Happy 2014 everyone!
I decided to do something a different for my blog this year
(yes like actually write in it for starters).
I’ve learned that I don’t do so well without a deadline or specified
project (even if it’s arbitrary and self-imposed). So this year, I’ve set myself a new vegan
cooking and blogging challenge.
To be honest, I’ve had enough of most of my favourite
celebrity chefs. I’m sick of Jamie
Oliver. Every time I see him “smash
something up” on a chopping board I want to wallop him over the side of the
head. “STOP IT JAMIE YOU’RE MAKING A
MESS!!!” I shout at the television.
I don’t know how Hugh gets time to dig in his garden and do
all that country stuff with the amount of time he spends in front of the camera
extolling the virtues of the quiet river-cottage life, while tut-tutting at
anyone who would DARE eat the odd microwave meal while watching TV in their
apartment after a long day at work.
Poor Nigella – my
favourite ever TV chef having her name dragged through the mud by that loser ex
hubby with a penchant for DV; that being said who didn’t snigger briefly every
time she was on TV this Christmas sprinkling icing sugar over something?
I can’t stand the
sound of Donna Hay’s voice, I just can’t share Maggie’s passion for figs,
verjuce and nut brown butter, Whenever I see Rick on TV all I can do is shout
“you home wrecking tramp!” then feel very sorry for that poor little
wire-haired terrier. If I see Janella stick coconut fat and nuts in a Magi-mix
one more time and call it healthy I’ll need a bex and a good lie down; and
while I still think Richo is pretty cool, the challenge of making a vegan
version of a suckling pig is probably a step too far for this humble home cook
and blogger.
Clearly I need to do something new – so I had a think about
what’s changed for me and what hasn’t.
It’s no surprise to anyone that I still love cooking, and I still love
being vegan. I also still very strongly
think that everyone should be able to have great food, and that nobody should
have to miss out on flavour. I still
also think that vegan cooking and food needs to be demystified – it’s just
regular food.
Just when I was ready to switch off the TV and do something
useful over my Christmas break, Food Safari came on.
“Hello Maeve” I say to the TV. Maeve is lovely. She’s also got a pretty awesome job, trying
cuisine from all over the world, while wearing an assortment of unique and
artistic colourful tops teamed with beautifully fitting jeans. I wonder if I can do a vegan food safari? I don’t have the camera crew or colourful
tops and I strongly doubt that people will just randomly start inviting me over
to cook vegan food for me so I can eat it while saying “mmm” “hhmmm!” while
looking coyly away from the camera.
So the format is going to have to be pretty much me cooking
stuff at my house (bonus I get to eat stuff, and stay in my pyjamas!)
I’m going to call this year “Megan makes the world
vegan”. Clearly expecting all 7 billion
or so of us to go vegan over the course of this year is probably what a
business buzz word lover would call a “stretch-target”.
So instead, I did what any sensible person would do, and
allocated a random country to each week of the year, with a planned break over
Easter and a knock off in mid December.
Partly by default as this is what I’ve been cooking; Week 1
of 2014 is going to be Italy. After this week, I'll be pulling a random country out of a hat. My list of countries is as per the international dialling code list in the front of my 2014 diary - so if it has a country code it's classed as a country for the purposes of this blog.
Italian food is awesome.
I’m yet to find a person when offered a suggestion of Italian food for
dinner says “nope… can’t think of anything Italian I’d like to eat today. The cuisine is complex, and dates back
literally to Roman times. Imagine life
without Italian food. No olives, pasta,
pesto, pizza, minestrone, risotto, arancini, gelato….. Actually stop that. Don’t imagine the world without those yummy
things. It’s just too sad.
One of the interesting recipes I found this week needed no
modification to make it Vegan – that’s the wonderfully zesty and zingy Italian
condiment, Gremolata. Traditionally
gremolata is used to season Osso Bucco (a meat stew) but you could use the
gremolata to top pasta, risotto, grilled tofu, veggie burgers or all sorts of
things. Also, it’s very quick and easy
to make.
You will need the following things:
Bunch of parsley (flat or curly leaf is fine)
1 lemon – both the rind (without any of the white pith) and
the juice.
About 4 tablespoons of sesame seeds
Salt and pepper to your taste.
If you have a blender or food processor just loosely chop
the parsley, and chuck everything in, adding salt and pepper to your taste
after wizzing it up. If you’re going by
hand, then chop the parsley and lemon rind as finely as you can, then mix it in
a bowl with the lemon juice and sesame seeds, seasoning at the end.
I made some four days ago and have stored it in a glad bag
in my fridge. It still seems fine –
though I imagine it would be okay to freeze as well if you wanted to keep it
for longer. I’ve found that it goes
great on top of a pasta dish or a risotto along with a dollop of Tofutti. It adds a lovely bright green splash of
colour to the plate along with the zesty fresh flavour.
The next dish I made this week was a pumpkin risotto. Risotto is another one of those Italian
dishes that lends itself very easy to making vegan. Here’s how I did mine.
-Half a butternut pumpkin diced into smallish cubes
-One onion, diced.
-3 bay leaves
-1 table spoon crushed garlic (from a jar is fine)
-about 1 cup of white wine
-6 cups of hot vegetable stock (I used the Massel “Chicken
Style”)
-2 cups of rice (I used 1.5 cups Arborio rice, and 0.5 cup
brown rice)
-About a table spoon of olive oil (to be honest I didn’t
measure it I just poured a little bit into the bottom of my pot).
-salt and pepper to taste
I put a big pot on to a low stove heat with the olive oil
and garlic in. I then got to work dicing
my onion and pumpkin. By the time I
finished cutting the vegetables the oil had heated up and was ready for the
garlic and bay leaves to go in for a minute or so. I then put the pumpkin and onion in and gave
it a stir to coat with the oil.
Once the onion goes a bit translucent (it loses the white
colour) put the rice in, and stir to coat the rice with olive oil.
Pour in the wine, and crank the stove heat up to about half
of maximum. (Your stove may be different; if the pot doesn’t sound like it’s
bubbling shortly after putting the wine in then you may need to crank it up
some more. If the thing sizzles and
spits at you immediately then you may need to turn it down a bit).
Once the wine has nearly evaporated then you need to add in
the first cup of stock. Traditionally a
risotto is made by slowly doling in ladles of stock from another big pot on the
stove on low heat next to the risotto pot.
I have a lazier method.
I boil the kettle and prepare hot stock one cup at a time using either
the cubes or powder. If you wanted you
could also buy the liquid stock in the carton, decant it into a suitable jug
and microwave it.
Also, rather than ladling in a spoon at a time, I add a cup
at a time, meaning that you can leave it to its own devices for a couple of
minutes at a time, as long as you stir it well after each addition, and are
careful to keep the heat fairly low so it doesn’t boil dry the moment you turn
your back.
Basically, you add the stock a cup at a time (so 6 additions
in total) stirring after each. The whole
thing should take somewhere between half an hour and forty-five minutes to be
finished cooking. The mix of brown and
Arborio rice will give you a traditional thick risotto texture, with a little
bit of chewiness and flavour from the brown rice. I topped my risotto with the gremolata and
enjoyed it with a lovely glass of pinot gris a friend gave my partner and I for
Christmas.
You could also top it with your preferred cheese substitute,
such as the commercially available parmesan sprinkly products, or some
nutritional yeast (sadly you can't get either of these in a regular supermarket - you'll need to either order online or check out a reasonably well stocked health-food shop).
You can’t finish a lovely meal without dessert, so I also
learned how to make fresh fruit sorbet.
I was amazed at how easy it is to make – and the frugal part of me wonders
if I can bear spending over 5 bucks a litre for the stuff again.
You’ll need the following.
-About a kilo of fresh fruit. You could use berries, kiwifruit, mango,
pineapple, peach, nectarine etc. You may
need to adjust the recipe a bit for things like citrus or bananas – as their
texture and sugar profile is a bit different.
Don’t let that stop you giving it a shot if you see some cheap at the
market though!
-2/3 a cup of sugar.
-2/3 a cup of water.
You’ll need to make sugar syrup out of the water and sugar,
by heating them in a pot until completely dissolved. Don’t let it boil for ages so that the syrup
cooks down to a brown toffee, but don’t panic if you turn your back for a
minute and it’s boiled a little bit. If
you’re feeling fancy here, you could have a go at flavouring your sugar syrup
with a spritz of lemon juice, or a splash of rose water or orange blossom
water.
You need to let the sugar syrup cool down, ideally to room
temperature.
Peel and roughly chop the fruit. You can use a stick blender if you’re careful
– you may wish to manufacture a shield over your bowl out of a tea-towel, or
cardboard cut so as to let the blender in, but to protect your ceiling from
luridly coloured fruit splatters.
Blend the fruit and sugar syrup until it’s completely
mashed. You do need actual sugar, and
not a sugar substitute, as the sucrose in the table sugar affects the
properties of the fruit as it freezes.
Once you’ve blended your fruit mix, transfer it to a plastic
container of some sort (a recycled sorbet container is fine, or a lunch-box
type container is fine… or several small ones if you don’t have a big one on
hand) and pop it in the freezer.
Check on it once an hour, and stir it through with a
fork. As soon as it’s a texture and
temperature you enjoy, it’s ready to eat.
If it gets a bit too hard, you can just remove it from the freezer and
leave it out for about fifteen minutes to soften up – then if you prefer the
soft-serve type texture, you can stick it in your blender or food processor and
give it a quick wiz.
Okay so that was 3 very easy Italian recipes. As a bonus, this week was not just vegan, but
gluten-free too.
As luck would have it, next week the random country
generator has indicated that I’m making Japan
Cheerio
Megan.
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