Bobotie and Milk Tart, several weeks later (oops)

As per my menu plan, I made vegan versions of Bobotie and Milk Tart several weeks ago. And then I forgot all about the blog and moved on to other things like Coursera and True Blood and Christmas. Oops!

Bobotie is sort of like shepherds pie, except it has an eggy-custard layer instead of a mashed potato layer, and the mince is spiced with curry. I followed the recipe from SA Promo here, however I substituted some cooked lentils and some broken up vegan burgers for the mince, and made a white sauce with a a little extra silken tofu for the topping. There is also a vegan recipe you could follow over at veggie.buntch.net.

Vegan bobotie just out of the oven

Vegan bobotie

The bobotie made for a satisfying, tasty meal, but I wasn’t super keen on the sweet+curry thing. I know that  sweet and savoury tango in most of the cuisines of the world but still I’m not entirely convinced.

I served the bobotie up with yellow rice (using this recipe) and some easy tomato salad.

Yellow rice and tomato salad

I also had a shot at creating a vegan milk tart. I used pretty much every damn vegan custard-replacement in the book, and was delighted with the results. I was less delighted with the pictures, but I did what I could in my dark house with my little camera.

Baked vegan milk Tart (milktert)

Short bread base

• ½ cup spelt flour
• ½ cup rice flour
• ¼ cup plain flour
• 1/3 cup icing mixture
• ¾ vegan margarine

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.
2. In a large mixing bowl mix the flours and icing mixture together until well combined.
3. Rub the margarine in until the mixture resembles a crumbly dough.
4. Press the dough into a pie plate or tart dish and bake for 15 minutes.
5. Allow to cool.

Filling

(This made too much for just the pie, and I had an extra cup of just filling – if you’re playing along at home, only work to about 2/3 of this recipe)

• 1/3 cup sago (or seed tapioca)
• a litre of water to the boil
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 Tbs agar agar powder
• 1 1.3 cup bonsoy soy milk (in my eyes it’s the only brand that still tastes decent after boiling)
• 1/2 cup coconut cream
• 2 Tbs agave
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• nutmeg and icing sugar, for dusting

1. In a large saucepan bring the water to the boil and add the sago. Cook until the sago is just translucent and drain and set aside.
2. In another saucepan stir the bonsoy, sugar and agar agar powder over the heat until the bonsoy starts to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for five minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Remove from heat and quickly stir the sago, coconut cream,  agave and vanilla into the milk and agar mixture.

For an uncooked Tart

1. For an unbaked tart, pour the mixture into the cooled tart shell and refrigerate for several hours.
2. Dust with icing sugar and nutmeg before serving.

For a baked Tart

1. For a baked tart, pour the filling into the tart shell and dust with icing sugar and nutmeg
2. Put a tray under the pis dish to catch any filling that bubbles over, and bake at 180 degrees celsius for 20 minutes.
3. After baking, grill for 4 minutes or until brown on top.
4. Allow to cool completely before serving.

 

As it happens this may be where I leave South Africa, for now anyways, because I have too many exciting Christmas related posts to write!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creole Madness

Last night I had a crack at some creole dishes: Tomatoes and Okra, Dirty Rice, and an Eggplant Casserole. Last night I also got a call from my boss asking me to come in for a shift that would start at about dinner time. Not the best combination, as it turns out.

I rushed home with the groceries, and got into it.

The recipe I used for the tomatoes and okra, and the dirty rice, are from Gumbo Pages, and the recipe I was supposed to use for the eggplant casserole was from FatFreeVeganKitchen.

For the tomatoes and okra, I used frozen okra from the Middle East Bakery instead of fresh, and I used Cheatin’ Bacon Style Strips instead of Tasso (whatever that is). I otherwise followed the recipe, and as it wasn’t disastrous, I suppose I can say it turned out well. I wasn’t fond of the okra, which I hadn’t eaten before. I thought it was odd, and furry, and generally not my thing. Sorry Okra lovers everywhere, I’m just not a fan. That being said, the tomato and bacon combination is always a winner.

Okra and Tomatoes

Dirty Rice usually calls for rarely used parts of a chicken- gizzards, livers, necks, and backs. Yuck! I substituted with some tempeh and some smoked tofu. Again, I otherwise followed the recipe, and it turned out awesome! Flavourful with the creole seasoning, fluffy, grainy rice that wasn’t too mushy, and an interesting brown-ish colour (which I assume is where it gets its name from.

Not-so-Dirty Rice

The loser of the night was the eggplant casserole. I have used recipes from the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen many times before, and can generally recommend them. It wasn’t her fault my version failed, it was mine, all mine.

To get an idea of what happened, here’s what is was supposed to look like:

Image frm FatFreeVegan Kitchen

And this is what it did look like:

Mmmm, appetising

Something I know about myself, but always forget, is that I tend to overreach when I’m in a hurry. Especially in the kitchen. 20 minutes before guests arrive? Lets make lasagne! Tired and grumpy already? Try something fiddly and new! Desperately hungry? Bake something that takes an hour! And so it goes.

And so it went last night. I looked at the picture on the website, vaguely read the ingredients list, and thought, “yeah, I know how to make that”. Apparently not.

See I had read that this recipe require silken tofu, rather than the white sauce I use for bakes. What I hadn’t read were the instructions, or the rest of the ingredients list, that clearly stated you should add cashews, then blend the cashew/tofu mixture before adding it to the eggplant.

I don’t have a blending device capable of mushing cashews anyway, but still. So, rushing through it, I deflty plopped the tofu out of its packet and right into the pan of eggplant, and gave it a good stir. It didn’t look very creamy. Instead it looked like the solid bits of curdled milk floating and a sea of thin, unappetising, eggplant gravy. With bits of capsicum, our household’s least favourite vegetable.

To put this into context, I had also run out of pots (we own 2 saucepans, a frying pan and a wok) and as such run out of time to finish, having to do things in stages due to the pot shortage. And the oven started smoking a little because something had overflowed the last time I used the oven (unbeknownst to be), and was now burning on the bottom. Also, I get up at a bit after 5am on Wednesdays, and so was tired. This is my defence for what happened next.

Mr* arrived home in the midst of the pot cursing fury. What should I do when things go wrong? Laugh, and get on with it, would be the appropriate answer. What did I do? Asked for Mr’s help, then got grumpy at him when he asked me questions, like what to do or how to do it, or got in my way (i.e. in the kitchen), of course. Great idea!

Thankfully my partner is a wonderful, caring, patient man, and this didn’t erupt into any kind of actual argument. *Note to self, thank him for that again*

So, Mr quietly mashed some potatoes, then skedaddled out of the kitchen and retreated to the safety of the bathroom had a shower, while I poured the sorry-looking eggplant mixture into a baking dish, and topped it with mashed potato (which I had swapped for the much simpler and quicker bread crumb crust the recipe cals for, because I’m a glutton for punishment. And i like mash).

Finally, and just in the nick of time, all was ready to eat, or in my case, pile into a container to take to work.

Phew!

The result

Myself, Mr and a meat-eating workmate of mine (hi Dan!) all ate the creole offering, and all came to the same conclusion: The tomatoes and okra were tasty, but the okra itself was a but weird (Mr likes it slimy, Dan and I both hadn’t had it before), the rice was good, and the casserole- just glad it had mash, because that was the only edible part.

*It occurs to me I may not have explained this. Mr is my partner. He has a name, but doesn’t like the idea of having it on the internet, so I’ve nick-named him. Also, he works days and I work odd, part-time hours (early mornings, nights, and weekends), so I do most of the cooking now.

Mac n Cheese

Macaroni and Cheese. I remember watching American movies as a kid, and drooling over the idea of macaroni and cheese. It was the main character’s favourite food, or what they had for dinner when their mum, dad, big brother, or quirky uncle were trying to cheer them up. Its what baby sitters made for their charges before something spooky happened at Halloween.  But it certainly wasn’t something we ate when I was growing up in Regional NSW.

Turns out it is pretty great. I can see why kids in the US love it.

You may have noticed I’m not much of a recipe follower. I like the idea of cookbooks, but I really jut use them to get ideas, rather than following the instructions.

This time I intended to use Lauren Ulm’s recipe from Vegan YumYum, but on the night I opened the book, had a cursory glance at the ingredients, and decided I couldn’t be bothered following a recipe. I’m sure its a good recipe, and it doesn’t look difficult, I just had an odd moment of the CBFs and decided just to guess.

So we’ll say the recipe has been inspired by Vegan YumYum’s baked mac and cheese, and credit should go to her. I couldn’t be bothered measuring anything so the measurments below are just approximate, but I’ll talk you through the general gist.

Baked Mac and Cheese

1. Boil the pasta (enough for 4 serves).
2. Make a white sauce, make it cheesy. I make my ordinary white sauce (its here) but make it a little thicker, leave out the bay leaves, and add double the nutritional yeast, 2 tsp dijon mustard, 3 tbsp cream cheeze, some lemon juice, and some salt and vegie stock powder, and a little turmeric for colour.
3. I then steamed some broccoli, and added the broccoli and pasta to the sauce and tossed through.
4. Copying Lauren Ulm, I baked it all with a bread crumb/turmeric/vegie salt/nutritional yeast crust, but only for about 10 minutes.

It was exactly what I had imagined Mac and Cheese would be. It was creamy, cheesy, and warm. Very comforting comfort food.

Baked mac and cheese

What’s been going down this week?

Well, I spent last week on a bland food diet, which wasn’t very interesting, and consisted mostly of mashed potato, digestive biscuits, steamed potato, white rice, and soy ice cream.

Not really worthy of a post.

However necessity is the mother of invention, and since I’ve been able to slowly add things back onto the ingredients list, I have come up with a few recipes to make life a little more interesting.

This recipe was invented during the ‘white food only’ stage. I’ve called it creamy quinoa bake, and it is a concoction of quinoa, eggplant, white sauce and mashed potato, that tastes much better than it sounds (or looks!). It was creamy, delicious, and a lovely way to use quinoa, the Queen of grains.

I don’t have a photo, but I will post the recipe below. It was just so good, it must be shared.

Creamy Vegan Quinoa Bake recipe

Grain Layer

• 1 large eggplant, large dice, salted and wiped down
• 1 onion, fine dice
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 cup dry quinoa
• 3/4 cup frozen peas
• 2 tbsp beef flavoured or chicken flavoured stock powder
• olive oil for frying

White Sauce

• 3 tbsp white flour
• 2-3 tbsp margarine
• 2 1/2 cups soy milk
• 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
• salt and vegie stock to taste
• 2 bay leaves

Mash

• 2-3 large potatoes
• milk and margarine to taste
• salt to taste

1. In a large saucepan bring 3 cups of water to the boil. Add quinoa and cook until tender (about 20 minutes, continue with recipe while waiting).
2. Chop vegies as described n ingredients list
3. In another pot, bring water to the boil, and add the potatoes.
4. Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees celsius
5. Remove quinoa and strain. Set aside in a bowl.
6. Add a little olive oil to a large saucepan, fry onions, garlic and eggplant on medium heat until the eggplant is cooked through.
7. in the meantime once the potatoes are soft, strain and mash, adding milk, marg, and any flavourings you like (i wasn’t allowed to have any, so we used salt reduced stock). Set aside (its ok if it gets cold).
8. In another small saucepan, add the margarine and flour to make the roux for the white sauce. A roux is just equal parts flour and fat. Mix it with a wooden spoon over low heat until it starts look like dough. Over medium heat, continue to stir with a wooden spoon until it begins to dry out, stick to the bottom and resemble crumbs.
9. At this point remove from heat and add a little milk. Return to low heat, and add milk little by little, stirring constantly to remove any lumps.
10. Add bay leaves, yeast and flavourings (again I used stock, but use whatever you like – vegan cheese, herbs, salt, pepper) and continue to stir as the sauce thickens. When the sauce has reached desired thickness (should coat the back of the spoon), remove from heat. It will continue to thicken here.
11. Add the cooked quinoa to the eggplant mixture. Stir in stock powder and frozen peas, and stir until thoroughly mixed.
12. Spoon half the eggplant quinoa mixture into a baking dish, and spread evenly.
13. Cover this with most of the white sauce (remember to remove the bay leaves first).
14. Mix the remaining quinoa with the remaining white sauce, and spread this on top of the other two layers.
15. Finally add the mash, spreading evenly on top.
16. Place the baking dish into the oven, and bake for 30 minutes at 200.
17. Remove from the oven and allow to settle in the pan for 10 minutes, then serve.

Enjoy!

I have a recipe for vegan rhubarb crumble cake to post soon, and then next week I’ll be back on track and heading to Azerbijan (recipe wise, anyway).