Some of you have dreamed of this day. Waited eagerly. Maybe even salivated a little.
I am sharing my recipe for vegan chocolate avocado muffins. The idea of chocolate and avocado as a food combination is not a new one. A lot of chinese resturants/cafe's will offer a chocolate avocado smoothie on their drinks menu. To be honest, I've always been a bit skeptical. I've always thought that avocado is for guacamole and guacamole alone. I've had a Steven Covey-esque paradigm shift on this one. Avocado is not just for guacamole, it's for cup cakes too!
Some time ago, a friend with a high-pitched voice and appropriately asymmetrical hair gave me a vegan food challenge - to make something delicious that combined chocolate and avocado. I debated a few ideas in my mind before finally setlling on making these cup cakes with chocolate fudgy icing. I gave them to the friend with the high pitched voice and appropriately asymmetrical hair as a thank you gift for feeding my cats while I was away from home over a weekend.
The positive feedback on rich, indulgent and delicious flavour of these cup cakes was so good that I've made them several times since. I think part of the reason they work so well as a vegan indulgence is that quite often vegan cakes use tofu to replace the dairy component. Usually, this works just fine; but for some flavours the nutty/soy-ish flavour of the tofu can permeate through.
The avocado has a much milder flavour, but it's texture is a great analogue for butter in this recipe. It gives you the best of both worlds, by helping the chocolate cake to be rich and moist, without lending that background of soy flavour. It's perfect for vegan cakes, and would be also great for anyone who needs to avoid dairy food, or reduce saturated fat intake. The omega 3 fatty acids in avocado are good for you.
The avocado also takes the place of butter in a rich fudgy icing, alowing the chocolate flavour to play the lead role in this treat.
Here's the recipes, it makes a lot of cup cakes but trust me, you'll need them.
You will need:
Dry ingredients
3 cups self raising flour
1/2 a cup cocoa powder
1/2 a teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
'wet' incredients
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 ripe avocado
2 cups water
2tsp vanilla essence
2tbs white vinegar
You will have to:
Pre-heat your oven to 180C, lightly grease (cooking oil spray is fine) your muffin trays and set them aside.
In a big bowl; combine all of the dry ingredients.
In a seperate bowl mash the avocado until completely smooth. This will take a few minutes if you're doing it by hand with a fork, you could be forgiven for using a blender or food processor for this job.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, then add the vanilla essence, vinegar, avocado and oil. Mix to incorporate a little.
Add the water bit-by-bit until you have a glossy smooth cake batter.
Dispense the cake batter into the cup-cake trays. You will get 8-10 big cupcakes or anywhere up to 24 miniature cupcakes.
Place the cup cakes in the oven. They will take about 10-18 minutes to cook, depending on your oven and the size of your cupcakes.
Once they're cooked, remove from the oven and let them call in the trays for a few minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.
Now, you can make the icing. You will need.
1 avocado
3 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2tsp vanilla essence
2tbs golden syrup
Mash the avocado until smooth. My comments RE blenders/food processors remain valid here.
mix the vanilla essence and golden syrup with the avocado.
Sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a large bowl, then incorporate the avocado mixture. You may need to add a small amount of water to get the texture right. (it should be thick and fudgy, so that it will stick to the under-side of a knife or a spoon). If your icing is too dry add a little water. If it's too wet, add a little more icing sugar.
Place the icing in the fridge and leave there until the cup cakes are at room temperature. Leave it for at least an hour or so.
Spread the icing on top of the cupcakes, feel free to add any other decorations you like. Be creative and have fun.
So, there it is. You are now empowered to make your own delicious vegan chocolate avocado cupcakes. How on earth am I ever going to convince anyone to feed my cats for me again?
Megan Makes it Vegan
Thursday 8 November 2012
Sunday 14 October 2012
Megan's (mostly) vegan food adventure
Hello readers,
I've just returned from a holiday in Fiji, which sounds utterly delightful. However, a pleasant blog about a pleasant holiday would be a direct violation of Murphy's law, so I'll tell you about what actually happened in Fiji.
The trip was taken a bit at last minute, I was needed to fill a gap on a group trip due to cancellation. Rather than have everyone on the trip miss out, I arranged leave from work, organised my travel insurance and packed a suitcase full of books and swimsuits for a tropical adventure. I pictured myself strolling to a little village, buying fresh mangoes from little pop-up roadside markets, and eating all manner of lovely fresh vegetables with plenty of rice. Yes, you guessed it faithful reader, time for the record scratch.
The group trip ended up actually being at a villa, about a three hour drive from Nadi, which for the astute geographers amongst you will realise is pretty much the opposite side of the island. I was in fact, almost completely isolated. Never fear, the group stopped at the supermarket near the airport to stock up on supplies to group-cook at the villa. I was told to relax, there would be plenty of vegetarian options.
The experienced vegans reading this may share a knowing nod with me now. There is a difference between vegan and vegetarian, and sometimes that difference requires vegans to be seasoned and experienced label readers, picking up all manner of trace ingredients that sneakly put animal products into your food.
I manage to during the group shop grab myself a liter of soy milk and a large box of Oreos. Little did I know how much I would be needing these two rather average food items in the days to come.
The morning of day 2 of my Fiji adventure dawned. I breakfasted on white bread toast, with marjarine (probably not vegan, but the toast came kindly 'buttered' before I could inspect the container) and a glass of soy milk. About three hours after this breakfast I manged to accidentally take a header off a 3 meter sheer cliff. I hit my head on a rock and lost consciousness. I came to back at the holiday villa with my partner holding me and talking to me. "Just let me go to sleep" I say. She kept me awake, kept talking to me and by doing so most likely saved my life. My concussion was quite severe, and I'm in fact still recovering from it now. Having an accident or injury while on holiday is never fun, especially when you're in a non-first world country where medical resources are fairly limited. While I'm confident the Fijian doctor I saw (Dr Raam) was really friendly and knowledgeable, his proscription of panadine forte and Fiji bitter was probably not what I'd be getting in an Australian hospital.
The unfortunate side effect of falling off the cliff is that I spent most of the holiday bed-ridden. My partner stayed by my side after the injury to care for me. Sadly, this meant that we couldn't access the group food, or participate in shopping trips to make sure that food we could eat was purchased. While not vegan, there are some foods my partner can't eat. Finding meals that satisfy us both at home is generally easy, but is a bit more of a challenge while travelling. The three days after my injury involved some pretty serious starvation. My partner and I shared the box of oreo cookies, with no real meals for about seventy two hours.
Imagine our delight when we are informed the locals would be cooking a Fijian feast for us at the villa, after nothing but Oreos for a few days. I was told that there would be a vegetable curry. The night of the feast rolled around, our stomachs gurgled in hunger and anticipation. I must say that never before has the word feast been so badly used. The table was laden with fish curries, roasted chicken and pork dishes wrapped in taro leaves. The vegan options included dry baked potatoes with the unmistakable odour of keroene, an iceberg lettuce salad, a pumpkin curry (so popular and delicious that I managed to scrape one mouthful for myself after the bowl had made it's way down to my end of the table) and cold baked taro. The smell of fish permeated everything and I struggled to eat a few mouthfuls of potato as nausea struggled against hunger. My partner and I held hands and walked off to our bed, united in our disappointment.
The next morning, day 4 of our 9 day trip a nearby resort opened it's doors to us, after being closed for a wedding function. We stroll in at 8am, eager for breakfast. My partner orders herself a cooked breakfast with all the trimmings, absolutely delighted to be having a full meal again. I read through the menu carefully, sighing. There's nothing on the menu that's vegan, or can be made vegan with a modification. The closest thing is a serving of banana and coconut pancakes. At home, I'd make the dish with coconut milk and mashed banana, using a little chick-pea flour to replace the egg. I can only realistically expect that this resturant has used eggs in their pancakes, and probably not ethical free-range eggs.
I make a difficult decision, one that most vegans have had to make at some point; the choice between going hungry or eating something that doesn't sit well with your ethics. I ordered the pancakes. I hadn't had a propper meal in about four days, and my body was screaming out for some nourishment so it could start healing from the injury I had suffered. I discussed it with my partner at the table, she understood how seriously I felt about the situation, and how much it matters to me to be vegan, to live my ethics. She very rightly pointed out though that skipping a meal at this point would be very bad for my health, I was still struggling through the concussion from my head injury and wasn't fully sure how much of my light headedness at the time was due to the injury, or purely due to hunger.
The choice I made is commonly referred to in vegan circles as 'the Paris excuse'. The idea is that, while travelling, or in a situation where vegan food is not available, a vegan can make a decision to eat something not vegan, but return to full veganism as soon as they are back in their normal environment, without losing the title of being a vegan. I feel that this scenario already comes in under the definition of a vegan; namely a person who does all they can to minimise all forms of animal exploitation through rejection of animal products in all consumable items. In the luxury of Australia's national capital, 'all that I can' is quite a lot; there's a vegan cupcake shop a 2 minute walk from my office. In a remote town in Fiji, 'all that I can' isn't quite so much.
The final days of the holiday were made quite lovely by the wonderful resort staff, who did introduce me to one local delicacy, fried coconut. The recipe is quite simple; you take a fresh coconut, open it (generally with a sharp knife and strong hand... be careful don't cut yourself!). Take the solid flesh of the coconut and cut it into chip shaped wedges, remove most of the furry bit of the outer brown skin. Fry the coconut in hot oil, then baste generously with sweet chilli sauce when done. These are a common 'bar snack' over in Fiji.
The holiday eventually wraps up, and we make our homeward journey. I buy myself a packet of pringles to munch on the journey home. The trip home involves a 3 hour bus ride, followed by a five hour flight, followed by another 3 hour drive. I wasn't sure of finding food at the airport or on the plane.
My partner and I breathe a sigh of releif as we touch down at Sydney Airport and clear our way through customs. I stand at the baggage carousel clutching the half full box of pringles. One of the people from the group I was travelling with makes their way up to me. They begin to question the ingredients on the box of pringles, going on ot suggest that it contains traces of dairy product. The woman squeaks at me "As a vegan I thought you wouldn't eat something like that?" I'll confess, My response wasn't as diplomatic as it could have been. I snapped back "Do you really want to have a debate on this with me right now?" She harumphed and stalked away to the other end of the baggage carousel.
Perhaps, I should have wipped out my copy of "but you kill ants don't you?" and explained to her that veganism is never really a perfect black and white activity, but a constant aspiration. Perhaps I could have explained to her that hunger was the most common sensation I felt during the trip, behind pain from my injuries. But really, I just couldn't be bothered justifying myself to someone who was a meat eater.
This kind of harsh assessement happens to vegans and vegetarians quite regularly.... the number of times I've been asked "are those leather shoes?" "is that a wooly jumper?" I realised that this woman assiginging herself as the vegan purity police, Sydney Airport international baggage carousel region was essentially doing the same thing. One theory is that this is a bit of tall poppy syndrome. Vegans are trying to walk the talk. To really live their values. They should be applauded for it. Vegans are also people, trust me I'm a very regular normal person, I do the best I can, but sometimes that just isn't perfect.
The holiday wasn't all bad though, in fact in line with my theory that the universe is all about balance, something very wonderful happened to couteract all the nastiness of near-death experience and vegan haters. Despite the adversities we faced, my partner and I pulled together and made a great team, dealing with all the problems we encountered together. We agreed that regardless of what challenges life manages to throw at us, we want to face them as a couple. Shortly after our return to Australia (after a CT scan to confirm that I've suffered no brain damage) we ordered rings to celebrate the commitment.
Next blog, I promise you a propper recipe..... the much requested and rather popular chocolate avocado muffins with fudgy chocolate icing.
I've just returned from a holiday in Fiji, which sounds utterly delightful. However, a pleasant blog about a pleasant holiday would be a direct violation of Murphy's law, so I'll tell you about what actually happened in Fiji.
The trip was taken a bit at last minute, I was needed to fill a gap on a group trip due to cancellation. Rather than have everyone on the trip miss out, I arranged leave from work, organised my travel insurance and packed a suitcase full of books and swimsuits for a tropical adventure. I pictured myself strolling to a little village, buying fresh mangoes from little pop-up roadside markets, and eating all manner of lovely fresh vegetables with plenty of rice. Yes, you guessed it faithful reader, time for the record scratch.
The group trip ended up actually being at a villa, about a three hour drive from Nadi, which for the astute geographers amongst you will realise is pretty much the opposite side of the island. I was in fact, almost completely isolated. Never fear, the group stopped at the supermarket near the airport to stock up on supplies to group-cook at the villa. I was told to relax, there would be plenty of vegetarian options.
The experienced vegans reading this may share a knowing nod with me now. There is a difference between vegan and vegetarian, and sometimes that difference requires vegans to be seasoned and experienced label readers, picking up all manner of trace ingredients that sneakly put animal products into your food.
I manage to during the group shop grab myself a liter of soy milk and a large box of Oreos. Little did I know how much I would be needing these two rather average food items in the days to come.
The morning of day 2 of my Fiji adventure dawned. I breakfasted on white bread toast, with marjarine (probably not vegan, but the toast came kindly 'buttered' before I could inspect the container) and a glass of soy milk. About three hours after this breakfast I manged to accidentally take a header off a 3 meter sheer cliff. I hit my head on a rock and lost consciousness. I came to back at the holiday villa with my partner holding me and talking to me. "Just let me go to sleep" I say. She kept me awake, kept talking to me and by doing so most likely saved my life. My concussion was quite severe, and I'm in fact still recovering from it now. Having an accident or injury while on holiday is never fun, especially when you're in a non-first world country where medical resources are fairly limited. While I'm confident the Fijian doctor I saw (Dr Raam) was really friendly and knowledgeable, his proscription of panadine forte and Fiji bitter was probably not what I'd be getting in an Australian hospital.
The unfortunate side effect of falling off the cliff is that I spent most of the holiday bed-ridden. My partner stayed by my side after the injury to care for me. Sadly, this meant that we couldn't access the group food, or participate in shopping trips to make sure that food we could eat was purchased. While not vegan, there are some foods my partner can't eat. Finding meals that satisfy us both at home is generally easy, but is a bit more of a challenge while travelling. The three days after my injury involved some pretty serious starvation. My partner and I shared the box of oreo cookies, with no real meals for about seventy two hours.
Imagine our delight when we are informed the locals would be cooking a Fijian feast for us at the villa, after nothing but Oreos for a few days. I was told that there would be a vegetable curry. The night of the feast rolled around, our stomachs gurgled in hunger and anticipation. I must say that never before has the word feast been so badly used. The table was laden with fish curries, roasted chicken and pork dishes wrapped in taro leaves. The vegan options included dry baked potatoes with the unmistakable odour of keroene, an iceberg lettuce salad, a pumpkin curry (so popular and delicious that I managed to scrape one mouthful for myself after the bowl had made it's way down to my end of the table) and cold baked taro. The smell of fish permeated everything and I struggled to eat a few mouthfuls of potato as nausea struggled against hunger. My partner and I held hands and walked off to our bed, united in our disappointment.
The next morning, day 4 of our 9 day trip a nearby resort opened it's doors to us, after being closed for a wedding function. We stroll in at 8am, eager for breakfast. My partner orders herself a cooked breakfast with all the trimmings, absolutely delighted to be having a full meal again. I read through the menu carefully, sighing. There's nothing on the menu that's vegan, or can be made vegan with a modification. The closest thing is a serving of banana and coconut pancakes. At home, I'd make the dish with coconut milk and mashed banana, using a little chick-pea flour to replace the egg. I can only realistically expect that this resturant has used eggs in their pancakes, and probably not ethical free-range eggs.
I make a difficult decision, one that most vegans have had to make at some point; the choice between going hungry or eating something that doesn't sit well with your ethics. I ordered the pancakes. I hadn't had a propper meal in about four days, and my body was screaming out for some nourishment so it could start healing from the injury I had suffered. I discussed it with my partner at the table, she understood how seriously I felt about the situation, and how much it matters to me to be vegan, to live my ethics. She very rightly pointed out though that skipping a meal at this point would be very bad for my health, I was still struggling through the concussion from my head injury and wasn't fully sure how much of my light headedness at the time was due to the injury, or purely due to hunger.
The choice I made is commonly referred to in vegan circles as 'the Paris excuse'. The idea is that, while travelling, or in a situation where vegan food is not available, a vegan can make a decision to eat something not vegan, but return to full veganism as soon as they are back in their normal environment, without losing the title of being a vegan. I feel that this scenario already comes in under the definition of a vegan; namely a person who does all they can to minimise all forms of animal exploitation through rejection of animal products in all consumable items. In the luxury of Australia's national capital, 'all that I can' is quite a lot; there's a vegan cupcake shop a 2 minute walk from my office. In a remote town in Fiji, 'all that I can' isn't quite so much.
The final days of the holiday were made quite lovely by the wonderful resort staff, who did introduce me to one local delicacy, fried coconut. The recipe is quite simple; you take a fresh coconut, open it (generally with a sharp knife and strong hand... be careful don't cut yourself!). Take the solid flesh of the coconut and cut it into chip shaped wedges, remove most of the furry bit of the outer brown skin. Fry the coconut in hot oil, then baste generously with sweet chilli sauce when done. These are a common 'bar snack' over in Fiji.
The holiday eventually wraps up, and we make our homeward journey. I buy myself a packet of pringles to munch on the journey home. The trip home involves a 3 hour bus ride, followed by a five hour flight, followed by another 3 hour drive. I wasn't sure of finding food at the airport or on the plane.
My partner and I breathe a sigh of releif as we touch down at Sydney Airport and clear our way through customs. I stand at the baggage carousel clutching the half full box of pringles. One of the people from the group I was travelling with makes their way up to me. They begin to question the ingredients on the box of pringles, going on ot suggest that it contains traces of dairy product. The woman squeaks at me "As a vegan I thought you wouldn't eat something like that?" I'll confess, My response wasn't as diplomatic as it could have been. I snapped back "Do you really want to have a debate on this with me right now?" She harumphed and stalked away to the other end of the baggage carousel.
Perhaps, I should have wipped out my copy of "but you kill ants don't you?" and explained to her that veganism is never really a perfect black and white activity, but a constant aspiration. Perhaps I could have explained to her that hunger was the most common sensation I felt during the trip, behind pain from my injuries. But really, I just couldn't be bothered justifying myself to someone who was a meat eater.
This kind of harsh assessement happens to vegans and vegetarians quite regularly.... the number of times I've been asked "are those leather shoes?" "is that a wooly jumper?" I realised that this woman assiginging herself as the vegan purity police, Sydney Airport international baggage carousel region was essentially doing the same thing. One theory is that this is a bit of tall poppy syndrome. Vegans are trying to walk the talk. To really live their values. They should be applauded for it. Vegans are also people, trust me I'm a very regular normal person, I do the best I can, but sometimes that just isn't perfect.
The holiday wasn't all bad though, in fact in line with my theory that the universe is all about balance, something very wonderful happened to couteract all the nastiness of near-death experience and vegan haters. Despite the adversities we faced, my partner and I pulled together and made a great team, dealing with all the problems we encountered together. We agreed that regardless of what challenges life manages to throw at us, we want to face them as a couple. Shortly after our return to Australia (after a CT scan to confirm that I've suffered no brain damage) we ordered rings to celebrate the commitment.
Next blog, I promise you a propper recipe..... the much requested and rather popular chocolate avocado muffins with fudgy chocolate icing.
Sunday 19 August 2012
Vegan snack extravaganza
For once, I'm not starting this blog with an apology. Yes, it's been a while since I've blogged. Masterchef is well and truly over, Andy in all his boyish glory is of all things off to open a mexican resturant with his bestie Ben. All the best to Bendy in their mexican ventures.
As some of my faithful readers who know of me in the 'real world' may have worked out, I've been busy doing other things; being happily swept off my feet and also a bit of being there for my urban family. See, all good worthy and important stuff. Nothing to apologise for.
Recently, I've also been spending a lot more time than I'm accustomed to in front of the TV; doing my patriotic duty of cheering on the Aussies to proud maritime glory in the olympics. Something else I've been doing while watching TV, is a lot of snacking (who said I wasn't a multi-tasker).
Even better, I've been snacking away happily with a friendly bunch of non-vegans as we worked to keep our energy levels up while we cheered the aussies on to olympic awesomeness. I have been thoroughly spoiled, with massive amounts of care and effort lavished upon me to ensure that there was something available for me to munch on; so I wasn't left out when snacking with the gang in front of the TV.
This experience has made me realise that my blog has a bit of a hole in it. Just like your "three squares" which can be either vegan or not vegan in equal degrees of deliciousness, vegan snacks are just like any other non-vegan snack. Vegan snacks can cover the full spectrum of bite-size, crunchy, savoury, sweet, spicy, chewy, hot or cold. There's a vegan snack for every palate and occasion.
Here's a few vegan versions of classic snacks, there's no real preparation or cooking involved. I took a trip to my local supermarket and searched the shelves high and low until I found an adequate selection.
You don't get much more classic than the "chip'n'dip" a feature of many classic aussie gatherings since I first remember. These days the the supermarket is full of great vegan dips. For those who don't like reading labels, hommous is always a safe bet. It would take a strange producer indeed to put anything animal related into a tub of hommous. Also try eggplant dip (baba ganoush) or beetroot dip, almost all of the regularly available ones are vegan. Also tomato salsa (found in a jar in the chip aisle) is vegan. Sadly, it's pretty much impossible to get a completely vegan guacamole, they all seem to be 'padded out' with cream cheese. Making your own is very easy though, you could make a super lazy version by just mashing some avocado with a little lemon or lime juice on top to prevent the fruit from enzymatic browning.
To dip into your awesome dips, there's heaps of stuff. A surprisingly large selection of chips are vegan, the plain corn-chips, plain, salt and vinegar and some of the BBQ flavours are fine. Moving beyond chips, there's also heaps of other crunchies, give some seaweed flavoured rice crackers, grissini (bread sticks) ryvetas, water crackers and for a last surprise, BBQ shapes are all vegan. Also, I'm stating the obvious here but, some vegetable crudites are always popular, try carrot, celery, cucumber and capsicum cut into sticks. I wanted to check out the savoury shapes to see if they're vegan too, but they were on a really tall shelf and I couldn't reach a packet to check the label. Readers, let me know if you have better luck than me?
Anti-pasto can either be a vegan disaster zone, with a plates loaded with different smoked meats and sausages, and no vegetables in sight, or it can be vegan snack heaven. Your supermarket deli has heaps of great vegan stuff to add to an antipasto (antipasti?) plate. Try stuff like sun-dried tomatoes, olives, marinated capscium, grilled eggplant and artichoke hearts. For something a bit more substantial, try some dolmades, they are rice and lentils cooked with spices wrapped in a grape vine leaf.
Traditionally, I would busily load myself up on crackery type snacks so that I'm not starving hungry when the rest of the party-goers start tucking into the inevitible party pies and sausage rolls. The good news is now that vegans can have heaps of hot snacks without having to scour the freezer looking for a box labelled vegan specifically. Frustratingly, some companies will make you pay through the nose for those 5 little letters on the front of the box, when an inspection of the ingredient list shows their product is very basic to produce, usually made from lentils and veggies and should be very cheap to produce. Now that I'm past my rant, here's a vew hot vegan snacks that can be easily thrown into the oven to cook up with no fuss. Try things like potato wedges, potato gems, hash browns or veggie spring rolls and dim-sims. There are a few specialised items in the freezer section; a company called "Syndian" will sell you items labelled as vegan and gluten free for a price.
Finally, this blog on snacks would not be complete without a brief chat about sweets. You can get some lovely vegan sweets at the supermarket. For those who don't want to read labels and don't want any concern over weather the item is 'fully vegan' or not, there's quite a few things speficially labelled as vegan. You will find them in the health food aisle, and include rum-balls, white and 'milk' chocolate, chocolate mintons and even a vegan version of tim-tams.
If you don't want to blow more than five bucks on a single packet of biscuits, there's a few more options available. Gingernut biscuits and Choc Ripple biscuits are both vegan... yep, totally vegan. How cool is that. If you want something that's a bit more of a treat and have time to do it, the Lindt 70% and higher chocolates are vegan; they come in blocks, but if you have time to melt some and dip strawberries in it, you'll have a very pretty mini-dessert. If you want a cold dessert, you'll find soy ice-creams in the freezer section; and most sorbets are vegan.
To all those who host vegan house guests, thank you. I, and every other vegan are incredibly grateful for your understanding and effort in attempting to feed us.
Until next time, take care and make sure you eat something yummy!
As some of my faithful readers who know of me in the 'real world' may have worked out, I've been busy doing other things; being happily swept off my feet and also a bit of being there for my urban family. See, all good worthy and important stuff. Nothing to apologise for.
Recently, I've also been spending a lot more time than I'm accustomed to in front of the TV; doing my patriotic duty of cheering on the Aussies to proud maritime glory in the olympics. Something else I've been doing while watching TV, is a lot of snacking (who said I wasn't a multi-tasker).
Even better, I've been snacking away happily with a friendly bunch of non-vegans as we worked to keep our energy levels up while we cheered the aussies on to olympic awesomeness. I have been thoroughly spoiled, with massive amounts of care and effort lavished upon me to ensure that there was something available for me to munch on; so I wasn't left out when snacking with the gang in front of the TV.
This experience has made me realise that my blog has a bit of a hole in it. Just like your "three squares" which can be either vegan or not vegan in equal degrees of deliciousness, vegan snacks are just like any other non-vegan snack. Vegan snacks can cover the full spectrum of bite-size, crunchy, savoury, sweet, spicy, chewy, hot or cold. There's a vegan snack for every palate and occasion.
Here's a few vegan versions of classic snacks, there's no real preparation or cooking involved. I took a trip to my local supermarket and searched the shelves high and low until I found an adequate selection.
You don't get much more classic than the "chip'n'dip" a feature of many classic aussie gatherings since I first remember. These days the the supermarket is full of great vegan dips. For those who don't like reading labels, hommous is always a safe bet. It would take a strange producer indeed to put anything animal related into a tub of hommous. Also try eggplant dip (baba ganoush) or beetroot dip, almost all of the regularly available ones are vegan. Also tomato salsa (found in a jar in the chip aisle) is vegan. Sadly, it's pretty much impossible to get a completely vegan guacamole, they all seem to be 'padded out' with cream cheese. Making your own is very easy though, you could make a super lazy version by just mashing some avocado with a little lemon or lime juice on top to prevent the fruit from enzymatic browning.
To dip into your awesome dips, there's heaps of stuff. A surprisingly large selection of chips are vegan, the plain corn-chips, plain, salt and vinegar and some of the BBQ flavours are fine. Moving beyond chips, there's also heaps of other crunchies, give some seaweed flavoured rice crackers, grissini (bread sticks) ryvetas, water crackers and for a last surprise, BBQ shapes are all vegan. Also, I'm stating the obvious here but, some vegetable crudites are always popular, try carrot, celery, cucumber and capsicum cut into sticks. I wanted to check out the savoury shapes to see if they're vegan too, but they were on a really tall shelf and I couldn't reach a packet to check the label. Readers, let me know if you have better luck than me?
Anti-pasto can either be a vegan disaster zone, with a plates loaded with different smoked meats and sausages, and no vegetables in sight, or it can be vegan snack heaven. Your supermarket deli has heaps of great vegan stuff to add to an antipasto (antipasti?) plate. Try stuff like sun-dried tomatoes, olives, marinated capscium, grilled eggplant and artichoke hearts. For something a bit more substantial, try some dolmades, they are rice and lentils cooked with spices wrapped in a grape vine leaf.
Traditionally, I would busily load myself up on crackery type snacks so that I'm not starving hungry when the rest of the party-goers start tucking into the inevitible party pies and sausage rolls. The good news is now that vegans can have heaps of hot snacks without having to scour the freezer looking for a box labelled vegan specifically. Frustratingly, some companies will make you pay through the nose for those 5 little letters on the front of the box, when an inspection of the ingredient list shows their product is very basic to produce, usually made from lentils and veggies and should be very cheap to produce. Now that I'm past my rant, here's a vew hot vegan snacks that can be easily thrown into the oven to cook up with no fuss. Try things like potato wedges, potato gems, hash browns or veggie spring rolls and dim-sims. There are a few specialised items in the freezer section; a company called "Syndian" will sell you items labelled as vegan and gluten free for a price.
Finally, this blog on snacks would not be complete without a brief chat about sweets. You can get some lovely vegan sweets at the supermarket. For those who don't want to read labels and don't want any concern over weather the item is 'fully vegan' or not, there's quite a few things speficially labelled as vegan. You will find them in the health food aisle, and include rum-balls, white and 'milk' chocolate, chocolate mintons and even a vegan version of tim-tams.
If you don't want to blow more than five bucks on a single packet of biscuits, there's a few more options available. Gingernut biscuits and Choc Ripple biscuits are both vegan... yep, totally vegan. How cool is that. If you want something that's a bit more of a treat and have time to do it, the Lindt 70% and higher chocolates are vegan; they come in blocks, but if you have time to melt some and dip strawberries in it, you'll have a very pretty mini-dessert. If you want a cold dessert, you'll find soy ice-creams in the freezer section; and most sorbets are vegan.
To all those who host vegan house guests, thank you. I, and every other vegan are incredibly grateful for your understanding and effort in attempting to feed us.
Until next time, take care and make sure you eat something yummy!
Thursday 12 July 2012
Kiwifruit Challenge Part 2
I'm not going to apologise for the delay in producing part 2 of my kiwifruit challenge blog. I had a very good reason for delaying the write-up.
I made a dessert using fresh kiwifruit on the same night I made my chutney featured in part 1 of the challenge. A day after preparing my rather reasonable dessert of kiwifruit and orange muffins, I had a very lovely and special dinner guest; to whom (amongst other things) I served my kiwifruit muffins. She was kind enough to provide a brief review stating that I've "Shown that Kiwifruit is not just for pav".
There was one unfortunate downside to this, when after, I say again AFTER! eating (and enjoying) these muffins, I was firmly instructed to not feed this very lovely and special lady tofu. This was unfortunate for me at the time, as well, as you'll see in my recipe. These orange and kiwifruit muffins contain silken tofu. I'm not talking a couple of teaspoons here... I mean step one of the recipe is going to involve you draining and mashing an entire 250g packet of the stuff. Awkward.
However, being a glass half full kind of lady, I decided that silken tofu in muffins was not really a show-stopping problem in the general scheme of my life... let's face it, worse things have happened.
I deliberated the issue with myself for a few days, before deciding on a course of action. Honesty really is the best policy. I came clean about the tofu. No doubt placing a very severe strain on this fledgling relationship. I really tried to sell it as a glass-half-full situation.... Tofu isn't evil! it's not even bad!... the tofu-hump has been conquered! It's all good from here on in, with salt and pepper tofu, tofu-cheesecake, mr-puffy-tofu, agadeshi tofu, grilled tofu with salad....
Yeah okay, record scratch. The moratorium on fermented soy products continues.
Here's my muffin recipe, I can honestly state that you wouldn't know they were vegan and had tofu in them if you don't specifically tell someone.
You will need:
250g silken tofu (the soft stuff, not silken firm)
50g nuttelex (melted)
2 cups Self Raising flour
1/2 brown sugar
1 cup chopped fresh kiwi fruit
1/2 cup orange juice (from a bottle is fine, it doesn't have to be freshly squeezed)
You will have to:
Pre-heat your oven to 180C
Prepare either 12 large or 24 small muffin cases (your choice of greasing with cooking spray or lining with paper trays)
Open the packet of silken tofu, drain the water.
In a mixing bowl mash the silken tofu.
Melt the nuttelex (I just put mine in the microwave)
Stir the sugar and melted nuttelex into the tofu mix.
Add the flour slowly, stirring until incorporated. It should be a bit dry.
Add the orange juice, adjusting the volume of OJ if needed to get a good muffin batter consistency. It should be thicker than a pancake batter, but not like a dough, you should be able to spoon it into the muffin trays when it's just right.
Add the chopped kiwifruit last, stirring very gently to incorporate the fruit without squashing it.
Bake at 180C for about 20 minutes, they are cooked when you can poke a fork or other similar item into the muffins and it comes out clean.
These muffins are not super sweet, so if you want something really decadent you may want to consider some icing. Happy cooking!
I made a dessert using fresh kiwifruit on the same night I made my chutney featured in part 1 of the challenge. A day after preparing my rather reasonable dessert of kiwifruit and orange muffins, I had a very lovely and special dinner guest; to whom (amongst other things) I served my kiwifruit muffins. She was kind enough to provide a brief review stating that I've "Shown that Kiwifruit is not just for pav".
There was one unfortunate downside to this, when after, I say again AFTER! eating (and enjoying) these muffins, I was firmly instructed to not feed this very lovely and special lady tofu. This was unfortunate for me at the time, as well, as you'll see in my recipe. These orange and kiwifruit muffins contain silken tofu. I'm not talking a couple of teaspoons here... I mean step one of the recipe is going to involve you draining and mashing an entire 250g packet of the stuff. Awkward.
However, being a glass half full kind of lady, I decided that silken tofu in muffins was not really a show-stopping problem in the general scheme of my life... let's face it, worse things have happened.
I deliberated the issue with myself for a few days, before deciding on a course of action. Honesty really is the best policy. I came clean about the tofu. No doubt placing a very severe strain on this fledgling relationship. I really tried to sell it as a glass-half-full situation.... Tofu isn't evil! it's not even bad!... the tofu-hump has been conquered! It's all good from here on in, with salt and pepper tofu, tofu-cheesecake, mr-puffy-tofu, agadeshi tofu, grilled tofu with salad....
Yeah okay, record scratch. The moratorium on fermented soy products continues.
Here's my muffin recipe, I can honestly state that you wouldn't know they were vegan and had tofu in them if you don't specifically tell someone.
You will need:
250g silken tofu (the soft stuff, not silken firm)
50g nuttelex (melted)
2 cups Self Raising flour
1/2 brown sugar
1 cup chopped fresh kiwi fruit
1/2 cup orange juice (from a bottle is fine, it doesn't have to be freshly squeezed)
You will have to:
Pre-heat your oven to 180C
Prepare either 12 large or 24 small muffin cases (your choice of greasing with cooking spray or lining with paper trays)
Open the packet of silken tofu, drain the water.
In a mixing bowl mash the silken tofu.
Melt the nuttelex (I just put mine in the microwave)
Stir the sugar and melted nuttelex into the tofu mix.
Add the flour slowly, stirring until incorporated. It should be a bit dry.
Add the orange juice, adjusting the volume of OJ if needed to get a good muffin batter consistency. It should be thicker than a pancake batter, but not like a dough, you should be able to spoon it into the muffin trays when it's just right.
Add the chopped kiwifruit last, stirring very gently to incorporate the fruit without squashing it.
Bake at 180C for about 20 minutes, they are cooked when you can poke a fork or other similar item into the muffins and it comes out clean.
These muffins are not super sweet, so if you want something really decadent you may want to consider some icing. Happy cooking!
Sunday 1 July 2012
Masterchef kiwifruit challenge - Part one
Hi everyone, thanks for tuning in. In this blog entry I'm taking on the Masterchef kiwi fruit challenge.
A lady in my pub trivia team was lovely enough to bring a plethora of kiwi's along one night last week; I was the lucky recipient of about twenty little specimens of this brown and furry on the outside, green and tangy on the inside fruit.
Kiwi fruit is really good for you; it's very high in vitamin C. However, I've never had kiwi as anything but a snack all by itself, where you either cut it in half and eat it with a spoon or cut it into slices and remove that furry skin in little rings.
As I um and ahh about accepting these lovely fruit; not knowing if I can manage to eat that many kiwi fruit before they go off; and not wanting to waste any "BG" suggests that I take the "Kiwi fruit challenge". By suggest, I really mean her wish is my command, so of course I must go forth and produce food and a blog entry to fulfill this brief.
I cast my mind back; to the memorable episode where Mindy won herself the immunity pin in Masterchef. Admittedly, it was in a raw food challenge against some top sushi chefs, however they were required to select a 'star' ingredient to feature in each of the courses. The sushi chef guy selected kiwi fruit.
I now have an excuse (oops I mean a reason) to take the kiwi fruit and produce something worth blogging about.
I start off by consulting with my good friend and much lauded oracle; "Google Chef"... She's got recipes for absolutely everything. I am actually cooking from a recipe I found on the net; the recipe was vegan by the ingredient list as is. I guess that's a bit of an 'invention/creativity fail' however, I also think it's a great opportunity to show that you can get really delightful and unexpected results from different ingredients if you're just willing to try something a bit different.
The first thing I did was weigh my kiwi fruit to see how much I had.
I'm just thinking of your health and well being by making sure you flex your neck while sitting at the computer. If you can't be bothered flexing, I have about half a kg of kiwi fruit on that scale.
In addition to the 500g of kiwi fruit you will need.
1 banana, 1(large) brown onion, 3tbs lemon juice, 1/2 cup raisins, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 tsp each cayenne pepper, allspice, nutmeg and cardamon, 1 dessert spoon salt, 1/2 cup white vinegar.
Prepare the kiwi fruit by removing the skin and dicing them.
By this time I'm a tad skeptical of this recipe... a kiwi fruit, a banana and some onion in a pot? sounds like a "someone walked into a bar joke" to me right now. But I persevere.
The instructions to this recipe are very straightforward, I'm actually surprised to learn how easy it is to make a chutney. This is my first time making one and I'd always thought they were complicated!
All you do is chop up the fruit and vegetables, then take everything in the ingredient list and throw it into a large pot over medium heat.
Give it a stir, and once it boils then turn the heat down to a gentle simmer. The recipe says to simmer for 1 hour, until everything is cooked down to a jam like texture. I keep an eye on it every few minutes, giving it a stir to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot.
The finished product looks like this:
I'm the first to admit that a jar of chutney doesn't look like much; really this just looks like a jar of chutney. I made some onion bahji's for dinner to try out with my chutney.
The kiwifruit chutney was tangy and delicious! I've discovered that it's great with onion bahji's, cauliflower pakoras and just regular old bread.
So... if you find yourself in a situation with stacks of kiwi fruit you don't know what to do with and you like tangy chutney give this one a go.
A lady in my pub trivia team was lovely enough to bring a plethora of kiwi's along one night last week; I was the lucky recipient of about twenty little specimens of this brown and furry on the outside, green and tangy on the inside fruit.
Kiwi fruit is really good for you; it's very high in vitamin C. However, I've never had kiwi as anything but a snack all by itself, where you either cut it in half and eat it with a spoon or cut it into slices and remove that furry skin in little rings.
As I um and ahh about accepting these lovely fruit; not knowing if I can manage to eat that many kiwi fruit before they go off; and not wanting to waste any "BG" suggests that I take the "Kiwi fruit challenge". By suggest, I really mean her wish is my command, so of course I must go forth and produce food and a blog entry to fulfill this brief.
I cast my mind back; to the memorable episode where Mindy won herself the immunity pin in Masterchef. Admittedly, it was in a raw food challenge against some top sushi chefs, however they were required to select a 'star' ingredient to feature in each of the courses. The sushi chef guy selected kiwi fruit.
I now have an excuse (oops I mean a reason) to take the kiwi fruit and produce something worth blogging about.
I start off by consulting with my good friend and much lauded oracle; "Google Chef"... She's got recipes for absolutely everything. I am actually cooking from a recipe I found on the net; the recipe was vegan by the ingredient list as is. I guess that's a bit of an 'invention/creativity fail' however, I also think it's a great opportunity to show that you can get really delightful and unexpected results from different ingredients if you're just willing to try something a bit different.
The first thing I did was weigh my kiwi fruit to see how much I had.
 | ||||||||
| I forgot to rotate the image again, sorry. |
In addition to the 500g of kiwi fruit you will need.
1 banana, 1(large) brown onion, 3tbs lemon juice, 1/2 cup raisins, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 tsp each cayenne pepper, allspice, nutmeg and cardamon, 1 dessert spoon salt, 1/2 cup white vinegar.
Prepare the kiwi fruit by removing the skin and dicing them.
By this time I'm a tad skeptical of this recipe... a kiwi fruit, a banana and some onion in a pot? sounds like a "someone walked into a bar joke" to me right now. But I persevere.
 |
| Banana ready to be prepared. |
All you do is chop up the fruit and vegetables, then take everything in the ingredient list and throw it into a large pot over medium heat.
 | |||||||||
| Starting to cook chutney |
The finished product looks like this:
 | |
| Yours may be less sideways. |
The kiwifruit chutney was tangy and delicious! I've discovered that it's great with onion bahji's, cauliflower pakoras and just regular old bread.
So... if you find yourself in a situation with stacks of kiwi fruit you don't know what to do with and you like tangy chutney give this one a go.
Sunday 24 June 2012
Masterchef round-up and vegan meals in 5 minutes or less
It's been a little bit since I've blogged. I've been busy on a few other projects, including renovating my home over a geological time-scale. This installment: Lovely curtains for my sun-room/library!
 |
| I'll confess, the only reason that throw-rug is folded so nicely is because my cleaner did it last week. I can't bear to touch it now. |
I'm loving Masterchef this week. Tonight I perched on my couch, eating my 5 minute noodle salad (recipe to follow in this blog) when they put on a food challenge that couldn't possibly be more opposite than the meal I was eating. The "dude food" challenge was completely awesome.
Can dude food
be vegan? Sure! Dude food isn't just stuff wrapped in bacon and deep fried. It's also stuff coated in sugar and deep fried, or even deep fried food on a stick. In my opinion the ideal dude food should go great with a beer, or go great after about ten beers. It should be prepared with absolute disregard for caloric content or nutritional balance. It should have intense flavour.
So, if I were making dude food vegan: I would make: mini okonomyaki (fried japanese vegetable
pancakes), beer-battered whole button mushrooms and mini-deep-fried pumpkin
cakes. I would serve it with vegan mayo,
that has teriyaki sauce swirled through it; topped with fried shallots and
garlic. I'd provide extra-long cocktail
sticks with it so the "dude" could load each of the three bite-size
items onto a single stick and chow the whole thing down with mayo coated
goodness.
Why am I not making this rather than just describing it? Because I live by myself (with three cats). I can eat a lot for a small(ish) person, but even I have limits. Amina made sushi and got sent through to the elimination round tomorrow; rightfully so. Amina, I love you to bits and think you're an awesome cook but sushi is not dude food and dude food is not your thing. It's all good though as I'm sure she'll use the opportunity to absolutely mop the floor with "Andrew" and make sure that silly bloody twit goes home. That guy could fuck up toast I have no idea how he's managed to hang on in the competition this far.
Earlier in the week the Masterchef team catered for a Hindu wedding. I'm not going to re-create or blog any of their dishes here as Hindu culture is a vegetarian (but not vegan) culture already. Some of the recipes in that episode looked like they would have been vegan by eye: The Aloo tiki, Gobi 65, Eggplant chips, and the okra tamarind curry. Google Masterchef, they usually have the recipes on their website.
The challenge recently that really caught my interest though was the "5 minute challenge" Can you walk into your kitchen, and walk out 5 minutes later with a meal that's completely ready to eat? It's actually a tough challenge. Even making a salad can take longer than 5 minutes if you're not prepared and organised in the kitchen. I'll break down my work into 1 minute intervals so you can see how I did it. I'm lucky that when I bought my house, I basically bought the kitchen size and layout I wanted, and am slowly dealing with the rest of the house that's around that kitchen. As a result My layout of fridge, pantry, preparation area and stove-top are perfectly arranged to cut down on excess doubling-back across the room while preparing food. You may struggle to get this done in 5 minutes or less if your kitchen is cramped, poorly laid out, or if you're not totally organised.
Here's my first 5 minute meal, a Japanese style spinach salad.
Minute 1:
Turn on a stove element to high heat, place a fry-pan on the stove to heat up.
Go to your pantry and get the following items.
-Wallnuts (about a hand full will do)
-Sesame seeds (about half a hand full)
-Rice wine vinegar
-Sesame oil
-vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil)
-Soy sauce
-Nori sheet (1 sheet)
Go back to the stove top.
Place the wallnuts and sesame seeds in the fry pan to toast.
Place the other pantry items on the bench.
 |
| Stopped the clock for a 1 minute progress check. |
Minute 2
Go to the fridge and get the following items.
Fresh spinach leaves
pickled ginger
lime juice (squeezy bottle)
Take these items to your bench/preparation area.
Go to your cupboard and get the following items
Chopping board
Salad bowl.
My knife is on a knife block at my prep area, if yours is somewhere else go and get it now.
Quickly wash the spinach (I just ran it under the tap in my hands) shake it dry and place it in the salad bowl.
Give the fry-pan with the nuts and sesame seeds a quick shake and make sure nothing is burning.
 |
| Progress at 1:45, 15 sec to wash spinach and put in salad bowl. |
Minute 3
Remove a few pieces of pickled ginger from the jar, place them on your chopping board.
Dice them finely, then add to the salad.
Take one nori sheet and crumble it, using both hands over the salad.
Turn off the stove, leave the nuts and seeds to cool.
Go to a cupboard and find a screw-top jar.
Minute 4:
In this minute we are making a salad dressing; you don't need to measure the ingredients accurately to get it right. Salad dressings are most often a 3:1 oil:acid mixture. Other stuff you add to it is usually just seasoning. I didn't measure my dressing, I just added the components by eye, gave it a good shake and tasted it to make sure I was happy with it.
Into your jar place
6 drops sesame oil.
Make up to "3 parts" with rice-bran oil.
Add "1 part" rice wine vinegar (ie if you used 100ml of oil, then you will need about 30ml of vinegar)
Add a small splash of soy sauce
Add a small squirt of lime juice.
Put the lid on the jar, shake.
Remove lid, taste, adjust if needed.
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| Forgot to stop the clock, also forgot to rotate the image. Sorry. |
Minute 5
Tip the nuts and seeds from the fry pan over the salad.
pour some of the salad dressing over the salad. (I made a lot of extra dressing in that jar, as I know it will keep to be re-used in other things)
Give it a quick stir-through.
I used the last thirty seconds to get myself a glass of OJ to go with the salad, and to take this picture.
 | |||||||||||
| Nutritious, satisfying meal in 5 minutes or less. |
Voila! If you can stand spending 7 minutes in your kitchen, you could have thrown some tofu or tempeh into the fry-pan with the nuts and seeds for a bit of extra 'oomph'
But wait, there's more.
I can also make a noodle salad in 5 minutes or less. I used some of the left-over salad dressing from the Japanese style salad (with a slight modification)
Minute 1.
Put about 500ml of water in your kettle, put it on to boil.
Get a bowl and place it on the bench next to the kettle.
Go to your pantry and get the following items.
Vermicelli bean thread noodles.
Place the noodles in the bowl
 | ||
| This is enough noodles for a big batch, each 'bunch' of noodles is enough for 1 serve. |
My neighbour's cat was so intrigued by my efforts he decided to have a peek at what I was up to.
 |
| He's not here to borrow a cup of sugar. |
Minute 2
Go to your fridge and get the following items.
Bean shoots
1 Carrot
1 red capsicum
spinach leaves
Your left over salad dressing from the Japanese style salad
Fresh ginger
1 fresh chilli
Place them on your bench.
Get your
chopping board
knife
grater
a plate
Finely dice the chilli
Open the salad dressing jar, place the chilli and ginger inside, put the lid back on give it a shake.
Minute 3:
Grate the carrot
Finely chop the capsicum
roughly chop the spinach leaves.
Minute 4
drain the noodles
place a hand-full of bean shoots on the plate (or a bowl is fine if you like, it doesn't matter.)
top with the noodles
add the other vegetables, stir/toss with a fork.
Minute 5
pour the salad dressing over the top. Again, if you can spring for 7 minutes in the kitchen you could do some grilled tofu or something similar to chuck over the top to add a bit more "oomph"
 | |||
| 5 minute noodle salad. |
I'll count this one as another vegan win. 2 meals, completed in 5 minutes or less. Both tasty and satisfying. Give them a go and let me know how it went for you? Can you take the 5 minute vegan meal challenge?
Saturday 9 June 2012
Megan makes Masterchef pub food challenge vegan
I love a good pub meal. Who doesn't?
Traditionally a pub meal was one of three things: Banger's n' mash (and gravy if it was a particularly good pub) Rissole'n'veg (there's something about the sound of that word... go on say it out loud, with an Aussie accent. "Rissole") or steak. Either on a plate, or in a sandwich.
Over the years pub food has gotten a bit fancier; but overall has stayed true to several very clear concepts. A pub meal is a generous portion of satisfying food that's easy to make and appealing to just about everyone's tastes, and is best washed down with a pint of your favorite beer. Usually with some form of chips on the side. I'm serious. I once had a pub meal that consisted of :sweet and sour deep fried tofu (and in a country pub too!) with rice... and a side of chips'n'salad.
I toyed with the idea of blogging something for the Masterchef seduction challenge earlier this week; but then quickly realised a couple of things. Firstly, me giving advice on seduction would be like... well like me giving you advice on how to cook the perfect steak. Clearly, a lady who lives alone (with her cats) is not the one to be suggesting the perfect seductive dessert.
Also, the ingredient combinations on offer were a struggle... Option 1, Strawberries and cream is out... I can't use the cream. Option 2, Champagne and Caviar, I can't use the caviar, and if I need to resort to copious amounts of alcohol to to seduce someone then I might just go for the time honoured technique of a long island ice tea and the light switch. (the long island ice tea is for them, the light switch is for me) Option 3, chocolate and roses. My most promising yet. Sadly, one hiccup. My blog rules require me to only use food available from a regular supermarket. Your local woolies does have flowers at the front of the shop for sale, including roses. Unfortunately the roses sold for visual gifts are not good for eating. I don't have any roses (of decent size and appearance) in my yard yet, so couldn't use roses either.
I suppose I could leave a Hansel and Gretel style trail of chocolate bits leading all the way to my bedroom, you know... just on the off chance?....
Luckily for us all, another episode of Masterchef came out before I could order the ACME "catch yourself someone beautiful and amazing" kit.
So, my vegan pub meal is going to tick all the boxes. It's easy to make, delicious, suits a wide range of tastes and goes great with a frosty cold beer. I'm going to show you how to make a tempeh burger with satay sauce, and a side of really great potato wedges. Perfect way to kick off the Queens birthday long weekend in our nation's capital.
The first thing I do is get the potato wedges going.
I pre-heat my oven to 180C then put a pot of water on the stove to boil.
Then you need to cut your potatoes into wedge shapes.
Be generous, I used about 500 grams of potatoes here. If you end up with left over potato wedges at the end they freeze and re-heat just fine.
Once you've cut your spuds, the water should be boiling by about now. Put the potato wedges in for about 10-12 minutes. This will pre-cook the potatoes before baking them, and help them have a really nice fluffy texture inside once they're finished.
While the potato wedges are boiling you can get started on the satay sauce. I used a commercial thai red curry paste to get the balance of chilli and spices just right. If you're not in the mood for cooking you could just use a commercial satay sauce if you want; but I find them a bit insipid... nowhere near enough chilli kick for my taste.
I put a pot on the stove, turn it up to high heat and add 2 dessert spoons of the Thai red curry paste. If you're cooking this for a vegan, or with the intent of making the dish completely vegan then check the labels when buying the curry paste, traditionally it will contain non vegan things like shrimp paste and fish sauce. Happily I've found a brand at the local woolies that's okay for vegans, it's in a jar in the Asian food aisle.
Follow the curry paste with 1 cup (250ml) of coconut cream. Stir until combined. Mine looked like this.
No satay sauce is complete without some peanutty goodness. I add a very generous quarter cup of peanut butter to my sauce. I want it to be really thick and rich. Stir the peanut butter through until the sauce mixture is completely homogeneous. You can then turn the stove element under the sauce off.
By now, the potatoes should be boiled. Drain the water, give the pot a shake with a forwards-backwards arm motion. This will rough up the surface of the potato wedges a bit and help them have a nice crispy outside when cooked.
Dump the spuds into an oven/roasting pan and drizzle with a generous amount of oil. They don't need to be swimming in it, but you want all of your wedges nicely coated. I sprinkled mine with a bit of salt, parsley and dry/powdered garlic, gave it another vigorous back and forth shake, then put it in the oven.
I'm sorry but here's the bad news. These spuds will take anywhere between 40 minutes and one hour to cook. They are worth the wait though.
Go away for between 20 and 30 minutes. The rest of this dish is really quick to put together. Have a beer, put your feet up, you get the drill. I used the time wisely; watching my cats stalking each other.
Once you're back in the kitchen check on the potato wedges and give the roasting pan a bit of a shake.
Then, it's time to prepare the Tempeh. WTF is tempeh? I hear you say.
It's this:
Tempeh is made from soy beans. It was invented in Indonesia. Tempeh is great grilled and fried and some people say it has a slightly nutty flavour. To me, it just tastes like tempeh. I really like the stuff. If you give the recipe on this blog a go you can find out what it tastes like for yourself.
I cut the tempeh to make my ideal burger shape.
The great thing about tempeh is that it's perfectly fine to eat raw if you want. You don't need to worry about cooking times. In fact, I put mine in my sandwich press to grill it on both sides at once. It took just a few minutes, not long at all.
While the Tempeh is in the Sandwich press I got a turkish bread roll and cut it in half.
You'll keep Nigella.
I sit the roll on top of the sandwich press to warm the bread up a bit while the tempeh is cooking.
Then I prepare some quick salad ingredients to go with the burger. I use baby spinach, grated carrot and tomato. You can use anything you like or have handy. I also turn the stove on low for the satay sauce, giving it a quick stir through and making sure it's warm.
Finally, my long awaited potato wedges are ready. I assemble my meal.
There it is in all it's basic but satisfying glory. Perfectly cooked potato wedges, crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. Grilled tempeh burger with some salad, smothered with freshly made satay sauce.
This meal, a frosty beer and the L-word made my Friday night pretty awesome.
Give this recipe a go, it's pretty easy to do and I promise you won't be disappointed.
Traditionally a pub meal was one of three things: Banger's n' mash (and gravy if it was a particularly good pub) Rissole'n'veg (there's something about the sound of that word... go on say it out loud, with an Aussie accent. "Rissole") or steak. Either on a plate, or in a sandwich.
Over the years pub food has gotten a bit fancier; but overall has stayed true to several very clear concepts. A pub meal is a generous portion of satisfying food that's easy to make and appealing to just about everyone's tastes, and is best washed down with a pint of your favorite beer. Usually with some form of chips on the side. I'm serious. I once had a pub meal that consisted of :sweet and sour deep fried tofu (and in a country pub too!) with rice... and a side of chips'n'salad.
I toyed with the idea of blogging something for the Masterchef seduction challenge earlier this week; but then quickly realised a couple of things. Firstly, me giving advice on seduction would be like... well like me giving you advice on how to cook the perfect steak. Clearly, a lady who lives alone (with her cats) is not the one to be suggesting the perfect seductive dessert.
Also, the ingredient combinations on offer were a struggle... Option 1, Strawberries and cream is out... I can't use the cream. Option 2, Champagne and Caviar, I can't use the caviar, and if I need to resort to copious amounts of alcohol to to seduce someone then I might just go for the time honoured technique of a long island ice tea and the light switch. (the long island ice tea is for them, the light switch is for me) Option 3, chocolate and roses. My most promising yet. Sadly, one hiccup. My blog rules require me to only use food available from a regular supermarket. Your local woolies does have flowers at the front of the shop for sale, including roses. Unfortunately the roses sold for visual gifts are not good for eating. I don't have any roses (of decent size and appearance) in my yard yet, so couldn't use roses either.
I suppose I could leave a Hansel and Gretel style trail of chocolate bits leading all the way to my bedroom, you know... just on the off chance?....
Luckily for us all, another episode of Masterchef came out before I could order the ACME "catch yourself someone beautiful and amazing" kit.
So, my vegan pub meal is going to tick all the boxes. It's easy to make, delicious, suits a wide range of tastes and goes great with a frosty cold beer. I'm going to show you how to make a tempeh burger with satay sauce, and a side of really great potato wedges. Perfect way to kick off the Queens birthday long weekend in our nation's capital.
The first thing I do is get the potato wedges going.
I pre-heat my oven to 180C then put a pot of water on the stove to boil.
 |
| Potato Wedge preparation. Frosty cold beer in the background. |
Be generous, I used about 500 grams of potatoes here. If you end up with left over potato wedges at the end they freeze and re-heat just fine.
Once you've cut your spuds, the water should be boiling by about now. Put the potato wedges in for about 10-12 minutes. This will pre-cook the potatoes before baking them, and help them have a really nice fluffy texture inside once they're finished.
While the potato wedges are boiling you can get started on the satay sauce. I used a commercial thai red curry paste to get the balance of chilli and spices just right. If you're not in the mood for cooking you could just use a commercial satay sauce if you want; but I find them a bit insipid... nowhere near enough chilli kick for my taste.
I put a pot on the stove, turn it up to high heat and add 2 dessert spoons of the Thai red curry paste. If you're cooking this for a vegan, or with the intent of making the dish completely vegan then check the labels when buying the curry paste, traditionally it will contain non vegan things like shrimp paste and fish sauce. Happily I've found a brand at the local woolies that's okay for vegans, it's in a jar in the Asian food aisle.
Follow the curry paste with 1 cup (250ml) of coconut cream. Stir until combined. Mine looked like this.
No satay sauce is complete without some peanutty goodness. I add a very generous quarter cup of peanut butter to my sauce. I want it to be really thick and rich. Stir the peanut butter through until the sauce mixture is completely homogeneous. You can then turn the stove element under the sauce off.
By now, the potatoes should be boiled. Drain the water, give the pot a shake with a forwards-backwards arm motion. This will rough up the surface of the potato wedges a bit and help them have a nice crispy outside when cooked.
Dump the spuds into an oven/roasting pan and drizzle with a generous amount of oil. They don't need to be swimming in it, but you want all of your wedges nicely coated. I sprinkled mine with a bit of salt, parsley and dry/powdered garlic, gave it another vigorous back and forth shake, then put it in the oven.
I'm sorry but here's the bad news. These spuds will take anywhere between 40 minutes and one hour to cook. They are worth the wait though.
Go away for between 20 and 30 minutes. The rest of this dish is really quick to put together. Have a beer, put your feet up, you get the drill. I used the time wisely; watching my cats stalking each other.
 |
| I probably should have gotten the shopping bags out of shot first huh.... |
Once you're back in the kitchen check on the potato wedges and give the roasting pan a bit of a shake.
Then, it's time to prepare the Tempeh. WTF is tempeh? I hear you say.
It's this:
 |
| Tempeh |
I cut the tempeh to make my ideal burger shape.
 |
| I actually take the piece in the foreground, and slice it down the middle (like the way you cut a sponge cake before you put the cream in the middle) |
While the Tempeh is in the Sandwich press I got a turkish bread roll and cut it in half.
 |
| Hey Megan: I just stopped worrying about losing my 'domestic goddess' crown to you. |
I sit the roll on top of the sandwich press to warm the bread up a bit while the tempeh is cooking.
 |
| Turkish bread... I love you so much. |
Finally, my long awaited potato wedges are ready. I assemble my meal.
 |
| Megan makes the masterchef pub food challenge vegan. |
This meal, a frosty beer and the L-word made my Friday night pretty awesome.
Give this recipe a go, it's pretty easy to do and I promise you won't be disappointed.
Wednesday 30 May 2012
Megan makes the "masterchef oz harvest challenge" vegan
I'm watching masterchef. Tonight is the team challenge where the participants take Oz Harvest refigerated vans, drive them around Sydney to various hotels and restaurants, take food that would otherwise be wasted and turn their findings into a meal that they can present to 25 very serious chefs, restaurant critics and food editors.
Oz Harvest is a charity that takes food that's still good from hotels, shops and restaurants that would otherwise be thrown out and turns it into meals for the homeless. What a wonderful charity! So, tonight they're taking premium food off the homeless and serving it to Australia's finest. Ok. Oh! a wild development appears, They are donating to the charity based on what they think of the meals. Good stuff!
Seriously though, food waste is a really major issue. Up to 60% of the food that comes to westernised nations is just wasted. It never makes it to the stomachs of people. In a world where literally billions of people are starving. You know that pizza crust you left behind? There's someone on this world who would be grateful to have that as a meal. Yes, I know you can hear me; I sound just like your mum. I'm telling you "Finish what's on your plate! there's starving kids in Africa!" Your mum is right. There are people, in many countries around the world, literally starving.
I could go on, but to do so would break one of the rules of my blog; I don't discuss the 'why's' of being vegan on here. So, if it's a topic that interests you (the connection between a carnivore diet and world hunger) feel free to email me to discuss, have a chat to your local vegan society or do your own research on the issue.
I decided tonight that in the spirit of the Masterchef challenge, I'd go through my own fridge and cupboard to use up some veggies that have been kicking around there since last weekend's shopping trip. Here's what I found.
-1 punnet of (slightly wrinkly) cherry tomatoes.
-4 mushrooms (looking good vern)
-1/2 a package mixed salad leaves.
-left-over fresh pasta (from my megan makes fresh pasta vegan challenge)
-1/4 jar of discount olives (whole with the pit in)
-2 cloves of garlic
-whole-grain mustard
In my cupboard I keep a few basics. These include:
-olive oil
-balsamic vinegar
-salt
-pepper
By the ingredient list, it all looks a bit italian... So I start by.
Putting on a pot of water to cook that pasta.
I think about a pasta salad, reject the idea because the tomatoes are a bit marginal and really need to be cooked, then realise that there is now law that says I can't do beautiful balsamic roasted tomatoes and put them in my salad. So:
I pre-heat my oven
I get a oven-tray, pour a reasonably generous amount of olive oil into it.
Then, I cut my cherry tomatoes in half, tossing the halves into the oven tray with the oil.
Sprinkle it with a little bit of salt and pepper, adjusting the amount to your personal tastes.
Finally I splash it with a bit of balsamic vinegar. (you don't need much, maybe 6-7 drops or splodges as it comes out of the bottle)
I put that in the oven with the timer set on 20 minutes.
I wash my salad leaves and dice my mushrooms.
By now my water is boiling for the pasta, I decide to turn my left over fresh pasta into "Stracchi" which is Italian for "Scraps" having stracchi pasta is a traditional peasant food, because it involves using your left over pasta to cook the final meal for the week. You can use your broken pasta bits, broken up lasagne sheets or whatever is on hand. Stracchi really captures the spirit of not wasting any food.
I cut my fresh rolled pasta into random sized bits and toss it into the water. Fresh pasta cooks really quickly, so I now have 2 minutes to do a quick salad dressing.
I get a glass jar (an old coffee jar to be exact)
I don't use exact measurements when I make salad dressing, I use ratios, then guestimate the seasonings, taste it and adjust as needed.
-3 parts olive oil
-1 part balsamic vinegar
2 cloves garlic (very very finely diced)
approx 1tsp whole-grain mustard.
Chuck all of these into the jar, put the lid on very tightly and shake the living daylights out of it.
I assemble my salad very quickly by tossing the pasta, tomatoes, mushrooms and olives through the salad leaves. I dress it with the prepared balsamic dressing.
You'll have to trust me it looked good. I took a photo but "ate" all of my internet already so it's uploading slower than a wet week.
As an added bonus, I've got a lovely tangy balsamic vinagrette to store in my fridge for later. It will keep really well for at least a couple of weeks.
Not wasting food just makes perfect sense. You save money, you reduce waste and the impacts that throwing things out to landfill has on the environment and you know that weather near or far, your mum is proud of you for being so thrifty and clever.
Also, if you are reading this blog and are a producer of food, anything from fine-dining to convenience stores and you'd like to
A)help out people who really need it
B)get that feel-good sensation that only comes with doing some good
C)save on your garbage disposal costs
D)possibly get a mad sweet tax deduction (check with your accountant/financial adviser to be totally sure on that)
Then check out Oz Harvest, or even a few other charities who do similar worthwhile work, such as One Umbrella and Food Not Bombs.
Now... getting this world from a place where we feel good by helping the homeless, to where we feel good because we've stamped out all poverty and everyone has a home, a job, and the opportunity to shine is a bit more of a journey. Starting with not wasting things is good though. Do you know someone who'd appreciate a surprise meal they didn't have to cook for themselves? Turn your thrifty-cleverness into a semi-random act of kindness. You'll literally be making this world a better place.
Oz Harvest is a charity that takes food that's still good from hotels, shops and restaurants that would otherwise be thrown out and turns it into meals for the homeless. What a wonderful charity! So, tonight they're taking premium food off the homeless and serving it to Australia's finest. Ok. Oh! a wild development appears, They are donating to the charity based on what they think of the meals. Good stuff!
Seriously though, food waste is a really major issue. Up to 60% of the food that comes to westernised nations is just wasted. It never makes it to the stomachs of people. In a world where literally billions of people are starving. You know that pizza crust you left behind? There's someone on this world who would be grateful to have that as a meal. Yes, I know you can hear me; I sound just like your mum. I'm telling you "Finish what's on your plate! there's starving kids in Africa!" Your mum is right. There are people, in many countries around the world, literally starving.
I could go on, but to do so would break one of the rules of my blog; I don't discuss the 'why's' of being vegan on here. So, if it's a topic that interests you (the connection between a carnivore diet and world hunger) feel free to email me to discuss, have a chat to your local vegan society or do your own research on the issue.
I decided tonight that in the spirit of the Masterchef challenge, I'd go through my own fridge and cupboard to use up some veggies that have been kicking around there since last weekend's shopping trip. Here's what I found.
-1 punnet of (slightly wrinkly) cherry tomatoes.
-4 mushrooms (looking good vern)
-1/2 a package mixed salad leaves.
-left-over fresh pasta (from my megan makes fresh pasta vegan challenge)
-1/4 jar of discount olives (whole with the pit in)
-2 cloves of garlic
-whole-grain mustard
In my cupboard I keep a few basics. These include:
-olive oil
-balsamic vinegar
-salt
-pepper
By the ingredient list, it all looks a bit italian... So I start by.
Putting on a pot of water to cook that pasta.
I think about a pasta salad, reject the idea because the tomatoes are a bit marginal and really need to be cooked, then realise that there is now law that says I can't do beautiful balsamic roasted tomatoes and put them in my salad. So:
I pre-heat my oven
I get a oven-tray, pour a reasonably generous amount of olive oil into it.
Then, I cut my cherry tomatoes in half, tossing the halves into the oven tray with the oil.
Sprinkle it with a little bit of salt and pepper, adjusting the amount to your personal tastes.
Finally I splash it with a bit of balsamic vinegar. (you don't need much, maybe 6-7 drops or splodges as it comes out of the bottle)
I put that in the oven with the timer set on 20 minutes.
I wash my salad leaves and dice my mushrooms.
By now my water is boiling for the pasta, I decide to turn my left over fresh pasta into "Stracchi" which is Italian for "Scraps" having stracchi pasta is a traditional peasant food, because it involves using your left over pasta to cook the final meal for the week. You can use your broken pasta bits, broken up lasagne sheets or whatever is on hand. Stracchi really captures the spirit of not wasting any food.
I cut my fresh rolled pasta into random sized bits and toss it into the water. Fresh pasta cooks really quickly, so I now have 2 minutes to do a quick salad dressing.
I get a glass jar (an old coffee jar to be exact)
I don't use exact measurements when I make salad dressing, I use ratios, then guestimate the seasonings, taste it and adjust as needed.
-3 parts olive oil
-1 part balsamic vinegar
2 cloves garlic (very very finely diced)
approx 1tsp whole-grain mustard.
Chuck all of these into the jar, put the lid on very tightly and shake the living daylights out of it.
I assemble my salad very quickly by tossing the pasta, tomatoes, mushrooms and olives through the salad leaves. I dress it with the prepared balsamic dressing.
You'll have to trust me it looked good. I took a photo but "ate" all of my internet already so it's uploading slower than a wet week.
As an added bonus, I've got a lovely tangy balsamic vinagrette to store in my fridge for later. It will keep really well for at least a couple of weeks.
Not wasting food just makes perfect sense. You save money, you reduce waste and the impacts that throwing things out to landfill has on the environment and you know that weather near or far, your mum is proud of you for being so thrifty and clever.
Also, if you are reading this blog and are a producer of food, anything from fine-dining to convenience stores and you'd like to
A)help out people who really need it
B)get that feel-good sensation that only comes with doing some good
C)save on your garbage disposal costs
D)possibly get a mad sweet tax deduction (check with your accountant/financial adviser to be totally sure on that)
Then check out Oz Harvest, or even a few other charities who do similar worthwhile work, such as One Umbrella and Food Not Bombs.
Now... getting this world from a place where we feel good by helping the homeless, to where we feel good because we've stamped out all poverty and everyone has a home, a job, and the opportunity to shine is a bit more of a journey. Starting with not wasting things is good though. Do you know someone who'd appreciate a surprise meal they didn't have to cook for themselves? Turn your thrifty-cleverness into a semi-random act of kindness. You'll literally be making this world a better place.
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Megan makes fresh pasta vegan
Masterchef is on TV! I've been so excited by season 4 so far. I'm loving that the show is getting back to basics, it's all about cooking great food. I'm hoping it stays that way and doesn't become all about he-said she-said politics and power plays. I really want the best cook to win. At this stage, my money is on Amina. I think she's a wonderful cook who truly loves food and knows how to present it.
The Masterchef pasta challenge (on TV last week) was actually a really good and fair test of skills a cook needs. The first phase of the test involved identifying different types of pasta by their traditional Italian names. Knowing your ingredients is an important skill for any chef. The next challenge involved making a minimum 250g of fresh pasta, without the benefit of scales to weigh out the flour. Another fair test of a chef. They need to work fast and need to be able to eye-ball measurements. The final challenge involved reproducing a dish without a recipe, just by seeing and tasting the dish. I feel there's a few parallels to my efforts on this blog here. Only I don't taste the meat dish before trying to make it vegan. Occasionally I bombard my work colleagues with questions like "what does salami smell like?' "who in the world actually likes scollops?" I really feel for the Masterchef contestants. They have to live in the Masterchef house, with a bunch of new people, cook on TV and do it all to some pretty serious time pressure. Meanwhile back at home....
My biggest challenge is typing a blog around an inquisitive kitten who likes to alternate between attacking the cursor and the keyboard. Shows like Masterchef make me realise that what I most like about cooking is that it's so relaxing. When I'm at home in my kitchen cooking something new, or whipping up an old favorite I'm having fun and relaxing.
Hey Nigella it's not all about you, in fact this blog entry isn't even about you at all!
Fresh pasta is incredibly simple to make. If making it according to the traditional recipe, you just need flour and eggs. 100grams of flour to one egg to be precise. Mix those two ingredients in these ratios together and you will end up with pasta dough.
You can make a vegan pasta by just using flour and water. However this will really only produce pasta that's at most one step above the dried pasta you get in the supermarket. I want to make pasta that is really special. So I do a little bit of extra work to replicate the chemical composition of an egg in my pasta.
I start by weighing out 200g of plain flour. I then add 50g of chick pea flour. You can also see Chick pea flour labelled as Besan. It's more commonly used in Indian cooking.
The Chick pea flour is high in protein, and will help replicate the protein present in egg white. I then add 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Any vegetable oil will do really. I also add a very tiny pinch of tumeric. This spice is also commonly used in Indian cooking, but in the quantity used here won't flavour the pasta at all but will add a little bit of yellow colour that would normally be obtained from the egg yolk.
I also needed 2/3 of a cup of water to get this mixture to become a firm dough. Your pasta may need a little less or a little more depending on a few factors such as how dry your pasta is, how cold the water is or how humid the air in your kitchen is.
Once I mixed my pasta dough together it looked like this.
I now need to roll this pasta out. I don't have a pasta machine, so just use my rolling pin. I roll it very thin (approx 2mm thick). It looks like this.
Okay, now I've made a lovely sheet of fresh pasta what do I do with it? I decide that since I've been receiving requests for some time from a friend to make her favorite food vegan, I figured that today was the day to make lasagne vegan.
I want to do this dish carefully, the lady I'm cooking for is a very serious lasagne connoisseur... a lasagnesseur.
I start by preparing a vegan bolognaise style sauce. I use.
2 cloves garlic
1 onion, diced
splash olive oil
1 can diced tomatoes
2tbs tomato paste
2 tsp mixed herbs
3 button mushrooms
1 cup TVP.
WTF is TVP?
You will find this bad-boy in the health food aisle. It's made from 100% soy beans. Prepare it to package directions (which involves soaking it in boiling water)
I start by heating the olive oil in a pot, then once it's fragrant adding the onions. Once the onions brown throw in the can of tomatoes, herbs mushrooms, tomato paste and prepared TVP. Taste the sauce and adjust the herbs to your personal taste. Feel free to add salt and pepper to your own preference. My bolognaise looks like this.
Turn the heat down low, and let it simmer away until it's nice and thick. To make lasagne you want to have it a bit thicker than a regular bolognaise sauce that you'd use for spaghetti.
The next component in a lasagne is a really good bechemel sauce. I decide to make a vegan bechemel sauce with a hint of garlic. Here's what I used in my vegan garlic bechemel sauce.
3tbs nuttelex,
2tbs flour
2 cups soy milk
2 cloves garlic.
Melt the nuttelex on the stove, while finely chopping 2 cloves of garlic. Once the nuttelex is melted add the garlic. Add the 2 tablespoons of flour while rapidly stirring over a medium heat. You are making a roux. The flour and butter will thicken, if it gets lumpy don't panic. You can do what the real chefs do and just pass it through a sieve at the end. :-D
Here's my Roux.
Then you need to add your 2 cups of soy milk in a slow and steady stream while stirring. Once the sauce is heated through it will be cooked. Taste it, adjust if you need to. I found mine was absolutely perfect!
Now it's time to assemble your lasagne. Start off with one ladle of the bolognaise sauce on the base of your lasagne dish. Then a layer of pasta, then a layer of bechemel, then bolognaise, then pasta.
I only have small baking dishes, so I actually made 2 lasagnes, one square, and one oval. The oval lasagne is shown above.
Traditional lasagne is finished with a layer of bechemel sauce then cheese on top. Vegans don't eat cheese so I need to improvise.
I take a tub of tofutti, some garlic dried parsley, oregano, salt and a pinch of tumeric (for colour) and beat it to a smooth paste with approximately 3tbs of vegetable oil. I topped my lasagne with this mix and baked it at 190 degrees C for half an hour.
Here's what the finished product looked like.
Here's my review: "OMG! That vegan lasagne was great."
Thanks for trying out my vegan lasagne Stacey. It was a pleasure to cook for you.
The Masterchef pasta challenge (on TV last week) was actually a really good and fair test of skills a cook needs. The first phase of the test involved identifying different types of pasta by their traditional Italian names. Knowing your ingredients is an important skill for any chef. The next challenge involved making a minimum 250g of fresh pasta, without the benefit of scales to weigh out the flour. Another fair test of a chef. They need to work fast and need to be able to eye-ball measurements. The final challenge involved reproducing a dish without a recipe, just by seeing and tasting the dish. I feel there's a few parallels to my efforts on this blog here. Only I don't taste the meat dish before trying to make it vegan. Occasionally I bombard my work colleagues with questions like "what does salami smell like?' "who in the world actually likes scollops?" I really feel for the Masterchef contestants. They have to live in the Masterchef house, with a bunch of new people, cook on TV and do it all to some pretty serious time pressure. Meanwhile back at home....
 | ||
| Meet Kavesh. An almost unlimited source of cuteness |
|
| Nigella says "Would you cut the crap and blog about food?" |
Hey Nigella it's not all about you, in fact this blog entry isn't even about you at all!
Fresh pasta is incredibly simple to make. If making it according to the traditional recipe, you just need flour and eggs. 100grams of flour to one egg to be precise. Mix those two ingredients in these ratios together and you will end up with pasta dough.
You can make a vegan pasta by just using flour and water. However this will really only produce pasta that's at most one step above the dried pasta you get in the supermarket. I want to make pasta that is really special. So I do a little bit of extra work to replicate the chemical composition of an egg in my pasta.
I start by weighing out 200g of plain flour. I then add 50g of chick pea flour. You can also see Chick pea flour labelled as Besan. It's more commonly used in Indian cooking.
 | |||
| Chick pea flour |
I also needed 2/3 of a cup of water to get this mixture to become a firm dough. Your pasta may need a little less or a little more depending on a few factors such as how dry your pasta is, how cold the water is or how humid the air in your kitchen is.
Once I mixed my pasta dough together it looked like this.
I want to do this dish carefully, the lady I'm cooking for is a very serious lasagne connoisseur... a lasagnesseur.
I start by preparing a vegan bolognaise style sauce. I use.
2 cloves garlic
1 onion, diced
splash olive oil
1 can diced tomatoes
2tbs tomato paste
2 tsp mixed herbs
3 button mushrooms
1 cup TVP.
WTF is TVP?
 | |
| TVP |
I start by heating the olive oil in a pot, then once it's fragrant adding the onions. Once the onions brown throw in the can of tomatoes, herbs mushrooms, tomato paste and prepared TVP. Taste the sauce and adjust the herbs to your personal taste. Feel free to add salt and pepper to your own preference. My bolognaise looks like this.
The next component in a lasagne is a really good bechemel sauce. I decide to make a vegan bechemel sauce with a hint of garlic. Here's what I used in my vegan garlic bechemel sauce.
3tbs nuttelex,
2tbs flour
2 cups soy milk
2 cloves garlic.
Melt the nuttelex on the stove, while finely chopping 2 cloves of garlic. Once the nuttelex is melted add the garlic. Add the 2 tablespoons of flour while rapidly stirring over a medium heat. You are making a roux. The flour and butter will thicken, if it gets lumpy don't panic. You can do what the real chefs do and just pass it through a sieve at the end. :-D
Here's my Roux.
 | ||
| Show off. |
Traditional lasagne is finished with a layer of bechemel sauce then cheese on top. Vegans don't eat cheese so I need to improvise.
I take a tub of tofutti, some garlic dried parsley, oregano, salt and a pinch of tumeric (for colour) and beat it to a smooth paste with approximately 3tbs of vegetable oil. I topped my lasagne with this mix and baked it at 190 degrees C for half an hour.
Here's what the finished product looked like.
 |
| holy crap it actually looks like lasagne. |
Thanks for trying out my vegan lasagne Stacey. It was a pleasure to cook for you.
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