Caponata

The Festive Cake was pretty good, if you like that sort of thing. We do, but we still have quite enough to be going on with, thank you.

So, although I have no pictures because it was all consumed without any concern for blogging, I thought I'd share the recipe for Caponata that was made for 25th December.

There was one problem, when I went to buy aubergines the shops were devoid of the plump purple fruits, not one to be found anywhere (well, anywhere I chose to go) so I forked out for some hothouse courgettes and substituted, and do you know, it wasn't at all bad. As you might guess, the following recipe is pretty much variable to taste. If you can get aubergines they are traditional. Make sure they are really well cooked in plenty of oil or it will be nasty.

For enough caponata for at least eight take three courgettes (the 15cm sort), 1 large onion, 2 red peppers, 1 yellow pepper, 1 green pepper, 4 celery stalks, about 150g baby tomatoes (cherry or plum), 100g pine kernels, 1 tbsp. raisins (plumped in hot water), 2 tbsp. capers (rinsed and dried), olives; black and green to taste, stones removed, 4 tbsp. vinegar (I used 3 of cider and 1 of balsamic), salt and pepper. Lots and lots of olive oil.

Toast the pine kernels in a hot pan until delicious and set to one side to cool.

Slice the peeled onion in half through the root and then slice from root to stalk end to make long narrow strips. Fry until softened and very slightly coloured in a good splash of oil. Remove to a large mixing bowl.

String your celery (this is important) Divide the stalks longways if they are large and cut into small pieces, about 1cm long. Gently fry in the same pan you used for the onions with a little more oil if necessary until heated through but still quite crisp and green. Remove to the mixing bowl.

Cut your courgettes into neat slices. I used a ridged griddle to cook these because I love the patterns it makes but you can just use the frying pan again. Remove cooked courgette (it should still be a little firm) to the mixing bowl.

Cut the peppers away from the seeds and divide the flesh into squares, about 1.5 cm each side. Or whatever you fancy. I tried griddling these but they took a long time. The frying pan is your friend.

Finally, quickly fry off your halved baby tomatoes and before they soften too much add them to the bowl.

When all the vegetables are in the mixing pan (don't forget the aubergine) then add the pine nuts, the raisins, capers, olives, vinegar and freshly ground black pepper. Add a little salt, the capers and olives will be salty already. Stir well to combine.

This is better for being made the day before it is needed to allow the flavours to meld. In fact, it will keep for a week in the fridge and leftovers are great for topping pizza if it lasts that long.

Allow to come to room temperature before serving with some crusty bread.

Hope you all had a good holiday. My NY's resolution is to start blogging regularly again, but we'll just have to see how that goes.

Candice Cake

This cake comes in many names, No-Bake Cake, Refridgerator Cake, even Tiffin, but because my very dear friend once made one for my birthday we always call it Candice Cake in this house. It would have been Candice's birthday last Friday and we made this cake in her honour.



I think Candice based her cake on the version found at Vegan Family but this is how we make it now.

200g rich tea biscuits (Co-op are suitable for vegans)
75g mixed nuts, roughly crushed
150g brandy soaked raisins (or plump your raisins in some hot water, dry well and add a tsp. of almond or vanilla flavouring for a non-alcohol version)

75g marg. (I used Pure)
50g golden syrup (a couple of dessertspoons full)
100g plain 70% chocolate

100ml soya cream
100g plain 70% chocolate
Cherries to decorate

Grease a 20cm (or so) loose bottomed tin.

Crush the biscuits in a deep bowl with the end of a rolling pin or what have you. Mix in the nuts and raisins.

Put marg., syrup and broken up chocolate into a glass bowl and microwave on high for about 1.5 minutes checking every 30 seconds. The chocolate won't be completely melted but if you stir it, it should dissolve down nicely into the hot syrup and fat to make a lovely smooth gloop.

Tip the gloop into the biscuit mixture, mix well and press down into the bottom of the tin. Pack it down hard.

Put the second 100g of chocolate into the glass bowl and pop it back into the microwave for about a minute, checking regularly, until it melts. Mix the soy cream into the melted chocolate to make a fudgy topping and use it to cover the base already in the tin. Decorate at will.

Chill for a couple of hours (up to a couple of days, wrapped) before eating.

If you're not happy with microwaving chocolate then use a bowl over hot water for the melting exercises.

Yule

I'm working up to the festive season very very slowly.

These are mince pies. I've been craving them.



Not difficult to make if you take the usual short cuts. The mincemeat was Co-op brand, suitable for vegetarians and vegans. The pastry I did make myself, part of a policy to renew old skills. It turned out o.k. and my secret - at the moment I'm inhibiting my snobbery and using plain solid white fat, pure vegetable oil, the non-hydrogenated variety. Works like a dream but of course it has a very bad press. Still, that's what the commercial producers use. At least this way I can make sure it's fresh when it hits the flour.

More soon I hope. I'm cooking for eight this year. Should be a laugh.

Loaf Burger Thing

I'm sorry, I just can't think of a better title than that. We had this tofu legume loaf for dinner last night and it was o.k. but the leftovers in a bun were much more fun.



To make a loaf that will serve 4 or 5 people, or enough to make 6 slices for using in sandwiches and panini you need this recipe.

240g firm tofu, crumbled
240g split mung beans, after cooking (I used 125g dry and had a few spare)
85g fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced or grated
Thumbsized piece of fresh ginger root, grated
A splash of olive oil
1 big tbsp. peanut butter (or tahini, I was out)
Soy sauce and black pepper to taste.
30g or so of sesame seeds.

Fry the onion until it starts to colour in the olive oil. Add the grated garlic and ginger and stir around for a couple of minutes more. Don't let the garlic burn.

Add the fried mixture to your tofu, mung beans and breadcrumbs. Mix thoroughly with the peanut butter, soy sauce and black pepper. Press the mixture into a 20cm square pan and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top. I lined my pan with a bit of parchment paper but you'd probably be o.k. in a non stick tin without it.

Bake at 180C for about 40 minutes until firm and lightly coloured.

You can then serve it with vegetables and a vegan gravy, let it cool and serve with salad or next day, quickly sear a portion on both sides and serve in a bun with pickles and ketchup. Your choice.

Hard Italian Biscuits

Cavalucci di Siena are a speciality of Tuscany; traditional festive fare named for the little horses of the Palio, the famous horse race of Siena. Stripey Cats are supporters of the Snails although the race itself is not something that vegans should ever support.

I'd never made these before and I think I may have left them in the oven just a touch too long. They are very hard, more like biscotti than cookies but the flavour is wonderful.

Ingredients.

350 grams of plain flour
two teaspoons baking powder
100 grams roughly chopped walnuts (I used mixed nuts)
50 grams of candied peel (use a good quality)
two teaspoons of ground aniseed
two teaspoons of ground cinnamon
300 grams of sugar (I used some muscovado in the mix, delicious but the colour was misleading.)
185 mls of water

Preheat the oven to 150C

Sieve the flour and baking powder together, add the peel, nuts and spices and mix up.

Put the sugar and water into a heavy bottomed pan, bring to the boil, turn the heat to medium and cook for five minutes or so to make a pale syrup. Remove from heat.

Add the dry mix and stir with a wooden spoon to form a soft dough.

Line two trays with parchment paper, greased greaseproof or rice paper.

Place small tablespoons of dough, about 5 cm in diameter with a little room between them for expansion. The mixture is hot but cools quickly. I portioned the dough out and then went back and gently shaped the biscuits with my hands although I have seen recipes that suggest using a rolling pin and cutters. Don't make them too big, you should get at least 16 from this quantity.

Bake for 40-45 minutes or until they are lightly golden, slightly firm, and a bit puffed up. Don't over bake, they will be terribly hard. If you've made many more than 16 reduce the cooking time to allow for the smaller volume of your cavalucci.

Store in an airtight tin for up to a week. You'll need to dip them in coffee or wine to eat, although they can be softened a bit by warming them in an oven for a few minutes.

Cream Tea

One of the most archetypal of all British foods and possibly one of the easiest. Scones, whether you say them as scones or scons, are just flour, a little fat and baking powder lightly mixed to a soft dough and baked quickly.

Served with jam and cream, in this case medlar jelly and Soyatoo whipping soya cream, they make a perfect teatime meal or you can have them for breakfast. We did.

Pie

Smoky Tofu and Mushroom Pie in a vegan suet pastry crust served with roast pumpkin and a ginger miso sauce.

A trip to the Farmers' Market.

Waldorf Salad - Celery, Ashmead's Kernel apple, walnuts from a friend and vegan dressing.


Purple Sprouting Broccoli Gratin.



Banana Whisky Cream Pot.

Gone Away

Blogs may be resumed in the future or never.

Thanks for reading.

Carrot Cake

Having an electric oven for a few days has meant that I can bake away merrily at more or less regulated temperatures with no fear of the fuel running out - well, global warming and all that acknowledged.

One of the first things I made in the UK was this carrot cake, to use up some of the wonderful carrots from France and also because I had a jar of expensive Japanese rice malt syrup that needed finishing up pronto.

This recipe is based on one in the Encyclopedia of Vegetarian Living by Peter Cox (isbn 0747518068). This is a really great book for the beginner vegan, full of interesting recipes and ways of getting your nutrients from vegetable sources. The book was first published in 1994 and could do with some updating as the health information is good but there has been a lot of research done since then. Now out of print it's still worth buying if you can find a copy.

400g wholewheat flour
100g desiccated coconut
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground cloves
500g carrots, grated. (the worst bit in my opinion!)
100g light flavoured vegetable oil
150ml hot water
400g barley malt syrup (or use whatever malted syrup you have. I had 200g malted rice syrup and made up the rest with Tate and Lyle's golden syrup but all malt is nicer)
100g currants
Zest and juice of one lemon.

Preheat oven to 180C. Oil a tin, either 23cm diameter or anything up to 23x33cm rectangle.

Measure and mix the dry ingredients into one bowl.

Blend the oil, syrup and hot water (use the hot water to rinse out the jar!) together in another bowl, then add the carrots, currants, lemon zest and juice and stir well.

Tip the wet ingredients into the dry ones and stir to combine. Spoon (or pour) the batter into the cake tin.

Bake for 35 - 40 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto a rack to finish cooling.

I didn't make a fancy icing for this, just a little icing sugar with enough orange juice and zest to make it spreadable applied thinly and then dusted with more coconut and hundreds and thousands but if you want to make a huge production with soy cream cheese, lemons and icing sugar don't let me stop you.

Semolina Bread

This is an Italian recipe bread, made with semolina. Yes, real semolina.

I went mad in the supermarket and bought a huge sack of this, which is not ground as fine as flour but is just very fine semolina. It makes exceedingly wonderful bread. Of course, you may not be able to get this in which case Italian semolina bread flour which should be a pale yellow in colour will work just fine.

I'm never really sure if it's worth giving out recipes for bread. This one uses a strong wheat flour biga fermented overnight as a starter and fine semolina as the making up cereal. It needs a really hot oven. I made a lot, and although I could scale the recipe down it then starts to become fiddly with a gram of this and a pinch of that. If you're really keen to know what I did leave a comment and I'll update.

Confusion #2

Something of a mixed up muddle of a dish but it tasted good.

Warm Puy lentils mixed with store cupboard standbys; tinned sweetcorn, pickled roasted pepper, olives. A small shallot chopped fine and handful of delicious sweet local walnuts, the gift of a friend who visited during the week. The dressing was a little soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and a good grind of pepper.

The Point

As usual I've gone into a flat spin at the expectation of the arrival of the Alpha male on Friday. It's been a long month without him.

Consequently, my mind isn't really focussed on the food and although I had polenta disks, Berber spiced pumpkin and artichoke tips to make a poncey and photographic stack for tonight's meal, actually I can't bring myself to assemble it and have instead been living on strong coffee and the occasional crisp sandwich to ward off the possibility of fainting.

However, since I'd spent nearly a fiver on out of season asparagus, I was motivated* to steam that to be served with a vinaigrette dijonnaise. To replace the pumpkin a glass of the somewhat ambivalent Tunisian wine, Sidi Brahim, which is nearly the same thing may help to calm my shattered nerves.

Service is going to be a bit erratic for the next few days. Hope to get back to normal by the middle of next week.


* ah Love, where have you gone?

The Star of the Show

These knobbly looking things are called Jerusalem artichokes, or sometimes Sunchokes if you are on the American continent. They are easy to grow, simple to cook and quite tasty to eat, with a flavour all their own, but they have a flaw that makes them all but unusable. They contain a form of sugar, inulin, that most people are unable to digest. This leads to a side effect of uncontrollable flatulence. Since I've grown some, I thought I'd better make a meal with them before Mr. Stripey Cat arrives at the weekend. Such are the benefits of living alone.

There are lots of recipes for these difficult tubers. I particularly like a Turkish one where they are simply simmered with oil and lemon juice but a pot full of that might just be too much for me to finish up on my own by Friday. A good way of getting a taste of the vegetable without overdoing it is to mix them with mashed potatoes.

Clean your jerusalem artichokes and cook them in their skins until they are completely soft. You'll need a ratio of about 1 artichoke to 3 medium potatoes.

You can cook them in the same pan as the potatoes but if they're large they may take longer than the spuds to cook. Mash your potatoes with plenty of oil or margarine and then squeeze the soft insides of the artichoke into the pan and mash it all up together. It will keep warm for while in a covered dish in the oven if you need to prepare other things to go with them.

I served mine with some tofu triangles simmered in a beer and onion gravy. I put a tad too much white pepper in the gravy but you can't tell that from the picture.



Happy farting!

Soup and Crackers

A big bean broth made with the biggest white beans I could find, some chopped courgette, shallots, tomatoes and herbs and a good vegetable stock.



My favourite way of using up scraps of puff pastry, marmite palmiers. You can also make 'straws' from the same ingredients. Savoury, crispy and delicious.

Pumpkin Tarte Tatin

Apple Tarte Tatin is a very well known dish and there are numerous recipes for it, many claiming to be the original or correct version. There are also lots of variations using different fruit and some savoury combinations. This is a sweet pumpkin interpretation. It's not at all bad.

You need a very thick hob and oven proof pan for best results but you can use a saucepan to make the caramel and a baking tin for the pie. Please be very careful with the hot sugar, it can burn you badly.

You will need;

pumpkin, peeled and cut in thin slices
sugar, plenty to cover the base of your pan - 3 or 4 tablespoons
margarine or vegan butter, about a tablespoon.
some puff pastry, ready made is fine, or another crust of your choice.

Put your pan on the hob and add the sugar. Over a medium heat allow the sugar to heat and melt. As it melts it will turn golden in colour. You can stir it a little to spread the heat and avoid hot spots. As soon as it is all gold, turn off the heat and mix in the marg. or butter. If you're using a separate baking dish then grease it and pour in the caramel. Swirl it around to cover the base.



Arrange your pumpkin pieces neatly over the caramel. Remember they will be visible when you serve the pie so try to make a neat pattern. Don't make more than two layers of very thinly sliced pumpkin. You can sprinkle on some cinnamon or nutmeg or your favourite pumpkin spice if you like now.

Roll out your pastry and cut a generous sheet to cover the pumpkin and tuck down around the edges. Remember the caramel will still be hot, so take care.



Cook the tart at about 180C or a little hotter for abut 30 or 40 minutes. You want lovely golden pastry and the fruit to be cooked underneath it. When you take it out of the oven, it should look like the picture above, all puffed up and with the caramel sizzling around the edges.

Get a serving dish with a lip to catch the sweet juices and big enough to entirely cover your baking dish. With oven gloved hands place the serving dish upside down over the pie, then pick up dish and pan and invert them so that the pie drops out into the serving dish. If it sticks a few taps on the bottom and a little patience should bring it out. Any bits of pumpkin stuck in the pan can be popped back onto the tart where they belong.



The caramel will run down over the tart and into the server, which is why it needs to have a lip. The tart is delicious served warm or cold with cream. I served mine with some of the banana ice cream that I like to make, you can find the recipe here.

Patates Yahni Me Elies

Patates Yahni Me Elies - Potato Stew with Olives

This is a recipe that has been shared in my circle of friends for longer than I really care to admit to. It's a great dish for parties, easy to prepare and can be made with store cupboard ingredients and staples. The fact that we're all still making it after ...mumble... years is a measure of just how delicious it is.

Because it's so good for crowds I'm going to give you the full quantities for 8. I made just a fraction of it for myself but leftovers are easy to heat up and taste just as good or it can even be eaten cold with a dash of lemon juice.

Olive oil
1.5 kg potatoes, peeled and cut into bite sized pieces
4 large onions, sliced thinly
10 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
150ml wine (you can use red or white, I prefer red.)
2 tsp dried oregano
750g chopped tomatoes, tinned or fresh
150g black olives, pitted and rinsed, whole
2 tbsp olive paste (use olive tapenade if you have it, if not mince some more black olives finely)
Parsley

Heat oven to 190C/375F/Gas mark 5.

Put a big splash of olive oil in a frying pan and and sauté the potatoes for five minutes - in batches if necessary. They don't need to cook through, just have the rawness taken off and a little colour added.

Remove potatoes from pan to an oven-proof dish large enough for them to lie in a shallow layer. Use a slotted spoon so the oil is left in the pan. Sprinkle the whole olives over them.

Add more oil if necessary, and saute the onions, garlic and chilli for a few minutes. Then add the wine, tomatoes, oregano and olive paste. A little black pepper doesn't go amiss but be careful with salt as the olives will be very salty. Cook for a minute or two, then pour this sauce over the potatoes and olives in the baking dish.

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour until potatoes are cooked through and tender. Top up with water or wine if it gets too dry during cooking but you won't need much. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and eat.

It is possible to make this almost oil free, by parboiling the spuds and using a minimal amount of oil in the sauce but where's the fun in that!

Jacket spuds by the Fire

A very simple supper using the wood fire to cook my jacket potatoes. We usually serve this supremely comforting food with coleslaw and baked beans (and sometimes killer cucumber pickles and a few other things but beans and coleslaw are essential). The coleslaw is just some more of the Cherry Coloured Coleslaw from a few days ago using a white cabbage mixed with the red one this time. The beans, well, we're in France.

It is possible to buy Heinz baked beans here but I refuse to do so on principle. Instead I used an imported can of Peeled Ful from the Iranian grocer's shop in Motspur Park. Ful are basically broad beans and a staple of Middle Eastern cooking. Ful in tins is exactly equivalent to British baked beans but for a different culture. They're also rather good.

I ate so much I thought I would explode, but that's o.k. once in a while.

Rice Rolled

I made makisushi. Nearly everyone reading is likely to have tried this already at home so I'm not going to re-invent the wheel for you here but I thought a few notes about what I did might be of interest, particularly if you're in a place where Japanese ingredients are hard to find.

Firstly I used a short grain brown rice. I wanted to do this because it's a little more nutritious than the white and these rolls would inevitably form a major part of my food for a couple of days. To make sure the rice was tender and cooked quickly I soaked it for 12 hours before cooking. It's still not quite the same as rolling authentic Japanese white rice but it worked.

Then I had no sushi su, the vinegar mix used for seasoning the hot rice before it's rolled. This is very easy to make at home; the basic proportions are by volume:

9 measures of rice vinegar
3 measures of sugar
1 measure of salt
1 measure of mirin

However I had to substitute for the rice vinegar with cider vinegar. This is much stronger than rice vinegar, more acidic, so I replaced 3 measures of vinegar with water to reduce the acidity. I also cut right back on the salt, which I regret now from a taste point of view but wanted to be healthy, and I had no mirin. To give it that slightly raw alcoholic fragrance I used a teaspoonful of Cuban white rum but there's no doubt mirin would have worked better.

Gently heat the ingredients together in a thick bottomed pan until the sugar and salt have dissolved, no need to boil. This keeps quite well so you can make more than you need and keep the rest in a clean jar in the fridge for next time.

I had no pickled ginger. Root ginger, the younger and more tender the better, is easy (if frightening) to slice on the mandoline into very thin wafers. Use a little of your sushi su to cover them and allow to marinate for several hours. I made a small jar of this too, to see me through the next couple of weeks.

Not perfect, but it helped to satisfy my cravings for the exotic in this rural backwater of France.

Gardener's Soup

The summery weather of the weekend has left us. Now it's overcast and a little windy, much more autumnal, but there are still plenty of vegetables left to harvest in the plot. I made soup.



This is a mixture of red and green lentils, mung beans, pot barley and split green peas. I buy it as ready mix, a sort of slow food convenience package but it's easy to make your own favourite version with what you have in store. Choose pulses and grains that, like these, will cook in about the same time.

For this sort of wholefood soup it really helps if you can put the dried goods to soak for a few hours before starting the cooking, everything is softened and ready to go and the final dish seems more digestible for it. So put a couple of handfuls of mix in some clean water and leave to soak for at least two hours and ideally six.

An hour before you want to eat, start the soaked mix cooking. You can either cook it in its soaking water or do as I do and drain it, replacing the starchy soaking water with fresh. Add a vegetable stock cube and bring it all to a boil. Simmer for twenty minutes while you prepare the vegetables.



Although you can substitute any vegetables you like in this, the selection I chose today worked really well. I had some celeriac, carrot, potato and a small beetroot. The potato is a variety called Shetland Black, a heritage potato which is really floury. It has blue rings inside naturally and isn't going off! I also used a large clove of garlic, finely sliced.

Cut everything into small cubes no bigger than a pea. When your pulses and cereals have cooked for 20 minutes add the vegetables to the pot and bring back to a simmer.

There is no added oil or fat in this recipe and no need for extra seasoning if your stock cube is, as mine was, a bit salty, but taste it to test and add a sprinkle of salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

When the vegetables are cooked, you're ready. Ladle into a soup bowl, get some crusty bread to dip and tuck in.

Florentine Parasols

Parasol mushroom caps on a bed of spinach with a rich tarragon flavoured bechamel sauce.

This didn't really work as I intended so I'm not going to bother with the recipe, but it was such a pretty idea and photographed so well I thought I'd put it up just to record the effort.

Déjeuner sur les légumes

Such lovely summery weather today that a salad is entirely appropriate.

Couscous with avocado and black olives, supported by radishes, shallots and leafy greens from the garden in a lemony french dressing. Eaten by the vegetable patch under the blazing sun with a glass of good red. Bliss.

Fun with Foraging

Anyone who reads my other blog will have noticed I've become obsessed with wild fungi at the moment. Today I was lucky enough to chance upon some of the most edible of wild foods, the Parasol mushroom.



It's hard to mistake these for anything poisonous in Europe but if you're lucky enough to find some, check with someone who knows or a good book before proceeding.



The parasol mushroom has thin, delicately flavoured flesh which does not discolour when cut. Because its flavour is so mild it should be cooked quickly without other flavourings, and because it is so tender it's ideal for making into Fritters or Tempura if you're feeling fancy.

My favourite tempura batter is made with beer, a fine light lager for preference with just enough flour whisked in to make a thin creamy emulsion.

Brush your mushrooms off (or wash if they are very dirty) and remove the stalk. Divide the caps into quarters and dip into the batter. They're very light so you'll need to spoon the liquid over to get a good covering.

Deep fry in nice hot oil (not smoking, of course) until the batter is just turning golden. Lift from the oil and drain, salting immediately they come from the pan.

Because I'm very taken with the concept of wild food I decided to serve these on a bed of chickweed, which is currently running riot in the cleared patches of my vegetable beds. Cut a nice bunch, lightly dress with a few drops of sesame oil and use as a bed for four or five pieces of Parasol Fritter. Serve with a wedge of lemon. Makes a lovely starter for an autumn themed dinner party.

The Long Baguette of Lunch

Radish, Tomato, Avocado all sliced and layered into a baguette with Aubergine caviar as a spread.

Cherry Coloured Coleslaw

So many leftovers and cooking experiments have seen me overeating for the last few days. For supper today then I decided to go raw and vegetable.

This coleslaw is made with red cabbage, carrots, apples and shallots all grown here in our garden.



I grated the vegetables fairly finely using the very scary mandoline. It's a great tool but last time I used it I cut myself so I was being extra specially careful today.

Then I mixed everything together with a dressing made of 1 tbsp. soy mayo, a Bjorg branded one that I don't like much, a small pot of soya yoghurt, a teaspoonful of Dijon mustard, a pinch of salt and a splash each of cider vinegar and soy sauce. Not very exciting or innovative but quite healthy and guess what, enough for leftovers tomorrow as well!

Not really Nachos

I was trying out the recipe for corn chips from the excellent Mas du Diable site. The chips have a lovely taste but I didn't really pull off an impressive execution. They stuck to the foil, browned unevenly and took longer to cook than expected, probably due to my temperamental oven.

To serve with them I'd made a Salsa Verde, tomatilloes, avocado, garlic, lemon juice, the works but then wondered if I could use up some of my leftovers - that Colby uncheese is still hanging around and will have to be binned in the next couple of days.

So I give you Nachos, of a sort at any rate. Corn chips, layered with Salsa Verde, Spicy Tomato Ketchup and Colby uncheese warmed through...



It all tastes surprisingly good, but I'm not expecting to win awards for presentation or photography today. Dear me, no.

Not a food post at all

If you've arrived looking for seed swaps, my bad, the post you are looking for is not here.

Try The Catstripe - Seed Exchange. See you there!

Three Sisters Chowder

A warming soup made with the vegetables of the Three Sisters growing plan, pumpkin, beans and sweetcorn. I'd love to be able to say all the vegetables were grown here but the deer (or possibly the stray dog) ate my corn, which was already pretty stunted from poor soil and hail attack early in the season so I had to take recourse to a tin.

Prepare your beans. I have undried shelling beans from my climbing haricots at the moment which just need to be parboiled for a few minutes before use. If you are using dried beans then you will need to soak them and cook them until soft before starting. Or you could use a can! Observant viewers will see I had a couple of bean pods still tender enough to include whole but they're not essential.

Chop up an onion finely and sweat in a little oil. Add cubed pumpkin pieces - I used a variety called Melonette Jaspée de Vendée, a small fruited very sweet pumpkin but whatever you have will do - a couple of handfuls for two big bowls of soup, so you won't use a whole fruit. Stir around in the oniony oil and then add hot water to cover. Allow to simmer, 15-20 minutes, until the pumpkin is soft. Whizz up with the hand blender to a creamy smooth stock.

Add your beans and corn and bring back to a simmer for a few minutes. As I said, I used tinned corn but it would be infinitely better with the grains freshly cut from a sweet milky cob. Season with salt and pepper. Enjoy.

Lomo Saltado

It was a comment made on A Vegan called Bacon that started my research into the Peruvian dish, Lomo Saltado. Somehow I'd never come across it before but once I read about it, well, I had to have it.

Lomo means back in Peruvian Spanish and the Peruvians don't really seem to mind what sort of back they make jump* for this dinner although beef is most often mentioned in the literature. So, since they don't mind, I'm not going to retitle this No Lomo Saltado, it's just Lomo Saltado made with a small back of tofu.

Imagine a saucy stir fry rich with tomatoes, onions and herbs mixed with a large portion of chips and served with rice. The gravy from the tofu moistens the chips, the rice stretches everything out so it's not too strong. Isn't that just delicious? You'll be making it for yourself within a week I guarantee.



I won't give you quantities. This would have been plenty for two served with rice. I didn't have any rice because I'm already overloaded with leftovers but I ate the lot and I may die.

Slice some firm tofu thinly and marinate for half an hour in some soy sauce, a splash of vinegar and a few drops of sesame oil.

Meanwhile make some chips. I made thin french fried style but chunky chips might have been even better. Cook until crisp and then drain well and keep warm.

In a lightly oiled pan sauté some onions, a little garlic and a few cumin seeds. Add the drained strips of tofu and stir fry until the tofu is browning. Add a chopped tomato or two and some finely sliced sweet pepper (I didn't have any and used a handful of immature chillies but make sure they're not too hot if you do this) and stir again, then toss in the rest of the marinade to make a sauce. Stir in some chopped green herbs, parsley and coriander to taste. If it's a bit dry add some water, tomato juice, ketchup diluted with water, whatever to make sure there are few spoonsful of sauce lapping around the tofu and vegetables.

Pile your chips on a plate, top with tofu stir fry and pop a portion of white rice on the side. Total gratification will be yours.

*Originally in this post I had misremembered the name as Lomo Saltando, Jumping Back. In my mind that seemed quite reasonable, like a French Sauté. After I checked, nothing makes sense any more but see Soja's comment which explains everything!

It's my party

and I'll cry if I want to.



This rather splendid beast was the present that my son and his father gave me. I used it for the first time today and it is good. If I had to find a fault it would be the rather weedy and difficult to control toggle switch which I feel sure I will break before too long but it should be easy enough to replace.

With it I made a batch of the Colby Uncheese from the Uncheese Cookbook as quickly as you like and very effectively.



I just wish it could have helped me with my birthday cake which turned into a sorry mess of a thing. Still, it tastes o.k.



And so another year commences...

Vegan Savoury Pain Perdu

When my children were little I used to make them a concoction we called Eggy Bread. It differed very slightly from the dish generally understood by that name, not because it was vegan - it wasn't, we were only veggie in those days, but because the egged bread was sandwiched together with marmite.

I liked this a lot, and it was a great way of rendering slightly tough old bread more tender for little mouths and teeth to cope with but as they grew older they eschewed it, as it were, and we stopped having it. Then I took the step I'd been aiming for all my life and went vegan, so that was that.

Of course, like nearly everything else that is cooked, the naming can get you into a lot of trouble. Many people would call this French Toast and who am I to challenge them? But my mother, who wasn't a fan of eggs, made plain buttered toasted sandwiches and then opened them up and called it French toast, so I'm not comfortable with that as a title; it sounds wrong to my inner child. Brits understand Eggy Bread very well, but this doesn't have eggs in it so I'd rather I didn't call it that. The French have a similar recipe to eggy bread for their Pain Perdu and at least that doesn't reference the eggs in the title. Since I'm in France I could use that. But the modifications would make a Frenchman swallow his beret. I cannot tell a lie and this rather long and rambling paragraph is why the post is called Vegan Savoury Pain Perdu!



Make some marmite sandwiches with thinly sliced bread. If you hate marmite then substitute at will. Miso might do it for you, yeast pate, nothing at all. You could use jam but I'd suggest you leave the nutritional yeast out of the dipping mix if you want to do that. You don't need margarine or extra spread as the sandwiches will be fried.

Make a dipping mix of 25g chickpea (besan) flour, 10g nutritional yeast flakes (about a large dessert spoon) and 100ml non-dairy unsweetened milk. You need to mix the dry ingredients and then very slowly add the liquid, mashing down the lumps as you go or it becomes unpleasantly gribbly and will leave little bits of unmixed flour all over your breakfast. You want a smooth, fairly liquid batter.

Heat a frying pan with a splash of neutrally flavoured oil i.e. don't use the Extra Virgin Olive oil.

Soak your sandwiches in the dip, one at a time on both sides and then put them into the hot pan. Fry until golden on the first side then turn over and repeat for the second. They shouldn't stick but you might have to be gentle when easing them up.

Eat immediately. The sweet or plain versions could have extra syrup poured over but the savoury ones need nothing at all apart from a strong cup of coffee to accompany them.

Saf - Restaurant Review

On a recent trip to the UK my son took me for lunch at Saf, a vegan, mostly raw, restaurant in Shoreditch, London. It was opened quite recently with a good deal of marketing hype and is part of a small international chain. They describe their offerings as a plant-based, botanical menu using pure organic ingredients and claiming to avoid all artificial processing.

I could, quite easily, raise some issues with that description since the processes they put their foodstuffs through before serving them are quite definitely not natural in any respect but I'll allow their intention is to serve food with as many of its intrinsic nutrients intact as possible and leave it at that.

The restaurant is easy enough to get to if you're comfortable with the tube, not the most attractive area of London but possibly the next place for a bit of gentrification. The premises are clean and cool, stripped and modern in appearance. There is a disabled toilet on the same level as the dining area but other toilets are downstairs. On a Thursday lunchtime it was nearly full which can't be bad.

The menu is quite varied although the naming of dishes can be confusing. This is a raw vegan restaurant and finding dishes labelled nachos, lasagne, even Boursin (as in the French cheese spread) is confusing and not particularly helpfully descriptive. As we were there for lunch the menu was slightly shorter than the dinner version but not hugely different, just a light emphasis on more snacky offerings.

Friendly waitresses found us menus and brought tap water on demand. We had some cocktails. I didn't much like my shiso ginger lemonade one but my son's was quite tasty. Unfortunately I've forgotten what it was! The waitresses are helpful and will explain the food to you if you need it, so don't be shy to ask.

We were both starving when we arrived and gobbled down our starters before remembering to take pictures. To begin we had the Nachos and the Boursin Trio. The nachos were dehydrated crackers and the toppings with them a pleasant enough salsa, rather nice guacamole and something that tasted strangely like the cheese spread that comes in tubes. Our opinion was divided over it, but I think we came down slightly on the dislike square.

The Boursin Trio was just three flavours of cashew cheese, red pepper, olive and herby served with some more crackers and garnishes. Everything looked very pretty and it was lovely to be in a vegan restaurant with no worries about what was lurking in the food but this starter wasn't outside of my experience in any way and so, probably egotistically, I spent a while wondering how I would have made it better!

For main course we had:


Wrap - I'm sure this had tofu in it but I can't fnd one like that on the menu now



Buddha Bowl

The wrap was good of its kind. The bowl very pleasant. My first bite of the tofu was sublime but then the next one I realised that actually it was just a bit too salty for total enjoyment. I didn't like the rice at all, it wasn't just sticky to eat with chopsticks but almost hard panned. The vegetables were nicely done but the sauce (in the bowl) didn't really seem appropriate and I left it.

Greedy as we are we decided we would have some puddings:


Ganache Tart


Strawberry Coconut Cheesecake

The Ganache tart was really rich and chocolatey. We liked it very much but it came, on this day at any rate, with some lavender sorbet. I'm not sure if this was a mistake but it was horrid, tasting like fabric softener. A disappointment since I've eaten much nicer lavender sweets elsewhere. The portion defeated my son but that's not too bad after a big lunch.

The cheesecake was sweet and toothsome. I enjoyed it, not least because getting a decent vegan pudding anywhere in London can be a struggle and this was a good one. Again the plate decorations and sorbet weren't gob smacking but the overall presentation and balance was pretty good.

We finished with a coffee and the prettiest little cast iron teapot of Redbush tea. Bill for the two of us, including drinks (no wine) and a 12.5% service charge (included on the bill) came to £60. Not cheap but certainly acceptable for a treat. I'd definitely go again.