Tofu Hash

I have to apologise to David at BooktheCook. I was going to try one of his recipes but to begin with I had no potatoes, then, back in France I had plenty of spuds but no mushrooms (I only stock them when Mr. S-C is here) but no matter because I could have substituted some tofu strips but then, when I went to get the rocket it's all gone over in the heat and the next batch isn't ready to harvest yet. So, David I'm sorry but I will try again soon.

Tofu Hash was my lunch today. Is it really a Hash? I'm not sure but call it anything you like it was an easy option for some precooked potatoes and what have you. Needed a bit of chilli.

Potatoes are variety Pink Fir Apple, the perfect waxy salad potato but good fried too. The shallot and runner beans came from the garden. The tomato sauce came from a jar (my tomatoes are all still green :( ). Tofu by Bjorg.

Pudding from the field

Blackberry Kissel topped with thick yoghurt, brown sugar and more blackberries.

Broad Bean Pâté

It's easy enough to make a statement about giving up salt and vinegar for a few days, much harder to do it and write a food blog. I think this recipe just about fits the bill and is still worth recording.

Firstly, is it a pâté? Probably not, but paste or mash or spread sound less appealing and pâté does indicate it's something to be eaten with toasts or crackers, probably as a starter or snack.



You need some beans. These are some I've been growing in my heritage vegetable patch. They are unusual because they have crimson flowers which makes them worth saving just for the beauty of it, but also they are an older variety, hardy and prolific. The beans mature sequentially which means a more spread out harvest and we've had a great crop from them this year.



First task is to take them out of their furry cases. At this time of year they are easy to split open and extract the green seeds. Crimson flowered broad beans are also unusual in that the seeds stay green even when mature but if you have a different sort don't be surprised if they are much lighter in colour than this. My favourite broad bean actually has pinky chestnut coloured seeds but I haven't grown it this year.

Later in the year, when I will be saving fully mature beans for seeds they are often infested by earwigs which is pretty scary but we won't think about that now.

When you have your seeds, drop them into a big pan of boiling water for 3 or 4 minutes to blanch. Drain and allow to cool a little.



For this dish you'll need to pop the seeds to remove the chewy seed coat. I feel I must point out this is in no way a traditional practice in the UK where the beans are supposed to be taken young enough to eat them seed coats and all. When I first read about skinning the beans it seemed to be excessive, unnecessary and somewhat precious. If you look at the picture you can see a row of beans along the edge of the plate. Those on the left, with a black scar, will have tough seed coats (but full of valuable roughage!), on the right the skins will be tender enough to be eaten by all and should be in my opinion.

However, in the interests of texture we're going to skin all of these. It's a pleasant task provided you're not being watched by a dog who has clearly never eaten a broad bean in her life but is sure she'd like one.



Then you'll need to pick some herbs. I just went mad and picked some of everything, two types of parsley, dill, chives, mint, coriander, tarragon and basil but you could show a little more restraint. My coriander is flowering, isn't it pretty?

Make sure your herbs are really dry and your knife is really sharp. Chop the herbs finely. You need about 4 teaspoons of chopped herbs for this meal but if you chop too many there are plenty of ways to use them.

Mix your herbs with 4 tsps. lemon juice and a couple of tsps. olive oil. and mash it all together with the shelled, skinned broad beans. You can use a fork for this, no need for a processor.

I was strong and didn't add salt or pepper. It really doesn't need it but taste it and see if you need some.

Like cures Like

Similia similibus curantar or like should be treated by like is an ancient principle perhaps first documented by Hippocrates. A similar belief is the Doctrine of signatures, a rather medieval interpretation of the benefits of nature and particularly herbs based on the comparison of materials with the uses they should be put to.

It being one of the hottest days of the year I thought I'd adopt some of this specious reasoning, which persists today in the guise of homeopathy, and treat myself to some Hot and Sour Soup.


Hot and Sour soup without yuba.

I suppose it's a bit like the old British habit of having a good hot cup of tea to cool yourself down on the warmer days of the year but much much spicier.

This recipe makes two good sized bowls, ideal as part of a meal serving two then. Unfortunately I find I can just drink it all up.

Ingredients:

25g seitan
1 tsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. sesame oil

50g sliced bamboo shoots (or use celery sliced in a similar way for a nice alternative).
2 dried Chinese black mushrooms or shitake mushrooms,reconstituted and shredded or 2 fresh white mushrooms sliced.
50g onion cut into long skinny slivers.

50g tofu, sliced or cubed OR 50g yuba, reconstituted.

600ml water
1/2 teaspoon grated or finely minced fresh root ginger.
1 whole dried red chilli

1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
2 tsps. soy sauce
3 tsps. white wine, cider or rice vinegar.
A shake of sesame oil.

2 tsps. cornflour slaked in a little cold water.
1 spring onion, green parts, sliced.
1/2 tsp. ground white pepper.

Method:

I have split the ingredients into functional groups to make it easier. Start by making small cubes of the seitan. Mix with the 1 tsp. soy sauce and 1/2 tsp. sesame oil and leave to marinate for half an hour.

Prepare the vegetables. These are suggestions but other veggies e.g. fine sliced carrot, can be substituted to taste. Dried lily buds are traditional, soak a few, trim the hard ends and add them if you like.

Put the water into a pan and set on the heat. Add the chilli pepper and the ginger and bring to a simmer.

Add the prepared vegetables to the pot. Bring back to the simmer. Add the seitan, and if using the tofu, but not the yuba.

Bring back to the simmer. Add the sugar, soy sauce, vinegar and a touch more sesame oil and taste the broth. I don't think it needs salt but you may like to adjust the balance of soy sauce and vinegar.

With the pan on the heat, stir up your slaked cornflour and add it to the pot, stirring continously. The soup will thicken slightly.

Remove from the heat and add the ground white pepper. This is the essential flavouring but it's easy to overdo it. Start slowly and keep tasting until it seems right to you

Garnish with the chopped green onion and the optional shredded yuba. Serve very hot with additional chilli oil for the totally insane.


Hot and Sour soup with yuba.

This is delicious but I have noticed that I'm adding more and more flavourings and spices in my food to get the sort of intense hit I crave. Because of this I'm going to be detoxing my tastebuds and living on boiled brown rice, lightly cooked vegetables from the garden and as few flavourings as I can manage. So no ginger, soy sauce, spices, salt, sugar or vinegar for a few days which I hope will help to bring my palate back to the sensitivity it needs.

Veg Blog Search Resource

I've been planning to update my link list of veg*n blogs for a while to reflect the many new places I've discovered that are worth reading but in the meantime Susan at FatFreeKitchen has beaten me to it, reorganised her list to its own domain and provided a handy search widget for ease of use.

You can find the link to her blog search in the sidebar and if you'd like to get the widget for your own blog, go here to collect the code.

A life more fancy

A tentative excursion into the exotic, this is still very much a work in progress but I was pleased with the look and the experiment has given me new directions to work in.

A risotto flavoured with components of harissa is topped by aubergine twists in sesame seeds and served with a rustic hummous; roughly crushed chickpeas in lemon, garlic and sesame oil garnished with a caramelised onion gelée.

Biscotti

I've been trying to get a good vegan biscotti recipe for a while. This isn't quite it but it's damn close. These are crunchy hard, almost too hard but just right for dunking.



80g oil (sunflower or whatever)
1 banana mashed well (this is about 100g)
50g cocoa powder
200g white sugar
225g plain flour
1 tsp. baking powder.
50g brazil nuts, roughly crushed.

Mix the oil with the very well mashed banana.

Sift all the dry ingredients except the nuts together.
Add the nuts.

Mix in the wet ingredients. It will form a fairly firm dough. Knead it with one hand for a few moments so that it comes together nicely, then divide into two parts and form each part into a flattened log shape about 10cm across and 25 cm long.

Put the shaped logs onto a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for about 25 minutes at 180C. The loaves should rise a very little bit, just cracking the tops. Remove from the oven and allow to cool until it's comfortable to handle them.

Reduce the oven temperature to 150C. Slice the chocolate loaves with a very sharp knife into pieces about 1.5 cm wide. It's a bit crumbly at this stage so take care.

Lay the pieces back on the baking sheet and put back into the cooled oven for 15 minutes, then turn all the slices and give them another 15 minutes to crisp up.

Cool on a wire rack. They are extremely hard when just cooked but become a little more biteable after a day in a tightly closed biscuit tin.

Serve with strong coffee or our favourite, crumbled over vanilla icecream.

Bread in a Bath

'Evening, my little Gastronauts (and who does remember the great Keith Floyd these days?), tonight we're going to explore the delicacy known as Pan Bagnat or Bathed Bread, a sandwich from the south of France which is ideal for picnics since it positively revels in being squashed under the chilled wine at the bottom of the basket.



Here we have the mise en place; a rather misshapen ciabatta, some chopped garlic, some capers, some stoned olives, some basil leaves, tomato slices, chopped celery, chopped lettuce, vegan tuna (tell you about that later!) and vinegar. I'm sure you can work out which is which.

Now, for absolute authenticity we need some cucumber which I didn't have and the vinegar should be of the red wine variety but, hell, this is the vegan version of a Niçoise favourite, it ain't never gonna be authentic! That said, the cucumber is a nice wet fruit, ideal for moistening the bread with its delicate juices and the red wine vinegar is, in my opinion, far more appropriate for this dish of the overheated South than the chilly cider flavours of the North. But whatever you have is just fine.

The bread needs to be white, holey, maybe even a little bit stale but don't choose anything too tough. You need to be able to bite it all the way through without breaking your jaw. Ciabatta /is/ Italian but the French do make similar breads. You can use pain ordinaire or sourdough, even a baguette if you prefer.

Slice the loaf longways like it was a huge roll. Sprinkle chopped garlic on the bottom half (or just rub the cut clove over, if you're a wuss), apply plenty of capers and sprinkle liberally with the vinegar. Drizzle a little olive oil on that.

Layer on some cucumber if you have it, then take slices of vegan tuna (yeah, I know) and arrange across the cucumbers. Season with pepper and lay the basil leaves over. Time for the celery, tomatoes, olives and lettuce, in that order or any other you fancy. You probably won't need salt because of the capers and olives but it's your choice.

Oil up the top slice of the loaf and add a little more vinegar if you like it and cover your sandwich.

You're done, but you can't eat it yet. Wrap the whole construction up tightly using cling film, foil or a dish that will take the whole thing and some greaseproof or parchment paper to cover it, then put a heavy weight on it and leave somewhere cool for at least 4 hours to mature. The salad exudes its juices which mix with the oil, vinegar and seasonings and the bread soaks up all this healthy goodness becoming succulent and tender. Served with a glass of rosé there can hardly be anything nicer on a hot summer's day in the country.



Oh, and that vegan tuna! I'm still working on it but there is a commercial product you may be able to get. Marigold Braised Tofu comes in tins from good health stores worldwide and is delicious. Failing that tofu slices, seitan or even cheesely might fill the gap although the flavours will move steadily away from the epitome of the original.

Molecular Gastronomy or Raising Seitan

So molecular gastronomy? Well yes, in that molecular gastronomy is an approach to cookery via the chemistry of the ingredients. Extracting the gluten from wheat in order to use it in different presentations is exactly that. Nothing new under the sun is there, but who needs to eat a staple deformed and reformed to imitate an entirely different comestible anyway?



Seitan is one of those foods that occupy an uneasy position in the world. Is it a traditional food or is it food technology gone mad? Like soya it has expanded beyond its historical culinary origins into a food that tries to carry itself on its tradition but is often so far removed from it that any resemblance to the original is purely coincidental. It is no longer the aesthetic flowering of stringent temple cookery but a commodity in a protein greedy world.

I like seitan sometimes. It's good in a stir fry, can be used to emulate Peking duck for eating with pancakes and plum sauce, makes a change as a protein booster from the inevitable pulses but it's only one food of many and the tradition of imitating meat products with it puts it in a context that as a vegan I would sometimes prefer to avoid.

It's not an easy option to obtain either in France or the UK. We used to buy small tins of it from the Chinese supermarket - made in Taiwan they came in an interesting variety of flavours and forms from abalone to popk (sic) taking in duck and chicken along the way. They all taste much the same but the abalone is in small puffs, the chicken and duck have scary feather pimples moulded into their solid slices and the popk is a slightly more lurid pink. Unfortunately, after various food scares from China and other oriental producers we've become reluctant to buy this any more, just in case.

With that sort of ambivalance in mind we managed perfectly well but finally, after doing without for some time I decided that I had to give it a go myself. The technique isn't complicated, just a bit physical and tedious and others had tried and succeeded, like my friend Herbi (who has documented the process so well I've borrowed his photos, see the full set here) so what could possibly go wrong?

Looking around the web for recipe ideas I found that the traditional method has all but been superseded by the quick and easy route, commercially extracted gluten powder is juggled around casually by all sorts of cooks and it's become something of a vegan staple recipe for many - of which more later - but I was looking for the old fashioned sort.

My first hurdle was that nearly all the recipes call for wholewheat flour. Why is that when the whole point of the exercise is to remove from the wheat everything but the protein? I resolved to use white flour and be damned. I put 1.5kg strong white bread flour into the mixer and added 950 ml. of water. This is the proportion I use for making bread, more or less, and it gives a fairly tight dough which I thought would be a good start for the process. Unfortunately our huge bread mixer found the quantity too small for a proper beating. I had no more white flour so another 1.5kg wholemeal swiftly followed the white into the bowl along with more water.



I set the controls for the heart of the sun and sat back to wait. Twenty minutes later I had a large lump of dough. So far, so good. Then, I started to get cold feet! All that water used, all that carbohydrate and bran washed away. In my research earlier I saw only one commercial concern that mentioned recovery of these items and I vaguely remember from years ago an amateur recommendation to collect and dry the starch (effectively gluten free flour) for other uses but that was not visible on my searches today. This is such a wasteful food.



The actual washing is a pleasant enough task, a bit like washing your undies in the sink. To begin with the ball of dough collapses into claggy strings but after about the fourth change of water it starts to come back together again and form a sturdy squishy sponge that can be pulled and pressed with impunity to get it clean from the milky flour water.

After a great deal of kneading, squeezing and water down the drain you'll be left with about third of what you started with - you've extracted the gluten, nearly pure protein although there is still a lot of water in it.



To complete the process you need to cook it. I've seen recipes that suggest a short plain water simmer before adding it to a stock for a longer cooking but I don't think that this is necessary for small pieces.

Make a big (for this amount I had 6 litres of stock) pot of stock, using your favourite powder, fresh vegetable stock, dried herbs etc and add to it quite a lot of soy sauce, a strip of kombu and a few slices of root ginger. When it comes to the boil add your gluten in pieces. I found the best way to do this was to take handfuls of the stuff, stretch and squeeze it into thin sausage shapes and then use scissors to snip off thin sections. These expand in the pot, taking up the flavour of the stock and become quite neat looking slices. Allow to simmer gently for an hour and then turn off the heat, cover the pot and allow to cool in the pan.

Use immediately, store in a covered container in the fridge with some of the stock for up to a week or freeze in small containers, again with some stock, and use fairly quickly.



It is an interesting food but achieved at the cost of throwing the baby out with the bathwater; at the same time as making this experiment with gluten I used the equivalent ingredients (with the addition of a little yeast) to make six loaves of bread. A few slices of that will give you all the same protein properly rounded out with carbohydrates and fibre, far less water usage and not a lot of difference in the energy used for cooking.

I made a tiny stir fry to illustrate this blog post and I expect to showcase the seitan more fully over the coming weeks. It is a good protein addition to the diet but the high processing costs associated with it mean that it should be regarded as a special occasion food, a luxury for high days and holidays. The effort required to make it is the indicator of that.

And this is why I view with some reserve the many current recipes on the web using vital gluten powder. In my view, the possibly misguided search for foodstuffs that are nutritionally comparable to meat is causing vegans to fall into the same trap as the meat eaters. The food is becoming overprocessed and resource heavy, unsustainably concentrated and the link to a more natural, healthy diet is becoming lost.

BBQ

Not exactly haute cuisine but a pleasant way to spend an evening in the garden.



First get your charcoal glowing. We use a very old cast iron barbeque that is nearly rusted through in places but is still much better than anything else we've tried. Make a small wood fire in the box (or use firelighters!), pile on the charcoal and sit back for an hour while it all gets hot.




After years of experimentation we've decided that fancy kebabs and fiddly presentations aren't worth the effort. Thinly sliced vegetables and good sized pieces of tofu or tempeh are easier and that means more successful.

Here we have slices of courgette and pepper lightly brushed with oil, slices of firm potato parboiled and brushed with oil and tempeh in triangles briefly marinaded in oil and turmeric.



To serve with the cooked items we had potato salad, pico de gallo and some 'killer' pickles - salt pickled cucumbers I potted three years ago and still going strong.

An Entertaining Weekend

We had a favourite visitor stay on Friday and as well as actually doing a tad of housework in his honour we wanted to make him some delicious food.


Antipasto of Griddled Vegetables in a Lemon Vinaigrette

Red peppers (at the bottom and invisible), courgettes and spring onions cooked on a a very hot ridged griddle, coated while warm with a very lemony dressing and decorated with Kalamata olives and capers. It was chilled before serving. I also made some ciabatta to soak up the juices.

Then we made him do some work and create his own ravioli from pasta dough and filling I had prepared in the afternoon. In fact, the two of them, A and Mr. S-C made a great team with the pasta roller and the cutters and I wish I'd taken pictures but I was having too good a time sipping wine and watching my boys work!


Mushroom Ravioli with Basil oil and Roasted Tomato

For pudding we had raspberry sorbet. The Fruit Garden in France is still a gleam in my eye but there were some raspberries at the Co-op that were not only at an appropriate price for the season (it's not "half price" but market price and I wish they'd tell the truth) but local, in good condition and marked down for being on their sell-by date. Irresistible or what?


Raspberry Sorbet

The sorbet is tremendously easy to make;

200g fine white sugar
200ml water
250g raspberries
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Select half a dozen of the prettiest raspberries and freeze individually for garnish.

Make a syrup of the water and sugar, stirring over a gentle heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add the remaining raspberries and allow to simmer for about a minute until the fruit starts to cook and falls apart when you stir it. Remove from the heat and rub the syrup and fruit through a fine sieve to remove the pips. Allow to cool and add the lemon juice.

Put into a freezer proof container and as soon as it's cold into the freezer. Allow to freeze. The relatively high sugar content and the pectin in the fruit stops this from freezing too hard but give it a stir after a few hours to redistribute the ice crystals.

When it's frozen completely (and it still won't be to solid to scoop unless you have an industrial freezer) scrape it out into your food processor and process smooth. The colour will change as air is beaten in. Put it back in its freezer container and into the freezer again until needed.

You can skip that last step if you like, the colour will be darker and the end product not quite so smooth but it's still delicious.

It was a hot evening and although I shaped the ice into neat quenelle shapes it's such a soft ice it melted during the photos. If you need quenelles, shape them and put back into the freezer until serving.

An Entertaining Weekend

Takeaway

One of the few benefits of being in the UK is the ability to get genuinely vegan take away meals from our favourite reasonably local Chinese restaurant Veggie World.

This is a plate of tonight's selection, pineapple fried rice, veggie chicken and tomatoes and sesame toasts, just half of it because the portions are quite big. Mr. Stripey Cat had his usual too, 'Chicken' Macau and chips with a mixed starter box.

We're a bit worried that this wonderful friendly and virtually unique to Bletchley and Milton Keynes restaurant might be struggling to get customers so if you're in the area, please please look them up. They also sell the fake meats in freezer packs for cooking at home, perhaps not something you'd want every night but a useful resource that I hope will stay in business.

A Slice of Pie

I was making Cornish Pasties yesterday (of which more another time) when I realised I had far too much filling for the area of pastry available. The solution was to make the rest into Pie.

Line a loaf tin with your pastry - I had ready made puff paste, I'm going to have to start tagging these! You'll need to save enough pastry for the lid.

Finely slice an onion, a medium potato and a couple of carrots. Mix the shreds together and season well with salt and pepper.

Chop a block of tofu into small cubes, dress with a teaspoonful of soy sauce and another of olive oil. Mix well.

Fill the pie case with the raw vegetables and top with the tofu. Cover with the lid and crimp the edges to seal everything in.

Cook at about 180C for approximately one hour. You may need to reduce the temperature a little if it starts to brown too much but you will need a long cooking time for that raw filling, and the long slow baking really develops the flavours.

Cool in the tin for half an hour or so, then remove to a rack or serving dish to stop the pastry becoming too soggy.

Serve cold in slices with salad and pickles for a light summer lunch or picnic.

Figs

Clearing out the back of a cupboard I found a packet of dried figs. I think these were part of a Mother's Day present given to me by my daughter this year.

The figs were washed in clear cool water and put into a pan with enough fresh water to cover them, a glassful of red wine, the zest and juice of a lemon and a piece of cinnamon stick. They were brought gently to a simmer and kept there for 15 minutes, then the figs and their juice were removed to a serving dish and chilled.

The scent of lemon and cinnamon gave a cosy, out of season, flavour to the kitchen. Comforting on this grey and rainy day.

Late

Chocolate cupcakes with Whisky buttercream

A fracture in my life is stopping me cooking. I did have a go this afternoon and half created some hemp felafel inspired by the Chocolate Lady but although I spent a pleasant hour grinding flax and hemp seeds and watching The Ghost and Mrs Muir the mixture that evolved tasted so revolting that it didn't even get as far as the oven but went straight into the compost.

So in anticipation of a hungry man arriving home and no dinner for him I literally whipped up some cupcakes like a good little woman. Oh it's not that I won't eat a cupcake but there's just something not right about their modern incarnations. And anything that requires me to do origami with parchment paper to make a piping bag (where is my piping bag?!?) is an abomination. After piping a couple with this construction I decided they looked prettier with hand swirls from the back of a teaspoon.

So there you have it, I'm late to the party again and I'm wearing the wrong shoes. Hope to be back soon.

Had them

The perfect chip. So many people think they have this cracked. I happen to be one of them. Although Heston's version, cooked three times is gilding the lily in my opinion (and the ones he did with an infused aroma of hay and injected with tomato ketchup - or did I dream that- were ridiculous) you can't make a good chip without cooking it twice.

More importantly still, you must have the right potatoes. In the Stripey Cat household we can make chips out of anything and often do but for proper chips, real chips that hold the attention completely through each crisply melting bite until the last scrap has been lovingly located and captured from the serving dish you need a variety of spud called British Queen. Oddly enough, this isn't a potato that is much grown in the UK anymore, but in Ireland where they know their chips it's a still a widely planted crop.

The oil is quite important too. We like a peanut oil for its high smoke point but olive oil is good handled carefully. Don't use it more than two or three times for health reasons. Fill your frying container not more than 1/3 full and have a fire blanket in the kitchen in case of emergency. I know you can use one of those automatic deep fat fryers, but why? Don't try to cook too many chips at one time.

Carefully chop your spuds into chunky pieces, leave for a while, say 15 minutes to an hour, in a bowl of icy water. Drain them, dry well on a clean tea towel.

Heat the oil to hot enough, and this is where I'm going to fail you all because I don't know the temperature. It's the temperature at which a cube of bread takes a minute to brown but what does that mean. I know, because I cut the cube (and eat the crouton!) but it's very imprecise. Nevertheless, with all the due care necessary when dealing with hot oil plunge your dried chips into the sizzling bath. It will foam up impressively. Let the chips sizzle away for around five minutes, they will not change colour much in this time, should not in fact, but will seal their outsides and stop taking in oil.

Lift the chips from the pan to a place of draining. Reheat the oil, just a tad hotter than it was before and return the chips to the pan. Another 4 minutes should see you with chips that are both golden and delicous!

Scoop them out and allow to drain for a moment, then salt liberally and serve.