Flicking the Vs: September 2015

Vegan MoFo day 30 - Fusion challenge with a persimmon cake

Whaaaaaaa? It's MoFo over today! I actually had to double take when I looked at the calendar! I'm not sure what I'll be able to ...

chocolate

Vegan MoFo day 29 - Road trip with a side of imagination

This whole post is basically a lie. I don't do road trips. If I'm travelling, it's by train rather than road. And if I'm o...

For today's prompt, I had to first go and work out what the difference between a taco and a burrito really was. I mean, I like Mexican food, but the definition of each dish is a bit of a mystery.

Luckily, the internet is a wonderful place and can pretty much give you knowledge on any subject, as well as give you a load of extraneous crap you really didn't want in the first place. You decide which camp the 12-minute long video 'Taco vs Burrito debate-o-rama' falls into.

Having watched the video, I know now what the difference is. I also now know that I love both and wouldn't choose between the two.

That said, due to the ingredients in my fridge, I'm doing a taco recipe today. I hope the burritos don't get jealous...

Tofu tomatillo tacos

Ingredients

Marinaded tofu ingredients

Six or seven white peppercorns

Two garlic cloves, thinly sliced

Stems from a 30g bunch of coriander, chopped

Drizzle of olive oil

Half a deseeded green or jalapeno, finely chopped

Pinch of salt

400g block of tofu, towel pressed

Oil

Salsa verde ingredients

Five tomatillos, roughly chopped

Two spring onions, sliced

Juice of half a lime

Half a deseeded green or jalapeno, diced

Half of the coriander leaves

Pinch of salt

Slaw ingredients

Quarter/third of a pointed cabbage, finely sliced

Juice of half a lime

Few handfuls of green salad leaves

One medium carrot, grated

Handful of pumpkin seeds, dry roasted til they pop

Spring onion, sliced

Teaspoon of vegan mayonnaise

And...

Half an avocado, diced

Four or five corn tortillas

How you do it

Slice the tofu into four - you'll have four slices of tofu the same size in length and width, but a quarter as deep as when you begin.

Puree the other marinade ingredients using a blender or pestle and mortar, then smear thinly over the four tofu sliced. Leave to one side to marinade for as long as you can be bothered - an hour, overnight, whatever you like.

Next, take all the salsa verde ingredients and pulse a few times in a blender until you get a thick salsa.

Then, in a separate bowl, pour the lime juice over the cabbage and massage until it begins to get a little floppy. Set to one side.

Preheat your oven to 150C in case.

Now, slice the tofu slabs into thin strips. Warm up some oil in a pan, and stir fry until golden brown, cooking in batches if you need to.

Pop the tofu strips onto a baking tray and put in the oven to keep warm while you prepare the tacos.

Mix the rest of the slaw ingredients into the cabbage and stir thoroughly.

Onto each tortilla, put a handful or two of slaw, then a handful of tofu strips, then a healthy spoon of a salsa verde. Sprinkle over a few cubes of avocado.

EAT.

burrito

Vegan MoFo day 28 - taco vs burrito

For today's prompt, I had to first go and work out what the difference between a taco and a burrito really was. I mean, I like Mexican f...

courgette

Vegan MoFo day 27 - My favourite herb or spice? Tarragon all the way

Surely asking a vegan food blogger to name their favourite herb or spice is a bit like asking a parent to pick their favourite child or some...

chocolate

Vegan MoFo day 26 - It's cold and rainy so I made mousse

I'm treating today's MoFo - It's cold and rainy and there’s a snow drift outside your door! What are you going to make using th...

japanese

Vegan Mofo day 25 - my favourite cuisine is Japanese

I've never been to Japan. I'd like to very much. Until I can afford that plane ticket, I've just been travelling there through c...

beans

Vegan MoFo day 23 - autumn equinox eats: borlotti beans on toast

Happy MoFo day 23! Panicky side note: I can't believe we're already staring down the barrel of MoFo being over! Only seven more days...

I like the title of today's MoFo. I'm on an island and I have all my nutritional needs met? Sounds a lot like my life now, living in Britain and that. Last time I checked it was an island, albeit a pretty large one.

I'm kind of hoping that my nutritional needs are being met by fruits, veggies, pulses and all that sort of thing, rather than some sort of tiny supervitamin pill, because I've chosen three really frivolous things.

If I was being a grown-up, I'd be telling you about how I'd choose things like asparagus, ripe cantaloupe, or shiitake mushrooms. Maybe I'd say that with miso, garlic, and lemon, I could make all those plain veggies into a feast every night.

But those wouldn't be the things I choose. These would be:

Beer

When I was kid and I first tried beer, I couldn't believe people would drink it without a gun against their head.

Now, if I'm going to be a castaway, I'm not facing the future without all manner of beers at my disposal. I'm hoping it's a desert island I'm stuck on, because I'd fashion myself a hammock, crack open one of my endless supply of beers and watch the sunset. I'd love a crisp lager or a herbal wheat beer.

If it's some windswept place racked with sleet and desolate landscapes, then I'd build a fire and open a thick, bitter stout or a treacly porter.

If I'm not going anywhere for a while, I'm going to settle down to my island life with a beer in my hand.

This is one of my favourite beers at the moment - Pressure Drop's Wu Gang Chops the Tree. (There's a great story behind that wonky name - it's all explained here.)

Cake

You know all those questions you get the first time you tell someone that you're a vegan? I remember going out for dinner with someone for work who said with horror: "You're a vegan? That means you can't have caaaaaaake!" When I'd stopped laughing, I said that no, vegans very much have cake, and explained all the myriad things we can use to replace eggs.

London's got some great vegan cake places - Ms Cupcake, Cookies and Scream, I'm looking at you - and more and more non-vegan places are starting to stock plant-based delights too.

I can't walk past a place selling vegan cake without buying a slice. Nothing says indulgence - or happiness - like a good bit of sponge and icing. If I can have endless cake on this island of mine, then I'm not feeling so bad about being stuck there.

Tea

And if I'm going to be eating all that cake, I'm going to need a vat of tea.

For you folk that are coffee drinking, I get you. I like coffee too. First thing in the morning, there's a french press with my name on it and if I've been out for dinner, I want a sharp and bitter espresso to finish things off.

But for any other hot beverage to pass my face, it has to be tea. Green, white, herbal, or builders, I can't get through a day without innumerable cups.

Doesn't matter whether I'm having salad or haute cuisine, I want a cup of tea next to me. Being stuck on an island? I'd drink to that.

beer

Vegan MoFo day 21 - Three things I'd never live without: Cake, tea, and beer

I like the title of today's MoFo. I'm on an island and I have all my nutritional needs met? Sounds a lot like my life now, living in...

cake

Vegan mofo 20 - Veganizing Eve's pudding

Veganising an old family recipe initially seemed to be a bit tricky - I don't remember my parents, or grandparents, ever writing down a ...

lunch

Vegan MoFo day 19 - A ploughman's lunch on the go

The original lunch on the go was probably the ploughman's lunch. According to the conventional wisdom, the ploughman's lunch - a...

Today's MoFo prompt, cook a local dish, is a bit of a head scratcher. Does local mean from my town? My county? My country?

Given there's no good answers to that, I'm going to settle down with a recipe that's local to a particular part of England - albeit not my particular part of England.

Sussex Pond Pudding, as the name suggests, hails from the county of Sussex, one of the regions that border London. It's a very old recipe, apparently dating from the 17th century. You can kind of tell that, given the vast amount of fat and sugar that's in it - I guess people in the 1600s didn't live long enough to worry about diabetes or tooth decay!

The pond in the name refers to the thick caramel sauce that will seep out when the pudding is cut. No word on why it's a dish local to Sussex though - I'm pretty sure they're not known for their lemon groves over there!

According to the lazy person's font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the original version didn't use a lemon in the centre, but an apple. Over time, however, it's a lemon that's become the accepted recipe. I was a bit dubious about whether or not to eat the lemon itself, but it becomes like a slightly sweeter marmalade version of itself. It's still pretty sharp, so don't go chowing down full speed.

Vegan Sussex Pond Pudding recipe

Ingredients

220g flour

110g vegan suet

150mls non-dairy milk

Zest of one lemon

Another whole lemon

Pinch of salt

80g light brown sugar

80g vegan butter equivalent, plus a bit extra for greasing.

How you do it

Grease a five-inch pudding basin.

Mix together flour, suet, zest, and salt until combined, then add milk and bring together until you have dough.

Roll out the dough until you have a large circle, about 30cms across. Cut out a third (so you have a sort of Pac-Man shape) and bring the two cut sides together to make a cone.

Put the dough cone in the basin and pat down.

Mix together the butter and sugar. Put half of the mix in the bottom of the dough base.

Pierce the lemon a good few times with a skewer and add to the basin. Pack the rest of the butter and sugar mix around it.

Take the remaining one third of dough and roll out to make a lid.

Brush the dough in the basin with water and press the lid down on top.

Put a circle of pleated baking parchment, greaseproof paper or foil over the top of the pudding, and tie string around the circumference to keep it down.

Take a large saucepan and put a small sauce in the bottom. Put the basin on top of the saucer and pour boiling water into the saucepan until it reaches about two-thirds of the way up the basin.
Put on a low heat and leave to steam for two hours.
Let pudding rest for 10 minutes before turning out.

dessert

Vegan MoFo day 17 - Sussex Pond Pudding, a traditional local dish

Today's MoFo prompt, cook a local dish, is a bit of a head scratcher. Does local mean from my town? My county? My country? Given the...

blackberry

Vegan MoFo day 16 - my favourite late summer food is blackberries

Late summer eating is stuffed full of melancholy - you know all those great summer sweetcorn, tomatoes, and stone fruit is coming to an end....

butter beans

Vegan MoFo day 14 - sharing some chilli verde with a non-vegan

I had planned to do something really clever today and veganise a chocolate prune torte that a friend of mine had been aiming to make allerge...

kitchen tour

Vegan MoFo day 13 - Welcome to my kitchen

Today's MoFo prompt gave me the vicious earworm that is You Will Always Find Me in the Kitchen Parties, so I've decided to inflict i...

I don't have that many cookbooks. Well, not that many to me, anyway. Some I return to all the time, some just for the odd recipe or two. But the one I go back to over and over again is The Asian Vegan Kitchen by Hema Parekh. They say you always hurt the ones you love and my copy of the Asian Vegan Kitchen is proof of that - there's a burn mark on when corner when I was using it too close to my gas hob and it caught fire.

The burn mark's on the other side but you can see all the paper markers for recipes that are next on my list to make!

There are two reasons why my love affair with the Asian Vegan Kitchen has been enduring (I bought it years ago as a relatively new vegan). The first is that recipes are incredibly reliable - I don't remember making anything that wasn't tasty or that turned out weird. The second is that it's full of both new takes on dishes I already love, as well as just as many recipes I've never heard of, which require that hard to find ingredients and internet detective work.

The food spans several different countries in Asia - from those whose cooking you might be familiar with (Japan, China, Thailand) to those you might not have discovered before (Burma). Each country is divided into sections, so you get to build your own meal around it - soup, noodles and rice, mains, sides and salads, and desserts.

There are a few colour photos to get you going with the Asian Vegan Kitchen, but mostly it's just black and white text on a page - with Hema Parekh's tips and anecdotes interspersed with the recipes themselves, giving you hints on how to cook the dish as well as a little history on where she picked up the recipe.

The recipes vary in complexity – there are Korean namuls you can knock up in minutes, and curries that require special stocks, and spice pastes, and hunting down ingredients that your local supermarket isn't going to have.

I guess that's why the Asian Vegan Kitchen has a place in my heart – it's a real something-for-everyone cookbook, and it's the one I always recommend if anyone asks for a suggestion for a new vegan.

While over the years a good many experiments from the Asian Vegan Kitchen, there's nothing like MoFo for encouraging me to revisit some old favourites and cook up some new recipes.

From the India section, I made some chole (the chick peas on your right) and some potato and zucchini curry (the er, potatoes and zucchini on your left).

I've made a few versions of chole before, but this one has stormed to the top of my favourites list – the spices are incredibly well-balanced for something that doesn't really take a lot of time to come together. The potato and courgette dish is also surprisingly flavourful considering how quick it is to make. As you'd expect, both taste even better the next day.

I was similarly inspired to go and make a red curry, one of those dishes that always seems easy to make, but hard to make well. Even with a few substitutions (I doubt many authentic Thai curries have some runner beans in), the paste was so full of the different flavour layers working beautifully together, for a brief moment I allowed myself a virtual high-five at for my handiwork.

Of course, it wasn't my handiwork really, it was Hema Parekh's. She's the silent partner in my kitchen endeavours, and I'm really glad to have made her aquanintance all those years ago.