Thai Stuffed Omelets

I hardly ever buy veggie ground round, but for some reason it called my name on this week's shopping trip. I also finally got around to making the omelets from Vegan Brunch, so it seemed to me that these two things could combine together to make a tasty dish. The result: Thai stuffed omelets. I revised Isa's recipe a bit to make the omelet a little more durable, but they are still delicate. The soft texture of the omelet contrasts nicely with the more chewy filling, and the combination of sweet and savoury makes for a delicious dish that can either be an entree or an appetizer.

INGREDIENTS
Makes 6-8
Omelets:
- 1/4 cup instant tapioca
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 pound silken tofu (not Mori-Nu)
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1/2 tsp tumeric
- 1 tsp fine black salt
- 1/3 cup chickpea flour
- generous tbsp corn flour
- 1 tbsp cornstarch

Filling:
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 pkg veggie ground round (I used Yves)
- 1 tbsp vegan oyster sauce
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp sweet chili sauce
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tomato, chopped
- 2 tbsp chopped cilantro

METHOD
Omelets:
1. Place tapioca in a food processor and sprinkle water over top. Let sit for a few mins. Add tofu, nooch, oil, tumeric, and salt. Blend until very smooth. Add chickpea and corn flour, and cornstarch and blend until smooth.
2. Heat a non-stick pan over medium heat (you may have to play around with the heat a bit to find the right temp where the omelets can cook without burning). Lightly grease and pour a generous 1/2 cup of batter into the pan. Spread out into an 8" circle with a spatula, then cook until mostly dry on top (a few mins). Flip and cook for another few mins. Remove and let cool for a min or two. I find the omelets are a bit more durable when they sit for a bit.
3. Place about 1/4 cup of filling in the middle of the omelet, then fold the opposite ends of omelet in to create a square. Place on a cookie sheet, cover with foil, and keep warm in the oven while you cook the other omelets.

Filling:
1. Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Saute onion and garlic for 5-7 mins, until soft. Add ground round, sauces, sugar, and tomato. Bring to bubbling and cook for 8-10 mins, until tomato cooks down into a thick sauce. Add cilantro and stir. Keep warm while you cook the omelets.

Apple Jelly

Apple jelly is a small bite of heaven. Subtle in flavour, delicate in texture, and deliciously sweet. Perfect on a piece of toast for breakfast. Like most jellies, apple jelly is more work than your standard fruit jam because the juice needs to first be extracted from the apple. This is an old style jelly that does not rely on commercial pectin to set, but the extra work is well worth the end result.

INGREDIENTS
Makes four 500ml jars of jelly
Apple Juice
- 10 lbs cooking apples
- water

Jelly
- 8 cups apple juice (from above)
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 6 cups sugar

METHOD
1. Remove stem and blossom end from the apples, then quarter (no need to core). Place in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to bubbling, then loosely cover. Reduce heat and cook for about 20-30 mins, mashing the apples as they soften. Don't cook too long, just until the apples are soft and easily mash-able.
2. Line a large colander with a wet tea towel and place over a large pot or bowl. Dump cooked apples into the colander and let drain for at least 2 hours. The juice will be thick, clear, and slightly pink.
3. Measure out the juice to make sure you have 8 cups. Place in a large pot, add lemon juice and sugar. Bring to boiling over med-hi heat. Boil hard for about 25 mins, stirring regularly. The jelly should sheet off a cold metal spoon when it is ready. Quite frankly, I have never figured out exactly what this means. You will find that the jelly will begin to coat the spoon you are using to stir the jelly.
4. Skim off foam, pour jelly into sterilized and warm jars, screw on lids finger tight, then process in boiling water (making sure jars are fully submerged) for 10 mins. Remove from heat, remove lid, and let cool for 5 mins. Remove from water and let fully cool. Jelly will fully set as it cools.

Pumpkin Rolls (and Bread)

Tonight's post is kind of two ideas in one. First, adding pumpkin to just about any kind of bread is a good idea. I peel and seed the pumpkin, chop it, and boil it in water for about 30 mins until it is soft. I then drain it and blend it in a food processor until very smooth. I have found that this puree can be subbed in for water in bread recipes, almost cup for cup. Start by simply replacing the water with the puree, then add in more as needed. It gives the bread a wonderful light orange/yellow colour and makes it tender and moist.

Second, I give you mini buns. Not really a ground-breaking idea, I know, but hear me out. This year the boys' school changed to something called the equal day. Instead of two recesses and a lunch break, the kids get two 40 min "nutritional breaks," one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This makes packing food a little more interesting, but I have had great luck with these mini buns. The recipe is Peter Reinhart's Italian bread recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice: the starter is made as per the book, but the final dough is made with whole wheat flour, and the water is replaced with pumpkin puree. Each bun weighs 50 grams, is brushed with soy milk after rising, and is baked at 400 degrees for 14 mins. The great thing about these is that there is no crust to leave behind, so the kids gobble them all up, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I make 40 of them at a time (double batch of dough), freeze them, and pull them out as I need them throughout the week.

Apple Juice

We have apples coming out of the wazoo! I guess it is too cold to grow apples up here (there are no local orchards that I know of), so my in-laws bring us a whole whack of apples from down south every fall. So, after making apple pie, apple crisp, and huge batch of apple sauce, we still had tons left. The obvious thing to do next was to try my hand at apple juice. OK, first just let me say that apple juice is A LOT of work. I don't know how they can sell huge cans of it for 99 cents. I started with a recipe in my canning cookbook that called for 24 lbs of apples to be chopped, cooked in 8 cups of water, then hung in a cheesecloth and left to drip for 2 hrs. That sounded like too much work, plus I doubted any cheesecloth could hold 24 lbs of cooked apples. Enter my Jack LaLanne power juicer! I figured the juicer would eliminate the initial cooking step and perhaps filter the juice a bit. Well, it didn't work exactly as planned since the juice still needed considerable straining to filter out all the sediment. Here is what I did to get a delicious juice with an amber colour and cidery taste. Son #1 set up the photo for tonight's post.

EQUIPMENT/INGREDIENTS
Makes about 6L of juice
- 24 lbs apples
- 1 juicer
- 2 clean tea towels, damp (they will get stained)
- two large pots/bowls
- kitchen thermometer
- 6 1L canning jars and lids

METHOD
Sterilize your jars. Get a large pot of water boiling to process the jars of juice.
1. Use large rubber bands to affix the tea towels over the top of the pots/bowls. Don't make the towel tight over the bowl; rather, make sure it dips into the bowl so it can hold the juice.
2. Working in batches, chop the apples and process them through the juicer. Pour into the towel over one of the bowls and let drip through. You will find that the towel quickly gets gummed up with a pectiny residue, so I made this a pretty rough filtering. Once most of the juice passed through, I detached the towel and squeezed the remaining juice through. Then, I poured it through the other towel while I cleaned the first towel. I then passed it through the first towel once again.
3. Once all the juice has been filtered, heat to 190 degrees F and keep at that temperature for 5 mins. Pour into jars, top with lids, then screw the ring on finger tight. Place in pot of boiling water (making sure water covers lids), return to boiling, then boil for 10 mins with lid on. Remove from heat, remove lid, and let sit for 5 mins. Remove jars from water and let cool.

Thanksgiving Roundup

This post won't help my Canadian readers, but perhaps it will be of some use to all you Americans (and anyone else celebrating Thanksgiving some time soon). First, let me apologize for the lack of a picture (of food--this is from our fall hiking trip). I was all ready to snap a pic of the feast when I realized my battery was dead. Sigh. For the entree I made the Thanksgiving Mini Pot Pies than I blogged about a few days ago. I made a triple batch of the roasted mushroom gravy to pour over absolutely everything. Both the pot pies and the gravy went over very well with vegans and omnis alike. I was afraid that the pies would be a little redundant, but that really wasn't the case. The other problem was how to serve the pies since they were baked in a ramekin. I placed them off centre on the plate, then piled all the other dishes around the ramekin--it worked perfectly. The other dishes were pretty standard: mashed potatoes, baked yams, acorn squash, peas, carrots, and corn. I also made stuffing, though it I didn't stuff it anywhere. First, I made Peter Reinhart's Italian Bread recipe, subbing the water in the dough (not the starter) with pureed pumpkin. The result is a wonderfully soft and golden loaf. I cubed the bread and tossed it with onions and celery that had been sauteed in olive oil. I seasoned it all with sage, thyme, and salt and pepper, and added raisins and dried cranberries and baked at 350 in a greased pan for about 1 hr and 15 mins.