Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
We decided to celebrate Bastille Day in decidedly bourgeois fashion this year by hosting a french brunch for dinner party, complete with vegan “french” toast, mimosas made with Italian “champagne”, and no small amount of “intellectual” pretension (although to be fair, no culottes were worn, no dissenters were imprisoned, and no cake was eaten). Much like it’s historical impetus, the party was a (state-)smashing success, and while the Fete Nationale won’t come around again for another year, you can celebrate this brunch any time.
Our main course for the evening was the aforementioned french toast with brandied pear compote and rustic potatoes with soy sausage and peppers on the side. The potatoes were very similar to those featured in an earlier recipe I posted here, so I won’t go into detail again, but I will say that baking them in the oven at 450 degrees for about a half hour before frying them is definitely a good idea. The recipes for the french toast (which appears in the second volume of “I Was A Teenage Vegan Cookbook”) and the compote (which I sort of made up on the fly) are as follows:
Ingredients:
- 2 ripe bananas
- 1 loaf of bread
- 1 cup soymilk
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- Vegetable oil
- 3 ripe pears
- 1/4 cup margarine
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 2 tbsp. brown sugar
- 1 tbsp. cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp. ginger
- 2 tbsp. Grand Marnier
Equipment: Frying pans.
Music: The Books - Music For A French Elevator
Instructions:
- Mash the bananas together with the soymilk and 2 tsp. of cinnamon and pour into a shallow bowl or pie plate.
- Heat 2 or 3 tbsp. of vegetable oil on high until very hot (cooking in oil that isn’t hot enough will result in most of the batter sticking to the pan). Olive oil has too low a smoke point to use for high temperature frying, so try canola or safflower instead. Keep the bottle on hand and add more oil to the frying pan as needed.
- Slice the bread and dip it into the batter, making sure to cover both sides completely. Drop the pieces into the frying pan and cook until the the edges on the bottom look crisp, then flip over and repeat for the other side. Remove finished pieces of toast from the pan and reserve on a baking sheet in the oven (set to 230 or so degrees) until all of the pieces are done.
- In a separate pan, melt the margarine along with the maple syrup and brown sugar. Slice the pears (making sure to remove any stickers and seeds) and add them to the pan. Add the cinnamon and ginger, stir thoroughly, and cook until they soften. Add the Grand Marnier, reduce the heat, and simmer until ready to serve.
The French get sort of a bad rap these days (Freedom Fries, anyone?), and I guess the results of their revolution were ultimately pretty terrifying, but they definitely know how to party, by which I mean smoke cigarettes, wear berets, and suffer existential crises. . . . I think I can see where things may have gone awry. Remember, folks: A dinner party without dancing is a revolution not worth having.
