Crazy Mother Hubbard: What To Do With The World’s Largest Squash, Part 2 – Low-Sugar Squash Muffins

   My main theme for VeganMoFo 2013 is to veganize some of the dishes featured on one of my all-time favorite TV shows, “Friends”. As those of you not living under rocks should know, Monica was a professional chef, so we have some interesting & fancy dishes coming up in the next few weeks. However, I had to start  not with one of Monica’s amazing creations, but with perhaps the most famous dish of the ten years of the series’ run…and perhaps the most famous TV dish of all time (yes I went there): Rachel’s English Trifle, or the Thanksgiving Cockup. 

If you aren’t familiar with it, watch this: 

 Yup, this is what we’re making. I KNOW! At first, I considered making the Shepherd’s Pie portion out of dessert-type foods that could just resemble beef sauteed with peas and onions. Cacao nibs in sweet cream with little green candies, crushed chocolate cookies with chopped mint leaves in a chocolate sauce, and more were among my ideas for how I could chicken out of this. But I realized of course that I just HAD to go all out. (Also, when I ran the idea by some friends, they were adamant that I do it the gross way. My friends are smart.) Otherwise, what’s the point? What’s the point of making delicious custard and cake if you can’t destroy it with faux beef with peas and force your family to eat it? 

     So here we go. We’re in this together now. (Except of course I’m the one who has to eat it.) 

First, I made the custard. I roughly used the cream recipe from the Banana Cream Pie recipe in Vegan Pie in the Sky. I boiled a mix of almond milk and agar, then more almond milk and cornstarch, and then sugar (half turbinado half powdered). Then I blended it with silken tofu, coconut oil, and vanilla. It didn’t thicken as it should have, but luckily I made it yesterday, and a day in the fridge helped it set. You can make any kind of vanilla cream or custard you want.

I also made a small batch of vanilla cream frosting for the top layer. This is going to be awesome.

Oh right, you’re here for the beef part. I sauteed a handful or two of red onion in a bit of olive oil with some frozen peas, and added in Gardein beef cubes. It would be nice on its own…but that’s not what we’re here for.

For the two layers of ladyfingers, I decided to make a denser vanilla cake than usual, and then break it into small square pieces in the trifle. I just winged a recipe, and it actually turned out really well. I’m learning! 

The actual dish calls for jam and raspberries, but I only had fresh strawberries on hand, so I used strawberry jam to complement it. You can use whatever combination of berries and jam that you want. (Wait, are you actually going to make this?)

COMPONENTS

• 1 batch vanilla custard or cream of choice
• 1 batch vanilla frosting 
• 2 vanilla layer cakes
• 1 C berries
• 1/2 C jam
• 1 (small) batch faux beef cubes sauteed with peas & onions

Cake recipe

DRY INGREDIENTS:

• 2C flour
• 1C sugar
• 1T cornstarch
• 2t baking powder
• 1/2t salt

WET INGREDIENTS:

• 1C milk
• 2t apple cider vinegar
• 1/3C canola oil

Directions: Preheat oven to 350.
Let the milk and ACV curdle in a measuring cup for 5 minutes.

Mix together in a large bowl all dry ingredients.
Add the oil to the milk/ACV mixture, then add that to the bowl of dry ingredients until mixed. Don’t try to overmix, but if you do it’s NBD because we’re going for denser cake.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until the toothpick test works. 
Once cooled, cut into small squares.

FOR THE VANILLA FROSTING:
INGREDIENTS: 

• 3C confectioners sugar
• 1/2C Earth Balance butter (or margarine of choice)
• 1/2C Earth Balance coconut spread (to balance the flavor)
• 2t vanilla extract

Directions: Mix all ingredients with hand blender until they become frosting. 

FOR LABOEUF (NOT SHIA):

• 1C Gardein beef cubes
• 1t olive oil
• 1/2 small onion
• handful frozen peas

Directions: You know how to do this, you just don’t want to.

NOW LET’S GET TO LAYERING THIS BITCH!

1. Put down a layer of the cake squares
2. Cover that layer with your jam of choice
3. Then, spread down most of your homemade custard
4. Top the custard with your berries, and more custard if you want
5. ADD YOUR MEAT AND PEAS YO
6. Top with more custard, more jam if you want (Joey would be happy with that improvement), then the vanilla frosting, and bananas
7. VOILA!

Let’s see all that in action:

 THIS WAS SO GROSS. I forced myself to eat a piece, obviously, and I’m so nauseous. The things I do in the name of MoFo! I couldn’t force my family to try it though. I couldn’t even successfully explain to my mom why I was adding beef to the beautiful and otherwise delicious dessert. I said, “Don’t you remember the ‘Friends’ episode when Rachel makes the trifle and messes it up?” And she said, “Yeah I remember.” And I said, “I’m doing that! For MoFo! It’s my theme to make stuff from “Friends”. And she said, “Okay…I don’t get it.” Sigh. I hope you guys do, because if ate this shite for no reason I’ma cry. (No, I’d probably vomit first, because that might happen anyway.)

You bastards want proof that I ate this, don’t you!!! As if my nausea isn’t enough, my Elphaba-like face color. Fine! Here you go. This picture is the piece I ate FOR YOU. You’re welcome. So anyway, how do you wanna pay me?* (Your line: Is this a service you’re providing me?!) (NB: guess the source of this line and gimme some deets and you get Giveaway Points! Alternatively, just say something awesome. Do both, and like crazy things could happen to both of us.) 

I still can’t believe I successfully constructed and ate the famous English Trifle/Shepherd’s Pie. Could I BE any more like Rachel Green?

fellow mofoers – you might realize that all your amazing comments are gone. lost in the transfer from weebly 🙁 but as of now you can see them here! https://laughfrodisiac.weebly.com/my-own-creations/veganmofo-veganizing-friends-rachels-english-trifle

For our recent anniversary (aw thanks), Husbo and I returned to one of our favorite fancy restaurants in London, The Clove Club. We celebrated our anniversary there two years ago, and this year we decided to shake our shoulders like Danny Burstein’s adorable Tevye and make a tradition of it. You might recall that last year, we were on a train to Chengdu for our anniversary, which was prettay prettay disgusting. To make up for that (plus 98% of all our train experiences last year), we splurged on this super extravagant dinner again. The Clove Club is one of the few Michelin-starred restaurants in London that will offer a worthwhile vegan tasting menu, so it always comes to mind first when we are considering super swanky restaurants. 

One of the first UK restaurants to use the ticketing system, where you pay when you make the reservation, The Clove Club is a ritzy Shoreditch restaurant with an exclusive club-like vibe, located in Shoreditch Town Hall. It has one Michelin star and it’s the UK’s highest ranked restaurant on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, at #33. (Last year it was #26, just saying.) (Alinea is #34 so take this list, like all lists/awards, with a dangerous-for-your-blood-pressure amount of salt since that restaurant is extraordinarily better than most of the places ahead of it.)

Also, I believe it’s the only restaurant I’ve ever been to that offers a soft pairing instead of just a wine pairing with your menu. They even say on the website that they do that; it’s not like some secret you have to ask for. Especially in London, where most of the social activity for a non-drinker involves watching everyone else drink till they’re pissed (UK has a serious alcoholism problem but it’s part of the culture so it will remain ignored), it’s great for a non-drinker to have a nice option. In fact, on this visit our waiter told me that not only were they offering a soft pairing, they had two soft pairings available! I could choose between juice and tea, and obviously I chose juice. There were a few missteps in there, but I’ll talk more about that below.

Soon after we were seated, we were asked about our beverages – the wine and the soft pairings, yes, but also whether we wanted still or sparkling water. You know I appreciated getting right to the most important issue – water – without making me take out my big reusable bottle from my bag in a place like this. As usual, I chose still and Z chose sparkling, and the server assigned to our water needs (lol the dream) got confused and gave both of us sparkling for much of the meal. Luckily our main server took over at some point and gave me still. It is hard to chug sparkling and I like to chug! 

We were getting the tasting menu, and so the first few dishes sent out were little off-menu ‘gifts’ from the kitchen to amuse our bouches, which are always some of the most interesting bites. I received an adorable tiny crispy cup of green beans and edible flowers that tasted of dill, and even though I tend not to like dill because of food poisoning memories, I loved this. Next up was a little turnip roll, looking like a sushi roll or a baby burrito or something but it was rolled up turnip. Sounds whack, tasted amazing.

My last amuse was a chickpea panisse, and I almost high-fived the waiter who brought it. I was psyched for some acknowledge that vegan proteins exist, and also I just forking love everything made with chickpea flour, like socca, and this was a little bite of socca. 

To follow up/erase the little treats, they next brought me melon gazpacho granita as a palate cleanser, though a more interesting one than usual. 

At this point in my notes, I wrote ‘Almost a potato but watery’ and I have zero clue what I meant by that or what point in the meal it was supposed to correspond to, if it was related to this meal at all. Recent-past me was very wise though, so I will use the phrase as much as I can.

Next, I was brought one warm tomato. I kind of thought ho boy, is this how it’s gonna be? After that promising chickpea panisse? But it was one warm good tomato, doused with soy sauce, almost a potato but watery, and even though it was hard to eat, I remembered that it’s all about the meal at large at a place like this, not each individual dish. It was served with a fresh cucumber juice, tinged with a little apple and some other subtle hints of this and that to make a really lovely, refreshing cucumber juice. A soft pairing win! 

My next course needs no introduction. It was BEANS! I love beans oh how I love beans, especially in fancy restaurants who would love to only give me single tomatoes and no protein. The white beans (the server said cocoa beans?? but no) (I googled and apparently Coco de Paimpol beans are a thing and are whitish so that is probably it; shortening it to ‘coco’ is misleading guys!) were served with impeccably cooked and flavored mushrooms, so it was a dish I often cook myself but made delicious and wonderful. My drink of the moment was a buckwheat iced tea, which I loved because I love buckwheat and really got into buckwheat teas in China last year. It was Bucks County up in here! Calling it another Soft Pairing Win even though it was a tea and not a juice and I thought they were two different routes to take but I guess sometimes they share the path? 

The next course was my absolute favorite and brought the whole shibang to another level. I got a little bowl of the freshest herb broth that was like if everything green and fresh and herby was reduced to their strongest, most sublime levels of green and fresh and herby taste concentration and probably mixed with a little magic. It was INCREDIBLE. I mean yeah it was broth, but incredible forking broth. There was a baby potato and a single strand of samphire in the bowl, which was fun to try to get when you were drinking directly from the bowl. I would say the potato in the broth was almost a potato but watery, but it really was a potato. It was served with the greatest piece of solid food ever, too – a cracker of crispy potato topped with white bean puree and amazing grilled mushrooms (but grilled differently from the previous course, I believe). Everything about this course was perfection and I really wanted to shout ‘just give me a million of these, please’ which really should be an option when you are paying this much but alas, I behaved. 

Next up to bat, we have a wonderful white beet dish. The beets were sliced super thin and I guess the whiteness instead of the redness means there is no trace of any dirt taste that regular beets often have, and they were topped with slivered almonds. The waiter poured a Greek yogurt (made from almonds) sauce over the whole thing, and it was splendid. It looks like a mess because I didn’t get the picture until after the pouring happened, but whatevs. So good! And I appreciate the perfectly smooth almond yogurt sauce that I like to think they made just for me that night. 

While this course was great, the soft pairing was…not. You may remember from my previous Clove Club review that I was given a red pepper juice to accompany a corn-based dish, and the match of red pepper and corn was highly praised. However, I also mentioned that too much juiced red pepper is a lot to ask someone to drink. At this latest meal, the red pepper juice was a weird match for white beet and yogurt, and the giant glass was way too much to ask. I could barely finish two sips before I wanted to barfalomew. Soft Pairing Fail.

Luckily, this was about the time they brought out their superb sourdough bread, so I could get rid of the taste. Their bread is so good we would have happily filled up on it even though everyone always says not to do that, for some dumb reason.

The more substantial ‘main’ dish section of the menu came out now, and my first of these was a grilled baby eggplant with cumin sauce and eggplant caviar. So, not the most interesting or inventive dish, but it tasted great and was well made. Still, given the setting, you’d hope for something more imaginative. I LOVED my soft pairing, though: a steaming hot pot full to the brim of mushroom tea. I drank the whole pot and loved it. The taste was very subtle, almost bland, but that’s okay for tea, and the smell was sensational (just like MUSHROOM and SO STRONG).

The last of the savory courses was one of my favorite parts of the dinner: a plate of maitake mushrooms and broccoli and other greens and leaves served with a courgette (zucchini) puree and a Jura foam. Jura, I learned, is a region of France where they make their own kind of French wine and so this foam was made from that, I guess, but was cooked and foamified so it didn’t taste like or have alcohol. So fancy, so delicious! They really based my meal around cooking mushrooms impeccably and I am down with that. 

Unfortunately, my soft pairing for this wonderful course was a big bummer: They brought me a non-alcoholic beer. Okay there’s a lot to go over here. First of all, I said juice pairing. JUICE. Second, you’re assuming that the people not drinking alcohol still like the taste of alcohol. That’s a very bold assumption to make, and one that I don’t think will ever prove true in any situation. Third, you don’t know why I’m not drinking. What if I was an alcoholic and the taste of beer, even without the alcohol, was a big trigger? Fourth, WHO LIKES NON-ALCHOLIC BEER? Literally NO ONE on the planet. Lastly, and most offensive to me personally, this felt exceedingly lazy. We’re paying more than we’ve ever paid for any meal up in here, and someone back there is like ‘hmm, we need a drink for this dish that isn’t alcohol, oh I know, how about just this beer that the alcohol pairing is getting but the non-alcoholic kind! Great! Except not great. Beer is disgusting and non-alcoholic beer is bullshit. SOFT PAIRING FAIL. Ugh thank goodness most of this meal was wonderful because this aspect of it feels really like a slap in the face. 

Luckily dessert came next to distract me from my OVERWHELMING RAGE. 

And dessert was epic. You know from my past reviews of fancy places that don’t primarily cater to vegans that they often just can’t do dessert. They either buckle under the pressure or they never give a shit in the first place and they go ‘oh here’s a plate of fruit and, if we feel like trying a little, that same fruit made into a syrup or a sorbet ENJOY THAT WILL BE $100!’ But my two desserts (actually, three sort of) from Clove Club this evening were remarkable. Not only were they both interesting and creative, but they were also delicious.

First up was a blackcurrant granita with soy foam and berries. The soy foam was more of a substantial cream and there was more of it than there was granita, so that really saved this from being one of the aforementioned kinds of lazy vegan desserts, as did the fact that it tasted great. The granita was a little too melted underneath the cream, like it was ready in the kitchen before the server fetched it for us, but things happen. There was also a shot of olive oil poured across it, which seems fancy and whimsical but I couldn’t really taste it so that’s just like unnecessary fat but whatever. Oh so for my American readers, blackcurrant is like the most popular fruit flavor in the UK. Husbo keenly observed (he’s so keen) that it’s used as commonly here as grape flavor is in the USA. It’s pretty strange to UK friends that blackcurrant juice et al. is just not a thing in the states. Anyway great dessert. BUT, the real treat of this course was the soft pairing! Thank god they returned with such a strong followup to the Biggest Fail in Soft Pairing History because this blackcurrant and beetroot soda was so incredible, so perfect and delicious with both flavors balanced, that it almost made up for everything. I wish I could buy this soda from them to have at home. And I don’t even drink soda! 

But the last dessert was the winner, maybe of the whole meal, maybe at least tied with that herby broth and potato thing. This is the kind of dessert I want to share with all future omnivore restaurants who claim to be able to make me something good. It was a caramel ice cream (WIN) on top of a coffee meringue foam (WIN) on top of potato sticks (WHAT SURPRISE WIN). The potato sticks were exactly like those things we’d get at a Wawa as kids, which I completely forget the name of but could NEVER forget the taste. YOU KNOW like those superskinny shoestring potato sticks (the name was probably Potato Stix lol) and they were so greasy and salty and amazing. Well whoever had the idea of putting them with caramel ice cream and meringue deserves a medal. This dessert was REMARKABLE. And I don’t even like coffee, well I don’t drink it, but in dessert form it was great, especially mixed with caramel. And potato stix. The soft pairing was a pear juice with coffee syrup and it was delicious. Another SP Win.  

As is the case with these fancy super long tasting menus, when you think you are finished and you can’t possibly eat another bite of anything, they bring you petit fours with your coffee or bill as supposedly a little treat but at this point it’s like a mockery of your stomach. Unforch, Husbo got the petit fours because they didn’t have vegan versions. However, they gave me a house-made dark chocolate bar, as they did last time, and it’s good chocolate. And since the guy who brought it to me felt bad that I didn’t get the petit fours/knew I was going to mention this on the internet/saw how much I loved chocolate by my face tattoo that says I Love Chocolate, he brought me a second one! So I brought 1.5 very nice dark chocolate bars home.

All in all, this was a spectacular meal that lived up to our expectations and memories of last time. Even though there were a few missteps and a few things that are making my veins pop and not in my forearms like I like, overall it was wonderful. But it is incredibly expensive, and even though it was a special occasion, it feels very strange to spend that much money on a meal. That guilty feeling is stronger than usual now that it’s like end-of-days time and everything is going to shit, so it might have to be the last fancy meal for a while. Or, if it really is end-of-days there is no reason to save our money soooo maybe not. WEIRD ENDING. 

CLOVE CLUB, SHOREDITCH, LONDON, UK, EUROPE FOR NOW
Water speed: Pretty good, though not as good as last time and I got a lot of sparkling by accident. I know that sounds like theeeee most entitled bullshit to complain about but that kind of detail is what Michelin stars are given for.
Service: Very nice.
Bathrooms: The bathrooms are downstairs, dark and reminiscent of like a brothel in 1800’s New Orleans. You know what I mean? The lighting was dim, the colors were dark reds and browns, and random cosmetics were scattered on display. A very strange mood going on but it was nice and clean, so whatever! Also I liked that the stall was separated from the sink area, despite being a single serve bathroom. People don’t have to wait outside that way, avoiding the awkwardness that comes from that. Oh the toilet seat was hysterically big and weird! That’s enough. (copied from previous review because it’s the same.)
Food: Splendid! I read over my previous review, and all my food-based complaints seem to have been addressed: the lack of protein was fixed (they could still do more, especially in the two mains, but still, an improvement), the desserts were improved by extraordinary leaps and bounds.
Bonus: Great to have a fancypants restaurant for special occasions/profligate spending when you have no need for money anymore.