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They go on for miles
I planned to spend this afternoon with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks. Neither of us planned to spend the evening making stuffed crepes. And yet. We had tofu, we had mushrooms; we had chickpea flour; we had a pair of recipes in Andrea Nguyen's book that told us how to pan-fry the first with a savory sesame relish and how to mix the second with rice flour and griddle it into crepes with a filling we weren't interested in; we thought it only made sense to combine the two. Rush said, and I quote, and full well I agreed, "And it'll be simpler than having to deal with making rice." Cut to: a full two hours later, after the endless chopping of mushrooms, after frying the tofu took easily fifteen minutes a side, after the relish has gone through five different changes of taste, after we have spoon-pressed the chickpea batter through a tea strainer to smooth out the infinite little lumps, after we christen the first plate "Deformed Rabbit" because each of its three intended crepes is a spilled mélange of tofu, mushrooms, and accidental papadum, after the second plate where Rush is getting the hang of the crepe twiddler (that is its name and we will hear nothing against it) so that it doesn't grind holes in the center of the batter and I am getting the hang of drizzling oil around the edges and letting the stuff fry longer than I think so that I can loosen it in one piece from the pan rather than five, not very long after the third plate where they look like completely reasonable side-folded crepes and we are simultaneously punch-drunk and still working with smoking-hot oil so we can't do anything but keep cooking—and gaudior is beginning to make plaintive sounds from the living room—we eat dinner. There are two extra crepes at the end, each served in their own bowl because we've run out of other dishes. If they don't look restaurant-quality, it's only because by this point we have stopped caring about presentation and have just dumped them out of the pan and plonked them on the table. I may post the pictures Gaudior took of exhibits A through edible if I can look at them without cracking up. I am not sure I have ever experienced a steeper learning curve in a single meal. I am not sure I have ever before cooked a meal which made me feel simultaneously accomplished and stupid. Because now we know how to make chickpea-and-rice-flour crepes, and if we'd only let them ferment overnight, we'd have had dosas. And in full possession of our faculties, without the assistance of cooking sherry or kitchen beer, we looked at a rice cooker and an unknown recipe for crepes and decided the crepes would be simpler.
(They were delicious.)
rushthatspeaks. Neither of us planned to spend the evening making stuffed crepes. And yet. We had tofu, we had mushrooms; we had chickpea flour; we had a pair of recipes in Andrea Nguyen's book that told us how to pan-fry the first with a savory sesame relish and how to mix the second with rice flour and griddle it into crepes with a filling we weren't interested in; we thought it only made sense to combine the two. Rush said, and I quote, and full well I agreed, "And it'll be simpler than having to deal with making rice." Cut to: a full two hours later, after the endless chopping of mushrooms, after frying the tofu took easily fifteen minutes a side, after the relish has gone through five different changes of taste, after we have spoon-pressed the chickpea batter through a tea strainer to smooth out the infinite little lumps, after we christen the first plate "Deformed Rabbit" because each of its three intended crepes is a spilled mélange of tofu, mushrooms, and accidental papadum, after the second plate where Rush is getting the hang of the crepe twiddler (that is its name and we will hear nothing against it) so that it doesn't grind holes in the center of the batter and I am getting the hang of drizzling oil around the edges and letting the stuff fry longer than I think so that I can loosen it in one piece from the pan rather than five, not very long after the third plate where they look like completely reasonable side-folded crepes and we are simultaneously punch-drunk and still working with smoking-hot oil so we can't do anything but keep cooking—and gaudior is beginning to make plaintive sounds from the living room—we eat dinner. There are two extra crepes at the end, each served in their own bowl because we've run out of other dishes. If they don't look restaurant-quality, it's only because by this point we have stopped caring about presentation and have just dumped them out of the pan and plonked them on the table. I may post the pictures Gaudior took of exhibits A through edible if I can look at them without cracking up. I am not sure I have ever experienced a steeper learning curve in a single meal. I am not sure I have ever before cooked a meal which made me feel simultaneously accomplished and stupid. Because now we know how to make chickpea-and-rice-flour crepes, and if we'd only let them ferment overnight, we'd have had dosas. And in full possession of our faculties, without the assistance of cooking sherry or kitchen beer, we looked at a rice cooker and an unknown recipe for crepes and decided the crepes would be simpler.(They were delicious.)
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Glad there was eventually a happy ending.
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We are seriously considering them! We'd need a bigger griddle and some fenugreek first.
(We also looked up how to make injera, but for that we'd need teff.)
Glad there was eventually a happy ending.
It was kind of ridiculous. Our next plan is for kitsune udon soup and we're waiting to find out in what ways we'll needlessly complicate that.
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And in full possession of our faculties, without the assistance of cooking sherry or kitchen beer, we looked at a rice cooker and an unknown recipe for crepes and decided the crepes would be simpler.
I've made similarly questionable decisions in the kitchen. Even when it doesn't turn out well, I usually learn something and have fun at it.
I'm always looking for people willing to tolerate my culinary experiments; possibly I should invite you, Rush, and Gaudior over for dinner sometime.
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I think that would be a lot of fun! Just so long as we get to take part in the experimentation, too.
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Nine
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The crepes are all gone, but I'll post the pictures if
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Nine
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I still wonder what happened to our logical faculties this evening. Dinner was extremely tasty, but.
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I have only made the standard kind of French crepes, but I do it with a palette knife and have no problems. Oh, and galettes, which are also a standard kind but with sarrasin instead of flour.
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Rushthatspeaks:
I say smugly, having used the knife sharpener as heatproof cooking chopsticks a while ago
Wait! You mean a sharpening steel? Were you reaching for a butter knife?
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And we should cook for you sometime!
Oh, and galettes, which are also a standard kind but with sarrasin instead of flour.
Oh, nice. I've only made the kind of galettes that are more like pastries. I like the idea of the kitchen palette knife.
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'Galette' is a better name for those than 'buckwheat pancake-style crepe', which is what they call them on menus around here for some reason. I have not tried making them at home but I like them and should.
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I think we can be genuinely excused for not realizing how differently a gluten-free batter would behave in a hot pan than a wheat- or buckwheat-flour batter under similar conditions—I have very clear memories of learning to make pancakes in the old house in Arlington and that thing with the oil around the edges was nowhere in it. (The tofu book is giving us a fund of not just good vegan recipes, but good celiac-safe recipes, and I should remember this for when it becomes relevant to guests.) The crepe twiddler was still imperative, as was our willingness to keep adjusting our techniques until the crepes stopped falling apart in the pan. I didn't think much about it until afterward, when we were reading dosa recipes. But we have this habit of discovering the capacities of different kinds of dough as we work them, like the spilling green oobleck of the onde onde or the hell-beast that was glutinous rice flour with palm sugar syrup, and at this point I think I should just assume that any combination of flour and liquid we haven't tried before will hate us until proven otherwise (and possibly hate us anyway, because glutinous rice flour. I am still all for trying the Shanghai spring roll skins, however, and that whole family of har gow).
Everything else, though, that was probably just us.
I love you.
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I'm glad to hear that.
I do hope to see pictures.
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We've never actually cooked anything so far that came out badly. Just aggravated us a lot in the meantime. Possibly this means we are due a spectacular failure, just to keep balance, but I'd be fine with not.
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LOKI GET OUT OF MY PANCAKES.
I'm glad the sacrifice of your time and brainz was rewarded.
And now we can totally make dosas!
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I like the way we observe about half of any given recipe and then just improvise the rest.
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I totally understand this kind of preference. With the crepes you're doing something and you have to wait for the rice; when I took the T home after work and there was a line for the escalators I used to walk up all of the stairs at Porter rather than wait and thought of it as "because I was lazy" though technically it would be better described as something I did because I don't like standing around wasting time when I could be making progress.
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Yeah. Walking is not usually faster than waiting for a bus, but if there is no bus convenient? I walk.
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It's like Julia Child meets Girl Genius! Tasty, tasty mad science....
I now am feeling like I desperately want this cookbook, but that I should also be a little afraid of it.
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It is a brilliant cookbook and not at all intimidating to cook out of, but you should be aware that when we turn to it for dinner, things like this happen.
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I had to return Andrea Nguyen's book yesterday, but I photocopied a few of the recipes so I could keep on making them.
we had chickpea flour --LOL. That is so totally you guys. You have *everything*
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They're South Indian. I don't know anything more about the specific cuisine than that. They used to be rare in Indian restaurants, which I believe are mostly Punjabi, but I think that's changing. I have ordered and eaten them before.
I had to return Andrea Nguyen's book yesterday, but I photocopied a few of the recipes so I could keep on making them.
That's a wonderful testament to a cookbook. Which ones?
That is so totally you guys. You have *everything*
We ran out of palm sugar and glutinous rice flour!
which ones
I copied the mabo tofu one and the one that gets wrapped up in banana leaves (for which I subbed bamboo leaves)--there were other excellent ones, but those were the top two of the ones I made.
Which ones do you like best?
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We've only made (I've only been involved in) a handful of recipes so far, but I loved the twice-cooked coriander tofu; I would make it again cheerfully. Gadon tahu—the one with the banana leaves—is probably my favorite; it was so delicious and unexpected and far less complicated than it looked. Would also make again any time I had banana leaves on hand. Still really want to make the kitsune udon, but that's because I love inarizushi and I don't see there's any way I could go wrong adding kelp stock to it.
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