Further Cooking Adventures

So yesterday I took two cooking classes.

In the morning, I attended a salads class at The French Kitchen. I suck at making salads, so I needed it. There were six students present, and we made 16 or 17 different salads between us. We had a wonderful buffet lunch together, during which we ate most of them, but we were able to take home four salads and a tub of French vinaigrette. After the class, I bought a couple of loaves of The French Kitchen's wonderful baguettes, four small jars of jam, and some European butter. We had those with the salads and some other bits and pieces for dinner last night.

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a vegan cooking class (this one was a demonstation and tasting, not a hands-on class) at our local Natural Grocers. We learned how to make buckwheat galettes. These were Breton galettes, a type of pancake, not the free-form pastries that have the dough edges folded up around the sides to encase a filling. Our instructor, who is from Breton, France, brought along a traditional heavy 13" galette pan, but, as it didn't work particularly well with the induction cooktop she used, she made most of her galettes in an ordinary frying pan. One can also use a "crepe maker" griddle. Galettes are made from buckwheat (or sarrasin), a gluten-free pseudograin that is rich in protein, zinc, copper, and manganese. Buckwheat is considered a "pseudograin" or one of the ancient grains because, like quinoa, chia, and amaranth, its seeds come from broad-leaf plants, not grasses, from which come "cereal grains", such as wheat, rice, corn, and millet. We also learned to make a vegan béchamel sauce, with cashews as the primary ingredient, and a vegetable filling of mushrooms and spinach. I thought the end result was absolutely delicious! This dish will be my new comfort food.

Buckwheat Galettes with Spinach and Mushroom in a Cashew Béchamel Sauce

3 cups buckwheat flour
4 cups water
Salt and pepper to taste
Sunflower oil (for cooking, apparently sunflower oil provides the best taste)

Mix ingredients; stir until smooth, allow to rest for at least 30 minutes in fridge; when ready to cook, remove from fridge and stir in about a cup of water (the batter should have the consistency of heavy cream); fry as for crepes.

Cashew Béchamel Sauce

2 cups of cashews, soaked in water
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups vegetable broth (or 1.5 cups broth and 1/2 cup of white wine)
3 Tbsp nutritional yeast
1 Tbsp onion granules
pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
pinch of white pepper
1 tsp sea salt

Saute the onions in water/broth until softened but not caramelized; add garlic and stir for a minute or two; add all ingredients to blender and blend until very smooth.

Vegetable filling

16 oz. mushrooms of choice (the instructor used cremini mushrooms, which were very tasty)
10-16 oz. baby spinach
A little vegetable broth

Cook mushrooms on medium to high heat in a little vegetable broth for 5-8 minutes; add spinach and cook for 3 minutes; add cashew béchamel sauce and cook for 2 minutes. One can experiment with other vegetable fillings. Our instructor recommended asparagus.

Add filling to galettes and fold.