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My main one is vegan food. Before I had access to a kitchen to make my own food, it used to involve collecting, curating and creating recipes, but has since moved onto creating (and endlessly recreating, adapting and morphing) certain flavour and texture profiles.
The current big one I've been very obsessed with making and eating for the last few years, is variations on hoisin mock duck wraps.
The latest iteration is a salad wrap, with leaves of nappa cabbage as the wrap, a layer of vegan garlic mayo with chilli crisp, mock duck, green onion, cucumber, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, hoisin sauce, corriander leaves, and another cabbage leaf to cover/ close the wrap. This probably has the best textures so far and tastes really good!
Making/eating kimchi is a similarly intense interest/obsession. So is hotpot. I fucking love hotpot.
My secondary major interest fluctuates between several different things, but is currently perfume.
I'm very into creating (and endlessly recreating, adapting and morphing) certain scent profiles, and collecting perfumes.
I like to do this through layering different perfumes on my skin and clothes, so I can highlight certain notes/sensory aspects for myself (that may not be apparent on other people's skin chemistry, so this, like with my other interest, is a very subjective fascination!).
Over the span of three days (between showers) I like to start in one place with my layering combinations and go on scent journeys as the notes morph and fade, and I add to them with other complimentary scents and see how far I can go. Notes linger on clothing longer and differently to how they do on skin, so as I'm layering over several days it builds up in fascinating ways. It's very interesting to me too finding which layering combinations work one way but not the other.
Lately I've enjoyed starting with a base combo of Mauboussin Mauboussin (resinous yet juicy plums and lots of ylang ylang) and Musamam White Intense by Lattafa (juicy spiced oranges and too much ambroxan)- and then taking that in interesting directions as it fades over the day, like layering on more spices and wood notes, and then when that fades, onto various ouds and roses.
Or adding a Stronger With You flanker (sweet and aromatic with chestnuts + individual flanker variations), then when that starts to fade leading it with fragrances full of ginger, vanilla, lactonic nutty notes and patchouli.
Being enveloped in layers of beautiful fragrances is such big sensory good times for me and discovering new combinations is so pleasing.
Also before anyone comes at me for this, I live alone and don't wear any fragrance when I go outside, so I'm really not hurting anyone with this hobby!
What do you use for the fake duck meat?
I’ve gotten pretty obsessed with making good seitan, but there’s just so many variables. I’m mostly a texture person, and I find that the place where lots of vegan recipes fail is in the texture department. So that’s where my passion for vegan cooking leads me.
The Linda McCartney Vegetarian Shredded Hoisin Duck have been my go to for a while as they're in most of the big supermarkets here and I can get them delivered to my house.
I like to defrost them and use them 'raw' (they're already fully cooked) because I find the texture gets weird when they're prepared according to the package instructions.
Any Asian superstore will likely have many varieties of better, and probably cheaper, mock duck though. If I lived near one I would be so fat!
I had a seitan phase a few years back, I got really into finding good spice mixes to include in the dough for maximum 'meatiness'.
I made and tried to like the 'lunch meat' style seitan a few times, but memories of being a kid having to eat actual lunch meat (and how slimy and sometimes gritty from gristle it was) really put me off it.
Texture wise with seitan, I liked gently beating the kneaded dough flat with the end of a rolling pin, and then tightly rolling and coiling it up, wrapping it tightly to steam, and then shredding it and adding bite sized bits to hotpot.
What's your current favourite seitan recipe? What texture do you like your seitan?
Dang, there’s a couple of Asian grocery stores near me, but I’ve never thought to look for mock duck. Usually I’m just loading up on gochujang.
For seitan, I am pretty much stuck making loaves of the deli meat style “ham” or “Turkey” although I find they both taste about the same. The recipe I based them on is from 86 meats(or something like that), and it uses extra form tofu as the moisture. I’ve tried with just VWG and water/broth, but I never liked the texture when I do that. I’m really wanting to try using beans/lentils instead of tofu, but I’ve been risk adverse now that I’ve got a recipe I like.
In my pre-vegan life I was pretty into making pizza, so I obsessed over hydration levels, proofing time, baking temp, and all those other minor details of making good bread. I see seitan as bread-adjacent, so I think there’s a lot of overlap in cooking bread and seitan. My plan in the coming year is to start tweaking the hydration level, and switching up the additives to see if I can’t find a method that really resonates.
I also think there’s some room for exploring the cook method. Lots of recipes say “simmer DO NOT BOIL”, so you know they’re looking for a specific temp. I’m wondering if it would be easier to achieve with a Sous vide? But other recipes swear by the steam method. Steam is going to be WAY hotter than simmering, so that’s a huge difference in method right away. I tend to favor the oven bake to get a nicer looking “crust”. But I bake at 350F, which is hotter than steam? But less intense heat transfer. I also ALWAYS temp the loaf before taking it out. 190f internal temp (just like a good loaf of bread). The shape and size of the loaf really can mess with your cook time, so I’ve found it best to just temp it with a “meat” thermometer.
Anyway, shame there’s not a c/seitan community on Lemmy yet. I don’t have enough content to run such a place, but I’d be happy to contribute to the discussion.