The latest from Twitter: @Peace_Coffee plays cupid with “Caffeinate Your Cutie,” @triplerockmpls is serving @surlybrewing Mild at $3.50 a pint, @bittercube celebrates the long-anticipated opening of Eat Street Social, and @Masu_NE will feature a suggestive little Valentine’s Day roll through Tuesday.
Jill Lewis / Heavy Table
If you’re accustomed to indulging in a sinful soft-ripened cheese or you prefer to dip your chips in sour cream, having to follow a dairy-free diet is a tough act. But when the need to follow said diet arises in the summer, it’s downright cruel. In the season of ice cream, milkshakes, and flaky, buttery fruit desserts, people abstaining from dairy need to find other ways to satisfy their sweet teeth. Having just completed a two-month fast from all things milk-based, however, has shown me that it’s not impossible. Local bakers, ice cream makers, and restaurants serve up some mighty tasty treats that, in many cases, will force yourself to admit that this dairy-free existence isn’t as tortuous as you imagined.
So where should you go if you’re itching for a snack that doesn’t contain milk, butter, cream, or cheese? The Heavy Table has done some sleuthing and can point you in the right direction if you’re in the Twin Cities metro area. But by no means is this list exclusive. Feel free to add your favorites in the comments — especially if you’ve found a good substitute for soft-ripened cheese.
Frozen Desserts
Jill Lewis / Heavy Table
There may be no better reminder that summer is here than the sound of the ice cream truck driving around the block. But if you can’t partake in the real stuff, don’t fret. Sorbet is here to save the day. Several local ice cream shops offer at least one variety of sorbet — typically a fruit-based flavor — daily, so you don’t have to look on longingly at your friends while they gobble down cones. Edina Creamery recently offered a raspberry sorbet ($3.25 for one scoop) that was so creamy, it was hard to believe that it lacked actual cream. Izzy’s Ice Cream in St. Paul lists several sorbets on its menu, such as coconut, guava, and passion fruit, while Minneapolis’ Crema Cafe dishes up Sonny’s sorbets in unique flavors like cherry zinfandel. It won’t get you buzzed, but the fruitiness of the wine plays well with the chunks of cherry studded throughout the scoop. And as a bonus, you can pick up pints of Sonny’s at Lunds and Byerly’s (where it sells for $5.39 / pint), Kowalski’s, and local co-ops in case a trip to the cafe isn’t in your plans. Or, if you have an ice cream machine handy, you can whip up your own sorbet — check out our recipe for Vodka Rosemary Peach Lemonade Sorbet, created by yours truly last summer. Continue reading Dairy-Free Summer Indulgences »
Jill Lewis / Heavy Table
How do you get a 2½-year-old to eat beets? Put them in a cake! (And how do you get the same 2½-year-old to eat fish for dinner? Promise him beet cake for dessert.) If you have a picky eater in your house or are suffering from an overabundance of beets from your CSA subscription this summer, baking up a beet cake is an unexpected but tasty way to incorporate the vegetable into your weekly menu. And even if you like beets when they’re prepared in a more traditional way, you have to admit that a cake — studded with chocolate chips, no less — tops even the most mouth-watering salad any day.
The chocolate won’t completely mask the beets’ flavor. Rather, it complements their natural sweetness while putting this concoction firmly in the dessert category, unlike zucchini bread, which you could classify either as a dessert or a breakfast bread. The original recipe, from Colleen Patrick Goudreau’s The Vegan Table, calls for 2 cups of pureed beets. If, like me, you don’t have enough beets on hand to yield 2 full cups, use applesauce to maintain the proportion of wet ingredients — a balance of 1½ cups beets and ½ cup applesauce lends enough moisture to the cake without diluting the beet flavor. Continue reading Chocolate Chip Beet Cake »
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
Here’s what I wish I were doing tonight: Packing up the car and heading for the woods, where a bonfire would burn and great piles of grilled sausages would be passed around, washed down with beer, and perhaps sweated out in a dizzyingly hot sauna. (And, it must be said, waking up tomorrow morning smelling of smoke, with twigs in my hair, a dull ache behind my eyes, and a fervent wish that someone somewhere in my vicinity were scrambling eggs.)
Today is Midsummer or St. John’s Day — Juhannus in Finnish, Jaanipaev in Estonian, Jani in Latvian, Jonines in Lithuanian — and probably the most beloved holiday on the calendar.
Much like the summer Friday afternoon exodus from the Twin Cities, on June 24 the capitals of the Baltics empty out. Everybody has a family house in the country — or a friend’s or a friend of a friend’s — where they can gather around a bonfire, eat and drink themselves silly, and enjoy the silvery midnight of not-quite-white nights. In Estonia, not-so-sober revelers will attempt to jump over the fire for good luck. And in Latvia, girls will weave wreaths of flowers to wear on their heads and great rounds of young oak branches for their beaus.
And, throughout the region, much attention will be paid to what to serve and eat: The leading Estonian newspaper reports that sales of meat and beer have doubled in the week leading up to Jaanipaev, bolstered by a forecast of good weather. And I’m sure the story isn’t much different up and down the Baltic coast.
You’d think, with our considerable Finnish heritage here in Minnesota — and surprisingly large and active Latvian population — I’d be able to find some sort of St. John ‘s Day celebration, at least a bonfire somewhere or a sale on sausages at Kramarczuk’s. Instead, however, I’ll be setting up the firepit in the backyard, letting the kids stay up later than they should, and trying to recreate recipes from Estonia, where I spent several years in my early 20s, with American ingredients.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
On the menu is shashlyk, lamb kebabs marinated with lemon and onion. Pork would be most common in the Baltics, and beef would work, too, of course. But I’m going with lamb, which seems to bound right out of the sweet green spring fields for no other purpose than to be cooked over an open fire.
(On a recent online discussion of Jaanipaev menus, one commenter sniffily pointed out that shashlyk is not to be counted among Estonia’s traditional foods. Well, indeed, the tasty skewers may have made their way to Estonia from Georgia, Armenia, and the Caucasus via Soviet Russia, but I know from experience there will be great heaps of marinated pork and lamb crackling over fires throughout the Estonian countryside tonight.)
Sausages, large roasts, and chops would also be appropriate. But, if it’s Midsummer, there must be fire and there must be meat. Last Midsummer, to fulfill the meat requirement, my Latvian neighbor (everyone should have one of those) brought over sausage rolls — minced bacon and sausage wrapped in thumb-sized packages of a sweetish raised dough. Perfect.
While there are no cucumbers, tomatoes, or radishes yet ready to be harvested from country-house gardens in the Baltics, we do have them here now. So a nice accompaniment to all that grilled meat would be a traditional cucumber salad: Slice them paper thin, sprinkle with salt, and allow to drain in a colander for half an hour or so; pat dry and toss with a dressing of vinegar and sugar. Or cut tomatoes and radishes into wedges and drizzle with sour cream. Continue reading A St. John’s Day Feast »
Maja Ingeman / Heavy Table
If you observe the Christian faith, you probably know that today is Fat Tuesday, also known as the day before Ash Wednesday, which kicks off the Lenten season of repentance and reflection. Fat Tuesday, however, is a day of indulgence — a day in which the devout must pack on the pounds (hence all the butter and cream) before the Lenten fast begins. Traditionally, Swedes deviated from their fast on Tuesdays to eat tasty buns called semlor (one semla, two semlor) — so much that now, Sweden.se claims, “Fat Tuesday would be more aptly named fat January, February, and March.”
The wheat bun (which dates back to the 16th century, when the holiday was also called “Vita Tisdag” because only white things were to be eaten on that day) is flavored with freshly ground cardamom — buy some whole pods of white cardamom (we bought ours at Penzeys Spices), remove the husks, and grind the seeds in a clean coffee grinder. After baking, the bun’s top is sliced off, the insides are scooped out like a jack-o-lantern, and the bread crumbs are mixed with almond paste and milk. This concoction is then spread inside each bun and topped with whipped cream.
When we did our shopping, we taste tested the marzipan and almond paste available at Cub Foods. Upon comparing ingredients, we saw that the marzipan contained corn syrup in addition to the sugar included in both products. The marzipan’s resulting sweetness and overly solid texture were comparable to the saccharine-sweet personality of the HomestarRunner.com character of the same name, whereas the almond paste featured a fuller, nuttier flavor. Ideally, freshly ground almonds would provide the tastiest and healthiest option, though store-bought almond paste (or, if you like it, marzipan) constitutes an acceptable alternative in a pinch. After all, Fat Tuesday comes but once a year — you’ve got to get your fix!
So, without further ado — semlor!
Om du kan förstå svenska, titta på det här recept.
Semlor
Makes 16-24 buns
Original recipe from allrecipes.com
2 eggs
⅔ c butter, melted
1½ c warm milk
2¼ tsp (1 packet) active dry yeast
6 c all-purpose flour
½ c sugar
½ tsp salt
1 tsp ground white cardamom
4 tsp baking powder
½ c milk (plus more as needed)
5 oz almond paste (or freshly ground, sweetened almonds)
2 c whipping cream
2 tbsp sugar
powdered sugar
- Whisk together eggs with butter and milk. Sprinkle yeast over the top and allow to soften for 5 minutes.
- Sift together 5 cups of the flour with ½ cup sugar, salt, and ground cardamom.
- Combine the flour and milk mixtures until a soft dough forms. Cover the bowl with a towel, and allow to rise in a warm spot for 30 minutes.
- Sift together flour and baking powder. Stir into the dough and knead until smooth.
- Shape the dough into 16 balls (or 24 if you’d like smaller semlor) and place onto greased baking sheets. Cover with a towel, and allow to rise until doubled in bulk, 35 to 40 minutes.
- Bake in a 375°F preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown and the center has firmed. Cool buns on a wire rack to room temperature.
- Once cool, cut a slice about ½ inch thick off of the top of the bun and set aside. Scoop or cut out the center of the buns, leaving a shell about ½ inch thick. Tear the removed bread into small pieces and place into a bowl. Moisten the bread with milk, then mix in the almond paste until smooth. Add additional milk if needed until the almond filling is nearly as soft as pudding.
- Whip the cream with 2 tablespoons sugar to stiff peaks. Fill each shell with a spoonful of almond filling. Spoon whipped cream on top of the filling to ½ inch over the top of the bun. Replace the tops onto the buns, and dust with confectioner’s sugar before serving.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
This weekend, that near-universally dreaded holiday rolls around yet again. Derided as cheesy, cliché, and / or a mass-marketed corporate scam, Valentine’s Day gets a bad rap for its Hallmark Holiday status. Can everyone afford to shower their significant other in rose petals and take him or her to the fanciest three-plus-course meal in town? Probably not. Can you ditch the formula so prominently ingrained in pop culture for something more personal, heartfelt, and affordable than a box of Russell Stover chocolates? Most definitely.
Sometimes, time and effort count more than anything — and not in the sense of making your lover a papier maché penguin. And hey — if you’re single, think of the holiday the way they do in Mexico: El día del amor y la amistad (day of love and friendship).
What follows are six ideas, both savory and sweet, for deliciously sensual edible offerings that you probably don’t have time to make on a daily basis.
Maja Ingeman / Heavy Table
1. Caramel / Cinnamon Rolls
The tantalizing scent of Cinnabon stops many a traveler or mall-walker in his or her tracks. Those cinnamon rolls smell so good… yet, upon boarding the plane or resting your legs, the taste never seems to compare to the expectation set by that smell of hot melted butter and cinnamon sugar. Enter fresh, scratch-made caramel or cinnamon rolls: lighter in texture, free of preservatives, and dripping with thick, gooey caramel and pecans. If you prepare the bread dough the night before and wake up bright and early, you can roll out and bake plenty of cinnamon-raisin-swirled buns in time for a morning treat.
2. Croissants
In our diet-obsessed world, croissants scream indulgence: They’re flaky, loaded with saturated fat-laden butter, and most of all, they’re delicious. The process of making croissants, though it appears daunting, can be quite relaxing if you approach it with the right state of mind. Just know that you’ll have to attend to your dough about as frequently as one might tend to a cell phone at the start of a new and promising relationship with a needy partner. The result will be well-worth it: a flaky pastry which melts on the tongue and looks like it’s fresh from the bakery.
3. Brioche French Toast with Strawberries and Powdered Sugar
This one’s easy if you don’t mind a bit of baking. This simple James Beard recipe is a quick and easy version of the traditional egg-and-butter-based bread, and can be made a day or two in advance. The richness of the bread is a luxurious step up from standard wheat bread, and a simple French toast batter of an egg, a splash of milk, and a dash each of cinnamon, salt, and sugar can be whipped up in a minute flat. Fry in a pan and top with sliced strawberries (if you’re pretty enamored with the V-Day theme, cut deep when you remove the stem and then slice to reveal heart-shaped slices) and a light dusting of powdered sugar. Served in bed, this breakfast doesn’t require excessive prep time but provides a tasty result.
Courtesy of Sabrina Orlins
4. Sushi
Coastal Seafoods, which offers about the freshest fish available in the Twin Cities, has a great selection of sashimi offerings. The variety of flavors you can combine is sure to please your palate, while the differing textures of short-grain sushi rice, crispy nori, velvety fish, crunchy vegetables, and burst of fiery wasabi make for an ever-changing and engaging mouthfeel. Involve your significant other or friends in the sushi-making process, as it’s sure to be an engaging experience.
5. Homemade Pasta or Gnocchi
There’s something about the texture of fresh pasta or gnocchi that beats the dried version, hands down, every time. The fresh version, as increasingly popularized at such hotspots as Bar La Grassa and Broders’, yields more to the bite than the chewier, dried version. Meanwhile, the inevitable time commitment and potential frustration incurred will not only impress your dinner guest, but give you a feeling of accomplishment. Another plus? It seems that each person is incredibly particular about the way their gnocchi is served: Some people prefer it pan-fried and slightly crispy, while others prefer it drowned in cheese. By making it at home, you can make it just how you like it — and save yourself the disappointment of an “imperfect” order at a restaurant.
6. Grilled Venison Steak with Juniper Berry Cream
This one’s reserved for the daring. If venison is available (either from a hunt this fall, or from a grocery store), this hearty dish will sate your hunger, while perfect execution of the gin flambé will impress the pyromaniac in your life. Be careful, as this trick also carries greater risk of failure if you’re not confident wielding a flaming skillet… and, let’s face it, burning the house down and being sprayed with a high-power fire hose will definitely put a damper on your otherwise romantic evening.
Grilled Venison Steak with Juniper Berry Cream
Serves four
Adapted from the original recipe from The Gunflint Lodge Cookbook by Ron Berg and Sue Kerfoot
¼ oz juniper berries
2 tbsp gin
1 tbsp shallots, finely chopped
½ c homemade chicken or beef stock, lightly thickened with cornstarch
1 c heavy cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 ½ tsp butter (optional)
4 (6 oz) venison steaks
Melted butter
Seasoned salt
- Crush juniper berries.Place in bottom of medium skillet over medium-high heat.
- Add gin and shallots; flambé.
- Add stock and cream; reduce until thickened.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Whisk in optional butter. Keep warm.
- Brush venison steaks with melted butter and sprinkle with seasoned salt.
- Grill or bake to desired doneness.
- Place on warmed plate and top with sauce.
- Serve immediately.
If you’re willing to trade some time and effort for the potentially huge bill you’d incur for a restaurant-cooked meal (or you just didn’t make a reservation in time), try your hand at an infinitely more personal meal. Hey — if it doesn’t work out, there’s always take-out!
by Soleil Ho on February 4, 2010
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
The best football party food fits the following criteria: It must be easy to eat mindlessly, it must be dippable, and it must go with cheap beer.
For millions of American households, that means that their parties stand upon the two salty pillars of animal grease and cheese, their coffee tables piled high with buffalo wings, barbecue, pizza, burgers, and pork pork pork. For many vegans, vegetarians, and people with lactose intolerance or other allergies, that means having to get real comfortable with the chips and salsa for three hours.
Accommodating a vegan diet may be intimidating or even befuddling to many people. It not only excludes the obvious meat, dairy, and egg products, but also trickier ingredients like honey and gelatin. Vegans and those with allergies typically have to be on high alert when they encounter food that they haven’t made themselves. Mo Peterson, an employee at the Linden Hills Co-op and a former vegan, says she had to develop coping mechanisms for family gatherings and parties. “Usually, I’d just eat beforehand and bring a snack. I would never assume that there’d be food that I could eat there.”
Can football maniacs and vegans ever reconcile? Emily Iwuc, a veteran vegan Super Bowl party host, thinks that they can, despite the fact that football is basically a bunch of burly men throwing around a dead cow for sport. She says, “To me, the Super Bowl is about eating a lot of food that is pretty bad but delicious. And you can make a lot of pretty bad vegan analogues!” To wit, many vegans want to eat junk food just as much as omnivores do, so why not let everyone join in the fun? Cutting down on the grease might even save you the cost of the morning-after antacids, which seem to be as much a part of the ritual as the food itself.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
According to Iwuc, the greatest challenge in holding an exclusively vegan party is figuring out what foods translate well enough to satisfy the meat eaters. “When I’m figuring out what to make, I’m thinking, ‘How do I prevent people from getting fed up and just ordering KFC or pizza?’ The key is filling that junk food niche and not leaving people disappointed, hoping for the real thing.” Consequently, many vegans’ suggestions for snacks are simply riffs on the classics, such as chili dogs and pizza.
Meagan Holtgrewe, of the blog Rhymes with Vegan, says her repertoire of football party food includes: smoked “sausage”-style jambalaya, a tostada bar, spicy mock duck lettuce wraps, and barbecue pulled “pork” sandwiches with creamy potato salad. Iwuc plans to offer pierogi, buffalo seitan nuggets, and sweet potato fries at her party this weekend.
All you need to pull off a really great vegan-friendly party is a little nutritional yeast and an eye on ingredient lists. You might even discover some weird surprises, such as the fact that Oreos don’t contain milk or eggs. (Maybe that’s not totally surprising.) Certain substitutions are easier than others: Dallas Rising of the Twin Cities-based Animal Rights Coalition endorses Tings, an unexpectedly delicious vegan take on Cheetos.
If you’re concerned with the dangers of genetically modified food or soy protein isolate, stay away from soy meat and cheese. If you must go there, be aware that many vegans can only recommend vegan cheeses with reservations. Peterson calls vegan cheese “an illusion of cheese,” while Iwuc says, “Unless you’re used to [it], it’s just gross.” Nutritional yeast, however, makes for a great cheese-like condiment and could go on pretty much anything.
Instead of the traditional potato skin toppings of bacon and cheddar cheese, use slivers of sun-dried tomatoes, caramelized onions, and nutritional yeast. Serve them with a side of dill and horseradish Tofutti sour cream (which, by God, actually tastes like its dairy-based counterpart). If you want to get all fancy and Miami-themed, make black bean and plantain fritters with a side of mango-habanero salsa for dipping. Though, yes, Oreos are technically vegan, do your friends one better and get some ginger or chocolate Newman-Os. And of course, you shouldn’t neglect to crack out the chips and salsa.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
Black Bean and Plantain Fritters
Serves 6 as an hors d’oeuvre
4 ripe plantains, unpeeled with ends chopped off
1½ c all-purpose flour (more as needed)
salt to taste
1 15-oz can of black beans, rinsed
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp chili powder
1 dash cayenne pepper
¼ of a medium red onion, minced finely
½ c panko bread crumbs, or enough to coat fritters
canola oil
- Boil the plantains until the flesh becomes soft enough to mash. Let cool.
- Peel plantains and combine with flour and salt to make a soft dough. Dough should still be a little sticky.
- Combine beans, lime juice, spices, and onion in a bowl and season to taste.
- Grab a golf ball-sized chunk of dough and flatten in the palm of one hand. Spoon a little of the bean mixture onto the center of the dough (not too much) and mold into an oval-shaped fritter. Continue with the rest of the dough until you run out.
- Coat the fritters with bread crumbs and set aside.
- Fill a frying pan with enough oil to cover the bottom, and bring it to a nice frying temperature. Fry fritters until golden brown and serve immediately.
Mango-Habanero Salsa
Serves 6, can be doubled, tripled, etc. very easily
3 ripe mangoes, skinned and pitted
lime juice to taste
salt to taste
1 tbsp cilantro, chopped
1 habanero pepper, minced
- Combine all ingredients in a food processor. Process and add water until salsa reaches desired consistency.
Recent Comments