When Life Hands You Lemons…

…Make Lemon Cake!

The rental place I’ve moved into has a meyer lemon tree, which is going great guns at the moment.  I have lemons coming out of my ears, even after I’ve given bags of them away to the neighbours.

As a result, I’ve been experimenting with all things lemon flavoured. The latest semi-success was a lemon and almond cake I made this week.

I’ve never really had the knack with citrus in cake – they tend to turn out sort of like pudding, and this was no exception. I intend to look it up, but I suspect there’s some chemical reaction between the acid and the baking powder.

Anyway, despite the dense texture, this cake was delicious, so here’s a recipe for anyone willing to try it out. If you improve it, let me know!

Vegan lemon cake – only one piece left!

 

Lemon and Almond Cake

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 1/3 cup white flour
• 2/3 cup almond meal
• 2 tsp baking powder
• zest and juice of 2 meyer lemons (or any lemons)
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/3 cup silken tofu
• 1/3 cup soy milk

Icing

• 2 cups icing mixture
• juice and zest of one meyer lemon
• 1 tbs margarine
• 1/3 cup flaked almonds

1. Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees celsius, and grease and line a round cake tin.
2. In a large mixing bowl mix sugar, flour, almond meal, and baking powder until well combined. Add all other ingredients and mix with an electric mixer until well combined.
3. Pour mixture into the cake tin and bake for 35 minutes or until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean.
4. Let the cake sit for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool.
5. To make the icing, beat sugar, magarine and lemon juice and zest together until creamed. Smooth onto cooled cake.
6. Toast the almonds in a dry, non-stick pan, then sprinkle over the icing.

Red Lentil Soup

One of the things I enjoy most about writing this blog is that I am always learning new things about what the world eats. I had no idea at all that red lentil soup, a winter staple at my place, was so popular in Turkey. I (silly, privileged Aussie) just thought it was something that vegans made up after eating a lot of dahl.

I was wrong, and it seems the soup I’ve been making every winter is actually Turkish, right down to the dash of red pepper.

I have read many recipes for this soup, all slightly different- some use carrot, some add tomatoes, some add a little cream, etc. My recipe is pretty basic, though I add a little tomato paste for colour and flavour. If you give it a try, play around with it and add whatever you like.

Vegan Red Lentil Soup

Red Lentil Soup

serves 4

• 1 medium onion, dices
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup red lentils
• 1 potato, peeled and diced (I usually don’t bother peeling, and just deal with the skin bits, because I am lazy the skin is nutritious).
• 1 litre of stock. I like to use strong (but not salty), home made stock, but use what you like.
• 1 tbs tomato paste
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• salt to taste

1. In a soup pot, fry the onion until translucent.
2. Add the garlic and fry for a further 5 minutes.
3. Add the lentils, stock, potato, tomato paste and pepper and bring to the boil.
4. Return to a simmer and pop the lid on loosely. Allow to cook for 40 minutes, until the lentils are cooked.
5. Remove from heat and carefully blend (trying not to burn yourself – ouch!).
6. Taste and add salt if needed.
7. Serve with a little coriander on top.

Unfortunately I have no access to blending equipment at the moment, but I decided to make the soup anyway. I had hoped I could cook it until it all fell apart and blended of its own accord, but I was wrong. So, I tried pushing it through my colander, with minimal success.

Smooshing action shot

Eventually I resorted to serving it up with the solids artfully heaped in the bottom of the bowl, and the liquid poured on top. It worked, kinda, and it tasted good regardless.

Heaped solids - now tell me that phrase doesn't make you hungry!

 

 

More beans, more eggplant, more potatoes and more walnuts (of course)

I’m convinced that at some point in the distant past, some wrote a book (in Georgian – one of the oldest living written languages) about the wonders of walnuts, and how to make sure you eat them at every single meal. It must have been a best-seller, because really and truly, walnuts are in everything here.

But enough about walnuts.

Tonight I had another go at Lobio, or red beans, although this time I followed a recipe for a cooked version. This version is a sort of soup/stew/dip, made of onion, garlic, kidney beans, herbs and spices. I used suneli (a special Georgian spice made from the flowers of the fenugreek plant), dried mint, coriander seed, cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt, fresh coriander and fresh parsley. The recipe said to use raw garlic and onion, but MR is a bit of an alliumphobe, so I used roasted garlic and red onion.

Lobio

It was warm and filling, but to be honest it just didn’t push my buttons like the salad version did. As kidney beans are the main source of vegetarian protein here in Tbilisi, I’ll probably try to make this again, though next time I think I’ll use raw garlic, and add more salt, more clove, and track down some fresh mint and dare I say it… dill.

I used two recipes conflated, which you can find here, and here. They are already vegan, hooray!

The second part of tonight’s menu was stuffed eggplant. The main feature that separated this Georgian versionto all the other kinds of stuffed eggplant was the method of cooking – the eggplant with stuffing got simmered in a skillet for about 45 minutes, instead of being baked.

Stuffed Eggplant

Sadly, this dish was also a little bland to my tastes, and I missed the oily, baked goodness I’m used to. The blandness could be because I only had kinda crappy tomatoes, or because I’m a salt-fiend. In any case if I make this again I will be using a little more salt, and maybe some nooch and lemon juice.

The saviour of the evening was the potatoes with walnuts, which is a very simple dish of boiled chopped potatoes, tossed with walnuts and fresh herbs. The original uses butter, I subbed olive oil. If you’re playing along at home, I would recommend using a butter substitute like vegan margarine for the flavour, although the olive oil was good.

Potatoes with Walnuts

I am a big fan of potato salads without mayo, so this was a winner for me.

On a tangent, I am very happy to say that as Christmas approaches, the shops have more and more “lenten” or “fasting” foods. Today I scored vegan cake slices, which we had for afternoon tea. At one lari a pop (about 70 cents), I’m looking forward to eating lots of these in future.

Georgian Cherry Cake

Georgian Chocolate cake

 

 

 

 

 

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?