sound. None of this ‘shetta’ bullshit.
Remember: it’s a hard ‘k’ sound. None of this ‘shetta’ bullshit.
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hahaha this is the longest picture ever I love it 
I ran out of pictures |
Next up, we have a ridiculously addictive vegan-cheese topped mushroom casserole. I never buy vegan cheese like ever, but all this talk about the new Field Roast Chao slices over in Murka has made me quite envious. But apparently, the UK’s best vegan cheese, Violife, is just like the Chao stuff! So I bought it. And it is soooo gooooood. It asked me to be used over a homemade pizza but come on I can’t plan weeknight dinner long enough in advance to account for rising yeast dough. Ain’t nobody got time for that! So instead this is kind of like a polenta pizza! It even has my favorite pizza topping: mushrooms! I also threw on cannellini beans because I love beans.
Cheesy Mushroom & White Bean Polenta Casserole
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Dinner at Vegan Hotel Saorsa 1875
Recently (okay not actually but time is moving too fast, Adam Sandler hit fast forward again or something) we had dinner at Saorsa 1875, the UK’s first vegan hotel as it bills itself, or the Saoirse Ronan hotel, as we call it. It’s located in Pitlochry, Scotland, a lovely tourist town with a great theatre (see here and here). You can’t have dinner here before seeing a show, though, because it’s a tasting menu restaurant where you need to sit and stay and enjoy, which we love. I guess you could see a matinee and then mosey and then have dinner. So all works out!
At our dinner, we were expecting the 5-course tasting menu we had been reading about since the hotel opened. But apparently that’s only on the weekends now, and we were there on a Monday, when it is 3 courses. A wee disappointment, the weeest really, and it’s also priced accordingly so it was a lot cheaper than we expected! It was still lovely, maybe not as weird Michelin-y tasting-y menu-y as we hoped, more ‘this is normal food that you’ll actually enjoy and will actually fill you’, which is nothing to sneeze at. Maybe we will one day go back for the fivers and see what weird shit they come up with, we love weird shit.
First of all, it’s important to know that there are hotel dogs around, so build in time to your visit for petting them properly. There’s one doggo who is sooo old and so sweet and just ugh so nice LOVES IT.
Saoirse operates dinnertime with like one seating, so all the 8-10 wee tables eat the same things at the same time, pretty much. Don’t worry, there are no family-style tables or anything (at least not since covid I think?) so you are spaced away from all the people coughing and generally being gross. While you wait for your table to be ready, you pet the dogs and you hang out at the bar, which has a really nice list of cocktails (both bar and bat). We tried a watermelony non-alc that was good, and I wanted to order another but couldn’t get anyone’s attention before we were ready to move into the main dining room.
I do wish that they had left us in the bar longer, because we sat at the tables awaiting the first course for about 30 minutes before it came, which whatever but no one was filling water or taking drink orders so I had to nearly diminish the reserves in my bag. That water was for the drive home! So service could deffo use a brush-up. Luckily they did bring little dinner rolls around. You had a choice of charcoal or beetroot, two simply incredible choices for bread, right? So I was like ‘puh puh puh porque no los dos???’ but luckily they were much more generous with the bread through the night than the water so I got to try both. Fill up on bread! My fave thing to do!
Okay then the real food started! First up was our baby corn salad – how ballsy is that considering how many people hate baby corn! I guess that might be an American thing because British people seem to love it? Correct me if I’m wrong! This salad had microgreens, big-balled caperberries (always think of Bridget Jones when faced with caperberries), and grilled baby corn. Okay grilling the bc is the way to go. It was a very decent starter salad, sharp and refreshing. I was still waiting for water during and after this course thoooo.
Onto the main! Let’s note that this was the summer menu (I’m a few months post), and though the first course felt appropriately refreshing and summery, the second felt very much appropriate for now, cold and dark winter. It was GREAT, actually, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t feel seasonal. Here we have roast butternut squash (I know, like wintertime staple), with spicy pumpkin seed pesto, pickled celery, and lemon balm. First off, LOVING the pickled celery. Second, the pesto really was spicy! Way to go this country! It was a really nice mix of flavors, with the dark spicy pesto and the sharp pickled celery. The squash came two ways – cubed and on a bed of itself pureed. And best of all, the ‘chickpea’ listed in the description ended up being chickpea panisse, or a socca block, pick your romance language. I forking love socca so I was happy. It was so creamy and so good, much better than when I make it and you need to have a lot of water on hand because it swallows kinda dry. I think I need more oil/any oil. ANYWAY, a delicious wintry dish.
Again I waited for water for a long time, but the people are nice so I didn’t throw anything.
After another long wait, we got our dessert, and boy was it worth it!
Probably the best dish? I mean I am biased because it was dessert and it had the two dessert necessities – ice cream and chocolate. But man alive this was good! They really buried the lede with that printed menu just saying ‘chocolate torte’ and not the best part: the ice cream was BANANAS. No not ‘banana’, it was tonka bean and vanilla. I have never been able to try tonka bean anything despite really wanting to because it’s always in a dairy option so I was sooo excited to finally try it. And this ice cream was amaaazing. Like wish I could have bought a tub of it to bring home even though there’s no room in the freezer. We’d make it work. Amazing. The torte was fantastic too, like the densest richest chocolate torte ever. I could have done without the passionfruit gel on top because I think there are very very few times when chocolate and fruit actually go together so if it’s not banana or strawberry it’s just gonna be weird and incongruous. It was sour which I guess they wanted to counter all the sweet, but who wants to counter sweet? Crazy people!
But speaking of weird and incongruous but in a fun and good way: that last lump on the plate was all those things! Here we have peppercorn chocolate mousse. Like it’s nice chocolate mousse and there are peppercorns in there. Just for fun I guess. I don’t know if I liked it or just appreciated the weirdness but it was cool to try (once?).
We decided not to get the additional cheese plate, though many did. We were pretty full (and it costs more, and it was unclear if its 15 to share or 15 each person…it can’t possibly be 15 each person right? woof), though maybe next time I would try it, but only if I could get it before the actual dessert. Excuse me, but having a cheese plate after you’ve had ice cream and chocolate torte feels insane. Like who ever heard of eating an oat cake after you’ve had ice cream? It is nonsense to me. I know you disagree but man, if I’m having ice cream and chocolate why would I destroy that by eating anything else afterward? So weird.
So all in all it was a great dinner. Service left a bit to be desired, as it was pretty hard to get anyone’s attention for water or more drinks (and since they had interesting non-alcs I actually wanted one for the first time!), but they were nice and it was all nice. For £35 per person instead of the £60 for the 5 courses, we were pretty happy that we ended up there for a 3 course night. But hopefully one day we will be able to try the 5 and hopefully they will be weird and wonderful. This meal was much more normal, like regular food, which you know can be nice!
SAORSA 1875, PITLOCHRY, SCOTLAND, UK, CRUMBLING WORLD
Water speed: This is the one area that really could be improved! Like I said it was hard to get attention to ask for water or even to order drinks that we would pay money for! What a shame.
Service: See above but they were nice people. YOUR MA’S GOOD PEOPLE.
Bathrooms: There are two single-serves through the lobby of the hotel, pretty nice! Hotel bathrooms tend to be!
Food: Really good, even though we were expecting weird tasting menu shit, it was nice to eat food recognizable as food!
Bonus: Like I said, fully vegan hotel, dedicated to ethics, dogs around, Saoirse Ronan, what else could you want? They also do lunch, though it is a different vibe (burgers I think?). And one day I’ll be back for that tasting menu!
