We like Pie

A great big vegetable pie

I hope everyone had a lovely festive season. After the parties and gatherings and potlucks and snacking we were left with some root vegetables and a portion of puff pastry to use up. We like pie, so we made one.

This pie is ultimate simplicity. Line a loose bottomed cake tin with pastry, fill it with vegetables, I used raw cubed swede, potatoes, onions, celery and a handful of green soy beans. Season with salt and pepper and put on a nice pastry lid. The real trick is to cook it for a good long time. This one took an hour and ten minutes at 180C which allowed all the vegetables to cook through. If the top browns too quickly cover it with a bit of baking paper but it shouldn't be a problem.

Now at the planning stage, New Year's Eve dinner. Come back soon.

Pudding

No, not a Dickensian Christmas pudding but my current pudding of choice for celebrations and parties.

This is based on a recipe I found on Rawmazing. It's tremendously rich and calorific, nothing to worry about if it's forming part of a diet that is largely composed of dehydrated grass and green smoothies, but something to be quite wary of if you're intending it to follow a traditionally cooked main course.

My version no longer qualifies for the raw label, I have used ready made biscuits, real sugar and prepared chocolate instead of the original raw ingredients, but that's not a problem for me. Just remember that this cake will serve at least 12 portions and is extremely filling. If you use a slightly larger tin you may need a few more biscuit crumbs but there will still be plenty of topping so you shouldn't need to increase that.



Orange Chocolate Cashew Cheesecake

Serves 12

Crust:
150g digestive biscuits
75g margarine
50g golden syrup
100g dark chocolate (save one square back to grate over for decoration if liked)

Smash up biscuits in bowl with a heavy item like the end of rolling pin. Melt margarine and syrup together and mix into the biscuit crumbs. Press mixture into the bottom of a greased 18cm (7 inch) loose bottomed pan. Melt the chocolate, about 30 seconds in the microwave or over a hot water bath. Spread over crumb base. Place in refrigerator to set.

Filling:
2 big Oranges (make sure you have very good unwaxed oranges)
75g caster sugar (or to taste)
300g Cashews (soaked in plain water for at least 3 hours then
drained)
150g Virgin Coconut Oil (from health food shops. This sets hard at room temperature so sit the jar in some warm water if it's too solid to get out of the jar)

Grate the zest from the oranges. The zest is important to the flavour. I left it out of this cake because I could only get waxed oranges but the flavour was lacking. The zest also puts some nice orange speckles through the mixture. Be careful to only get the orange part as the pith (the white) is bitter. Squeeze the juice out of all the oranges.

Place cashews, sugar, coconut oil, zest and orange juice in a food processor and process until very smooth. Pour over crust, smooth and bang down a bit to settle and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving. Grate a bit more chocolate over to decorate at serving time. Keeps well, covered in the refrigerator, for a couple of days if necessary.

We served this with the Brown Brother's Orange Muscat and Flora dessert wine which went splendidly.

Cuban

We were going to have a party last weekend. At midday on Saturday the skies were blue and the roads were clear. By 2 p.m. there were 3 inches of settled snow and it was still snowing heavily. We cancelled.

Now we have food for an army and only the two of us to eat it. I expect we'll manage. I had planned a gentle Cuban theme to the meal, based on recipes from "A Taste of Old Cuba"

This is an interesting book, which I hope has truly authentic recipes from Cuba even if they are rooted in a period before the Cuban revolution. Many of them are impossible to veganise effectively as they rely on meat as their principal ingredient but the poor people's food is based on rice and beans and what good socialist vegan could eschew those?

Black beans, plantains, rice, all these things are well represented across the internet but there was a recipe for a side salad which appealed to me for its novelty and style, Guacamole Cubano.




To make enough salad for six to eight servings you will need;

1 ripe pineapple
2 large avocados (ripe but not mushy)
a small red onion (or part of a larger one!)
Olive oil
Lime juice
Salt

Peel, core and divide the pineapple flesh into small cubes. I don't have recommendations for the best way to tackle a fresh pineapple but I usually take off the top tuft and bottom to make flat ends, peel by slicing downwards from top to bottom with a very sharp knife, pick out any 'eyes' that are left and then slice into quarters to make removing the core easy. Catch as much juice as you can. I wouldn't use tinned pineapple for this dish.

Cut the avocados in half, remove stones, peel and dice into similar sized pieces to your pineapple bits.

Slice the red onion finely.

Mix all the fruit and vegetables into a bowl and then dress with equal parts of good olive oil and lime juice whisked together. Add salt to taste.

It seems to me that this very simple preparation could do with a little jazzing up in the form of some chilli pepper but actually served with black beans, rice and fried sweet potato chips (no plantains in Sainsburys this week) it adds sweetness and variety without being overpowering so bear that in mind when making it as part of a full menu.

If you'd like to learn a little more about life in present day Cuba try reading the Havana Times, written by Cubans about themselves.

Crackers

Khara Biscuits and Moroccan Cookies

Every day I look through my blog feeds and scan through Foodgawker looking for interesting ideas and recipes that I might like to try. In the last week or so I spotted two recipes on very different sites, from very different countries and was intrigued to see how closely the methods and results of the recipes were similar whilst still remaining true to the cultures that created them.

These recipes produce old fashioned, crunchy, almost rusk like biscuits, rather dry and simple and yet taken with tea ideally suited for a light snack or restorative break.

The Khara Biscuits are spicy, fragrant with ginger and curry leaves and originate in Bangalore. Enjoy them with chai or another spicy brew. I based my recipe on the one at Red Chillies.

200g plain Flour
50g vegan margarine
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt (I thought even this much was a bit too much so go carefully)
3 tsp sugar
10ml water
Spice/Herb mix.
You need about 1 mixed tablespoon of grated ginger, grated green chilli, grated lemon grass and finely chopped curry leaves. I made mine from a thumb sized piece of ginger, half a large chilli, 1 thin stem of lemon grass (just the tender bulb end) and about 10 curry leaves. The original recipe calls for green coriander but I didn't have any so substituted the lemon grass. If the chilli is frozen it grates really easily on a microplane.

Heat the oven to 180C. You'll need one large baking tray.

Mix the dry ingredients together well.

Rub the margarine in with your fingers as if making short crust pastry. You should be aiming for a finish rather like bread crumbs.

Add the spice paste. This is moist and should start to form a dough in the bowl as you mix it in. Make sure it is evenly distributed then add about 1 teaspoon of water. You should now be able to form a stiff dough. Press the loose crumbs together firmly and gather everything up into a smooth ball. If you really need to add another teaspoonful of water but try to add as little as possible. It needs to be very stiff.

Roll the dough out to about 1/2 cm thick, prick all over with a fork and cut the shapes required. I used a pizza cutter to form (not very) squares but the mixture is stiff enough to use cutters if you'd like to. Gather up the offcuts and re-roll until it's all used up. Arrange the biscuits on the baking sheet, brush with oil and bake for about 20 minutes until golden.

Yield: about 24 depending on size chosen.

The Moroccan cookies seem to be big in Israel. I found the recipe on Food Bridge although it made an enormous quantity which I've reduced to a quarter. Researching later I also found a twice baked version called Fekkas which like biscotti are cooked, sliced and cooked again. It looks interesting enough to try another time but this much simpler form will give you a taste of the delights that can be yours.

250g plain flour
20g ground rice
1 tsp. baking powder
50g sugar
20g sesame seeds
2 tsp. anise seeds (or fennel at a pinch)
1 tsp. grated orange zest
60g oil
100ml water or orange juice

Preheat the oven to 180C. You will need one large baking sheet.

Mix all the dry ingredients, flour, ground rice, baking powder, sugar, sesame seeds, anise and orange zest in one bowl.

Combine the oil with about half the water or orange juice and whisk well. Mix this into the dry ingredients with a fork then slowly the rest of the liquid kneading with your hands so that the mixture forms a firm ball. You may not need all the liquid, try not to add too much more than 100ml. This dough needs to be firm.

Roll the dough out to about 1/2 cm thick. Prick all over with a fork. This biscuit is traditionally shaped as a narrow rectangle but you can use any shape you like. Gather up the trimmings and repeat until all the dough is used.

Bake for 20-25 minutes. They should be lightly golden and crisp when cooked.

Delicious with mint tea. Yield: about 25-30 depending on size chosen.

Both sorts of biscuits store well in an airtight tin.

When Good Vegans go Bad

Here it is, the end of Vegan MoFo and I've not hit the quota. Including this post just 14 entries for the month. Still, I'm not going to beat myself up about it, it's been a good experience and there's been so much interesting writing going on from other people to read that I doubt my laziness will have been noticed much.

My excuses, well, they're many. This week we've been doing some house redecorating and meals are hearty, basic and easy to cook, but hardly worth blogging about. For example, tonight we're having Pasta Bake made with the leftovers of yesterday's Turkish Lentil and Bulgar soup and if I can't restrain myself including the even older leftovers of a bean loaf which was itself created from a leftover Thai Green Curry. At least I'm good at recycling.

This month has also seen a storm in a teacup over the defection of Voracious Vegan to the dark side. I'm almost disinclined to link to it, I think she's had far too much exposure already but I was really surprised to find her shockwaves spilling over into omni forums I inhabit and not even foodie ones at that. It seems she's touched the same chord in the meateaters as the one that makes them feel really good about themselves.

As far as I'm concerned she's welcome to eat what she wants but did she really think that her exposition on her changed lifestyle was the best way to let a disinterested world know about her return to her old dietary habits, or is she so far up her own fundament that she thought it was news worth reporting in such an attention grabbing manner? What do you think?

Okara Fudge Cake

My experiments in creating our own tofu and soy milk are largely being guided by The Book of Tofu by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi. I actually have two copies of this, one a small format paperback of the original edition that was bought second hand and an updated large format version which I notice is being sold at a tremendous price on Amazon. It's also available in French at a more reasonable price so I don't know what's going on there at all.

The book is full of stuff, only some of which is relevant to a vegan diet and some which seems bizarrely dated and old fashioned. Still, the basic principles of tofu making haven't changed in many centuries and there is plenty to glean from the history and techniques described.

Now that I've started to produce soy products regularly I find I'm beginning to be overwhelmed by the quantity okara or soy bean pulp that is left after the first stages of making the milk. The book has some useful suggestions for using up this by-product which is rich in fibre and protein. I'm going to try several of them over time but the first one to catch my eye was a method of sweetening and toasting the ground bean pulp to make breakfast cereal or granola.

I had the residue of 250g of soaked, liquidised, boiled and strained soy beans. To this was added 60ml of rape seed oil, 60ml of maple syrup and about 60g of granulated sugar along with a pinch of salt. Mixed together well, the pulp was spread out on a large baking tray and placed in an oven at about 200C for an hour or so. You need to turn it every 15 minutes to stop it scorching. The maple syrup is not essential but I thought it would add flavour to the cereal.

When the cooking was done it looked like this.



Much more like cake crumbs than granola. Which gave me an idea. Rather than have a bag of sort-of breakfast food I would likely never use I could make a sweet with them. Based on our favourite Candice Cake this is a rich fudgy delight. I replaced the biscuits crumbs and nuts in the original recipe with the toasted okara crumbs (but kept the rum soaked raisins!) and didn't bother with the extra topping layer, this baby is plenty rich enough.

Serve in very small squares with strong coffee. Brilliant.

Everything Soup

Minestrone soup. Make it like this.

No matter how hard I try I'm not going to succeed at making 20 entries for this year's Mofo. Which is a bit sad. I could cheat and put out a couple of posts a day between now and the end of the week but really, I haven't got the will power, even though there are several potential sources of inspiration bubbling under. Let's hope they reach the surface before Yule.

Anyway, above is Minestrone soup and it's something we have quite often. Most people will already have a favourite recipe but mine is linked to above if you need it.

This Mofo has been interesting for me, I've found lots of new blogs that will help expand my understanding of cooking and the lifestyles of other vegans. Here a few of them, there are many more.

Alf Hana means "a thousand delights" in Arabic. This is a great blog for finding out about all sorts of Egyptian delights, nicely veganised and easy to read.

In fact, that's something that really affects my enjoyment of blogs, clearly laid out sites ideally with dark on light text to page. Anything written on a black background, too fussy or with brightly coloured text hurts my eyes too much to continue.

Juu's German Kitchen is very inventive and fun to read, giving me insights into how they eat in Germany. I love his 'just go for it' approach to veganising traditional German foods.

I've enjoyed reading Our life in Sandarna, a Swedish blog showing Swedish home cooking. It seems to have been started just for Mofo but I'm hoping they'll keep writing.

There's a bit of a Nordic theme to all this. Seglare in Copenhagen is another Swede, living in Denmark and reporting on what she finds there. Lovely writing and some nice recipes.

And last but not least, special mention to Dandelion. I was already a regular reader of Rose's blog but she has excelled herself this MoFo with some wonderful posts on recipes from all around the world. Her industry is an inspiration.

By the way, if you've subscribed to the MoFo RSS reader bundle and you plan to unsubscribe by removing the whole bundle in one fell swoop, make a note of anyone who was included who you are normally subscribed to. Google reader deletes all regardless of the tags, and it's taken me some time to rebuild my usual reader favourites to the state they were in before I loaded and unloaded the Mofo bundle.

Pommeau Cake

Another menu item from Rootmaster was an Apple and Rum Cake, not so very different from a recipe I'd bookmarked on David Lebovitz's blog for veganising later. So that was my cue for this cheeky little pudding.

It is more of a pudding than the sort of cake to be devoured in slices with coffee, but it's nice warm or cold served with some banana ice cream enlivened with 50g of sugar and a slug of Calvados instead of the lemon juice.

I used Pommeau for flavour mainly because I've had the end of a bottle sitting on the kitchen table for some days now and it needed to be used but it's appropriate, a sweet apple alcohol in a sweet apple cake. If you don't have it substitute Rum (mine is still in France) or Brandy.

130g Self raising flour (or plain flour sieved with 1 tsp. baking powder)
120g non-dairy yoghurt
150g sugar
50ml Pommeau
80g light vegetable oil
400g peeled and chopped apples - I used Bramley's Seedling and Russet, choose anything well flavoured.
A pinch of salt.

You will need a 20 cm springform or loose bottomed cake tin for this. Grease and flour it well.

Mix the yoghurt and oil together, then add the flour and salt. Beat it all together well then add the Pommeau and stir it in.

Fold the apple pieces, the chunks should be about 2cm square but apples don't lend themselves to precision like that, into the batter and pour into the prepared tin, smoothing it level.

Bake at 180C for an hour. This is a moist cake but a skewer or toothpick should come out clean at the end of this time, if not, leave it a little longer.

Serve warm or cold with ice cream or custard.

Tofu Teriyaki Stack

A couple of the things on the menu the other night seemed appealing but I didn't choose them for my meal because they looked easy enough to recreate at home. One of them was a tofu stack made with locally produced tofu which tickled me because I had some locally produced (by me) tofu sitting in the fridge at home.

In the end what I made didn't quite recreate their take on it but incorporated elements of two of their dishes.

It's a work in progress but we enjoyed it. The tofu stack is made from deep fried wonton wrappers - I had some left over from a packet that I'd bought for gyoza. Slip them into hot oil and they bubble up beautifully. Drain and keep warm in the oven while you prepare the rest.

With my home made tofu I used some onion, garlic and marrow. I made disks of marrow flesh, fried them off in a little oil and then coated them with teriyaki sauce. These were held in the warm too, then the tofu was made into a scramble with the onions, garlic and a little more teriyaki sauce. Finally everything was assembled into stacks.

With them we had some brown rice and a stir fry of quartered brussels sprouts with some green soy beans which worked surprisingly well.

On the Bus

Last night, as promised, Mr. Stripey and I joined some friends for a meal on the Rootmaster Bustaurant. This entirely vegan establishment is housed in an old Routemaster, a number of converted containers (like the ones on container ships!) for storage and an awning covered seating area by the bus, which would be lovely in the summer but not in the torrential rain of autumn. Luckily for us we had secured the most comfortable seats in the place, a lovely table for eight situated upstairs at the front of the bus.

And this is where my dreams of being a restaurant reviewer of note come crashing to the floor. With my cook's hat on, with my health inspector's hat on, with an eye to the cost and value of the meal I find there were many flaws in the experience BUT I had fun and the staff were friendly and I don't want to give anyone a hard time over it. So, when I'm critical, don't take it badly. This is how it was for me, on one evening in November. It's not a final pronouncement on the end of the world. 'k...

Also, all the pictures are rubbish. Sorry. You can read the menu at the web site above.



Starter of stuffed mushroom - Mr. Stripey had this and I only had a taste. He liked it, my mouthful was stuffed with raw garlic but tasted good.



Starter Mediterranean Quesadilla - mine. This was pleasant enough. The alfalfa sprouts could have done with another rinse before serving, they had that slightly musty taste of sprouts stored a little too long.

Several of the party chose the Panissa for starter and enjoyed it but we didn't take pictures. Soup of the day was Broccoli, a particular dislike of mine and the restaurant had run out of olives which was surprising and a bit disappointing.



Moroccan Vegetable Bake, the Mr's choice. He was underwhelmed although it was perfectly edible. There was a flavour that I identified as pickled lemon and he felt was soapy. The most expensive dish, we both thought this was probably overpriced.



Roasted Pumpkin and Walnut Tart, a few people had this. The bite I tried had good pastry and well matched flavours. A winner.



Stuffed Cabbage dish. This was my main course and I have to admit I chose it seduced by the thought of roast potatoes and red wine sauce. I did get some of those but not quite enough and not quite as my imagination had furnished them. The barley filling was easy to eat but the savoy cabbage wrapping everso slightly tough. Either the 'polenta' was lumpy or it was mashed cauliflower, I couldn't be sure.

And so to puddings. Vegans will know that to be provided with a full dessert menu is a real treat and we all saved room for the novelty.



Chocolate and Caramel Fondant was the pudding of choice for most, although it has to be cooked to order and takes 20 minutes to prepare. The menu does suggest that if you're going to want it you should order when ordering your mains but of course, we didn't actually read that far when perusing the menus at the start of the meal. The wait wasn't a problem as the conversation was flowing well.

As Chocolate fondants go, these weren't bad although the inevitable cracks about Masterchef were made, chocolate fondant being the nemesis of many an amateur cook hoping to impress.

The diners who tried the Walnut and Caramel tart said it was good. It must have been, I couldn't get a bit to try.



I wanted to be different so I had the cheesecake which, frankly, tasted stale to me. Others ate their portions so maybe my tastebuds were off but I had to leave it.


As a group we are greedy drinkers and we had a little difficulty getting our wine bottles replaced as quickly as we would have liked. Also the bus has no toilet facilities, if you need to go you are directed to a bar across the square (I assume they have some arrangement). The toilets there are fine but you have to negotiate the rain, the gaggle of smokers outside the bar and a tremendously loud interior to get to them, all of which contributed to a headache which followed me all the way home to Newport Pagnell. Well, it was mostly the smoke to be honest and I can't really blame Rootmaster for that, it's everywhere.

The bill for eight came to just over £320 including tip. This isn't a huge amount per head for London, particularly as we had several bottles of wine in there but it does put it at the more expensive end of the range of veggie restaurants we've tried. If the niggles could be addressed I'd have no trouble paying it again but as it is, I think it's a bit high for the standard of food and facilities being offered.

Don't take my word for it. Try it for yourselves.

Puzzle of the Pine Nuts

It may not be something that's ever caused you a problem but there is trouble about in one of the most essential ingredients of many delicious vegan foods. The issue is Pine Nut mouth or "cacogeusia" to offer up an entirely arbitrary medical sounding name for the phenomenon.

After eating certain types of pine nuts some people develop a nasty metallic taste in their mouths which persists for days or weeks even. It's not an immediate effect and can vary in intensity. There have been reports of stomach pains and upsets as well although this is less well supported. It's not obvious what's causing the problem.

Although the issue has been registered with the British authorities since the middle of 2009 at least no formal answer is yet forthcoming, indeed it's not clear whether any official scientific efforts are being made to resolve this, although you can register with Food Standards by emailing here; toxicology@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk.
Let them know the details of the pine nuts you consumed and the length of time you experienced the bitter taste.

The Danish food ministry have released some details of their researches which suggest that it may be related to Chinese sourced pine nuts, perhaps from species of pine which have not been traditionally used for eating but which are now being exploited because the world market in these nuts has grown but it doesn't seem to be as simple as merely avoiding Chinese sourced nuts although I must admit this has been my strategy for some time now.

Then, today, my attention was drawn to a website run by a graduate student in the Netherlands, The Great Pine Nut Mystery. This looks like a really useful resource for gathering together all the information about pine nuts that can be found and helping Grace and the researchers at Wageningen University unravel the mystery.

Slipped off the MoFO wagon for a spell but I'm out to dinner tonight so look forward to some bleary phone photos of my dinner tomorrow!

MoFo ate my reader

I've had to unsubscribe from the RSS bundle - not only was I drowning in reading that I had no chance of keeping up with it seemed to be overloading Reader in some way and causing all sorts of errors and anomalies. I'm going to make a point of popping over to the Where in the World page instead and working my way through what catches my eye there.

Anyway, I've not done anything very exciting to report. Mr. Stripey made a request for Millionaire's Bar, the sort of thing you give your wealthy uncle so he dies young and leaves you all his money, it's that rich. My first attempt at this has shortbread which is too crumbly and a caramel layer that's too chewy (although delicious and worth a posting to itself).



So it's back to the drawing board. I hope our bodies can take the punishment.

And then, I made soya milk. I know, it seems so unlikely, but this is the first time I've ever made soya milk in all my life. Truth be told, I don't like it much and for the small quantities that have been necessary it's just so much easier to buy some.

However, I have a cunning plan and it requires that first I master all aspects of soy product manufacture enabling us to enjoy home made tofu, tempeh and in the fullness of time maybe even miso and soy sauce too. I used the recipe here although it's not going to be particularly different to any other recipe. All I can say is, what a faff. It's not difficult but it is boring. I shall be working on my attitude problem assiduously I can assure you. And here are the results of my labours.

Rush job

Just a quick one to make the quota! Dinner tonight was pretty simple, boiled spuds, steamed cabbage and a rich onion miso gravy with slices of smokey tofu simmered in it.



Pudding was another very simple construction. Apple Fool. Most usually made with the mouth puckering green gooseberry or the equally sour faced rhubarb, fruits fools make any sharp fruit puree delicious, sweet and creamy.

If you google for recipes for fruit fools you'll find plenty that demand huge quantities of double cream but in the cash strapped middle England of my youth fruit fools were made with custard alone, not even an egg custard but the magnificence that is Birds Custard, just cornflour, sugar, vanilla flavouring, colouring and milk.

We've come a long way since then. Although I still have a can of the good stuff in the cupboard I splashed out on some ready made custard from Alpro. They may make rubbish soy milk and yoghurt these days (someone in marketing has decided that even the unsweetened versions need to have vanilla keynotes!) but it's hard to fault their instant custard. It's a gem of its kind.

Use equal quantities of freshly made fruit puree and custard by volume. I had some excellent cooking apples; Lane's Prince Albert, but any cooker that will give a soft frothy sauce will do. Mix the two together and chill until required. A tall glass and a shortbread biscuit will dress it up for company but we just ate ours with a teaspoon.

As usual apologies for the photos. I can't wait for the daytime to be longer than night again.

Get out of Jail Free Card

O.k. I'm taking the easy way out today. Reading the VeganMoFo RSS feed is taking so much time I don't have any energy left to cook. Seriously, although I've linked to the RSS feed page you might prefer to bookmark the Where in the World page and concentrate on one country at a time. My brain is fried trying to keep up.

This is the list from IEatTrees that everyone's doing... if you've not done it yet, hang on to the thought. It just might save your life.

What is one food you thought you’d miss when you went vegan, but don’t?

You know, I don't think there is one. I knew I'd miss meringues and I do, but I'm working on it. I do miss good cheese, and I expected to. I suppose a lot of commercial confectionery - I had a mild sweetie addiction but if I do take a bite of something by accident these days I find it tastes stale and rancid, not very nice at all.

What is a food or dish you wouldn’t touch as a child, but enjoy now?

I was mainly brought up in a houseful of conventional eaters and it stunted my curiosity to an extent. Luckily I had an Aunt who was a great foodie and she introduced me to the complexities of French cooking. From there, the world was my oyster.

What vegan dish or food you feel like you “should” like, but don’t?

Oh, anything with buckwheat in it. Yuck.

What beverage do you consume the most of on any given day?

We talking volume or frequency? A lot of low caffeine teas, like redbush or herbal blends and then I make up for that by as much espresso as I dare.

What dish are you “famous” for making or bringing to gatherings?

That weird stuff that was strangely addictive! My safe offering to omnis is baklava. They love it, and so do I.

Do you have any self-imposed food rules (like no food touching on the plate or no nuts in sweets)?

Am I OCD? No comment. I don't much like fusion cooking but luckily that fad has fallen out of fashion.

What’s one food or dish you tend to eat too much of when you have it in your home?

Pickles

What ingredient or food do you prefer to make yourself despite it being widely available prepackaged?


Everything.

What ingredient or food is worth spending the extra money to get “the good stuff”?

Chocolate, oil, spices. Almost anything really, although sometimes corners can be cut in the interests of economy.

Are you much of a snacker? What are your favourite snacks?

Normally, not much of a snacker. I just have six meals a day.

What are your favorite vegan pizza toppings?


Marinated artichoke hearts.

What is your favorite vegetable? Fruit?

I love aubergines. And grapes are so easy to eat but really, all fruit and vegetables are fab.

What is the best salad dressing?

Classic vinaigrette.

What is your favorite thing to put on toasted bread?

Seriously? Soy sauce. However, I eat a lot of marmite too.

What kind of soup do you most often turn to on a chilly day or when you aren’t feeling your best?

Any kind of soup. Feeling feverish? Miso Soup. Full of cold? Hot and sour soup.

What is your favorite cupcake flavour? Frosting flavor?


I don't eat cupcakes. Really.

What is your favorite kind of cookie?


Or cookies. Well, I'm lying. I like pink wafer biscuits but they're hard to get vegan. Also Nice biscuits, a sort of fine coconut thin shortbread biscuit which are probably not so well known world wide. Oh, and Bourbon creams... eh, takes me back to my youth!

What is your most-loved “weeknight meal”?

Most frequent is probably a big pan of mixed roast vegetables. I love all the food we eat, or I wouldn't make it.

What is one dish or food you enjoy, but can’t get anyone else in your household to eat?

The Stripey male is much less keen on foods that are acid or bitter than me, so I don't make meals like that. He'll eat them but he won't ask for seconds and it breaks my heart.

How long, in total, do you spend in the kitchen on an average day?

You mean cooking? Depends, the evening meal usually takes about an hour but other food prep and meals can bump that up to three hours or so.

Waffle waffle waffle

I had a good birthday for cooking aids. This lovely shiny Cusinart waffle iron was a present from my son and I've been trying some different recipes to see how to get the best of it.

First of all I went for the absolutely most simple recipe I could find, based on this one called Frasvåfflor (you'll need to scroll down a bit to find it.)

Lacking enough vegan marg. I made substitutions and came up with this;

60g neutral flavoured vegetable oil
125g soya milk
100g flour (I only had spelt)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. vanilla essence.

This made four waffles, which were nice enough to look at but really tasteless.

So the next experiment used this recipe:

(based on the one at GroupRecipes)

115g strong white flour
115g rye flour
115g spelt flour
(the reason for this odd mixture of flours is that I only seemed to have a lot of strong bread flour on hand and thought it would make the waffles tough. Substitute 345g of plain or cake flour or use half that and half fine wholemeal flour)
50g sugar - white, brown, whatever
1 teaspoon (about 9g) baking powder
pinch of salt

25g light vegetable oil
350g non-dairy milk
170g water (you may not need all of it)

Get your waffle iron hot before you start to mix.

Weigh and mix the dry ingredients. Weigh the wet ingredients and add to the dry. Mix well. You may not need all the water but I found the mix much too thick in the original recipe and needed to thin it down a bit.

This makes about 12 waffles in the Cusinart. Ladle a good tablespoon onto each section and spread it a little bit.

Close and cook to your preference. I found these needed about 4 minutes and could maybe have taken a little longer if they were to be eaten immediately. As I was expecting to freeze them, I took them out before they were perfectly golden to allow for further browning in toaster.

They freeze well, allow to cool, bag up with some parchment paper dividers and toss in the freezer. You can then remove one or two for breakfast and reheat in the toaster from frozen. Almost as good at the freshly cooked ones.

Mofo Day 5 - Greek Chickpea Soup

Another reason for hating the winter, flash photography.

Recipes pop up in all sorts of unlikely places. My pointer to this absolutely classic simple Greek staple came from Agricultural Biodiversity, a site which brings together all sorts of interesting things about humans, crops and the wild relatives that spawned them. Today a link there about the European Food Information Resource took me to a recipe file (it's a downloadable .pdf) where I found the recipe.

The original (on page 51) made far too much soup for two and I wanted to use the pressure cooker to reduce preparation time, so I soaked 500g chickpeas in hot water for two hours and then pressure cooked them at high for 20 minutes. Half the chickpeas were put aside for another dish and I continued with the remainder.

250g chickpeas (dry weight)
Water
1 large onion
70g Extra virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
15g (1 scant tablespoon) white flour
7g (1 heaped tsp) salt

Soak the dried chickpeas overnight (for about 12 hours) in a bowl of cold water, then rinse them thoroughly and place in an uncovered saucepan filled with water over high heat. When the water starts to boil, skim off the foam which forms on the surface and reduce the heat to a medium temperature.

After 10 minutes, add the onion and the salt (the onion is added at this early stage so that it can dissolve and blend into the soup). Add hot water as required during cooking so that the chickpeas don't dry out and stay "soupy".

Test the chickpeas whilst as they cook until they are soft. This will take about 2 hours. Or speed this step up by soaking the chickpeas in hot water for a couple of hours and then pressure cooking according to your pressure cooker's instructions. You can add the onion and salt to the pressure cooker at the start or in the next stage.

Take about a quarter to a third of the cooked chickpeas from the pan and mash them with a potato masher or stick blender. Return the chickpea pulp to the pan and stir in. Add the finely chopped onion and salt now if it's not already in the pan, and cook for a few minutes until soft. Bring the volume up to about 1 litre with more hot water if needed.

Mix the lemon juice and the flour in a bowl and add to the soup. The amounts in the original recipe are a bit odd, I think for 500g chickpeas as described it should be 30g white flour or two tablespoons. The flour both thickens the soup and helps the olive oil stay in suspension. The lemon juice is for flavour so adjust to taste but you'll need at least one whole lemon's worth. Allow the soup to cook for 15 minutes or so to cook the flour and meld the flavours.

Then add the olive oil and simmer for a few minutes more. It should be comfortingly thick and simple. Add some chopped green herbs if you like.

Serve, with bread, salad, olives, vegan cheese or whatever.

Les neiges d'antan

Carrot Cake from my birthday 2006

Aubergine Tikka

Instant Fail on VeganMoFo as I totally didn't make the necessary post for yesterday. In my defence, well, there isn't very much, but that post will be along shortly, probably in the company of several others.

So, this is a meal I cooked for myself about three weeks ago. An Aubergine Tikka Masala. The sauce tasted great but was strangely unappealing to the eye (and not entirely like the original) so for now, here is how I made the Aubergine Tikka part without a Tandoor.

Cut large aubergine(s) (it's delicious, do plenty!) into biggish chunks, they will shrink by about 50% when cooked so cut with an eye to finishing with bite sized pieces for serving.

Sprinkle a good teaspoon of fine salt over the pieces and leave to degorge for about an hour. Now, this step is often regarded as unnecessary with modern varieties of aubergine but the point here is not to remove bitterness but to slightly dehydrate the fruit so that it will absorb more of the marinade in the next step.

When the pieces are oozing liquid, squeeze them dry. You can rinse the salt off first if you like, probably a good idea if you have high blood pressure but rinse quickly and squeeze well.

Make a marinade of 100g non-dairy yoghurt, a tablespoon of mashed garlic, a tablespoon of grated ginger and a half teaspoonful each of ground turmeric and a good red paprika. These spices will help with the colour. You can also add a little garam masala or your favourite curry powder if you like but don't overdo it.

Mix the dry aubergine into the marinade so that it is well coated and leave for an hour.

Heat your oven to hot.

I used a hob to oven pan for this, a wonderful cast iron oval skillet which holds a fearsome heat. Heat your pan up as hot as it will go on the hob with just a splash of rapeseed or peanut oil in it. Put the pieces of aubergine in, with the marinade still clinging to them, making sure they are well spread out. Turn them over so that they are sealed on all sides.

Add a sliced chilli and some finely sliced onion rings and pop the whole pan into the oven for about 15-20 minutes until the aubergine is richly golden.

Serve with naan breads, a raita, salad and other curries.

Decisions, decisions.

Whose idea was it to run VeganMoFo actually in the same month as NaNoWriMo? For someone with a very limited ability to get myself motivated even as far as making breakfast it is definitely taking the piss. I don't think I can do both and my ability to choose rationally is pretty poor too, so I may end up doing nothing at all.

Anyway, I can at least have a go at blogging this. For my birthday, a whole month ago now, I received a kit of secret powders and special tools so that I could start to experiment on the rather well trodden paths of molecular gastronomy.

I'm still learning techniques at the moment so it will be a while before our meals start to show much influence from the higher echelons of fancy cuisine and even longer before I'll have any original recipes to share but for the moment please be amazed by my first attempt, a beetroot caviar.

Foraging

One of the best things about living on the edge of a forest with your own land is that wild food collection is as easy as stepping out to the vegetable patch. Today I went out for the first of the sweet chestnuts and scored some lovely wild mushrooms too.

Even so I was about to consign them to the fridge and have a slice of bread for supper when the phone rang and Mr. Stripey told me not to be so silly. So I made the fancy dinner I'd planned whilst walking around the fields.



It's nothing more complicated than a sweet chestnut and chanterelle stew served with a big dollop of comforting polenta to soak up the red wine sauce.

Sweet chestnuts look a little like horse chestnuts but the green cases are much much spikier. Wear gloves to collect them and pick them over carefully. Any that are not plump within their chestnut skins aren't worth having and any with tiny holes will have a worm living inside, so best discarded.

Chanterelles are some of the easiest wild fungi to identify but it's still worth doing your homework before heading out to the woods. You can substitute any sort of edible mushroom if you can't find any.

To serve four, although perhaps not with quite such large portions as the one I gave myself you will need:

300g fresh sweet chestnuts.
100g fresh wild fungi (or use oyster mushrooms from the supermarket)
Olive oil
1 medium onion
2 stalks of celery
2 cloves of garlic
300ml red wine (I used a supermarket brand Merlot)
20g dark miso
15g ready made Dijon mustard
Black pepper and salt.

Peel the chestnuts by slitting the hard brown skin and pulling it away. It should separate easily leaving a thinner pinkish skin over the nut. Bring a pan of water to the boil and drop the chestnuts in to simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes. Refresh in cold water and peel off the thin underskin. This isn't particularly easy and if you've left them to simmer for too long the nuts will crumble. Just do your best.

Clean and slice your mushrooms. Heat a clean pan and add a big slug of olive oil to it. Quickly fry the mushrooms until they have lost moisture then, retaining as much oil as possible in the pan, remove them to a warm dish to rest until needed.

In the same pan and oil as you cooked the mushrooms, cook the finely chopped onion and celery until they start to brown. Season with plenty of ground black pepper and add the crushed cloves of garlic. Stir everything around then add 300 ml of wine. Bring to a simmer and allow to reduce for five minutes. The liquid should reduce to about half its original volume.

Mix the miso and mustard with 200ml of cold water and add it to the pan stirring well to combine. Add the peeled chestnuts and stir, then cover and keep over a low heat while you make the polenta.

I used five minute polenta made according to the packet. At the end of cooking add a good measure of a well flavoured olive oil or some of your favourite vegan margarine and keep warm.

Add the mushrooms to the pan of simmering chestnuts and mix well together.

Serve a dollop of polenta for each diner topped with chestnut and chanterelle stew. Make sure everyone gets their fair share of the gravy. Decorate with finely chopped parsley or chervil if liked.

Eat immediately with a glass of good red wine.

Indian Summer

I was born in an indian summer. My mother tells me she sat in the hospital gardens with me, mothers in those days spent 10 full days in hospital, and we soaked up the unseasonal sun together.

This year, my birthday was grey, wet and cold but after a week when I was sure that autumn had set in properly the skies cleared and the temperature rose. The perfect moment for a celebration drink I've been meaning to share all summer.



The fruit punch bases known as Pimms are very traditional English drinks and the most well known version is based on gin, the quintessential English spirit. It's almost impossible to buy the branded version in France, a secret recipe which has been guarded since 1823.

However, it is possible to create a home grown equivalent which is almost as good. Serve it with plenty of ice, slices of orange, lemon and cucumber, add small pieces of aromatic soft fruit like peaches or melon, a sprig of mint (not in picture!) and decorate with borage flowers. You can make it in a jug or the glass but it's a long drink. Serve it in an old fashioned half pint dimple mug or use a straight pint glass as I did.

To make a full 750ml of Pimms No1 style basic alcohol fruit cup mixture which will allow you to make over 3.5 litres of drink you will need:

300ml Dry Gin (no need to use a Bombay Sapphire or other expensive brand)
300ml Italian Red Vermouth (again, pick one you like but it doesn't need to be expensive)
150ml Orange Curaçao (Cointreau works)

If you mix these in a 750ml screw top bottle you can keep it in the fridge and serve yourself delicious drinks on any sunny day that calls for it.

To serve, take your glass and half fill it with ice. Add a measure of Fruit Cup mix and fill the glass with fruit and flowers. Top up with 3-4 measures of lemonade, soda water, tonic water or a mixture to taste. The final alcohol content will be about 6%, equivalent to a strong beer or half the strength of wine so take care and drink responsibly.

Saturday Breakfast

Latkes with Tomato Jam, served with a big mug of coffee.

Back soon.

Beetloaf

This is a favourite recipe I don't make often because I'm too lazy to do the grating required but it's filling, tasty, economical and, dare I say it, good for you. It's also just the sort of no-nonsense old fashioned vegetarian home cooking I crave from time to time.

The recipe makes a large loaf tin roast which can be served straight from the oven, eaten cold with bread or crackers or reheated in a sauce so despite making six good servings it's ideal for the single diner. I've never tried freezing it but I'm sure it would.

You will need:

250g grated potato (about one large, well scrubbed so no need to peel)
250g grated beetroot (about 2 medium. Scrub them well, no need to peel, trim the root end and use the leaf stem stubs to hold the root while you grate it)
150g finely chopped onion
100g fine breadcrumbs, wholemeal is best.(I used my coffee grinder to make mine!)
100g coarsely ground nuts - almonds, walnuts, cashews, whatever. (the grinder struggled here, and few nuts were left whole which was rather nice)
75g tahini (or peanut butter or if all else fails a tablespoon of oil)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
black pepper
2 tsps dried herbs (thyme, sage, mixed, de Provence) or the equivalent in fresh

Mix the vegetables, crumbs and nuts together. Dilute the tahini with the soy sauce and mix everything together with the pepper and herbs.

Bake in a well oiled loaf tin for about an hour at 180C. Line the bottom of the tin with a strip of oiled baking parchment if the turning out whole is important but usually you'll get away with it anyway. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes and then turn out to decorate in whatever retro fashion floats your boat. I've seen meatloaf recipes suggest masking in tomato sauce or ketchup even. Interesting.

I served mine with dutch oven steamed potatoes and leaf cabbage, dressed with an onion miso gravy.

Ketchup catchup

This is what I made with the pot of tomatoes I was working on yesterday. Two litres of simple, rich, thick tomato ketchup.

Last year I tried quite a range of different recipes for tomato jams and ketchup and they were good but they weren't quite the same as the thick red gloop of my misspent youth. This is much closer to the mark and has no garlic or onion in it.

You will need 9 litres of fully ripe, washed and roughly chopped (in halves or quarters) red tomatoes and a pot big enough to take them all. I'm not sure what the weight is but I'll be filling the pan again tomorrow and will weigh it then for an update. *** UPDATE *** The weight of tomatoes in my pan full is about 7kg/15lbs.

Without adding any extra water, set the pan of prepared tomatoes over a low heat until the juices start to run, then give it all a good stir and turn the heat up for 20 minutes or so until the whole pan is full of soft, cooked tomato goodness.

Turn off the gas and allow to cool a little. This is for your comfort, so if you can take the heat move straight onto the next stage.

Run the softened tomatoes, skin, seeds and all through a food mill. You'll need something like this, I bought mine four years ago and it's still going fine.



This will remove the seeds and any lumpy bits but still press most of the skin and flesh through. When it's all done you'll have reduced the volume in the pan to about 6 litres.

Put it back on the heat, bring to a simmer and allow to reduce, stirring frequently to avoid it catching, until it's 3 litres, a half of what you started with. A big preserving pan with graduations on the side is helpful but you could use a ruler. Measure the depth of liquid when you start and stop when you get to half of that. It does take a bit of time so keep yourself busy in the kitchen while it does its stuff.

Add to the pan, 500g white (or any colour you fancy!) sugar and 500ml of 5% (or greater) vinegar - I used a 5% cider one. Season with two teaspoons of paprika, 1 teaspoon of ground allspice, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and three dried red chillies. The spicing is up to you, this is lightly fragrant. If you use whole spices you'll probably want to strain them out before bottling. Add 25-30g good salt. I used sea salt.

Stir everything in and then reduce the volume again to two litres. You'll need to stir much more frequently now and the sauce will spit so use a long handled spoon, wear an oven glove or wrap your hand in a tea towel to avoid burns.

When the sauce is reduced it should be thick enough but you can reduce it a little more if you like a really rich dollop with your chips.

Pour into warm sterilised bottles or jars and seal the lids. If you want you can heat treat this for longer keeping. Put on the caps but don't tighten and process in a simmering water bath with the water up to the neck of the bottles for 25 minutes, then remove and tighten caps. We'll use it all up before it has a chance to go off so I haven't bothered. Refrigerate after opening.