food

We welcomed Chef Joe Haber, head chef and owner of Tomahawk Tacos, to the Indigenous Food Lab Test Kitchen for a special cooking session. Joe shared a cherished Haudenosaunee boiled cornbread recipe passed down from his grandmother, who made it for his mother and family. Traditionally topped with a beef-based gravy, Joe reimagines the dish with a rich mushroom and bean sauce infused with cedar and sage, showcasing the often-overlooked flavors of bean broth. Join us as Joe shares this generational recipe and its story, celebrating tradition with a fresh twist.

Recipe: Cornbread

• 4 cups Nixtamalized White Corn flour
• 2 cups dried small red beans
• Salt

Cedar Mushroom Sauce

• 2 Quarts Red Bean Broth - 1.5 lbs Mushrooms (any variety or mix of multiple varieties)
• 1.5 cups diced alliums (a mix of leeks, scallions, onions, shallots, whatever is available)
• 1/3 cup minced sage
• Branch of Cedar
• sunflower oil
• Juniper
• Salt
• Garnish with Scallion, Radish and Arugula or other seasonal leafy green

I accidentally let it slip in front of the boss that I like to bake and now I'm stuck making the sourdough at the restaurant I work at, dog I've been here like a month, I don't want to be workshopping your bread recipe. bread's getting good though, but I hate baking in a combi steam oven.

like, it looks great, but the crumb is still too dense for my liking and doesn't really get the squishy soft texture I'm looking for. It's a slightly upscale buffet restaurant, and I really want guests to fill up on (good) bread so we can save on food costs and time refilling the actual dishes.

Does anyone have any tips for open baking in a combi oven?

We're doing like 8-10 loaves a day when it gets busy.

Right now I'm doing a blend of manitoba, rye and a semi wholegrain heritage grain with high protein, 72% hydration and a starter that doubles in 4-5 hours. 4 sets of stretch and fold after kneading it in the bread mixer for around 5 minutes, total bulk ferment is around 5 hours and then cold ferment in the walk-in overnight.

Baked with 100% steam at 230c for 15 minutes with no fan, then no steam, still no fan, at 210c for 20-25 minutes and then 240c for a bit for the colour.

I think this one had some uneven fermentation for some reason, and the oven spring was lacking, even with the nice ear that formed, crumb is good, but dense

this one was really nice, but it spread out a little too much because I had too high hydration, around 80% (the other ones in the batch looked a lot flatter)

I feel like the bottom rack of the smaller oven produces the best loaves, but I can't really justify only baking 3 loaves at a time when we only have 2 small ovens and 1 big and produce food for around 100-200 people on weekends

This is like an eighth of the total amount she made, a serious reduction from last year. All vegan. Not pictured are the self-made caramel bonbons which are the perfect mix of chewy but melts in your mouth.

It's a Basket of Onion Rings.

Patton:

war criminal

beats PTSD victims

probably racist

only won WWII thanks to the soviet union

General Tso:

war hero

tactician

feeds the hungry

beloved for his special sauce

Recently discovered this family owned Chinese restaurant that will sub tofu on any of their dishes at no charge, I’ve been 3 times so far it has been delicious every time.

This comes with a side of rice and your choice of egg drop or hot and sour soup, and it’s $10. The older couple who own it are really nice too, probably gonna hit it up once a week at least.

May arnibal, perlas, at syiempreng tokwa

I just thought it might be fun to chat generally about making these proteins from scratch, and hear what people's experiences are with it.

Tofu:

I've been watching Will It Tofu videos lately and it inspired me to make some pumfu from scratch because it's a bit cheaper that way and you also get the byproducts which can be reused too.

It's really fun to do because watching the milk separate into curds feels like mad science or witchy or something. It really turned out great, except I only got about 2/3rds the amount of pumfu out of process as they said I should. The only thing I can think of is maybe I didn't blend it well enough, so I'm going to try some tricks to blend it better next time.

Anyway, you get 3 products from it:

1. Tofu - pumpkin seed tofu is so good, it's just expensive. It's just fattier than soy, so it really lends it to sausage-like preparations. I spice it like chorizo, pan fry it as a crumble and serve it over a tostada with black bean refritos and some veggies. I try not to overpower the flavor of the pumfu itself. It's killer.
2. Okara - This is the pulp leftover when you squeeze out the nutmilk. You can find recipes for it. A lot of people bulk out baking recipes with it. I combined it with a mashed potato and veggies and made a potato/okara pancake with it and dressed it with some thai chili sauce. The nuttiness of the pumpkin seed really came through, and it's really good. I'll need to add a bit of binder next time though, because it was pretty fragile. I've also heard you can rehydrate the okara, add nootch, and have a nice ricotta replacement, and tasting the raw okara, that makes sense. I may try it.
3. Whey - This is leftover when you press the curds into tofu. This makes a nice broth, and it added some depth to my instant ramen.

Seitan:

I've been making this from scratch for years. It's pretty easy.

I've tried both the "wash out" method where you wash the starch out of whole flour, and the method where you just start with gluten flour. I don't feel like the final product benefits much from the extra work of washing it out, so I just do it lazy-style.

There's lots of recipes out there for different mix-ins and different methods to cook. Personally, I like a very chewy, spongy, fluffy seitan, so I don't mix-in any other flours and then I boil it unwrapped in small pieces so it can fluff out a bit. Then I'll just do other prep from there. I love a nice fried buffalo seitan "wing."

I find that adding other flours (chickpea is common) makes a final product that's more like tofurky. That has it's place, but I'm a bit of a sicko and want the spongy stuff.

Tempeh:

I never made this from scratch, but if anyone has, I'd love to hear your experiences.

Has anyone out there experimented with this stuff? Going forward I'm definitely going to be pressing more weird tofus. I accidentally got too many red lentils a while back, so that's probably going to be my next tofu.

satay sauce made with peanut butter, red curry paste, tamarin paste, vegan fish sauce, palm sugar and coconut milk

tofu cubed and fried in oil with chili flakes, white pepper, tumeric powder, garlic powder, coriander powder and cumin.

added rice noodles somewhat undercooked and mixed with the tofu and satay sauce until reduced and noodles finished cooking.

garnished with fresh spring onion

It doesn't look great, more like squishy red slop but man does it taste good. I add vegan parmesan and fresh lime juice once it's on the plate. Recipe is from Love and Lemons

I'm like Peter B Parker eating that burger

In metric: 1488.35 grams.

Smith's website is very slow, very buggy, and very badly designed but I use it because Smith's is cheap. And sometimes they screw up. This is their biggest fuckup that I found yet.

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Edit

To be clear - the price is supposed to be ~$9.99.

I've recently adopted a vegetarian diet and have been enjoying vegan cooking. As much as online recipes are useful there's still nothing quite like a physical cookbook. I have a small collection of recipe books but most are very much centered on the use of animal products and so they are of fairly limited use to me now. I've been looking at the Food Not Bombs books as well as some of the America's Test Kitchen books but I'm curious as to what this community can recommend.

Edit: Thank you for all of the responses! I now have a lot to look into and I apologize for not really being able to respond to all of you individually.

This post brought to you by my pinky

By the power of liquid bandage, hopefully I can get by playing power chords normally enough at band practice

I bought some very cheap enameled steel (not cast iron, stamped steel) pots, for cooking pasta and potatoes and such.

Background: After I dropped my decades old stainless steel pasta pot and the plastic handle broke off, I got some cheap IKEA so-called "stainless steel", which is chrome-free, and it rusted (do not recommend). So I'm trying enameled steel since it's cheap and cannot rust (well except the rims which just have some chromed steel crimped on I guess). Only 40 € for four pots in different sizes.

I can boil water on the electric stove at full blast, and that hasn't broken them, but I also have a super powerful mini induction hob, and that's like 10x faster and I'm afraid to try that in case it might shatter or warp.

Theoretically they're great for cooking liquids because they're not reactive, thin, light and good on induction but I'm kind of afraid of breaking them. Enameled steel used to be a thing here in Germany but pretty rare now. It seems to be almost unheard of in the US, but maybe some people on here from around the world have some experience about what sort of abuse these pots should be able to take.

Like....yeah, no shit you would?
Why are white people like this?

All these dishes are vegan however there might have been a still image of meat at some point since there were a bunch of photos briefly shown, but I didn't catch any while watching

Chili Oil Recipe: Ingredients: 8 oz Sunflower Oil 1–1.5 Guajillo Peppers, Dried, stems and seeds removed 2–3 Arbol Peppers, Dried, stems and seeds removed 1–1.5 Chipotle Morita Peppers, Dried, stems and seeds removed ½ Ancho Pepper, Dried, stems and seeds removed 3 Garlic Cloves (Pre-peeled) 2 Green Onion Bottoms 0.5 oz Maple Sugar Salt to taste (Kosher) Prep Method Add dry ingredients (Guajillo, Arbol, Chipotle, Ancho) to the blender and pulse until finely chopped. Transfer to a pan. Add garlic cloves to a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add green onion bottoms to the food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Combine the salt with the chili mixture and stir until thoroughly incorporated. In an appropriately sized saucepan, heat the sunflower oil to 400°F Carefully pour the hot oil over the vegetable and pepper mix. Let it cool. Stir in the maple sugar until fully dissolved. Store, label, date, and initial for proper tracking.

Wild Rice Pilaf Recipe: Ingredients: 4 cups of Wild Rice, Hand Harvested, Dry 1.25 cups Mirepoix (onion, celery, carrot mix) 1/4 cups Dried Berries 1 tbsp Sunflower Oil 8 cups Water or vegetable broth (For hand-harvested rice, use 2 parts water per part rice) Salt to taste Prep Method Rinse wild rice until water runs clear like lake water Heat oil in a large saucepot over medium heat until shimmering. Add mirepoix and cook until softened (2–4 minutes). Add rice and water, bring to a boil, and lower to a simmer. For hand-harvested rice, simmer for 10–15 minutes and check halfway through to ensure there is enough water and it’s not cooking too quickly. With 5–8 minutes left, stir in the dried berries and allow them to simmer until the rice is tender. Season with salt to taste before serving.

Maple Baked Beans Recipe: Ingredients: 4lbs of Tepary Beans Combine Rinsed, Soaked Beans with Ingredients Below and Bake: 1/3 cup of Pure Maple Syrup 2 cups of bean juice (from soaking) 2 tsp salt Once Cooked, Drizzle with Maple Syrup Prep Method: Thoroughly rinse the beans. Add to a container with enough water to submerge and let soak overnight. After soaking, rinse beans thoroughly and place in a 4-inch pan. Add bean juice, maple syrup, and salt. Cover with foil. Bake at 300°F for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, uncover and stir. Add water if necessary. Check beans in 15-minute intervals until the desired texture is reached. Drizzle with the second amount of maple syrup before serving.

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