Day 5...My Flavorite Chickpea Stew

Day 5...

OMFG, Oh My Fairy Godmothers! This Chickpea Stew recipe that I threw together was divinity.

Yes, I'm still surviving, thank you very much. Oven is still mocking me. I want cupcakes and she won't get hot for me. Ha! reminds me of the Rolling Stones lyric, and I quote, I'm so hot for her. I'm so hot for her, and she's so cold, close quote.

Been visiting family and friends, thank you Jesus, I still have some of both who haven't completely abandoned me for my big mouth.

I'm not fit for public consumption!

I'm just so insensitive these days. I blame it on my loving husband. He doesn't sugar-coat a thing for me. Everything is so cut-and-dry, as the idiom goes, with him. I have had many years developing a colossal backbone that I'm afraid I step on pretty, lacquered toenails, wherever I tread.

That, and I'm post-partum from a high-risk pregnancy. I was on confinement for nearly 9 months. Self-induced of course. Read too many books. Now I can't speak to adults properly.

Alas.

We live 25 miles away from civilization. I don't get out and about on the reg. And, we grow our own veggies and fruits during the summer months so there's no need to go to the market every other day. You know, and see people. People of average height and intelligence. Or just people in general. Maybe talk to them too.

I have to routinely remind Christopher, my cut-and-dry-General-Patton-in-the-rough husband, to speak comfort to me at the end of the day. I remind him that the only people I talk to are under the age of 7 years. I do like to talk on the subjects regarding Star Wars, Mario Kart, bathroom habits and high-sugar/high-fat comestibles, but my socio-intellectual needs are not fulfilled with these hot topics.

Le sigh, as the French say, or sigh, in my imaginings.

But, I did make a tasty stew the other day in my, actually Christobelle's, Dutch-Oven.

I must have the Dutch Touch, as I like to call it. Everything I toss into the blessed DO turns into a melodious symphony of food.

I actually made this tasty number on the stovetop. Yes, the stovetop works just fine but no dice when it comes to baking--and cupcakes, nominatively.

Without further ado, I give you:

Chickpea Stew:
2 cups cooked chickpeas
1 cup green peas
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 cup carrots, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbsp. fresh ginger, minced
1 (14 oz.) can of coconut milk
1 (14 oz.) can of water
2 tsp. Bangarang! or seasoned salt
2 tsp. Garam Masala
1 tsp. turmeric

Toss all of the above ingredients into a Dutch Oven. Lid. Place on a big, medium-heat stovetop burner or on a bed of coals and cook one hour. Remove from heat and carefully remove lid with heat proof gloves.

I served mine over rice and tossed some fresh jalapenos and basil on top.

It was OMFG-Oh My Fairy Godmothers! some kinda good.

Day 3 & 4...The DO drew First Blood

Day 3...

Was a catastrophe.

It was a multi-tiered failure.

Crumbs! Day 3 Disaster

I managed to burn my seasoned tofu steaks. 

I incinerated my fresh picked veggies that had come straight out of our gardens: fatty carrots, turnips the size of baseballs, zucchini and young, tender squash.  All grown with L-O-V-E. Washed and cut with care.  Charred beyond recognition. Ash.

And, to add insult to injury, I had labored over a batch of cinnamon rolls for the boys which were of course, you know the chorus by now, BURNED.

I even managed to burn my finger and am sporting a classy TMNT Band-Aid, (that's the acronym for the legendary Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for those of you with daughters or sons over 18 years of age) over the flesh wound.

I'm okay, thanks for asking. But I swear to Fairy Godmothers! that I was miffed.  My Dutch Oven drew first blood. I nearly threw the bally DO into the woods and let it do the Old Testament thing: the ashes to ashes and dust to dust bit.

The campfire did its job, turned the wood to coals and what-not, but it was just Too Darn Hot, as Cole Porter put it best.

I ate leftovers: lentil soup and cornbread but I wanted fire-roasted veggies, tofu steaks and cinnamon rolls by God.



My favorite Yeast Rolls recipe that I make into all sorts of yummy junk.
Including Cinnamon Rolls.

I vowed right then and there that I would try again.  I would make cinnamon rolls every day until I got it right.  That's the difference between me and most humans.  I revel in doing things over and over and fail and fail so I can climb on stepping stones of my dead self and rise to new heights.

I went to bed.  The sun went down on my anger.

Day 4...

I woke up, thank the Lawd.

And made a fire. 

Let it burn to coals while making another batch of cinnamon rolls.

Raw Dawgs

I decided to do a few things differently so they wouldn't escort me to a clinic as a case and point to the broad category of insane in the membrane (I think I remembered seeing that term in my Medical Terminology class).

I put the beastly, sweet rolls in a 9-inch cake pan instead of directly in the Dutch Oven for starters.  Maybe the Dutch Oven is Too Darn Hot, I thank you again Cole, for direct contact.  I dunno. I was just trouble-shooting.

Placed the lid on the DO.  Took a gander at my cardinal rules and made sure I used 8-10 coals on the bottom as a bed for the DO to rest its weary body on.  Then, carefully laid about 14 coals on top.  Way less heat than Day 3.  I actually put on a timer as I nestled my DO into the fire.

I cleaned and cleared the coals and ash from my DO.
Checked on the sweet buns at 12 minutes. 
They weren't burned! 
They actually needed more time. 
Gave it thus.
5 minutes went on the clock.
Checked for doneness and Oh My Josh! they were done. 
Perfect. 

I championed that MF, Mother Fairy or course, and had cinnamon rolls for dinner!  They were wondrous to behold.  I even thought about naming the rolls, Beloved.



my Beloved. ;)

 

They were indeed loved by all.

my Beloved cinnamon rolls:

Ingredients

1 cup warm, plain soymilk

2 Tbsp. Earth Balance Butter

¼ tsp. sea salt

3 ½ cups AP Flour

2 Tbsp. sugar

2 ¼ tsp. (or 1 packet) yeast

Directions

If you have a bread maker, now is the time to use it to make the dough.  Toss in the warm soymilk, butter, salt, flour, sugar and yeast into the bread maker. Set it on the dough cycle and happily walk away while it does the magic.    After the little timer goes off go and fetch the dough and toss it on a floured surface.

OR, measure out the warm soymilk, add the yeast and sugar, stirring well.  Let this mixture sit for 5 minutes in order for the yeast to dissolve. In a big bowl, whisk together the flours and salt. Get out another big bowl.  Pour the yeast mixture into the big bowl, add the oil, and whisk.  Stir in the flour, one cup at a time until well incorporated and forms a dough ball.  Flour a working surface.  Knead the dough ball for about 10 minutes.  Until the dough is smooth, elastic and supple. Place the dough in a well oiled bowl and turn it once so it is nice and shiny all over.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and place in a warm draft free place to rise for an hour.

 Pat the dough down with floured hands and a floured surface.  Use a rolling pin and flatten out into a 9 x 13 inch rectangle or there abouts.  Melt 2 tbsp. of Earth Balance butter and slather on top.  Mix about a half a cup of cinnamon and sugar.  Sprinkle over the butter. Cut lengthwise into 8 strips.  Roll up each and place on an oiled 9-inch cake pan.

 

Pop the pan into the DO. Set lid securely on top and cook over and under coals for about 18 minutes or so. 

 

Ice if you like.

 

Me likey.

 

 

Day 2...Soup's On

Day 2...

Me and my lambkin stop for a photo op on the outskirts of the Culpeper Farmers Market.

I had a glorious time in Culpeper, Virginia with my folks.

We had a ball.

We even went to the Culpeper Farmers Market.  I used to be a vendor there a few years back so there were many familiar faces and friends.

I actually didn't want to go.  To many people. The thought of people everywhere asking "where've you been" and such rot was debilitating.

Nosy Parkers.

I'm just kidding.  I like these people.  I just forgot that most of them were extremely nice.  All except my arch-nemesis. The Fish Monger.  You know who you are. I felt your death stare. But, in the words of the late Tupac Shakur, "I ain't mad at cha."

Any who, my sister and I got super-caffeinated upon entering the market because of an amazing roasted coffee company that just so happened to serve iced coffee on a warm summer morning.  We even had Seconds, which was a bad idea for me, after we had bought all of our goodies.

Our goodies included: beets, a variety of kale I'd never seen before, five different varieties of garlic (yes, 5, and he probably had 20 to pick from) and other scrumptious stuff.

We stashed our veggies in the car and traipsed down Davis Street to a childhood favorite, Knakals Bakery.  As soon as we opened the door to the bakery I was hit by a wave of nausea.  I turned 50 shades of Green.  I thought I was going to toss my cookies and then crawl across the counter and toss their cookies.  That place that used to be, to me, the smell of heavens gates but in an instant became Dantes Inferno with Mephistopheles taking money for doughnuts across the cut glass (I know, it was really Faust and Meph).

They are so sassy in there.  Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode with the Soup Nazi.  I'm always prepared to be neglected or worse when I go into Knakals, but assaulted by the smell was a new injustice.

We 23 skadoo-ed, and legged it to my new favorite place.  A place were dreams are made every day: Clark's Hardware.

I lived in Culpeper for nearly 20 years and never set foot into Clark's Hardware until Julie took me by the metaphorical hand and shoved me in the door with the hope of cast-iron cookware within its walls.

That place is A-MAZE-ING!!!

I have set my cap on a 16-inch Lodge Dutch Oven. She will be mine. Oh, yes. She will be mine.

Clark's has it all for the avid gardener, the constant cook and something for your hobbyhorse's horse.
The place is an inspiration waiting to happen.

After I picked out my birfday, Christmas, Easter, Saint Valentin'es Day and every other major holiday, presents for the next six years, we left with a promise on our lips that we'd be back.

I was so psyched that when I went home I was bound and determined to cook Dutch oven style again.  I made two phenoms: a lentil stew and cornbread.

Lentil Stew in the campfire coals.

Lentil Stew
1 1/2 cups green lentils, dry
1 medium sweet potato, diced
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 big tomato, chopped
3 cups water
1 can (14 oz.) coconut milk
2 tsp. Bangarang or seasoned salt
2 tsp. Chinese Five spice powder

It's done and ready to be dressed.

Toss all of the ingredients into your Dutch Oven and lid.

Place in a bed of ten or so hot coals.  Add at least 16 on top of the lid. Add hot coals when needed.  Let cook for an hour to an hour and a half, or until the lentils are done and the sweet potato is soft.

Slap on those high heat gloves.  Brush the coals and ash off of the top and gently open the lid a little to let of steam.

Remove lid.

Serve the stew piping hot in bowls.

When serving the hot stew you can add:
1 bunch of kale, chiffonade cut
1 or 2 jalapenos, minced
a few sprigs of basil and cilantro, minced

Also, you can substitute 3 cups of cooked lentils for the dry lentils and reduce the water to 14 oz.












Cornbread

Cornbread ready to go into the coals.

2 1/4 cup cornmeal
3 Tbsp. chia seeds, ground
3 Tbsp. sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda

3 Tbsp. coconut oil, melted
2 3/4 cup almond/coconut milk

In a big bowl, toss together all of the dry ingredients.  Then dump those ingredients into a well oiled Dutch Oven.  Stir in the wet ingredients until well combined.

Put the lid on.

Place DO in a bed of 10 hot coals.  Cover the top with coals as well.

Cook for 30-40 minutes. Put on those high heat gloves. Give the lid the Brush-a-Roo. Remove the lid carefully.

 Cut cornbread, remove from DO and let it cool on a wire rack.

The best dag-gone dinner I've had in ages!

The most moist cornbread I've ever had.

Day 1...The Oven Broke

My oven is dead. Dead as a doornail as the expression goes.  I am a vegan cook. This would not do.

I don't know if you have ever had a mad-craving for chocolate cake with no oven to cook it in.  How are you going to survive? How are you going to have your cake and eat it too? These were questions I was facing the day my oven broke. 

Thankfully, I am just about the most willful woman that I have ever met.  Ingenuity should be my middle name.

I built an edible garden. This is just my front lawn.  I did it with a shovel, rake, hoe, pea gravel, riverbed/farmland rocks (we call them Love Rocks because my husband would bring a few to me when he came home from the fields or an adventure), mulch, wood, and a wheel barrow (and when the wheel barrow broke I used buckets and my sons' Radio Flyer wagon). That's it. I'm 32 and 5' 2". Mother of three boys ages 7, 5 and 7-weeks. I am woman, hear me roar and what-not. I Will Survive like the great Gloria Gaynor.

the front gardens with my campfire ring of rocks in the center

I have never taken a cooking or gardening class. I was a personal trainer and aerobics instructor before I broke ground. Being vegan, I eat mainly fruits, vegetables and I flavor nearly everything with fresh herbs. Personal training tanked. I had to garden or do without. I chose to garden.

Fast-forward three years and I have another son, a ginormous garden, no microwave and a broken oven.

Oh, and a craving.


I grabbed my husband's Dutch-oven, built a fire in my homemade pit and went to it. And you know what...it worked. I had chocolate cake for dinner. Then grilled some corn. Then made a lentil stew befit for royalty. It was at that moment that I knew I may never cook a meal in-doors again. I was having too much fun playing with fire, cooking and surviving (enjoying) my quasi-crisis.

In order to bake a cake I needed to do the following:

Build a fire.  Wait till I had a lot of coals when the wood burned down.

Prepare the Dutch-oven. Lawd knows what my husband, Ernest Hemingway incarnate, cooked in it last. Wiped it out thoroughly and oiled it with coconut oil. 

Fished out his High-Heat gloves.

Located a hand-brush to  wipe off the ash and coals at the end of the process.

Threw together the ingredients to my favorite vegan chocolate cake in a 9-inch cake pan.

Chocolate Cake:
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup Hershey's Cocoa Powder
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup warm water
1/3 cup coconut oil
1 tsp. vinegar

Grab your 9-inch cake pan and mix the dry ingredients together in the pan. 
Grab a liquid measuring or Mason jar and stir together the wet ingredients.  Pour the wet into the dry and mix up.

Place the pan in your Dutch-oven (DO). Pop the lid on.

Place oven in a bed of coals. 

There are a few cardinal rules, as the idiom goes, for DO cooking/baking.  Figure out the diameter of the oven.  Most actually have it stamped on the top.  You need 2 big coals for every inch of the diameter of your DO to bring it to 300 degrees.  So my husband, Chris, has a 10-inch DO. I need 20 coals to make my DO 300 degrees.  8 underneath. 12 on top. 

For every additional 25 degrees add another coal at the bottom and the top.  I want a 350 degree oven to bake my cake so I need to add 2 coals underneath the DO and 2 more on top.  Simple-enough.

I ended up with about 10 big coals underneath and 14 coals on top of the lid to bring the heat up to 350 for my chocolate cake to bake.

This is the fun part.  In order to see if you have a good source of heat, hold your hand about a foot over the coals and see if it is hot.  If you think it's not hot enough, toss on a few more red hot coals with a shovel. 

When you smell your chocolate cake at about 35-40 minutes into the bake time it may be done.  Use your hand broom and sweep all of the coals and ash back into the fire. Using gloves, carefully remove the lid a little to let off steam.  Check the cake for doneness.  I see if it springs back with a touch of a finger on the middle.  If it is goey, it needs more baking time.  So lid, toss some hot coals on top and give it tenish minutes until it smells delish.

Give it the brush-a-roo.  Carefully remove the lid and remove from the DO from the coal bed.  Carefully remove the cake pan and let cool.  Slice and serve.

I was so gratified by the turn-out of the chocolate cake that I ran around the house and grabbed Chris' grill top from his homemade stone-grill thingy where he does all of his out-door cooking. Ran the grill-top up the slope and tossed it over my coals, shucked some corn, slathered on Earth Balance Butter, pulled some thyme, rosemary, parsley and other herbs from the garden and sprinkled them on buttered corn and slapped those corn-puppies on the grill-top and rotated them till they were nice and sizzly.

Then, I sliced up some of green-tomatoes and popped them on the grill and cooked them until they were pea-green and soft.  Tossed a piece of grilled corn, the grilled green-tomatoes with fresh torn basil, and wedge of chocolate cake onto a plate and served it to all of our family with teeth. We all have a lovely set of teeth except my little lambkin, baby boy.

And Dinner was served.  I survived Day 1 without an oven and I added a new cooking skill to my repertoire.  I will never be the same again.