Beakfast, lunch and sweets

Try as I may, I’ve never been able to knock out a great loaf of bread. Sometimes I might accidentally turn out an OKish flatbread or a decent pan-fried roti but that’s as close I get to fluffy, tall, slice-able thing. So when I read that in Iran bread is king, and is chowed-down upon at every meal, I was not optimistic about my ability to master the dish.

And I was right to be pessimistic.

I followed a recipe in Saraban for Barberi, or breakfast bread. It’s a flat bread, so I thought it wouldn’t be too elusive. It smelled divine while it was rising, and it actually did rise (!). I pulled it into ovals and I pre-heated trays and I baked and I pulled it out of the oven and it smelled great and was fluffy… but was lacking any flavour at all. And it was hard as stone within about 30 minutes.

Ah well, a baker is one of things I am not.

In any case, we had ate it for breakfast, with jams and tea. At least is was photogenicish:

Yes indeed that IS margarine with jam and bread. (Mr style)

For lunch on the same day the bread got another run as a side-kick for the soup. I found a recipe for beet and lentil soup on Turmeric and Saffron, and since our garden is chock-full of beetroot, and I love lentils in soup I decided to give it a go.

Again I was not optimistic about beetroot soup. I’ve eaten beet soup in the past and found it creepy – too sweet, too grass-flavoured.

This time my spider sense was wrong – this soup was really nice. I changed it a little but so little that you should really check out the original recipe here.  To veganise I used vegan stock instead of chicken stock. I couldn’t be bothered with dumplings at lunch so I threw in some little noodles at the last minute, and I left out the beetroot greens, to avoid the grassy flavour. I used dried dill because I didn’t have fresh. and I added some parsley.

Beetroot and lentil soup

On the same day I made some baklava, Persian style. I used my normal recipe for baklava (which has not measurements, so I wont post it), but used rose water in the syrup, and some cardamon in the nut mix to match it to Iranian recipes I’ve pondered on the net.

the resulting pastry smelled gorgeous, but I missed the lemon tang I’m used to. It also had that slightly odd flavour that rose water gets when it’s been heated too long – my fault, for adding it earlier than I should have. Next time I might add a little rose and a little lemon, and see how that goes. That said, even sub-optimal baklava is pretty fabulous.

The verdict? Beet and lentil soup is going into my stack of recipes for extra garden produce. I’m not making bread ever again, I will buy it like we’re supposed to. Baklava is always good, but zi prefer mine with a teeny bit of tang.

Happy Hanukkah

With all the buzz about Christmas, and numerous potatoes hanging out in my kitchen, I decided it was probably time for a little Hanukkah cooking.

I made potato latkes, apple sauce and knishes (not typical Hanukkah fare, but they are Jewish and I wanted pastry).

As per usual I used the might power of the Google to find recipes, and as per usual I didn’t follow them at all. You can find what look like fabulous recipes at ChooseVeg, SunnySeedUp, HeyThatTastesGood, and of course in Vegan With A Vengeance, but here’s what I did:

An odd photo of the yummy feast

Vegan Latkes

Serves 2

Latkes generally have eggs, and vegan ones generally have corn flour (Cornstarch) or egg replacer. I have none of these things and I don’t eat eggs, so I made a slightly heavier version, with plain flour.

• 1 large potato, grated
• 1 small onion, chopped fine
• dash salt
• dash pepper
• 3 tbs plain flour
• oil, for frying

1. Put the grated potato and chopped onion in a large bowl with the salt and pepper, and let it set for about 10 minutes. The salt should pull some of the water out of the potato, to help make the batter.
2. Mix together with a spoon, then add the flour, and continue to stir until well combined.
3. In a non-stick pan heat some oil. Add spoonfulls of the latke mixture, and fry until brown on both sides. Continue until all mixture is used up.
4. Serve with apple sauce and, if you have it, vegan sour cream
   

   Latkes!

 

Apple Sauce

Serves 2 or 3

• 1 enormous apple, or two small ones, peeled, cored and diced small
• 1 cup water
• dash each of cinnamon, clove and nutmeg

1. Add all ingredients to a small saucepan and bring to the boil.
2. Return to a simmer and cook until the apple is mushy.
3. You can mash with a fork, masher or blend.
4. Serve with latkes

I actually don’t know if the sauce is supposed to be hot or cold. I served it warm, because I made it while the knishes were in the oven. I apologise for any offence given by my inappropriate apple sauce serving.

Home made apple sauce

 

Vegan Knishes

Makes about 15

Knishes often have potato in the pastry, but I don’t have proper mashing equipment and couldn’t get it fine enough, so I left it out.

• 1 1/2 cup plain flour
• 1/3 cup oil (I used sunflower and olive)
• 2 Tbs to 1/4 cup cold water

• 1 1/2 large potatoes, diced
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1 leek, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 200g tin kidney beans (my very untraditional addition, because we needed to use them up)
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Pre-heat oven (I only have 3 gas marks, so I’m not sure, but I had it on hot, it felt like about 200 to 220 celsius).
2. In a mixing bowl add the oil and flour and mix with a metal spoon until it resembles crumbs. In a warm climate you need to ensure the bowl and spoon are cold to ensure a flaky pastry. Where I am it’s minus 2, so no worries, I mixed by hand.
3. Add a little cold water and mix through with a metal spoon or knife, until combined. Continue to add water, 1 tbs at a time, until your dough is soft and pliable.
4. Smooth the dough into a ball and set aside.
5. Boil the potatoes until tender. Drain leaving just a little boiling water, and mash with together.
6. In a frying pan heat a little oil and fry the leek and garlic until soft.
7. Add the leek and garlic to the potatoes, along with the drained beans and salt and pepper. Mix together and set aside until cool.
8. On a floured surface, roll out the dough until it is about 3 or 4 mm thick.
9. To fill the pastry, spoon the mixture onto the pastry. You can either spoon it down one length of the pastry, roll and chop (like sausage rolls), or spoon it onto the pastry in sections make small pouches.
10. Place knishes on a baking tray and pop into the oven for about 25 minutes.
11. If you have the goods, feel free to brush them with something to aid in colouring. I didn’t as I only had vanilla soy milk, but they coloured okay anyway.
12. Serve with mustard.
    

    Round and flat vegan knishes

 

Greek Week

Okay, so this is another of the countries we culinarily visited while I was busy packing up our house in Melbourne. In fact, I only had time to make two days worth of Greek food and this just isn’t enough, especially for a cuisine with so much linking it to food in Melbourne, so I will be revisiting Greece on the blog in the future. I will introduce Greece properly at that time.

For now, some photos and links for recipes.

Of course, one of the first things I knew I had to make for Greek week was a salad. A Greek salad, of course. It happened to be very well timed – my garden was producing copious amounts of lovely, tasty, brightly coloured mini tomatoes, crisp green capsicum and glossy, leafy greens. I added kalamata olives, cucumber and chickpeas, and left out the cheese. Yum.

Vegan Greek Salad

Next up was stuffed capsicums. Not the green ones from my garden this time, but some pretty yellow ones I picked up at the Preston Market. I stuffed them with herbed rice (parsley, thyme, oregano, sultanas, pine nuts and almonds) and baked them.

Beautiful stuffed yellow capsicum

All plated up with herbed rice

The next day we were heading off on a road trip to see some family for the last time before we set off on our big adventure (the adventure we’re currently on). I decided keep or road food on-theme, and made some spanakopita triangles and baklava, and cheated by buying some dolmades from the supermarket.

Spanakopita

I perused a number of recipes for Spanakopita, then made up my own. The amounts are gone from my memory though, so a brief description will have to do.

You will need:

• Filo pastry
• lots and lots of fresh spinach
• oil
• an onion, diced
• fresh parsley, chopped
• salt and pepper
• vegan cheese, crumbled
• tofu (hard), crumbled
• nutmeg
• soy milk for brushing

1. Pre-heat the oven to (probably) around 180 celsius. Defrost filo if required
2. Chop and steam the spinach.Drain it, squeezing out excess water, and put aside.
3. Saute the chopped onion in a little olive oil.
4. Remove from heat. Add drained spinach, chopped parsley,crumbled tofu and vegan cheese. Mix loosely.
5. Taste, and add salt, pepper and nutmeg as desired (The nutmeg is my addition, as I am a big big fan, feel free to leave it out).
6. Peel off a few filo sheets as one. Fill with the spinach mixture and seal the edges with a little water, to make a triangle shape. Repeat with remaining filling
7. Brush the tops of the triangles with a little soy milk and bake until lightly browned.
8. Allow to cool a little before serving. If you are going to travel with them, allow to cool completely before putting them in a container (or they get soggy).

Melty, wonderful baklava

I was so impressed with how easy and fabulous the baklava turned out to be. I used this recipe, and substituted vegan margarine for the butter. Easy as.

Have Greek food, will travel

We were very satisfied travelers, munching on spanakopita and dolmades and baklava at the truck stop. This will definitely be repeated.

Links

http://rawvegangreece.blogspot.com/  - as it suggestes, this is a blog about a Greek raw vegan. Awesome.

http://www.thisdishisvegetarian.com/2011/03/1408greek-vegetarian-couple-goes-to.html – a story about a Greek couple being refused an adoption due to their vegetarianism.

Also, I know someone f who is a Planet VeGMeL recently made vegan spanakopita, but for the life of me I can’t find the recipe now… any help?

 

 

 

Coconut Jam

My new official favourite food is Coconut Jam – a local caramel-like spread made from sugar, glucose and coconut (and sometimes Karat banana, something I’ll blog about later).

It can be eaten straight out of the jar, put on pancakes, scones, or made into tarts, and it is soooo good. Being partial to all things sweet I’m glad to have found it hiding out next to the peanut butter at the Blue Nile, a local supermarket, as there isn’t much here in the way of vegan sweets, especially if the vegans in question are also trying to avoid the evils of high fructose corn syrup and aspartame, which seem to be in every damned thing.

But back to the positive. I’ve made caramel out of coconut before, but its pretty exciting to have all the work done for you, and because it is made right here in Pohnpei it has the added benefit of helping the local economy and agriculture, which could use the boost. Go local!^

Here are a few photos of what we’ve done with it so far, and a recipe (if you can call it that) for banana and caramel tarts:

Coconut Jam is ready for its close up

Pancakes with Kalamansi and Coconut Jam

Scones with (coconut) jam and cream*

Making Tarts

Banana and Coconut Caramel Tarts

Makes 12

• 2 sheets of shortcrust pastry or home made equivalent (I made my own with flour, sugar, coconut oil and ice water, but didn’t measure, however there are plenty of recipe son the net if you want to make your own).
• 3 small bananas (one aussie banana is equivalent)
• 1 jar coconut jam (or home made caramel, or soymilke caramel flavour)

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Lightly oil the cups of a muffin pan, or lay out 12 patty pans/muffin liners on a tray.
2. Cut rounds from your pastry to fill 12 cups of a muffin pan/liners, and gently press to make the tart case.
3. Bake cases until just beginning to colour. (this took me 20 minutes, but as I used coconut oil a marg-based pastry may be different).
4. Turn cases out and allow to cool.
5. Chop the banana/s and place bits of banana at the base of each tart case.
6. Add a heaped teaspoon of caramel/jam to each tart, then put them back in the oven for a further 15 minutes.
7. Allow to cool and serve with vegan cream.
   

   The finished product

Vegan Cream

enough for 20 tarts

• 1 packet of silken tofu (297g, I used Mori Nu)
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1/3 cup icing mixture/powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 tsp lime juice

1. Add all ingredients and blend until smooth.
2. Refrigerate for one hour.

Notes

* My photos are a bit sucky and are likely to stay that way while we’re in the FSM as our kitchen/house has bad lighting, and our plates are black. The ones that don’t suck were taken in an apartment we no longer live in.

^Go Local is a campaign of the Island Food Community of Pohnpei, encouraging people to grow and eat local foods in order to benefit health, income, food security and cultural preservation. I intend to blog about the various local foods we try under the Go Local tag.

Beans and Sausage and Philipino Spring Rolls

Ah, the perils of waiting too long between cooking the thing and writing about the thing. I can’t for the life of me remember the real name of this bean dish, or anything much about it, except that it was good.

A mixture of tomatoes, green capsicum, beans and sausage, it was similar to an Italian salad, but had very Spanish flavours. Really yum.

I do remember, also, that it was the first time I had tried the picnicker sausages from The Radical Grocery Store, and I have been completely in love with them since!

Unfortunately, you’ll just have to make do with a picture, because that’s everything I remember!:

Philipino Beans and Sausage

I remember a lot more about the spring rolls.

Philipino spring rolls are called Lumpia. They have a slightly different filling than chinese spring rolls – relying more on beef and garlic, although they still include the cabbage and other vegetables. To make mine, I used frozen spring roll wrappers, not trusting my think-pancake-type-food skills, and I used tempeh as the main filling ingredient, along with lots of cabbage.

I usually love spring rolls, but I wasn’t so hot about these. I think that’s due to the tempeh filling which had a very bitter flavour for some reason. If I make them again, I will use seitan, tofu or just vegetables.

Lumpia