Flicking the Vs: August 2013

vegan mofo 2013

The obligatory Vegan MoFo post

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.

artisan vegan cheese

More experiments from Artisan Vegan Cheese

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!