We hadn’t eaten black-eyed peas for a while, so the peas and rice did taste extra delicious. Anni commented how the taste of the black-eyed peas combine the sweetness of chickpeas and the flouryness of regular beans. I think that’s an apt description!

Here’s what I used:

• 2,5 dl dried black-eyed peas
• a piece of kombu
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• about 2 teaspoons of cumin
• about 1,5 teaspoons of coriander
• 2 chipotles in adobo sauce, finely chopped
• 2 dl tomato sauce, passata style
• 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

About two hours before I started to cook, I quick soaked the peas: I rinsed them, put them in a bowl filled with boiling water, and covered the bowl. (Obviously, they could’ve been soaked overnight too, but since I forgot to do it, I had to quick soak them.) Then, two hours later, I began with boiling the black-eyed peas. I threw soaking water away, put the peas in a kettle over low heat, added the kombu and plenty of boiling water.

While the peas were simmering, I prepared the sauce. First, I put a frying pan over medium high heat, added the onion, and fried it until quite brownish. I kept stirring the onion a lot so that it wouldn’t burn. Then I added the garlic, cumin, coriander and the chipotle, and fried them about half a minute, stirring continuously. I poured the tomato sauce in the pan, stirred, lowered the heat, and waited until the black-eyed peas were done. I drained the peas, removed the kombu, and added the peas into the frying pan. I mixed the sauce and the beans, added the salt, and checked the taste.

The process of making pizza is considerably easier with store bought pizza crusts and tomato sauce, but I highly recommend making your own – it is more than worth it. I have never had a store bought crust that wasn’t dry and too thick, and I like my tomato sauce filled with flavor – just a thin layer of the home-made sauce will be enough to season the whole pizza. However, for almost instant gratification, our potato pizza had no tomatoes whatsoever, and was just as delicious.

Double-Rised Spelty Pizza Crust (for 4):

This is the end of my spelt madness for a while, since I used the last of my spelt flour in this pizza crust. But it was the best pizza crust I’ve ever made – thin and crispy, just like I like it, and as a bonus it was very easy to roll out. Double-rising process requires some planning ahead, but improves the texture of the crust.

• 2 and ½ dl water, in 42 degrees Celsius
• 3 and ½ dl spelt flour
• 3 and ½ dl wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon dark syrup
• 1 sachet (11 g) dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt

First, I placed the water, that was a little warmer than my hand, in a mixing bowl. Now, I mixed in the syrup and salt, and stirred until combined. Then I mixed all the other ingredients in a separate bowl, and then poured about half of them in the liquid bowl. I stirred vigorously with a wooden fork until the dough seemed glutinous, and then poured in the rest of the flour. Now, I kneaded the dough until it formed a firm and springy ball, which took about 4 minutes.

I filled our kitchen sink halfway full with hot water, covered the dough bowl tightly with plastic wrap and a cutting board, and placed the bowl in the water. I let the dough rise for about an hour and a half while we were doing some grocery shopping. When we came back, it had almost tripled in size. I took the dough out of the bowl and flattened it on a floured surface, kneading it lightly to get the air out, and repeated the rising process; placed the dough in the bowl, covered, filled sink with warm water, and placed the bowl in sink.

Now, I started making the tomato sauce and preparing the fillings. When that was done, after about 45 minutes, I took the dough out of the bowl, cut it in four pieces, formed a ball of each piece, and rolled them with a rolling pin on a well-floured working surface. This batch makes four round pizzas that each fit on a regular baking sheet.

Tomato Sauce:

• 500 g tomato sauce (the passata style, or crushed tomatoes)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, finely cubed
• 5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1 and ½ tablespoons dried basil
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
• freshly ground black pepper to taste

First, I fried the onions in the olive oil for about 4 minutes, until they started to brown a little. Then, I added the sliced garlic, and fried it for another 2 minutes. I added the basil, and sautéed it for about 30 seconds, and then added the rest of the ingredients. Now, I let the sauce simmer until we were ready to fill our pizzas, for about 45 minutes. Had I started earlier, I could have let it simmer up to 2 hours for maximum taste.

Before filling the pizzas, I like to purée the sauce with our immersion blender, and let it cool down a bit. This batch makes enough for about four pizzas, and since we only topped two with tomato sauce, we’ll probably use the leftovers as a pasta sauce.

Our Fillings:

• fresh spinach, rinsed and coarsely chopped
• red bell pepper, sliced
• sun dried tomatoes in oil, rinsed and sliced
• red onion, thinly sliced
• green beans (haricots verts)
• sliced button mushrooms (for Heikki)
• grated vegan cheese that melts (we had Cheezly brand)
• freshly ground black pepper

The tomato sauce is filled with flavor, so we just spread a thin layer of it over two pizza crusts. If there’s too much sauce, it can easily overwhelm all the other flavors. Then we filled our pizzas with all the yummy fillings, and topped them with grated vegan cheese and freshly ground black pepper. We baked our pizzas on the upper rack of our oven, in 225 degrees Celsius, for about 7 minutes.

A Note on Vegan Cheese: The only commercial vegan cheese we’ve tried that really melts is the Cheezly brand, but there might be others. We’ve tried their mozzarella, edam, and cheddar, and they all have the kind of artificial flavor that vegan cheeses generally do – I think they are best for cooking and baking, as opposed to sandwich fillings and such. Heikki prefers his pizza with drizzles of olive oil instead of vegan cheese, but I kind of like its salty soft meltiness.

Unbaked pizzas – these little photos can be clicked to make them larger.

Potato Pizza:

When we are making pizza, Heikki always insists on at least one potato pizza, the concept of which an old flatmate introduced to me. The spelt crust recipe makes 4 round pizzas, so we baked two tomato pizzas and two potato pizzas, which left us with next day’s lunch as well. This potato pizza really is amazingly good in all its simplicity.

• 5 potatoes, scrubbed and thinly sliced
• 3/4 dl olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, pressed
• 1 tablespoon dried dill
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• thinly sliced red onions

First, I mixed the olive oil, dried dill, garlic, and salt in a cup. Now, I placed the sliced potatoes in a mixing bowl, and poured in half of the olive oil mixture, stirring to coat each slice. When the pizza crusts were ready, I brushed the rest of the olive oil over the crusts, and then arranged the potatoes evenly so that they covered the pizza crusts. Then we ground some black pepper over the potatoes, and sprinkled the pizzas with sliced red onions. The potato pizzas were also baked in 225 degrees Celsius, in the upper section of our electric oven, for 7-8 minutes.

It’s pretty hard to find smoked chipotle chilis in Helsinki, in fact I’ve never seen them, so I just used a cheap Pirkka-brand sauce called “Meksikolainen kastike (The Mexican Sauce) – salsa chilpotle”. It is actually imported from Mexico, and is pretty chipotley, but I guess real chipotle chilis would make the chili even better – and add a lot of heat!

On Sunday, I baked a seitan log, crumbled it in an electric shredder, and stored the crumbles in the fridge for future use. Now, I could just measure out 2 dl of crumbled seitan to make this chili. In case there’s no seitan log in sight, textured soy protein bits would be a good substitute.

Chipotle Seitan and Bean Chili:

• 500 g tomato sauce (or crushed tomatoes)
• 2 dl crumbled seitan log
• 380 g package cooked mixed beans, rinsed well
• 2 red onions, finely cubed
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2-3 tablespoons salsa chipotle
• 1 tablespoon wheat flour

First, I fried the onion and the garlic on medium heat until they had softened, for about 10 minutes. Then I added the rest of the ingredients except wheat flour to the pan, and stirred until the sauce started bubbling. I covered the pan and let it simmer for about half an hour.

Now, I tasted the sauce and adjusted the saltiness, and then sprinkled the wheat flour over the pan. Flour thickens the sauce, which makes filling the tortillas easier. I stirred the chili with a wooden fork until all of the flour was incorporated, and kept on stirring until it started to bubble again. Now, I set the temperature on low heat, covered the pan, and let it a brew up for an hour or so, until it was dinner time. I garnished the chili with frozen parsley, but chopped cilantro would have been even better.

Cumin Yogurt Sauce:

• 2 dl plain unsweetened soy yogurt
• 1 green bell pepper, finely cubed
• 1 big clove garlic, pressed or finely grated
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin (jeera)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon lime juice
• freshly ground black pepper
• finely sliced red onion for garnishing purposes

First I took aside a teaspoonful of green bell pepper cubes for garnish. Then I mixed everything up, and garnished with the onion slices and bell pepper cubes. Now, I refrigerated the yogurt sauce for 30 minutes or so.

Then we filled our soft corn tortillas with a pile of seitan stew, yogurt sauce, and cubed cucumbers. This recipe makes enough to fill 8 tortillas.

The recipe was adapted from Tofu Balls in the Post Punk Kitchen forum.

Here’s what we used for the balls:

• 500 g regular firm tofu

• ½ dl ground fried onion (or one fried onion)

• 2 cloves gralic, pressed

• 3 tablespoons soy sauce

• ¾ dl roasted peanuts, finely ground

• 1 dl potato flakes (powder for mashed potatoes)

• dried basil, freshly ground black pepper, and smoke salt to taste

Basically, I just mixed all the ingredients. I mashed tofu with my hands until it was as crumbled as it gets, I love squeezing tofu through my fingers. Then I just mixed everything together until the dough was smooth, let it cool down in the fridge for a few minutes, and formed it into little balls. This amount made about 16 small tofu balls, I think the balls were about 3-4 cm in diameter. They should not be too big, to make sure that they keep together well. Then we just rolled them in wheat flour and fried in hot canola oil until a little brown all over.

Here’s what the balls looked like before frying:

We served them with spaghetti and easy tomato sauce, which was basically just garlic and basil cooked for 15 minutes or so in a can of tomatoes, some salt, olive oil, teaspoon of sugar, and black pepper, and then mixed with a hand held mixer. The texture of these tofu balls was very smooth, and the taste is subtle but pleasing. If they don’t seem to keep together, a tablespoon or so of wheat flour could be added in the dough before frying, but with the potato flakes I don’t think this will be necessary.