Peanut Butter-Caramel Apples

Happy Day 1 of Vegan MoFo! I can’t think of a better way to usher in the season than with these decadent but not truculently sweet peanut butter and caramel coated apples. They are autumnal, a cinch to make and the creation of Isa Chandra Moskowitz, whose Post Punk Kitchen gave rise to Vegan MoFo. She has a column, “Nickel and Dined,” in BUST and this is featured in the October/November 2010 issue. To get the full scoop, pick up a copy. But even with the general guidelines I’ll provide here, you should be fine to make them.

All you need is a half-cup each of brown rice syrup and creamy peanut butter (go for the natural, unsalted, unsweetened variety—you’ll get plenty of salt and sugar from the other ingredients), a cup of roasted and salted peanuts, 4 to 6 apples (I used Granny Smith but I recommend my favorite apple, the perfectly rather than overly tart and crisp Pink Lady), and some chopsticks.

Brown rice syrup can be a little pricey but it’s cheaper than maple syrup and, as Isa wrote in her BUST column, it will give you a spot-on caramel consistency without the fuss of making caramel from scratch. I also use brown rice syrup to sweeten oatmeal and tea and it seems to hang around in pantry for longer than many other liquid sweeteners because most jars of brown syrup are more generous in comparison.

Securely stick a chopstick into the bottom of each apple and set them aside. Have a large platter or cutting board covered in parchment paper ready. Whiz the peanuts in a food processor until well-chopped. Be careful not to overprocess—you don’t want to end up with more peanut butter. Just small pieces of peanuts. You can also roughly chop them with a knife but it will take forever and you won’t get the pieces as small as you can with the processor.

In a small saucepan, warm the syrup and peanut butter over low heat until combined and smooth. This shouldn’t take longer than 2 or 3 minutes. Dip an apple in the sauce and smooth out with a mixing spatula or back of a spoon.


Roll the sauce covered apple in the chopped peanuts and press them with your hand to make sure the nuts stick. Place on the parchment covered platter. Repeat for each apple. Refrigerate the apples on the parchment platter for at least 3 hours and then, voila, deliciously decadent caramel apples! Now wasn’t that easy for something so pretty and tasty?

Pictures by Joselle and Brian

Coming Soon: Vegan MoFo 2010

Wherein every vegan blogger goes batty over food. Starting November 1.

What can you expect here for Vegan MoFo?

• A recipe for Dexter Salad (the mystery of the title will be revealed)
• Reviews of many new Philly vegan eateries, including Blackbird Pizzeria (which we are eating tonight!) and Grindcore House and old haunts like the venerable Horizons
• Coverage of vegan author events in Philly
• A roundup on my not-so-crazy, small vegan wedding, including helpful hints on devising a creative vegan menu, working with a nonvegan caterer, finding cruelty-free shoes and celebrating your love without blowing your budget
• Delicious vegan eats and cozy places to stay in Woodstock, NY
• Vegan-friendly chain restaurants
• Much more!

Until then, Happy Halloween. For now, it's back to studying blood and the lymphatic system.

Still Here

It may go without saying but it's been over a year since my last post. Anyone reading this knows me and knows what I've done in that year. In the off-chance that you don't know me or what has occurred during this past year, here's the condensed version:

• I moved to Philly to be with my then-fiance. I had just quit a job that I was very unhappy with and that battered my body (hello, repetitive strain injury. Goodbye being an editor). I felt very lost. This time last year was a time when I felt lost nearly everyday and not infrequently depressed.
  
• I decided to become a nurse-midwife. It wasn't an overnight thing. I've entertained the idea for years but I didn't know enough about the profession to say for sure it was something I could commit. What I wanted from my profession was to not be behind a desk. I wanted to actually make a decent living. I wanted to see my children on more than just weekends and weeknights and have a flexible schedule. Most importantly, for years I felt lost about my career so I read about personality types and jobs. I am an INFJ. According to this type, I need to do work that's meaningful, would allow me to be warm and empathic and move people. I am really great at seeing potential and possibility in other people's lives, in being able to read people and help map out a life for them. Some of this is because I'm admittedly bossy and a sometimes a control freak. But I actually have a knack for seeing what other people don't see about themselves and sharing that information to help them (if they, in fact, want that information). So, I investigated counseling (again. I was a psych major, after all) and nursing. Then I decided being only a therapist wasn't enough. I wanted to counsel but also use my body and have a set of knowledge I could share. Nurses counsel and teach about and oversee health issues. Furthermore, I wanted to be my favorite kind of nurse, a midwife, so I can immerse myself in many of the topics I love--sex, pregnancy, ladies, babies, birth, breastfeeding. So, that's what I'm doing and now I can probably kiss that flexible schedule goodbye.
• I became a doula. I attended my first birth as a doula in August.
  
• I enrolled in community college to take all the science courses I avoided as a psych major--anatomy and physiology, chemistry, microbiology. I was scared I was fooling myself. I thought I didn't have a mind for science.
• But I am kicking ass in science. All A's. It's work but I get it and most of the time, I'm really interested in what I'm learning too. All good signs.
• I planned a wedding.
  
• On Sunday, October 10, 2010, Brian and I got married.
• I applied to nursing schools. I'll find out in a few weeks about the fate of one of the applications and the other one in February.
• In the meantime, I'm taking the second portion of anatomy and physiology and nutrition. Actually, I should be reading for class instead of writing this but it has been a year and I'm feeling inspired.
  

I want to blog again. I still want to write, even if I am going to be a nurse. I think about it and miss it but was having problems accessing this blog due to having a--unbeknownst to me--compromised account, . But I also did nothing about not having access to that blog because I thought I should give up my dream of writing now that I am going to be a nurse. I was sad about that. I've been writing since I was a kid and it has always been the one thing I've felt sure about but I couldn't do it because my hands hurt when I type and my ego hurts as I worry about not being good enough. Instead, I tucked it away and studied science and got married and took care of our dog and read some good books and read a few wedding blogs. I want to blog and podcast. It's something I have to do because I'm always thinking about it. I want to do something about midwifery, becoming a midwife, and sex and babies and veganism. But I am still formulating how to weave that all together in a cohesive enough way to make it a good blog.

In the meantime, I'm back to Mutual Menu. And I'm working on a vegan guide to Philly that will eventually be posted on a most excellent blog that I've recently discovered and has definitely reinspired me, Bonzai Aphrodite. There are so many new delicious vegan places popping up in Philly that I need to eat at and need to leave a record of them here. At the very least, I owe this blog a "How To Have a Vegan Wedding," post.

So, I'm back. If there's anything this year of non-blogging has taught me, it's that the things that are scary are the things I need to do most. And they are actually not as scary as I imagine them to be.

World's Best Onion Rings

Since last posting, I've left my most recent job as the assistant editor of a medical journal, moved into my fiance's home in Philadelphia, started volunteering at Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society (better known as PAWS), and, while there, fell in love with a Parson Russell Terrier (formerly Jack Russell)/Papillon/and maybe Spaniel mix, who Brian and I recently adopted and renamed Benji. In the midst of packing, moving, mulling over an idea for a new blog that may never come to fruition, and having some sort of pre-turning 30 depression, I haven't blogged. But I have eaten. A lot.

Here's something perfect to make and eat on a rainy day while holed up in a house with an adolescent dog suffering from kennel cough.

World's Best Onion Rings
Adapted from Feast by Nigella Lawson

Onion rings always sound like a delicious, decadent option at a restaurant until you actually eat them. Then they are almost always a mushy, underseasoned, greasy disappointment. When I was growing up in Manhattan, there were not nearly as many fast food restaurants as today. Going to Burger King was an exotic, rare trek uptown and I took this opportunity to order onion rings. They were stale and left an unsettling oily film on my mouth. As an adult, my ideals for onion rings--crisp and seasoned breading without and soft-crisp, sweet onion within--have yet to be met.

Therefore, I don't know exactly why I decided to tackle making homemade onion rings for perhaps the second time in my life (the first time must have been a floury failure I've mostly blocked from recall). But I had this bag of Trader Joe's onions sitting around and a hankering for fried. Surprisingly, none of the vegan cookbooks I own have onion ring recipes. I checked out How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman but, with it's call for cold beer, chilled sparkling water, and eggs, it was too fussy. I knew Nigella Lawson's Feast (handsdown my all-time favorite cookbook and one of my favorite pieces of writing ever) had an ultimate onion rings recipe but I wasn't sure how simple it would be to veganize.

Luckily, what follows is pretty much the original recipe, except for my own buttermilk concoction, tweaking the flour mixture to accommodate my pantry offerings, and swapping out the shortening for oil. The key to the perfection of these onion rings is the soured milk mixture and letting the onions marinade in it for several hours. Serve with the usual burgers or over some baby greens dolloped with aioli.

1 large white onion
1 cup plain soy milk
1 tablespoon white vinegar (don't use balsamic or other strongly flavored vinegar)
1 teaspoon arrowroot or cornstarch
canola oil
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 tablespoon Creole seasoning (or 1/2 tablespoon paprika)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
generous pinch or two of sea salt

Chop off the root ends of the onion and peel. Starting from widest part of onion, slice ringed circles about 1/2 inch thick. Put aside smaller or broken rings for another use (I chopped and added them to a pot of black bean soup). You should have anywhere from 12 to 20 of the best looking onion circles.

In a large bowl, mix soy milk, vinegar, and arrowroot. Place onions in mixture and gently stir to coat the pieces. It's okay if not all of the rings are completely submerged but make sure they each get coated and sit in some of the milk mixture. Cover and put in the fridge for anywhere from 2 hours to overnight. Overnight is ideal.

Over medium heat, add about 2 inches of oil to a deep soup pan (don't use a skillet). Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, Creole seasoning, cayenne, and salt in a shallow bowl or plate. Take the marinated rings out of the fridge, shake off excess milk, dip each ring into the flour, and add to the well-heated pan. Only add 5 to 7 rings at a time, being careful not to crowd the pieces. It will take a few batches to complete the process and you may need to add more oil once it starts getting full of flour but be patient. After a few minutes, or until one side is golden brown, flip over each ring with tongs, being careful not to remove the delicate flour batter. Drain them on paper towels and eat as soon as possible. Not that you'll be able to resist doing that anyway.

More Nigella Lawson comes to the States in just a few weeks when she releases the US edition of Nigella Christmas.