Happy New Year

Last night's celebration dinner...


Green Pea Soup with Bagel Chip croutons

We chose Pea Soup over more exotic ingredients like asparagus in order to remain true to the season.


Chestnut Cranberry Rounds with Roasted Garlic and Squash, a Beetroot Confit and a Red Wine and Forest Mushroom Sauce

This rather traditional range of flavours went together very well. The chestnuts were fresh, cooked and peeled before combining with vegetables, flour and stock. The rounds were cooked in small patty trays but were rather fragile and difficult to turn out.


Raspberry Sponge with Caramel Sauce and Icecream

This sponge was brilliant, if I say so myself, made with coconut milk and frozen raspberries but the caramel sauce was still too hard and chewy when it cooled. The ice cream was Swedish Glace, one of the few short cuts we took with this meal.


Handmade After Dinner Mints

A simple faux fondant forms the middles of these pretty and easy chocolates. They are incredibly rich but rather delicious.

Thanks to Mr. Stripey for taking the pictures.

Happy New Year to all my readers, I hope you have success and happiness in the future and that we can continue to share our cooking and lives through our blogs.

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.