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 forgot to rotate the image again, sorry.

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.

Banana ready to be prepared.

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.

Starting to cook chutney

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:

Yours may be less sideways.

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. 

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.

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

Take 1cm of ginger, cut the skin off and grate it
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.

Done! you now have the knowledge needed to produce a healthy meal in 5 minutes or less.  Just think about the amount of time it takes to get "fast food".... You have to drive to the shop, order... collect food, pay, drive home. Even if you lived next door to a fast food shop you'd be hard pressed to get door-to-door with a meal in under 5 minutes.  I actually had this one done in 4 minutes 10 sec; as I saved time by using the left-over salad dressing from yesterday's Japanese salad.  The last 50 sec in minute 5, I used to put the extra noodle salad into plastic containers to take into work for lunch during the week. 

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?

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.

Potato Wedge preparation.  Frosty cold beer in the background.

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

Hey Megan: I just stopped worrying about losing my 'domestic goddess' crown to you.

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.

Turkish bread... I love you so much.

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.

Megan makes the masterchef pub food challenge vegan.

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.

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.

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....

Meet Kavesh.  An almost unlimited source of cuteness

 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.

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

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?

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!

Show off.

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.

holy crap it actually looks like lasagne.

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.

Megan makes Nigella's "left-over chicken thai soup" vegan.

Howdy,

Well winter seems to be making an early arrival here in Australia's national capital.  Minimum temperatures are getting below freezing, mornings have that beautiful winter-wonderland frosty look.  It's getting cold.  Also I'm back in the office beavering away at my day-job.  Saying it's a bit busy would be an understatement!  That's how I like to work though, I tend to do better with a bit of deadline-pressure.

I got home from work the other night wanting a dinner that was quick, easy, tasty and warming.  I thought it would be time to make Nigella's left-over chicken thai soup vegan. 

Thai cooking lends itself really well to vegan and vegetarian cooking.  Most Thai restaurants list their curries on their menu with options to have the dish either with tofu, vegetables, meat or fish.  I say hi to the feline residents, but they politely decline to join me in the kitchen today.  They're camped out on my bed having a snooze and do not wish to be disturbed.  So I get out of my suit ASAP, slip into something a little more snuggly and start cooking.

I am warm and comfortable, your argument is invalid.

Nigella wants me to start off by heating up one liter of chicken stock in a pot. 

I don't quite start off the same way Nigella does.  I can't use some of the Asian seasoning Nigella uses such as fish sauce; so I want to give the spices I can use the best chance to make this dish as flavoursome as possible. 

I start off by heating 2tsp of crushed chilli, 1tsp crushed ginger, 1tsp of crushed garlic and 2tbs of lime juice in a pot.  I'm not adding any oil to this as later on I'll be putting some coconut cream in the soup, which will add plenty of texture, and allow any fat-soluble flavours to be well and truly dissolved into the mix.

Yet another occasion I wish you could smell this blog.

While that's heating, I take about half a packet of mung-bean vermicelli noodles and place them in a large bowl.  Turn on the kettle to boil some water.  These noodles will cook just by soaking in the hot water.  They're great to take camping, or for any time you want to have something cooked with minimum time, effort or equipment.

Once the spices smell really good, I add 2 cups (500ml) of vegetable stock and 2tsp of tamarind paste.  This is less stock than Nigella used, but I'm cooking a smaller quantity of soup than she did.  My plan is to make 2 servings, one for me and one for my freezer.  I haven't scaled down the tamarind paste, as I want the dish to taste very tangy which is what the tamarind will do.  The tamarind paste you can buy in the jar is easier to use than the hard preserved tamarind you buy in plastic bags at a deli or other food store.

By this time the kettle has boiled, so I pour enough water over the mung bean noodles to cover them and leave them to soak for a few minutes.  I then get to work chopping some green vegetables to add to my soup.  I use a bunch of spinach (leaves and stalk) and a baby bok-choy.  Just about any leafy green will do.

Foreground: Chopped spinach.  Background: mung bean vermicelli noodles soaking away

At this point Nigella fetches her left-over roast chicken from the fridge and pops it into the soup.  This is all going to cook very quickly, in a matter of minutes.  I decide I want this dish to be fairly light, so don't go for any of the commercially available meat substitutes.  I'm keeping this one very simple, and substituting some sliced button mushrooms in place of the chicken. 

After the mushrooms go in (I used three, but that's mainly because that's how many were in my fridge) I then pop open a can of coconut milk and pour it in.  My can was 270g size.

While I'm waiting for the mushrooms to cook a little, I drain the mung-bean noodles and pour them into the soup pot.  I place the spinach stalks in first, stirring the soup to get them right through the mix.  I float the spinach leaves on top of the soup, to let them steam and wilt a bit before stirring through.

I then chop about 1/3 of a bunch of coriander and 2 red chillies (I love chilli and hot flavors if your palate is more sensitive than mine you can reduce the amount of chilli to suit your personal preference) while waiting for the spinach to wilt a bit.  I then turn off the heat, stir the spinach leaves through the soup.I then quickly stir through the coriander and chilli, then ladle out my serving.

Making this soup vegan wasn't a huge challenge at all and I feel I kept with the spirit of the recipe by using 'left over' vegetables in my fridge rather than going to the shop to buy something specially to cook.

The whole dinner from walking into the kitchen to walking out of the kitchen took me a grand total of fifteen minutes, so it's an absolute win for a week-night meal.


I'm happy with how this one turned out, I'd be comfortable to make it for visiting friends.  Give it a go and let me know how it worked out for you.

Megan makes Nigella's french toast with stewed fruit vegan

I'm on holidays from work.  I'm taking my sabbatical at home to get enough time to build my veggie garden.  By gardening I mean....

Yep that's a B-double backing up my driveway with my gardening supplies.

and...

No they are not matchsticks, each one of those logs weighs about 70kg.

On the first morning of my holidays I made myself Nigella's french toast vegan.  I felt like a truly indulgent breakfast to kick-start my relaxation time, and I'm pleased to say it really hit the spot.  I'll apologise in advance for the pictures in the blog, for some reason it looks like a drunken lemur is operating my camera instead of me.  I never profess to be a skilled photographer, but these photos are pretty terrible.  You'll see in a moment.

Nigella wants you to make a french toast mix using eggs, milk, vanilla essence and a little sugar.  I did a little bit of research into getting the optimum vegan french toast recipe.  In actual fact, there's a very easy way to replicate the exact taste and texture of a french toast mix, but you need to buy a product from an online store, or a very well stocked health-food shop.  However, as the rules of my blog limit me to an average supermarket, I'll be making it from what's available.  Here's the recipe for the stuff to dip your bread into.

1 cup soy milk. (full fat, don't use the low-fat one)
100 grams sugar.
1 tsp vanilla essence, or extract.
1 heaped tbsp corn-flour.

Put all of these ingredients into a bowl, and either whisk, or use a stick-blender to make sure they're really well mixed.

I used a hand-cranked beater.  I found it at a second hand shop for a dollar in a small country town.  I like the hand-operated one it's less noisy which is a bit easier to tolerate first thing in the morning before getting to your first coffee.  However, the stick blender would do it quicker.  My french-toast mix looked like this.

Frothy!

Put that aside, and get the fruit started.  Stewed fruit does not need to take ages, and isn't difficult.  Nigella's stewed fruit is actually completely vegan. (thanks Nigella!)  I adjusted the recipe slightly, to use up a marginal apple.  You can stick to Nigella's recipe or throw in some other fruit if you wish.  Here's the stewed fruit recipe.

-1 plum, cut into half and stone removed. (quarters if it's a big plum)
-1 apple cut into chunks and core removed.
-1 cup cranberry juice
-1 cinnamon quill

Nigella added sugar to her stewed fruit recipe, as I'm not a huge sweet tooth, and the french toast is pretty sweet, I left the sugar out and let the natural fruit sugars in the plum and apple do the job for me.  Feel free to add sugar if you really like sweet things, it might be a good idea to start with about 1 tbsp, then increase bit by bit until you get it to your personal taste.

Place the Cranberry juice on a high heat on a shallow fry-pan on the stove.  Once the juice starts bubbling add the cinnamon quill, the plum (cut side down) and the apples.  Let them bubble away while you get started on the french toast.

Then all you need is some bread, preferably slightly stale.  I used some  fairly crusty italian-type bread that I'd left out the night before specifically.  Really any bread would be fine, you could even take the sweetness up a notch and use slightly older raisin bread.  The only bread that would be a bit difficult would be a really dark rye bread, as it might be harder to see when it's cooked, or some gluten-free breads may not hold up so well when soaked with the mixture.

Place a slice of bread (or two if you have a big shallow bowl) in the soy-milk mixture.  Then, put (another) fry pan on the stove, add a nob (approximately 1dessert spoon) of nuttelex (my preferred butter substitute).  Once the nuttelex is melted, and the bread fully soaked with the soy milk mixture gently lift the bread out of the bowl and place it in the pan.

Yours may look less blurry than this.

Mine took about 2-3 minutes per side to achieve golden brown perfection.  This works out very well, as the soy-milk mixture makes enough for about 4-6 slices of bread, and your stewed fruit will take about 10 minutes to be done. 

Keep a bit of an eye on the fruit as you're cooking the french toast, turn the heat down to medium or low if it looks like it's getting too bubbly.

The sugar in the soy-milk mixture helps impart a lovely sweet-vanilla flavour to the french toast, and also helps it caramelise and brown nicely, mine looked like this.

mmmmmm french toast goodness.

As a final touch of fancy-ness once the french toast was done, I tossed a few pecan nuts in the left over nuttelex, which had soaked up a little bit of the sugar from the french toast.  Then I had a go at making my food look pretty.  While doing this I turned the fruit down to very low, just so that it was kept nice and warm.

It looked good trust me.

So what you see there, is 2 slices of the french toast, some of the stewed fruit on top, and the toasted pecans beside.

What happened when I ate this was an immediate sensation of pure oral bliss.  The sweet vanilla bread, crispy on the outside, soft and warm in the middle.  The slightly sharp tang of the cranberry tempered by the sweetness of the plums and apples, along with the pecans made this my favourite cooked breakfast ever.  Should I be lucky enough to have a guest for a weekend breakfast whom I really really like very much, I'd love to cook this for them.

Hey Megan, sure there's plenty of fish in the sea... but you're a vegan, in the desert, forever alone.  Buhahahahaha!

  I might have the last laugh on this one Nigella.  My french toast with stewed fruit and toasted pecans is completely awesome.  Also... my veggie garden is going to totally kick arse.