i wanna be a chocolate god post 4: enlightenment

Sweet Jeebus. After making this, I think I'm going to become a hot chocolate activist and lobby to have this sort of thing declared "real hot chocolate" and everything else clearly labelled as "a vague suggestion of what hot chocolate might be if it were done all the way". The "just add soy milk and stir" or even "melt really good chocolate into the soy/nut milk of your choice, along with a few spices" has got nothing on the crazy elaborate preparations from the enlightenment. Drinking this sure enlightened me. Hot chocolate cobbled together from a few different 16-18th century recipes, most of which are already vegan! Yay!: For 8 people: Start with 1 batch almond/hazelnut milk (I made this in the soy milk maker). Place the milk in a pot with mortar and pestled: generous 1/2 tsp annatto, 1 heaping tsp anisseed, a scant tsp of strong cinnamon (the kind used in indian cooking), 3-5 cloves, as many candied rose petals as you want - I used about two tablespoons. Add a whole vanilla bean and an ancho chilli (deseeded), both were dried, so I just cut them into strips with scissors, since the whole mess is going to be strained later. Heat this all to a simmer, then turn it off and let it sit for a few hours (I left it for about 8 hours) This should be a) bright orange (yup, that's it in the pot, with the tomato for comparison) b) not sweet and c) kinda thin. Then, strain the whole thing into a pot, and dissolve about 150 g of good dark chocolate in it (I used 75% untempered chocolate from Valhrona) plus a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa. Sweeten to taste with agave. Drink. It will become immediately clear why this is considered an aphrodisiac. I nearly went off in my pants while drinking it.

You really do need to let the almond/hazelnut milk and spices sit for a good few hours. When I tried a little sample of it early on in the afternoon, it was quite jarring, but by the evening, all the flavours had rounded out and melded. There was a bit left, and we had it for breakfast, and I have to say that it was even better. Next time I think I'll start the hot chocolate the day before and let it steep (before the straining step) overnight. Oh, and this is not suitable for american "serving sizes". I served it in small cups, which I think amounted to just over half a cup per serving.

Just for the record, I am completely and utterly unable to understand how anyone sees being vegan as deprivation.

music of the gods for the drink of the gods: dead can dance

taking a bow. plus, going all medieval on your ass

Lelly gave me a blog award! Eeeeeeeeeeee! How very exciting! Thank you! Apparently I am supposed to put up this little banner thing. And nominate more people. I can do that. But Lelly already nominated Vincent over at Vegan Improv. *sigh* Once again, Lelly is a step ahead of me. Now, I suspect that the people I nominate are supposed to nominate yet more people, so get on it you guys!

First, I nominate Tuimeltje over at twigs and tofu, because she tries new stuff, and rocks.

And Jake, who writes some of the funniest and most insightful stuff out there.

And...ahem.. Hezbollah Tofu, for being fabulous, and regularily exposing the fuckwititude of Anthony Bourdain. This saves me endless time, as otherwise I would have to expose said fuckwititude myself. Plus, yum fancy-pants food that will impress everyone you know and often takes a long time to make, which can lead to excellent bouts of cooking-as-procrastination.

Also, Jillian and her bitchin' vegan kitchen. Jillian makes food by actually following the recipes. This is an inspiration to me, and I secretly use her as my recipe tester, even though she doesn't know it. Shhhhhhh!...

And finally.... Vegandwhatnot, a fellow Canuck ,whose blog is just starting out, but looks brilliant. Saskatchewan needs more vegans. And more pirates.

Now. A project: Ducky's Modern Medieval. Starting at some yet-to-be-decided date this fall, I shall embark on a one-month experiment, mostly to see how my tastes change if I move away from the dominant spices in my spice cupboard. Soooo...for a month, I'll let loose in my kitchen with medieval recipes. Yes. A month of vegan medieval. Just to be clear, I won't be following the recipes in the sense of trying to recreate medieval food. The question is: if a cook from a medieval vegan kitchen (say a monastery) found themselves with my vegbox in my (modern) kitchen every week, what would they do? For lack of a better term, I guess I'll be doing fusion cuisine, only across time instead of geography. So Modern Medieval, not "Ducky's Time Travel", okay? There seem to be a fair number of vegan recipes out there, mostly because meat, eggs and milk were off limits for so many religious communities for so much of the year. I'm vegan for slightly less godly reasons, but no matter. I shall move bravely forward (or backwards? which am I doing here?). Basically, this is going to be an experiment with different spice combinations and cooking techniques. I've been fascinated by medieval/renaissance cooking for a while now, partly because there isn't much of a distinction between the use of what we would now consider to be sweet and savoury spices and partly because there was some pretty interesting cooking (and scholarship) before plain boring-ass food took over because it was somehow less sinful (less decadent?) than yummy food. So, bring on the cloves, cinnamon and rosewater! If you have any specific recipes you'd like to me try out, send me a link, and providing it's not something totally unveganizable, I'll probably try it.

too cool for rules

Despite Pythagoras and his highly amusing rules forbidding fava beans, maybe because they contain the souls of the dead, maybe because they look like testicles (ummmm...maybe Pythagoras had more experience than me in this department, but I just don't see it), maybe because they resemble the gates of hell in having no hinges, I found myself wanting them for dinner tonight. Perhaps it's just my rebellious nature. The man had some weird rules, and people have tried to work out his reasoning behind this on a number of occasions. As for me, I will cede all things triangle-related to Pythagoras, but I'm going to just ignore him on the whole anti-fava front. I'll let you know if it adversely affects my geometry skills.

Antipythagorean beans: chopped onion, a whole head of garlic, olive oil, an eggplant, vast amounts of *fava beans*, cumin, lemon, ras el hanout, pomegranate molasses, salt. Scooped up with potato bread (mashed spuds, okara, nutritional yeast, spelt flour, rosemary, baking powder). I forgot to take a photo, so here it is ready to go to work tomorrow, accompanied by some olives that miraculously escaped my olive rampage this morning, but only because they were hiding behind a red pepper, which will be made to pay dearly for harbouring fugitives. It too is coming to work tomorrow, where it will be eaten. In the background are my boobs getting their nerd on. We also had broccoli with tahini on it, but there is none left for the photo because there is never broccoli left because I love it so much. But I thought I'd mention it so that y'all know that I occasionally eat something green. You see, I am secretly afraid that my mother is reading this blog and is worrying that I live entirely on chocolate and fancy dinner party food. So, just for the record: I eat my broccoli. And sometimes other people's broccoli.

subversive, "i don't need your damn anti-fava rules to be cool" music: The Balanascu Quartet playing Kraftwerk.