Tales of a Vegan Food Fetishist

Dal Saag

2012-01-03T22:41:00.001+11:00

We went out for Indian recently and I had dal saag for the first time. It's been sitting in my consciousness and teasing my tastebuds since then, and I just had to make some for dinner tonight.

I was incredibly pleased with the way that this turned out - it takes about an hour and a half, but is absolutely worth it.

Serves 4 to 6

1 1/2 cups dried yellow split peas
3 cups warm water
3 bay leaves
1 teaspoon turmeric
5 cups water
250g (1 packet) chopped frozen spinach
1 teaspoon Nuttelex
1/3 cup water
3 tablespoons grapeseed or other neutral flavoured oil
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 large green chilli, roughly chopped
2 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped
heaping 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
heaping 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 heaping teaspoons sea salt
1 tablespoon tamarind paste
heaping 1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 tablespoon Nuttelex
1/2 cup chopped fresh coriander (about one bunch)

Put the dried yellow split peas into a large bowl and cover with the 3 cups warm water. Stir and soak for at least 30 minutes, until the split peas have doubled in size.

Drain and place the split peas in a large saucepan. Add the turmeric and bay leaves and cover with the 5 cups water. Put over a high heat and bring to a boil. Continue at a fast simmer until the water is almost completely cooked away, and the split peas are mostly soft and beginning to break down - about 40 minutes. Remove the bay leaves.

Whilst the split peas are cooking, place the spinach, 1 teaspoon Nuttelex and 1/3 cup water into a medium saucepan, cover and place over a medium heat until the spinach is completely defrosted and soft. Take off the heat and set to one side.

Place the onion, ginger, garlic, chilli and tomatoes into a food processor and blend into a smooth paste.

When the split peas are almost cooked and the bay leaves removed, add the defrosted spinach, stir well, turn to a low simmer and stir regularly. In a frying pan, heat the grapeseed oil and add the onion/ginger/garlic/chilli/tomato paste and fry for at least 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the cumin, coriander, cardamom and sea salt to the frying onion/ginger/garlic/chilli/tomato mixture and stir constantly as the mixture becomes dry, for about another 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and pour the onion and spice mixture into the split pea and spinach mixture. Add the tamarind paste and stir together well.

Add the garam masala and 1 tablespoon Nuttelex and stir through until the Nuttelex is melted. Add the chopped coriander and either serve immediately, or if waiting for rice or other curries to cook, cover and take off the heat before serving.

New Year's Eve Home Made Cheez Platter!

2011-12-30T16:19:00.001+11:00

I decided to leap with both feet into vegan cheez making after a successful experiment with cashew baked ricotta style cheez. The perfect opportunity arose to make a cheez platter for a NYE party.

Macadamia Goat's Style Cheez

I had a whole lot of macadamias kicking about the fridge and decided to find a way of using their neutral, fatty, rich flavour in a cheez. I trawled the intartubes and found an adaptation of a Vegetarian Times recipe for cashew goat's cheese, and decided to adapt that even further, using macadamias and adding some miso and umesu vinegar for extra zing.

I'm putting up the recipe as I made it - I was happy with the flavours of the cheez, and I enjoyed the slightly fibrous nature of the cheez based upon the texture of macadamia nuts, but I found it far too soft and will likely make changes. I'll note the changes I'm likely to make and when you try the recipe (and I do encourage you to try it!!) you have the option of following them.

Cheez

1 1/3 cups macadamia pieces
2/3 cup water (Note: I used up to a cup because I couldn't get the macadamias smooth, but next time I would try to reduce it to around 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 teaspoons miso
4 teaspoons umesu vinegar
1 teaspoon Herbamare salt or sea salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
2 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Coating (optional)

2 tablespoons fresh lemon thyme, minced
1 teaspoon ground pepper
olive oil

Blend the macadamia pieces and water together until smooth, for about 4 to 5 minutes. Add the rest of the cheez ingredients and blend for another 2 minutes.

Scrape the cheez mixture onto a cheesecloth or Chux wipe (not the blue ones!) and wrap and seal, and place the ball of cheez in the cheesecloth over a container, and leave to drain for at least eight hours at room temperature. (Note, next time I would take the lead from the tofurky recipe and line a colandar with the cheesecloth/Chux wipe, scrape in the cheez mixture, cover, place the colander in a bowl and gently press for the same time at room temperature).

After the cheez mixture has drained and you're ready to go, heat the oven to 100 degrees Celsius. Line a cookie tray with baking paper. Scrape the cheez onto baking paper and form into a log, about 5cm wide, 3cm deep and 25 to 30cm long.

Bake for 35 to 60 minutes, until the log is slightly coloured and firm on the outside but soft to the touch. (Note: I found that the log was still incredibly soft after cooking it).

Let the log cool completely. It can be served when cold as is, or if it is still too soft or you want a pretty presentation, you can coat it in the lemon thyme and pepper mixture. Roll out a piece of cling wrap onto a clean service. Brush with the olive oil and sprinkle with the fresh lemon thyme and ground pepper. Carefully place or scrape the cheez onto the centre of the lemon thyme and pepper mixture, and then carefully roll the cling wrap around the cheez to coat with the mixture. Chill completely before turning out and consuming!

Block Cheezes

I decided to experiment with block cheezes set with agar agar, and turned again to the intartubes for inspiration and assistance.

I followed this recipe (mostly) by Ann Gentry and this advice from Vegangela to make a half batch and flavour the cheezes.

This recipe was really easy, fun to make and tasty! The main change I made to the recipe was to add a tablespoon of sesame oil to the mix. When I make it again I'm probably going to experiment using different non-dairy milks (like almond, coconut, cashew) and possibly coconut oil instead of canola oil.

I divided the half batch into three and added chives (1 bunch chopped finely - about 3/4 cup) to one batch, liquid smoke and smoked sea salt (1/2 teaspoon and 1/8 teaspoon respectively) to another, and finely sliced stuffed green olives (about 1/3 cup would be best - I used almost a cup and ended up with two not-so-much-cheeses-as-olives-vaguely-held-together-with-cheez. Tasty but not easy to eat!!) into the third. I then let them set at room temperature for about half an hour, then in the fridge, uncovered, for another hour, and then finally covered them in cling wrap and let them set overnight before serving.

Chive Cheez

Smoked Cheez

Olive Cheez

The chive cheez and the smoked cheez were the most popular. I would love to try making a Mexican style cheez, and a herbed cheez, and a pepper cheez...

I was relieved to find that home made vegan cheez is really simple - it leaves a bit of a mess, but totally worth it! - and I look forward to making some more again soon!

Xmas (Eve) recipes

2011-12-26T20:39:00.001+11:00

This year was my first year hosting an Xmas celebration. We chose to do it on Xmas Eve as that is the Swedish tradition. I planned out a big menu and as we got closer to the day J. added some wonderful Swedish dishes.

The final menu was:

Tofurky with cranberry-macadamia stuffing
Cranberry-jalapeno relish

Mushroom-onion gravy
Roasted butternut boats
Roasted sweet potato
Maple carrots and asparagus
Janssons frestelse
Cold roasted beetroot mustard salad
Senapssill

And dessert was:

Honigkuchen
Xmas Cake ice cream

We were too busy enjoying the food to take many photos. Here's a crappy phone photo of the spread:

Cranberry-Jalapeno Relish

This has a lot of heat in it but is sweet and more-ish. It pairs really well with the slightly bland (in a good way) tofurky - I also like it on top of avocado on toast!! We also used it as the salsa for our Xmas day lunch of leftovers burritos.

Makes approximately 2 heaping cups

1 onion, finely chopped
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/3 cup crystallised ginger, roughly chopped
1/3 cup canned jalapenos, roughly chopped
1 1/2 cups dried cranberries, roughly chopped
1/2 tablespoon sea salt
1/4 cup agave nectar or sugar
1/4 to 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
2 to 3 cups water

In a medium saucepan, saute the onion in the olive oil over a medium heat, until the onion is translucent. Add the crystallised ginger and jalapenos and saute for a minute or so. Add the dried cranberries and stir through well. Add the sea salt, agave nectar or sugar, red wine vinegar and about 1 1/2 to 2 cups water. Stir together and leave to simmer, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is the consistency of jam and the cranberries have mostly broken down - about 25 minutes. You may need to add more water as the mixture cooks to assist in breaking down the cranberries and ensuring that it doesn't stick.

Chill completely before serving.

Mushroom-Onion Gravy

A classic thick pourable gravy.

Makes about 4 servings

2 onions, sliced into thin half moons
2 cups button mushrooms, sliced thinly
1/2 cup fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced thinly
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 to 3 tablespoons chickpea flour
1 to 2 cups vegan "chicken" or other stock
1 teaspoon Marmite
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 tablespoon dried thyme
1/4 tablespoon dried sage
several grinds white pepper

In a deep sided frying pan, saute the onions in the olive oil over a medium heat until translucent and soft. Add the mushrooms and saute until softened and beginning to give off moisture, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Sprinkle in the chickpea flour and stir to coat the onions and mushrooms. Pour in the stock a 1/4 cup by 1/4 cup, stirring between each addition of stock to ensure that the gravy is smooth. The more stock you use, the thinner the gravy will be. Stir through the Marmite, sea salt, thyme, sage and white pepper.

Allow the gravy to simmer, stirring constantly, for another 3 to 5 minutes before serving. If you need to leave the gravy before serving, it will thicken, so add a little water and simmer to thin slightly before serving.

Vegan Senapssill

This is a vegan version of mustard pickled herring. As someone who adored rollmops pre-vegan, the flavours in this hit a whole lot of food related emotional notes for me. I would love to figure out how to make vegan rollmops, but in the meantime this is a great recipe!

The original recipe was taken from here.

1 large eggplant (350 to 400g)

Mustard Marinade

100mL Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
100mL canola oil
100mL soy cream
2 tablespoons dried dill

Slice the eggplant into sliced herring sized strips (5 to 7cm long, 1 to 2cm wide, 1cm thick). Boil the strips in lightly salted water for about 5 to 7 minutes. Drain the eggplant strips and set to one side.

In a medium bowl, mix together mustard, salt, golden syrup and vinegar. Whisk in the oil and soy cream and add the dill. Add the eggplant strips and marinate for at least a few hours to overnight.

Traditionally served with potato (I had leftovers with white bread and crackers...)

Honigkuchen

When I lived in Rose Bay as a teenager, I used to eat lots of European Jewish foods, and loved the German Jewish New Year's cake, Honigkuchen, with its sweet stickiness and spiced depth of flavour.

I decided to try to make this cake vegan (no honey, no eggs) and gluten free for Xmas Eve dessert. I am really very happy with the way it turned out. I did some internet research and decided to veganise this recipe I found on Smitten Kitchen.

The gluten free flour mix I've been using for Xmas baking this year is one part coconut flour, one part buckwheat flour, one part brown rice flour, one part chickpea flour and half part potato or tapioca flour.

3 1/2 cups gluten free flour mix
1 cup ground almond meal
1/2 heaping teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/3 cups canola oil (if using standard flour, reduce the oil to 1 cup)
1/2 cup agave nectar
1/2 cup treacle
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons ground flaxseed and 5 tablespoons water, whisked together and set to one side.
1 cup warm coffee
3/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup rum (or, to keep this alcohol free, leave this out and increase the orange juice to 1 cup)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a bundt pan.

Sift together the flour, almond meal, baking powder, baking soda and dry spices in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, whisk the grated ginger, agave nectar, treacle, brown sugar, coffee, orange juice, canola oil and rum together well.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into it. Stir through well to make a smooth pourable batter. Pour the batter into the bundt pan and place into the centre of the oven.

Bake for about 45 minutes - if the top begins to colour too much, cover with foil - until a skewer inserted into the thickest part comes out clean. I only cooked this for 30 minutes, as I was concerned that it would become dry, and the centre was a lovely dense gooey pudding like consistency which I quite enjoyed. But to cook through, cook for the full length of time.

The Xmas Cake icecream was rich chocolate icecream made with coconut milk, with a dash of rum, and macerated spiced fruit (that I had made for fruit mince pies) stirred through. It paired really nicely with the cake to make a rich Xmas dessert.

All in all, it was a fairly easy and delicious Xmas Eve event and I look forward to doing it again - possibly with some of these recipes! - next year.

Home Made Tofurky

2011-12-18T19:10:00.000+11:00

I've never had tofurky (I'm not sure I'd ever even had the traditional Xmas turkey pre-vegan) but I have the opportunity this year to host an Xmas Eve dinner. I wanted to make something that my gleegan friends could eat and I've had my eye on a Vegweb tofu turkey with stuffing recipe for years now. The below is my version of it. I did a test run to take to a potluck early Xmas celebration and I'm glad to say that it went down a storm!!

There is a fair amount of prep work required, but most of that is down time, and the results are totally worth it.

Tofurky

1 x 750g block extra firm tofu
1 x 350g block extra firm tofu
1 x Massel "chicken" style stock cube
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1/2 to 1 tablespoon dried thyme
1/4 cup hot water

Mash the tofu in a large bowl until it achieves a ricotta consistency - don't work too hard on making it smooth and don't use a blender or food processor for the job.

Mix the stock cube, onion and garlic powder, dried thyme and hot water together well in a small bowl. Mix thoroughly through the mashed tofu.

Line a colander with a slightly damp cheesecloth or Chux wipe. Pour in the mashed tofu mixture and press down well. Cover the flat top of the tofu with the rest of the cheesecloth and cover with a plate. Place the colander into a large bowl and put a heavy weight - such as several tins of tomates/legumes etc - on top of the plate on top of the tofu mixture.

Put the entire contraption into the fridge and leave for at least overnight to 24 hours.

Stuffing

1 teaspoon olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup dried cranberries, finely chopped
1/2 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
3/4 cup canned brown lentils
dash vegan Worcestershire sauce
juice of half an orange
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
4 buckwheat crispbreads, crumbled
1/4 cup plain rice crackers, crumbled

Saute the chopped onions in a medium sized saucepan over a medium heat until translucent.

Add the walnuts and cranberries, and stir through. Add the brown lentils, Worcestershire sauce, orange juice, sea salt, ground pepper, dried sage and dried basil, and cook, stirring vigourously, for a couple of minutes. Take off the heat.

Stir though the crumbled crispbreads and rice crackers, until the mixture becomes dry and thick. Set to one side to cool.

Basting Liquid

1/2 cup vegan "chicken" style stock
juice of half an orange
dash of vegan Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Braggs (or tamari)
1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
dash liquid smoke
1 to 2 teaspoons agave nectar
1/8 cup sesame oil

In a small bowl, whisk together all of these ingredients well. Set to one side.

Putting it all together

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Line a biscuit tray with baking paper.

Take the pressed tofu mixture out of the fridge. Scoop out the centre, leaving about an inch around the edge. Retain the tofu you've removed.

Spoon in the cooled stuffing and press down well. Press down the removed tofu to cover the stuffing and to create a flat base for the tofurky.

Carefully turn the tofurky out onto the lined biscuit tray, flat side down. Press the sides in firmly.

Baste the top of the tofurky with about 2 tablespoons or so of the basting liquid. Cover the tofurky with foil and bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven, remove the foil and baste the tofurky well with the basting liquid.

Put the tofurky back into the oven and baste again every 20 minutes, cooking for an hour (making the total cooking time an hour and a half).

Remove the tofurky from the oven and baste generously with the basting liquid whilst it is still hot. If serving immediately, leave for about 5 minutes before slicing. If serving the next day, let cool in the fridge and either serve at room temperature or heat, basting a little, in a hot oven just before serving.

Enjoy with gravy or cranberry sauce (I made a jalapeno-cranberry chutney that I'll be posting the recipe to soon), and use the leftovers on sandwiches!!

Teese Scones and Fauxpacho

2011-11-16T20:45:00.000+11:00

So, yesterday I had a very specific craving for cheez scones. And since I had an open block of Teese cheddar sitting in my fridge at home (thanks to The Green Edge in Brisbane - the only place I can recall seeing Teese in Australia) of course I had to make them when I got home after work.

I mused on Twitter about what to have them with (because, even though you totally could, you probably shouldn't have a meal entirely of Teese scones. Well... possibly...) and got the answer "Gazpacho" from Kaydee (and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to link to a tweet, so, um, yeah. But it happened!)

I've not made either of these dishes before, so I was very happy with how they turned out.

Teese Scones

Makes 7 large scones

Inspired by this incredibly easy recipe for Lemonade Scones, and also by my ongoing experiments with using mayonnaise in random baked goods...

Dry
2 1/4 cups self raising flour
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 to 2 teaspoons Herbamare seasoning salt
2 teaspoons smoked paprika

Wet
2/3 cup vegan mayonnaise
2/3 cup tonic water
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/3 cup grated Teese cheddar + 1/4 cup for the top

Extra plain flour for rolling and cutting the dough

Preheat the oven to about 220 degrees Celsius. Get a round cake tin - about 9 inches in diameter - close at hand to put the scones in.

In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients.

In a medium bowl, mix together the wet ingredients (bar the extra 1/4 cup Teese). Pour all of the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and use a fork to mix together until the mixture is well combined. It make still be a little sticky and it will definitely be very soft! If it is too sticky, add about another 1/4 cup self raising flour and mix together.

Put about 1/4 cup plain flour down onto a clean surface and turn the dough out onto it. Dust the top of the dough with about another 1/4 cup plain flour. Dust your hands with flour and press the dough into a circle about 3 to 4cm thick. Dip a glass in flour and use it to cut out circles from the dough and place these circles, sides touching, into the cake tin.

Place the tin into the centre of the hot oven and cook for about 10 minutes, until the scones have risen and begun to lightly colour. Sprinkle over the extra 1/4 cup Teese and place back into the oven for about another 10 minutes, until the scones sound hollow when tapped.

Eat hot!!

Fauxpacho

Makes 3 to 4 servings

I fiddled about a fair bit with the classic gazpacho recipe, so I feel like my version requires a cutesy name...

50g avocado
240g tinned chickpeas, drained and rinsed (1 can)
2 cloves garlic, minced
juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon salt
600mL V8 Spicy Vegetable Juice
1 spring onion, finely chopped
1 Lebanese cucumber, deseeded and finely chopped
1/2 yellow capsicum, finely chopped
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

In a large bowl, mash together the avocado, chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice and salt until fairly smooth - some little chunks are okay. Stir in the vegetable juice a little at a time to make sure that everything combines well. Add the spring onion, cucumber, capsicum and red wine vinegar and mix well. Cover and put into the fridge to chill before serving.

I see many scones in my future, as I've found a recipe that seems pretty robust and works every time! Also, cold vegetable soup that tastes almost like Bloody Mary is always going to be a winner and I suspect I'll be making it again soon as the temperature soars here!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Pumpkin Carving, Nerdiness and Chocolate Icecream

2011-10-31T21:15:00.000+11:00

So, that's it for another year, eh? It's been a great month of food! I'm probably going to spend the next month actually reading and commenting rather than just scanning and favouriting posts!

Firstly, a photoless recipe. We fell upon this chocolate icecream like rabid chocolate fans and thus there were no photos taken.

Rich Chocolate Icecream with Candied Spiced Walnuts

1 1/2 cups + 1/4 cup coconut cream
1/8 cup cocoa
100g vegan chocolate
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vegan custard powder

100g walnuts
1/8 cup rice syrup
1/8 cup maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon Herbamare salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder

Firstly, make the candied walnuts. Dry toast the walnuts in a dry frying pan over a medium heat until they are beginning to slightly colour. Pour in the rice syrup and maple syrup and toss the walnuts quickly to coat. Add the salt, cinnamon, cayenne pepper and cardamom powder and stir to combine well. Cook for another couple of minutes until the syrup is thickened and sticky. Pour onto some baking paper and ensure that it is flat. Chill until completely cooled.

Mix together the 1/4 cup coconut cream and the tablespoon vegan custard powder in a small bowl. Set to one side.

Put the 1 1/2 cups coconut cream, cocoa, sugar and chocolate into a small saucepan and place over a low heat. Stir until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. Just as the mixture begins to boil, take off the heat and whisk through the coconut cream-vegan custard powder mixture.

Pour into a heat proof bowl and chill completely for one to two hours.

Pour the chilled coconut milk mixture into an icecream maker and churn as per the icecream maker's instructions.

Whilst the chocolate icecream is churning, chop the candied walnuts into chunks. When the icecream maker has finished its cycle, pour into a medium bowl and stir through the walnut chunks. Spoon into an airtight container and place into the freezer to set for an hour or so before serving.

I have never done any pumpkin carving - it's not a big thing in Australia - but J.'s friends were having a pumpkin carving shindig on the weekend so I got to carve my first ever pumpkin!

Left to right: Spooky Tree, The Joker, Zombie Chen Kenichi (J's own design), Franknfurter (my choice)


And the reverse angle.

I love J.'s Zombie Chen Kenichi! It made me giggle. Pumpkin carving is a lot less difficult and a lot more fun than I'd expected and I'd be happy to try it again in a year.

Totally non-food related, but I spent Saturday at a fan convention for Warehouse 13 and Eureka, and got to have a grand time with the extremely hot and highly amusing Colin Ferguson (Sheriff Jack Carter).

Finally, I finished the weekend up at the 2011 Cruelty Free Festival, where I ate lots, said hi to many folks, got a grand Vegan Australia tshirt, ran a cooking demo and talked about tempeh, seitan, strudel and cashews, amongst many other things. Lots of fun! In order to keep the sun off me, I have a huge pink umbrella/parasol, and snapped this fab picture of J. playing with it.

I'm hoping to keep up the cooking and blogging after Mofo has finished, and to keep having fun with it! It's been lots of fun and I'm really glad that I joined into it again this year! Thanks for reading and commenting - it's so good to feel like part of an international community.

Vegan Mofo 2011: Indian Feast Recipes!

2011-10-30T10:21:00.000+11:00

I had my friends Cassie and Andrew over for dinner with J. and I last night. We decided on an Indian feast, which I adapted slightly to ensure that Cassie was able to enjoy everything (chilli/hot is not her friend).

Check it out:

Clockwise-ish from the front: chopped coriander, Cashew Cucumber Raita, Aloo Aloo, scented rice, papadams, Chana Masala, Tofu Saag and mango chutney

It was a leetle too much food for four people, but man it was good!

Cashew Cucumber Raita

I wanted the flavours and textures of a yoghurt based raita, but we can't get plain vegan yoghurt (or, frankly decent flavoured vegan yoghurt) in Australia, so I was going to use silken tofu. However I discovered that the in-date silken tofu was very off, so I grabbed some cashews I had in the freezer and used them instead. They were probably the best bet anyway - creamy and fatty and neutral flavoured.

Serves about 8

1 cup raw cashews

juice of 2 lemons

1 tablespoon miso (I used red)

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/4 to 1/2 cup water

1 Lebanese cucumber, chopped finely

handful of fresh mint, chopped finely

Soak the raw cashews in cold water for at least an hour. Drain and put into a food processor with the lemon juice, miso, cumin and 1/4 cup water. Blend until smooth, adding more water a tablespoon at a time as required to make the texture as liquidy or as thick as you want.

Pour into a bowl and add the cucumber and the mint. Test for seasoning and add a little salt as required.

Aloo Aloo

A potato only version of Aloo Gobi! I'm going to give you my original recipe for Aloo Gobi - I just replaced the cauliflower with yet more potato...

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients

½ cup onion, roughly chopped

1 inch piece of ginger, roughly chopped

1 large red chilli, roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

3 cups tomatoes, roughly chopped

3 teaspoons ground coriander

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 tablespoons water

2 teaspoons oil

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

2 green chilies, sliced in long pieces

2 bay leaves

2 cups of cut cauliflower (cut into small florets)

2 medium potatoes (cubed into bite sized pieces)

1 teaspoon salt (to taste)

2 tablespoons of chopped cilantro (green coriander)

1/4 cup water as needed

Method

Place the onion, ginger, chilli, garlic and tomatoes into a food processor and process into a paste (or pound into a paste using a mortar and pestle or chop finely). Set to one side.

In a medium bowl, mix the onion/garlic/ginger/tomato paste, coriander powder, cayenne pepper, turmeric, and 3 tablespoons of water together. Set to one side.

Heat the oil in a deep sided frying pan.

Add the cumin seeds to the oil and when the oil start foaming around the seeds, add the bay leaves and green chilies and stir for a few seconds.

Add the onion/garlic/ginger/tomato and spice paste and stir for 3 minutes, or until the oil begins to split.

Add cauliflower, potatoes, 2 tablespoons of water and salt. Mix well.

Cover the pan and let it cook on medium heat for about 15 to 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Make sure to stir gently every 3 to 4 minutes.

Serve topped with chopped coriander leaves.

Scented Rice

Serves 4 to 6

A very simple recipe for making rice feel special with minimal effort. 1 cup rice, 2 cups stock (I used Massel "chicken" style stock for this meal), 6 to 8 cardamom pods and a couple of cinnamon sticks (though I used one star anise since I didn't have any cinnamon sticks). Put everything into a saucepan, cover, bring to a boil and then turn down and simmer, covered, until the liquid is all absorbed and the rice is fluffy OR put everything into a rice cooker and cook until the cycle finishes and the liquid is all absorbed and the rice is fluffy.

Chana Masala

I love this mixture of salty and sweet and sour and a little bit hot - plus: chickpeas. You can never go wrong with chickpeas.

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients

½ cup onion, roughly chopped

1 inch piece of ginger, roughly chopped

1 large red chilli, roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

3 cups tomatoes, roughly chopped

2 teaspoons oil

3 bay leaves

2 teaspoons ground red chilli

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

2 teaspoons ground coriander

2 teaspoons garam masala + 1 teaspoon garam masala

2 teaspoons salt

2 cups water

3 cups chickpeas

½ cup fresh coriander leaves, chopped

Method

Place the onion, ginger, chilli, garlic and tomatoes into a food processor and process into a paste (or
pound into a paste using a mortar and pestle or chop finely). Set to one side.

Heat the oil in a deep sided frying pan over a medium high heat.

Fry the bay leaves in the oil for half a minute and then add the onion/ginger/chilli/garlic/tomato paste
and fry for 2 minutes.

Add the dry spices - red chilli, turmeric, coriander garam masala – and the salt, and stir through.

Add the 2 cups water and stir until the mixture begins to thicken into a gravy.

Add the 3 cups chickpeas and cook through.

Just before serving, stir through the 1 teaspoon garam masala.

Serve topped with chopped coriander leaves.

Tofu Saag

I used to deep fry the tofu cubes before adding them to the spiced spinach sauce, but I've reduced
the fat a great deal by utilising the Isa almost-dry-fry method. I also reduced the amount of Nuttelex
(vegan margarine) that I use, but there is still some in there as the spinach sauce benefits from that
fatty mouthfeel.

Ingredients

½ cup onion, roughly chopped

1 inch piece of ginger, roughly chopped

1 large red chilli, roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

1 cup tomatoes, roughly chopped

4 cups frozen spinach

1 teaspoon vegetable oil + 1 teaspoon vegetable oil

2 cups extra firm tofu

6 whole cardamom pods

2 teaspoons ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 to 2 cups water

2 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon Nuttelex

Method

Place the onion, ginger, chilli, garlic and tomatoes into a food processor and process into a paste (or
pound into a paste using a mortar and pestle or chop finely). Set to one side.

Cook the frozen spinach as per the packet instructions – steam with a little water - until completely

thawed. Set to one side.

Place a deep sided frying pan over a high heat and pour in 1 teaspoon vegetable oil.

Cut the extra firm tofu into 1cm square cubes. Add the cubes to the vegetable oil and fry for about 3 to 5

minutes, until golden on one side. Carefully flip and fry for another couple of minutes. Add 1
teaspoon Braggs and stir so that the Braggs is absorbed. Set to one side.

Heat the second 1 teaspoon of oil over a medium high heat. Add the cardamom pods and fry until
the oil becomes fragrant. Remove the cardamom pods from the oil. Add the onion/ginger/chilli/garli

/tomato paste and fry for 2 minutes.

Add the dry spices – coriander, cumin, cinnamon – and stir through. Add the spinach and 1 cup of
water and cook for 15 minutes, adding more water as required. The sauce should be not too liquidy.

Remove from the heat and blend with a stick blender until smooth and bright green. Stir in the salt, 1 tablespoon Nuttelex, and fried tofu, and place back on the heat for another 5 to 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

I'll leave you with the gorgeous stack of papadams that we made (yup, deep fried):

Vegan Mofo 2011: I Less than Three MyZoetrope

2011-10-27T21:33:00.000+11:00

Today I arrived home to a brown package in my mailbox. What could it be? I turned it over and saw this next to my address on the envelope:

Hurrah!! Much art from the fabulous MyZoetrope!!

Inside the wonderfully decorated envelope was a gorgeous card with a lovely note from Michelle:

And finally the print that I was lucky enough to choose after I won the Vegan Mofo giveaway, "Hello Spring":

Lookit all the pretties lined up:

Can't wait to get a beautiful frame for the print (and maybe one for the card and envelope art too - I love cats!!)

Thanks MyZoetrope for making such happy, colourful and wondrous art!! MyZoetrope is running a fundraising exercise during Vegan Mofo, where she's creating a painting a day and placing them for sale. All proceeds (bar shipping) will be donated to the For the Animals Sanctuary. Check her blog, the charity art for sale and her etsy shop out and get purchasing before the end of the month!! Great art and a great cause!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Green Chili Stew

2011-10-25T19:47:00.000+11:00

No, that isn't food. It's my Lucie cat. I'm putting a couple of photos of her in today because it's around this time of year that it's her birthday. This year she turns 18 - I've had her in my life since she was about 3 or 4 weeks old. Life wouldn't be the same without her in my life - even when she's stealing my nooch!!

Anyhoo, onto foods. The weather in Sydney went from obscenely hot yesterday to cool, windy and rainy today. Weather for hot comforting food.

Green Chili Stew

Serves 3 to 4

1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 fresh jalapeno, thinly sliced
1 pickled jalapeno, thinly sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium carrot, cubed
1 medium zucchini, chopped
1 cup hominy
200g extra firm tofu, crumbled
1/3 cup quinoa
1 can tomatillos, drained (about 2 cups)
1 1/4 litres vegan "chicken" style stock
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon ancho chile powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano

a couple of lemons, cut into wedges

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and saute the jalapenos (fresh and pickled), onion and carrot until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and zucchini and saute for a couple of minutes. Add the hominy, tofu and quinoa and stir through and cook, stirring occasionally, for a couple of minutes. Add the tomatillos and squish them to break them, and stir through, then pour in the stock and stir well. Finally, add the smoked paprika, ancho chile powder, cumin and oregano and stir through well.

Set to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes, or until the quinoa is well cooked and the liquid is mostly cooked into the vegetables and the stew is thick and spoonable.

Spoon the stew into bowls and squeeze lemon juice from the lemon wedges over the stew to serve. I also topped mine with some nooch.

More Lucie, you say? Oh, okay. Here she is on "her" armchair - which has a giant cushion on it allowing Lucie to sit in splendid queen of the household manner, as she should.

Vegan Mofo 2011: Banh Mi Sandwich with Dipping Sauce

2011-10-24T19:59:00.000+11:00

I kept reading about Banh Mi in various North American cookbooks and blogs and was slightly confused as to what it was. I realised after a while that Banh Mi was the original name for what we in Australia (in our infinite capacity for understatement and unimaginative description) refer to as a "Vietnamese pork roll".

I used to get the salad version of this from various Vietnamese bakeries and every time I had them I thought "gosh, this is fresh and tasty and lovely", but I would never have contemplated making them at home - because let's face it, they're basically a salad roll. And I don't do salad rolls.

Except when I do.

On the way home from work this afternoon, having left work early due to the ongoing sick 'orribleness, and cursing the extreme hot that's descended upon Sydney, I was gripped by the desire for a Banh Mi - and not just any Banh Mi, but the one with the dipping sauce from Veganomicon (pages 101 to 102).

But, you know, with some tweaks.

I wasn't able to find cucumber or fresh coriander, so got red capsicum (bell pepper) and green chilli (I suspect it was a fresh jalapeno). I didn't want white bread, so got some delicious olive sourdough baguette.

And then I went home and started prepping.

First I made the dipping sauce from Veganomicon - tweaks: I didn't have any five spice powder, so chucked in a couple of star anise, used Massel "chicken"-style stock, used rice syrup instead of sugar, used lemon juice instead of lime juice and about doubled the amount of fresh ginger - and decided to use the dipping sauce as a marinade for 200g extra firm tofu that I'd sliced into 1/2cm thick slices.

Then I made a silken tofu mayonnaise.

300g silken tofu
2 tablespoons red miso
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon black salt (optional - I found the "egginess" went really well with the rest of the sandwich and the sauce)
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon rice syrup

Blend all together until smooth. Put into the fridge to chill.

After marinating the tofu for half an hour or so, I heated a teaspoon of olive oil in my wok and then fried the tofu until golden on one side, flipped and fried until golden on that side, then added a little Braggs to colour them and took them off the heat and set to one side. I found that the dipping sauce/marinade imbued the tofu with an excitingly sweet-hot flavour that was enhanced by the frying and Braggs.

I poured the remaining dipping sauce/marinade into a saucepan and simmered for about ten minutes and then strained into a Pyrex bowl.

I chopped up all the veges - carrot, tomato, iceberg lettuce, chilli, red capsicum and spring onions - and arranged them with the strained dipping sauce for a pre-construction photo. I also sprinkled the vegetables with salt and white pepper to get the authentic Vietnamese bakery salad roll experience.

I constructed the sandwich by slicing the baguette in half lengthwise and smother with silken tofu mayo, then top with lettuce, carrots, spring onions, red capsicum, tomatoes, chilli and lastly the tofu.

I had never had a French dip sandwich either, so wasn't sure what to expect. But OMG the broth - astonishing!! So many layers of flavour, so intense and yet so subtle so that the vegetables could sing. Wow. Just. Wow. And changing the texture of the bread - still chewy and yet drenched in different flavours.... So. Good.

I suspect that this is going to become my hot weather go-to sandwich - at least for a while - and I'm kicking myself for not trying it earlier!!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Weekend Over Again?!

2011-10-23T20:22:00.000+11:00

Man, that weekend went by fast! I know I promised a coffee icecream recipe in my next post, but I need to keep tinkering with the recipe - not happy with how it turned out (too ice crystal-y) though it is a great coffee flavour and quite creamy. I think, given the success of the Monte Carlo icecream (which is freaking gorgeous and which J., who is not a sweet freak and who has wanted coffee icecream for a while, thought was the winner of the two icecreams), that I'll try using coconut cream the next time. But first I will be experimenting with chocolate icecream and spiced maple nuts....

But! Onto the weekend fuds.

J. (seen below avoiding the paparazzi) made me dinner on Saturday night - a gorgeous rich lasagne with red wine, garlic, red onions, dried chantarelles, lots of kalamata olives, fresh oregano.... It was amazing!

No photos! It's all about the food!

Straight out of the oven

Slice of pasta heaven


Simple side salad: rocket, red onion, cucumber, tomato, oregano, olive oil

My contribution to the evening was the icecream and some of my roasted garlic garlic bread.

So.Much.Garlic.

This morning we went to Mad Spuds for breakfast - they've updated their menu so we wanted to check out the new Vegan Stack. I like that they have vegan options and easily veganiseable vegetarian options consistently on their menu. Some are a bit of a miss (J. had a salad that he really didn't like) but there are some definite hits also!

J. got the Vegan Stack. There's lemon cornbread, falafels, soft polenta, lentil-potato cake, marinated tofu, roasted tomato, red onion jam, spinach and quinoa puffs.

As it was actually close to lunch time, I opted for the baked potato with Boston beans (which are made vegan), avoiding the red Leicester that usually comes with them.

It was only a little bit of food...

Two (!!) baked potatoes, beans, coleslaw, lemon olive oil dressing and salsa. It was delicious and I was completely unable to finish it!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Iron Chef Challenge - Monte Carlo Icecream; and the Liebster Award

2011-10-22T15:59:00.000+11:00

In Australia there's a biscuit made by Arnott's called a Monte Carlo - two coconut shortbread biscuits sandwiched with coconut icing and raspberry jam. To me these are a quintessential "Aussie" biscuit, and I have such an emotional connection to them that I veganised them (under the copyright avoiding nom de plume Coconut-Raspberry Sandwiches) and put them in my first cookbook.

I made them recently to take to work, and had some coconut icing left over. I'd also cracked out the icecream maker and have been having a play with it (coffee ice cream recipe and review soon!). So when the latest Iron Chef Challenge ingredient was announced - coconut - a Monte Carlo icecream recipe immediately made itself known in my brain. It helped that I had all of the necessary ingredients in the house!

I used the method from Wheeler Del Toro's The Vegan Scoop as a kicking off point.

Monte Carlo Icecream

Coconut Icecream

1 1/2 cup + 1/4 cup coconut cream
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 tablespoon custard powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Coconut Icing

1/4 cup vegan margarine
3/4 cup icing sugar, sifted
1/2 cup shredded coconut

1/4 cup raspberry jam

Coconut Icecream

In a small bowl whisk together the 1/4 cup coconut cream and the 1 tablespoon custard powder and set to one side.

Put the sugar and 1 1/2 cups coconut cream into a saucepan and place over a low heat. Cook, stirring to help the sugar melt, until the mixture begins to come to a boil. Take off the heat immediately and whisk through the custard powder mixture. The coconut milk mixture will become slightly thicker and feel silky.

Put into a container and place into the fridge to chill completely - about two hours.

Coconut Icing

Beat together the vegan margarine and icing sugar and mix in the shredded coconut to form a stiff mixture. Cover and chill in the fridge for an hour. Then form into about 1cm round balls and place back into the fridge.

Putting it all together

Pour the chilled coconut milk mixture into an icecream maker and churn as per the icecream maker's instructions. About 10 minutes before the end of the churning, drop in about half to all of the icing balls - put in more if you want extra sweet coconut bits.

Heat the 1/4 cup raspberry jam in a small saucepan over a low heat until it is of pourable consistency. Take off the heat.

When the icecream has finished, place about half of it into a container and drizzle over half of the raspberry jam, then the other half of the icecream, then the other half of the jam. Use a bamboo skewer to quickly draw through the icecream to form swirls. Seal well and put into the freezer. Freeze for at least a couple of hours before it will be firm enough to scoop.

Susan, the wondrous kitty queen and vegan cookbook honcho over at Kittens Gone Lentil, has nominated me for the Liebster Award.

“Liebster” is German and means ‘dearest’ or ‘beloved’ but it can also mean ‘favorite’. The idea behind this award is to bring attention to bloggers who have less than 200 followers and show your support during Vegan Mofo!

The rules of winning this award are as follows:
1. Show your thanks to those who gave you the award by linking back to them.
2. Reveal 5 of your top picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Enjoy the love and support of some wonderful people on the www!

I'm a crap commenter but I have been reading a lot of great blogs this Vegan Mofo, so here goes!

1. In The Mood For Noodles
2. Heathen Vegan
3. One Arab Vegan
4. Veganise This
5. Cupcake Kitteh

Vegan Mofo 2011: Sick Conquering Thai Red Curry

2011-10-21T20:00:00.000+11:00

I've been cold/flu sick on and off, to a lesser or greater degree, for something like six months. It's completely ridiculous. I woke up this morning not feeling brilliant and by dinner time knew that I needed to blast the sick out of me. So I whipped up a red curry, full of ginger, garlic, lemon and miso. Delicious and full of sick conquering goodness!

Red Curry

Serves 1-2

200g extra firm tofu, cubed
2 teaspoons Braggs
1/2 teaspoon olive oil + 1/2 teaspoon olive oil
3/4 can Maesri Red Curry Paste
1 tablespoon red miso
1 teaspoon tamarind paste
1 inch ginger, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
60g broccoli, cut into florets
60g carrot, cut on the diagonal
100g Brussels sprouts, quartered
60g frozen peas
juice of two lemons
1 1/4 cups coconut milk or cream
1 cup water

Heat 1/2 teaspoon olive oil in a wok over a medium high heat and add the tofu. Cook on one side, no stirring, until golden. Flip carefully and cook the other side until golden. Pour in the Braggs and toss to cook off. Pour the tofu into a bowl and set to one side. Head the other 1/2 teaspoon olive oil over a low heat and saute the ginger and garlic for a minute or so. Add the red curry paste and stir to mix thoroughly. Add the tamarind paste and red miso and mix thoroughly - add a dash of water if the paste is sticking. Add the tofu and cover completely. Pour in the coconut cream, lemon juice and water, and mix well. Add the carrots and Brussels sprouts. Simmer gently whilst you are cooking some rice or quinoa to go with it - about 15 to 25 minutes. When the rice or quinoa is ready, add the broccoli and frozen peas to the curry and heat through for another 5 minutes. Take off the heat and serve.

Vegan Mofo 2011: Lucky Lovely Day

2011-10-20T21:15:00.000+11:00

No food in this post, just a quick note to say that I am one lucky happy vegan today - I won a Vegan Mofo giveaway and am going to be lucky enough to have a piece of artwork from My Zoetrope in my home!! So very chuffed!!

Other loveliness today - my baked goods went down a storm at work, hurrah. J. and I had an impromptu burger dinner date, which was lovely and fun and tasty.

And my friend Susan at Kittens Gone Lentil posted a wonderfully enthusiastic post about Vegan Indulgence, which made me grin like a loon and also blush a lot.

This coming weekend the plan is: J.'s lasagne, more roasted garlic bread, seeing some art and making coffee ice cream.... Now to just get through Friday!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Latin Lunch and Baking for Work

2011-10-19T22:09:00.000+11:00

Today's lunch was a gorgeous collision of some of my favourite Latin flavours, full of protein and bursting with tastiness.

I had chipotle lentil patties (page 123, Appetite for Reduction. I make them small and get eight out of a half batch of the recipe) and a big pile of quinoa, both topped with a no-oil version of the Venezualan Guasacaca from Viva Vegan! (page 39). So fresh and zippy! I am extremely happy that I have another round of this for lunch tomorrow!

Tomorrow is a monthly meeting at work - my first one at this workplace - and my boss knows that I'm a cookbook author and a keen cook, so she's been bugging me to bake something and bring it into work. So tonight I baked two things, both from Vegan Indulgence - Choc Cherry Squares and Coconut-Raspberry Sandwiches.

(I've cheated with the following photos and used some outtakes from the original photoshoots for Vegan Indulgence.)

Choc Cherry Squares

This is on page 16, but I have altered the recipe slightly to make the frosting into a much much richer ganache frosting!

Makes 16 squares

Cake

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups bottled/canned sour (Morello) cherries, drained (retain the liquid!)
1/2 cup chocolate pieces or chips
1/2 cup neutral flavoured vegetable oil
1 cup cherry liquid (retained when you drained the cherries!)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Ganache Frosting
170g vegan cream cheese
2/3 cup chocolate
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons soy milk

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Grease and flour a 20cm square cake tin.

Cake

Roughly chop the cherries (and chocolate, if you are using pieces rather than chips). In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and sugar together. Add the sugar and stir through. Toss cherries and chocolate in the flour mixture to coat. This will ensure that the cherries and chocolate do not sink to the bottom of the cake when baking.

In a small bowl, whisk together the cherry liquid, oil and vinegar. Pour into the dry ingredients and mix until combined - do not overmix!

Pour mixture into the cake tin, smooth the top and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until cake has risen and cracked a little and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Whilst the cake is baking, make the Ganache Frosting.

When the cake is cooked, cool in the pan for about 5 minutes, then invert onto a cake rack to cook completely.

Ganache Frosting

Mash the vegan cream cheese well in a small bowl. Put the sugar, chocolate and soy milk into a small saucepan over a very low heat, and melt, stirring with wooden spoon or heat resistant spatula occasionally, until the sugar is melted and the chocolate mixture is smooth. Add the mashed vegan cream cheese and beat together until smooth and thick. Chill until the cake is cooled.

Putting it all together

When cake and frosting have cooled, spread the frosting over the cake to cover (it will cover to about 1/2 to 1cm thick). Carefully cut the cake into squares and keep refrigerated.

Coconut Raspberry Sandwiches

These are from page 20.

Biscuit
1/2 cup vegan margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup non-dairy milk + 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup custard powder
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 cup shredded coconut

Filling
1/2 cup vegan margarine
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted
3/4 cup shredded coconut
Raspberry jam - about 1/2 a jar

Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Line two biscuit trays with baking paper.

Biscuit
In a large bowl, beat margarine and sugar together until light and creamy. Carefully beat in vanilla and non-dairy milk.

In another bowl, sift flour and custard powder together. Fold into the margarine mixture until well combined.

Add coconut and mix through well. The mxiture should be soft and slightly sticky, but you be able to handle it without too much sticking to your hands.

Use two dessertspoons to form ovals of dough, about 5cm long. Place these on the baking tray, spaced out by about 5cm. Carefully flatten the ovals with the back of a flour-covered spoon to form a 1cm thick slightly oval biscuit.

Bake for 30 minutes, until the biscuits begin to colour on their bases and are firm to the touch. Leave on the tray for another 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Filling
Beat margarine and icing sugar together until creamy and light. Fold in coconut until well combined. Chill in the fridge until the biscuits are cooled.

Putting it all together
Match up the biscuits to the most even pairs. Spread 1/2 teaspoon of coconut filling on all of the biscuits. Place 1/2 teaspoon of jam in the centre of the icing mixture on half of the biscuits. Carefully sandwich pairs together, using the edges of the coconut icing to join them together.

Keep in the fridge. These will keep for about a week.

I hope that my manager and workmates are happy with these treats! It's always fun but a little nervewracking to bake for omni workmates, but I'm sure that they'll be fans of these (if I do say so myself) lovely sugary treats!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Pizza, Foiled Again Lunch, and Chickpea Salad with Walnut Dressing

2011-10-18T22:23:00.000+11:00

(The photo uploader is being a bit annoying so please forgive any wonky photos - I cannot be arsed to try and load them properly yet again. *sigh*)

On Sunday afternoon, J. and I had a late lunch/early dinner of pizza at a place called Wood and Stone in Surry Hills.

The waiter was really good about letting us know what wines were fined with animal bits (all of their range) and checking on the bread and pizza dough for animal products (none in either) and generally was just really helpful.

We got a start of a bruschetta to share - you can't go wrong with toasted garlicky sourdough, olive oil, fresh tomatoes and herbs, really. It was gorgeous.

J., despite his professed loathing of eggplant, got the sweet potato pizza with eggplant, sundried tomatoes and olives. Mmmmmm.

I decided on the three fungi and avocado pizza - enoki, oyster and button mushrooms and fresh avocado. The avocado had been put through the oven so it had that very fatty cooked taste, but I didn't mind it in the context of the pizza.

I would definitely be happy to go back and try other of the vegetarian pizzas made vegan there - in fact, there's a bocconcini and pesto one that I want to try without, well, the bocconcini and the pesto! It's got caramelised onions and other yummies on it...

So, if you're in Surry Hills and want a vegan friendly pizza place, Wood and Stone is definitely one to try!

Today's lunch was something I call "Foiled Again" - all of the vegetables having been roasted in foil last night and then cooled in the foil, seasoned and wrapped back up in the foil for me to unwrap for lunch today.

Lookit - the seasoning went pink overnight from the beetroot juices!

The last of the golden beetroot - it was so tasty!

Corn seasoned with salt, pepper and nooch, which formed a delicious sauce overnight!

All of these vegetables were served alongside a chickpea salad with walnut dressing. I made the dressing last night, and it's bloody delicious, but it's an odd pinky-grey colour from the walnuts, so there's no way this photo was ever going to be attractive, but still. Here is the delicious chickpea salad with walnut dressing:

Walnut Dressing

1/3 cup walnuts, broken into smaller chunks
1 tablespoon capers and a little of their brine
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons prepared horseradish
1 1/2 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon vegan mayonnaise
1/2 tablespoon red miso
juice of half a lemon
1/3 cup water (more as required)

Put all of the ingredients into a food processor and process, scraping down the sides occasionally, until very smooth. Add water a teaspoon at a time if the dressing is too thick.

Chickpea Salad

1/2 batch Walnut Dressing (above)
270g canned chickpeas
1 spring onion, chopped finely
1/2 tablespoon Braggs
couple of dashes of hot sauce
1/2 cup frozen peas, defrosted
small handful coriander and parsley, finely chopped

Put the chickpeas, spring onion, Braggs and hot sauce into a bowl and mash until the chickpeas are mostly mashed but some are still whole. Stir through the Walnut Dressing, peas, coriander and parsley.

Serve with vegetables, on crackers or on a sandwich.

Vegan Mofo 2011: Baked Low Fat Vegan Gluten Free Corn Fritters

2011-10-16T22:37:00.000+11:00

I've found myself with a few recipes kicking around the old brain pan - a couple inspired by Iron Chef Challenge (which, whilst I haven't made it to the deadline for that, I am thinking of making a four course feast based upon it at the end of Vegan Mofo!), and one that came to me this morning.

Baked Low Fat Vegan Gluten Free Corn Fritters

(photos from my camera phone - still battery-less for the other one!)

Makes 9 fritters

Ingredients

kernels cut from one cob of corn (a little over one cup)
2 spring onions, finely chopped
2/3 cup corn meal
1/3 cup chickpea (besan/gram) flour
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
1 tablespoon flaxseed (linseed) meal + 1 tablespoon water, mixed together in a small bowl
1/2 tablespoon red miso
1/3 cup soy milk
a couple of dashes of hot sauce or 1/2 teaspoon Sriracha (optional - for a little afterburn)
1 teaspoon olive oil

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees Celsius.

Line a cookie tray with baking paper.

Put the corn kernels, spring onions, corn meal, chickpea flour and pepper into a medium sized bowl and mix together well.

When the flaxseed meal and water mixture has thickened, mix in the red miso and soy milk with a fork until well combined. Add to the corn mixture in the large bowl and stir together well - it will look like you don't have enough liquid, but keep stirring and it will become a firm but soft and moist mixture.

Take a large dessertspoon of the corn mixture and form into a 1cm thick round patty and place onto the baking paper lined cookie tray.

Brush one side of the patties with olive oil and then flip them and brush the other side with olive oil.

Place into the preheated oven and let bake for about 12 minutes, then flip them and bake for another 5 to 10 minutes, until they are golden and firm.

The corn will still have crunch but is encased in a soft corny pillow of dough: the comfort of corn fritters without the frying - and with the added bonus of being cooked all the way through!

I served mine with lashings of tomato sauce (of course!) and roasted beetroot and golden beetroot, which were simply quartered, roasted in foil and then seasoned with white pepper and Herbamare seasoning salt.

Pretty beetroot!

A serving of 3 corn fritters has approximately 205 calories (according to the calculations at myfitnesspal.com).

Vegan Mofo 2011: Downtime; or: What I Ate Out This Weekend

2011-10-16T13:26:00.000+11:00

Weekends are rapidly turning into mofo downtime, where I don't cook much but I do eat out a lot. So, without further ado, here's what I ate Friday night, Saturday and Sunday morning...

All photos taken with camera phone - ran out of batteries in my actual camera!

Friday night

J. and I went to Vina Vegetarian, one of my favourite Asian vegetarian restaurants. I've been going since they first opened and the owners and their family are all really lovely. The food is consistently good, too!

Steamed dumplings with soy sauce and chilli sauce

These dumplings were great - the filling was full of vegetables and a hint of ginger.

Steamed firm tofu with mushroom flakes and soy sauce

You can get a panfried version of this but I really like the gentle flavour of the steamed tofu and the way that it soaks up the dipping sauce.


BBQ "Chicken" Rolls - do it yourself style - faux chicken, noodles, mint, pickles, lettuce, rice paper and a vegan belacarn dipping sauce

J. noted that the dipping sauce "smells like barf" (the vegan "shrimp paste" retains the strong smell of the ingredient it is mimicking) but the flavour of the sauce is not at all like the smell and I find the dipping sauce somewhat addictive. I love rice paper rolls but J. decreed them "too much work" (whilst still tasty).

Noodles fried with tofu, many faux meats and vegetables

Our original Friday night plan had been to go to the Sydney Night Noodle Markets (on my suggestion) but I had an explore before we were due to meet and found them chronically un-vegan friendly - it seemed that all of the vegetarian food either contained or was made of egg. So we bailed on that, but J. was still keen on noodles, and these ones hit the spot.

This was a megatontruckload of food and came in under $50. I would recommend Vina as a fun faux meat restaurant with a Vietnamese bent to try when you're in the inner west of Sydney.

Saturday

We had been meaning to try the new iteration of Earth Vegan cafe - and given that it is very close to where I live, I really should have checked it out earlier!

These are written all over Newtown and Enmore

They didn't have a breakfast menu as such - there was one breakfast item, it seemed - so we both go that.

Pesto toast, house made baked beans, vegan rashers

I'm pretty sure the pesto used walnuts and it had a strong olive oil taste - very yummy!

Earth Vegan doesn't serve coffee, so we'd caffeined up at my place and then we got lemongrass ginger tea, that came in a cute teapot/cup combo.

The tea itself never got as flavoursome as we'd hoped for, but was a nice hot drink with our meal.

I also splurged and got a dark chocolate peanut butter smoothie - which was a good idea at the time, but too sugary for me!! When will I learn? Ah well. It tasted gorgeous.

The bottom of the glass had rich chocolate-peanut pieces in it - this is what defeated me!

Sated from our late breakfast (which came in around the $40 for two - a little pricey) we had a convoluted but ultimately successful quest to find a reasonably priced backgammon board game, and proceeded to drink pale ale and play backgammon in the sun in my courtyard.

(We both ended up slightly sunburnt from this activity - oops!)

To counteract the beer and sun, we took a break for a late lunch/early dinner of zaatar bread and dips.


Left foreground - chilli hummus. Right background - beetroot sumac relish (definitely the winner!)

Not pictured: the ginger-tofu-vegetable stirfry we grabbed takeaway when we went to get Army of Darkness (which J. hasn't seen) from Civic Video. They don't have it in stock (?!?) so we ended up watching the Coen Brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There. I got the stirfry because I required vegetables after a bread heavy day. Totally hit the spot.

Sunday

Earth Vegan is closed on Sundays, and we've been to Scrambled (and J. wasn't too impressed) but I'd been told of a new cafe called Silverbean near my place. We went to check out the menu just on the off chance, and we hit gold for J. - they had a veganisable breakfast burrito! So of course we had breakfast there and looked no further.

House made baked beans, toast & roasted herb tomatoes

These beans usually come with cornbread, but it sadly has egg in it. However! The chef was really amenable to me bringing along a couple of vegan cornbread recipes for him to try. He was also careful to point out that the beans etc don't have meat in them - anything with meat is clearly marked. So that's pretty cool.

My mark of a good chef is one whose food I don't have to autocondiment, and I must say by that criteria this guy is amazing. The beans were subtle and flavourful and full of vegetables, and the herb tomatoes were little explosions of tastiness. And for $8, that's a good breakfast.

Breakfast burrito - black beans and vegetables

The burrito was lovely - missing potatoes, sadly, but with well cooked black beans, chunky juicy mushrooms and lots of vegetables inside. The only downside was that J. had politely waited whilst I ran home to get a jumper (there was a very cold wind) and the food arrived just as I left, and the insides of the burrito were room temperature by the time he cut into it. But the burrito was still really tasty - and again, $8.

So that's my weekend in food up to this point! Tonight I'm thinking of trialling a corn fritter recipe that's banging at the insides of my skull, as well as attempting the latest Iron Chef challenge (bananas and coffee) if I get enough time.

Now I'm off to the co-op to see what gorgeous vegetables I can find today!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Two Pasta Dinners, One Lunch and a Sort-Of Recipe

2011-10-13T21:53:00.001+11:00

Last night I made an AFR inspired dinner of pasta shells with marinara, jalapeno stuffed greens olives and herb breadcrumb roasted cauliflower and mushrooms. I decided to throw some thickly sliced mushrooms in with the breadcrumbs and roast them with the cauliflower. What a great outcome I got - chewy to the tooth but still juicy, and where their juices had leaked out they collected and caramelised the herby breadcrumbs.

They were rich and full of flavour and even somewhat "buttery", with only a teaspoon of oil for all of the breadcrumbs, cauliflower and mushrooms. If you get a chance to roast some mushrooms this way, I highly recommend it.

Whilst the cauliflower and mushrooms were roasting, I braised some extra firm tofu that had been marinating in an adaptation of the Basic Baked Tofu marinade (page 144, Appetite for Reduction) - vegetable stock, balsamic vinegar, Braggs, thyme, garlic and Sriracha - for about two days (due to my having been sick). I fried them in a little oil in a wok, and then added 1/3 of the marinade and let it cook off at a high heat, turned the tofu, added another 1/3 of the marinade and let it cook off again at a high heat. I ended up with rich dark brown caramel tofu triangles that I packed away with some roasted cauliflower for lunch today (and tomorrow).

Finally, after I ate dinner, I made the Carrot-Ginger Dressing (page 52, Appetite for Reduction) and portioned that out for lunch.

And here is my gorgeous lunch today - baby spinach, brown rice, braised tofu, roasted cauliflower and carrot-ginger dressing (taken with my phone camera)

I found the raw garlic in the dressing a little intense - I would probably roast it before adding it next time I make it. Otherwise, the dressing is sweet and earthy from the carrots, has a little sting from the garlic and ginger (though I would probably up the ginger content next time as well) and is amazing with spinach!

Tonight after Pilates I didn't really know what I wanted for dinner - until I popped into the local organic co-op, Alfalfa House, and found asparagus for sale. Yoink! said I! and purchased some immediately.

I decided to roast the asparagus (as the stalks were quite thick) in breadcrumbs, ala cauliflower, but I added a little minced fresh garlic to the breadcrumbs. I made a creamy pasta sauce (this is my "sort-of recipe: 150g cauliflower, steamed; 1 teaspoon red miso; half a clove of garlic, minced; juice of one lemon; 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard; about 3 to 4 tablespoons nutritional yeast; about 2/3 to 1 cup of the cauliflower steaming water, whizz together in a food processor or with a stick blender) cooked the pasta and roasted the asparagus for the same amount of time, and tossed the sauce with the pasta in the saucepan to heat through. Served the pasta with asparagus on top, and extra breadcrumbs sprinkled over. Was everything that I wanted tonight!

I think that asparagus is possibly my favourite Spring vegetable - what's yours?

Vegan Mofo 2011: Brief musings

2011-10-12T22:02:00.000+11:00

I made a lovely dinner, but I'll post that tomorrow. I felt like doing a very brief not-about-food-as-such post, because I've been thinking about how children make the connection between animal and meat, cow and that steak on their plate, baby chicks and the wings they're chewing on. At some point we seem to make a conscious choice not to recognise that connection, to willfully engage in cognitive dissonance, to use animals for the brief experience of taste and texture, and to see only the flesh on our plates, not the animals we've (however distant we may be from the killing floor) killed.

According to my mother, I would become vegetarian on and off throughout most of my childhood, and I can remember knowing that what I was eating was of an animal - my mother, with her typical sense of bluntness, would refer to "hen's periods" ("would you like some scrambled hen's periods for breakfast?") and gave me soy milk when I was quite young (soy milk in the early 1970s being soy flour or dried soy milk powder mixed with water....It was not nice) and taught me that "cow's milk is for baby cows, not for humans".

It's not surprising that I would go vegetarian, and also no surprise that I would react to vegans the way that I did and that many others do - slapping my hands over my ears and going "lallalalalalalalalla" and clutching my cheese and generally refusing to acknowledge my implicit and explicit action (and lack thereof) and direct negative impact upon animals and environment, due solely to the choices I had made when I consumed.

The question "why did you become vegan?" is a difficult one for me - I did it with no education apart from cooking with vegan friends every weekend for a few months. I just knew that it was the right thing for me to do. And I was right - it's almost nine years later, and I've become more educated and more passionate and more convinced every day that the choice I made to go vegan was the most important choice I've ever made - for me, for the animals, for the Earth. And, wholly selfishly, being vegan has opened up opportunities I'd never thought that I would have - I'm a cookbook author, I've owned a vegan cafe, I get to do food demos at festivals and meet vegans and passionate people from around Australia and the world.

This has been something of a ramble, and I'll leave you now with a wonderful, and quite possibly very influential, piece or two out of one of my favourite children's books - The Great Ghost Rescue by Eva Ibbotson. Do keep reading, as there are some wonderful animal related quotes coming up!

The basic idea of the story is that the ghosts of Britain are being expelled from their ancestral haunting grounds by the encroaching highways, carparks, apartment buildings, discos etc. A family of ghosts encounter a boy named Rick and he travels with them to London to see the Prime Minister to get a ghost sanctuary set up.

One evening they encounter a family of vampire bats, led by Sucking Susie....

"You mean you used to fly in and suck people's blood at night? You really did?" said Rick, backing away.

"Certainly we did," said Susie, looking crossly at Rick. "What do you expect blood-sucking vampires to do except suck blood? The people never knew. A vampire that knows its job doesn't leave a hole bigger than a mosquito."

"Well I think it's disgusting all the same."

"Oh you do, do you? And what's that you're wearing on your feet, pray?" said Susie, her red eyes glinting.

"Shoes," said Rick, surprised.

"Exactly. Made of leather, no doubt. From a cow, I dare say. And I suppose you went up to the cow first and said 'Excuse me, Madam, but would you mind being murdered so that I can have a nice part of shoes?'"

Rick flushed. He hadn't thought of it like that.

"And what did you have for breakfast before you set out? Bacon, I suppose. From a pig."

Rick nodded.

"Precisely," said Susie. "What's more you didn't have the good manners just to go up to that pig and take only a little bite out of him so that he could go on living? Oh no. You had to kill the whole animal and slice it up. Really, humans beings make me tired."

And another salient point from Susie, a little later on:

"You can't go sucking the blood of cows...." Rick began.

"Oh we can't, can't we?" said Susie, turning on him. "And if you were a cow, which would you rather? A nip or two at night while you were asleep or people pounding and squeezing your udders and taking all the milk you wanted for your calf?"

This made me think, when I first read this as a six year old child, about what my responsibilities to animals are, what my rights are, what their rights are, and when I read this as an adult I see where some of my vegan seeds were sown.

(I love a lot of the throwaway lines that have such wonderful thoughts behind them. What about this:

Above Mrs Crawler hung an alligator with a pleasant smile. Mr Crawford was sitting under a sad-looking water buffalo. Barbara couldn't help thinking how odd it was that you could shoot and stuff animals whereas everyone would make an awful fuss if you shot and stuffed people who were mostly not nearly so nice.)

And some of my (albeit somewhat lazy these days) activist seeds were sown:

Barbara looked at him quietly for a moment. Then leant forward. "Before we came away I was reading about the polar bears," she yelled in his ear. "The ones in Alaska."

Rick nodded. "What about them?"

"They're in a very bad way. Becoming very rare. Extinct perhaps. Rich people go and hunt them from aeroplanes and snowmobiles. It's perfectly disgusting."

Rick was still silent but his face had changed. He was working things out. How soon could he get to Alaska, how much would it cost? Should he take Barbara and Peter or go alone? What exactly did polar bears eat?

Barbara watched him for a while. Then she leant back, satisfied. He'd be all right now. For a boy like Rick, there is always something important to do.

And that's what we, as vegans do, every single day - some simple, something profound, something important.

Vegan Mofo 2011: Where Do You Get Your Protein? Chili

2011-10-11T21:38:00.000+11:00

Or stew, as J. doesn't think that this qualifies as a chili, as there are no black or kidney beans in it. Either way, it's packed full of protein, chillies, herbs, vegetables and bountiful flavour.

Serves 4 to 6

1 teaspoon olive oil
1 brown onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 chipotle in about 2 tablespoons adobo sauce, chopped
1 canned jalapeno, chopped
1/2 carrot, diced (fresh or use some that came in the can with the jalapeno)
100g tempeh, finely chopped
100g red lentils
1 1/2 teaspoons ancho chile powder
3/4 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/2 fresh mango, chopped well
200g crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
6 to 8 cups water
1 tablespoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons Braggs (or soy sauce or tamari)
4 Brussels sprouts, quartered (optional)
1/3 + 1/6 cup quinoa
corn off one cob (about 1 cup)
1 tablespoon lime juice (not fresh)
1/4 cup lemon juice

Topping

1 bunch coriander, leaves chopped
1 to 2 large spring onions, finely chopped
1/2 to 1 avocado, chopped

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and saute the onion and garlic until the onion is translucent. Add the chipotle in adobo sauce and the jalapeno and the chopped carrot and cook, stirring occasionally for a minute or so. Add the tempeh and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring often. Add the lentils and mix thoroughly, and then add the chile powder, garam masala, chili flakes and dried oregano, and mix together. Cook for about a minute, stirring, then add about a cup of water and mix.

Add the mango and tomatoes to the mixture and stir through, then add the tomato paste, vegan Worcestershire sauce, Braggs and 4 cups water. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the red lentils are softened but not falling apart - about 30 minutes. Add water as required if the mixture is getting too thick.

Add about 2 more cups of water then add the quinoa, Brussels sprouts, corn, lime juice and lemon juice, stir together well and bring to a simmer again. Simmer until the quinoa is cooked and the mixture is thick and there is very little liquid.

Topping

Mix all of the ingredients in a small bowl.

Serve the chili topped with some of the topping and then nom (and hope that the four different types of chilli and citrus juices cure you of your sick - if you're me, that is!)

Vegan Mofo 2011: Brinner, AFR Style

2011-10-11T18:22:00.000+11:00

When I first started using Appetite for Reduction, and posting my adapted versions of the recipes, I really didn't think I'd be making as many of them as I have ended up making - I looked through the book and blog recently and was kind of blown away (and not necessarily in a good way) by how many I've made and posted!

So, whilst I'll still post pictures and reviews of the recipes, I'm not going to post recipes any more. All I can say is: Go, Buy, Now! It's a great investment and you really will learn a lot of new ideas and techniques - and get to eat some tasty foods! Isa posts lots of recipes over at theppk.com, so check them out as well!

Yesterday, all I could think about was Brinner, Brinner, Brinner. There was lots of to-ing and fro-ing about what I was going to make, but I knew that the Mango BBQ Beans from Appetite for Reduction (page 133) were going to be the centrepiece. And I'd probably grab some vege sausages, 'cos, frankly, sausages and beans is manna from heaven.

But what else? Whilst I was at the supermarket I saw Brussels Sprouts and vaguely recalled some sort of hash recipe, so grabbed them and a potato (on the logic that hash always involves potato) and was relieved to find, when I got home and went through AFR, that I had all of the ingredients to make Brussels Sprout-Potato Hash (page 65).

And here's the end results:

From left: Brussels Sprout-Potato Hash, two Sanitarium BBQ sausages, Mango BBQ Beans

Reviews

Mango BBQ Beans

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I do love a fruity sauce, and this one has the extreme sweet and exotic punch of soft rich mango. I don't really like mangoes by themselves (which must go against some sort of Australian/Queensland born rule) but I do really like them cooked into sauces, as icecream and in chutney. This recipe, again, was simple to make, took a little less time than the recipe said (it said to cook for about 45 minutes, but I found that 30 minutes or so took it to a really thick tasty sauce). The main change I made was to use garam masala in place of the ground coriander and allspice (as I had neither in the spice drawer) - it worked really nicely with the mango flavour and I think I'll keep it that way next time I make it. Mangoes are coming into season so there is definitely no reason not to rush out and make this immediately!

Brussels Sprout Potato Hash

The thing that I worry about most when making hash is that the ingredients will all stick to the pot I'm cooking in - as the cooking method is to saute ingredients and then cover and dry cook, only stirring occasionally, so that they can caramelise and steam. So I've got the concept down, but every time I make hash with potatoes, the caramelised tasty bits stick to the bottom of my pan and the potato cooks but does not get golden. This time was no different, sadly, but the flavours were gorgeous, the sprouts were still firm to the bite, and the addition of lemon zest (I kept the full amount even though I was making a half batch) really livened everything up. And the citrus note tied in well with the fruity beans. Next time I make this hash I'll roast it rather than try to cook it as directed - too much scrubbing required during washing up!!

I had a dessert of So Good Vanilla Bliss ice cream and chopped up bits of my vegan Picnic bars - totally indulgent and totally worth it.

Today I stayed at home sick (which I'm hoping to cure with some serious home made chili later) and had beans, sausages and defrosted leftover cornbread muffins for brunch - Brinner for Brunch!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Organic Golden Beetroot and AFR's Hottie Black Eyed Peas and Greens

2011-10-10T20:04:00.000+11:00

Yesterday I made the impulse buy of a bunch of organic golden beetroot - I've seen them on the intertubes, but never in person before!

Ain't they purty?

They were sold with their lovely bright greens attached, so I knew that I wanted to make a meal that included both the root and leaves. I thought that I'd let the beetroot sing by simply roasting them in oil and then seasoning them to serve. But what to do with the greens?

I flicked through the list of ingredients I had in the house and then flicked through Appetite for Reduction, and settled on Hottie Black Eyed Peas and Greens. And boy am I glad that I did!

I had a medium and a small golden beetroot, and a medium red beetroot. I scrubbed them, cut off the long tails and the piece where it meets the stalks, then wrapped them in separate pieces of foil and popped them directly onto the rack of a a hot (200 degrees Celsius) preheated oven.

Look at those beautiful jewels! The golden beetroot took a little less time to cook than the red beetroot - I ended up having to slice the red beetroot in half so that they would cook relatively evenly. I also, at about the 30 minute mark, put them on a baking tray as delicious juices had started leaking out of the foil packages.

Whilst the beetroot roasted, I trimmed the beetroot leaves and put them in a sinkful of cold water to soak to get rid of any dirt or insects or grit. I then shook them off and dried them in my handy salad spinner, before shredding them for the following recipe.

Recipe

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 119

1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, finely sliced
110g beetroot greens, shredded (or kale)
3/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt
215g black eyed peas, cooked
1/3 cup tomato sauce (ketchup) + 1/4 cup water + 1 teaspoon tomato paste, mixed together
1 tablespoon Cholula hot sauce + a dash of Sriracha
1/4 teaspoon liquid smoke

Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Saute the onion until translucent, using a little of the water to help if it sticks, for a few minutes. Add the garlic and saute a little more. Add the greens, 1/4 cup water and seasoning salt. Cover and cook down the greens for about 10 minutes. Add the black eyed beans, tomato sauce + water + tomato paste mixture, and the remaining 1/2 cup water and mix thoroughly. Cover the pot and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the hot sauce, Sriracha (for extra heat) and liquid smoke, mix and then use a potato masher to mash about half of the beans, to help thicken the sauce. Cook for another 5 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally. Taste for salt and heat - add more hot sauce or Sriracha as needed!

Review

This was so delicious! I'm a sucker for hot sauce, tomato and greens, so unsurprising that I loved this! I would be interested in trying this with crumbled tempeh as well, and as I have half a bunch of beetroot greens left I may well try it. Possibly have it over pasta...

....Hmmmmmm.

I'm really enjoying the fact that these recipes are so consistently appealing, easy and tasty!

Next post: Brinner, AFR style...

But for the moment I'll leave you with a picture of roasted beetroot gorgeousness (these were sweet, earthy, juicy, and utterly delicious).

Vegan Mofo 2011: Weekend Food Roundup

2011-10-09T21:44:00.000+11:00

Last night, after my chocolate creating fest, J. and I had a wonderfully savoury evening, where we drank lovely red one and watched hours of Iron Chef! I'd made a half batch of Chipotle-Lentil patties from Appetite for Reduction (keeping the full amount of chipotles and coriander), and we decided to have roast potatoes with our burgers...

J. put this deliciousness together - baby potatoes, olive oil, salt and fresh lemon thyme, tossed together and roasted, stirring occasionally, for about an hour at around 200 degrees (fan forced). I did introduce the idea of roasting whole garlic cloves with the potatoes, for spreading the insides of onto our burger buns later.

When the potatoes were almost ready, I popped the Chipotle-Lentil patties on top to warm them through (I prefer their texture on the second day after they've been made).

Here's my plate of roasted potatoes, patties and buns.

And the tasty vegetable and other fixings plate.

And finally, a burger all made up - roast garlic, avocado, butter lettuce, tomato, fried red onions, chipotle-lentil patty, chipotle sauce, hot salsa.... NOM!

We ate far, far too much - so much so that we had to lie on the floor, rubbing our bellies and groaning with food pleasure.

And a bonus shot of my lunch of the same day, which I had to counteract the sugar and chocolate in the air - Hoisin-Mustard Tofu from Appetite for Reduction, a half batch, with the full batch of sauce, broccoli and zucchini as the vegetables.

And my brunch from today - fresh za'atar from Man Oosh Pizzeria, topped with a scrambled tofu (firm tofu, tomato, Braggs and lemon juice), and finally heaps of nooch and Sriracha.

Hit my hungry tummy spot!

I'll be doing a separate post for my Sunday dinner, which was all from Appetite for Reduction (and gorgeously tasty!)

Vegan Mofo 2011: Giant Chocolate-Peanut Covered Caramel-Wafer Bars

2011-10-08T13:58:00.000+11:00

Or, for a shorter name, Vegan Picnic Bars....

There's a chocolate bar in Australia and the UK that was my preferred chocolate bar - on the odd occasions that I ate them. It's called a Picnic, and the advertising for it is that it's "deliciously ugly" - this is because it's a lumpy chocolate peanut covered bar. Hidden inside in the centre are a wafer biscuit, caramel and puffed rice.

I have found myself with incredibly strong peanut-chocolate combination desires recently, and got to thinking about this chocolate bar, which I haven't eaten in almost 9 years. So, of course, I decided that I could make a vegan version....

Warning: This is a half day exercise to create, but the results are pretty damned close to the original (so far as I can remember), incredibly rich, and, chopped up, will feed a lot of folks!

Making the bars is really a construction rather than a true "cooking" job. Start with your ingredients: vegan wafer biscuits (nougat flavour preferred, but I got chocolate and that worked well), chocolate, condensed soy milk (though if you can't find this I've included a recipe for caramel that doesn't need any fancy ingredients), rice syrup, puffed rice and salted peanuts.

You'll need two 200g packets of salted peanuts and I used six (yes, 6) blocks of Lindt 70% chocolate. This made about 12 bars.

Recipe

Caramel

1 320g can soy condensed milk
1/3 cup rice syrup

Place both ingredients into a medium saucepan over a low heat and let cook, stirring occasionally (it will bubble a lot, watch it to make sure it doesn't come up over the sides), for about 20 minutes, or until it is bubbling slowly, is smooth and the colour is darker. The caramel should coat the back of a spoon and start drying as soon as it hits the air.

OR

Don't have soy condensed milk? Try this one:

1/2 cup raw sugar
1/3 cup rice syrup
1/4 cup Nuttelex

Put the sugar and rice syrup into a medium saucepan over a low heat, and melt together and cook, stirring occasionally, until droplets put into cold water turn into pliable but firm blobs. Take off the heat and whisk through the Nuttelex.

I cooked my sugar based caramel past the soft ball stage, so the bars I made with it have more of a crunch. But this is not a bad thing!

Now for the first set of construction.

Line a cookie tray with baking paper.

Put 1/3 cup puffed rice onto a flat plate.

Cover your individual wafers completely with caramel and press the caramel covered wafers into the puffed rice to cover as much as possible.

I used a variety of tools to do this - especially as the caramel cooled and started hardening, it became more difficult to spread it. Possibly having the caramel in a microwave safe bowl and zapping it for 10 seconds whenever it gets too tough to spread (and, you know, having a microwave!) would help - I just ended up pressing the firm caramel onto the wafers with my fingers!

I found a set of tongs were helpful in holding the wafers while I smeared the caramel on them - but the tongs got covered too!

Sticky tongs!!

Put the caramel and puffed rice covered wafers onto the baking paper lined cookie tray and set to one side to firm up at room temperature.

Soy caramel

Sugar caramel

All lined up on a baking tray

Whilst the caramel is setting, melt two blocks of chocolate in a double boiler (a Pyrex or metal bowl suspended over a saucepan with boiling water - do not let the water touch the bottom of the bowl!).

Cover the bars completely in chocolate and put into the fridge to get the chocolate to set.

Whilst the bars are setting in the fridge, melt the other two blocks of chocolate over the double boiler, and stir through the salted peanuts.

Spoon some chocolate peanut mixture over the top of the bars and put back into the fridge to set. Turn the bars onto their thin sides and spoon a little more chocolate peanut mixture along the sides. Put back into the fridge to set. Repeat to put chocolate peanut mixture on the underside of the bars and the other thin side of the bars.

Then, when you're in the mood for something seriously sugary, chocolatey and rich, cut yourself off a chunk (though not with a ceramic knife - mine chipped when it hit some of the caramel and I didn't notice and then ate a little and cut my tongue. Oops!) and chow on down (I did this with a big glass of water on the side - but I'm not very good with sugar!!)

Soy caramel cross section

Sugar caramel cross section

I actually had a little chocolate peanut mixture left over, and mixed through some puffed rice and created little balls to have later.

This was labour intensive but satisfying. It was the first time that I worked with turning condensed milk into caramel, pre-gan or vegan, so I was well chuffed that it worked the way that I expected it to!

If you've got a half day free, this is a great way to spend that time. SUGAR RUSH!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Images from my upcoming cookbook

2011-10-07T21:21:00.000+11:00

So, I had a crappy day (involving, at one point, crying in the bathroom at work), and when I got home all I wanted was comfort food pasta.

So I didn't think that I'd have a post for today, but then I thought that it would be fun to share some of the images of recipes from my upcoming (Easter-ish 2012) second cookbook, Wrapped in Pastry.

Caramelised Onion Tarts

Black Forest Tarts

Pate en Croute


Roast Vegetable & Hummus Tart

Aussie Picnic Pie

Peanut Butter Caramel Blueberry Pie

Our photoshoot set up - Martin (the photographer) is a genius!

My first cookbook, Vegan Indulgence (which, as a small segue, is almost sold out of its print run - so cool! If you want a copy, get to my publisher aduki or your local stockist of vegan cookbooks and see if you can snag one!), concentrated solely on desserts and sweet things. Which was great and a lot of fun, and I'm very proud of the recipes. This time was even more fun, where I got to explore many of the lovely things you can do with pastry, and to have an equal number of sweet and savoury dishes. And I'm very pleased and more than a little obsessed with my sausage rolls recipe!

I was really happy with the photos that resulted from our photoshoots (even with rainy days and constrained timeframes) so am well chuffed to share them with you!

Extreme food porn and self promotion out of the way, tomorrow will return to our usual programming. I have been obsessing about making a vegan Picnic bar, so fingers crossed there'll be a post about that adventure!

Vegan Mofo 2011: AFR's Eggplant-Chickpea Curry & 2nd Ave Vege Korma

2011-10-06T21:40:00.001+11:00

I'm a big curry fan - Indian, Thai, Indonesian, love all of them and more! But I have to have at least two curries on my plate to get some variety in flavours, textures and palate experience.

So I decided to make the Eggplant-Chickpea Curry (because it sounded like heaven!) and the 2nd Ave Vegetable Korma for the "I'm eating vegetables!" kick.

I also contemplated the Cashew-Cranberry Biryani, but figured that I'd be pushed making the curries, so I decided on my fallback Cardomom Perfumed Rice (with added coriander tonight).

The meal almost didn't get made - I had Pilates until after 7pm and seriously considered getting takeaway pizza - but I persevered, and fortified with a few dried dates and peanut butter I got down to the serious business of cooking.

Recipes

Eggplant-Chickpea Curry

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 230

1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
1 1/2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
1/2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon chilli flakes
225g fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped
455g fresh eggplant, cut into 1cm cubes
1/2 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt
1 teaspoon mild curry powder
1 teaspoon garam masala (heaped)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 - 1 cup vegetable stock
215g cooked/canned chickpeas

Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over a low-medium heat. Saute the onion until translucent, using a little of the vegetable stock as needed if the onion sticks. Add the garlic and ginger and saute for another minute.

Add the eggplant and cook, stirring occasionally, for a couple of minutes. Add the tomatoes and salt, and stir through and cook for another couple of minutes. Add the curry powder, garam masala and cumin and stir through, then pour in 3/4 cup vegetable stock. Mix well.

Cover, put the heat up to a medium-high heat to bring to a middling simmer and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes - or until the Korma is ready to be covered. Remove the lid and add the chickpeas, stir through and continue to simmer, uncovered and stirring occasionally, until the rest of the meal is ready - about 15 to 20 minutes.

2nd Avenue Vegetable Korma

1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 onion, sliced into thin half moons
1 1/2 garlic, finely sliced
1 tablespoon finely sliced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon mild curry powder
1/2 teaspoon garam masala (heaped)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon coriander seeds, crushed
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable stock
180g cauliflower, cut into florets (and any peeled chopped stem)
180g broccoli, cut into florets (and any peeled chopped stem)
115g carrot, sliced on the 1/4cm thick diagonal
1/3 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup coconut milk
1 1/2 tablespoons dessicated coconut

(Put the rice on in the rice cooker before starting this recipe).

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over a low-medium heat, and saute the onion for about 3 minutes until translucent. Add the garlic and ginger and saute for another minute.

Add the stock to deglaze the pan, and mix in the spices and salt. Add the vegetables - they won't be submerged, and make sure that the broccoli is above the liquid.

Cover and bring the heat up to a fast simmer, and simmer until the vegetables are tender - about 10 minutes.

Uncover, add the peas, coconut milk and dessicated coconut. Stir through well and take off the heat. Leave until the rice is ready and then serve.

Cardamom-Coriander Perfumed Rice

Put 1 cup basmati rice, about 8 cardamom pods and a teaspoon of coriander seeds into a rice cooker. Cover with 2 cups vegetable stock, stir together and then cover and set to cook.

Review

I found these curries a little less complex in flavour than I usually enjoy but when I finished them with a squeeze of lemon juice, the flavours all came together really well. I yummed them down!! The rice was simple enough and with occasional bursts of strong coriander flavour that the vegetables in the curries really shone.

The curries were a bit fiddly to make, especially as I was home much later than usually, but really, if you prep the onion, garlic and ginger together you're really only active in the cooking for about 30 minutes and then food is ready about 20 minutes after that.

I'd probably add some more heat to the eggplant and maybe add some peanuts or cashews to the korma next time.

As with pretty much all of the recipes I've tried from AFR, these were easy, fun, tasty and something I would make again.

Vegan Mofo 2011: Random Dining Out - Bling Bling Dumpling

2011-10-05T21:26:00.001+11:00

J. and I had braved the shopping centre to find me a resuming-Pilates outfit. We had decided upon Crazy Noodle as our destination for dinner when we found ourselves arrested by the name of a Chinese restaurant on the way.

Bling Bling Dumpling.

Seriously. How could we not check if they had vegan options??

We had a squizz at the menu and one minor "Are there eggs in the dumpling skins? What about milk? What are the vegetarian options without eggs?" interrogation of the waiter done we decided to try it out.

The food was middling ok, but really, it was totally worth it for the decor alone....

Sequin covered walls!

Xmas decorations! Sparkly silver tablecloth! Heart shaped box containing toothpicks!

What is that thing, perched above the display of laughing Buddhas, frogs & beer?

A knotted upside down flamingo lamp, of course!

The menu was a "choose the way it's cooked + choose a filling" one, and the only vegan option was a two bean filling, so we went with panfried two bean dumplings.

They looked gorgeous (and, just as a quick segue, I got a new phone based almost entirely upon the fact that it has a good camera - and boy is it ever an improvement on my old phone's camera!) but sadly they were starch with starch inside - same texture all through. And the two bean wasn't red bean or anything exciting like that - nope, looked like pinto and borlotti! I was very hungry and didn't mind the starchy experience, especially when doused in black vinegar and soy sauce, but I wouldn't order them again.

We chose stir fried chilli vegetable noodles, and thankfully they were able to swing the meal out of the doldrums and into the tasty again.

They were hot, tasty, full of cabbage and chilli, and hit the noodle spot nicely.

We had only ordered the above but realised that we probably needed some vegetables. I aimed straight for my favourite vegetable - broccoli - and ordered the garlic broccoli.

Hot, salty, the broccoli still with some bite, and very very garlicky - with the bonus addition of black fungus!! I found this one a definite winner and would come back and try other dishes just on the merit of this one.

J. went straight for his preferred vegetable - potato - and ordered the chilli potato stir fry.

Sadly, he found the potato undercooked for his tastes, and was most unimpressed. I didn't mind the crunch of the potato (though my tummy is a bit sore now) and liked the simple stir fry well enough, but wouldn't order it again.

We did spend a lot of time going through the menu with the wait staff, asking about fish and eggs and chicken stock and all the other hidden things that can sneak into restaurant food, and our waitress was so excited to find out that we were pure vegetarian that she asked me lots of questions about how long I'd been vegetarian and why I'd gone vegetarian and how much she admired vegetarians. It was lovely. I am tempted to go back purely as vegan outreach to her!!

So, for a random weeknight "this place looks do-able" experience, it was pretty good. We were amused that my beer came with a straw (!!) where J.'s didn't - gotta love the gender specific straw! - and, as mentioned, the decor really has to be seen (in person it's even more insane) to be believed!

Bling Bling Dumpling
5/185 Broadway
Ultimo

Vegan Mofo 2011: AFR's Pea (Edamame) Pesto Pasta & Buffalo Tempeh

2011-10-04T20:35:00.001+11:00

A friend of mine once accused me of being a plain-food-colour-bigot - in that I would have red cabbage instead of white, sweet potato instead of potato, carrot and beetroot instead of lettuce... You get the drift. And, given that the first thing I thought when I contemplated putting these two recipes together was "Oh, how cool will the bright green and the bright orange-y red look together?", she could well be right.

Buffalo Tempeh is definitely my new favourite way to prepare & nom upon tempeh. I find myself coming back to it again and again, and it's always brilliant. Tonight I used some garlic powder in it rather than fresh garlic as I'm very low on fresh garlic. Still worked out tasty and wonderful.

Pea (Edamame) Pesto

I have frozen peas in the freezer, not edamame, and I'm a bit skint so I'm making my recipes with what's in the flat, not buying any new ingredients!

Adapted from Spinach Linguine with Edamame Pesto, Appetite for Reduction, page 174

Pea Pesto

1 clove garlic, chopped
1 small bunch basil, roughly chopped
200g frozen peas, thawed
1/2 cup cold vegetable stock
juice of one small lemon
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

Put the garlic and basil into a food processor and process until chopped together. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until very smooth. It's quite liquid, but that will help when cooking it into the pasta.

100g angelhair pasta
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
120g button mushrooms, sliced (thick enough so that they'll have a little body and bite after cooking)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
sprinkle of Herbamare seasoning salt

Put a pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta.

When the water is boiling, add the angelhair pasta and stir. Heat a wok and brush with the olive oil. Add the mushrooms and toss until they start sizzling a little. Add the garlic, thyme and salt, stir through, and cover with a lid, stirring occasionally, and cook whilst the pasta boils.

Drain the pasta and add to the mushrooms, stirring with tongs to coat. Pour in the pea pesto in two batches, cooking and stirring everything together to thickly and lusciously coat the pasta and mushrooms.

Serve with Buffalo Tempeh on the side and top with enough nooch that your nooch-addicted cat attempts to eat the pasta....

Review

This was so lovely - you'd think that the delicate sweetness of the pesto would be blown away by the hot spicy tempeh, but the flavours of both shone through when combined. I love the flavour of pea and basil together and can't imagine making this with anything else - even though the original recipe uses edamame! I also liked that I learned (yet another) new technique - to quickly saute mushrooms and then cover, stirring occasionally - they get caramelised and cooked through, but not soggy, oily or limp. Definitely going to use that technique again!

This is a really good, quick, tasty and above all colourful weeknight dinner - definitely recommended!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Birthday Carrot-Coconut-Pineapple Cake

2011-10-04T07:40:00.001+11:00

My sister and her husband have birthdays very close to each other. I'm always crap at birthday presents, so usually I will cook for them. Last year we went to Rubyos for my sister's birthday (my first, but most definitely not my last, Rubyos experience - vegans of Sydney, I cannot recommend their service to vegans enough. Ring/email and ask about having a vegan menu put together for you, and then book for your next important occasion dinner. You will not regret it.) I think the year before I made them a vegan Mexican feast. This year I made a birthday cake for when my mother, J. and I went over to their place for dinner.

Birthday Carrot-Coconut-Pineapple Cake

Adapted from Ginger-Macadamia-Coconut-Carrot cake, Vegan with a Vengeance, page 215

2 1/3 cups plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon (heaping) ground nutmeg
2/3 cup pineapple juice (or juice/syrup from the canned crushed pineapple)
1/3 cup orange juice
1/2 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/3 cup crushed pineapple (canned - fresh, the enzymes can cause baking to fail)
1 cup shredded coconut
2 cups (heaping) grated carrots

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Have ready two 8 inch round springform pans.

In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg.

In another large mixing bowl, beat together the pineapple juice, orange juice, canola oil, sugar, maple syrup and vanilla extract. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in three batches, combining well with a whisk between batches.

Fold through the pineapple, coconut and carrots.

Divide evenly between the two pans and smooth the tops. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a skewer in the center comes out clean.

Cool in the pans for about 5 minutes, then remove the round sides and cool for another 15 minutes. Turn upside down and gently remove the bottom of the pans from the cakes - you will likely need to loosen the sides - and then cool completely.

Coconut Icing

I was going to get soy cream cheese and make lemon cream cheese icing for this - which, in my mind, always goes with carrot cake - but forgot to buy any so made the following icing:

Adapted from Coconut Heaven Cupcakes, Vegan with a Vengeance, page 227

1/2 cup coconut cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups icing sugar
1 1/3 cups shredded coconut
1 cup dessicated coconut

Beat the coconut cream and vanilla extract together. Beat in the icing sugar. Use a fork to stir in the shredded and dessicated coconut. This will be a very thick but slightly sticky spoonable and spreadable icing.

Other

2/3 cup crushed pineapple

Put half of the coconut icing on one of the cooled cakes. Put the crushed pineapple mostly into the centre with some of it peeking out the edges on top of the icing.

Like so

Put the other half of the coconut icing on the the other of the cooled cakes. Carefully put the second cake on top of the first cake to form a layer cake. Leave uncovered at room temperature to "set" the sticky icing a little, for about 40 minutes, and then carefully cover with cling wrap and put into the fridge - unless you're serving immediately, in which case just dig in!

J.'s ginormous slice of cake

As a bonus, here are some shots of the delicious dinner my sister made for us (all vegan, of course!)

Eggplant & asparagus curry (left). Sweet potato & pea curry (right).


Chickpea curry

It was all so good!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Arroz con (Orange Mojo) Seitan

2011-10-03T08:48:00.001+11:00

I had a really hard time thinking up what to make for the last meal I was cooking for my mum during her stay. Nothing from Appetite for Reduction appealed to me, I had kinda used up my inventiveness with the lasagne, and once I opened Viva Vegan! I had a craving for gorgeous Latin flavours again - but I didn't want to have to leave the house to get extra ingredients.

I had all of the ingredients for Orange Mojo Seitan (I adore the orange mojo marinade) and was tossing around many things that I could have it with. I finally settled on making Arroz con Seitan (which I've made before) but adding in an extra stage of cooking the seitan chunks in orange mojo. And subbing a few ingredients.

Arroz con (Orange Mojo) Seitan

Steamed White Seitan

Page 35, Viva Vegan!

Seitan cooling post steaming

Mojo Oven-Roasted Seitan

Page 104, Viva Vegan!

I followed this recipe to the letter except for not using any of the (3 tablespoons!) of olive oil, and cutting the seitan into1cm by 5cm chunks rather than in thin strips. I also baked it for a little longer, to get the marinade well and truly infused into the seitan.

Arroz con Seitan

Mmmm juicy orange mojo seitan...

Adapted from Arroz con Seitan, page 145, Viva Vegan!

Seitan from above
1 tablespoon olive oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, chopped finely
6 spring onions, white and a little of the green, chopped finely
1 large zucchini, chopped finely
1/2 cup crushed tomatoes + 2 tablespoons tomato sauce + 1 tablespoon tomato paste, blended together
1 cup vegetable stock + 1 1/4 cups vegetable stock
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 large bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups long grain rice
1 cup frozen peas
1 large carrot, chopped finely
1/2 cup kalamata olives, chopped
1/4 cup capers
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons oregano
3/4 teaspoon turmeric

Brush a wok with a little olive oil and sear the mojo oven roasted seitan chunks, turning occasionally, until they are crisp and dark on the edges. Put back into the glass tray they were roasted in and set to one side.

If you have a Dutch oven or enamel glazed cast iron pot, use them! I used a heavy bottomed saucepan and the rice stuck and created a crust on the bottom. It was fairly easy to remove but it did mean that I had to keep stirring the mixture, which you shouldn't do.

Heat the olive oil in your cooking pot over a medium heat, and saute the garlic, onion, spring onion and zucchini slowly, stirring often, until the vegetables are very soft and broken down, about 15 minutes. Take this time to prep everything else.

Pour in the tomato mixture, 1 cup vegetable stock, dried oregano, cumin, bay leaf and turmeric (I use this to get the yellow colour, as I don't use annatto oil due to being allergic to annato), stir and simmer for 4 minutes. Add the rice, 1 1/4 cups vegetable stock, peas and carrots; cover and bring the mixture to a boil. Remove the lid, reduce the heat to a low simmer and push the seared seitan strips down into the mixture. Sprinkle sliced olives and capers over the top, cover the saucepan again and cook at a low simmer for about 25 minutes, or until rice is tender (if you're me and the rice has stuck to the bottom, add another 1/2 cup of water and stir every 5 minutes or so).

Remove from the heat, keeping covered, and set aside for 10 minutes to cool. Serve and nom on down.

I'm not sure that the added step of cooking the seitan in orange mojo made much difference to the dish, except for adding a slightly different depth of flavour to the seitan, but it fulfilled my psychological need for orange mojo! I am always happy but not ecstatic with Arroz con Seitan - part of that is because I always burn the rice, part of it is because it's a lot more work for something that is, as my mother commented, "delicious glorified risotto" and finally because once I start eating it, I don't ever want to stop because it is so damned tasty (and I know that I have to control myself)!!

Vegan Mofo 2011: Lazy Home Made Baked Beans

2011-10-03T07:16:00.000+11:00

It was a rainy, cold, wet and early morning. My usual breakfast of puffed quinoa and maple-almond cereal wasn't really appealing. I had a can of borlotti beans kicking about. And a can of tomatoes. The plan formed: baked beans on toast.

Perfection.

Spicy Smoky Lazy Baked Beans

400g can crushed tomatoes
1 can borlotti beans, drained (approximately 260g)
1 heaping tablespoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 heaping teaspoon marjoram
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon liquid smoke (optional)
2 shakes Cholula (or Tabasco) hot sauce
1 tablespoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon Braggs (optional - taste for salt)

Put all of the ingredients into a medium saucepan and mix well. Place over a medium-high heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have thickened and darkened - about 20 minutes. Use this time to make your coffee (or juice or tea or what have you) and toast.

I served mine with Polish rye bread topped with fresh avocado.

Damn fine breakfast.

Vegan Mofo 2011: Plantains 2 Ways, Sober Beans and Brazilian Orange Rice

2011-10-02T09:43:00.000+11:00

In last year's Vegan Mofo, I posted an ode to Viva Vegan! Whilst it has recently been replaced in my cookbook affections with Appetite for Reduction, I'm often thinking about VV when I'm cooking from AFR (bad me!)

Having my mother staying for the long weekend is an excuse for me to show off my cooking skills and definitely an excuse to make foods that I love or have been wanting to make for a while. I have a lot more comfort in blindly following recipes from Viva Vegan! than any other cookbook I've ever used as I am yet to come across a recipe that did not work exactly as Terry said.

So last night I thought that I'd make two recipes I'd made before - tostones and roasted plantains - and then two recipes I've been thinking about for a very long time - Drunken (though I made them Sober) Beans and Brazilian Orange Rice.

Mmmmmm. So tasty.

So, I pretty much made most of the components of the meal as per the recipes in the book. However, I did play around a fair amount with the Drunken Beans recipe, so I'll post my adaptation of that at the end.

Plantains Two Ways

My mother's photo of a delicious twice fried tostone

Tostones (page 119, Salsa Golf page 53, Viva Vegan!) - plantain sliced and then soaked in salted warm water, patted dry, fried, drained of oil, pressed flat, fried again, sprinkled with salt.

So good. These were definitely my mother's preferred way to eat plantains. And she ended up really appreciating the Salsa Golf (or my adaptation thereof: vegan mayonnaise, tomato sauce, Sriracha, Cholula hot sauce, salt and lime juice) with the tostones - which was a win because as I was making it she was a bit dubious (I believe the phrase "that looks interesting" with the facial expression "EUWWWWW" was bandied about).

Plain Roasted Plantain

Roasted Plantain (adapted from the "Just Roasted Plantains" note on page 118, Viva Vegan!) - I simply sliced a ripe plantain in half and put it into a 180 degree Celsius oven, covered with foil, and baked for about half an hour, flipping once. Then, to serve, topped with salt, lime juice and nooch.

Roasted Plantain all dressed up

I actually really like plantains like this - don't get me wrong, tostones are definite favourites, but the banana-y-ness of the plantain is heightened by roasting, and mixed with salty, citrusy and noochy flavours, it really does it for me. My mother, not so much.

Brazilian Orange Rice

(Page 98, Viva Vegan!)

As you can probably tell, I'm a big citrus fan. I had made the lime rice previously, so this was a similar way with different citrus. Subtle and flavoursome, rice just toothsome without being chalky, I loved this. I think the only thing I would do when making this in the future would be to reduce the oil - I followed the recipe exactly and found that it was far too oily for my recently low-fat palate. However, the oiliness and orange worked well together, made fresh by the coriander and complemented the earthy heat of the Sober Beans exceptionally well.

Seitan Chorizo


Straight out of the oven and cooling

(Page 36, Viva Vegan!)

I've never had chorizo pre-vegan, so I'm not sure if this is "authentic" to that experience. What I do know is that the chipotle variant I make (without removing the seeds from the chipotle, because why would you?) is a favourite of mine. In this batch, I left out the cumin and added turmeric (as I was using olive oil instead of annatto oil). It's very soft straight out of the oven and remains quite soft when slicing, so chill for as long as possible before use.

Sober Beans

I opted out of a couple of steps with this recipe - one was cooking the beans from scratch (because I didn't have any pinto beans in the house to soak them for long enough), another was using pinto beans (because I couldn't find any in tins, I went with a mix of kidney and borlotti beans) and finally I chose not to use the beer and tequila, instead using vegetable stock.

This was a deeply flavoursome, spicy but in a way where you could taste the various types of chilli rather than "OW HOT!", and very simple to make, especially using tinned beans. And having gotten up very early on the day and made the chorizo before 9am!

Adapted from page 91, Viva Vegan!

Serves 3

1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed (approximately 260g)
1 can borlotti beans, drained and rinsed (approximately 260g)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 red onion, diced
1 pickled jalapeno, diced
2 links seitan chorizo (chipotle variant), diced finely
3/4 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon ancho chile powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 cup crushed tomatoes
250 - 300mL vegetable stock

Garnish

1/2 cup finely diced spring onions
1/4 cup finely chopped coriander
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 pickled jalapeno, finely chopped
sprinkle Herbamare seasoning salt

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium high heat. Saute the onion and jalapeno until the onion is translucent. Add the chopped chorizo and cook for about 5 to 8 minutes, stirring often - it will stick but when you deglaze with tomatoes and stock there will be lots of flavour!

Add the oregano, chile powder, and cumin and stir through. Add the diced tomatoes and stock and stir through, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan to make sure that all of the stuck bits come off. The liquid should come about 1 inch above the other ingredients, so add more stock as required to cover.

Put the heat to a semi-vigourous simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thick and saucy, not soupy. This takes about 40 minutes, so set the rice to cook about 20 minutes in to making the beans.

Just before you're ready to serve, mix together the garnish ingredients in a bowl and serve on the side, letting people put as much or as little as they like on the beans.

Vegan Mofo 2011: Tempeh Lasagne and Roasted Garlic Bread

2011-10-01T08:18:00.001+10:00

Hurrah! Vegan Mofo 2011 is here! I've subscribed to the feed and there are, OMG, over 600 blogs to enjoy! I'm going to be reading posts well into next year, I suspect!

Onto recipes, the reason why we're all here!

Tempeh-Mushroom Lasagne

Serves 4

I wanted to make my mother and myself a lovely rich lasagne, but I wanted to keep to my low fat, calorie tracking ways as much as possible. I was also interested to see if I could successfully use the lessons that I've been learning whilst cooking from Appetite for Reduction.

Tempeh Sauce

1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 red onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
300g mushrooms, thinly sliced
125g zucchini, thinly sliced
225g tempeh, grated
75g kalamata olives, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
2 x 400g cans of crushed tomatoes
1 1/3 cans water
1 vegetable stock cube

Heat the one teaspoon of olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and saute the onions and garlic until the onions are translucent - a couple of minutes. Add the mushrooms and zucchini and stir through well. Allow to saute without stirring for a couple of minutes, then stir, and continue sauteeing until the mushrooms and zucchini have started releasing moisture, which will deglaze the pan effectively. Keep sauteeing until the vegetables are soft and beginning to break down. Add the grated tempeh and olives, and stir through. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring regularly.

Add the oregano, marjoram and chilli flakes and stir through. Add the tomato paste and vegan Worcestershire sauce and stir through to completely mix. Pour in the crushed tomatoes and water and stir through completely. Bring the mixture to a rapid simmer and cook until most of the liquid has cooked off, about 25 to 30 minutes, stirring regularly.

Whilst the tempeh mixture is cooking, make the cheezy sauce.

Cheezy Sauce

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 173

3 cups hot vegetable stock
1/3 cup plain flour
2/3 cups nutritional yeast
juice of 1 lemon
dash of hot sauce
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Put the plain flour and nutritional yeast into a medium saucepan and whisk through the vegetable stock until there are minimal lumps. Put the saucepan over a medium heat and cook for about 5 minutes, whisking constantly, until the sauce is thickened. Whisk through the lemon juice, hot sauce and Dijon mustard and take off the heat and set to one side.

And the rest

250g lasagne sheets

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Put a ladleful of the tempeh mixture into the bottom of a deep casserole dish (approximately 25 to 30cm long by about 20cm wide and at least 10cm deep). Put lasagne sheets on top of the mixture, and then put another couple of ladlesful of the tempeh mixture on top of the lasagne sheets and smooth to cover. Pour in a ladleful or two of the cheezy sauce and smooth to cover. Continue layering lasagne sheets, tempeh mixture and cheezy sauce until you have enough tempeh mixture and cheezy sauce for one layer. Then, instead of topping the tempeh mixture with cheezy sauce, put on a layer of lasagne sheets and finally top with cheezy sauce to completely cover the lasagne sheets.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until bubbly and golden and the lasagne sheets are tender (test this by pushing a skewer through the lasagne).

In the last 10 minutes of cooking, put the roasted garlic bread (below) in the oven to cook with the lasagne.

Roasted Garlic Bread

Serves 4

I really wanted to have garlic bread with the lasagne, but I didn't want to have it dripping with oil. This was my compromise and it was, if I say so myself, bloody brilliant.

2 heads garlic
1/2 tablespoon red miso
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon water
small handful of fresh basil leaves, finely shredded
1 baguette

First, roast the garlic. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Remove as much of the papery skin as possible, then wrap the garlic in foil. Put into the oven and roast until the garlic is softened - about 30 minutes. Unwrap from the foil and set to one side to cool.

When the garlic is cool, squeeze or remove the garlic flesh and put it into a food processor. Add the miso, lemon juice, olive oil and water into the food processor with the garlic and blend until completely smooth. Stir through the shredded basil leaves.

Cut the baguette into quarters and slice each quarter almost all the way through, so as to create four connected slices.

Smear the roasted garlic mixture between each slice, on the last slice and a little over the top of the loaf. Wrap in foil and set to one side until time to cook.

I was so chuffed with these recipes, especially when I ran them through myfitnesspal.com and got the nutritional information. The Tempeh-Mushroom Lasagne comes out at 604 calories per serve (4 servings in one casserole dish) and the Roasted Garlic Bread comes out at 309 calories per serve (4 servings in one baguette). Not the lowest of low calories, but pretty damn fine for a "treat" meal - and I'm especially chuffed with the garlic bread, as other garlic bread had calorie values around 1000 per serve...

It's nice to know that I'm learning some different techniques for cooking. I'm interested in having an interesting and tasty life, but also a long and healthy life, so finding a way to live my life well and lose weight comfortably is important to me.

Having said that, today I'm off to yum cha and tonight I'm making my mum a Latin feast including tostones. It's going to be tasty fun!

Stop! Random Cat Photos Time.

2011-09-30T07:30:00.000+10:00

So, I made two repeats for dinner last night (herb roasted cauliflower and smoked tofu with pasta shells in kalamata olive marinara) so I didn't take photos or post anything. Tonight I may be straying from the AFR path and making either lasagna or risotto for my mum. I haven't decided yet. I was going to make something new but that always stresses me out when I'm cooking for someone else.

In the meantime, have some random cat photos that I have taken recently.

You have to squint but up the back of the room is the shop cat from Fiji Market in Newtown. It loves attention (I spend half of my time in the shop giving it scritches) but doesn't like when that attention is divided when you're trying to take a photo - thus the long distance photo!

Keeping to the shop cat theme...

There is a photo printing internet access document printing everything printing place in Newtown and this is their shop cat. I had met it a couple of times before but it had run away from me when I tried to approach it. This time, as you can see, it was more than happy to accept my worship.

Black and white seems to be a recurring theme in shop cats, especially along Enmore Road (there's at least two that I've seen). This is one of them - the shop cat for a kink wear shop. It's always wonderful to see it sunning itself amongst the PVC bustiers...

I was going to add photos of my cats Squeak and Lucie but Blogger's photo loading function is being sucktastic so I'm going to leave you with shop cats and go and get ready for work!

Are there shop cats in your area?

Appetite for Reduction: Masala Tofu

2011-09-28T21:09:00.000+10:00

I came home from work, hungry and tired, and overwhelmed with the need for something carb-y, hearty and warm. I was tempted by pizza but as I had found this morning that I'd lost 3cm since embarking on cooking from Appetite for Reduction, I decided to continue the good work.

So I thought I'd have pasta with a marinara adaptation and some Masala Tofu. However, when I read through the recipe, I realised that I would have to wait for at least an hour and a half to get dinner into mah belleh, so I hacked it somewhat! Thankfully, it all turned out to be exactly what I wanted!

Recipes

Masala Tofu

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 146

This was a full batch, so that I can use some in my lunch tomorrow.

Marinade

3/4 cup vegan "beef" style stock, hot
3 teaspoons mirin
3 teaspoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Braggs
2 tablespoons mild curry powder
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 inch fresh ginger, thinly sliced

350g tofu, cut into 1cm wide slices, then into squares, then into triangles
1 teaspoon vegetable oil

Mix all of the marinade ingredients together. Put the tofu into a shallow flat bottomed bowl and cover with the marinade. Leave for about 10 minutes as you prep the pasta sauce.

Brush the vegetable oil into a wok and heat over medium-high heat. Place the tofu into the wok in a single layer and cook on one side for about 5 minutes without touching it - or until golden. Carefully flip the tofu and cook for another couple of minutes. Pour over the marinade, whack the heat up to quite high and simmer, stirring the tofu occasionally, until the marinade has cooked away and the tofu is coloured and covered in thickened marinade. Cover, take off the heat and set to one side until the pasta is ready.

Pea & Zucchini Marinara

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 193

2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 tablespoon Braggs
340g passata
100g fresh zucchini, sliced in half and then into 1cm thick half moons
100g frozen peas
100g small pasta shells

Pour the passata into a deep sided frying pan and add the garlic, chilli flakes and Braggs and stir through. Put the heat to medium-high and then simmer, stirring occasionally, until the colour is darker and thickened a little. Add the zucchini and cover with the sauce, cooking until tender (you may need to turn the heat down). Finally, add the peas, cover and take off the heat.

Whilst the sauce is cooking, cook the pasta in boiling salted water.

Drain the pasta and stir through the sauce. Serve with the masala tofu on the side.

Review

I was chuffed that the Masala Tofu cooked up so well and so tastily using a different technique from the cookbook - and it's unlikely that I'll use any other method, as I'm a fan of quick into mah belleh foods!

The simple curry flavour of the tofu meshed surprisingly well with the pasta sauce, and the chilli in the pasta sauce pulled the disparate elements together. I will definitely make the masala tofu again, was a great flavour and texture!

And, finally, here's my lunch from today - buffalo tempeh and veggie potpie stew wraps, with strawberries.

My mother is coming to stay on Friday, and I'm excited to share some of these recipes with her! Though I may well indulge in some macnnotcheese goodness with her too.

Appetite for Reduction: Potato-Spinach Curry & Tamarind Quinoa

2011-09-27T21:27:00.000+10:00

J. and I aimed to get some Indian food last night and sadly the place we went didn't really appeal to either of us, so we went to Green Palace instead. We had Pad Thai and Pad Kee Mok and mushroom toast and curry puffs. So it wasn't all that bad.

However, my desire for Indian food resurfaced halfway through the work day and I decided on curry and quinoa for dinner.

Mmmmmmm.

Recipes

Potato-Spinach Curry

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 232

1/2 teaspoon + 1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1/4 red onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 tomato, chopped
1/2 tablespoon mild curry powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable stock
215g cooked chickpeas
115g potatoes
115g sweet potatoes
250g frozen chopped spinach
1 tablespoon lime juice (not fresh)

Heat a medium sized saucepan over a low heat. Brush the saucepan with 1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil, and add the cumin seeds. Cook over the heat, whilst they pop, for about a minute. Add the other 1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil and the onion, sauteeing for about 3 minutes, until it is translucent. Add the garlic, ginger and chilli flakes and saute for another minute (adding a little water if required). Add the tomato and mix to deglaze and cook for about 3 minutes, then add the curry powder, cumin and salt, and mix well.

Add the potatoes, sweet potatoes and chickpeas and vegetable stock - the vegetables won't be completely covered, but that's ok. Turn up the heat, cover the saucepan and bring to a boil. When boiling, lower to a simmer and cook, covered, for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Start the Tamarind Quinoa at about this point.

Add the frozen spinach and mix well. Cover and cook for another 5 minuted, until the spinach has thawed. Mix well and cook for another 10 minutes, or until the spinach is mushy and the potatoes and sweet potatoes are very tender. Add the lime juice, taste for salt and cover, with the heat off, until serving.

Tamarind Quinoa

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 84

1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil
1/4 red onion, diced
1/2 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 1/2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon coriander seeds (whole)
1/2 cup quinoa
1 1/4 cup vegetable stock
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup low fat coconut milk (I actually used 1 tablespoon tahini mixed with water, which was fine, but use the coconut milk!)
1 heaping tablespoon tamarind concentrate
1/3 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup chopped fresh coriander

Heat a medium saucepan over a medium heat, and saute the onion, ginger, garlic and coriander seeds for about 3 minutes until the onions are translucent. Add water if it starts sticking.

Add the quinoa, stock and salt. Cover and bring to a boil. Once boiling, lower to a simmer and cook, covered, for about 20 minutes or until the water is absorbed. Stir often. If the water is absorbed and the quinoa is still white in the middle, add a little more water and stir through (the extra 1/4 cup that I added into the recipe should ensure that this doesn't happen). When the quinoa is tender and fluffy, add the coconut milk and tamarind and stir until the tamarind is completely dissolved. Fold in the peas. Cover, turn off the heat and keep covered to warm the peas through, about 5 minutes. Fold through the coriander and serve.

Review

I was a bit iffy about the potato-spinach curry - I make a fairly fab tofu saag and whilst this didn't have the hot-sweet-sour tones from garam masala, it's lovely, tasty and addictive. I inhaled it!! I reduced the amount of potato and added chickpeas to make up the weight - I love potatoes but eating too many is not good for me. Next time I would likely leave out the curry powder and add garam masala at the end, which would also reduce the amount of lime juice that I'd use. I also found this very underseasoned - it needed a fair whack of salt to bring the flavours together. For a little while it tasted mostly like spinach, but as I said - delicious when it all came together.

I love tamarind and I actually increased the amount of tamarind from 3/4 teaspoon (the above recipe is for a half batch of the recipe) to a heaping tablespoon - I really couldn't taste the tamarind following the original recipe. I also used tahini so that might have dulled the tamarind's flavour a little - but still, it's tamarind quinoa, go crazy with the tamarind!! I found that I had to add more liquid to get the quinoa cooked through, but this dish ended up tart, tasty and a perfect complement to the potato-spinach curry.

I've just made some buffalo tofu for lunch tomorrow - I'm following a suggestion in the book and making veggie potpie stew wraps, and thought I'd add some spicy tofu for a bit of fun!

Not sure where I'm going next in the book - I've just taken to randomly purchasing vegetables and then seeing what recipes I can make. So stay tuned for more adventures!

Appetite for Reduction: Caesar Chavez Dressing

2011-09-27T20:14:00.000+10:00

Crappy phone picture, sorry

There's a macrobiotic food franchise in Sydney called Iku. They have a salad dressing that I go through obsessive phases about - it's a tahini base with capers and apricot jam amongst other ingredients.

I had been thinking about making the Caesar Chavez Dressing as I'm a big fan of vinegary capers, and I was very glad that I did. It's like having the Iku dressing constantly on tap, but without having to go to Iku to get it!! I'm resentful of them because they've taken the word "vegan" off all of their marketing materials and serve moo juice and bee vomit in some outlets - but I have been eating there for about 17 years, so I still find myself there on occasion.

So, this is a brief blog, just to say OMGMAKETHISDRESSINGITISSOINCREDIBLE!!

...no, really.

MAKEITNOW!!

Then, as my friend N. would say, you will have to resist the temptation to smear it all over yourself, every food imaginable, and even your likelytobeannoyed cat.

Recipe

Caesar Chavez Dressing

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 43

2 tablespoons spring onions, chopped
2 tablespoons cashews (soaked for at least an hour and then drained)
1 tablespoon tahini
1 tablespoon red miso
1/3 cup water
2 tablespoons lemon juice (fresh)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 heaping tablespoon capers with brine
1/8 teaspoon salt
a couple of grinds of white pepper

Put everything into a food processor and blend for at least 5 minutes, stopping and scraping down the sides with a spatula often. It's important to blend for the full time to ensure that the dressing is completely smooth and not grainy.

Review

OMGSOGOOOOOOOOOOD

I used half of this over cold brown rice, chickpeas and broccoli for lunch yesterday, and then mixed the other half with a tablespoon or so of water to thin it down, and then had it over hot rice, brown lentils, black eyed beans and broccoli.

I also bought eggplant today so that I can make the eggplant "bacon" at some point and have an excuse to make more of this dressing to have with it in the Caesar Salad!

Appetite for Reduction: Veggie Potpie Stew with Sundried Tomato and Spring Onion Cornbread Muffins

2011-09-25T20:57:00.000+10:00

It got ridiculously cold and rainy today and by evening time I was definitely in the mood for something warming, comforting and that would feel a little decadent.

Recipes

Veggie Potpie Stew

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 251

1 teaspoon olive oil
1 small onion, cut into dice
8 dried shiitake mushrooms, placed into 1 1/2 cups hot water (they will expand to weigh about 50g)
150g button mushrooms, sliced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons dried sage
1 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt
several grinds of white pepper
1/2 cup red lentils
3 cups vegan "beef" style stock
300g Dutch Cream potatoes, cut into 3/4 inch chunks
200g carrots, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
1/4 cup plain flour
3/4 cup frozen peas
1 tablespoon vegan Worcestershire sauce

When the shiitake mushrooms have rehydrated, remove them from the soaking liquid (retain this liquid for use later) and slice thinly (they will expand further as they cook).

In a large saucepan, saute the onions in the olive oil until translucent, a couple of minutes, and then add the mushrooms, garlic, sage, salt and white pepper, and saute for another couple of minutes, until the mushrooms have released their moisture.

Add the red lentils and the vegan stock, cover the saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for about 5 minutes, then add the potatoes and carrots. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook, still covered, for about 25 more minutes, or until the lentils are completely disintegrated and the potatoes and carrots are tender and beginning to break down. Stir whilst the stew is covered, to ensure that it doesn't burn or stick to the bottom of the saucepan.

Mix a cup's worth of the retained mushroom soaking liquid and the flour to a slurry, and add to the stew with the thyme, frozen peas and vegan Worcestershire sauce, and cook, uncovered and stirring constantly, as the stew thickens. Taste for salt and seasoning (I added more salt and pepper at this point). Serve with the corn bread muffins.

Sundried Tomato and Spring Onion Cornbread Muffins

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, Fresh Corn and Scallion Cornbread, page 244

1 cup soy milk
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar (this was a boo boo, I meant to use red wine vinegar)
1 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons water
1/4 cup sundried tomatoes, chopped finely
1/2 cup spring onions, chopped finely

Add the vinegar to the soy milk and whisk together. Set to one side to curdle.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, buckwheat flour, baking powder, salt and dried oregano. Whisk the oil and water into the soy milk and then mix that liquid into the bowl with the cornmeal mixture. Mix until just combined. Fold in the sundried tomatoes and spring onions.

Spoon the batter into a 12 piece muffin tin and bake for about 12 to 16 minutes, until a skewer into the centre of a muffin comes out clean.

Review

The stew was a-mazing. I found that before I added the Worcestershire sauce (that's my main addition) that it was a little bland, but not in a bad way - just in a way where I wanted a little more layered flavour. I think that using shiitakes (if I do say so myself - another of my additions) added to the "meaty" work of the mushrooms, as the shiitakes were well cooked but resisted the teeth more than the other mushrooms. I think that a mix of mushrooms is best - too much chewing would take away the potpie style fun! I used red lentils instead of yellow split peas, and they definitely did the job of breaking down and creating a creamy gravy.

I meandered so far off the cornbread recipe that I'm not sure that I can really "review" the AFR recipe as such. I did replace the maple syrup/agave nectar with water (don't like sweet cornbread and trying to avoid sugar after the excesses of yesterday's picnic) and adding buckwheat made them a little dryer. However, they did add that crunch, "pastry-y" mouthfeel and experience to the stew, and they soaked up the stew's gravy gorgeously.

I decided to have a lunch bowl at work tomorrow, so made the Caesar Chavez Dressing (page 43) to go over it. May I just say: OMGMAKETHISNOWIWANTTODRINKITHOLYCRAPSOGOOD! This is the first of the dressings from AFR that has really knocked my socks off and I can't recommend it enough. There will not likely be a photo of the lunch bowl as I am having it at work, though.

Appetite for Reduction: Curried Cabbage and Peas

2011-09-25T14:25:00.000+10:00

I managed to do about 1/3 of the food shopping I wanted to do today before I got so drenched from the rain that I decided to give up. However, part of what I did get was curry powder and cabbage, so I decided to try out the Curried Cabbage and Peas recipe, alongside my current favourite Hoisin-Mustard Tofu.

Recipe

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 111

1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 small onion, sliced into thin half moons
1 1/2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger
1 small carrot, sliced into fine diagonal pieces
200g red cabbage, shredded
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon mild curry powder
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 tablespoon Braggs
1 tablespoon chilli sauce
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Heat the olive oil in a deep frying pan and saute the onion, garlic and ginger. Add a little water to help the sauteeing if it begins to stick and to deglaze prior to adding the carrot, cabbage, salt, curry powder and the remains of the 1/2 cup water. Stir together, cover the pan and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

I took it off the heat after this point as I needed the stovetop space for making the tofu, and added the frozen peas and stirred them through and covered the pan again and let the retained heat cook the peas. I tasted and found it a bit bland so added the Braggs, chilli sauce and red wine vinegar, which brought out the curry flavour more.

The vegetables should be tender but with a little bite left in them.

Review

Mmmm. Hoisin-Mustard Tofu

I thought that this worked really well with the hoisin-mustard tofu, although they are ostensibly from different cuisines - the base of onion, garlic and ginger was the same and the chilli in the hoisin-tofu was mellowed out by the curry but also heightened the spice in the cabbage.

As I said in the instructions above, I found the flavour bland without some added acid (vinegar + cabbage = win) and extra chilli and salt. Try the recipe as is and if you find it needing a little oomph then make the suggested additions.

I'm not sure that I'd make this again, until I was to add some seitan or chickpeas and have it over rice. And perhaps with vegetable stock there'd be more body to the flavour. I'm also a bit of a curry powder snob - I do prefer to make my own blend of curry spices rather than use a mix as I did in this recipe.

It continues to be cold and rainy here. I'm contemplating making the Veggie Potpie Stew for dinner. Sounds pretty good to me!

Appetite for Reduction: Cauliflower Pesto Soup

2011-09-24T21:04:00.000+10:00

Apologies for the not very pretty photos - hot soup in harsh night lighting is not a good combination.

I went completely batshit at the potluck today - so many tasty good foods! So I wanted something very low calorie, very bland, very easy and, because it's now raining and cold, something warming. And something for which I had all of the ingredients in the fridge!

Thus, Cauliflower Pesto Soup.

Recipe

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 210

1/2 teaspoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
200g cauliflower, chopped into florets
1 1/2 + 1/2 cups water
1/2 tablespoon vegan "beef" style stock powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cracked pepper
1/2 tablespoon arrowroot flour
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves

Saute the garlic in the olive oil in a medium sized saucepan over a low heat, for about a minute. Add the cauliflower, toss in the olive oil and garlic (do not let the garlic burn!) and pour in the 1 1/2 cups water and add stir in the stock powder. Cover, turn the heat up to high and bring the mixture to a boil. Boil for about 10 minutes, until the cauliflower is tender.

Mix together the 1/2 cup water and the arrowroot flour thoroughly until dissolved. Lower the heat to a simmer. Mix in the arrowroot mixture and cook uncovered for a few minutes until there is a slight thickening.

Take off the heat, stir through the basil leaves and then carefully blend the mixture smooth with an immersion blender.

Serve immediately.

Review

This does taste amazingly like rich pesto - so much so that I really wanted to cook up some pasta and throw it through! I might do that some time - I also may use this to make a pasta tofu bake (macnnotcheese style): crumble tofu, stir it through the soup, add cooked pasta shells, pour into a baking tray, top with breadcrumbs and bake. Would be a wonderful pesto bake. Though that would put a big ole arrow through the heart of 50 calories a serving that the soup currently clocks in at!

Ultra simple, lovely and clear tasting, would definitely make again. But I'm me, so after my first couple of spoonsful, I added Sriracha, lemon juice and nooch.

Planning my weekday menu, now that I'm working again I'll need to be more organised with making lunches over the weekend or night before. I think I'll be doing "bowl" type stuff for work - grain, protein, veges, dressing - which will give me a chance to explore some of the dressings I haven't tried yet.

Veganomicon: Vanilla-Yoghurt Pound Cake (with a surprise ingredient!)

2011-09-24T11:49:00.000+10:00

So, there's an accidentally vegan mayonnaise in Australia called Praise 97% Fat Free Mayonnaise. And there are lots of US recipes for cakes and biscuits that ask for soy yoghurt and there isn't a decent vegan soy yoghurt to be found in Australia.

Based upon the sweetness, slight tanginess and gelatinous nature of the mayonnaise, I thought that it might be a good replacement for soy yoghurt in these recipes. I decided to do my initial test of this theory using the Vanilla-Yoghurt Pound Cake in Veganomicon. A little overkeen, as one of the ingredients named in the recipe title is yoghurt!

I hereby present my mayo version of Vanilla Pound Cake.

Adapted from Veganomicon, page 254

1/2 cup Praise 97% Creamy Fat Free Mayonnaise
1/2 cup well mashed soft tofu (mash first and then measure)
3/4 cup soy milk
1 1/4 cups raw sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon orange blossom water
2 cups plain flour
3 tablespoons arrowroot flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 165 degrees Celsius. Line a loaf tin - ideally 9 by 5 inch (though I used a 10 by 4.5inch tin, was the only one I had) - with baking paper.

In a large bowl, combine the mayonnaise, mashed soft tofu, soy milk, sugar, oil and extracts. Use a whisk and beat well until everything is smooth, about 2 minutes.

Sift in the flour, arrowroot flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Combine carefully and then beat with the whisk until a very thick batter forms, about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Don't overmix.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin. Use a spatula to scrape all of the batter out of the bowl and smooth the top of the loaf.

Bake for about 50 to 55 minutes, until a toothpick or thin sharp knife inserted into the centre comes out clean (a little moisture is okay). Don't open the oven to check on progress for at least the first 40 minutes of baking (no matter how amazing it smells!!) (The recipe says 60 to 65 minutes but mine was ready 10 minutes earlier).

Just out of the oven

I left this overnight before slicing - the outsides softened and became sugary, the insides became a little denser and moister. I discovered that I had managed to overmix - you can tell because of the base of the cake having a really dense crumb and the outside of the cake being a little crust-like - but only by a little, thankfully.

There was no identifiable mayo taste in the finished product, so for this recipe I'm declaring the experiment a success!

And, as I've been baking a lot (there's a potluck on today), here are some bonus shots of lemon muffins (adapted from Vegan Brunch's Lemon Poppyseed Muffins, page 156). Mmmmmm, candied citrus peel...

Curious Lucie in the background

And here are Cocoa Raspberry Muffins (adapted form Vegan Brunch, page 161) , made gluten free and continuing my mayo experiment by replacing the applesauce in the recipe with mayo.

I can't wait to see what everyone else brings along!

Appetite for Reduction: Black Eyed Bean & Tempeh Balls with Mom's Marinara Sauce

2011-09-23T20:43:00.000+10:00

Also steamed cauliflower in Easy Peasy Cheezy Sauce.

Today was corporate fun and I had a carbtastic lunch with lots of pasta salad. I've been wanting to try the beanballs for a while but didn't want to have them over pasta after a pasta lunch. So this was my chosen combination. And it was gooooooood.

It got up to stupidly hot today (31 degrees Celsius) but thankfully there was a cool change in the evening and I was able to feel happy about making such a autumnal dinner.

Recipes

Black-Eyed Bean and Tempeh Beanballs

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 191

170g ginger-tamari tempeh
212g black-eyed beans
1 1/2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon cracked pepper
3 teaspoons Braggs
3 teaspoons tomato paste
3 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1/8 cup mixed Orgran rice and corn crumbs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon olive oil

Cut the tempeh into chunks and steam whilst you prep the rest of the mixture.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line a lipped cookie tray with baking paper.

Mash the beans with the minced garlic until there are no whole beans but the mixture is not completely pureed. Add the herbs, paprika, pepper, Braggs, tomato paste and balsamic vinegar and mixed together well.

Add the chunks of tempeh and mash into the mixture well. Add the crumbs, salt and olive oil and mix well with a fork.

Form the mixture into 10 equal sized balls and place on the cookie tray. Cover loosely with foil and bake for about 15 minutes.

Begin the marinara sauce whilst the balls are baking.

After 15 minutes, remove the foil, flip the balls and bake for another 10 minutes.

I turned the oven off and left the balls in there whilst I prepped the cauliflower and cheezy sauce and reheated the marinara.

Mom's Marinara

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 193

400g can crushed tomatoes
1 1/2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
4 kalamata olives, sliced very thinly
handful fresh basil leaves, sliced very thinly
2 teaspoons Braggs (after tasting)

Put all of the ingredients bar the basil leaves and Braggs into a frying pan and place over a medium heat and simmer until the tomato sauce is thickened and beginning to darken. Taste for salt (from the olives) and add up to 2 teaspoons Braggs, stir through and simmer for another couple of minutes.

Take off the heat. When the cauliflower is almost cooked and the cheezy sauce is thickening, put the marinara back on to a low heat and stir through the basil whilst the sauce is slowly simmering.

Steamed Cauliflower and Easy Peasy Cheezy Sauce

200g cauliflower, cut into florets

Put the cauliflower on to steam whilst you make the cheezy sauce.

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 173

I've made this sauce once before, as part of the Tempeh Helper, but this time I made a couple of more changes.

1/4 + 1/8 nutritional yeast
1/8 cup plain flour
1 1/2 cloves garlic, minced
3 teaspoons vegan "beef" style stock powder
1 1/4 cups water
juice of one lemon
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Mix all of the ingredients, bar the lemon juice and Dijon mustard, together in a small saucepan, using a whisk to get rid of any lumps. Place the saucepan over a medium heat and cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture is thickened, about 5 minutes. Add the lemon juice and Dijon mustard and whisk through well.

Put the beanballs and the cauliflower on your dinner plate. Pour half of the marinara over the beanballs, and half of the cheezy sauce over the cauliflower. NOM!

Review

The beanballs were great and simple to make. They were very soft when I was doing the first turn of them, but they firmed up nicely after the second baking and staying in the warm oven.

I added olive oil to the mixture rather than using an oil spray on the outsides of the balls as the recipe says.

I used ginger-tamari tempeh which added a little bit of an odd flavour with the rest of the meal, but I was happy with it. Looking forward to trying this with plain tempeh.

Marinara is marinara, but the combination with the beanballs was fabulous.

I wanted to use chickpea flour in the cheezy sauce, as that's my preferred flour, but didn't have any to hand. I love the simplicity of this sauce and the fact that it's still decadent tasty and feeling without being fatty. The aftertaste is still a bit salty so I need to tweak the levels of stock powder still.

Another win from the book! I have some leftovers, I think I'll some sort of wrap or pasta dish with them tomorrow.

It's the weekend and there'll be yum cha on Sunday, so am looking forward to many fried and steamed foods!

Bitchin' Chipotle Pasta Salad

2011-09-22T23:00:00.000+10:00

And now for a quick break from the recent spate of Appetite for Reduction posts - a quick, easy, spicy and fun pasta salad for picnics or potlucks.

Bitchin' Chipotle Pasta Salad

150g small shell pasta
1 cup frozen peas
1 medium carrot, carrot
1 chipotle in adobo sauce, roughly chopped
2 dessertspoons Byron Bay hot salsa
1/3 to 1/2 cup Praise 97% Creamy Fat Free Mayonnaise (accidentally vegan!)
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons Herbamare seasoning salt
juice of one lemon

Cook the pasta in salted water until just tender. Take off the heat, add the frozen peas and drain immediately. Rinse under cold water until completely cooled. Drain well and put the pasta and peas in a large bowl. Grate the carrot into the bowl and mix into the pasta and peas.

Make the chipotle dressing. Put the rest of the ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth. Taste for salt, heat, acid and tweak to your own taste (i.e. add a little more mayo or more salt or another half a lemon's worth of juice).

Mix the chipotle dressing into the pasta, peas and carrot until everything is coated to your preference - you may not use all of the chipotle dressing or you may have to make a little more!

This makes about 2 servings so increase as required for a picnic or potluck!

Appetite for Reduction: Chipotle Lentil Patties & Quinoa Salad with Black Beans & Toasted Cumin Seeds

2011-09-22T22:47:00.000+10:00

So, I started my new job today and decided to take an exciting lunch. I had been eyeing off the Chipotle Lentil Burgers for a while (love chipotles!) and to go with it I thought I'd continue with the Tex Mex flavours and make the Quinoa Salad with Black Beans and Toasted Cumin Seeds.

Recipes

Chipotle Lentil Burgers

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 123

2 teaspoons olive oil
1 small red onion, diced
225 zucchini, halved lengthwise and sliced 1cm thick
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 large handful coriander, chopped (both stems and leaves)
pinch salt
1 1/4 cup canned brown lentils
1 1/4 cup mixed Orgran rice and corn crumbs
1/4 cup chipotles in adobo sauce, chopped
2 tablespoon Braggs
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons smoked paprika

Saute the red onion in 1 teaspoon olive oil in a frying pan for a couple of minutes. Add the zucchini, garlic, coriander and a pinch of salt and saute, stirring regularly, for about 10 minutes, until the zucchini is soft.

Put all ingredients bar the additional teaspoon of olive oil and 1/2 cup of crumbs into a food process and process until mostly smooth, with a little texture. Put into a large mixing bowl.

Add the remaining 1/2 cup of crumbs and use a fork to thoroughly combine.

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees Celsius. Line a lipped cookie sheet with baking paper.

Form the mixture into 9 patties (the original recipe says 6 but I went a little smaller). Lay these out on the baking paper covered cookie sheet and brush both sides with the additional teaspoon olive oil.

Bake until puffed and beginning to colour, flip and continue baking until coloured and dry and fairly firm to the touch, about 15 minutes.

I actually froze half of these uncooked patties, and defrosted them in the fridge for about an hour and then put the still mostly frozen patties into the oven and they cooked up really well! The additional teaspoon of oil is not really necessary.

Quinoa Salad with Black Beans and Toasted Cumin Seeds

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 31

1 cup cooked quinoa
1/4 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 finely diced fresh tomatoes
2 tablespoons lime juice (not fresh)
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon agave nectar
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
215g black beans
1/2 cup finely chopped spring onions
1/2 cup finely chopped coriander

Toast the cumin seeds in a dry pan over a low heat. Toss often for about 5 minutes, until they begin to smell.

Add to a mixing bowl with the rest of the ingredients and mix together well. Serve after 10 minutes (to let the flavours meld) or even the next day.

Review

Firstly, I had a massive fail with attempting to fry the chipotle-lentil burgers. However, I discovered that baking them worked really well and I wouldn't do it any other way now! I was initially disappointed with the lack of chipotle flavour and heat in the chipotle-lentil patties. But I found the texture of them - I ate them the next day, at room temperature - chewy and tear-y and seitan like, and the gentle complex flavours really moreish. I would likely up the chipotle in the recipe next time I make them or serve them with a chipotle based sauce or mayo to bring up the flavour a bit more. All in all, these were easy, quick and tasty. I would like to try them directly after cooking, whilst they were warm, to see what the texture and flavours are like.

Sadly, the quinoa salad was a resounding meh. I added red wine vinegar and coriander (not originally in the recipe) when I did the initial taste test, as the salad just mostly tasted watery and very raw spring onion-y. Even with these additions and the salad sitting overnight and into the next day, the flavours had completely dissipated and I was left with wet and watery and occasional bitter bursts of cumin. Not a fan of this salad. If I'm looking for a quinoa black bean salad I think I'll use the one from Viva Vegan!

So a win-lose in this set of recipes. I'm just bounding through this cookbook - more than I've done for any cookbook other than Viva Vegan! And I'm still having fun!

Appetite for Reduction: Hoisin-Mustard Tofu and Spring Onion Potato Pancakes

2011-09-21T15:47:00.000+10:00

I have been putting off making this meal for a while due to a lack of breadcrumbs - and then when I'd made my own from sourdough, still a slight worry that they wouldn't be good enough - but today finally sucked it up to give it a bash.

The Hoisin-Mustard Tofu was definitely the winner in this combination, and I can't wait to make it again!

Recipes

Spring Onion (Scallion in the book) Potato Pancakes

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 61

I made a half batch of these, and the recipe says that a full batch makes 12 pancakes, but I only managed 4 out of my half batch.

225g potato, peeled and cut into small even chunks
1 pinch sea salt
3/4 cup thinly sliced spring onion (whites and greens)
3/4 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper
loosely packed 1/6 to 1/3 cup home made sourdough breadcrumbs

Breading

1/4 cup Orgran corn crumbs
1/4 cup Orgran rice crumbs
1/4 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt
1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon olive oil

Put the potatoes into a medium saucepan, cover with water and add the sea salt. Bring to the boil and continue boiling until the potatoes are tender. Drain and rinse with cold water, then put into a medium bowl.

Whilst the potato is cooking, prep the spring onions. Add the spring onions, sesame oil, black pepper and breadcrumbs to the potato in the bowl and then mash together until the potatoes are smooth. Cover and put into the fridge for an hour.

Mix together the breading ingredients and place onto a dinner plate. Preheat the oven to 225 degrees. Line a lipped cookie tray with baking paper.

Take a generous 1/4 cup of the potato mixture and form into a circular pancake, about 1/2cm thick. Press the pancake into the breading mixture and then gently shake off any excess. Put onto the lined cookie tray. Make sure that the pancake looks well breaded. Continue until all the mixture has been made into pancakes.

Place the cookie tray into the oven and cook for about 12 minutes, until the edges of the pancakes are colouring. Flip the pancakes over and bake for another 10 minutes. If not serving immediately, turn the oven off and leave the pancakes in there until serving.

Hoisin-Mustard Tofu

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 153

1 teaspoon olive oil
200g extra firm tofu, diced (mine was frozen then thawed, which gave it a chewier texture - not required, however)
1 teaspoon Braggs

Sauce

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 small red capsicum, diced small
1/2 red onion, diced small
1 to 1/2 cloves garlic, minced
1cm by 2cm chunk of fresh garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 1/2 tablespoons mirin
1 tablespoon (heaped) hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon (heaped) Dijon mustard

Other

1/4 iceberg lettuce, either as cups or torn as a base for the tofu

Preheat a non stick pan over a medium heat and brush with 1 teaspoon olive oil. Add the tofu and let cook on one side until golden (about 3 minutes). Flip carefully to avoid breaking the tofu and cook the other side until golden. Add the Braggs and stir through. Remove from the pan.

Add the capsicum, onion, garlic, ginger and chilli flakes to the pan and dry fry for a minute or so. Add the olive oil and the sesame oil and fry for about 5 to 10 minutes, until the vegetables are softened. Add the mirin and cook off for a minute or so. Add the hoisin and the mustard and cook off for another minute. Add the tofu and toss to coat.

Serve either in lettuce cups or over torn lettuce.

Review

I found the pancakes kinda meh - I ended up covering them in chilli sauce and lemon juice. They were very dry and the spring onion taste was less forward than I thought it would be. Part of it could be the breading (using gluten free) and part of it could be leaving them in the oven (though turned off) whilst I was prepping the tofu. I suspect that served with a dipping sauce, these would be great. They were too dry and there wasn't enough sauce for them to really mesh with the hoisin-mustard tofu.

Still, easier than I thought that they would be!!

I lurved the hoisin-mustard tofu. Lurved it so much that I was either happy that I had not made a full batch (as I would have eaten it all) or wishing that I had made a whole batch so that I had more to eat!! I think it will definitely get put into the rotation...and I was thinking of trying the sauce with tempeh and chickpeas as well. Really good. Try the recipe now!!

Tonight I'm dining out again, but I'm going to prep something for lunch tomorrow - starting my new job!

Appetite for Reduction: Pasta con Broccoli

2011-09-19T21:30:00.000+10:00

Apparently today was a Brassica family kinda day for me. And also a slightly bland day - possibly after the extremely punchy flavours of last night's Chipotle Black Bean Posole.

Everything I had read about this recipe had commented on its bland nature - and the introduction to the recipe points this out! I found myself totally fixated on it, however, and I'm glad that I made it.

Recipe

Lookit all that garlic!

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 169

115g angelhair pasta
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/4 cup thinly sliced garlic
1/4 teaspoon chilli flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
3/4 cup "beef" style vegan stock
2 cups broccoli (about a whole head), tops cut into small florets, stalks sliced thinly
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon cracked black pepper
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt

Optional: nutritional yeast, squirt of Braggs

Put a pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta.

In a frying pan, saute the garlic, chilli flakes and thyme in the olive oil for about a minute over a medium heat - do not burn! Add the stock and stir through. Bring to a simmer and add the broccoli. Cover and cook for the length of time it takes to cook the pasta, about 5 to 8 minutes.

Cook the pasta as per the packet instructions.

Drain the pasta and add to the broccoli mixture, along with the balsamic vinegar, lemon juice and salt. Take off the heat and sit for about 3 minutes, to allow the pasta to soak up the remaining liquid.

Put the pasta into bowl/s, add a little Braggs and sprinkle with nooch.

Review

Yup, this was bland but this was absolutely what I wanted for dinner and really hit the spot. If you wanted to jazz it up a bit, add a little more chilli or throw in some additional different herbs. But I really appreciated the simplicity of this, and the addition of nooch made it completely fab (as the addition of nooch usually does).

Appetite for Reduction: Herb-Roasted Cauliflower and Bread Crumbs

2011-09-19T15:55:00.000+10:00

Despite the fact that it has gotten warmer and warmer here over the last week or so, I was in the mood for a stodgy lunch - perfection (I thought) would have been deep fried potato chips. This recipe called to me and, with the addition of some smoked tofu and a tomato sauce-Sriracha dip on the side, totally hit the stodgy hot chips vibe I was looking for - for a grand total of about 440 calories.

Recipe

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 108

This is a full recipe - serves four - but at 70 calories a serve for the cauliflower recipe, and about 40 calories a serve for the smoked tofu, I indulged in all of it for lunch.

1/3 cup breadcrumbs (freshly made from kamut/spelt sourdough)
2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
450g cauliflower, cut into bite size pieces & washed (allow water to still cling to them)
200g smoked tofu, cut into 2cm x 1cm chunks

Optional sauce: 3 tablespoons tomato sauce and 1 tablespoon Sriracha, mixed together

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees Celsius. Line a lipped cookie tray with baking paper.

As I'd made the breadcrumbs by putting chunks of sourdough into my mini food processor, I continued the recipe in there. Add the thyme, oregano, seasoning salt and 1 teaspoon of the olive oil into the breadcrumbs in the food processor and process together until well combined and fragrant. You can just mix these ingredients together in a bowl also.

Put the breadcrumb mixture into a bowl and put the cauliflower into the breadcrumbs. Toss until the cauliflower has some breadcrumbs stuck to it. Carefully transfer the cauliflower to the cookie tray and lay in a single layer.

Put the chopped smoked tofu into the breadcrumbs and toss until the tofu has breadcrumbs stuck to it. Carefully scatter the tofu amongst the cauliflower on the cookie tray - still in a single layer. Sprinkle the remaining breadcrumb mixture over the cauliflower and tofu.

Drizzle the remaining 1 teaspoon of olive oil over the cauliflower and tofu and then put into the oven.

Bake for about 25 minutes, turning the cauliflower and tofu once, until the cauliflower is beginning to char on the edges and the tofu is firm and golden and crisped on the outside.

Review

I loved the addition of smoked tofu to this dish - I think it paired really well with the cauliflower and herbs. I put in an extra 1/2 teaspoon of salt from the recipe, and I'm wavering upon whether it is too much (I've put in my amount above) - it does add that hot chips with salt thing, but if you're not going for that then just use 1/2 teaspoon.

This is definitely a dish I'd make again - whether as a side to something else, I'm not sure, but to hit the "snacky" desire, it definitely works for me.

I served this sprinkled with nooch and that was also a fab addition.

What will tonight's dinner be? Who knows? I've wandered far off my original menu plan. And boy it's fun!

The Weekend: Pizza and Chipotle Black Bean Posole

2011-09-18T20:17:00.000+10:00

So, I had an indulgent Saturday night of pizza, red wine, peppermint chocolate chip CocoLuscious ice cream, watching Iron Chef (Pear and Chocolate Battle, and Potato Battle) and threatening to take photos of J.

We made four different small pizzas made on thick pizza bases that I got from the supermarket. The toppings included a tomato sauce made of passata, garlic and olive oil (cooked by me); smoked tofu; red onion; kalamata olives; faux ham; pineapple; basil leaves; mushrooms and Notzarella (which was sliced, not shredded as I forgot to bring the grater).

I only got a photo of one of the pizzas and here it is - J's creation: tomato sauce, mushrooms, smoked tofu, red onion, kalamata olives, basil leaves and Notzarella

I made my favourite trashy pizza - tomato sauce, shredded faux ham, pineapple, kalamata olives, and Notzarella.

Today I was feeling somewhat crap - bad neck, headache, some nausea - and all I could think of for dinner was something spicy, Tex Mex-y and soupy. I had bought a can of hominy and some cans of chipotle on Saturday morning and wanted to have a play with both of them. I went through Appetite for Reduction and Viva Vegan! for inspiration and came up with the following recipe.

Chipotle Black Bean Posole

1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, cubed
handful green beans, cubed
2 chipotles, finely chopped + 2 tablespoons of adobo sauce
1 teaspoon ancho chilli powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1/4 teaspoon + 1/2 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt
400mL passata
800mL water (and more as required)
3/4 cup black beans
1 tablespoon "beef" style vegan stock powder
1 cup hominy
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/4 teaspoon cracked pepper
1 tablespoon lime juice (not fresh)
1 cucumber, sliced into thin half moons
1/4 cup olives, thinly sliced
1/2 cup shredded white cabbage
1/3 cup avocado, diced
handful spinach corn chips, crushed

Saute the red onion, garlic and carrot in the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat, for about 5 minutes, until the onion is translucent. Add the chopped chipotles and adobo sauce and stir through for a minute or so. Add the ancho chilli powder, cumin, cinnamon, oregano, chilli flakes and 1/4 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt and cook off for a minute, stirring often.

Pour in the 400mL passata and 800mL water, and stir to mix. Add the vegan stock powder, black beans and hominy and stir through. Bring the heat up to high until the mixture starts boiling, then turn down to low so that the mixture simmers slowly. Simmer for about 25 minutes, and if the liquid gets too thick or starts to stick add a little bit more water, until the hominy has softened and the sauce around the vegetables is coating the back of a spoon.

Take off the heat and stir through the frozen peas, cracked pepper, 1/2 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt and lime juice and sit for about 10 minutes to allow the flavours to meld.

Prep the cucumber, olives, cabbage, avocado and corn chips.

Put a couple of ladlesful of the posole into a medium bowl and top with a mixture of the vegetables and corn chips. Stir the crunchy fresh vegetables through the hot soup and then chow down.

So. Tasty. Good.

Appetite for Reduction: Red Thai Tofu & Everyday Chickpea-Quinoa Salad

2011-09-17T13:50:00.000+10:00

I decided to continue the spicy dish and creamy counterpoint dish by combining Red Thai Tofu and Everyday Chickpea-Quinoa Salad, and I'm happy to report that it was a grand combination - highly recommended!

Recipes

Everyday Chickpea-Quinoa Salad

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 16

I made a single serving of this with a double serving of the dressing - extra creamy goodness. I used the remaining Cool Slaw dressing that I had left over as it is essentially the same recipe except that the one for this salad has balsamic vinegar in it.

1/2 cup cooked, cooled quinoa
1 cup iceberg lettuce, shredded
107g chickpeas, cooked
1/2 recipe Cool Slaw dressing

Mix together all of the ingredients in a large bowl and set to one side.

(about 360 calories)

Red Thai Tofu

I made a 1/2 batch of this, which is two servings.

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 149

200g extra firm tofu, cubed
4 medium radishes, sliced
1/4 cup spring onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 tablespoon ginger, finely chopped
1/2 tablespoon Thai red curry paste (I use Maesri)
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon Braggs
1/2 tablespoon agave nectar
7 leaves basil
1 teaspoon olive oil

Heat 1/2 teaspoon olive oil in a wok over a medium-high heat and add the cubed tofu. Fry for about 2 minutes on each side, trying not to break up the tofu when you flip it, until a little golden. Add the teaspoon Braggs about halfway through cooking and stir through. Remove the tofu from the wok and set to one side.

Mix together the red curry paste, water, tablespoon of Braggs and agave nectar in a small bowl and set to one side.

Heat the other 1/2 teaspoon olive oil in the wok and add the spring onions, garlic, ginger and radishes and stir fry for about 4 minutes.

Add the tofu cubes and the red curry paste mixture and cook for another 3 minutes or so, stirring until the liquid has cooked away.

Add the basil leaves and stir until wilted.

(about 220 calories)

Serve with the salad and nom!

Review

The Everyday Chickpea-Quinoa Salad is very bland, but in a good way. I didn't put in the red onion that's in the recipe, but that's because I can get a little ill from too much raw onion, and have been overindulging recently. I wouldn't eat this every day without a little more oomph - and maybe the balsamic would give it that oomph.

The Red Thai Tofu was magnificent and I'll definitely be making it again. I like that it would go well with any type of crunchy vegetable - next time I'll likely make it with carrot. I like capsicum, especially red, but it does not like me, so I tend to avoid using it.

Tonight will be a night of pizza indulgence and peppermint-chocolate chip CocoLuscious icecream fun, so that's a bit of a deviation from the AFR cooking fest!

(Sort of) Appetite for Reduction: Mixing it up!

2011-09-16T19:10:00.000+10:00

I'm developing a backlog of leftover dressings so I thought instead of making another recipe - or remaking another one (I mean, I remade Buffalo Tempeh already today) - that I'd mix it up a bit and make a meal incorporating the Sundried Tomato Walnut Dressing (of which I had the most leftovers).

I thought that the dressing, as it was so thick, would make a great pasta dish. And it did!

1/4 batch Sundried Tomato Walnut Dressing (page 50) - about 1/3 cup
100g angelhair pasta
100g zucchini, cut into 1cm pieces
100g brown lentils, canned
5g capers, roughly chopped
25g kalamata olives, sliced
1/2 teaspoon olive oil

Put a saucepan of salted water on to boil for the pasta. As soon as it comes to a boil, put about 1/2 to 1 cup of the salted water into a bowl with the Sundried Tomato Walnut Dressing and mix together. Set to one side.

Cook the angelhair pasta as per the packet's instructions. Drain and set to one side.

Put a wok over a medium-high heat and brush it with the olive oil. Saute the zucchini until starting to colour and soften slightly. Add the lentils, capers and kalamata olives and stir through to warm the lentils. Finally, add the Sundried Tomato Walnut Dressing mixture and stir through, and then toss the drained pasta through the whole mixture.

According to my calculations based upon the nutrition data website, this meal comes to about 400 calories, which isn't too bad as it's very filling and comfort food feeling.

Appetite for Reduction: Buffalo Tempeh and Cool Slaw wraps

2011-09-16T13:57:00.000+10:00

This was a lovely spicy and filling lunch, messily eaten (lots of ooziness from the Cool Slaw!) whilst watching Pushing Daisies.

I've already written about the Buffalo Tempeh recipe - the main difference this time was that I used chilli tempeh, which really upped the spiciness!

Cool Slaw

I made a whole batch of the dressing but only used a half batch for my lunch.

Recipe

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 38

Dressing

1/4 cup cashews (soaked overnight and drained)
2 tablespoons spring onions
1/2 cup water
5 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1 heaping teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon agave nectar
1/2 teaspoon Herbamare seasoning salt

200g shredded white cabbage

Make the dressing by putting all of the ingredients into a food processor and blending ferociously for about 5 minutes, stopping occasionally to scrape down the sides and check whether the dressing is smooth and not graining. Once it's not grainy, set to one side.

Put the shredded cabbage into a medium sized bowl and then pour over half of the dressing. Mix together well and let sit, stirring occasionally, for about 40 minutes to wilt the cabbage.

Put half of the Cool Slaw onto a wrap, top with half the Buffalo Tempeh, adding any leftover marinade and dressing. Wrap and eat messily and then make yourself another one!

Review

Well, we all know that I love the Buffalo Tempeh, so that's a given. I found the Cool Slaw a) had a slightly silly name that I don't really like using and b) a little bland and in need of some additional salt when I was making up the wrap. However, with the Buffalo Tempeh it worked really well, cooling it whilst not overwhelming the flavour.

However, if I was going to serve the Cool Slaw on its own, I'd likely up the mustard and maybe add some capers for extra body and vinegary zinginess.

Oooh. This could be fun on the side with hot dogs. So very likely to make it again!

My wraps were worth 75 calories each, and the Cool Slaw is designed for six serves where I divided half of it into two serves. My lunch came to 590 calories in total.

So now I have several different dressings sitting in the fridge! Possibly I'll make a pasta dish with the Sundried Tomato Walnut Dressing, maybe with some tofu or black beans. Or I'll find another recipe to try!

Appetite for Reduction: Tempeh Helper

2011-09-15T20:20:00.001+10:00

Ho.Lee.Crap.

This was just astonishing. I had been yearning for something comfort food-y and somewhat trashy, and this hit all those requirements whilst also being incredibly tasty.

The below makes two servings

Recipes

Easy Breezy Cheezy Sauce

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 173

1/4 + 1/8 cup nutritional yeast
1/8 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
pinch ground turmeric
1 cup vegetable stock
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Mix the nutritional yeast, flour, garlic powder, onion powder and turmeric into a bowl and mix together.

Pour in 1 cup vegetable stock and whisk until as smooth as possible.

Pour into a small saucepan and place over a medium heat. Cook, whisking often, for about 5 to 10 minutes. Take off the heat and whisk through the Dijon mustard and lemon juice.

Tempeh Helper

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 171

Easy Breezy Cheezy Sauce (above)
1 teaspoon olive oil
113g chilli tempeh
1 3/4 cup water
85g angelhair pasta, broken into pieces
1/2 tablespoon Braggs
1 tablespoon lemon juice
100g broccoli florets

Seasoning Mix

1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon mild chilli powder
pinch white pepper
1 tablespoon "beef" style vegan stock powder
1 teaspoon arrowroot

Steam the tempeh and mash into "mince" style pieces.

Mix together the seasoning mix ingredients and set to one side.

Heat 1/2 teaspoon olive oil in a deep sided frying pan over a medium heat. Have a lid that fits onto that pan to hand.

Add the tempeh to the frying pan and fry until coloured and beginning to stick slightly - add another 1/2 teaspoon olive oil if required. Deglaze with 2 tablespoons water, then add the seasoning mix and 1 3/4 cups water and mix well. Add the angelhair pasta. Cover and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally so that it doesn't stick, for about 10 minutes.

When the pasta is cooked, take off the lid and add the Braggs and lemon juice and stir well until the sauce thickens, about 2 minutes.

Whilst the tempeh and pasta is cooking, steam the broccoli.

Serve the tempeh and pasta mixture and broccoli covered by the cheezy sauce.

Review

I don't have any childhood memory attachments to this sort of recipe - we rarely did packaged food when I was growing up. But I could imagine the comfort food trashy greasy tastiness this meal would evoke, and boy did it ever!

This was ridiculously easy, especially if you were to have the seasoning mix and the cheezy sauce bases all mixed up and ready to go. I used angelhair pasta because I didn't have shells and it seemed to work just fine.

I used chilli tempeh and this added a great chilli undertone to the dish. I think that would be integral for my enjoyment of the dish into the future so will likely either continue to use chilli tempeh for it or add some chilli sauce to the tempeh mixture whilst it's cooking if I'm using plain tempeh.

The recipes both ask for granulated garlic and onion flakes, and I only had powder. I had seen other bloggers saying that using powder would result in a bitter flavour, and they were not wrong. This is why I've added lemon juice to both of the components - it got rid of the bitter undertone and brought the flavours together. I think it would be a good addition at any time, but I am a lemon fiend. I added Braggs to the tempeh mixture as part of the bitterness removal and also because it wasn't salty enough for me.

I forgot to add peas to the tempeh mix, but didn't really miss them. The broccoli was a nice addition for the psychological "I'm eating a vegetable" part of the meal.

I would use this cheezy sauce again, but probably made with my usual go-to of chickpea flour instead.

This was so good and so what I was looking for that it made my brain nigh-on explode. Especially the fact that it only had a teaspoon of olive oil and 310 calories per serve. Oh. Emm. Gee.

Appetite for Reduction: Sundried Tomato Walnut Dressing

2011-09-15T16:31:00.000+10:00

I'm deviating a little from my initial plan because I keep going through the book and finding more recipes that I want to try and that I have the ingredients for already! My post job interview lunch today was a salad bowl with quinoa, chickpeas, peas, olives, salad leaves and the Sundried Tomato Walnut Dressing.

Recipe

It's hard to take a pretty picture of dark brown goo but I did my best!

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 50

1/4 cup sundried tomatoes (not packed in oil)
3 tablespoons walnuts
1/2 small red onion, chopped
1 cup hot water
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
3/4 teaspoon Herbamare salt
1/2 teaspoon oregano
2 shakes of habenero hot sauce

Put the sundried tomatoes into a small bowl and cover the with the cup of hot water. Soak for about 10 minutes.

Toast the walnuts in a small heavy bottomed saucepan over a medium heat, tossing the walnuts to ensure that they don't burn. When they smell super-walnutty and have browned in spots, about 5 minutes, take them off the heat and put straight into a food processor.

Remove the sundried tomatoes from the water and retain the water. Roughly chop the sundried tomatoes.

Add the onion to the walnuts and process to chop together. Add the rest of the ingredients and 3/4 cup of the retained sundried tomato soaking liquid and blend until smooth. I was using a mini food processor and about 1/4 cup of the liquid spurted out the sides whilst I was blending, so the dressing came out very thick. Which was fine by me!

Review

I enjoyed this a great deal - it's a very strongly flavoured mixture (and if I'm saying that, it's pretty intense!). I would probably reduce the vinegar and increase the mustard next time I make it. The recipe is used with pasta in the book and I can see how delicious it would be with pasta. But it did the flavoursome job in my salad!

I used about 1/4 cup of the mixture on my salad, but the serving size is defined as 3 tablespoons, so I increased the calorie value to 60 by having the larger serve. With everything else in the salad, I approximated the calories as 416.

Continuing with the deviation from my original plan, tonight I'll be making Tempeh Helper, which should be comfort food-y fun!

Appetite for Reduction: Gravy Bowl with Buffalo Tempeh

2011-09-14T20:57:00.000+10:00

Another set of winners! This barely qualifies as a low fat meal, as I topped the vegetables with Notzarella, but goodness me. Everything on the plate was beyond tasty-good.

Recipes

Buffalo Tempeh

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 161

125g ginger-tamari tempeh
1/4 cup "beef" style vegan stock
1/4 cup Sriracha
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano

Cut the tempeh into three equal pieces. Cut each piece in half widthwise, then diagonally so that you end up with 12 little triangles. Steam the tempeh for about 10 minutes.

Mix together the stock, Sriracha, garlic and oregano. When the tempeh has finished steaming, place in a single layer in a container and pour over the marinade.

Marinate for at least one hour - I marinated for about 4.

Heat a wok over a medium high heat and brush with 1/4 teaspoon olive oil. Place the tempeh into the wok in a single layer and fry on one side for about 3 minutes then flip and fry for another minute or so. Pour in the remaining marinade and let cook until the tempeh is coated. Take off the heat and set to one side.

Silky Chickpea Gravy

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 56

This is a half batch, which serves four. I used half of it in the bowl and the other half is in the fridge to be reheated later.

1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 1/2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon arrowroot powder
3/4 cup "beef" style vegan stock
215g chickpeas
2 tablespoons Braggs
juice of half a lemon

Saute the onion and garlic with the olive oil in a medium saucepan over a medium heat for about 5 minutes. Whilst it's cooking, whisk the arrowroot powder into the stock - my stock was hot and so the arrowroot thickened immediately. Add the thyme, sage and pepper to the onion and garlic and cook for another minute. Pour in the chickpeas, thickened stock, Braggs and lemon juice. Stir for about 2 minutes and take it off the heat. Use an immersion blender to blend the mixture until smooth. Place back onto the heat and stir to let it thicken a little more. Add a little water if the gravy is too thick.

Roasted Broccoli and Zucchini (with optional cheeziness)

100g broccoli, chopped into florets
100g zucchini, chopped into medium chunks
1/4 teaspoon olive oil
several thin slices of Notzarella (optional)

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees Celsius. Lay the broccoli florets and zucchini chunks in a single layer in a baking tray, then mix through the olive oil.

Bake until the edges of the broccoli are charred and the zucchini is tender.

If so desiring to indulge, place the slices of Notzarella over the roasted vegetables and put back into the oven until the cheez is melted over and into the vegetables.

Put half a cup of brown rice onto a plate or into a bowl. Top with the Buffalo Tempeh. Put the Roasted Vegetables next to the brown rice and tempeh and then cover with the Silken Chickpea Gravy. Mix together and nom on down.

Review

Oh yes indeed. I didn't touch the Buffalo Tempeh recipe other than to marinate for much longer, and it was hot and tasty and chewy and really yummy. So making it again soon.

I found the Silky Chickpea Gravy a little bland - which is partly why I had decided to make the Buffalo Tempeh for this bowl. I found that the addition of a little more Braggs and lemon juice really brought the flavours together and made them sing.

Whilst the cheeziness with the vegetables added more creaminess, it was the smoky roasted nature of the slightly charred edges of the vegetables that mixed really well everything else in the bowl.

I inhaled this meal and immediately knew, from the first mouthful onwards, that I would most definitely be making the dish again and again. In fact, writing this has made me yearn for another serving, even though I'm full. I'm very glad that I only made a single serve of everything apart from the gravy!

Appetite for Reduction: Peanut-Lime Dragon Dressing remix (& cafe breakfast)

2011-09-14T15:21:00.000+10:00

So, I decided to re-mix the Peanut-Lime Dragon Dressing, and am really happy with the outcome. Definitely gave me dragon breath!

I started with a half batch of the dressing, page 34, and added the following:

1/6 cup peanuts
1/3 spring onions, chopped
1 tablespoon chilli sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon Braggs
1/2 inch knob of ginger, chopped

I put the half batch of the original dressing and the rest of the ingredients into a mini food processor and blended until as smooth as possible.

I really liked this re-mix - it gave me the oomph I was expecting from the original recipe. I'll try the original recipe again with less liquid and see if that makes a difference.

I put together a bowl of quinoa, black beans, carrot, radish and baby spinach.

I then poured over about half of the re-mixed dressing, stirred through well and nommed away very happily.

Breakfast this morning was at a cafe in Surry Hills, fouratefive (on Crown Street). J. had discovered a vegan Mexican breakfast on their menu so we decided to try it out this morning. Happily it was lovely and tasty:

Sourdough toast topped with roasted tomatoes, tomatoey Tex Mex beans, crispy tofu, rocket, tomato, avocado and red onion. Lovely! Definitely being added to the vegan breakfast rotation - most of which is from cafes in the single Crown Street strip!

Tonight I'm planning on making another bowl - this time the Gravy Bowl. Am loving these bowls!

Appetite for Reduction: Big Fat Taco Salad

2011-09-13T13:49:00.000+10:00

And we're back on track! I mean, I love Tex Mex flavours, so I was pretty sure that I was going to enjoy this salad, but all of the elements came together so well, and I really enjoyed it! Also, have packed away the second serving, don't know that I'll need it, feeling nicely full.

I did play around with these recipes a bit, working to my own tastes.

Serves 2 (which all of the adapted recipes that I've been making do).

Recipes

Fresh Tomato Salsa Dressing with Black Beans

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 23

226g fresh tomatoes, chopped finely
1/4 cup coriander, shredded finely
1/2 cup spring onions, chopped finely
3 teaspoons red wine vinegar
2 splashes habanero hot sauce
1/4 teaspoon salt
215g black beans

Put the ingredients bar the black beans into a large bowl and mash together well - it won't break down much but enough to make it juicy. Test for salt (I'm a salt fiend). Mix through the black beans. Set to one side.

Guacamame

Though I used peas, so I need another name. Peacamole?

Adapted from Appetite for Reduction, page 23

1/2 avocado, about 85g, diced
1/2 cup frozen peas, defrosted for 12 hours
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/8 cup water
1/8 cup lime juice (not fresh)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 tomato, finely chopped
1/4 red onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup coriander, finely shredded

Put the avocado, frozen peas and garlic into a small food processor and blend together as well as possible, scraping down the sides as required. Add the water, lime juice and salt and blend until smooth. I had to put the mixture into a bowl and mash further with a fork because the avocado was not breaking down enough. Mix through the tomato, onion and coriander and set to one side (not for long, though).

Other Salad Ingredients

2 cups shredded iceberg lettuce
56g spinach corn chips, broken into pieces

Divide the lettuce into two and place onto two plates. Top each lot of lettuce with half of the tomato salsa and black beans mixture. Scoop a 1/3 or so of a cup of the peacamole on top of each plate, and scatter each plate with half each of the corn chips.

I did this, took photos, and then put my serve into a bowl, mixed it all together and nommed on down. I had tasted the peacamole just after it was made and I was a bit unsure about it. But mixed together with everything else, it suddenly gave the velvety fatty mouth feel that I love in guacamole.

I did drizzle Sriracha over my salad, but I'm a chilli fiend. I think, with my additions and changes, one serve of this salad was about 400 calories.

All in all, definitely love this salad, definitely recommend it.

And here's what other folks have to say about it - or at least the Google search for them.

Appetite for Reduction: Peanut-Lime Bowl

2011-09-12T20:01:00.000+10:00

And we have our first just-okay recipe from Appetite for Reduction. There are probably a couple of reasons why this didn't do it for me as much. I've never had a bowl as Isa describes it before, and was expecting something a little more powerful. I found the dressing far too thin and couldn't taste the peanut or the lime as expected. It was also too sweet. So I have a few tweaks that I'll make next time.

As far as calorie tracking goes, I decided to chuck in some chickpeas at the last minute, taking the approximate total of the dish to 630 calories, bringing my daily total in at 1535.5, which is 35.5 above what I was aiming for. Which isn't too bad - if I hadn't added the chickpeas I would have come in at 1375.

Let's start with the Baked Tempeh

Marinating the tempeh

Recipe

Adapted from Basic Baked Tofu (or Tempeh), page 144

1/2 cup "beef" style vegan stock
1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon Braggs
small handful fresh thyme
200g tamari-ginger tempeh

Cut the tempeh into 8 thin triangles. Steam the tempeh for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Whisk together the liquid marinade ingredients.

Place the tempeh into a single layer in a container, top with the thyme, and pour over the marinade.

Marinate for at least an hour to overnight (I went with about 4 hours).

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and lay the tempeh flat in a baking dish. Cover with the marinade and bake for about 40 minutes, turning once, until the tempeh is dark and glossy and the marinade is almost all cooked off. Set to one side.

Dressing

Adapted from Peanut-Lime Dragon Dressing, page 34

1/4 cup roasted peanuts
1 1/2 shallots, chopped
1/4 cup lime juice (not fresh)
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons agave nectar
2 tablespoons Braggs
1 teaspoon Sriracha

Pulse the peanuts and shallots together in a small food processor to break them down. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth. Put into an airtight container in the fridge until using.

Bowl ingredients

1/2 cup cooked quinoa
100g cooked chickpeas
100g steamed broccoli
handful baby spinach

Put the bowl ingredients into a large bowl. Top with the tempeh, half of the dressing and extra Sriracha. Stir together and chow down.

Bowl all mixed up

Review

The basic tempeh marinade was great and the fresh thyme smelled amazingly good when it was baking. It made the tempeh dark and glossy and rich tasting. Definitely using it again.

As far as the Peanut-Lime Dragon Dressing goes, I'd probably make a number of changes to this before making it again. I'd definitely reduce the amount of water, and probably remove all of the agave nectar. I'd increase the chilli and perhaps add some fresh ginger. I want the peanuts to sing so if I was going to make this again I'd likely take the caloric knock and increase the peanuts (if decreasing the water didn't work). And I might mix the lime juice with a little lemon juice - limes are quite expensive in Australia so often I'm using concentrate, the fresh lemon juice might add the expected zing.

Also, I'd probably not make this again on the same day as the rice noodle dish, as the flavour profile is so similar.

However, I seem to be alone in not being blown away from the dressing. Here's what some other folks have to say about this dish:

Reduction Project

Unethical Vegan

Looking forward to tomorrow's recipe adventures!