Flicking the Vs: 2015

When my folks come around later this week, we're going to have a traditional Christmas dinner - nut roast, roast spuds, sprouts, the works. But for Mr Flicking the Vs' family, it's less of an old school affair - we just have a load of different bits and pieces on the table, bit of bread and salad, everyone gets involved buffet style.

I've already made the cake for dessert ahead of time, and so I thought I'd get stuck into making the savoury stuff as well for good measure. First up, I thought I'd make some palm heart pies. I've made and frozen them to good effect before, and the theme for this Christmas is very much 'make stuff you can't mess up'.

Only I sort of did mess it up. I went out in the terrible weather yesterday to go and pick up some yoghurt for the sauce that goes in the pies. When I got back home, I thumbed straight to the recipe, only to find that there wasn't any yoghurt required.

Still, the yoghurt-less pies turned out rather lovely. First, get one red onion fried off, then add a few sundried tomatoes, and a tin of palm hearts, chopped up. Then stir in 1tbsp of flour, cook it off for a bit, 250mls of non-dairy milk goes in next, and you have your pie filling. Cut out some circles of ready made puff pastry for the mini pies, fill them, and stick them in the oven for 20 minutes at 200C.

Due to the wonders of ready made puff pastry (Jus-Rol, you're jus the best), the pies turned out none too bad.

So the pies worked out well, but now due to my shopping list foul up, I had a huge whacking great tub of yoghurt to use, and I don't even like yoghurt, really. What to do with it? Christmas cake it up. Add raisins, mixed spice, and make it taste all festive.

I had a bowl of yoghurt for breakfast, with a big dollop of Christmas compote on top, and wondered why I don't eat yoghurt more often.

Christmas compote for yoghurt

Ingredients
One bramley apple, peeled and grated
One small carrot, peeled and grated
30g of raisins and dried cranberries, or similar
Five glace cherries, quartered
The zest and juice of one small orange
1tbsp of light brown sugar (or more to taste)
One clove
Pinch of allspice, cinnamon, ground ginger
Small handful of chopped nuts

How you do it
Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and warm over a low heat for 30 minutes or so (don't worry about stirring it all the time, just the last five minutes or so - before that, just the odd stir is just the job.)
Once all the liquid has cooked off, and the compote is shiny and thick, take the clove out. Then, stick a load on your yoghurt, add some nuts and maple syrup and go feel impressed with yourself.

breakfast

A Christmas compote recipe for topping your yoghurt

When my folks come around later this week, we're going to have a traditional Christmas dinner - nut roast, roast spuds, sprouts, the wor...

Remember yesterday I made a sandwich that had brussels sprouts and Tofurkey in? Dear reader, I think I may have a problem. I did exactly the same thing again today - I took some Tofurkey and brussels sprouts and put them in a dish they were never meant to be in.

That okonomiyaki recipe that I've been living on recently? I put brussels sprouts and Tofurky in that, and made a sort of car crash between a Christmas dinner and a Japanese pancake.

You know what? It sort of worked. I stand by earlier statement that you can pretty much put any veggies in an okonomiyaki and it tastes good.

You also know what? I think I'm over Tofurky and brussels sprouts in stuff. If you see me trying the same thing again, take me by the hand and lead me away from the stove.

Still, here's a visual memoriam to a dish I can't imagine I'll ever cook again, and to the restorative power of sriracha and vegan salad cream:

But away from this madness, I actually made something decent. Yeah, I know, I was surprised too.

I like to give Mr Flicking the Vs' ma homemade biscuits every Christmas and I decided this year, I was going to try making some biscotti. I did a test run the other day to see if I could pull it off. I made a basic biscotti dough and added clementine juice, almonds and cranberries. It was... fine. OK, nothing special. Fine. But I really like Mr Flicking the Vs' ma, and wanted to make something really delicious.

So I tried again, and made a basic biscotti dough with hazelnuts and dark chocolate. They turned out really well - all the taste of a Ferrero Rocher in a biscotti. The thing I love about biscotti is that they can last for ages. Only if you make ones that taste like Ferrero Rocher, I don't think they'll be staying in the biscuit tin for a long time.

Hazelnut and chocolate biscotti

Ingredients

250g self raising flour

100g vegan caster sugar

half a tsb of bicarb

Pinch of salt

One flax egg - one tbsp if ground flax in three tbsp of water

2tbsp of neutral tasting vegetable oil

3tbsps of apple juice

30g of hazelnuts, roughly chopped

50g of vegan dark chocolate, roughly chopped (or you could use chocolate chips)

How you do it

Preheat the oven to 160C and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.

Mix together the flour, sugar, bicarb, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine the flax egg, oil and apple juice.

Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, then work them together into a non-sticky dough. The dough shouldn't be wet, but if you feel it's not coming together after being worked a fair bit, add a little water half a teaspoon at a time and then work the dough again.

Once it's all come together, add in the hazelnuts and dark chocolate and knead the dough until the goodies are equally distributed.

Then, turn the dough out onto a flour work surface and divide the dough into two.

Using your hands, shape the dough into two lozenges, about 25cm by 5cm and 2cm or 3cm thick.

Put the dough into the oven for 30 minutes.

After that time, take the dough out of the oven and leave it to rest for 10 minutes. Turn the oven down by 20 degrees.

After ten minutes, slice the dough into slices on the diagonal, about 1cm or 2cm thick.

Spread the slices out, cut side down, and put into the oven for 10 minutes.

After that time, turn the slices over so the other cut side is on the baking sheet and leave to cook for another 10 minutes.

Then, leave the biscotti to cool. Once they're that, brew up some tea and get dunking.

biscotti

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Mr Flicking the Vs likes walking. A lot. My idea of a good walk is a brief one that ends in a pub, his is something that I'd normally get sponsored due to the number of miles it involves.

After walking from Canary Wharf to Islington high street, Mr Flicking the Vs had decided to end the walk with vegan cake and coffee. The only place we could find with the required plant-based cake was Romeo's Gluten Free Bakery. I don't avoid gluten, but I'm happy to eat any vegan cake, whatever it's gluten status.

When we stopped in, there was only one vegan cake on offer - the chocolate cake. After marching across London, I wouldn't much have cared if it was made of thistles and mould, but still, I was very happy to see a chunk of chocolate laid down in front of me.

We ordered two coffees and one slab of cake. The server gave us two forks - which kind of obliged me to share. Damn you, server - I was going to shovel the whole thing down my gullet unaided. Now I had to give my other half the other half.

Here's the cake in question:

The verdict from Mr Flicking the Vs: "nice, but a bit dry." Man of few words, but he did sum it up pretty well. Tasted pretty good though, and I ate the whole thing, so what's a little aridity between friends?

Back at home, I was pondering what to do with some leftover pastry. Usually, it's cheese-less straws -love those nooch-coated fellas - that mop up pastry scraps. Only recently I'd been to the local health food shop and coming back with a packet of sausage mix for no good reason, I thought I'd make some sausage rolls (that, and Green Gourmet Giraffe posts beautiful sausage roll recipes that always make me drool a little bit.)

The packet mix was a bit on the bland side, so I tried fancying it up a bit with brazil nuts, seeds, and herbs and the end result was pretty good. Next time there's a football match down the pub or a kid's party that needs catering, I'm turning up with a plate of sausage rolls, ketchup optional. Only I'll be using Green Gourmet Giraffe's recipe instead.

And lastly, I love a good kombucha. The only thing I love more than a good kombucha is a good kombucha with money off - so when I saw a shop selling this chia kombucha for a not-wallet-busting price I thought it would be rude not to try it.

Verdict: my student budget may preclude this from becoming a regular purchase, but clearly mashing up kombucha with chai was only ever going to be a good thing.

cake

Sausage rolls and a new vegan cake discovery

Mr Flicking the Vs likes walking. A lot. My idea of a good walk is a brief one that ends in a pub, his is something that I'd normally ge...

Oh Brighton, how do I love thee, let me count the ways.

One, you have a great beach.

Two, you have lovely places to eat.

Three, you have a vegan co-op.

There are many more reasons to love Brighton, but somewhere that is so self-consciously pro alternativeness and veganism in all forms is always going to be high on my love list.

I went a few weeks ago, and this is what greeted me - how could I not be impressed? It wasn't a warm day by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a beautiful one.

After a walk to Hove and back, as is traditional when me and Mr Flicking the Vs head to Brighton, we're always hungry, and more often than not, we head to Iydea. (There are two in Brighton but we always end up at the same one on Western Road, because it's quieter and bigger!)

The thing I love about Iydea is you get to pick each bit of the meal - your main, the sides, and the toppings.

I picked arancini (the first time I've seen vegan arancini apart from on Dandelion Vegan's blog!), potato salad, coronation coleslaw, and salsa.

I love potato salad and coleslaw together. They were the staples of salad plates for me when I was a kid, and I still love them even now! Arancini - or rice balls if you'd rather - are more of a new thing for me, but they were just as tasty as I hoped, and left me in the warm carb-overload fuzz that good meals will do. According to the menu, there was vegan cheese in there - I couldn't taste it myself, but I'm not a fan of anything readymade that's not nut-based, so no bad thing I didn't spot its presence.

When we came out of Iydea, the sky was looking a little less inviting...

But that didn't stop me going and fetching an ice cream from Boho Gelato. My only gripe with the wonderful ice cream parlour is that they don't label up their vegan options (they're always in the same position, but still, why not advertise the fact that you're down with the plant based folk?)

As well as chocolate ice cream (never a bad thing), there was also coffee hazelnut among the vegan choices. I had both, and you're right, I was wise to do so. They were both fab.

So, in amongst all these days of long, sad revision, I think about Brighton and how soon I can get back there. Once my exams are over, I'll be walking down that beach quicker than you can say 'what percentage constitutes a pass mark?'

Brighton