Chickpea Palette for Your Palate

 Clockwise from 1:00: kala chana, garbanzo beans, ceci neri, desi chana, hara chana, cicerchie

I am particularly interested in the ceci neri right now, and hope I will have links for all of these soon.

Vegan Challah

 

This recipe differs from the recipe for vegan hamburger buns in that is has a higher proportion of vegetable pulp.  It was also made with rapid rise yeast.  This was not intentional, but resulted in a very fluffy crumb.

 Vegan Challah

1 medium-large  cooked potato, about 6 ounces
2 ounces cooked sweet potato

2 ounces cooked winter squash such as butternut or pumpkin

(you should have a total of 10 ounces (1 1/4 cup) cooked mashed vegetables)

2 pounds and 2 ounces all-purpose flour (about 7-8 cups)

1 cup water (use water from cooking the potatoes, plus enough added to make one cup)
1 cup unsweetened soy milk

1 tablespoon, 3/8 ounce (about 1 1/2 packets) yeast (I think I must have used rapid rise yeast, which I recommend.  This dough rose like The Challah That Ate Cincinnati).
 

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup date syrup, malt, or sugar (or honey, if cool)
1 tablespoon salt

optional:

For the holiday season, you may want to add:

2 1/2 ounces (1/2 cup) golden raisins, or Persian green raisins, or any other raisins moistened in a little tea or water (not quite enough liquid to plump them up, just a little, you know?)

Clockwise from 1:00  Black Afghan raisins, Manouka raisins, green Persian Raisins, purple raisins, golden raisins.  Persian greens are the sweetest.  Manoukas are amazingly delicious, but you must deseed them by hand.

Vegan Glaze
(optional)

1/4 cup water
1 Tablespoon agar
poppy seeds

Measure reserved potato water and if necessary, add enough water to make one cup.  If the water has become cool, reheat it.  Combine the water and soy milk in a mixing bowl.  The mixture should be warm.  Sprinkle yeast over the surface and add half the flour.  Mix with the paddle.  Leave the spongy dough in the mixing bowl to rise for 45 minutes.

Mix the dough once more with the paddle.  Remove the paddle and add the potatoes, syrup, oil,  salt, and remaining flour.  Knead with the dough hook for four or five minutes.  This dough can also be kneaded by hand.  The dough will be somewhat softer and stickier than typical bread dough, but worry not.

Turn the dough into an oiled bowl and allow to rise for another 40 minutes.  Punch it down, separate challah, and divide the remaining dough into twelve pieces for three 4-strand challahs or two 6-strand challahs. Allow the dough to rest a few minutes. Roll the dough bits into strands and allow them to rest another few minutes.  You might also let them rest in the middle of rolling if they are showing some resistance.    

Weave the strands into challahs.  

You can make six-strand koyletsh 

or Dem Rebns Khale (pull apart challah)

or challahpakhes

or challahsaurus

or shlisl challah

And of course for the joyous holidays, crown challahs.

Cover and and allow to rise another 45 minutes.

Heat the oven to 350F (Mark 4)

Bring 1/2 cup water to the boil.  Sprinkle the agar over the water and cook until clear.  Brush the tops of the risen buns with glaze, and sprinkle with poppy seeds. Bake the Challahs for about 35 minutes, rotating the pans after about 15 minutes. 

Just get a load of that tender, fluffy crumb.  No one could believe this was vegan.

Date and Tahini Honey Cake Vegan ταχινοπιτα

 

 

The honey in this year's cake is once again date syrup, the lush honey referenced in scriptural sources.  I was thinking of combining tahini and dates in a vegan cake first because dates love tahini, and also because tahini provides richness and structure to an egg-free recipe.  It turns out the tahini honey cake party already started long ago in Greek cuisine, where this cake and a few other intriguing vegan cakes are staples of the Lenten season. I hope I will get a chance to adapt many more of these.  As always, my favorite source for Greek recipes is Laurie Constantino, but this is adapted from Vefa's Kitchen.  I am generally wary of omnibus cookbooks, suspecting that the editors may have pressured the authors into including as many recipes as possible, but I have yet to find a dud in this one.

The cake is lovely.  This should not be a compliment, but no one will guess it is vegan. The moment you take the first bite, you think, oh, it's not sweet, I need to add more sugar or syrup, but then the sweetness sneaks up on you, and you just sink into sweet solace.

Things I substituted:

Instead of orange juice I used a whole orange.  I needed more liquid and added sparkling apple cider.  Probably water, soymilk, or orange juice would all be good.

Instead of raisins I used dates

I used date honey instead of bee honey

 

I reduced the amounts of cinnamon and cloves so the dates and tahini could shine.

Things I kept the same:

I used self rising flour PLUS baking soda AND cream of tartar (isn't baking soda plus cream of tartar just baking powder)? You might recall that in the final chapter of The Long Winter Ma finally has cream of tartar and saleratus to make a cake("“It seems strange to have everything one could want to work with,” said Ma. “Now I have cream of tartar and plenty of saleratus, I shall make a cake.”"). Both of these terms were mysterious to me the first time I read the book.  Of course I knew about baking soda, but had never heard it called saleratus.  I imagined "cream of tartar" must be something like tartar sauce, because it has the word "tartar" and it is, you know, creamy. It seemed unlikely that tartar sauce would be any good in a cake, but who knew baking better than Ma?

I was excited to use my White Lily self-rising flour for the first time.  My teachers in alimentary school held strongly from this flour, but I never felt the need for special cake flours at home until lock-down, when biscuits became my daily bread (and all-purpose flour works for these too).

Tahini and Date Honey Cake

14 ounces (3 1/2 cups) self rising flour (I used white Lily, for other flour add 1 tablespoon baking powder and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and measure by weight)

2 teaspoons teaspoons baking soda 

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon cloves

7 big fat juicy dates (or any dates) 7.6 ounces before pitting, 7 ounces after pitting, 1 1/4 cup chopped 

1 cup tahini

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup date syryp

1 orange

1/4 cup date vodka or slivovitz plus a little more for drizzling, if you like 

apple juice or cider if needed

Heat the oven to 350F, 180C Mark 4. Prepare 2 nine-inch pans, or 24 muffin cups, or 1 nine-inch pan and 12 muffin cups.

Sift together the flour, leavening, and spices.  Chop the dates and toss them with a little of the flour mixture.

Cut the orange into pieces and put the whole thing, peel, pith, and pulp, in the processor with the tahini, sugar,  syrup, and vodka, and blend completely.  Fold the tahini pulp into the flour mixture and when it is about half-mixed add the date bits, saving a few for the top.  If the batter is too dry, add some apple cider.  Scrape into the prepared pans, top with remaining date bits, and bake 25 minutes for the cupcakes and 35 minutes for the cakes.