1.26.2009

Reminiscing the Ultimate Hangover Breakfast

Chicken Fried Steak, in case you were wondering. I was talking to Mari about how wonderful I remember it being, and she said she had never had it before. "Oh man. Best breakfast EVER. Lousy cut of red meat, batter-dipped and deep-fried, gravy, hash browns..." Mari wrinkled her nose and said she didn't think she could eat something so heavy in the morning. I told her that, to be fair, I wasn't eating it before I trundled off to work... I was eating it at the crack of noon after a night of hard drinking. HUGE difference.

Anyway. I don't eat that sort of thing anymore, but I was reading one of Mari's cookbooks and saw a couple recipes for fennel that were recommended to serve with pork, which got me thinking about chickpea cutlets. I've read about them since I started reading about vegan cooking, and have wanted to make them for some time. It's very kind of Isa Chandra Moskowitz to make the recipe public, and is something I will definitely make again.

When I googled "chickpea cutlets recipe," one of the first results was from a blog called "Bigmouth Strikes Again," and it included a serving suggestion for the cutlets with vegan gravy and colcannon. Done, and done. The colcannon came from Lolo (who else?), and the vegan gravy came from good ol' Recipe Zaar.

Also, I would like to pause to mention here that no one should ever buy seitan at the health food store. It's a million dollars there, and frankly not that delicious. Make it yourself. There's pages and pages of recipes for it on the web, all of which allow you to season it however you like and save a little dough in the process.

Anyway, since the recipes are all available for your perusal elsewhere (the only difference is that I used a head of cauliflower in the colcannon in addition to some potatoes), I'll skip any lengthy process descriptions and get straight to the pictures.

Here I am, mashing the chickpeas for the cutlets:


Here's what the seitan for the colcannon looked like after baking and a bit of chopping:


So here I am, running around doing a bunch of things at once... Chopping kale, peeling potatoes, steaming cauliflower, kneading chickpea cutlets, chopping onions, asking Mari to peel and press garlic, stirring gravy constantly, making cutlets, frying cutlets, sauteeing kale and onions, mashing potatoes and cauliflower... You get the idea. I was having a hell of a time getting the cutlets to finish- they're supposed to be firm to the touch and I think the heat on my pan was too high, as the outsides browned immediately and the middles were still soft. I stuck them in the oven, set the timer, and went out to smoke, intending to get the gravy back up to heat when I went back in to serve dinner.

Then the power went out, which would have been utterly miserable, except we had wine.

To take our minds off of our hunger, we played rummy with Mari's "Dr. Who" cards.

It was only a half hour or so before it came back on, which was long enough for me to beat Mari three times in a row at rummy. Once it came back on, I sprang into action. I had stuffed everything in the oven immediately to keep it all somewhat warm, and that had mostly worked, and the cutlets were done. I gave everything a quick re-heat:

And dinner was served!!


Delicious. I brought a serving down to my mum yesterday afternoon and she enjoyed it very much, almost as much as I enjoyed it the second time!!

The chickpea cutlets are definitely staying in my repertoire, they were absolute genius. Thanks for reading!

1 comment:

Seanna said...

Ah, the great chicken fried steak from Pancake Circus cure. How I look back on those days with a fuzzy fondness.

Oh, and a vegan blog named after a Smith's song? Best ever.