The best vegan cheesecake

I was a bit disheartened after the pasta.  Nonetheless, I watched onwards, perched cross-legged on my couch with my notebook in front of me.  Nigella introduces her recipe.  "The french have a saying... everything in moderation, including moderation"  I first heard that saying from an old boss, but anyway, he probably stole it from the French.

Nigella then goes on to announce that she is going to make a chocolate peanut-butter cheesecake.  Booyeah! I exclaim.  Chocolate and peanut butter are like the Cheech and Chong of vegan dessert.  calming myself, and taking my pen in hand to take notes I admonish my television. 

"Nigella this had better be good, I can't get in the fail-zone here"

The recipe starts off with a biscuit base for the cheesecake.  Nigella wants you to use the following.

200g biscuits.  I used "Nice" biscuits, because a packet of Arnott's Nice biscuits are vegan (seriously read the label... no milk, no butter, all vegetable shortening, flour and sugar) and well, they're... pretty good!  (sorry I did steal that joke from a friend.)

50g butter.  I replaced this with 50g of Nuttelex, and 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil.

Sorry, for those who are a bit new to cooking here's a quick spoon tutorial.

There are three spoons.

The spoon on the left is a teaspoon.  It is commonly used for stirring cups of tea, or adding sugar to your tea. (if you don't use cubes)  The standard teaspoon should hold 5ml of fluid.  In a recipe this will be abbreviated to a "tsp"

The spoon in the middle is a dessert spoon.  It's the type of spoon you see at restaurants used for eating desserts.  This isn't usually used as a measure in recipes, so if I ever use one I'll use its full name so there's no confusion.

The spoon on the right is a table-spoon.  You may also know it as a soup-spoon.  It should be the biggest spoon in the cutlery drawer.  A standard tablespoon should hold 25ml of fluid. In recipes it will be referred to as a "tbsp"

Moving on.  I have 200g biscuits, 50g Nuttelex, and a "Tbsp" of vegetable oil in a big mixing bowl.

Nigella wants me to throw in 100g of chocolate chips.

I decided to make this recipe a bit more "grown up" by using very strong dark chocolate.  My chocolate is 85% cocoa mass, here it is.

mmmmm chocolate.

I buy this one because its vegan, it's absolutely delicious and its fair trade.  Fair trade cocoa products help make sure that farmers in third world countries aren't getting ripped off by big corporations purely so we can have cheap crappy unsatisfying chocolate.  Yes, the fair trade ultra dark chocolate costs more.  I promise you that the satisfaction you get from even a small serving of this chocolate will far outweigh the enjoyment you'll get from a watered-down, over-sweetened block of cadbury's crap.  Also I'd be a pretty piss-poor vegan if I cared about the animals so much that I couldn't even take honey from a bee, but didn't give a crap about people working their backs off on a farm.

Instead of Nigella's 100g of chocolate chips I've used only 50g of this chocolate.  It's much stronger in flavour.  I use just a regular knife, and chop it into small but roughly-shaped pieces.  Leave it on the bench for now, or put it aside.

Nigella also wants me to use 50g of peanuts.  I decide to balance out the quantities here, and add in 100g of salted peanuts.  Ie Nigella's Peanuts + chocolate = 150g, and so does mine.  I've just changed the ratio around.

Nigella just throws all of these ingredients into a food processor and wizzes the living daylights out of it.  I don't own a food processor.  They're a bit expensive to buy and they use lots of electricity.  They also take up a fair bit of bench real-estate, so if you only use it occasionally or have a small kitchen, it might not be the gadget for you.

I do need to crush my biscuits down to crumbs though, so here's my solution.

Maguiver... kitchen edition.

What you see there is a heavy glass coffee jar. (a wine bottle or a heavy food tin would work just as well) wrapped in al-foil.  I'm using this, and a bit of work from me to crush the biscuits.  I get a bit of a free work-out and it's a handy way to save some electricity.  You could also use a thick big glad-bag and a rolling pin, just be gentle with the rolling pin so you don't accidentally split the bag open and end up with biscuit crumbs EVERYWHERE. (I do mean everywhere.)

Once you have your biscuits crushed down to crumbs. (took me about 5 minutes of work) then mix through your chocolate chips and peanuts.  then add the oil and the butter.  I used my fingers to work the butter through the biscuit mix, being careful to use just the tips of my fingers up to the knuckles, and squashing the butter and biscuit mix between my fingers and thumb until the contents of the bowl is completely mixed through. (homogeneous in engineering speak)

Once you've done that, you need to transfer your biscuit mix to a "spring-form tin"  this is a fancy cake tin that has a spring-loaded release so you can take the sides away from the cake at the end of the job.  It's okay if you don't have one.  You could assemble this in a shallow pie tin, or a square casserole dish, the only catch is that you will need to be careful with a spatula to get portions out at the end, and accept a bit of mess on the way out.  If you want to find yourself a spring-form tin, they are at most shops that sell kitchen-type stuff, or keep an eye out at 2nd hand sales, as I find often that the older style baking tins and kitchen gadgets feel a bit more robust than the chain-store stuff.  That being said, if you're only going to use your spring-form tin on special occasions, then don't feel like you need to spend a whole day's pay on the thing.  Just get the cheapest one you can find, or drop me an email and borrow mine.

Enough waffling.  Here's what my biscuit base looked like.

Cheesecake foundations.

It doesn't look like much on camera, but this smelled just divine.  Wonderfully sweet and nutty. 

Put this in the fridge, and when you're ready get to work on the rest of the cheesecake.  We're going to make the filling now.

Firstly, pre-heat your oven to 170C.  

Obviously... vegans don't eat cheese.  The bulk of my cheesecake filling is going to be made from a really awesome product called Tofutti.  It's a tofu-based "better than cream cheese" that really tastes excellent.  You find it in the fridge section of the supermarket, next to the regular cream cheese.  A word of caution, for some reason it's a bit hit and miss with finding this stuff at the shops... sometimes woolies will have it, sometimes they're out of stock, sometimes they just don't carry it at all locations.  Coles doesn't carry it at all.  I think that you can order it through woolies online though, and get it delivered anywhere in their delivery network. 

Here's the tofutti.

Tofutti

For some vegans, Tofutti is a bit controversial.  Tofutti may contain white or castor sugar.  In order to get the sugar white the sugar cane juice in the sugar factory is filtered through an activated carbon filter.  The activated carbon filter is commonly made from bone char, which is the burned to ash remains of animal skeletons from slaughterhouses.

  None of the carbon from the filter ends up in the final product, but it's used to make the white sugar that may go into the Tofutti.  As a vegan I'm sad that the use of animals gets into so many industries and areas of our lives, into things that we wouldn't even think of.  However, I still use Tofutti for 2 reasons.  Firstly, the main competitor to Tofutti (Kingsland) cream cheese uses commercially obtained "raw" sugar.  I'm sure you've seen the raw sugar at the supermarket, the crystals are a bit bigger, and not as white as the finer white sugar.  Raw sugar is just white sugar that's had some of the cane juice mixed back in to give it a more "natural" feel in a lot of cases.  So not only is it filtered through the same bone-char filter that the white sugar is filtered through, but it's had some of the waste product, containing traces of that bone char mixed back in with it, it doesn't taste as good and you need to go to the health-food shop to buy it... if you're lucky enough to find one who stocks it.

 In a world with less demand for animal products, the skeletons of cows, pigs and sheep wouldn't be considered a waste-product to be burned down and sold to food and chemical processing plants, we'd find another solution to filter our sugar cane.  The act of buying Tofutti doesn't provide material support to the animal exploitation industry, and by asking for it at your local supermarket you're creating a vocal demand for animal-free products.  I personally think arguing about Tofutti when there's battery hens and veal crates is kind of missing the forest for the trees. Not every vegan will agree with me on this one, that's okay this world would be a boring place if everyone saw eye to eye on everything.

Okay, moving forwards.  I'm going to use both of those containers of Tofutti in this recipe. So, into the mixing bowl they go.

Now, it gets complicated.  Nigella has very helpfully told me to use "a dollop" of sour cream, and "a splodge" of peanut butter.  She also wants 3 eggs, and 3 egg yolks.  Ha! you have to own up to exactly how many eggs you used!

I mutter at the TV "stop stuffing me around Nigella, just give me your recipe!"  I make an executive decision.
  I'm going to use some silken tofu to help bind it together, that will do the duty of the eggs, and part of the duty of the sour cream.

Silken Tofu looks like this

Fermented soy goodness.

To open the packet run a knife along the edges of the plastic then remove the lid.  Take it to the sink, and place one hand over the top.  Gently tip the tofu container upside down, letting the block of tofu sit on the palm of your hand.  Be gentle with silken tofu, it falls apart easily. 

Place the block of silken tofu on your chopping board, and take the portion you need.  This is a 300g package, and I used half of the packet, so 150g of tofu.

To keep your left over tofu fresh, keep it in a container covered in water in the fridge.  I just re-used my tofu container like this.

I translated Nigella's "splodge" of peanut butter into a very generous 150grams.

Now into that mixing bowl with the tofutti, tofu and peanut butter you need to add 200g of sugar.  Yes, I've used white castor sugar. 

As an added extra, I'm putting in 1tbs (yes you cooking champion you know that's a tablespoon) of lemon juice.  This is to replicate a little bit of the sourness of sour cream.  Again, at this point, Nigella presses a button on her food-processor and looks winsomely at the camera for a moment as the electric motor whirs into action and makes her cheesecake middle homogeneous.  I use a wooden spoon.  Free workout, saves electricity.  Take the time to mix it gently, to make sure the tofu is fully incorporated. It should look smooth and glossy.

Almost perfectly mixed.

One advantage of the vegan version is that you can safely taste this raw.  Eating raw eggs can actually make you ill.  Go on, have a taste.  This is your dish, so you can make it how you like it.  Is it peanutty enough?  sweet enough? sour enough?  use the sugar, peanut-butter and lemon juice to adjust the taste to suit your needs.  If you want to change the flavour a bit add a small amount first, mix it through fully, then taste again.  The quantities I've used will depend on my lemons and on my brand of peanut butter, yours may vary.

Once you are happy with the taste, it's time to get your biscuit base out of the fridge.  Pour the cheese-cake mix over the biscuit base, and use your wooden spoon to very gently spread the cheese-cake middle around making sure the biscuit base is fully covered.  Scrape the bowl really well, you want to get it all onto the biscuit base.

Nigella didn't give an accurate baking time in her show.... The paranoid part of me is starting to think that she just wants you to watch her cook... she doesn't want you t o cook it yourself from the DVD... maybe it's a shameless ploy by "the man" to make you rush out and buy the book.  Don't be co-opted into the TV chef mantra of "it must be perfect."... I just take a punt, and set my oven timer to 20 minutes.  You could quite safely eat everything in that spring-form tin as-is, there's nothing that needs to be cooked to prevent food poisioning.  At the same time, I want it to bake a little bit to let the Tofu help set everything together, and for those chocolate chips in my biscuit base to melt and mush around a bit.

I check on it at 10 minutes, but decide to let it go for the full 20 minutes.  Your oven may be a little bit more keen than mine, so I'd suggest a 10 minute check-up on your cheesecake is a good idea.  By the time it's done, the top will have gone a slightly darker golden brown and the biscuit base will smell just wonderful.  Warm, sweet, chocolatey and inviting.

Once it's baked set your cheesecake aside to cool.

You're going to prepare the rich chocolate ganache topping.  I've used very dark chocolate to make mine a bit grown up.  I love the bitter dark chocolate taste.  If that's not your preference, then check out the health-food aisle of the supermarket or the "allergy aisle" and get yourself some dairy free chocolate.  It's milder and a bit smoother than the rich dark chocolate.

I took 150g of my chocolate, and placed it in a double boiler.  Goodness, what's a double boiler you say.  Well, again it's something you can buy to put on the stove to help you melt chocolate, or you could just make one like I did.

Maguiver... kitchen edition.

There is a pot with water in it on the stove, with the stove up to about half-power.  Sitting over the pot is a shallow/wide mixing bowl.  I've used one made from fairly thin aluminium so that it's a good conductor.  Place the bowl on top of the pot and put your chocolate in there.  It will melt gently as you watch.  If it gets too hot, put an oven-glove on  and lift the bowl away from the pot.  If it's not heating up enough crank the stove up a bit. 

To my chocolate I added 50g of nuttelex and half a cup of icing sugar.  I mixed it over the hot water until everything was fully combined.  Your mixture should look glossy and beautiful.

Then, while the mixture is still quite warm spread it over the top of the cheesecake.  you need to be very gentle here, as the "skin" on the top of the cheesecake layer is fairly fragile, so it's easier if you pour from the bowl across the area of the cheesecake to minimise the amount of spreading you need to do.  I used the back of my dessert spoon to gently spread it around.

I then sprinkled the top of the cheesecake with a handful of peanuts. This is kind of in homage to Nigella.  She finished this episode by slinking to her fridge, a svelte sexy figure clothed in silk, sneaking through the night to steal some leftovers... she sprinkles her chocolate covered cheesecake with a hand-full of salty peanuts and devours a deliciously large mouthful. 

So, I sprinkle my whole cheesecake with salty peanuts to offset the bitter-sweet rich chocolate topping.  I live by myself (with the cats) so slinking to the fridge is a bit redundant, I'm just saving myself from an injury induced by tripping over a cat while trying to out-slink a natural hunter to the fridge in the dark.

You're almost finished! place your cheesecake in the fridge, and let it set for a few hours.  Overnight would be even better.

I took my cheesecake into my office today, to share as part of a harmony day morning tea.  I decided that since we'd all been invited to share food that was important to our personal culture or heritage, that I'd like to share my vegan food culture with my colleagues.  It takes a rather brave soul to try a new recipe with a pretty major degree of ad-libbing upon work colleagues, but that's just how I roll I guess.  I'll admit to a small amount of trepidation when I un-hinged the spring-form tin in our little office kitchen.

Here's how it went.

Yayyyyy111!!!111

 

It looks like a cake! like a cheesecake!  Everyone at work knows it's vegan, because they know I'm vegan.  Even after being told that there's tofu in it, some of my work colleagues were happy to give it a try.  Thanks colleagues!  Here's some of the reviews I got.

"I've only ever had tofu in stir-fries before I didn't know you could do this... I'm a fan"

"Lovely, really light, fluffy, sweet..."

"If you hadn't have told me that there was no dairy in this I would have thought it was made with real cream cheese"

and my review... is in the title of this blog entry. The best vegan cheesecake I have ever made.  Rich, indulgent, sweet, powerful.  This was something I was very proud to present to my colleagues, all of whom are people I like far too much to want to see them eating mediocre food.

So the verdict.
This dish is a lot of work... but a cheesecake in general is a lot of work, so I wouldn't rate it as being more work than making a cheesecake with actual cheese and eggs in there.  It's a bit of a step up if you're a novice cook, but it's do-able.  Just take it slowly, and don't do it in a rush, you'll be fine.

Cost... my version is possibly more expensive than Nigella's version.  The Tofutti isn't cheap, about four bucks a container.  The fair-trade dark chocolate is also not cheap.  You wouldn't be making this every week, as far as an indulgent dessert goes I think it really delivers great bang-for-buck.

Appearance... I liked it, and my colleagues generally enjoyed the appearance of my cheesecake.  The edges are a bit crumbly in the picture, but remember mine has taken a trip from home to the office.

Enjoyment.. I enjoyed making this, I enjoyed eating it. (I have a bit of a sugar high now actually) and I really, really enjoyed watching a bunch of non-vegans turn take the first bite with a bit of trepidation, then rapidly savour their way through the rest of the serving.

Nutrition:  My version will have less saturated fat than Nigella's, and probably less total fat, and a lower calorie count.  Nigella's will contain some vitamin B12 from the egg yolks, which my version won't have.  My version with the darker chocolate will have more polyphenols and isoflavanoids.... and nobody wants to be polyphenol or isoflavanoid deficient.  I don't think you eat this dish for nutrition, but if you have heart issues, or really need to cut out the cholesterol and saturated fat, then the vegan cheesecake is a great way to literally have your cake and eat it too.  Making it vegan makes it cholesterol free.

Yay Nigella thanks for getting me out of the fail-zone here!

If you have a quiet afternoon and want something truly indulgent to share with someone you like, then you should really make my dark chocolate and peanut butter cheesecake.

Megan makes Nigella's "Small pasta with salami" Vegan.

Okay Nigella, it's you and me.  Let's do this thing.

I've watched Nigella's episode four times, noting down the recipe very carefully.  I'm approaching this one with a bit of confidence, as essentially Nigella's pasta dish looks like a fairly traditional rustic Italian pasta dressed up with a bit of salami.  That's really the only ingredient I have to change to make vegan.  Not too hard at all!

After watching Nigella carefully I went and did a bit of research.  What is salami?  Well, it's generally a big Italian sausage, most commonly made from pork meat. (that's from pigs... like the one in Babe, or Charlotte's web.)  They kill the pig, skin it, remove the muscle and fat, (the meat) and then use the very fatty portion of the meat to make the salami.  The meat is mashed up with salt and spices, shaped into a sausage, and left to ferment.  A mould forms on the outside of the salami protecting the inside from oxygen breathing bacteria species that can be dangerous for people to consume.

Okay, so Salami is spicy-fatty-fermented-mould covered pig.  I can find something vegan that could replicate the experience surely!

To the kitchen.

Almost everything else in Nigella's recipe is vegan.  To make my version you'll need the following ingredients.

Pasta- any 100% durum wheat pasta in small shapes.  I used a 500 gram box.

Tomatoes- 1 tin, diced tomatoes.

Mixed herbs- you can use a bouquet garni, or mixed italian herbs, or any combination of things like basil, oregano, parsley and/or bay-leaves.

Paprika

salt & pepper.

Canellini beans (white beans) 1 can.

Nuttelex (optional really you could get away without it)

vegetable oil suitable for frying something.

"not bacon" or "facon" or "bacon style rashers" about 4 of them.

This looks like an impressive list, but most of it is the kind of thing you could quite feasibly have hanging around in your pantry or fridge right now.  I didn't even need to go to the supermarket for this one.

Also I did this on my lunch break while working from  home, so this is a nice and quick one, 20 minutes go to wo, and that included getting the dishes done.

Today I'm joined by my girl-cat, here she is.

Nawwwwwww

Nigella's recipe suggests you get some slices of salami, cut them up higgeldy-piggeldy and fry them without any oil.  As salami is very high in saturated fat. (you can see the fat globules right in the slices of it) you don't need any oil.  I'm going to use my not-bacon (or whatever brand you get it doesn't matter) to form the basis of my salami.  You'll find this stuff in the fridge section of your supermarket in the same place the tofu and stuff like that is.  This area is usually directly opposite the juice, or next to the cheese area.

The very first thing you'll do though, is pretty boring.  Put the water on to cook your pasta.  Use a big pot with a generous amount of water.  In order to save a bit of electricity and get it heating more quickly use a pot with a well-fitting lid. Crank the stove up to high to get it going.

While the water is heating, roughly chop your rashers of not-bacon into bite-size and interesting shapes.  I then put a large wok on (lacking a suitably sized big fry-pan)  if you have a big and deep-ish frying pan that would work great as well. 

I used (very roughly) two tablespoons of vegetable oil in the pan, this is to stop the not-bacon sticking to the pan, and to replace some of the fat in the dish that would be imparted from having high fat meat there.  There is a health benefit here, as the fat is being replaced with more heart-friendly unsaturated fats.

While the oil is heating (on a medium heat)  generously rub the not-bacon all over with some paprika.  This will give it a good measure of spicy-ness.  By the time you've gotten this done, the oil should be heated enough.  You can test this by gently tipping the pan a little side-to-side, once it's heated the oil will be less viscous and will slide around the pan much more easily than when its cool.  If you want to, take the time to experiment this, observe the oil cool, then heat it and observe its behaviour once warmer.  Congratulations, if you completed this experiment you did a small study in Rheology, an exciting and interesting field of science/engineering.

Once I got my not-bacon and paprika in the pan it looked like this.

Looks Kinda.... meaty.

Also, my water had just started boiling, probably because I was busy tooling around with my camera and my cat rather than working on my cooking.

Check the packet directions for your pasta.  Mine only wanted 7 minutes to cook.  Smaller shapes will cook faster because there is a greater surface area to volume ratio than in bigger pasta.

Here's an action shot of my pasta.

Also an exciting way of disproving the "watched pot" theorem

 

 

 

 

Okay, I've now got 7 minutes to finish cooking this meal, I'd better not stuff around.  Nigella wants me to open the can of tomatoes and tip them into the pan with the "not-bacon masquerading as salami".  I comply with her instructions.  She then wants me to half-fill the tomato can with water, and give it a swish, tipping the rinsate into the pan with the tomatoes, etc.  Too easy.  Keep the heat on medium, or if you're in a hurry to get the sauce to catch up with the pasta you can bump the heat up to about 2/3rd's.  I'm using an electric stove, if you have gas, your heat settings may be different.  You want the sauce to be bubbling with small bubbles, but not a rolling spitting boiling inferno that gets tomato juice all over you and your kitchen.

Once the tomatoes are in, Nigella then asks me to put some herbs in.  I used 1 teaspoon each of dried basil, dried parsley and dried oregano.  If you use a bouquet garni or bay-leaves remember to fish them out once you've finished cooking.  Otherwise, put herbs in to your taste.  You can start with the herbs I used, taste test as you are cooking, and adjust to your personal taste preference.  You can at this stage add a little salt and pepper if that's what you like.

Mine looked like this.

Another Action shot! Look at me pour water like a boss.

Give this a good stir, and let it simmer for a moment.   Nigella also says you should put in a "nob of butter" to avoid the tomatoes coming on a bit too strong with their ascorbic acid.  I've not done this before, but since Nigella says so, we'll add in some nuttelex here (found at the supermarket in the margarine section).  "A nob" isn't really a great unit of measurement, so from what I could see on TV it looked a bit like this.  For reference, it's roughly the same amount you'd use to fairly generously spread on one slice of bread.

Roughly 1 nob?

 You've now got a can of canellini beans to tackle.

The Canellini bean is a medium sized white bean, commonly used in rustic Italian cooking.  Particularly in dishes from the Tuscany region.  It's a lovely bean, mild in flavour, smooth in texture, and fairly soft out of the can.  The canellini beans won't need much cooking at all.

You need to open the can of beans, and empty them into a colander that's placed in your sink.  (I really hope you read the whole sentence before doing that... and are not now standing in your kitchen with bean-juice on your feet and a colander in your hand)

You need to give the beans a good rinse, but treat them gently as they can break up quite easily.  Use the cold water tap, and a fairly gentle stream to rinse them off.  Use your fingers to encourage the water all through the beans and rinse until the water runs completely clear.

Give the colander a quick shake to get rid of the excess water, then tip the canellini beans into your pasta sauce.

At this stage my pasta was cooked.  I test it by fishing a piece of the pasta out with a spoon and tasting it.  If it tastes and feels good to your teeth (not too soft, not too chewy and certainly not crunchy), then it's done.  I find this is a bit tidier than flinging strands of spaghetti at my splash-back and waiting for them to stick, or fall to my bench and make even more mess.

Now you need to add the pasta to the big pot with the sauce and give it all a final stir around.  Here's now mine looked.

Hmmmmm

I'm reasonably confident that you are thinking the same thing I am.  That sauce looks a bit light on.  I agree.  If this were my recipe I'd have a bit more tomato stuff happening.  Okay, well Nigella is the curvaceous queen of cooking so I'll trust her.  I resist the urge to add anything to this dish and portion out a serving.  Here it is!

Let's be honest, this looks pretty boring.

Phew, now that my food is off camera I can zing it up with a splodge of sweet chilli sauce before I eat it.

The verdict.  My version was probably similar in cost to Nigella's.  Overall this dish was very cheap per serving.  I've got containers and containers of this pasta in my fridge and freezer now.  Taste... well I'll be honest, I wasn't excited by it, frankly this pasta was fairly boring.  I don't think that my vegan modification made it dull, I think that the pasta-sauce ratio was a bit keen, and that a more gutsy tomato base to the sauce and maybe some more vegetables would have made this much better.
Nutrition... my vegan version is probably slightly healthier, because I've replaced saturated fats in the meat and butter with mono and poly unsaturated vegetable fats.

The recommendation: If you're going to make a vegan pasta, don't make this one.  I wouldn't serve this at a dinner party.  If you're looking for a quick cheap feed, and are not too jazzed about how exciting the meal is, then this recipe is a go-er.  Makes great student food, quick, cheap, nourishing. 

Here's a link to a vegan pasta that I've made before and really love... if you want a vegan pasta to really savour, then I personally think you're better off with this recipe.

http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/Classic-Napoletana-Pasta-Sauce-L3081.html

The only substitution needed to make it vegan (the recipe is vegetarian but not vegan as-is) is to swap the butter in the recipe for some nuttelex.  It's a delicious rich, fresh lovely pasta sauce.  If you happen to have a veggie garden with fresh home-grown tomatoes, even better.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this blog entry.  Next entry I will be taking on a rich and indulgent dessert.  I hope your sweet-tooth is ready for some action.

cooking 101

Hi everyone, and thanks for tuning in!

This blog post is a quick cooking tutorial to help any novice/newbie cooks out there before I get into the swing of it with Nigella.  I've been watching through her DVD series, and some of the techniques I anticipate using may be at a more intermediate cooking level, rather than beginner basic.  I'd like to set every single person who reads this blog for cooking success.  As a heads up, this is a very basic recipe, and does involve use of a package curry paste to get the spices just right.  If you're a bit more advanced, feel free to wait for my next installment where I'll be getting stuck right into it, or keep scrolling through for your enjoyment.

Now lets get into it.  Monday evening I cooked up an absolutely huge curry.  Mainly because I had a bunch of veggies in my fridge that were getting a bit past fresh, and making a curry is a great way to use up a variety of different veggies.  I ended up with a massive curry that made about 12 portions, which are currently languishing in my freezer in just about every tupperware box I own.  Here's what I found in my fridge that needed to be used up.

-2 zucchini
-1 sweet potato
-2 regular potatoes (red skinned ones)
-1 red capsicum.

If you have some veggies lying around, and a bag of lentils you have the backbone of your curry.  You don't have to use the same veggies that I did, just have a look around your fridge and see what's there.  If there are none, or they are all mouldy then chuck them out, head down to the fruit and veggie shop or the supermarket, and grab whatever is on special or that looks good to you.  You can't go wrong, you can use whatever vegetables you like.

I also used green lentils to make my curry.  You can use any lentils you want.  As a bit of a guide, the smaller the lentil the quicker it will cook.  In order to prepare my lentils I took 2 cups of dried green lentils, placed them in a big bowl, boiled the kettle then poured enough water over to make sure all of the lentils were covered.  I left them to soak for four hours. (No I didn't eat tea really late, I started soaking the lentils around lunch time)  You can use tap water instead of boiling water and leave them overnight, or you can buy canned lentils.  Someone has already soaked and cooked them for you.  If you're using canned lentils, they'll need much less cooking than the soaked dry ones, so I'll give you instructions for canned lentils as well.

Here's what my lentils looked like after 4 hours of soaking.  You can see that they have absorbed most of the water, and pretty much doubled in size.

A lot of traditional Indian curries are made with lentils, partly due to the cultural and religious background of many Indians. (India is home to the world's largest population of vegetarians).  Also lentils are way cheaper.

My bag of lentils cost about $3.00 from my local supermarket.  I used half of that bag to make this curry.  Traditionally a meat version of this curry would most commonly contain lamb.  That leg of a lamb will cost you anywhere from $20-$50 dollars, with the upper end of that price range being at your local supermarket, and that lower end of the bracket being for a discount or local butcher.  On top of that, it will take much more work to prepare a curry this way (you would have to chop all of that meat into bite-size pieces and cook it for longer).  So in this case, making the curry vegan is a real win-win.  You win time as it's less work to prepare, and you save a bunch of money.  Great, now there's more money for a frosty cold beer to have with the curry, and the time to savour it.  Priorities.


So, you have vegetables, you have lentils, you're excited like big kev.  This curry is going to use a curry paste kindly made for me from the good people at Pataks.  Yep.  I'm not going to make you go to the supermarket today and buy the five or six different spices you need to make a curry from scratch.  Yes, it's using packet food.  No, I don't think all packet food is evil.  Yes it's still vegan, I checked the label very carefully. In this case, it will save you time and effort and if you only plan on cooking very occasionally it's less wasteful than throwing out your spices every time they get stale.

The picture below shows you the other ingredients I'm going to use in this curry.  You can see
-Rice
-Can of tomatoes
-Curry paste.

No magic, nothing fancy, just this stuff right here.

You will also need some utensils (kitchen version of tools) to do this recipe.  You will need the following.
-Chopping board
-Knife
-2 big pots
-wooden spoon
-plastic mircrowave safe container. A tupperware container will do
-Can opener
-basic cutlery and crockery

Okay, enough waffling.  Let's get cooking.  You will need to do a little bit of multi-tasking to get the rice and the curry finished at the same time, however if it doesn't quite go to plan don't panic.  I'll give you a plan B wherever needed to manage any of the common boo-boo's.

The first thing you need to do is start boiling water to make the rice.  To cook the rice, check the back of the packet the rice came in and follow the instructions.  If it tells you how much water to use, measure that out and put the heat on high to get the water going.  To save electricity use a big pot with a well-fitting lid.  If you don't have a lid, then a large dinner plate covered in al-foil will do the job, just make sure you use a glove to lift the lid so you don't burn your hands.  If the rice packet doesn't tell you how much water to use, be generous.  Fill the big pot about half way up with water.  You can always tip out extra water at the end.  If the rice gets too dry it can burn and stick to the pot, setting off your smoke alarm and ruining your nice pot.

Once you've got the water going, it's time to chop your vegetables.  I peeled my sweet potato, but left my regular potato unpeeled.  You'll need to peel pumpkin (if using), top and tail zucchini or carrots, remove the green top bit and white middle bits from capsicum.  Cut the vegetables into roughly bite-sized pieces.  Separate the vegetables according to how quickly they will cook, things like onions capsicums, mushrooms and snow-peas will cook quicker than starchy vegetables like potatoes and pumpkin.  If you're in a hurry and want to cook it quicker, cut the vegetables smaller, the surface area to volume ratio will effect the cooking time.  I like to be able to see and recognise all the vegetables in my curry so I've gone for a bigger dice.  Having the vegetables chopped, separated into your categories of "cooks quicker" and "starchy stuff that cooks slower" will help make the rest of the cooking job easier.

Put your second big pot on the stove then open the jar of curry paste and scoop it in, use any spoon, fork etc that will fit in the jar.  Keep the jar for now.  Once it starts to make a bit of a sizzly noise pop in any veggies you have that are similar to onion or capsicum.

Now this party-bus is going to turn into a three-ring circus!  In just a moment you'll be doing 3 things at once.

Take your potato, pumpkin, or any starchy veggies and place them in the plastic microwave safe container.  Pour in enough water to cover the vegetables.

Now is a good time to look back at the pot of boiling water, and the pot of vegetables.  Stir the veggies around a bit, to make sure nothing is sticking to the base of the pan.  If the water is boiling, then put the rice in.  I used 2 cups of rice to get enough side serves for my 12 serves of curry.  You can use as much or as little as you want.  Depending on what type of stove you have (gas or electric), how big your pot is, and the temperature your water started at the pot of water for the rice will take a varying amount of time to boil.  It will make a noise when it boils, so that will be a clue if you're not looking over it.

If at any point you feel rushed or stressed, then just slow things down.  Turn the heat down on the veggies, cook the rice more slowly at a low simmer than a boil.  You're supposed to be having fun.  Slowing stuff down if you need it won't make the food taste any different, and will let you take your time to get things right.  If you find that keeping half an eye on the rice while microwaving the veggies and keeping an eye on the curry is too much to do at once, that's okay too.

  If you find yourself needing more time to keep up with everything that's going on then dial down the intensity by turning the heating element under the rice off for now.  The rice won't get damaged by sitting in the water for a bit, and it's easy to keep the cooked curry at a good temperature while you cook the rice last if you need to.  If you're really into labour saving devices you can buy pre-cooked rice and microwave it once the curry is just about done. 

Now it's time to put the potatoes pumpkins / starchy vegetables into the microwave.  I put mine in for two lots of four minutes, but my microwave is pretty piss-weak.  What you're doing here is "par-boiling" the vegetables.  This will help to pre-cook the starchy vegetables to make this dish a bit quicker.

Once you've got the starchy stuff into the microwave, it's time to put the lentils into the curry.  Tip them in.  If you're using canned lentils you'll need to open the can, and drain the contents into a colander or sieve.  Then rinse them under the tap until the water runs clear, and doesn't smell like lentils (nowhere near as yuck as that sounds)  use your fingers to comb through them and make sure the water gets everywhere.  For completeness, here's an example of my lentils getting a bit of an extra rinse.

At this stage I turned my rice off, to finish cooking by absorption.  My lentils are tipped into the pot.  I'm going to add some liquids to this now.  Take the jar of curry paste, fill it with water, put the lid back on and give it a shake.  Tip that in.  Now open the can of tomatoes, and tip them in.  Fill the tomato can with water, give it a bit of a swish and tip that in.  Stir the pot of curry and once it bubbles put the heat down to medium, or lower to let the lentils cook.  If you're using canned lentils this won't take long at all.

This is another good time to say Hi to your rice, and make sure it's going okay.  Give it a good stir to make sure that it's not sticking to the bottom of the pot, or hasn't gone dry.   If you've switched your rice off to give yourself more time to focus on the curry, now might be a good time to get it heating again if you feel ready.

Once the starchy vegetables are parboiled, which is just a fancy way of saying "partially cooked by boiling them for a bit" they will look like this:

as you can see I'm testing them with a fork.  You should get a fork in there without much effort, but they won't be quite as soft as when they're fully cooked.

Drain the potatoes (you can re-use your lentil colander to save on dishes) then tip them into the curry.

At this stage, my rice was cooked, so I just gave it a good stir, then left it on the stove with the lid on to keep warm.  My cooked rice looked like this in the pot.

All over it like white on rice

My curry now looks like this.

I turned the heat down, and put the lid on to let it bubble way for about another 10-15 minutes to get the lentils thoroughly cooked, and the potatoes nicely done.

This is what my stove looked like.

I came and checked on it at five minute intervals, in between watching some TV.  You could read a book, or feed your cat.

This is what my cat, and his food bowl looked like.

It's a travesty.

 Good thing I took a break while making this curry.  The 15 minute cat biscuit famine was very hard on the local feline residents, but I believe we all pulled through okay.

Once you're finished, you can serve your curry.  I live by myself. (with the cats.)  and my serving looked like this.

Ta Daaaaa!

I've added in a store bought roti bread to help collect all the sauce, you can use any sides you like, pappadoms, relish, salad, anything you would like is fine.

If you're dishing up for lots of people, you could put the rice and curry in big bowls (or keep them in their pots on place-mats) at your table to let people help themselves.  There's plenty to go around.  If you don't have a big table, you can do it uni-student style and give everyone a plate/bowl and let them serve themselves from over the stove.  Saves on dishes.

I hope you enjoyed this little vegan cooking 101 tutorial!

Starting a new blog is always exciting.  I'm excited, I hope you are too.  Scrolling down from my cute faded green background, looking at that rather nice baked beetroot salad in the heading, nestled in cheerful contrast against that lurid blue tupperware, you know that this is going to be a world of good.

This is a blog by a vegan about food, but it's not a "vegan blog" or a "vegan food blog"  I'm hoping you'll join me for a mix of fun recipe sharing, kitchen experimentation, and to share an enjoyment of classic food jazzed up by some of my favourite TV chefs.

I love cooking shows.  Clarissa (rest her soul) of the two fat ladies made me smile every time she poured more cream, or dabbed more butter onto a dish.  Huey's cheerful mo' and penchant for sprinkling gargantuan quantities of grated cheese into every meal makes me happy.  The Iron Chef opening cry of  "Who's cuisine will reign supreme" still makes me want to pump my fist and cheer. 


Jamie Oliver's earnest love of cooking and his drawn-out war against packaged foods fills me with hope for humanity.

My blog will start though, with a celebrity chef who has a special place in my heart.  Nigella Lawson.  We all know Nigella, the English rose of the kitchen.  Her cheerful love of food, and of sharing food is just delightful.  Her flexible approach to cooking, her anti post-feminist backlash love of eating leftovers from the fridge in front of a TV audience warms my soul.

Of course, this is the moment where the record scratches, and we're left with that awkward silence after we all thought the violins were really going to get into full swing here.  I'm a vegan.  I don't eat meat, fish, oysters, shellfish, milk, cream (sorry Clarissa), butter, yogurt, ghee, duck fat, pate, bacon, eggs or honey.  I also don't wear wool or leather, and all of my household cleaning products and cosmetics have a little label on them that says "cruelty free".

I'm vegan for lots of reasons that are very important to me.  I've been vegan for a long time, and am certainly not in any danger of fading away.  It isn't the goal of this blog to discuss my opinions about animal rights, food politics, environment or social justice.  There are lots of people out there who will tell you why you shouldn't eat meat, or dairy, or eggs or honey. 

What I'd like to do, is show you that vegan food isn't "weird" or "bland" I'm certainly not missing out on anything delicious... As a vegan I'm against all suffering, especially my own.

I'm a scientist by background, and so decided to take a scientific approach to this blog.  My aim, is to as faithfully as possible follow Nigella's latest dvd series (Nigella Kitchen) and translate her wonderful meals into voluptous vegan delights.  Challenge accepted.  Here's the rules.

1)Recreate as a vegan dish each recipe presented in the TV chef's show.

2)Replicate as closely as possible the taste, appearance and overall enjoyment factor of the dish.

3)Use only ingredients available from an average suburban supermarket.  No strange staples from health-food shops that 2 out of three people would upon initially hearing the word mistake it for a communicable disease of some sort.

4)Road test my dish on a team of non-vegan volunteers (thanks workmates!)

5)Ask my team of eager volunteers to provide comment and feedback on my dish, reporting the results as fully and faithfully as possible, weather the reviews are good or bad.

6)Document my process with clear instructions and pictures so that my flock (okay wishful thinking) of faithful blog followers can reproduce my efforts in their own kitchens at home.  To also provide honest advice as to weather it's actually worth trying at home yourself.

7)Provide means for my blog readers to communicate and provide comment.


Phew I have my work cut out for me.  Let's get to the kitchen!