Ducky's culinary school: synergistic mole pancakes...with chard

Spanky named these himself.

We have a surplus of chocolate stout. Oh the horror! Actually, it's a batch of homemade chocolate stout that didn't carbonate quite enough, so it's cooking stout. And while cooking with alcohol is fun, this doesn't have a flavour that can just dissappear into the background. So we decided to feature it in this fancy-looking but actually really easy dinner. We plan to use this to impress people in the future.

Pancakes (6): 2 cups buckwheat flour, 400-500 mL chocolate stout, salt, 1 tbs flax, baking powder. Sauce: 3 small but powerful onions, 2 cloves chopped garlic, 5 or so large mushrooms, all cooked in white wine. When the onions are translucent add: 1tbs cumin, 1tbs coriander, 1 tsp oregano, black pepper, salt, a whack of chipotle in adobo sauce, 4 chopped tomatoes, tiny bit of pomegranite molasses (because we didn't have any limes). Simmer. Just before you're ready to eat, add chard. We used red chard. It was pretty. Sprinkle with toasted pumpkin seeds and cocoa nibs. Drink ginger beer. Bitch about useless safety regulations.

Question: What could be better than pancakes for dinner? Answer: N0thing. Pancakes for dinner are pretty much the bestest thing ever.

Ducky's culinary school: foodgasms.

I was in Florence and spent some time in the central market on the top floor where all the vegetables are, stumbling around in a state of quasi-estatic sensory overload. Mostly because of a fresh porcini stand. I bought fresh porcini, which are butter-melty and frankly, have a taste and smell that falls into the sex category. It would have been criminal to do too much to such a lovely and complex taste, so I just heated them through in some olive oil and salt, and put them on some fresh bread and ate. I also cooked up this little flowered zucchini on the side (just oil, salt, pepper and a bit of garlic). And maybe slumped into my chair making little noises of happiness. Of course, the next day, I went back to the market and bought some dried porcini to take home.

Now, usually, dried mushrooms don't smell like much when you open the bag. This smelled like much. Suddenly I understood why one might need a warning on a plastic bag telling you not to stick your head in it. One night, I rehydrated a few of the mushrooms, and put them on spaghetti with truffles and just a bit of parsley (Yes, I bought truffles packed in oil on this trip. Because life is too short not to) and parsley. Oh. My. Goodness. And then last night Spanky and I went down to Leith for an night of risotto. Hilarity ensued, but that was mostly due to the conversation.

Mushroom risotto: If you are lucky enough to get your hands on mushrooms this good, for the love of sweet Jeebus, don't do too much to them. Brown rice in olive oil, heated until is smells nutty and then doused with a good cup of dry white wine. Simmered and stirred in the mushroom water. Meanwhile, the rehydrated mushrooms were heated up in a little oil, a tiny clove of garlic, some wine, and a green onion. When the rice is done, mix, and add salt and a smidge of black pepper. Perhaps a little more olive oil. If you have more delicate mushrooms, use white rice.

Strawberry risotto: Take thinly sliced red onion and a clove of garlic and add it to olive oil in a pan before heating the oil. Turn the heat on low and cook until the onion is translucent. Add white rice and a tiny bit of cumin and some salt. When the rice is also translucent, add a healthy two or three shots of saffron gin (or gin and saffron. vermouth would also work), then hot water. Do the usual risotto thing. Meanwhile, reduce some balsamic vinegar (somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 cup for 1.5 cups of rice going into the risotto). When the rice is done, stir in the reduced vinegar, about 3 cups of sliced strawberries, at least half a cup of fresh basil, and black pepper.

Take both of these, and serve them with green salad to good friends. Eat slowly. Laugh a lot.

perfect music: snippets of Bach, sung by a choir boy and an angel, interrupted by helpless laughter and drinks.

Ducky's culinary school spreads the vegetable love

Nothing says valentine's day like roses and chocolate. Soooo, Ducky's culinary school presents: rose and chocolate pizza, specially concocted for the FatFree Vegan Kitchen's valentine's food extravaganza.

Pizza dough: standard yeasted pizza dough, kinda. We used 300grams chickpea flour, 100 grams whole wheat flour, a pinch of salt, yeast and a tsp of rosewater. Knead. Leave to rise. Knead some more, roll out, sprinkle with more rosewater, a bit of salt and some freshly ground black pepper and then bake at 220C for 15 min. Yes, you bake the pizza dough naked (naked pizza dough, I mean. Naked cook is optional.)

Then, add the sauce, which in this case is a nice little layer of pomegranate molasses. Alternately, one could use dark chocolate shavings, chillies and balsamic reduction, if one were feeling fancy, or even mole sauce if you had some on hand. But the pomegranate molasses was making eyes at me, I swear. Toppings: first layer: Wilted spinach and arugula mixed with 1 tsp of dry roasted coriander seeds and 1 tsp dry roasted cumin seeds, mushed up with a mortar and pestle. second layer: Butternut squash simmered slowly in veg broth and white wine (sub apple cider vinegar if you want) with a tiny little bit of pomegranate syrup added near the end. Pop this back in the oven for a few minutes to let the different layers get aquainted with each other. Then add the romantic layer: sprinkle with a cocoa nibs and decorate with candied rose petals. If you are me, add a bit more black pepper.

That's for valentine's day. Note that at this time of year, what with all the kissing and such, vampires can be a concern. We recommend the following, though not necessarily as part of a romantic dinner:

Side dish: Vampire-be-gone spuds. It's misty and mysterious out tonight, so we thought that just to be on the safe side, we'd make these. Diced potatoes (4), whole cloves of garlic (one head worth), and one of those deceptively hot hungarian peppers, in veg broth, thyme, and smoked paprika. When everything is almost done (the water has almost all evaporated), add a can of chopped tomatoes or several chopped fresh tomatoes, a diced green pepper and a few chopped capers and continue cooking. When everything is actually done, throw in some nutritional yeast and salt to taste. If we hadn't used all the spinach on the pizza, I would have thrown it in these spuds.

Poor Spanky was mostly running about being my kitchen slave for this dinner, chopping things and keeping wine glasses filled and such. I think the role suited him, but he probably disagrees, so we will resume our regular "nice Ducky" programme next week when I'm not trying to impress anyone or ward off the undead.

valentine music for the terminally cynical: leonard cohen. everybody knows.

ducky's culinary school: post 2

The culinary school has been busy, but we've failed to post. We are bad, bad homosexuals. No biscuit. There was even a double layer carrot cake, which was so exciting I forgot to take pictures.

Spanky likes beets. I likes beets. The veg box this week has beets. You can see how this dinner was inevitable. We give you.... (drum roll please) beet risotto. One of the best kept secrets in the culinary world is that risotto is actually really really easy to make. Ducky is withholding his conclusions until he's tried this unsupervised. So, you take your short-grain rice. We used brown, because I'm a freak. I like brown rice. And frankly, white rice is too wimpy for the sheer number of beets in this dinner. You take the rice (1 cup) and saute it in a little bit of good olive oil along with a bit of dried basil until it becomes translucent and smells nutty. Then you add 1 cup of red wine. We used Peter Lehmann Wildcard Shiraz, which was perfect for this. Simmer until the wine is gone, then add broth plus a little marmite and keep doing that (adding warm broth) until the rice is done. Stir as much as you like. I am a lazy ass, and stir my risotto so infrequently that Italian grandmothers would probably claim it's not even really risotto. However, I have fed this to actual Italians, from Florence even, who made little sex noises upon tasting it. So there.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, pour yourself a glass of the wine. Then chop beets. 3 beets. Maybe chop then drink. Not drink them chop. Spanky was drinking coffee because he's an addict. Also, chop an onion. Fry the onion up, then add the beets, then cover them, drop the heat, and let everything caramelize. If it starts to weld itself to the pan (as it did tonight) throw in a splash of wine and/or apple cider vinegar. While everything cooks, drink and talk about gay cheetahs. Drinking optional.

When the rice is done and the beets are done, mix them together in the beet pan. We then added all the roasted garlic we could lay hands on, which was just under a head, and some nutritional yeast. And toasted walnuts. Yum. We also had salad, mostly for colour contrast. Beet rissoto is yummy, and PURPLE. So much fun.

There was no music. We had the cheetahs and some fairly surreal conversation. Spanky, however, went out on the town dressed as Seymour last night. I think that takes care of the musical component of the weekend.

ducky's culinary school: post 1

So, in the kitchen, sometimes there is my flatmate. We'll call him Spanky. Spanky can brew beer with the best of 'em, and one day, I will know his dark beery secrets. In exchange, I'm helping him learn to cook. This is Ducky's Culinary School. I, as you may have guessed, am Ducky. Culinary school started a while ago, but we didn't have a blog a while ago. So you'll have to jump in here.

Here's Gnocchi with A Sauce Loosely Based on Something Resembling Arrabiata. And wine, which was good, but a poor choice for this particular dinner, as it was firmly beaten down into submission and throttled by the chillies. Sorry wine. Better luck tomorrow. Spanky says it makes a good post dinner treat now that the sauce isn't bitch slapping it. Yes, we use that sort of strong language here. We find it helps. I like gnocchi because it's comforting and can seem very fancy "ooooh! homemade gnocchi!", but it's ridiculously easy to make and if you make lots, you can freeze the extra gnocchi and have it later in borscht, only then you call it potato dumplings.

The vague directions for making gnocchi:

Bake some spuds. We baked 6, and we cheated by using the microwave. The important thing is that the spuds not be waterlogged. If you boil them, leave them in the fridge overnight. We didn't have that kind of time. We wanted dinner tonight. And we have a whack of spuds to get through. It's Scotland, it's winter, and we have a CSA box. Then, mash the spuds and add salt. At any rate, more than you think you would for plain old mashed spuds, but not enough to make you gag. Then, sprinkle in a good cup of plain white flour. Not self-raising. Not whole wheat. White. Dammit. Mix with your hands, and keep mixing and adding flour until you have a dough. Now make little tiny dumplings. I just rolled them one at a time between my palms while barking orders at Spanky, who was making The Sauce. If you don't have a fabulous roommate who makes sauce while you roll dumplings, or just want to just eat the gnocchi plain with a bit of olive oil, then add some chopped fresh rosemary (about 2 tbs) and nutritional yeast (2-4tbs) to the dough and it will be yummy beyond words.

Spanky, meanwhile, was busy combining his recent skills in onion-frying and tomato sauce making. He did this: 1 Onion, fried. Then lots of garlic (5 cloves). Deglazed with a can of tomatoes and 4 chopped tomatoes and about a cup of leftover red wine. Then a pinch of salt, a tablespoon of chopped capers, two chopped thai bird chilies and a teaspoon each of basil and oregano. And we threw in 5 or so chopped up sun dried tomatoes because we were feeling fancy. That all simmered, and then at the last minute, we added lots of spinach. But no matter you add, you always end up with two tablespoons of the stuff. I swear, if you started with 10 pounds of spinach, you'd just just get a really dense 2 tablespoons.

When that was ready, we boiled the gnocchi until it floated, and then rescued it and dumped unceremoniously into the sauce. It was yummy. We had broccoli and the worlds most giant parsnip, simmered in veg broth, thyme, lemon and a tiny bit of maple syrup, on the side. In the photo, you can see Spanky's notebook. Spanky takes this cooking thing very seriously, as should we all.