Flicking the Vs: August 2016

Did you know that you can turn mushrooms into crisps? And also chips, because that's exactly the same thing, just in a different version of the same language? All you need is a handy dehydrator, the merest wisp of effort, and about six hours of patience.

You did know that? Oh. I was all excited to tell you about this new thing I'd discovered, and was hoping you'd be 'oh, that's so interesting, cool, tell me a bit more'. And then I'd post a picture like this one..

... and I'd say 'look! Crisps made from fungi! From fungi!' And you'd say 'they look like elephant hide, grey and wrinkly.' And have to ask you to look past that, into their inner soul, which is way more delicious. Also, elephants are cool.

In retrospect it's fairly obvious that you'd be able to make mushroom crisps because you can buy dehydrated porcini shards, but no one goes around chowing down on them like they're Doritos. You can with these ones, a little bit of a nod towards hot and soup that I made to stop myself eating regular potato crisps during mega-length study sessions. I guess if you spend all day looking at the gastrointestinal tract, your thoughts will eventually turn to your stomach, I guess.

This is what I came up with - I'm pretty surprised that they turned out so good, because who would have though you could make a snack you can graze on while studying anatomy, which is not only tasty, but counts as one of your five a day?

Hot and sour mushroom crisps recipe
Ingredients
One punnet of chestnut or other mushrooms
Two teaspoons of soy sauce
Two teaspoons of rice vinegar
Half teaspoon of sriracha (optional)
Half teaspoon of sesame oil
One garlic cloves, finely grated
One small nub of ginger, finely grated
Green part of one small spring onion, finely sliced

How you do it
Cut the mushrooms into thin slices
Mix all the sauce ingredients together, then pour over the mushrooms and mix thoroughly
Leave the mix together for a minute or two to absorb
Dehydrate for about six hours, until the mushrooms are crispy.

dehydrator

Hot and sour mushroom chips - dehydrator recipe

Did you know that you can turn mushrooms into crisps? And also chips, because that's exactly the same thing, just in a different versio...

A lot of my favourite meals of late have been picnics out in our local park: sandwiches with Nutcrafter frawmage and salad, crackers and hummus, Ten Acre crisps, cake, and bottles of gin and tonic. I haven't managed to photo any of them, but they were so, so good.

But back in my kitchen - after visiting the Thenga Cafe not so long ago, and having reveries about the cabbage masala ever since, I decided to try and reconstruct the same joy at home.

Here's what I managed, using this here recipe:

It was several country miles away from the happy stomach-pleasing world of Thenga, but a respectable effort. I'm always a big fan of brassicas' work, so I knew me and cabbage masala would always get along, but I think this is the sort of dish that might persuade cabbaged-dodgers to give it one more go.

Another despatch from the world of things I'd never thought I'd make: homemade beans on toast. Beans are something you get out of a can, and cost you not very much indeed. I managed to come home late one night after a couple of beers, promising my beloved a can of aforesaid beans on aforesaid toast, only to find out the cupboard was bare of aforesaid canned delights.

It's alright, I said, I can make baked beans! If you're from the deep south, I dare say such an idea might seem quite a normal one. But in South London, it's like saying you'll just whip up some water by bonding hydrogen and oxygen: sure, you might be able to pull it off, but why would you try?

But needs must, and I had to attempt the impossible. I blended some ripe tomatoes, stock, spices and thickened it up with some potato starch. I used black eyed beans because we had an abundance of them in the cupboard.

And they were good. Really good. I was so impressed, I kind of wished I'd written the recipe down so I could make them again (I know - it's culinary heresy!)

In other experiments, I've been making dhokla - little savoury chickpea flour cakes that have a wonderful bouncy texture. The recipes I found online normally call for dairy yoghurt, but it's no bother to sub it for coconut or soya. They also normally call for steaming the dhokla in one big cake and then cutting it up, but I putting it into silicone cupcake cases seemed to work too.

The curry is my standard issue chick pea, potato, and spinach (based on this recipe) but with some tomatoes added into it for a bit of moisture. If everyone in the world was as reliable and good as this curry, it would be a lovely place.

As I'm preparing for another exam - another exam! because I've not sat enough this year - I've been looking for shortcuts in the kitchen. Case in point: when I saw a box of Secret Sausages that were just about to pass their sell-by date on sale for £1, I was all over that student-friendly pricing. All Secret Sausages are veggie, but only some are vegan - I got the Cumberland ones.

The taste was a bit weird, to be honest - really sour and vinegary, even though there's nothing like that in the ingredients. Not sure what was going on there, maybe they'd peaked early before their best before? Still, the casing was impressive - check out the shine below! If you're looking for something with the same sort of shine but less weird flavour, I'd recommend Dee's.

Talking of shortcuts, I've been putting my all-purpose spicy sauce to good use as a tofu marinade.

The weather here has been crazy hot. Yes, London does get crazy hot occasionally. Well, hot for England. Late twenties centigrade, that sort of thing. Hot enough that guys start going to the pub and supermarket without their tops on - not so good, Al.

It does mean that I've just been wanting to eat salad a lot more than I normally do. I never normally make salad, you see - Mr Flicking the Vs describes salad as "crunchy water", and he kind of has a point. But if you put a bit of spicy tofu on it, even the humble crunchy water can justify its existence.

baked beans

Simple vegan eats for summer

A lot of my favourite meals of late have been picnics out in our local park: sandwiches with Nutcrafter frawmage and salad, crackers and hum...

If you're opening this post hoping to be wowed by all the various vegan-friendly restaurants and cafes in Piran and Portoroz, then I'm kind of sad to report that well, there isn't much to report. Both towns are rather lovely, but I wouldn't say that either is a culinary destination for the plant-based eater.

Or, to put it a bit more bluntly, if you're off to Piran or Portoroz, I'd recommend going self-catering. Having scoped out the vegan options nearby - or rather the lack of them - we booked ourselves a dinky apartment at the top a lot of stairs (over 200, in fact, which I counted and recounted several times as I walked up them in the 33C heat. I would have wept at the effort involved, but I had no water in my body left for tears, having sweated it all out by that point.)

When we were in Ljubljana, we'd stocked up in a chemist chain called DM, which has a number of good size branches around town. While it's a pharmacy and you can pick up your aspirin or what have you, it also stocks lots of 'health food', like happily includes things like tofu, vegan hot dogs and pasta, and non-dairy milk. Happily, it's all stuff that doesn't need to be kept in the fridge either, so you can sling it in your backpack til you need it and not worry about it going manky in your bag.

Here's what we picked up:

The cappuccino ended up leaking in my bag on a warm day, so by the time I got to it, it was sort of warm fermented chocolate tofu. I'd still try it again though - what can I say? Obviously I'm a sucker for warm fermented chocolate tofu!

The hot dogs were fine, but I developed a friendly relationship with the tofu stuffed pasta. Decent pasta and a tomato sauce is a good meal on any day of the week, and it's even better when you eat looking out over the sea.

Here's the pasta:

Here's the view of Piran's red rooftops we'd look out over while we ate our breakfast:

We did venture out looking for lunch one day, and headed down to Portoroz's Fit Bar Fresh4U, a raw place. It's part of the Terme and Wellness LifeClass hotel and spa (round the corner from the Grand Hotel Portoroz), so head up to the lift and you'll find it. When we stopped in, it was empty, bar the odd spa guest wandering in their dressing gown for a juice.

We picked up two dishes: raw burgers and raw lasagne. They both came in huge plastic clam shells, probably about three times larger than they needed to be, and the prices felt a bit inflated as well, but I guess I shouldn't really go into fancy spas and carp about cost. Their market isn't itinerant vegan students, it's people who can afford to spank €160 a night on a hotel.

The raw burgers were three nutty patties on a big pile of undressed salad. The raw spaghetti was spiralised courgettes, cashew cheese, and the same big pile of dressing-challenged salad. Don't get me wrong, it's a raw restaurant, so I was expecting a lot of raw veggies, but I was hoping for some delicious raw dressing to moisten the whole thing. The burgers, and cashew cheese were both tasty, but the rest of the experience was missable.

In need of something sweet we fell upon Cacao, a cafe/ice cream bar on Portoroz beach. While a lot of it is very milky, there are some sorbets and non-dairy ice creams to be had: we both liked this little dark chocolate flavour.

Cafe Central, just outside Grand Hotel Portoroz, was offering a vegan cake or two when we passed by, but we didn't stop in - we had other vegan cake on our minds.

Back in Piran, the Cafe Theater - a big yellow bar and cafe on the waterfront, just off Tartini Square - not only has a lovely view over the Gulf of Trieste, but it also has a full menu of raw vegan cake, with the ingredients listed for good measure.

We went there twice for the cracking cocktails - perhaps it was the magic of watching the sun set and enjoying a goodly amount of alcohol, but they really are good - and had some vegan cake for good measure.

The first was a raw version of the local prekmurska gibanica, a layered cake normally made with fruit, poppy seeds, and ricotta. Clearly no ricotta here, but you get the rest of the good stuff:

Almonds, walnuts dates, cashews, apples, and poppy seeds: that's some of my favourite things right there, all in cake form. Given the amount of fruit involved, the cake was a bit on the moist side for my liking, but the flavour was absolutely delicious - with a wisp of cinnamon and all those fruits and nuts, it felt like the best of autumn made cake.

Incidentally, Lizin Vrt, the company that makes the raw cakes sold by Cafe Theater, also sells them to a lot of places in Ljubljana so if you're in a raw cake mood when you're strolling around the capital, there are a good few places selling Lizin Vert stuff to get your fix. Handily, they tend to advertise the raw cakes within with a large sandwich board outside, so just keep your eyes out.

Back in Piran, we also tried the raw chocolate cake. It looked like this:

Piran and Portoroz are fairly bereft of good vegan and veggie fare, but I guess if you know where to look, there are still a couple of enjoyable bites to be had. Failing that, bring your food, order a cocktail, and just kick back and enjoy the sun slowly dropping into the ocean. Piran's delights aren't culinary, but they are delights nonetheless.

cake

Eating vegan in Piran and Portoroz, Slovenia

If you're opening this post hoping to be wowed by all the various vegan-friendly restaurants and cafes in Piran and Portoroz, then I'...

Personal question - how are you with seitan?

Me and the seitan, I always feel like we should have a proper thing going on by now, but we never quite make it into success territory. I keep going back to the vital wheat gluten to see what I can make with it, and normally what I end up making with is quite chewy and has a bit of a funky taste.

Still, never let it be said I'm one to learn from my mistakes, so I've been experimenting with seitan once again. But now I've discovered the secret to seitan I really like: cutting it with other common or garden pantry substances.

I tried diluting it with cooked red lentils and Mexican spices, and the end result has the bounciness you want from seitan but without the stiffness. (Does that sound like an advert for a new brand of shampoo? It does a bit doesn't it? This seitan recipe also gives you style and hold that will last all day, now I think about it.)

Anyway, if you'd like to try the seitan loaf that convinced me that maybe all my experiments with seitan weren't in vain, just check it out below.

Chipotle lentil and seitan loaf
Makes one loaf

Ingredients
110g of red lentils
One tbsp soy sauce
One tbsp olive oil or other oil of your choice
One tsp of oregano
One tsp of ground cumin
One tsp of ground coriander
One tsp of smoked paprika
Two chipotles in adobo, finely diced, and one tsp of adobo sauce
200mls of vegetable stock
140g of vital wheat gluten

How you do it
Put the red lentils in a pan and cover with water. Bring to boil and cook according to the packet instructions (or indeed, according to your whim), then drain.
Add soy sauce, olive oil, oregano, cumin, coriander, paprika, chipotles, and stock, and mix.
Then add the vital wheat gluten, and give it a good old stir until you've got something seitany looking.
Pop into a well-greased loaf tin, and cook for one hour at 180C, flipping it over half way through if you can (clearly, you'll need another another loaf tin on top of it, or some other ingenious method of loaf flipping - I'm not suggesting upending it onto your oven rack).
Once it's cooked, use it for a no-meat-and-two-veg type dinner, as a sandwich filling, or in Mexican recipes.

lentils

Chipotle lentil seitan loaf recipe

Personal question - how are you with seitan? Me and the seitan, I always feel like we should have a proper thing going on by now, but w...

Loving Huts are a bit like getting socks under the tree at Christmas: there might be anticipation before you know what you're going to get, then there's probably disappointment because you hoped for something better, but you're probably also relieved because - not that you want to admit it - it is secretly just the thing you need.

So it turned out to be when I spent 48 hours in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana recently. Having been up to the Postojna caves and stumbled back fairly ravenous, we were pretty chuffed to see a Loving Hut just opposite the city's main train station.

There are a few dishes you can order off the menu, like burgers, but the main business of Ljubljana's Loving Hut is a buffet. Half of the buffet is salady bits, and the rest is hot food.

I dived in and treated myself to a little from both: tomatoes, olives, lentils and cucumbers from the salad bar, and some homemade baked beans, spinach lasagne, and a mashed potato and chard combo.

If you look at the plate I made up, you can see why I wasn't expecting great things:

Happily, I was really pleasantly surprised. The spinach lasagne was gorgeous, creamy and comforting - the sort of thing I always aim to make at home and never quite achieve. I could probably have eaten double the amount, but I wanted to save room for the equally gorgeous, creamy, and comforting mashed potato and chard mix. OK, so I didn't have to do much chewing, but that just adding to the relaxing feel of the meal.

The baked beans were also a bit of a revelation. Equally not much in the way of a work out for the jar, the beans were so much more warm and spicy than the name 'baked beans' would lead anyone to expect.

For the grand price of not very much (I can't remember the exact amount, but we're talking a handful of euros) I got a decent feed.

When I saw that they also stocked a vegan version of Bled's famous cream cake, I couldn't say no.

The local soy milk has a sort of powdery taste to it, and that came through in the cream cake. It was bit overly set too. I wasn't much of a fan, but Mr Flicking the Vs rather liked it, so maybe just me.

If that one-off visit had been my only experience of Loving Hut Ljubljana, I'd be telling you to get yourself down there for a cheap and filling dinner. Only it wasn't - I made the mistake of going back. The following day, for reasons too dull to recount, we ended up returning for a second meal. It was a couple of hours before closing time, but a couple of the dishes on the hot buffet (from the five or six there were before) were off and not replaced. Of the hot bits left, there was a pasta dish that was so overloaded with oregano it was like eating medicine, and a millet dish where the millet was uncooked. Not so good.

For the rest of our time in Ljubljana, we picked up food as we walked around. We stopped in at both Kalcek and Zrno do Zrna, two veggie/vegan health food and groceries on Trubarieva cesta.

Kalcek was more the sort of place you'd go to pick up your ingredients for dinner - tofu, vegan pasta, chocolate spread, and all that goodness (maybe don't try and make dinner with tofu and chocolate spread though). There wasn't much in the way of lunch materials, but I did manage to pick up this tofu, olive and caper sandwich. It was weirdly sweet and creamy for a sandwich, so it didn't drive me wild.

Zrno da Zrna has much more of a selection of takeaway type stuff - veggie and vegan sandwiches, cakes, and all sorts of interesting jarred bits and pieces you can use to construct the perfect picnic, like hummus we used to dip our crisps in by the river. Mr Flicking the Vs inexplicably picked this veggie burger, which is like a cold veggie burger sandwich. Again, perfectly decent, but there were much nicer things to enjoy in Zrno da Zrna, so I'd heartily recommend it for an explore.

On the same street, there was also Ajdovo Zrno, a vegan friendly salad bar, which we had a nosy around but didn't stop in for lunch (we'd eaten a lot of hummus and crisps by this point. A lot.) Also probably worth mentioning is BackWerk, a German bakery chain with a branch towards the big train station. It's not vegan, but it has some really interesting vegan options including spinach burek. You can find it at Slovenska cesta 52.

Also worth an honourable mention is Deli Zvezda, at Wolfova ulica 14. It's nextdoor to a cafe which sells vegan and raw cakes, but the Deli part mainly sells ice cream, including these two beauties:

I had hazelnut, Mr FtVs had chocolate. They're made with rice milk, and they're really very lovely.

My food experiences in Ljubljana were a bit hit and miss, but I think we didn't experience the best vegan food that the city has to offer. I'm pretty sure you could get a better plant-based dinner than we did, but regardless of eating, we still had a cracking couple of days in Ljubljana.

ice cream

Eating vegan in Ljubjlana, Slovenia

Loving Huts are a bit like getting socks under the tree at Christmas: there might be anticipation before you know what you're going to g...

Summer says: think about holidays. My wallet says: are you having a laugh?
Summer says: go on, you'd like to get on a plane and go somewhere exotic, wouldn't you, hmm? You even get excited about airplane meals, let alone the actual holiday bit. Wallet says: seriously, are you having a laugh? It's all looking a bit empty in here.
Summer says: holiday! do it! Wallet says: hahahhaha. No. Seriously, no.

Kitchen says: you've never been to Japan, Vietnam, or Korea, but how about we pretend you're going on a little holiday, hmmm? Go on, use your imagination and a few saucepans and we'll see what we can do.

Alright then, kitchen, I like your plan. Japan first. I'm going to make some sushi, because the weather is hot, and sushi suits it, and sushi loves some raw veggies for company.

And it doesn't mind cooked veggies either, so what about we steam some tenderstem broccoli, and coat it in a sauce of tahini, rice vinegar, soy sauce and mirin? Maybe we'll bake a big batch of tofu too, because that stuff can can a double life as a sandwich filling the next day. That's assuming you've got any leftover, of course. What about miso soup too, with some greens floating in it? You like greens, greens go with everything.

And if that's the culinary equivalent of running around a city, stopping to see the sights, wandering the streets checking out the cool buildings, pausing for coffee and local vegan treats, walking on, getting back to where you're staying late in the evening and passing out knackered, this is more like a day on the beach.

You know that feeling when you find a packet of vegan friendly dumplings, and you think 'I'll buy two, just in case I don't see these again any time soon?' Well, that's this. Finding a packet of Korean veggie dumplings and having it day after day, it's like you're having a beach holiday, just reading a book, lying in the sun, day after day after day. If you want to make a bit of a change, make yourself some salad, and adapt the bibimbap sauce you made the other day to make a spicy salad dressing.

If you like a bit of variety, there's always a bit of bibimbap. I've never made bibimbap before, but I've eaten a fair few of them. This dish isn't anything like any of them really, apart from the fact there's a load of vegetables on some rice. So this isn't really a bibimbap in anyway. I guess it's the holiday equivalent of when you go and eat the tourist version of the local dish, and you pay way too much, and it's nothing like the locals eat, but the view's great, the food's OK, and you're so chilled out because you're on holiday, you don't really care.

Here's some lemongrass tofu in a bowl, with some noodles. It's simple, it's energising, it's perfect for hot weather, and leaves you feeling better than before you gave it a try - like a few days on the beach. That's about as much holiday metaphor as I can stretch out of these four dishes. I think I gave it a good try, wringing out dodgy similes like water from a beach towel.

A bit like holiday packing (noooooo.... I can't stop!) this was a bit of a faff, because it was silken tofu rather than the more robust stuff that I normally use, and I spent half the cooking time trying to stop it collapsing into some weird tofu gunk. I think I just about managed it. I'm pretty sure if the Brownies were a vegan organisation, I'd get some sort of badge for this.

Here's my all-purpose sauce recipe - it works as a topping for bibimbaps (or non-specific rice dishes that resemble them), you can make some cracking tofu by using it as a marinade, and you can mix with vegan salad cream or mayo to make a spicy salad dressing.

All purpose spicy sauce
Make however much you want!

Ingredients
One part sesame oil
One part rice vinegar
One part maple syrup (optional)
Four parts goachang

How you do it
Mix all together and enjoy

All purpose spicy sauce sauce salad dressing
Ingredients
One part spicy sauce
One to one-and-a-half parts vegan salad cream or mayonnaise

japanese