30 Rock’s Cheesy Blasters: I Made Them!

October 30, 2013

Hi everyone! So I know I said that I was going to make the Cheesy Blasters from “30 Rock” for you on here, but instead I made them for HelloGiggles.com! Please don’t be mad; just go read about it! And enjoy! They were SO good. But they look even less appetizing than the English Trifle, huh?

Read about the Cheesy Blasters and pay homage to Liz Lemon here!

Veganizing “Friends”: Joey’s (AND ONLY JOEY’S) Fried Clams

September 25, 2013

As we’ve studied the eating habits of the Friends over the past few weeks, what is the most important lesson we’ve learned? JOEY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD. Correct! In “The One With The Birth Mother”, in one of my favorite Joey storylines, he dates a woman (Annie Parisse) who does silly things like order plain salads but mooch off of Joey’s dinner. I agree with Joey on this one: Order the food you want to eat! (As long as it’s vegan, obvs.) Anyway, Annie (let’s just call her Annie) doesn’t really understand that it’s weird to take food off of someone else’s plate, at least without asking first. The conflict comes to a hilarious climax with Joey’s seafood platter dinner. He thinks he’s successfully distracted her with extra fries (which he is willing to share), but no such luck:

HAHA Joey at the end of the above video is MY FAVORITE EVER. Anyway! So, as you heard, the following conversation occurred:

Annie: (looks over at Joey’s platter) Oh wow, are those stuffed clams?

Joey: Uhhh.. yes, they are my stuffed clams.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “Hold on, woman. It says ‘stuffed clams’, not ‘fried clams.'” A few points:

See his seafood platter plate, with all those little fried somethings? They look clam-sized, not shrimp-sized. (I know you see the actual stuffed clam in the shell later, but he could have had clams a few ways!)
What do you think Joey would like better, something stuffed, or something fried? Correct.

So, we’re going to make fried clams. Much better idea, right? Who has food-grade seashells lying around?

Nori is not the best idea here

I generally used the homemade seitan recipe from The PPK blog, because it’s great. I ripped the seitan pieces into long strips, and boiled it in broth with seaweed and dill thrown in. I didn’t have any kombu, so I used nori in the broth. If you have kombu, use that, because the nori isn’t meant for boiling and it disintegrated. Messy seaweed. You can see in the picture, it gets kind of weird. Kombu would impart a stronger flavor anyway. After the strips boiled, I breaded them and baked them. Let’s see!

FIRST, MAKE SEITAN
INGREDIENTS:

1C vital wheat gluten
1/4C nooch
1/2C cold water
1/4C soy sauce
juice from half a lemon
1T olive oil
1 clove garlic
1t salt

DIRECTIONS:

Boil a pot of water and drop in some kombu
Mix the dry ingredients in a big mixing bowl
Mix the liquid ingredients separately
Mix them together and form a ball
Knead the ball for a few minutes until it is less sticky and more bread dough-y
Rip seitan into strips and drop them into the boiling water
Cover but leave the lid askew
Lower heat to a simmer, and cook for 45 minutes, then turn off heat and let sit for 20

How weird does this look with the disintegrating nori! Don’t do it!

THEN, BREAD THE STRIPS
INGREDIENTS:

1C cornmeal
4T cornstarch
2t ground flax seed
2t salt
1t nooch
1C unsweetened almond milk
1T apple cider vinegar

Coated strips, ready for cooking

These turned out really well! They might not be salty enough for you, but that’s what sauces are for. You can make a vegan tartar sauce by blending vegan mayo, mustard, pickle relish, and capers, or you can just use ketchup. Really, any kind of sauce works here. An amazing thing I might do tomorrow with the leftovers is to mix vegan mayo with sriracha and a drop of Frank’s for a crazy spicy orange mayo like the type that comes with sushi rolls.

DIRECTIONS:

Mix the milk and ACV in a measuring cup; set aside
Mix remaining ingredients in a mixing bowl
Dip each seitan strip in the milk and then in the cornmeal mixtures. Make sure each is well coated and place on a baking sheet covered with parchment
Now, you can bake for 25 minutes in a 400° oven as I did, or you can fry them. I would recommend frying, but I don’t have a fryer or the mental capacity to safely deal with boiling oil.

It makes a lot! Dayum!

Now, with your sauces ready, your strips crunchy and baked (or fried if you are awesome), you can enjoy them on a plate, as Joey did in this episode. ORRR, you can honor Mr. Joseph Francis Tribbiani even more, and make a sandwich! Because what is Joey’s favorite food? Say it with me: Sandwiches!!!

It’s aliiiiive!

Not bad for my first try

In sandwich form, I’d definitely recommend tartar sauce and whatever else fried-clams-on-rolls are usually served with up in New England. So good! These were overall really easy to make, and they turned out well. You can play with the breading mixture and add spices as you desire, perhaps some cayenne pepper, curry powder, or, if you are like me, more nooch. Yum! And, let’s say it all together now:

Giveaway trivia!

Joey’s favorite food is, of course, sandwiches. But what is his favorite kind of sandwich?
In Monica and Chandler’s storyline, they meet a woman at the adoption center who likes them. What does this woman think M & C do for a living?
Extra credit: What Pulitzer-prize winning show featured a fantastic Annie Parisse?

Crispy Crunchy Chickpeas, 4 Ways!

March 11, 2014

I’ve had a new obsession lately, thanks to my commute. While I wait for my train to work, I am tempted day in and day out by these little bags of crispy chickpea snacks sold in my train station. Although sometimes they nearly break my teeth, I love them. Little chickpeas are somehow addictive, incredibly tasty, and pretty healthy, considering they are mostly just chickpeas! My habit is getting expensive though, so I decided to try making my own. Success! With little effort, I made 4 delicious kinds of crispy chickpeas today, and I am probably going to make more and more every day until I get sick of them or until all the stores run out of chickpeas. Let’s see what happens first! I really hope it’s not the latter. Or, really, the former.

#1: CHOCOLATE COCONUT SEA SALT

Ingredients:

2T coconut oil, melted
2T cocoa powder
2T sugar
1/2t coarse sea salt
1 1/2 C chickpeas

Directions:

In one bowl, melt your coconut oil.
Mix your dry ingredients in Bowl #2.
Mix your chickpeas around in the oil bowl.
Transfer the chickpeas to the sugar bowl and swirl around until everything is covered.
Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for an hour at 350F. Then, turn off the oven but let the sheet sit in there for at least another 30 minutes.

GARBANZOOOOOOOO

Chocolate chickpeas! SO gross uncooked! 🙂

#2: SALTY CHOCOLATE & CINNAMON

Ok, this is kind of cheating, but it’s my favorite one. Add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon to the dry ingredients above. Uhhhmazing.

Di di di di di dirrrty pop

#3: SRIRACHA & LIME

Ingredients:

1T Sriracha
2T fresh lime juice
dash salt
2t sesame oil
1 1/2 — 2C chickpeas

Mix all the ingredients together in one bowl, then swirl your chickpeas around until fully coated.
Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for an hour at 350F. Then, turn off the oven but let the sheet sit in there for at least another 30 minutes.

All oiled up

Yum! Baked to the bone

#4: GARLIC & SEA SALT & CRACKED
BLACK PEPPER

Ingredients:

2T olive oil
2t garlic powder
2t sea salt
2t freshly ground black pepper
2C chickpeas

Directions:

Pour the olive oil into one bowl.
Mix the spices into Bowl #2.
Swish the chickpeas around in Bowl #1, oil.
Transfer the chickpeas to Bowl #2 and swirl around until fully coated.
Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for an hour at 350F. Then, turn off the oven but let the sheet sit in there for at least another 30 minutes.

I’m in the oil bowl, I’m in the spice bowl !

I’m in the spice bowl, I’m in the oil bowl!

BEFORE COOKERY!

AFTER COOKERY! (minus handfuls that were assigned as testers…)

I love all of these flavor combinations, and I can’t wait to try more! I know a lot of other recipes for these say to use dried chickpeas, because you can control the cooking process, but a) ain’t nobody got time for that! and b) using canned chickpeas worked fine! Next on my list is a cinnamon & sea salt one with melted Earth Balance as the base, to make kind of a salted caramel-like treat. And then maybe Frank’s and nooch? Speculoos?? Who knows! The possibilities are endless and delicious. What flavor combos would you try next? Is it bad that I can eat 3 cans of chickpeas in one day because of this new obsession? No? Score!