cimorene

This is one of my mom's standard Thanksgiving recipes and a standby that she often serves at dinner parties. I served it last Sunday night to my friends alongside Pilafian's Pilaf. We also had

bluesbell's hummus on bread, lentil koftas brought by

morningfine, and

pierydys's pecan pie for dessert.

French beans with sesame seeds

Ingredients(serves four):
200 g green beans
salt
For the gomaae sauce:
4 tablespoons white sesame seeds
2 teaspoons sugar
one tablespoon soy sauce
one tablespoon instant dashi (stock) (I just used a vegetable bouillon cube, which is about 1 Tbsp)

1. Trim both ends off the French beans. Cook the French beans in boiling salted water for two minutes, until they are tender. (Trimming was unnecessary because the beans I used came in a can. Fresh ones definitely taste better, if you can get them. Frozen would probably be better too - I just had bad luck at our store.)

2. Drain the cooked beans and soak them in a large bowl of cold water for one minute to preserve the color. Drain well and cut into 1.25 to 1.5 in. long pieces. Chill for five minutes. (I didn't soak them in cold water or cut them any shorter.)

3. Meanwhile make the gomaae sauce. Grind the sesame seeds in a mortar, using a pestle, leaving some of the sesame seeds whole. If you do not have a pestle and mortar, roughly chop the sesame seeds on a chopping board with a knife or in a food processor.

4. Stir in the sugar, then the soy sauce and stock, and mix well with a rubber spatula.

5. To serve, put the chilled beans in a bowl, add the sauce and toss well. Serve immediately.

My mom didn't seem to know the origin, but gomae is a Japanese sesame paste dressing; Google turns up a number of spinach recipes and also some other vegetables and this version seems to be not entirely typical, as the sesame seeds were not toasted and there was no rice wine or vinegar. I have also seen miso paste mentioned in some of the results.

I had also found a recipe for "Vegan Olive Oil Challah" at autostraddle.com, a lesbian lifestyle site that I follow via Tumblr. I wanted to try it because of the vegan, vegetarian, and lactose-intolerant guests I was expecting, but neglected to notice that the dough needed to chill overnight, so it wasn't actually ready until breakfast the next morning. We made do with some older homemade bread and it was fine, but more importantly, this recipe is wrong and hilarious for many reasons.

It doesn't taste like challah. (In fact, it tastes exactly like Italian breadsticks. "Olive Garden breadsticks" was both the first thing that came to mind when I was asked how it tasted and the first thing that came to mind for pierydys as well.)

It doesn't have the texture of challah. Not a big surprise as challah contains a lot of egg, but I did sort of expect it to be similar I guess.

It doesn't belong to the same taste family as challah. To wit, it is savory and slightly salty with a detectable olive oil tint. Challah is sweet.

The recipe included measurements in US cups and in grams, but someone was apparently confused about how big a gram was, according to Wax.

So in the end, this is not challah at all. It is vegan, though, and it's very tasty and extremely crusty, which some people (including me) like, although you need to watch it carefully so it doesn't bake itself dry. It starts to dry out fast. So here is the recipe edited by me according to Wax's comments. (Wax likes bread and I hate kneading things, so she is in charge of bread in our household.)

VEGAN OLIVE OIL ~~CHALLAH~~ CRUSTY BREAD
Ingredients:

1 packet of active dry yeast (Sunnuntai's is 11 grams)
3 3/4 cups bread flour (900 ml)
1 1/4 cups warm water (300 ml)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (120 ml)
1 tablespoon kosher salt (rock or sea salt, slightly coarse preferable)
optional: sesame seeds for sprinkling; egg, milk, water or other glaze)

1. Combine yeast, water, and 3 dl of the flour in a bowl. Allow to sit for 10-20 minutes.

2. Add the oil and salt and whisk until smooth, then gradually add the remaining flour. Knead until smooth and elastic using dough hook or by hand on a floured surface.

3. Put in an oiled container and cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap. Let rise for 2-3 hours or until tripled in size.

4. Divide into either 1 giant loaf, 2 loaf-pan-sized loaves, or 6-8 dinner rolls; lay on baking trays, cover in plastic wrap, and refrigerate 8-24 hours.

6. Remove and allow to rise at room temperature for 2½ hours. Preheat the oven to 425°F/215°C.

7. Glaze with egg, milk, or water if desired before baking. Baking time should be up to 50 minutes for large loaves, up to 30 for medium, but I would check at 15-20 minutes for rolls or medium loaves and remove as soon as they start to brown. The smell can change from delicious bread smell to suspiciously toasty smell extremely fast (the result of this in our case was just slightly overly-dry bread, not burning).