Flicking the Vs: June 2012

This is a simple post, in honour of a simple ingredient: rhubarb.

I've been eating rhubarb as long as I can remember eating: my parents turned a little bit of our garden over to growing veggies when I was a tiny kid. Whatever else failed to grow, rhubarb was always there in abundance, huge spade-like leaves taking over the garden and hiding the blushing pinkish stems underneath.

We moved house, but the vegetable patch didn't move with us. Rhubarb lingered on as a feature of my childhood diet, ever so often in crumble form, before gradually dwindling away.

Luckily, in the last few years, both friends of mine and my boyfriend's mother have established vegetable patches of their own and planted rhubarb in them. As its wont to do, it's flourished, and I've been the beneficiary of the excess stalks.

"Take some home with you, won't you?"they say, wrestling them out of the ground, and into hastily dug out plastic bags for me to cart away with me.

Here's my most recent discovery, rhubarb in ginger:

I chop the stems into 5cm lengths, pour over some juice from a jar of ginger in syrup and roast until tender.

I've put it on my porridge, and poured over custard. You know what I think it would be best in though? A nice rhubarb crumble...

dessert

Roasted rhubarb in ginger

This is a simple post, in honour of a simple ingredient: rhubarb. I've been eating rhubarb as long as I can remember eating: my parent...

Not so long ago, I ended up in Camden. Camden, for my non-London readers, is a bit of north London known for its markets and alternative scene.

It's miles away by tube from my north London home, which means I don't end up there as often as I like, but whenever I do, it's always a pleasure.

One of the reasons I like it so much is its unashamed embracing of the weird, wonderful, fringe and niche mean you can always get a decent vegan meal. And not a vegan by accident meal, a real live vegan meal loudly and proudly marked as such.

I ended up stopping for dinner at My Village, a little cafe on Chalk Farm Road for a bit of falafel wrap, one of the vegan options it had:

My Village's menu was short: soup, salads, falafel and a few combinations of the three. Falafel for a vegan is inescapable so I tend to steer away from cooking it at home, so that when I'm out and it's my only option, eating it is a pleasure, not a chore.

And eating this one was definitely a pleasure - not the best falafel in the world, but decent and full of crunchy veg.

It was somewhat overshadowed by my second gorging stop in Camden, Inspiral Cafe.

I don't know why I've never been there before. I think it's probably because it's always full to bursting with people who've had the same cracking idea of getting some grand vegan food in, only just a bit earlier than me.

I stopped in for some cake, of which Inspiral has many, and they all look amazing. My slice of amazingness was this rather lovely raw banoffee pie.

It was a Goldilocks of a dessert: not too sweet, not too rich, not too heavy, but just right in all measures, without any of the telltale signs of sub-par raw puddings: too crunchy, too savoury, too effortful.

Not this raw dessert: this was perfect in every way: fairy light of topping, pitch perfect biscuit-type base and a fudgy middle. Wonderful - next time anyone disses raw food (as I admit I have, wrongly, in the past) shut them up with a slice of this.

Inspiral? Inspired.

My Village Cafe
(no website)
37 Chalk Farm Road
London
NW1 8AJ
020 7485 4996

Inspiral Cafe
http://www.inspiralled.net/
250 Camden High Street
London
NW1 8QS
020 3370 3797

cafe

Camden - a gorging tour of north London

Not so long ago, I ended up in Camden. Camden, for my non-London readers, is a bit of north London known for its markets and alternative sce...

I mentioned last week a visit to Brighton, and to a sushi restaurant there that was meant to be vegan-friendly. I tried their food, and didn't think it was a gesture of friendship by any measure.

Still what better way to cheer myself up after a disappointing dinner than a big slice of cake. And I mean big. So-big-it-deservces-its-own-postcode big. BIIIIIIIG.

Step forward Lydea, a veggie buffet in Brighton's Laines. Check out this bad boy:

It totally wiped out any memories of the sushi, and replaced it with a big, cake-crumbed smiled.

It was rich, and heavy, and delicious. It had fresh raspberries tempered with fluro icing - so cute! It could have realistically been dessert one day and breakfast the next, that's how big it was. Of course, it didn't last that long. I smuggled it off to a nearby park and quietly troughed it, happy as Larry.

My other Brighton cake experiment was a slice of raw Key Lime pie from Infinity Foods, a whole foods store, also in the Laines.

After the behemoth of cake from Lydea, Infinity Foods' pie did make it to breakfast. And a pleasant breakfast it was, but it just didn't hold a candle to the almond raspberry joy above.

Here's all the details for my cake experiment, below. Infinity Food was fine. Lydea? You'll be telling the grandkids about this one.

Lydea
http://www.iydea.co.uk/
17 Kensington Gardens
North Laine
Brighton
East Sussex
BN1 4AL
01273 667 992

Infinity Foods
infinityfoods.co.uk/
25 North Road
Brighton
East Sussex
BN1 1YA
01273 603563

Brighton

A tale of two cakes

I mentioned last week a visit to Brighton, and to a sushi restaurant there that was meant to be vegan-friendly. I tried their food, and didn...

Look at this plate of sushi from Moshi Moshi in Brighton. Looks good, right?

Alas, it may have looked good, but it didn't taste quite that way.

Me and my other half rocked up to Moshi Moshi after deciding we wouldn't go to any of our usual favourite Brighton eating places and would try something new. After a quick peruse of HappyCow, we picked Moshi Moshi - although it's not vegan, or even veggie, it has a lot of options for both, clearly marked on the menu, and I was craving some sushi.

Early signs were mixed: there was a sushi train (I'm a sucker for picking my dinner off a conveyor belt, cheesy as it may be), the service was perky, and the red and black decor was ripped straight out of The Big Book of Japanese Design Cliches. The building was also in an oddly empty-looking square smack dab in the centre of Brighton. Where were the shops? Where were the people? Had 28 Days Later kicked off and no-one had told us?

As well as fake-meat type dishes, like Redwood duck teriyaki or Redwood fish udon, Moshi Moshi's menu had an all-vegan sushi platter called Faroes. It promised all sorts of vegan goodies: mushroom teriyaki & natto and spring onion gunkan; tofu teriyaki nigiri; inari sushi; ume plum & cucumber and tofu, mizuna, sun dried tomato, red onion & cucumber maki, as well as the usual soy, wasabi and delicate sliced ginger on the side.

I started off with the natto and spring onion gunkan. I didn't expect to like it, and I didn't. Nothing on this earth can convince me that natto isn't just a cruel joke of soy beans wrapped in snot, and Moshi Moshi's gunkan didn't dislodge that thought. The spring onions might have been able to mitigate the horror, but I couldn't see, nor taste, any. Just that snotty, snotty natto - not nice.

To wipe away the experience, I cracked on with the tofu teriyaki nigri. I love teriyaki. You just can't go wrong with it. Or so I thought.

The tofu teriyaki tasted of precisely sod all. There was a vague beige colour to the tofu that suggested it had once been introduced to some soy sauce. Perhaps they swapped business cards. It wasn't a successful meeting either way, leaving just some disappointingly bland tofu in its wake.

The lack of taste was a defining feature of the Faroes sushi set. Take a look at the mahogany wonder that is the mushroom teriyaki - looks good, right? It wasn't. It was another curiously underpowered sushi. I don't know what Moshi Moshi put in their teriyaki. And neither will you if you order it, because there's not enough taste to work it out.

The ume sushi didn't taste of ume, the inari was adequate, and I can't tell you anything about the rest of the sushi because it was so underwhelmingly uninteresting, I've forgotten everything about it, apart from the thought that nagged at me while I ate: "So this is why you never see sun dried tomato in sushi."

The other nagging thought that persisted for at least half the meal was "why is everything so cold?" I think the rice, or perhaps the sushi itself, was kept in the fridge before it turned up to insult my lunchtime. Error.

Keeping things cool blunts their flavours, and if you're making sushi that tastes of nothing, leaving it in the fridge will just compound the problem.

Moshi Moshi did have vegan desserts. Taking my sushi platter as a guide, I decided not to stick around to try them.

Moshi Moshi did suceed in killing my craving for sushi, but I wouldn't say it satisfied it.

Moshi Moshi
http://www.moshibrighton.co.uk/
Opticon, Bartholomew Square
Brighton
East Sussex
BN1 1JS
01273 719 195

Brighton

Moshi Moshi restaurant review Brighton

Look at this plate of sushi from Moshi Moshi in Brighton. Looks good, right? Alas, it may have looked good, but it didn't taste qu...

Another recipe I put together for the Jubilee weekend. It's a take on Bakewell tart, named after England's last non-royal head of state, Oliver Cromwell*.

It's not much to look at, but it wasn't half bad. And, if you're a lazy sod like me and use ready made pastry (thank you, Jus Rol, for making many of your pastries vegan), then it doesn't take long to put together either.

Unlike the traditional Bakewell tart, which uses raspberry jam, Cromwell tart has swaps it for marmalade for a more sweet-and-tart effect. (For the traditionalists, just use raspberry jam for the more standard Bakewell, or cherry would work well too).

Like a bit of a dunce, I forgot to blind bake the pastry before adding the filling. Doing so doesn't alter the taste, but it does alter the look - hence the slightly melted-looking crust.

Another side note - Cromwell tart keeps really well. We were still eating nice, soft slices a week after I made it.

Cromwell tart

Ingredients

One recipe's worth of shortcrust pastry, to line a 23cm tart ring (use your favourite own recipe, or just buy some ready-made)
50g icing sugar
50g caster sugar
75g vegan margarine (I used Pure)
100g ground almonds
1tsp baking powder
1 pot of Alpro vanilla dessert
Zest of half a lemon
60ml non-dairy milk
Marmalade, or other jam

How you do it
Grease a 23cm flan tin.
Roll out the pastry and blind bake according to your recipe.
Meanwhile, cream together the sugars and margarine, then stir in the almonds, baking powder, lemon zest, and mix well.
Stir in the Alpro and non-dairy milk and mix well, until you have a gooey mixture.
When your pastry is ready, cover the base in a thin layer of marmalade or jam (or a thick layer, I won't tell.)
Top with the almond mix, and if you like, flaked almonds on top.
Bake at 180C until done (I forgot to write down how long for when I was making the recipe, but I'd guess 25 minutes or so).

*Yes, I know he's a bit of a tool, but show me a head of state in the 16th, 17th or 18th century (and indeed later) that wasn't. And royalty gets loads of stuff named after them - why not a 'commoner' too?

almonds

Cromwell tart recipe - like Bakewell tart, but vegan

Another recipe I put together for the Jubilee weekend. It's a take on Bakewell tart, named after England's last non-royal head of st...

Japanese food is my favourite, favourite food. So when I was leafing through my cookbook stash for the next candidate for a 'one week cooking from', I was quite pleased when I decded it was time to do Japanese Cooking: Contemporary and Traditional.

First up, Potstickers. Oh yes, little pillows of loveliness. I've made potstickers before, with fillings including gingery tofu (win) and tamarindy pumpkin puree (not so win). This was my first go with dehydrated soy mince, an ingredient I don't tend to use much because it doesn't really have much of a flavour of its own. But, as the potstickers prove, if you chuck enough ginger, soy sauce, shiitake and spring onions, even soy granules can become a deserving potsticker filling.

Next up, a couple of side dishes, including Sesame Potatoes. It looks a little like something that's been dragged out of a tar pit, no? You think I shouldn't have used black sesame seeds? You could be right. Still, they were lovely too, if a little damp. You think I shouldn't have left boiled spuds in their steamy pan after I finished cooking them? You may have another point.

Daikon and Tofu Pouches in Miso Soup? Don't mind if I do.

This one came as a bit of a surprise: I like miso a lot, but this I just loved - truly more than the sum of its parts. The chewy tofu pouches, crisp daikon and sweet miso were such a nice combination, I could quite happily have put it in a pint glass and chugged it.

My next foray into Japanese Cooking was another revisit of a dish I've made more than once and in more than one different way: Tofu Steak. JCCT's version uses a mix of some of the classic Japanese flavourings: soy, mirin, sake, garlic and sesame. I cooked it up with some onigiri and spinach with a tahini dressing. The result was, to put it mildly, SO GOOD. So maybe it doesn't look amazing, but who cares? It's not going to stay on the plate long enough to bother anyone.

I also cooked Sukiyaki, but I haven't included a picture of it as it looked more like a Doctor Who villain than a dinner. The idea of sukiyaki appeals - slices veggies, tofu and noodles in a pot in their own individual little piles and cooked in a soy broth. I used, as the recipe called for, shirataki noodles, and I think that'r what through this dish off - the texture is just a little weird, like gristle or something. *Shudder*. That said, I only had half the ingredients the recipe asked for, so once again, my bad.

As I said, Japanese is my favourite food ever. My week cooking from Japanese Cooking: Contemporary and Traditional just made it even more favouriter.

cook book

One week cooking from Japanese Cooking: Contemporary & Traditional

Japanese food is my favourite, favourite food. So when I was leafing through my cookbook stash for the next candidate for a ' one week c...

My boyfriend often rhapsodises about a bakery that he used to go to as a child. It roasted its own coffee and so always smelled amazing, he told me, and he'd be taken in there and allowed to pick up a pastry as a treat. Cheese straws were by all accounts one of his favourites.

Obviously, I don't cook with cheese, but that didn't stop me attempting to trigger a Proustian return to the joy of cheesy pastry for him.

Here's my first go at trying to do just that, created for our recent Jubilee picnic:

It's a simple recipe and it looks like just like this:

Cheesy twists

Ingredients

One sheet of vegan puff pastry (I used Jus Rol - I think it worked out around 50g/2oz)

3 tbps nutritional yeast

1 tsp onion powder

1tsp garlic powder

pinch or two of mustard powder

1/2 tsb bouillon powder

Salt and pepper

Nigella seeds

Non-dairy milk

How you do it

Preheat your oven to 220C, grease a couple of baking trays.

Mix together the nutritional yeast, onion powder, garlic powder, mustard powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

Unroll the pastry sheet and brush one side lightly with non-dairy milk (I used almond milk, but I think most types would work).

Sprinkle half of the yeasty mixture over the top and press down lightly. Sprinkle with nigella seeds if using.

Flip the sheet over and sprinkle on the other half of the mix, and more nigella seeds if you fancy.

Cut the sheet into 1-2cm strips. Twist each strip still it's all curled up, then lay them down on the baking sheet.

Bake for 10-15 minutes or until brown.

cheesy

Cheesy twists - a vegan snack recipe

My boyfriend often rhapsodises about a bakery that he used to go to as a child. It roasted its own coffee and so always smelled amazing, he ...

When I read other vegan blogs, I yearn for the photography skills of their authors: I like Have Cake, WIll Travel or Oh Ladycakes as much for their excellent photos as their for their excellent cakes.

But not all food can be as beautiful. I present pasticcio, the ugly duckling of the dinner world.

I apologise in advance - if I'd have known this would have turned out so good, I would have recorded the recipe properly and taken some better pictures. Still, it was darn tasty, so I thought I'd share it with you anyway - I know you're not the kind of person who judges a book by its cover and you can see beyond the wonky appearance to the sweet dish beyond.

Pasticcio, so Wikipedia tells me, is a Greek version of an Italian dish. It's sort of somewhere between lasagne and moussaka - pasta and mince topped with a bechamel sauce.

My version went a little like this: fry off a finely-chopped large shallot and three cloves of garlic then, when they're softened, add in a chopped red pepper, a couple of chopped tomatoes, two diced carrots, a bay leaf and generous handfuls of fresh oregano and thyme. When that's all softened a bit more, say five or ten minutes later, find some TVP.

Add a generous amount of the soya mince, some red wine and passata, tomato puree, red wine vinegar, and if you're so inclined, a bit of Marmite. Leave to simmer until the TVP sucks up all the liquid. If it gets too dry, add more wine, passata or vegetable stock. You want it wetter than you'd normally make it, as the pasta will soak up some of the liquid too during cooking.

In the meantime, boil some pasta - tubular types are traditional, apparently - and then drain and set to one side. Once the mince mix and pasta are both ready, combine them, and put in an ovenproof dish.

Put your oven on to 190C.

Find yourself a box of Mori Nu silken tofu and a couple of handfuls of pine nuts. Blend together til smooth, add in a few tablespoons of nutritional yeast, and a generous grating of nutmeg.

Spread the tofu mix on the mince and pasta, and bake in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is browned.

bechamel

Pasticcio recipe - or it's all Greek pasta bake to me

When I read other vegan blogs, I yearn for the photography skills of their authors: I like Have Cake, WIll Travel or Oh Ladycakes as much...

If you're in England at the moment, you'll be unable to escape the bindweed-like appearance of union jack bunting and flags everywhere - yes, should the UK economy be judged on its ability to shift red, white and blue tat, we'd be laughing. It's the Jubilee - Queen Elizabeth's 60 years on the throne - and pro-monarchy sentiment is unavoidable.

It's a difficult time to be a republican*, avoiding all the yay-Elizabeth-II backslapping and biting my tongue at the never-ending flag-waving nonsense.

Still, there's been one notable compensation for the Jubilee in the form of an extra bank holiday. Whoop!

Rather than battle with all the Jubilee crowds thronging the banks of the Thames in the pouring rain, and with our street showing no interest in a street party, we opted for a picnic indoors, free of Queenly mentions.

Having not been born when it was the Silver Jubilee, and with only the vaguest memories of Charles and Di's wedding, I asked my mum to fill in the blanks food-wise so I could knock up something appropriate. In typical Cockney plain-speaking fashion, she said: "I remember the food. It was shit."

Thanks mum.

So here, somewhere between retro and please-no-more-divine-right is what we had.

We've got champagne (well, champagne-esque fizzy wine), red cabbage coleslaw, cheesy twists, sausages on sticks, vegan Wotsits (yes, they do exist - get down to Vx to buy them), broccoli with peanut and sesame dressing, Crowell Tart (like Bakewell Tart only more anti-monarchy) and, in a rebuff to the typical Coronation Chicken, some Abdication Chick peas in vol-au-vents.

I'll be posting the picnic recipes as and when I can. I still have no love for the monarchy, but I'm a big fan of picnics. And days off.

*Note to my US readers - that's republican in the sense I'd like to see the UK with an elected head of state, rather than Republican in the sense of not a Democrat.

broccoli