Teleidoscope

Sun, Jun 08, 2008

Pancake Experiment

Posted at 1:43 pm MDT to Technology

One advantage of the powdered Egg Replacer is that you can make a half-egg's worth batch of things.

I made a 1/2 batch of my usual sourdough pancake/waffle recipe using egg replacer and almond milk. The texture was ok, but the flavor of the plain pancakes left a lot to be desired. (Fortunately, good maple syrup will cover a multitude of sins.) I think the rest of the batch is going to be donated to the wild birds.

They seemed to cook slowly. I wonder if the dairy and egg proteins affect the rate of browning. Need to review On Food and Cooking on maillot reactions.

The egg replacer seems to work all right as a binder, but it doesn't add any of the richness you get from milk and eggs. Cooking in bacon fat might help -- I've got some in the fridge.

Or schmaltz (rendered chicken fat). Can you buy actual schmaltz? I'd think places with serious kosher departments might have it. But I don't really know whether it has any flavor.

Maybe I should consider roasting a duck.

And I really need to figure out how to add some protein into the pancakes. You'd think, with almonds being nuts, the milk would have non-trivial amounts of protein. But it seems not. I'll need to check the protein in the different brands of non-dairy, non-soy milks next time I'm shopping for them. There were some actual nut 'flours' in the Whole Foods baking aisle, too. It might be worth checking the nutritional content on those.

The batter was too thick for the first pancake I made, but the way it puffed up makes me think it would do OK in the waffle iron, if I can get some flavor into it that isn't totally bland and boring.

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Egg Replacer

Posted at 10:08 am MDT to Technology

Yesterday at farmers' market was depressing: there is almost nothing in the food court that I should eat. Even the oriental dumplings have eggwhites and the tamales have butter.

I had teriyaki chicken with rice from the fusion booth for breakfast after we were set up. (Which had soy sauce, but the brewed soy products have less active phyto-estrogens than something like tofu does.)

I also bought a vegan cookie and brownie to take home (fortunately, Boulder is the kind of place that has a vegan bakery that shows up at the farmers' market) and a loaf of rosemary bread to nibble on for lunch.

But I'm hungry for protein and there are depressingly few prepared veggies that don't include eggs or dairy or both.

It's going to be a good thing my neighborhood grocery store is a Whole Foods. I stopped in the big Whole Foods in Boulder before I came home, bought some stuff and did some scouting.

Unlike Costco, they carry pitas and flour tortillas without anything I'm allergic to. They have a big selection of rice and almond milks, too. I got one of each to try. Vanilla flavored, not plain: I used to eat cheerios with vanilla soymilk and got used to the flavor combination. If one of them works, I will at least have something to have for breakfast -- toast with extra virgin olive oil just tastes wrong at that time of day, and I really want something besides plain carbs and tea.

The problem with both kinds of non-dairy milks is that they are meant for drinking, not as ingredients while my use of milk has for years been more as an ingredient than for drinking.

Their gluten-free aisle had two varieties of egg replacer. The store employee who showed me where they were said she found the one that is called for in most of the vegan baking recipes on-line has a baking soda aftertaste, and the ingredient list for it contains leavening agents which I think would throw off recipes, especially at this altitude. And it is recommended only for baking, probably because of the leavening agent.

The alternative product is from Orgran in Australia. The ingredients are just potato starch, tapioca flour, vegetable gum, methylcellulose, calcium carbonate and citric acid. And the recipes on the box (in several languages including Italian!) include lemon pie filling and batter for pan frying stuff. (Also a 'custard', but that needs milk.) This looked a lot more useful as a general binder, which is what I really wanted it for. I'm going to try making pancakes for brunch, since I need to toss the last couple of waffles from the last batch I made, and I want something to put maple syrup on.

I forgot to look for margarines (I was sort of flinching away from the dairy aisle) or lemons, but I can stop at my neighborhood Whole Foods on my way home from Nanette's this afternoon. I'm bringing her the dairy good from my fridge and freezer, and also the whiskey from my liquor cabinet because of the malt allergy.

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