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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| 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"
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| 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?
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