Flicking the Vs: February 2014

Not so long ago, I moved into a new place. In return for moving out to the 'burbs, I got a larger flat with a lovely kitchen. I felt giddy from all the storage space - I had to restrain myself from going crazy and buying all the kitchen gadgets I'd been dreaming of.

OK, so maybe I wasn't that restrained. I went out and bought myself a dehydrator.

There seem to be two kinds out there - fancy-dan ones that cost a couple of hundred pounds and up, and cheapo, easy to break ones for around £30. You can guess which one I went for (hint: champagne tastes, lager budget. It was the latter.)

I was a bit worried that the poor dehydrator would suffer the same fate as so many of its gadget breathren - left to gather space in a box in some unloved cupboard until it's rediscovered by someone saying "why on earth did I buy this?"

Happily, that's not been the case. Me and my dehydrator are very happy together and we've been spending a lot of time together ever since we met. Sure, it's a bit of a space hog, but I can overlook that without too much trouble.

The best reason to get a dehydrator? KALE CHIIIIIIIPS!

They sell those for £4 a packet in some of the whole foods shops (or in Whole Foods' shops, in fact!) Now I've got a dehydrator, I can just knock up a load of kale chips at home for a few pennies. These were made with purple kale I got from Borough market with a mix of soy sauce, tahini, rice vinegar and mirin on, dehydrated for a couple of hours. I think them being purple makes them taste better in some way.

Then there's also homemade Nakd bar bites for a bit of a sweet treat. These ones are a mix of dried dates and figs, and whatever mixed nuts I had in the cupboard - peanuts and almonds I think. They took a little while to dehydrate, but they were lovely when they were done.

Also joining my new dehydrator roster are beetroot chips - I used candy beets because they mean less purple juice to clean up, and because they look so pretty. They make a nice alternative to potato chips, and they're awesome rawsome with a bit of hummus.

That's three for three on my first dehydrator recipes - I'm very pleased so far. Any suggestions for what to make next? Send em over!

beetroot

My first attempts at dehydrator recipes

Not so long ago, I moved into a new place. In return for moving out to the 'burbs, I got a larger flat with a lovely kitchen. I felt gid...

The joy of having a decent cameraphone on you at all times is that you never miss a chance to snap something beautiful you get at a restaurant or something tasty you've just made. The downside is that you end up with a waxy build-up of random shots food on your phone you feel obliged to purge in an equally random blog post.

Join me, dear readers, for a new series: Crap I Found on My Phone. Some of this stuff is antediluvian, so you can play Guess What's In It along with me.

First up, this bowl of what appears to be a mix of quinoa, squash, tomato, parsley, black beans, and kale. It's the sort of dish I cook up when I imagine I have to placate the health gods: look, oh great ones, beans and greens on one plate! Please forgive me for my continued worship of cake!

Worship of cake that may have taken the form of this:

It's the Inspiral raw blackout cake, picked up from Whole Foods. It comes in a cute little jar, and because it's raw, it allows you to think you're actually eating some form of health food. At least, that's what I tell myself. Next up: work out the mental tricks needed to convince myself that as beer is made of hops and yeast, it can somehow be counted towards my five a day.

Also excavated from my phone was this picture of raspberry pancakes:

These were a surprise breakfast treat made by a great friend of mine when I stayed the weekend at her house. We stayed up late playing zombie-themed computer games, and when I awoke, there was a whole pile of lovely raspberry pancakes ready for me.

I grant you, they may not look like food-styled beauties, but I'd already eaten platefuls of them with such speed, it took super-human restraint to pause for a moment, pull out my phone and take a picture. They were lovely and pillowy and sharp from the fruit. A friend with pancakes is a friend indeed.

Next up, another Borough market vegetable buying expedition that ended with me having bought something cool I had no idea what to do with: a big bag of pied bleu mushrooms. They have a lovely faint blue colour, and a lovely bouncy texture.

I decided to put them to use in a recipe that originally featured in the Guardian's top 10 cauliflower recipes (scroll down to the bottom - it's the roasted cauliflower tart with oat-walnut crust and lemon herb filling recipe).

I followed the recipe but subbed out the cauliflower for the pied bleus and went from there. I had been planning to make it more of a quiche using silken tofu, but after my blender started making a funny noise, I fished out from amongst it all a peg. Yep, a common or garden clothes peg, which I can only assume was in the Mori-Nu box somewhere. Has anyone else had that happen?!

I decided to abandon the tofu and peg to the bin (I'm all for trying out new flavours, but trying splinters is a little too far out) and use the Guardian recipe. It turns out like this:

(It's in two halves because my other half is a mushroom phobe, so he got the tomato half.

The crust was amazing - far more interesting than the standard pastry, enlivened by the addition of walnuts and oats. The quiche-type filling also got bonus points for a) tasting nice and creamy without the need for silken tofu and b) not having a clothes peg in it.

I served it with a salad which is my new favourite: roast butternut squash and green pepper with spring greens, and a dressing made of equal quantities hummus and lime pickle.

I am firmly of the belief that lime pickle makes everything better. Luckily, it didn't have a lot of work to do with this tart.

cake

Random recipe roundup: Chocolate tart, mushroom quiche, raspberry pancakes and more

The joy of having a decent cameraphone on you at all times is that you never miss a chance to snap something beautiful you get at a restaura...

Another wondrous post dedicated to all the weird shit that lives at the back of your cupboard. Brace yourselves - oddments incoming!

As a vegan, do you tend to pick up weird and wonderful things on your travels that are so rare and magical you squirrel them away, waiting for the perfect recipe to use them in?

A lovely friend in Australia sent me a jar of this - vegan salted caramel sauce. I'd had this with me for months, waiting for the right moment to break the seal and dive into a pool of what I hoped would be caramel loveliness.

Alas, I didn't find the perfect opportunity, and the sell-by date crept up on me. So, with days to go til its end of life, I decided to get stuck in. The first thing I made was a dish I'd been wanting for ages - an ice cream sundae. I cracked open some vanilla Swedish Glace, added some bananas, some vegan squirty cream, and even the proverbial (and in this case literal) cherry on top.

I'd love to show you a picture, but it looked like a car crash of a dessert. Nonetheless, it was such a tasty car crash it didn't last long enough to photograph. It was just me and a spoon, unable to stop shovelling sweet, sweet glory down my cake hole.

For a second go at using up the caramel sauce, I revisited an old favourite - millionaire shortbread. Who doesn't like millionaire shortbread? If it's you, I just don't want to know you. I thought better of you than that.

Normally if I want a millionaire shortbread, I just crack open a box of Lazy Day's finest, but with the salt caramel sauce at hand, I decided to make my own.

I just used this old shortbread recipe with the fat dialled down and the result pressed into a tart pan and baked til crisp. While it was still warm, I poured on the caramel sauce, left it for a bit, then topped it with vegan dark chocolate melted in a bain marie (or double boiler to you New World folks).

Looks OK, huh? It tasted phenomenal - sweet and salt in a beautiful crispy union.

The other jar of wow-they-make-that-vegan-too? that I put to work recently was jar of plant-based caviar. The Caviart caviar is (I think) based on seaweed and agar, and has been in my cupboard for a million years.

Alas, dear readers, the caviar was not as successful as the caramel. I tried it a few times, including with some sour cream on a bagel, and was a bit disappointed. The taste was sooooooo strong, it was like your favourite mushroom's evil twin. It's almost delicious, but goes right past fun and ends up in nasty.

So, while I was impressed that you get all sorts of unexpected stuff in vegan form, even caviar, I won't be buying it again.

As for the salted caramel sauce, I'll be buying that by the boat-load.

biscuit

Vegan caviar and caramel

Another wondrous post dedicated to all the weird shit that lives at the back of your cupboard. Brace yourselves - oddments incoming! As a ...

There's nothing to link the dishes I've been making recently, other than the usual desperate need (I love the sound best before dates make as they rush past) to clear out the oddments that I found in the back of my cupboard and fridge before they achieve sentience and try to take over the world.

Having previously slated London's Borough Market for not having enough to please veggies and vegans, I'm being forced to change my opinions. While I maintain it's not overly burdened with lovely veg*n treats, you can't beat it as a place to pick up some phenomenal veg.

I managed to unburden one of the veggie stalls of a bunch of yellow tomatoes (if I call them sungold to they sound a bit fancier?) and a bunch of great white asparagus.

I love white asparagus when someone else prepares it, but I've only tried making it at home once. It was tough, and I didn't bother again. Turns out, you're meant to peel the stems of white asparagus before you cook it, so eating it doesn't feel like wrestling pipe cleaners down your gullet. What, you knew that? Really? It was a surprise to me! I know, I know, next I'll be asking for you to heat up my gazpacho or something.

Anyway, what do you do with (peeled) white asparagus, yellow tomatoes, too much broccoli and not enough time? You stick it all in the oven, roast it, and cover it with a mixture of breadcrumbs, ground pumpkin seeds and lemon rind.

Another week in Borough, I availed myself of another ingredient which had always been a bit of a mystery to me: the quince.

Aside from enjoying a bit of membrillo, I've never eaten or cooked with a quince. My only knowledge of quince comes from Edward Lear's poem The Owl and the Pussycat: "they dined on mince/ And slice of quince/ Which they ate with a runcible spoon." (If you don't know the poem, you need to remedy that. It's here!)

With two quinces and no runcible spoon in sight, I decided to get help from the spice cupboard.

I studded the quinces with cloves, and baked them face down in a mix of water, sugar and a couple of points of star anise.

It Kind of looks like something that should be on a pathologist's table, right?

Despite the kind of gory look of it, it was sweet and heady and far more interesting that baked fruit has a right to be. My only regret was not having enough custard on hand to drown this in the sauce-tsunami it deserved.

With the rest of the quince, I decided to make a pipián stew. It's a Mexican recipe that uses pumpkin seeds to make a big rich sauce that tastes uncommonly good. I got the recipe from the Wahaca cookbook my parents gave me for Christmas, where it's put to use covering butternut squash and, yes, quince. Alas, the recipe's not online, but search for 'pipián' and you'll get lots of alternatives.

I was stunned by how good the Wahaca pipián stew was. If left unsupervised, I would have been quite happy to down a pint of it. Instead, I had to content myself with craftily licking the bowl clean. Alas, quince doesn't reheat well, so if you fancy making pipián yourself, you'll just have to eat the whole lot in one go.

Take my word for it, eating a whole bowl of pipián is really no great hardship.