It's that time of year again – yep, MoFo is back. Let the blogging frenzy commence. For my theme this year, I'll be cooking...
Cashew nuts are like a vegan's Swiss army knife: like a
Swiss army knife, cashew nuts are useful in all situations, and you're always
grateful you if find one unexpectedly in your pocket. Or they come in a bright
red plastic casing and are handy for opening tins. One of those, anyway.
For some reason, cashews are stupidly
cheap at my supermarket at the moment. I decided to buy a metric truckload safe
in the knowledge I would either turn them into new and interesting dishes, or
just eat the lot in front of the TV with a daft smile on my face. Either way, we're good.
I decided to opt for the former, after reminding myself I'd
done not enough cooking from Artisan Vegan Cheese, after some early experiments.
I duly set about making rejuvelac, that weird fermented jazz that turns the cashews into cheese. In the hot weather that
London's been having of late, it didn't take long to do its stuff.
This is only the second time I've managed to make something that
looked like rejuvelac: I find it really hard to judge when to stop the liquid
fermenting and keep it the right side of the line between sharp and tangy, or weird
and a bit too funky.
I'm not sure how well I judged it this time: the cheeses I
made with the new batch of rejuvelac were a bit, well, cheesy.
The first one I made was chiefly because I remember a photo
on Cadry's Kitchen of Artisan Vegan Cheese open on the Sun Dried Tomato and
Basil Cheese annotated 'Holy crap! So good!' I got some basil and sun-dried
tomatoes, did the needful, and lo, a mound of creamy cheese was born.
There was just one thing that I couldn't get away from: the
cheesiness of it. Maybe it was rejuvelac that was left too long, maybe I was
heavy handed on the nooch, or maybe I've just gone off cheesy tastes, but
either way, a little less cheesy would have been good – allowing the tomatoes
and basil to show off a bit more.
The second cheese I made from the bounteous bag of cashew
was the 'piquant brown cheese'. As names go, that one doesn't sing, right? Still,
Artisan Vegan Cheese had me at "goes well with beer".
But oh, the sacrifices I had to make to get there. In two
words: fermented tofu.
I love the 'fu. Of course I do. And fermentation? I eat
sauerkraut with the best of them. But put them
together and it's on a hiding to
nothing. Seriously, this is not the 'fu you need to convince your omni-friends
vegan food really is gooooood.
Fermented tofu is punchy in the same manner a heavyweight boxer
with lead weights in his gloves going ten rounds with your head is punchy. Not
in a good way, my friends, not in a good way.
What does it taste like? Evil. Just salty, squidgy, stinky evil. It's the worst thing I can think of putting in my mouth without a gun to my head.
Still, ignoring the unforgivable wickedness that is fermented tofu, the rest of the ingredients are all fun stuff: cashews, umeboshi paste and bits and pieces. Once the cashew cheese is made, you have to let it do its stuff untampered-with for 12 days, flipping it over and playing the b-side every so often to let the air get to it.
There's a lot of flavour in the finished result. And, handily, there's not much of the fermented tofu tang that remains in the tangy finished product.It's highly salty, sharp and toothsome - in short, a really interesting addition to the vegan cheese stable. It's not the sort of cheese you want every day, but it's definitely the sort of cheese that holds its own against chutneys and other strong flavours.
Here's some beetroot chutney it hooked up with the other day - the two were fighting for attention on the taste buds in a good way.
Cashew nuts are like a vegan's Swiss army knife: like a Swiss army knife, cashew nuts are useful in all situations, and you're alw...
Recently, I went to Budapest, Hungary on holiday. I went round the castle, botanic gardens, wandered along the river and looked at some cool Communist statuary.
But you don't want to hear about that - you want to know what I ate, right?
I didn't know much about what Hungarian cuisine entailed before I set foot in the country, but I thought it was quite meat and paprika-heavy. That's as may be, but fear not, friendly vegans - they cater for the likes of us too.
The first place I went was Napfenyes Etterem, an all-vegan restaurant that does Hungarian food. We ended up going there twice in the end, mainly because it has the advantage of being open until 10pm - handy, given how Budapest's great bars can be a bit of a time-thief. Seriously, I blame the garden ruin bars for several lost hours.
The first meal we had was the sunlight platter for two. I think that may be a typo on their behalf - whichever were the two people they had in mind, they must be strapping seven-foot athletes or very, very hungry people indeed.
The platter was enormous - there were fried pancakes, grilled seitan, fried seitan, fried (non-dairy) cheese, fried potatoes and onions, rice, and (equally non-dairy) yoghurt, all in gut-busting proportions.
I'm still a vegan cheese phobe, but other half (who eats the regular kind) happily wolfed it down. The pancakes - the wedge in the photo below - were great, and the grilled seitan was some of the nicest I can remember having.
And the potatoes - the potatoes! Enough to make a grown vegan weep.
The sad thing about it was, despite our very best, very greediest efforts, was we couldn't finish the whole lot, nor fall upon the selection of cakes the restaurant has and do some serious damage.
The second visit was a bit less successful: Mr Flicking the Vs had a seitan in paprika-y sauce and spicy fries. The fries were cold. Not just a little on the chilly side, but Antarctic cold. Sadface. And I had more of that fabulous seitan with some decently fried veggies but everything had those little black dots that (I think) mean everything comes off a plancher grill.
That said, I'd happily eat there again. Note though this place doesn't serve booze, which may or may not trouble you. It did give me pause for thought, as I like a beer with dinner, but again, I liked their style enough not to be too shaken! It does serve ice cream though - the caramel was great - and the staff are lovely and friendly (they also have menus in English, which is handy).
The next place we tried was Macska. The name's Hungarian for cat, and the place has tiny cat ornaments on each table.
It's a loveable place, more of a pub than a restaurant, with a neat mezzanine level for nosy drinking.
It's veggie but not vegan, but it's definitely very vegan-friendly. They only have a handful of dishes on each day - when we visited, a couple were vegan and a couple more could be veganised. We asked the lovely lady behind the bar what she'd recommend for a vegan and she said this:
It was a fajita, stuffed with veggies and beans - the biggest kidney beans I'd ever seen, in fact. There were also a metric truckload of olives in it, which made the whole thing a bit salty, but being a saline fiend, I didn't mind too much. The salsa was pretty good too.
We popped in for a drink and stayed for several - it was that kind of place.
Then it was back to another booze-free joint, Mannanatural.
Mannanatural is a cafe-type place tucked down a street near the parliament. (Worth noting it closes at 8pm, not 9pm, as Happy Cow has it - which is why we ended up at Napfenyes Etterem the second time round!) There's no menu to speak of, you just pick what you want from a refridgerated cabinet and cart it off to your table to chow down.
The guy who owns Mannanatural (and whose lovely dog occasionally wanders in every now and again) speaks great English, and told us he'd make up a plate of a little of everything for us and bring a couple of smoothies over too.
Mr Flicking the Vs got grapefruit, apple and cherry, and I got a poppy seed drink which, while getting bonus points for being something I'd never tried before, promptly lost a load for tasting like Piz Buin.
Here's what our dinner looked like:
All sorts of goodies there - the smoked nut cheese (the disc on the bottom left) was phenomenal, as was the tatziki (bottom middle). But there was a great deal to love in there - so many different little tastes of fun. The was cabbagey goodness with black salt (top right) and cabbage rolls with a different nut cheese inside, and all manner of other bits and pieces.
It was almost all uniformly tasty and even Mr Flicking the Vs, a saladphobe, was completely won over.
This was the last time we went out for dinner and we were chuffed to have picked such a nice place. I was doubly chuffed that there were a selection of raw vegan cakes too!
By the time I went up to order one, the guy with the English had left, and the other man serving only spoke Hungarian and a bit of German. Luckily, through the international language of dessert, we were able to communicate, and I waltzed off with this slice of loveliness:
I'm not sure what was in it, but I caught the words "chilli choccy". I think the bottom was coconutty, and middle was banana and datey, and the top was nut and chocolatey (and chilli-y - is that a word?!). It was rich and dense and tasty, and didn't stay long in this world.
The only other thing we ate out during our stay was a falafel pitta thing from a place that looked like it had never been introduced to the concept of cleaning, but nonetheless did some kickass falafel.
Hungary totally won me over as a place, and Budapest's food did likewise. It was just Budaful!
Recently, I went to Budapest, Hungary on holiday. I went round the castle, botanic gardens, wandered along the river and looked at some coo...
Alright, alright, I admit that I pretty much bought freekeh for the name - so I could make lame puns about how on the run up to the weekend, I always want to try a new grain, so I inaugurated Freekeh Friday. You get the idea.
Only turns out that freekeh is no joke – it's actually rather tasty.
It's the new hip grain on the block – it hails from the Middle East and is made of roasted unripe green wheat. It looks a bit like the sort of thing that you'd see at the bottom of a budgie's cage, but don't let that put you off – it's got a really nice earthy taste and a bouncy texture.
Unlike the usual grain suspects, freekeh has a distinct flavour of its own – it's not just there to bulk up dishes with a bit of carbs. And like its ancient cousin quinoa, freekeh is reasonably high in protein.
Convinced yet? I was certainly curious enough to give it a try, especially given I had a couple of recipes knocking around that seemed to be calling out for freekeh: one for a spinach freekeh pilaf on a page I'd torn out from I don't know where, and one for quinoa with summer beans from The Independent. Where I thought freekeh might make a nice substitution.
Here's what I made – a sort of cross between the two:
It was pretty simple to concoct: boil the freekeh in stock, then when it's cooked, add a load of olive oil, lemon juice and a bit of garlic, then some defrosted frozen spinach, shucked broad beans, cooked purple sprouting broccoli and herbs (I think it was chives, basil and dill in this instance).
That was it! From start to plate took under half an hour, and it survived well enough to make a solid lunch the next day too.
I've got two-thirds of a bag left, and I'm looking forward to finding some new uses for this bad boy.
It's so good, it's almost freekeh.
Only turns out that freekeh is no joke – it's actually rather tasty.
It's the new hip grain on the block – it hails from the Middle East and is made of roasted unripe green wheat. It looks a bit like the sort of thing that you'd see at the bottom of a budgie's cage, but don't let that put you off – it's got a really nice earthy taste and a bouncy texture.
Unlike the usual grain suspects, freekeh has a distinct flavour of its own – it's not just there to bulk up dishes with a bit of carbs. And like its ancient cousin quinoa, freekeh is reasonably high in protein.
Convinced yet? I was certainly curious enough to give it a try, especially given I had a couple of recipes knocking around that seemed to be calling out for freekeh: one for a spinach freekeh pilaf on a page I'd torn out from I don't know where, and one for quinoa with summer beans from The Independent. Where I thought freekeh might make a nice substitution.
Here's what I made – a sort of cross between the two:
It was pretty simple to concoct: boil the freekeh in stock, then when it's cooked, add a load of olive oil, lemon juice and a bit of garlic, then some defrosted frozen spinach, shucked broad beans, cooked purple sprouting broccoli and herbs (I think it was chives, basil and dill in this instance).
That was it! From start to plate took under half an hour, and it survived well enough to make a solid lunch the next day too.
I've got two-thirds of a bag left, and I'm looking forward to finding some new uses for this bad boy.
It's so good, it's almost freekeh.
Alright, alright, I admit that I pretty much bought freekeh for the name - so I could make lame puns about how on the run up to the weekend,...
Sometimes, I get swept up in a wave of a cooking adventurousness that sees me sweating over the cooker for hours, cursing my decision to cook four dishes when one would be enough. I start off fancying myself to be Gordon Ramsay, I wind up swearing and cursing like him.
This was one of those times.
I'd been perusing India's Vegetarian Cooking, and had one of those 'I want to cook that, and that, and that. Oh yeah, and THAT!' moments.
I decided to make bhuna lobhia - stir-friend black beans with tomatoes, cumin, ginger and chilli, as well as a random tofu scramble with potatoes which may have been based on aloo gobi but with the cauliflower played by tofu.
That should have been enough for a decent meal, but I couldn't leave well enough alone, and decided to try out a spinach and mung bean-based dish called palak dal.
Mung beans are still a fairly new addition to my cupboard, but they're a welcome one, and they worked so well with the spinach, spices and lemon in the recipe. Mung beans have a bad rap, but I'm appointing myself their official PR person. Eat some, they're awesome!
But the star of the show was okra. You know I love okra like it's one of my family, right? And not one of the ones where I freak one when I think we share genes. Whatever the okra-hating slime-phobes say, okra is among the vegetable nobility in my eyes.
There are a couple of okra recipes in India's Vegetarian Cooking, but I made kodel (sweet and sour okra) here. It was a wonderous treatment of okra, and a dish completely new to me. The sauce for the okra was made from all sorts of fun stuff, like dried chillis, poppy seeds, coconut, tamarind and browned onions.
It was so delicious, I ate it for the next few days happily. Alas the okra lost a bit of its colour, but I'm eating with my mouth not with my eyes, so I'll forgive it. By eating it. Again and again and again.
Sometimes, I get swept up in a wave of a cooking adventurousness that sees me sweating over the cooker for hours, cursing my decision to ...
Time to get back to my New Year's resolution of cleaning out all the weird crap in the back of the cupboard that I bought to do amazing culinary experiments with and start cooking up the culinary experiments I promised myself.
Exhibit A: matcha powder, otherwise known as green tea that's been beaten into submission.
What can you do with matcha? Matcha lattes, matcha truffles, matcha cake, and matcha pudding, apparently. Lots of matcha-stuff. Probably turn it into gold if you tried hard enough. (I didn't try hard enough.)
No, my friends, today calls for cookies! (Most days call for cookies, as far as my understanding goes, but let's gloss over that.) The basis for this recipe is a Dan Lepard oldie from a while ago (Christmas three years ago, in fact) which you can find here (not vegan though).
If you need a reason to buy matcha, it's that it turns your cookies green. Regard:
I mean, cookies are cool, but green cookies are winning all round. Here's how to green up your own cookies:
Matcha brazil nut cookies
Makes about 10
Ingredients
50g vegan butter
110g light brown sugar
Half tsp of vanilla essence
Pinch of salt
100g self-raising flour
50g brazil nuts, chopped
1 or 2 tsp of soy milk (or vegan milk of your choice)
Half tsp matcha powder (Maybe more if you like that sort of thing)
Handful of vegan chocolate chips or chunk of dark chocolate, chopped up
How you do it
Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Stir in vanilla essence, then flour, salt and matcha. Stir to combine.
Add nuts and chocolate, and stir.
Add milk, a tsp at a time, and stir until the the dough comes together.
Preheat oven to 180C, and grease a baking sheet.
Put dessertspoons of mixture onto baking sheet, spaced well apart.
Cook for 12 to 15 minutes until the edges of the cookies start to colour.
Exhibit A: matcha powder, otherwise known as green tea that's been beaten into submission.
What can you do with matcha? Matcha lattes, matcha truffles, matcha cake, and matcha pudding, apparently. Lots of matcha-stuff. Probably turn it into gold if you tried hard enough. (I didn't try hard enough.)
No, my friends, today calls for cookies! (Most days call for cookies, as far as my understanding goes, but let's gloss over that.) The basis for this recipe is a Dan Lepard oldie from a while ago (Christmas three years ago, in fact) which you can find here (not vegan though).
If you need a reason to buy matcha, it's that it turns your cookies green. Regard:
I mean, cookies are cool, but green cookies are winning all round. Here's how to green up your own cookies:
Matcha brazil nut cookies
Makes about 10
Ingredients
50g vegan butter
110g light brown sugar
Half tsp of vanilla essence
Pinch of salt
100g self-raising flour
50g brazil nuts, chopped
1 or 2 tsp of soy milk (or vegan milk of your choice)
Half tsp matcha powder (Maybe more if you like that sort of thing)
Handful of vegan chocolate chips or chunk of dark chocolate, chopped up
How you do it
Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Stir in vanilla essence, then flour, salt and matcha. Stir to combine.
Add nuts and chocolate, and stir.
Add milk, a tsp at a time, and stir until the the dough comes together.
Preheat oven to 180C, and grease a baking sheet.
Put dessertspoons of mixture onto baking sheet, spaced well apart.
Cook for 12 to 15 minutes until the edges of the cookies start to colour.
Time to get back to my New Year's resolution of cleaning out all the weird crap in the back of the cupboard that I bought to do amazing ...
I've been posting occasional posts called feel the food fear and cook it anyway, where I attempt to cook something that's long given me the heebie jeebies.
This is sort of a variant of that - more like a 'feel the food rage and cook it anyway'.
The subject of my food rage is savoury muffins. I've attempted to make these before, several times.
you know the quote about 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?' Well, it's that. I was convinced that savoury avocado muffins were the way forward and attempted on more than one occasion to do find the secret recipe that I believed the world needed
I failed. A lot. A lot of weird avocado doughballs met their end in my kitchen. I wept, I gnashed my teeth, but I kept going. And kept failing.
After that, it was with some trepidation that I decided, months later, to return to savoury muffins after seeing an appealing recipe for a sweetcorn and sun-dried tomato version.
The recipe, which you can find here, is not vegan, but it's easily veganised. I omitted the cheese and replaced it with a bit of nooch, and dodged the egg in favour of a flax equivalent.
Here's what happened:
Not too shabby eh? All light and flavourful - the tarragon helped there, given it's pretty much the king of herbs and if you don't agree, I'll arm-wrestle til you change your mind.
One thing I have noticed with flax eggs (I think it's the flax eggs) is if you leave a baked product with flax in them for a day or two, and then pull off a chunk, you get these almost spider-web like see-through strands. Is that just me, or can you tell me what's causing it?
Weird muffin gossamer aside, I'm pretty chuffed with how these turned out, and I'll be making them again.
Reckon avocado would go well in there?
This is sort of a variant of that - more like a 'feel the food rage and cook it anyway'.
The subject of my food rage is savoury muffins. I've attempted to make these before, several times.
you know the quote about 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?' Well, it's that. I was convinced that savoury avocado muffins were the way forward and attempted on more than one occasion to do find the secret recipe that I believed the world needed
I failed. A lot. A lot of weird avocado doughballs met their end in my kitchen. I wept, I gnashed my teeth, but I kept going. And kept failing.
After that, it was with some trepidation that I decided, months later, to return to savoury muffins after seeing an appealing recipe for a sweetcorn and sun-dried tomato version.
The recipe, which you can find here, is not vegan, but it's easily veganised. I omitted the cheese and replaced it with a bit of nooch, and dodged the egg in favour of a flax equivalent.
Here's what happened:
Not too shabby eh? All light and flavourful - the tarragon helped there, given it's pretty much the king of herbs and if you don't agree, I'll arm-wrestle til you change your mind.
One thing I have noticed with flax eggs (I think it's the flax eggs) is if you leave a baked product with flax in them for a day or two, and then pull off a chunk, you get these almost spider-web like see-through strands. Is that just me, or can you tell me what's causing it?
Weird muffin gossamer aside, I'm pretty chuffed with how these turned out, and I'll be making them again.
Reckon avocado would go well in there?
I've been posting occasional posts called feel the food fear and cook it anyway , where I attempt to cook something that's long give...
