Sweet Baby Jesus, KFC and 13 Desserts

I’ve been remiss in my continued Christmas posting, but I have three new Christmas food traditions to tell you about so I can make up for it.

 

Cougnou, Belgium

You know that nursery rhyme about blackbirds being baked in a pie? I always though that was a bit gross (notwithstanding the fact that at the time I ate chicken pie very happily).

For some reason that’s the first thing I thought of when I came across this Christmas tradition from Belgium. Yup, bread shaped like baby Jesus. I suppose it makes perfect sense, really- break this bread, its my body and all that – but I just keep balking at the idea of eating a baby. Personally, I don’t really see the resemblance, so if I came across a vegan version I just might tuck in.

13 Dessert, Provence

I was pretty darn thrilled when I heard that there was a legitimate Christmas tradition of eating 13 desserts. Of course, this fabulous food tradition is from France.

The desserts include dried and fresh fruit, nuts, bread, cake, biscuits and nougat.  Some desserts have specific reasons for their inclusion. Light and dark nougats represent good and evil, dates are included to represent the journey from the middle east, dried fruits and nuts represent four monastic orders, a bread to break (not to be cut), and a famous Provencial dessert, Calissons d’Aix.

I am considering doing something like this, because, hello, 13 desserts! If I could do it in Australia I would have:

1. Dates stuffed with marzipan
2. Almonds
3. Raisins
4. Figs
5. Hazelnuts
6. Vegan Christmas log (a log made out of rum ball mixture, instead of yule log, because I’m just not a fan of sponge)
7. Sweet Olive Oil Bread (already vegan)
8. Mango (the French use oranges, but I don’t like them much)
9. Cherries (because why use winter apples when there are cherries in season?)
10. Chocolate fudge (non-traditional, my addition)
11. Mini vegan cheesecake (non traditional, my addition)
12. Gingerbread (not traditional, my addition)
13. Vegan Calissons, because they look fantastic.

If I do it here in Tbilisi, I will have to come up with something to sub for the cheesecake, hazelnuts and Calissons, and I would use the traditional winter fruits (apples, pears, citrus). I wouldn’t be using light and dark nougat to symbolise good and evil, because food is never evil and neither are dark colours.

 

Fried chicken with your honey, Japan

It turns out the Christmas is becoming a widely celebrated event in Japan. The celebrations are generally secular (most Japanese not being Christian), and is generally celebrated on Christmas eve, with a partner or lover. They have a special Christmas cake, a white sponge with cream an strawberries, and like to eat KFC fried chicken for Christmas eve dinner. Yup, you read right.

Apparently KFC may have become popular as a Christmas meal due to an ad some decades ago. It seems to have worked, as people are known to place their order weeks in advance, and line up around the block to pick up their bucket.

If I had anything here that was worth battering and frying I would totally get into this tradition, because I love the “Southern Fried” flavour. Sadly, I am without any tofu, tempeh, seitan, or any other mock, so I think I will make do with nut roast.

(I can see this Christmas food traditions research could turn our meal into a truly decadent event – 13 desserts, deep fried something, bread-babies – its all sounding pretty good.)

Bowing to presure

Due to a couple of pleedings for Okonomiyaki (which I’d never eaten before) I bowed to pressure and added it to my plan.

I’m so glad I did! It was delicious!!!!

Okonomiyaki, frying in the pan

I sort of made it up after reading a few non-vegan recipes, using soy milk, powdered dashi,  flour, and no eggs in the batter, and using smoked tofu instead of pork, radish and bok choy instead of cabbage (I didn’t have any cabbage), and adding some spring onions.

Condiments

I fried them in the wok, and served them with a soy sauce/sake combination, extra chopped spring onions, and loads of grated ginger.

They. Were. Awesome! I officially have a new favorite Japanese dish. I have since been told that they are often served with Japanese mayonnaise and pickled ginger, which we will have to try next time.

We also had some Udon noodles, marinated watercress, and steamed custard.

The noodles were easy, yummy, starchy goodness. The watercress wasn’t great. I used a recipe out of the book, Practical Japanese Cooking, which called for a soy sauce, dashi and sesame seed dressing. I like watercress, but I think the salty seasoning only played up how sharp and bitter it is, instead of complimenting it.

Watercress

The custard was awful. Really, really awful. I don’t know if this is generally the way with vaguely fishy-flavoured savoury custard, or if I killed it during the veganising process, but in either case it didn’t inspire me to make it again (or even to finish it!).

This style of custard is generally made with eggs, bonito stock, carrot, spinach and prawns or other sea creatures. I made it with silken tofu, cornflour, vegan dashi, soy sauce, nutritional yeast, onions, carrot, and bok choy, and I finished it with the lemon zest and peel the recipe called for.

Hot custard (on a pot holder)

It looked promising but odd when I spooned the mixture into ramekins ready to be steamed. It turned out, well, odd. It didn’t cook through, so didn’t set, which was the first problem. It also tasted too strongly of the cornflour I added to help it set, and the combination of creamy, gelatinous and salty was quite off putting.

I had high hopes for the custard, and was pretty disappointed both with my failed vegan version, and with my taste-buds for their lack of a sense of adventure this time around.

Rather than dissing the potentials of steamed savoury custard, however, I issue a challenge- I’d love to see any recipes or reviews for a good vegan steamed custard, if anyone else is keen to give it a go, or has tried it with success.

Let me know if yours works out better than my attempt!

Scattered Sushi

Scattered sushi, or bara sushi, or chirashi, is basically just potential sushi fillings/toppings arranged over rice in an interesting way.

Some people make it by actually just scattering the toppings, but others pay a great deal of attention to presentation. There are so many gorgeous scattered sushi pics around, and to get an idea of what you can do I suggest you run an image search for chirashi.

For my scattered sushi I made a pot of sushi rice, and tossed it with some toasted sesame seeds. I then topped this with some simmered veg (capsicum, mainly), thinly chopped carrot and daikon radish (to replicate the orange colour of shredded omelette), wakame, marinated tofu, zucchini, simmered mushrooms, cucumber and wasabi leaves.

It was a serious challenge of my knife skills. Just as I was basking in the glory of my perfect, tiny, carrot and daikon sticks:

So tiny they've become translucent!

… I had to sigh a little at my zucchini flowers. they were so dodgy that they ended up looking a lot more like stars. Kinda.

Zucchini stars. Lacking a little. (and half of them were only half a star!)

We ate our bowls of scattered such with some extra soy sauce and wasabi. It was a filling and healthy meal, although a little lacking in flavour for my liking. I’d love to try it made by someone who knows what they’re doing!

Here’s what it looked like being prepared:

First- rice with sesame seeds

Carrot and daikon

Everything else!

Wasabi leaf - fun to make

Teppanyaki and stuff

The plan was to make sushi, but when I wandered into the kitchen I was so sleepy and generally out of sorts that fiddly food was out of the question. Instead, I decided to make something teppanyaki-ish, with some vegies and noodles.

I have fond memories of real teppanyaki, which I first encountered at a friend’s birthday when I was 13 (?, maybe 14?). It was awesome. Good food, primarily made up of former creatures, cooked in front of you and then thrown at you. This wasn’t like that.

I used a recipe from the Australian Women’s Weekly (from now on shortened to AWW) Cooking Class Japanese for both the teppanyaki and the simmered green beans.

I subbed tofu and vegetarian Luck Chunks (from Global Green) for the prawns, chicken and beef the recipe called for. These were soaked in soy sauce, garlic, chilli and brown sugar, cooked, and served with a dipping sauce of soy, mirin, sugar, ginger ad sesame oil.

Teppanyaki is supposed to be cooked on a grill, near or at the table, and eaten immediately, in batches. Like most people I know, however, I don’t own a grill, I don’t have space for a BBQ, and (unlike most people) I don’t actually own a table. So I cooked it in my wok, in one batch, like the culinary heretic I am. It turned out more like a stir-fry than a BBQ, but it was delicious and, thankfully, easy.

I have really very poor hand eye coordination (especially given I’m a personal trainer!), and was almost too tired to cook, let alone throw food at anyone, so to avoid having to clean tofu off the carpet we settled for meekly placing the food on our plates.

Tofu and Vegetarian Luck Chunks (Mock Beef)

Simmered green beans- simple and yum

The green beans were simmered in a light broth of vegetarian dashi, soy sauce and rice wine.

We ate them both with some chilled Cha Soba (green tea noodles) tossed with sesame oil, sake, sesame seeds and little bits of nori.

Cha Soba - not a very good picture

This was a very simple and filling meal, which was exactly what we were in need of after a long day. Yum!

The taste of Autumn

According to Practical Japanese Cooking, Yudofu, or simmered tofu, has become so synonymous with Autumn that the word is now considered a ‘season word’. Essentially just blocks of tofu simmered in barely flavoured water and served with condiments, I thought this dish was likely to be too bland for our salt-addicted household. Boy was I wrong. Warm tofu dipped in the vinegar/sake/soy sauce, and eaten with spring onion, minced ginger and seaweed flakes is awesome! I can see why it would be so popular in Autumn, being warm but not too heavy, with really lovely piquant flavours in the sauce and the ginger. It was a really interesting way to serve tofu, and something I’d definitely eat again.

Condiments for the yodofu

We also had clear vegetable soup, simmered mushrooms, bought goyoza, and some green veg and rice. The vegetable soup was simple an had a nice smooth flavour. The recipe came from Australian Women’s Weekly Japan Cooking Class although I left out the potato and bean shoots as I didn’t have them, and added some celery as filler in their place.

Clear soup with vegetables

The mushrooms were simmered in a mixture of mushroom stock, soy sauce and vegetarian dashi, with a little raw sugar thrown in at the end. I used shimeji mushrooms instead of shiitake, as Mr isn’t such a fan, and they’ll e in lots of dishes this week, so I thought I’d try not to over do it for him. They turned out a little on the salty side, but were good with a lot of rice mixed in.

Simmered Mushrooms

The goyoza was bought at Global Green the other day, and was actually really good, although somewhat unattractive. I was surprised, because I have found bought dumplings to have odd flavours in the past.  They did fall apart a little when frying, but that may be because I didn’t have time to let them thaw, so I gave them a quick boil before frying, making their pastry wet and sticky.

Enormous pile of fried goyoza

Greens, glorious greens!

The greens were very simple, just steamed over the top of the soup just before it was done. It was a very yummy meal altogether, but the yodofu really was the star of the show, I thoroughly recommend you give it a try.

The Japan Plan

Food in japan is centered around rice, soup, fish, other meats, and vegetables, with sauces and condiments playing their part. It is usually touted as the healthiest food in the world, due to the focus on grains, vegetables and fish, and the lack of a lot of saturated fats and sugars.

I’m using Practical Japanese Cooking by Shizuo Tsuji and Koichiro Hata, and the Australian Women’s Weekly Cooking Class Japanese, which were both kindly lent to me by Mr.’s mum (thanks, Sue!). Nothing from the library this week, because it seems that someone else in Brunswick also wants to get into the Japanese culinary action.

I will also probably use some recipes from the web, and I might even try my hand at outdoing Iron Chef Japanese, if I can find some old episodes somewhere (I loved that show!).

Here is the menu plan for the week, although I may add some extra bits and pieces if I have time.

• Miso soup
• Clear soup (varying flavours)
• Rice balls – Onigiri
• Sushi of varying kinds
• Fried things – Tempura
• Skewers – Yakitori
• Terriyaki Mock Fish -
• Steamed Savoury Custard – Chawan-mushi
• Some kind of One Pot – Sukiyaki
• Simmered Tofu – Yudofu
• Fried Tofu – Agedashi Dofu
• Chilled Soba noodles
• Steamed, simmered, grilled and raw vegetables (hooray!)

Its pretty standard, I know, but that’s what I’m after this week. If I decide I have time for experiments, that’s when I’ll pull out the Iron Chef.

So, lets get cracking!

Introducing: Japan

Hooray! Its time to visit a new country (via the interwebs), and try to cook their food. I’ve been looking forward to Japan week since we picked it last week. So without further ado, I bring you the facts and figures bit.

Geography

Japan is in the Pacific Ocean, just east of China. It is made up of more than 6000 islands in total, but there are four main ones: Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku. Most of the country is mountainous, but Japan also has the largest single metropolitan area in the world, or so Wikipedia tells me.

The capital is Tokyo, on the largest island, Honshu, although apparently this was never really confirmed by the powers that be, which is interesting to me, coming from a country who’s politicians debated the question of the capital for a long time, and then built a new city to do the job.

Politics and stuff

*Please excuse me while I clumsily attempt to explain the complex political workings of a major power in a few sentences.*

Japan is a constitutional monarchy (hey, us too!) with an Emperor and an elected parliamentary Government.

There was recently (well, last year) a shift in power from the LDP to the DPJ. In brief Western-speak, the LDP are the conservatives, and DPJ are the progressives. It was a very big deal, because the LDP had been in power since 1955 with only one short-lived interruption.

The DPJ are progressive in a Japanese context, as they stand for a change from the status quo, and want to move toward  transparency, participation, and equal opportunity., and wanted to do things like make high school free, and ban temporary work in manufacturing. Exciting times!

An Australian observer may find it odd, however, that this progressive party also stands for free market capitalism (with added security), a smaller bureaucracy, and a cut in gas tax. Such a different context, I suppose.

Other stuff

Population: 126 804 433 (about 6 times as many people as Australia, in about a 20th of the space)

The median age is 44, and they have one of the lowest birth rates in the world, at 222nd out of 233.

With so few children, they treat their babies very carefully- Japan has the 5th lowest rate of infant mortality. A child born in Japan now has the 5th longest life expectancy from birth in the world.

Japan was first ‘properly’ independent in 660BC (i.e. its really, really old)

The main religions in Japan are Shintoism (89%) and Buddhism (71%). Some people belong to both.

Links

All the information presented here was gathered from the following links, with the exception of some of the politics stuff, which was the result of both the links and conversations with a lefty/greeny friend from Japan.

CIA World Factbook

Wikipedia

Here’s a quiz:http://facts-about-japan.com/

And here’s a fun link for the kids: Kids Web Japan

and, of course, some vegan/japan links.

Some very cool blogs: Shizuoka Gourmet; and MacVegan.

and some other stuff:

http://vegan.wikia.com/wiki/Japan

http://www.veganjapan.net/index_engl.html

http://www.vegietokyo.com/ a guide to Tokyo for the vego.