Flicking the Vs: 2010

Lime tofu with coconut rice and broccoli recipe

Lime tofu with coconut rice and broccoli Serves 3 to 4 For the marinade 4 dessertspoons soy sauce 2 dessertspoons mirin two cloves of garlic...

I had hoped to come back from a recent few days in the Italian city of Venice and be able to tap my nose knowingly and nonchalantly reel off a few local restaurants and trattorias where vegans can get themselves some hearty Mediterranean nosebag.

Alas it transpired that the main eating being done in Venice was the cost of the flight and accommodation eating into my tiny pay cheque and leaving me having to keep my food budget to a minimum.

Luckily, having booked a self-catering apartment, I could make my own scran and keep the costs down, but it did mean that most of the culinary discoveries I made in Venice were of the supermarket kind.

I don't speak Italian but I did swot up on the main words to avoid - along with the usual meaty and fishy suspects, anything with uovo (egg), latte (milk), burro (butter) or crema (cream) was out.

Of course, going to Italy, pasta is plentiful and easy to get in a vegan-friendly style. For a couple of days, I relied on simple pasta and sauce and another day I used it to bulk out the boxed vegetable and minestrone soups that the supermarkets also supplied for an Italian-esque rib-sticking meal.

A quick squizz around on the internet before I headed off left me with the impression that the concept of veganism was a bit of a foreign one in Venice, but I'm happy to report that soy milk can be found in supermarkets - I saw both plain and chocolate kind (oh yes, the Italians have their priorities right).

There were also a few vegan burgers and meat analogues to be had in the little supermarket I visited (the Coop by Piazzalle Roma) - including these two frozen soy cutlets, which weren't half bad when cooked up with some salad and fried potatoes, in tribute to the tourist menus that cropped up in cheap restaurants around the city.

I'm even happier to report that vegan ice cream is to be found - a couple of brands with a couple of flavours, including the amazingly tasty chocolate and hazelnut Benesi creamy goodness, pictured below.

Of course, cooking for yourself is all well and good but sometimes you need to get stuck in to the local offerings, even if you are a big-ass cheapskate like me. I'm a bit of a pudding fiend, so when my short arms did hit my deep pockets it was once again for ice cream.

We came upon the Grom gelateria, an ice cream chain started in Turin. Handily, they list on their website which flavours are vegan. Forearmed with that knowledge, I tried both the espresso granita and pear sorbet. Both were almost worth the price of a plane ticket to Venice on their own. Heaven.

grom

Vegan in Venice

I had hoped to come back from a recent few days in the Italian city of Venice and be able to tap my nose knowingly and nonchalantly reel o...

Vegan rum truffles
I realise there's a fundamental problem with this recipe - it's based on leftover cake, which means there's an assumption that you'd have a cake and then think 'well, I don't fancy the rest of this tasty sponge, whatever can I do with it?' l. Yes, it's an unlikely scenario, but bear with me.

A friend of mine gave me a box of vanilla cake mix, the results of which tasted like what aliens might create if they'd never tried cake before and tried to make it from a description in an encyclopedia. Or something. Anyway, what do you with leftover cake that's a bit meh? That's right: soak it in booze and wrap it in chocolate. It's a winner.

Vegan rum truffles - makes about 15 truffles
Ingredients
Handful of raisins (about half an oz or so)
50cl of rum
5oz of sponge cake crumbled into crumbs
half an oz of cocoa powder or vegan drinking chocolate
3 or 4oz or so of vegan chocolate

How you do it

Marinate the raisins in the rum for a while, ideally overnight.

The next day, when the raisins are full of rum, strain them (reserve the rum - you'll need it later) and chop into small pieces - as small as you can be bothered with.

Add the cake crumbs and cocoa/drinking chocolate powder to the chopped raisins and mix thoroughly.

Next add the rum. Do it little by little - you may find if your cake is moister or not as moist as the one I used, you may not need all the rum or you may even need a little more. The bonus of using a fairly moist cake is you'll end up with a spare bit of rum. If that happens, swig the remainder.

Back to the cake - add the rum little by little, stirring after each addition. What you want is a fairly moist mixture that will cohere into a solid mass when you roll it into balls. Just take a piece - you're aiming for something about the size of a walnut - and roll it between your hands until you've got a nice round ball. Set aside for now.

Next prepare a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and rub with a tiny bit of flavourless oil like sweet almond oil.

In a bain marie, melt the vegan chocolate (in this case Montezuma dark chocolate). Once melted, take one ball of a cake at a time and roll it around in the melted chocolate using a teaspoon. Once the truffle is well covered, fish it out with your teaspoon and put it on the lined baking tray.

Leave until the chocolate is cooled and set.

Make a cup of tea. Eat a truffle. Have another. Maybe then have a third or fourth. Feel a bit guilty. Have one more. Drink tea.

chocolate

Vegan rum truffles recipe

Vegan rum truffles I realise there's a fundamental problem with this recipe - it's based on leftover cake, which means there's a...

Inspired by a post on Vegan Dad's blog entitled Stuff I've Made But Did Not Make Up, I thought I'd share with you lucky little lot a few recipes that I've made that have worked out for me, on the offchance you had a spare rainy afternoon and fancied giving them a crack yourself.

For some reason, I had a brief pickling phase. There's something about pickling that I like - I like the idea of stashing something away for a long time, of making something that can last for months and still taste grand. I like the idea that you could make something now and it would still be there, veggie goodness and all, in a year's time, even post apocalypse. It would be me and the cockroaches, but I'd still be able to have a good bit of chutney, dammit.

The first recipe I've made that went over quite well is Sweet chilli jam, which has had repeat orders from my parents, who I tend to foist jars of experimental produce on. Aside from the hot-sweet axis of awesome, what pleases me about this jam is that making a massive vat of it and watching it bubble makes you feel a bit like a mad scientist or a witch.

Another thumbs up for jam work goes to this recipe for redcurrant and raspberry jam (PDF) which I knocked up with yet more goodies from my partner's mum. It turned out so well, I'm going to try and impress the lady in question with a jar of it!

A blast from the past that also turned out well was this recipe for piccalilli. I remember there always being a jar of piccalilli in the fridge when I was a kid, so it has some weird nostalgia thing for me. Yep, yellow vinegary fluid always takes me back to my childhood. Hmm.

The last recipe I wanted to share, only I can't remember which one I used, was one for pickled shallots. Alas, I can't find the recipe I made myself, but I think it was this one from the BBC, only I replaced the juniper berries and allspice berries with a few sprigs of rosemary and it was all gravy.

I made the pickled shallots over six months ago, and found a jar leftover in the back of a cupboard. I'm happy to report they're still good. Now bring on the apocalype. I'll meet it with a smile on my face and a jar of pickle in my hand.

chilli

Things I've made that I didn't make up - pickles, jams and piccalilli

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Raspberry mousse cake

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Baked quinoa nicoise

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Tuver dhal - a split pea soup recipe

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Granted, making a something called 'summer soup' while the temperature is breaking 2oC is a triumph of hope over experience, but all the summer veg is out and proud and deserves eating. Asparagus remains an inexpensive joy and flagolet beans still speak summer to me, albeit the sort of summer that the pedants among you would point out I could get all year round thanks to the joys of canning. Spoilsports.

This soup is open to adaptation, I think - I didn't have any mint in the house but I reckon a small handful of leaves would have gone down a treat. It can probably also do without the lettuce, but is there anything more summery than a little gem? It could probably also do with a bit more in the way of wine in the wine-to-stock ratio, but that would involve diverting it from going down your gullet, so I'll leave that one to your discretion.

Summer flagolet, lettuce and asparagus soup

Ingredients

One white onion, chopped finely

One teaspoon of fennel seeds

Two cloves garlic, finely chopped

Two celery ribs, finely chopped

150mls stock

100mls white wine

One can of flagolet beans, drained

Bay leaf

One bunch of asparagus, cut into four widthwise

Zest of half lime, finely grated

One small gem lettuce, sliced into thin rounds

Juice of half lime

Chopped parsley

Chopped dill

How you do it

Heat some oil in a saucepan and then add the onion, garlic, fennel seeds, celery. Sweat over a medium heat, covered, until lightly caramelised.

Add the stock, white wine, bay leaf and flagolet beans and bring to a simmer. Cook for five minutes or so.

Add the chopped asparagus and lime zest, and cook for two or three minutes.

Add the chopped gem lettuce and cook for another couple of minutes until the asparagus is cooked through and the lettuce is wilted.

Stir in the lime juice, a large handful of parsley and a couple of very large handfuls of dill (I used about half a packet of the former and a 25g packet of the latter).

Remove bay leaf, add salt and pepper and blend until smooth. Taste, add more lime juice if necessary.

asparagus

Summer flagolet, lettuce and asparagus soup

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It's been over two weeks since I last posted a recipe. Time flies when you're doing very little apart from watching crap telly and drinking even crapper white wine.

It was something that I was reminded of when I saw British tomatoes back on the shelves, along with asparagus. You know winter's over when those bad boys make their reappearance.

Seasonal? Yep, that's good. Local? Yeah, if you like. That's good too. Cheap? Now we're talking - less money spent on veg means more for that cheap white white.

Here's a recipe with both tomatoes and asparagus in. All you need to go with it is a few salad leaves and some cheap sauv blanc.

Tomato and asparagus half-and-half tart

Ingredients

3oz cashew nuts (cashew pieces are fine)

Two heaped dessertspoons of nutritional yeast

One garlic clove

Half a teaspoon of mustard powder

One dessertspoon of tahini

The juice from a quarter of a lemon

Two heaped dessertspoons of vegan mayonnaise

50-100mls non-dairy milk

One sheet of puff pastry (Jus-Rol is vegan)

One ripe tomato

One bunch of asparagus

Salt and pepper

Extra non-dairy milk for brushing

How you do it

Put the cashews into some water (about double their volume) and leave them to sit for a few hours. Two is enough, overnight is good too.

Drain the cashews, then add the nutritional yeast, garlic, tahini, mustard powder and lemon juice, then blend to a paste.

Add in the mayonnaise and stir. Then add your non-dairy milk - the amount of milk you'll need will depend on how long the cashews have been in the water, so add a little at a time. You'll want to end up with something with a consistency a bit like Boursin. If it's thinner, that's fine - you just want to be able to spread it and have it stay where you put it, not run off the pastry.

If you can't be bothered to finish the tart now, that's fine. The cashew mixture will keep for a day or two in the fridge.

Take the sheet of puff pastry out of the freezer until thawed, then put it on a greased baking tray.

Preheat your oven to 200C.

Using a sharp knife, score a line about 1cm from the edge of the pastry - you should end up with a frame all the way round. Inside the frame, score a criss-cross pattern diagonally - make the lines every 1cm or 2cm. Don't go out of the frame.

Spread the cashew mixture inside the frame (you may end up with a bit of cashew mix left over. That's fine. Use it as a spread on toast, or stir a spoon of the mix into scrambled tofu)

Then cut your asparagus into two, and slice the tomato into thick slices.

On half the tart, lay the tomato slices out. On the other, lay the asparagus top to tail.

Drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Then brush the pastry frame with milk. If you've not got a brush, dip your fingers in the milk, then run them round the frame.

Cook for 25 minutes in the oven, or until pastry is risen and brown and the veg is cooked.

asparagus

Tomato and asparagus half-and-half tart

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Spicy baked cauliflower

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This week, I've been experimenting with bread. Maybe experimenting with is too grand an expression - I've not been trying to fashion it into shoes, or using it to fuel a time machine - but I have been fiddling around with it.

My first experiment with bread was actually having a go at making it. I made a focaccia. It turned out pretty well.

Then I used focaccia dough to make these:

They're tarragon, pumpkin puree and pumpkin seed bread rolls.

Like politicians, they promised a lot, but didn't deliver quite as much.

Next stop in my bread experiments was the Grant loaf - an easy, no-knead recipe for wholemeal bread created in World War II.

It's talked up as being idiot-proof, so I used all the culinary idiocy at my command to put the Grant loaf to the test and you know what? It passed.

I buggered around with the measurements, used my most ropey scales and it still turned out alright.

So what to put on it? I had a hankering for a tofu equivalent of coronation chicken. Even in my omni period, I never so much as tried coronation chicken but, like egg nog (which has also never passed my lips in its original incarnation), it didn't stop me craving it. I blame the continent-sized hangover sucking the life out of me this morning for this aberration.

While I didn't end up with anything like coronation chicken, I did manage a comforting protein-plus-mayo-sauce combo that didn't go too badly with Doris Grant's finest.

Basil tofu sandwich spread

1oz of pumpkin seeds

One large garlic clove, finely grated

One block of Taifun basil tofu, grated

Two small carrots, (1oz to 2oz each) topped, tailed and grated

One rib of celery, grated

One spring onion, chopped into thin rounds

One teaspoon of lime juice

Mayonnaise to taste

How you do it

Roast the pumpkin seeds in dry frying pan for a few minutes, until they begin to colour.

Mix together the grated tofu, garlic, carrots and celery together with the pumpkin seeds, chopped spring onion and lime juice.

Add mayonnaise to taste. Be sparing - start with a couple of teaspoons and work up from there. Don't be tempted to just mash a load in - the flavour of the basil gets weaker the more you put in. You don't need a lot, just enough to bind it.

Use it to top wholemeal toast.

basil

Basil tofu sandwich spread

This week, I've been experimenting with bread. Maybe experimenting with is too grand an expression - I've not been trying to fashion...

A friend of mine - let's call him Nick, because that's his name - maintains that he doesn't like tofu.

Madness, I tell you, madness. How can anyone not like tofu?

Sure I'm a bit biased, because I could quite happily mainline the stuff and because I'm vegan and not liking tofu is probably against the ten vegan commandments but, to me, it's impossible not to like.

The beauty of tofu can take on the taste of anything you put on it, so if you don't like it, you've probably just not flavoured it with something you like. Or you've just not flavoured it at all, which would be the equivalent of trying to eat slightly damp, farty cotton wool crossbred with rubber and, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't like it then.

But if you flavour it with a load of nuts, some veggies and some other gubbins you've found in your cupboard, like I have here, there's no reason tofu can't be all warm and comforting.

The tofu I used in this is Clean Bean, made by a company in Brick Lane, I think. It's got a nice fluffy texture. Try it. You'll like it, honest.

You can't not like tofu, right? That would be madness.

Carrot, courgette and corn bake

Ingredients

Two shallots

Two cloves of garlic

1oz of pumpkin seeds

1oz of cashew nuts

325g of firm tofu (Clean Bean is pretty cracking)

One heaped dessertspoon of gram flour (or normal white flour)

Three heaped dessertspoons of tahini

Two dessertspoons of soy sauce

One dessertspoon of mirin

One dessertspoon of white miso

One medium carrot (about 4oz)

One medium courgette (about 4oz)

3oz of sweetcorn

Salt and pepper

How you do it

In a food processor (or in a mixing bowl with a stick blender), pulse the garlic, shallots, pumpkin seeds and cashew nuts together until completely blended.

Chop the tofu, add to the mix and blend again.

Stir in the flour, tahini, soy sauce, miso and mirin.

Top and tail the carrot and courgette and grate them both into a clean tea towel. Then gather the tea towel's corners together and wring out the liquid from the veggies.

Stir the carrot, courgette and sweetcorn into the tofu mixture, mix well and pour into a pyrex dish.

Cook at 200C for 45 minutes, or until set. Serve with new potatoes and a salad.

carrot

Carrot, courgette and corn bake

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Parsnip and red pepper korokke

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Did you know it was British Pie Week this week?

Yes, like every food stuff worth its salt in need of a bit of PR puff, the pie has been given its own week of shameless self-promotion.

Being a bit of a sucker for anything involving pastry, coupled with my own need to clear out my pantry of all the under-loved ingredients that seem to accumulate in there when I'm not looking, I've come up with this recipe for smoked tofu and leek roly-poly.

Oh alright, it's not technically a pie, but there's stuff wrapped in pastry and that's close enough right?

Feel free to leave out the morels if you've not got any lying around. Alas, I've had a bag lying around for a year, crying out to feature in some haphazard vegan recipe, so who I am to deny them?

Smoked tofu and leek roly poly

Makes one large roll - probably about eight slices

Ingredients

For the filling:

Oil

One brown onion

Two cloves of garlic

3 small leeks, cut in half lengthways then sliced into 1cm lengths

3 dried morel mushrooms, rehydrated and sliced finely

One block of Taifun smoked tofu or equivalent, cut into 1cm dice

A few sprigs of thyme

The zest of a third of a lemon

Two tablespoons of non-dairy cream

Salt and pepper

For the pastry:

8oz of self raising flour

4oz of vegan suet

Pinch of salt

A little non-dairy milk

Fry the leeks, garlic and onion in a little oil for 5 minutes or until lightly softened.

Put the leeks into a bowl, add the the rest of the ingredients, mix well and set aside.

Onto the pastry: mix together the salt, suet and self-raising flour. Then add the non-dairy milk, a teaspoon at a time, kneading with your hands as you go. You should end up with a lump of dough that comes away cleanly from the side of the bowl and isn't wet or tacky to the touch.

Flour a chopping board or work surface, and a rolling pin (a wine bottle will do if you haven't got one to hand!) and roll out the pastry until it's about 25cm by 35cm, and about 3mm thick.

Spread the leek and tofu mixture over the pastry, leaving a border of about 2cm around the edge.

Roll up the pastry fairly tightly - like you're making a swiss roll - and then place the completed roll on a greased baking sheet, with the join on the bottom. Tuck the raggedy short end under the roll, so you've got a neat rectangle in front of you.

Brush with non-dairy milk.

Put the whole thing in the oven at about 180C for 40-45 minutes, or until browned and crispy all over.

Cut into slices and serve with some tart green veggies - wilted spinach or kale would do the trick, I reckon.

Below - the uncut roly poly, Above - the roly poly with a couple of slices cut in.

leek

Smoked tofu and leek roly poly

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I love Christmas unashamedly - the twinkly lights, the nights out, the time off work - but when it comes to the lacuna between the big day itself and the return to the office, I find myself a bit jaded on the food front.

After having been repeatedly assaulted by salty or fatty treats and having become oblivious to their charms, suddenly now they're pretty much all I want to eat at the moment.

So I duly turned into a fatty, salty treat for the new year: savoury shortbread.

I am sad to report these savoury biscuits don't really keep well at all, so get them eaten as soon after you've made them. It's as good excuse as any for a bit of gluttony, I reckon.

They're good served with soup in case you wanted some inspiration on how to dispatch them - I ate a good few with a bowl of aubergine and tomato soup. Unfortunately, the soup in question - while tasting quite good - looked like a cross between a pete bog and a monster from Star Trek, so I'll spare you the recipe for that one.

Carrot and sage savoury shortbread

Makes about 10 biscuits

Ingredients

2oz vegan margarine

4 and a half oz self raising flour

A couple of generous handfuls of nutritional yeast

A medium carrot (say about 2 or 3oz when topped and tailed), grated

Half a teaspoon of vegan broth powder

A sprig or two of sage (about 10 to 12 leaves), chopped

A little water

Salt and pepper

How you do it

Rub the flour into the marge until you have something that looks a bit like breadcrumbs.

Add the nutritional yeast, grated carrot, chopped sage, broth powder, salt and pepper to the mix and stir until combined.

Add a little water (start with a dessertspoon or two) to the mix and work in. You're aiming to end up with a ball of dough that comes away cleanly in a single solid lump. If it's too dry, add more water, a teaspoon at a time. If it's too wet, add more flour.

Once you've got a ball of dough that's cohering happily together, wrap it and stick it in the fridge for an hour.

Once it's had time to cool, get it out and roll it out on a floured board until it's about 3mm thick or so.

Cut out rounds (if you don't have a cookie cutter to hand, use a wine glass) from the shortbread and lay onto a greased baking tray.

Cook in a 200C oven for about 15 to 18 minutes, until the edge of the shortbread is crispy and starting to brown.

biscuit