Flicking the Vs: April 2014

I was going to call this post something about the kindness of strangers, until I worked out most people involved weren't actually strangers to me. So, I guess, it's just a post about the kindness of vegans and vegan-enablers!

I recently made a new friend - seems odd talking about making friends when you're beyond your teenage years, right? - through school. She invited me and another classmate over for lunch, and lunch turned out to be an enormous South Indian feast - poppadoms and chutneys, loads of veggie dishes, rice, something exciting involving tapioca, and halwa for dessert. Not once did she utter the dreaded 'you don't even miss the meat, do you?' or comment on how difficult eating out as a vegan must be - she just served up an entirely vegan meal to a mix of meat eaters, veggies, and vegans that tasted amazing.

As if I needed another reason to like my new friend even more, she even packed me off with a carrier bag full of her homegrown chard, chasing me down in the rain after I'd left to put it into my hands.

It made it into three separate meals - as chipotle chard with a Mexican scramble and guac, in a Korean stir fry type thing, and as an attempt to make a quiche with butter beans. It didn't look pretty, but it sure sure tasty.

More food-related gifts came via my other half's mother, who's a lovely woman. When we went to see her recently, she me a present of a sprouter she'd picked up in a charity shop, which I was overjoyed with. I'd been wanting to get one for ages but had been put off by the price. Knowing this one came from a charity shop was great - my partner's mum didn't pay too much, gave me a present I really liked, kept something out of landfill, and gave some money to a charity to boot. Got to love charity shops, right?

I had to get some stuff started as soon as I got home: first off, some alfalfa, which made it into some sandwiches...

And some adzuki beans that have been gracing my salads ever since.

I know it's possible to sprout stuff without needing a sprouter, using a jam jar and some muslin, but my previous attempts have been somewhat unsuccessful, ending in slimy sprout goo. Using a proper sprouter, my kitchen is now turning out sprouted goodies by the jarful, all with food centimeters rather than food miles!

I don't know about you, but my life is sadly vegan free. The only real life vegan I know is hours away on the train, but I never feel cut off from the vegan community, if that's the right term, due to the wonderful world of the internet.

I get so many great ideas for recipes, recommendations on where to eat, vegan product news, cute animal pictures, and big belly laughs from reading lots of vegan blogs and hearing what the bloggers behind them have to say.

This week, I have to give a great big thanks in particular to Tea and Sympatico, a blog which reminds me why I need to get to Manchester more often. After I posted about having trouble with my oven, she only went and solved the problem for me! She spotted what was going wrong with a bit of Googling (we'd just assumed it would be dodgy wiring that we couldn't afford to repair and ignored the problem for weeks) and now, with a £13 new oven element in place, we have a fully working oven again.

Tea and Sympatico, thank you so much for your help!

With the oven back up to speed, I turned to a recipe I'd had my eye on for a while - coconut bacon from Green Gourmet Giraffe. I baked mine, rather than frying it, and think I left it in for a little too long.

That said, it still tasted AMAZING! I love burnt flavours, so I think the slight extra char on the bacon went really nicely with its smoky taste.

I put it to work in what may be the best bagel sandwich I've eaten in the last couple of weeks: jalapeno hummus, coconut bacon, a potato waffle, tomato and cucumber. It may sound wonky, but trust me, it was phenomenal.

Not everyone was so impressed with my bagel creation - my partner looked askance at me, and asked if was pregnant. (Answer, nope, it's just a food baby!)

My kitchen further paid out this week when I unearthed a brownie from Boho Gelato, a Brighton ice cream shop that always has amazing vegan flavours, that I had stashed in the freezer a while back. Despite its spell in the deep freeze, it was still delicious, with a strong, sharp raspberry flavour - an Isa recipe maybe? Either way, it quickly met its demise with some ice cream.

Since I went vegan, I don't think I've ever eaten so healthily (no, I don't just eat brownies all day!), so tastily, or with so many kind inputs from friends, family and internet helpers. I can't help but be happy I made the change when I did - for all you vegans and vegan enablers, thank you once again!

bagel

Hooray for food gifts, vegan enablers, and coconut bacon

I was going to call this post something about the kindness of strangers, until I worked out most people involved weren't actually stran...

Hooray! Spring has finally sprung in England, and that means lots of great veggies everywhere. My favourite spring arrival is the all-too-brief visit of asparagus - every year, I go crazy buying the stuff when it's in season, and get to sick of it by the end I almost can't wait to see the back of it. Almost.

This year, when I saw the first English spears in my local supermarket, I hurried home with a big old bunch and no clear plan of what to do with them.

It came to me when I saw a huge bag of gram flour in my cupboard and remembered Coconut and Berries singing the praises of quiches and omelettes made from the stuff recently.

Having made a terrible farinata once before, I thought I'd try following a recipe this time round. I found this one on the interwebz, and worked out maybe my last attempt was so grim because I didn't allow it to rest.

This time, I left the batter to do its own thing for a few hours, then poured it into a shallow tart dish with some broccoli, asparagus and baby plum tomatoes.

It turned out pretty well all in all. While the stuff's pretty fearsome when it's gone cold - like chewing on a rubbery slipper sole with veggies in - it reheats like a dream. I'll be revisiting farinata again, especially since the place I used to get my fix, Saf in Kensington, has now closed down.

There was more asaparagus in my next dish, which uses one of the few types of pasta I can't get enough of.

It's a mix of gnocchi, asparagus spears, spring onions, peas, soy beans, and mint, light steamed and fried in chilli oil with a squeeze of lemon juice. It was light and heavenly - just the sort of thing that makes you welcome spring with open arms!

If I could have put more asparagus in the next plate, I would have done, but I'd already troughed the lot by then!

When I come back from my parents at Christmas (yes, that long ago!) they insisted on piling me high with all sorts of food when I left, and I've only just finished working my way through it now. Among the tuck box they packed me off with was a packet of summer roll wrappers. Wondering what to stuff them with, I spied a tin of mock chicken tofu whose presence I can only explain by assuming I went food shopping while drunk.

When it slithered out of the tin, I was a little spooked - it was sweet and squidgy and not at all appealing. Of course, vegans can't ever let good tofu go to waste, so I hit upon a cunning plan: after I drained it off and simmered with kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass for a bit, then let it sit in the simmering water til cool. It took up the flavour of the Thai spices, turning scary tofu into scented tofu, and a tinned mess was reborn as a tasty filling for summer rolls.

I added some cellophane noodles, mint and coriander, carrots, celery and spring onions, and a tahini and soy dip.

I also turned to one of all my all time favourite cookbooks, Asian Vegan Kitchen, for an accompaniment - this eggplant dip. It's sort of like an Thai baba ganoush, and just as gorgeous as it sounds. It's got that lovely smokiness that I think of with baba ganoush, but with a nice sharp tamarind tang.

For my last trick, prepare to be amazed. It may not come as a surprise to you that I have a bit of a sweet tooth - you stick vegan on a dessert, and I'll buy it. So when I saw Pudology desserts the other day, I knew I had to have them, even if there were a little bit on the steep side at £3.75 for two small pots.

But when I got stuck in over the weekend, I was a little bit underwhelmed. The banoffee flavour didn't taste hugely of banana, and bore more resemblance to eating a melted milionaire's shortbread, only not as good.

I can't quite put my finger on why this didn't blow my socks off, but I'm always glad to see vegan desserts out in the world, so I'll be trying out some of the other flavours in the hope the banoffee was a one-off.

asparagus

Asparagus farinata, asparagus gnocchi and scary summer rolls

Hooray! Spring has finally sprung in England, and that means lots of great veggies everywhere. My favourite spring arrival is the all-too-br...

Some days, I just run out of cooking inspiration. Then I ask my other half what he wants to eat, and he says one of three things: Mexican, stir fry, or pasta. Without fail. In his culinary world, there are but three foodstuffs, and he's happy for us to eat all three in rotation forever. I try my best to come up with interesting, healthy, tasty vegan meals, but if I'm ever feeling fresh out of ideas, I just make Mexican, stir-fry or pasta, and I know everyone's happy.

Only the other day, the other half only went and blew my mind. I asked him what he'd like for tea, and he said "carrot and coriander soup". My first instinct was that he'd been bodysnatched and replaced with a replicant that hadn't downloaded the file on food preferences yet.

After satisfying myself he really was my other half, I made a carrot and coriander soup: sweated off onion and garlic with ground coriander, added some chopped carrot and stock, and when it was all done, blended it and topped with fresh chopped coriander.

I was surprised at how much more than the sum of its parts it was, it's not become a regular part of my lazy cooking rotation, sometimes with lentils or chickpeas added.

Behold, the fourth known dish in my other half's culinary taxonomy:

The next meal looks a little bit parsimonious, but I promise you again, it may be made of humble ingredients, but there's a lot more than that to it.

It's based on a recipe on The Telegraph here for roasted carrots and chick pea mash.

I didn't have any chick peas on hand, but butter beans soaked and boiled for a bit made an admirable stand-in, perked up with some fried leeks and tahini. Carrots roasted with a bit of coriander may not sound like anything special, but if you get the timing right, they become sweet and melty things of wonder.

I even had some radicchio to hand, and made a facsimile of The Telegraph salad with some quinoa, peas and mint. Oh, and then I chucked in some purple sprouting broccoli with tomatoes, because, well, when doesn't broccoli make everything better? (What? When you're making brownies, you say? Fair point.)

It may not look pretty (blame the low-lit phone pic), but it tasted pretty good.

Now this next dinner I'm blaming on you guys. On pretty much every blog I read at the moment, there's someone telling me how amazing Ethiopian food is and how I need to get involved.

I finally took your advice, and found a nearby Ethiopian and Eritrean place that did a load of veggie food, most of which was vegan. Our eyes were taken by the veggie platter, made up of a little bit of everything served on enough injera to feed a football team that hadn't eaten all week.

They were happy to dodge the dairy and make up a vegan platter for me and the other half, and this is what we got given:

Now I see why you guys have been getting so excited - this stuff's amazing!

Alas, I can no longer remember what we had on our plate, but there was a beetroot based dish, an okra one, three separate lentil dishes, something mushroomy, a fluffy gram scramble, and a load of other stuff that's escaped my memory.

What was perhaps more amazing than the variety of dishes was that they were all delicious. Even sharing this monster between two, me and the other half couldn't get through most of it, and we had to leave it. Lesson learnt - we'll be back, and we'll not be having a starter!

Finally, I've dug out the dehydrator again, and made up some courgette (or zuccini, if you're over the other side of the pond) chips. It was just a case of massaging the mandolined courgette with some chilli oil, ras el hanout and garlic salt, and dehydrating til crisp.

courgette

My first Ethiopian meal, courgette crisps, and the fourth known foodstuff

Some days, I just run out of cooking inspiration. Then I ask my other half what he wants to eat, and he says one of three things: Mexican, s...

Three surprisingly good meals this week that all merit a mention, and nothing overly ugly to assault your eyes either!

First up is my new go-to meal when I have a fearsome hunger but not the time or the energy to match.

It's a sort of variation on japchae: veggies, cellophane noodles, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and Korean soy bean paste (doenjang, I think). Pour boiling water over noodles and leave for five minutes. Fry garlic and ginger, add veggies, fry til done, then add the noodles and soy and doenjang to taste. Job's a good 'un!

It's one of those wondrous meals you can get from chopping board to furiously shovelling it down your throat in 15 minutes or so.

Both doenjang and cellophane noodles (aka bean thread, glass or crystal noodles) are fairly new additions to my pantry, but I couldn't live without either now. Doenjang brings that rich umami flavour that I love and goes perfectly with shiitakes, while cellophane noodles have a wonderfully bouncy texture that's both comforting and addictive.

Alas, there's nowhere near me that sells either, so I have to make a massive detour to the Oriental supermarket in Elephant and Castle. Still, it's worth it - more noodles, more doenjang, more steamed buns and tofu related shenanigans. What's not to love?!

The other new recipe I gave a go to recently was pastrami-style tofu, courtesy of The Telegraph, of all places (recipe's here - it's veggie but not vegan, though veganising it is no great stretch). There's not much to it, bar pressing some tofu and leave it to marinade in some spices and herbs for a while, then pan frying it.

The original recipe has some odd amount of sugar in it, but I just left most of it out, and it still turned out spicy and delicious.

I can't actually remember what the white blob on the plate is, so I'm just going to guess - magic? Pixie dust? The sound of children's laughter? Or butter bean mash? I'll let you decide... There's also broccoli with peppers, and kale and peas.

Last up - a curry. I've mentioned on more than on occasion how I love eating curries, but struggle with making them. I may have finally exited that dark period - behold the wonder of this chick pea laden glory:

It's another recipe from a mainstream newspaper - in this case, The Guardian - with a few tweaks.

The original recipe (found here, among a bunch of other very non-vegan other recipes. Alternative here) is for a tomato curry, and involves skinning tomatoes and sieving mixtures. These days I don't have time to read the paper, let alone skin a tomato, so I followed the recipe but mortar-and-pestled the spices first and didn't sieve them out later. I also turned the 12 peeled tomatoes (that's twelve!) for a couple of handfuls of cherry tomatoes and a can of chick peas.

The end result was hands-down the nicest curry I've ever made. Oddly, unlike most curries, it tasted better on the day it was made, not the day after. If that means I have to eat it all in one day, I reckon that's probably just another reason to love it.

curry

Pastrami tofu, the best curry I ever made, and bouncy noodles

Three surprisingly good meals this week that all merit a mention, and nothing overly ugly to assault your eyes either! First up is my new ...

I may have mentioned (several times) that I moved house a while back. Compared to our last place (which was about the size of a postage stamp), our new flat is positively palatial - and that means a whole new kitchen to fill with crap and get to know.

And it really does need getting to know! The oven is a bit of a loose cannon. If you try turning it on to 180C right away, it trips all the electrics in the flat and you're suddenly standing in the dark, without power. If you don't try and rush the oven into things - turn it on at 100C and ease it up slowly 15 or 20C at a time - it seems to prevent it a freak out. It's a time consuming process and you end up feeling like you're oven sitting! Even then, once it hits 180C, half the time it has a diva moment and shuts down anyway.

Which means if you want to cook anything at a high temperature - you know, at a temperature that might actually cook things - you have little hope of success. The oven says no, not for you. That makes it really hard to cook things like bread.

Still, some days, the oven gets to feeling more cooperative than others, and you can get something approaching a decent loaf out of it.

Here's one I made from this recipe for easy white bread on the BBC:

It turned out not too bad, freaky oven and all.

(By the way, if any of you are electricians and think my oven's tantrums are a sign it may blow up and take out my new kitchen, please let me know…)

Aside from the oven lottery, one of the delights of my new kitchen is the space - which I used up a nice chunk of recently by buying a big dehydrator. I've been dehydrating all sorts of veggies and even recently attempted some homemade flax crackers.

I managed to work a pretty darn good curried carrot version, but also had some minor flubs with a kale and tarragon combo (just say no!).

Can you guess which one I got a picture of though? I post it here as a warning to other cooks who may recklessly try to make similar crackers. Look upon my crackers, ye mighty, and tremble...

One way to ensure decent baked goods (or raw goods for that matter) is to buy them. While the Free From Bakehouse in Borough Market only does one vegan cupcake normally, it's a solid effort (and they're not far from work) so I like to keep them in business. Behold, the spiced plum cupcake:

I recently shared one of these with a cake-fiend friend, and she pronounced it one of the best cakes she'd had in a long time. Not sure I'd agree, but still, it can be no bad thing.

Elsewhere on the cake front, bad news: a while back the delightful Cat and the Cream cupcakes disappeared from London. This is a massive shame, as there were hands down the best vegan cupcakes around. Rumour has it that Cat and the Cream will return later this year, but until that happens, we're all slightly worse off in Vegan Land.

I normally picked up my Cat and the Cream cakes from Whole Foods. In their absence, Whole Foods has turned to a company I'd not heard of before, Trina's Delicacies, to fill the vegan void. The offering below was my first crack at their wares.

The verdict? Nice, but no Cat and the Cream. And at £3.50 though - about a third more expensive than the Cat and the Cream - it's a treat my stomach likes, but my wallet can't stomach.