Breakfast of the Vanities

Chickpea flour pancake with tomatoes and herbs. Gram flour doesn't hold together as well as wheat flour does in pancakes so I was pleased with the almost crepe like finish on this one. A simple topping of chopped tomatoes (yes, I used a tin but fresh, skinned and diced would have been better if tomatoes were in season) and a sprinkling of flavour filled herbs, mint, coriander, rocket and lambs lettuce made a good thing better.

It's been a time for reflection and grieving and so cooking hasn't been high on my agenda. Still, my whole world knows me as someone who cooks and Candice was no exception. Up until the last she was sending messages to me exhorting me to get the cook book on the road. I teased her about death bed wishes, they are extortion and likely to be agreed to in the stress of the moment with no real intention of carrying out the final request. She responded by getting other friends to harass me on her behalf.

Frankly, I don't believe I'm up to the job and since I fear failure even more than I fear hard work then the depth of my inability to believe in myself is starkly revealed. There is so much competition out there, from the likes of Bryanna, Isa , even Katie and her excellent little 'zines not to mention a whole raft of other vegan bloggers and loads of books written and published by more conventional means.

I simply don't know how to sell myself against such established successes.

However, I have resolved to take the coward's way out and compile my book with the intention of releasing it to a disinterested public via the modern vanity publishing route. So maybe sometime soon Lulu or Blurb or perhaps WritersWorld, although they are bit coy about setting up costs, will be carrying my tome. Well, maybe.

CJG's Porridge

This is the concoction of a dear friend of mine. Each time I stayed with her she would prepare this enormously filling and delightful bowl of breakfast goodness and we would drink redbush tea and eat porridge and have the sort of conversations that are only of interest to two old friends who have drunk a lot together the night before and still have news to share.

Candice died this week of, as they say, a long illness bravely borne. I will make my own porridge and think of her.

Start with a standard quantity of traditional rolled porridge oats, organic for preference and mix it with 2.5 times its volume of water. 30g weight of oats is about right for one person.

Put it in a large bowl or jug that will microwave - yes, you can make it in a pan but do you want all that hassle on the teetering edge of a hangover - and start the abomination for a couple of minutes. The porridge will boil up so make sure the container is large enough. Meanwhile chop a large banana into slices, find a handful of raisins, another handful of sunflower seeds, hull less pumpkin seeds or a mixture of the two and pinch of cinnamon if you like it. Add any other seeds you like and maybe a few nuts, walnuts are nice if you have them.

Toss these into the porridge, give everything a good mix and return to the microwave for another couple of minutes until the oats have finished cooking.

Then, with dedication born of love, serve the porridge with maple or golden syrup lavishly applied and a little soya cream if you like it.

Feel the goodness filling you up. Take care of all your friends.

Humble Pies

I'm proud of my baking and when I found some reduced price blueberries in the local Co-op it seemed the easiest trick in the world to create a teatime treat from a favourite muffin recipe and the bargain fruit.

Everything went to plan and the buns came out of the oven golden and fragrant but underneath that deceptively attractive crust was a disaster of considerable ugliness.

The fruit had sunk through the batter to the base of the muffin cases, but worse than that, the berries had deliquesced to an inky sludge that was an indigo blue and didn't look like food at all.

If you closed your eyes and used a spoon to scoop out the soggy bottoms they tasted o.k. but the cakes wouldn't leave the paper whole and even fully cooled were unpleasantly moist.

Pity.

Be my Valentine

We had Valentine's day early because of family commitments later in the week.

It's been hard to choose a sexy, indulgent meal and keep to the diet, and frankly just at the moment my heart is not in losing weight, so I've decided to abandon the regime and allow free rein to my imagination. However, I might just calorie count it as I go, to quantify the potential damage.

We've recently become enamoured of Cosmopolitan Cocktails. Never having paid much more attention to them than as a prop on "Sex and the City" I finally read a recipe and discovered that they are really just a girly version of my all time favourite; the Margarita. Just not as salty, sour or made with Tequila. Ideal for Mr. SC who dislikes most of those things. Oh and they're pink.

Wikipedia gives the full story but the simple recipe for Cosmopolitans is thus;



For one person:
2 measures vodka
1 measure Triple Sec
juice of half a lime (but we used lemon)
just enough cranberry juice (or in our case elderberry) to tint it pink.

Shake over ice, strain into a Martini glass and admire that rosy glow. We prefer to share the juice of the half lemon (so 1/4 per portion, yes?) and use our own elderberry cordial which gives the most beautiful colour. Very sexy, very plush and romantic.

Starter:

Compote of Love Apples with Asparagus and Pomegranate dressing.

Main:

Coeur aux Noix on a bed of Spinach with crushed Saffron and Black Pepper Potatoes

Pudding:

Sweetheart Tiffin
This was much more subtle than it appeared, filled with Amaretto soaked golden raisins and a delicious spicy undertone of cinnamon from the Speculoos biscuits I used in the mix. The hundreds and thousands are Mr. Stripey Cat's favourite.



served with Pink Fizz

Quiche?

This is the story of a failure, or was it a near miss? Either way, it didn't really do what I wanted it to do. It was nothing like a quiche but I suppose as a savoury tart for a change of pace meal it might yet have a place in the repetoire, although a few elements still require attention.



The recipe follows. If you make it as written it will be o.k. for supper but don't serve to those you would hope to impress.

The Pastry:

This is an olive oil based mix using a fine wholemeal chapatti flour;
265g flour
100g olive oil
90ml cold water

Put all the ingredients into the food processor and pulse until they turn to rubble. Then gather up the bits and form into a flattened ball by hand. Rest the dough for 30 minutes.

Roll out between two pieces of parchment or grease proof paper. This quantity is sufficient for a 22cm /9 inch flan. Bake blind for 20 minutes at 220C.

The Filling:

There are various tofu substitutes for eggy, cheesey mixtures around. This one is no better than most.

1 cube silken tofu- 340g
100g soya yoghurt
45g cornflour
30g tahini
12-15g nutritional yeast flakes
pinch celery seed
pinch ground turmeric

Put all these into the food processor and process to a smooth texture. I think I would add a little extra fat to this next time, but the whole thing is pretty calorific as it is. I put too much turmeric in, it's just a touch too yellow.

Fry off a medium onion in 10g olive oil and add 120g frozen broad beans or other veg of your choice. Season with some finely chopped rosemary and half a teaspoon of smoked paprika. When the beans are hot remove the mixture to a clean bowl and allow to cool.

Toast 40g of pine nut kernels until just browned and fragrant. Reserve in a separate bowl.

When the case has finished blind baking, arrange the onion and bean mixture in the bottom, cover with the tofu mixture, smooth the top and sprinkle the pine nuts over.

Bake in the hot oven 220C for another 20 minutes. Serve with salad.



Made as described each serving of six provides about 500 calories.

Teppanyaki Supper

We like Japanese food. Teppanyaki, although usually considered a meateater's dish, lends itself well to vegan eating with a selection of vegetables seared on a hot plate and served with dipping sauces and side dishes to complement the cooked food.

Because we're still dieting, tonight we didn't worry about creating an entirely authentic menu selection but simply chose those items that we really wanted to eat that weren't too culturally inappropriate.



On the griddle were six sorts of vegetable; butternut squash, potato, parsnip, mushrooms, yellow peppers and onions, each sliced thinly so that it would cook quickly and evenly. Starting with the squash, which takes longest, all the vegetables were added in cooking order, finishing with the parsnip shavings, sliced very thinly so that they would brown and crisp almost immediately on hitting the heat. The sugars in the root give a great caramelised flavour.

We cooked everything at once so that we could eat together even though normally the cook serves each item as it is cooked and doesn't get to eat until all the other diners are sated.



To go with the hot vegetables we had edamame soy beans, maki sushi filled with homemade kimchi radish or yellow pepper and tomato, steamed tofu with spring onions and sesame oil and a couple of dipping sauces, one soy sauce and rice vinegar, the other a hot sweet chilli sauce. The original menu called for miso soup also but we overlooked it and never missed it in the abundance of food on offer.

Dieting Dinner

We're on a diet. For over a week now it's been low fat, tiny portions and suffering but last night to celebrate a week of not eating very much at all we decided to have a small blow out. Really quite restrained in the end, each plate coming in at about 850 calories (as they are called by nutritionally challenged) plus some very welcome red wine that I forgot to worry about! There was even room for a few rosy red grapes and some raspberry jellies for pudding.



Portobello mushrooms were stuffed with mixture of crisply fried onions, some nutritional yeast and a couple of spoonfuls of soya yoghurt drained for few hours through a very fine sieve to remove a lot of the moisture. The mushrooms were then baked on a platform of puff pastry. To serve with them, parsnip chips, roasted in a hot oven after being tossed with a tiny amount of oil and fresh rosemary spikes.

The salad was oven roasted baby plum tomatoes on a bed of rocket dressed with a rather wonderful balsamic reduction which was black, sticky and deliciously piquant.

It has to be said, it all worked fantastically well.

And if we'd left the pastry out, each portion would have been 500 calories lighter.