Week 2: Breakfast - Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes with Cinnamon Cacao Tofu Cream

I'm not much of a breakfast person, preferring to grab some fruit and a coffee on my way to work than spend time preparing something, so I again had a short list of ideas for this week's meal.

The first idea I had was trying to clone the awesome Scrambled Tofu they serve at Maranui Surf Life Saving Cafe (http://www.maranuicafe.co.nz/) here in Wellington. It's a great, if often crowded, cafe where you can sit and watch the feeble Wellington waves come ashore while enjoying one of their vegan options and a decent long black. However, it turns out they've been nice enough to share their recipe already (http://recipefinder.msn.co.nz/recipes/campaign1/765180/scrambled-tofu) making a cloning attempt redundant... and ruining my one good idea. I'd highly recommend making their scrambled tofu recipe, or come to Wellington and let them make it for you :)

In the hopes of finding some inspiration I headed off to the supermarket and as I walked in I noticed some buttercup pumpkins stacked precariously in a corner. I love the natural sweetness of buttercup pumpkins and figured there had to be a decent sweet breakfast option in there somewhere. Further into the store I noticed the pre-packaged pancake mixes and it was settled; I needed sweet pumpkin pancakes. I was hoping to make a cashew creme fraiche to top the pancakes with but raw cashews were the one bulk bin item the store had run out of, so I opted for a tofu cream instead. I prefer a cashew creme fraiche, but the tofu cream still tasted pretty good.

Some googling when I got home revealed this pancake recipe, which I have basically ripped off with a few minor changes - http://cookieandkate.com/2013/pumpkin-oat-pancakes/

Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes

Wet

• 1 Cup Pumpkin Puree
• 1/2-1 Cup Soy Milk (start with a half cup and reserve the other half for later use)
• 2 Tbsp Olive Oil (plus some more to oil your skillet)
• 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
• 2 Tsp Maple Syrup
• 2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
• 2 Tsp Grated Fresh Ginger

Dry

• 1 Cup Oat Flour
• 1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
• 2 Tsp Baking Powder
• 1/2 Tsp Salt
• 1/4 Tsp Ground Nutmeg
• 1/4 Tsp Cloves

1) Combine wet ingredients in a small bowl, using only half a cup of the soy milk.
2) Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
3) Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and stir gently to combine.
4) The batter will likely be quite thick and a bit dry, depending on the moisture content of your pumpkin puree. Add more of the soy milk until the batter is more batter than dough, but not as thin as a standard pancake batter.
5) Let the batter sit for ten minutes, and heat a cast-iron skillet over a medium-low heat. The heavy skillet ensures an even heat across the entire surface, which pancakes love.
6)  Pour a 1/4 cup of batter onto the skillet and cook for three minutes, then flip with a spatula and cook for a further 90 seconds. These pancakes don't hold together quite as well as normal pancakes, so no matter how good you are at flipping pancakes with just the pan, don't - you will end up with a mess.

As I could only fit two pancakes in my skillet at a time I put the cooked pancakes on a cookie sheet in the oven at 100C/212F to keep warm while the rest cooked. I also made the tofu cream while cooking the pancakes, however making it in advance and letting it sit in the fridge would result in a thicker consistency. However, the cream will thin as it warms... and once served, these were never going to last long anyway so I wasn't too worried.

The recipe below yielded WAY more tofu cream than I needed... something in the order of ten times as much as I needed, so feel free to move the decimal point one place to the left to make a single serve batch (if you have small enough measuring spoons).

Cinnamon Cacao Tofu Cream

• 350g Box of Soft Silken Tofu
• 1 1/2 Tbsp Ground Cacao Nibs
• 3 Tbsp Maple Syrup
• 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon

1. Throw all ingredients in a blender.
2. Blend.

I served the pancakes in stacks three high, with maple syrup between each layer with a couple teaspoons of the tofu cream and more maple syrup on top. My six year old pronounced this the best breakfast he has had, and he's not a fan of tofu or pumpkin... so this is definitely a winning combination in my mind!

Notes:

• The temperature these are cooked at is important. My stove is terrible and only allows for five heat settings... the perfect temperature would be somewhere between 3 and 4 on my stove, so I had to keep swapping back and forth in an attempt to get the pancakes to brown without overcooking. As you can see in the photos, they are 'well done' but still tasted awesome... and I also enjoyed the texture of the crispy edges - almost to the point that I'd claim I did it on purpose.
• The linked recipe states that these are gluten free but oats are not gluten free... however, the glutinous protein in oats (Avenin) does not cause issues for about 80% of people with coeliac disease. If you have coeliac disesase procede with caution.
• The COOKIE+kate site says to buy pumpkin puree rather than pumpkin pie mix for their recipe, as the pie mix is pre-sweetened. I haven't seen either product here in New Zealand, so I just make puree by roasting the quartered the buttercup pumpkin then blending it once cooled.
• I don't have oat flour, so just threw 1 1/4 cups of oats into a blender and blended to a flour-like consistency. This yielded just over 1 cup of oat flour.
• I only used fresh ginger as I didn't have dried ground ginger on hand. It's entirely likely the flavour would be better with dried ginger.
• If possible use freshly ground whole spices as they test so much better. I have a coffee grinder I only use for spices and a ginger grater I also use for grinding whole nutmeg.
• These taste way better than the photo makes them look... I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to taking photos, and only have a phone as a camera, so feel free to pretend there are some exquisite artistic photos that make them look as good as they taste. Also, I made these for my kids in a rush before heading to work so you can also pretend there are more photos of the pancakes being made, or just check out the nice photos at the COOKIE+kate site linked above.

Week 1: Comfort Food - Chipotle Mac and 'Cheese' Burger with Portobello Fries

When I think comfort food I think of three things: lasagne, mac and cheese, and burgers. As I was already eating leftover lasagne when I discovered the theme for the first week, and didn't want to eat lasagne for most of the next week, I thought I'd go with mac'n'cheese or a burger for my comfort food... or better yet, mix mac and cheese with a burger for something like comfort squared. All burgers need fries and portobello mushroom fries are a good choice to provide a facade of healthiness to part of the meal.

There are four main parts to this meal... making the vegan mac and cheese, forming and crumbing the burger patties, making the fries and assembling the burgers.

Vegan Mac and Chipotle Cashew Cheese (Makes enough for six burger patties)

• 250g Macaroni
• 1/2 Cup Raw Cashews
• 1/4 Cup Vegetarian Stock
• 3 Tbsp Savoury Yeast Flakes
• 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
• 1 Tsp Ground Chipotle
• 1 Tsp Salt

1. Soak the cashews in water for at least two hours, but preferably overnight. Soaking the cashews ensures they blend more easily and create a creamier sauce consistency.
2. Cook the macaroni noodles as per the instructions on the packet.
3. While the macaroni is cooking, strain the cashews and combine with the rest of the ingredients in a blender, and blend until the cashews are creamy... about 3 minutes in my blender.
4. Combine the sauce with the strained macaroni and stir to combine.

To make the burger patties I use egg rings as shown in the picture below, but something like round cookie cutters would also work. Refrigerate in the egg rings for about an hour so the cashew cheese sauce sets and the patties hold their shape.

Once the patties are set, they need to be crumbed. The standard crumbing technique involves coating things with three ingredients in order: flour, egg and bread crumbs. Instead of eggs I used a half cup of leftover vegetarian stock mixed with two teaspoons of cornflour to thicken. As the cashew cheese is not very solid at room temperature care should be taken when flipping the patties so they don't fall apart. The crumbed patties should be set to one side, to be cooked later when the portobello fries are baking.

Portobello Mushroom Fries

• 3 Portobello Mushrooms
• 1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 Cup slightly thickened liquid, such as vegetarian stock with 2 tsp cornflour
• 1 Cup Panko Breadcrumbs
• 1 Tsp Rubbed Oregano (optional)

1. Slice the mushrooms into chips about 2mm thick.
2. Season the breadcrumbs with salt and pepper, and add the oregano if you are using it.
3. Crumb the chips by coating them with flour, liquid then breadcrumbs.
4. Bake in a single layer on a cookie tray at 200C/400F for 15-20 minutes, turning once.

Before the fries go into the oven, they should look like the picture below. They're done once they've gone golden brown around the edges, which should take just over 15 minutes.

While the fries are baking shallow fry the patties over a medium heat, and assemble the burgers with any further ingredients and/or condiments you wish. My burgers, from the bottom up, go: burger bun bottom, hot sauce, rocket/arugula, mac and cheese patty, sliced avocado, tomatoes, more hot sauce and the burger bun top.

What really makes these burgers for me are the hot sauces. Here in New Zealand we have a fantastic hot sauce company called Fire Dragon Chillies that makes great hot sauces with home grown organic chillies. The sauces I used in my burger are pictured below. The NZ Chilli Eating Champs commemorative sauce provides a great chilli kick while the smokiness of the Sh!thot Chipotle sauce works really well with a creamy cashew cheese sauce.

Note:

The most important thing to me is the savoury yeast flakes. I use the Lotus brand Savoury Yeast Flakes below, as I can order them online from a New Zealand source at a reasonable price.

If I don't have any of these yeast flakes my only other option is a local organic food store which has a nutritional yeast they package themselves which is an entirely different beast. I once bought a bag of their nutritional yeast and made a 'cheese' sauce with it, and promptly discarded the unused yeast after tasting the sauce. The lotus flakes smell and taste cheesy, while the stuff from my local organic store smells and tastes like Marmite which is definitely not what I'm looking for in a cheesy sauce. If you're not aware of what marmite is, it's a yeast extract spread which many New Zealanders love on toast... but it most certainly doesn't taste like cheese.