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 Birthday Mumma!

Today is my Mum’s 50th Birthday (Happy Birthday Mum!), and earlier in the week we had a High Tea birthday party to celebrate.

Its no secret that one of my favourite things is to make little food and sweets, which is good, because one of my mum’s favourite things to do is eat little food and sweets So my sister Katie, Mr, and my brother Jay all got in on the action and we cooked up a feast so pretty I figured I’d better share.

First things first, Katie was  charge of decorations, and she did such a great job. She op-shopped for cake stands and plates, and made everything totally gorgeous.

Katie's handiwork

The spread

The entirely vegan and almost entirely gluten free menu included:
•    Arancini
•    ”Meat” balls (some gluten)
•    Samosas (some gluten)
•    Rice paper rolls
•    Warm mushroom dip
•    Sushi
•    Hommus in cucumber cups (curtesy of Toby and K, who got it from Wind Attack)
•    Cupcakes
•    Chocolate crackles
•    Caramel and white chocolate slice

Cucumber cups and ugly sushi

Samosas and Arancini

Rum balls and Chocolate Crackles

White chocolate caramel slice (well, pink chocolate in this case, and slightly oozing)

Recipes-wise there isn’t much to share. Katie made the rice rolls, the cupcakes came from a packet mix, I’ve covered arancini before, everyone can make chocolate crackles, same goes for sushi, and the samosas came in a box from the Indian grocer on Beaumont St. The caramel slice recipe is mine, but it was a less successful version of a top secret from my book (that I’m still trying to get published – we’ll see). I can share my “meat balls” recipe and the warm dip recipe though.

vegan meat balls

Meat balls
1 cup frys chicken style strips, thawed
1 cup cooked brown rice
1 cup almonds
1 tsp vegan chicken stock powder
1 tsp mixed herbs of your choosing (I use oregano, sage and thyme)
1 tbs soy sauce
pepper to taste
1 tsp cornflour in 2 Tbs of water, to make a paste

1.    Put strips, rice, almonds, stock and herbs into a food processes and process until crumbed.
2.    Place mixture into a bowl and stir the cornstarch paste and soy sauce through.
3.    Mix to form a dough. Taste, add pepper if desired.
4.    Form balls.
5.    Fry balls in a little oil in a non-stick pan until browned on a few sides.
6.    Serve with some dipping sauce such as tomato, BBQ, or sweet soy.

Vegies and dip

Warm Mushroom Dip

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium brown onion, diced
1 cup chopped mushrooms (I like portobellas and/or oysters)
1 tsp vegan stock powder or appropriate amount of preferred salt
1 cup vegan sour cream
pepper
two tablespoons chopped chives

1.    In a large saucepan, fry the onion in olive oil until soft.
2.    Add mushrooms and continue to cook, stirring, until cooked through.
3.    Remove from heat, add salt and sour cream and blend with a stick blender.
4.    Stir pepper and chives through and serve warm.

I usually serve this in the middle of a cob loaf, but finding a gluten free loaf was a no-go, so we stuck it in a bowl near a platter of veggies instead.

Cupcakes!

Cupcakes
I’m no guru of gluten free baking. Most of my attempts have turned into weird, squishy, wafer-like substances, or rocks. But we had success with the cupcakes. Mr did the making, I contribute technical advice, and we totally cheated and used the Basco cupcake packet-mix. To make sure they rose without using egg, we used teensy-tiny cupcake pans instead of a muffin tray, and we replaced the eggs with three spoons of silken tofu. They turned out totally gorgeous, and all credit for their gorgeousness goes to Mr.

The Super-Late Christmas Post

Okay okay, its way past time for Christmas posts now, but I never wrote mine and now I am sitting in Abu Dhabi airport with many hours to kill (13 down, 10 to go) so now is the time.

Oddly, being away from home made celebrating feel more important than usual, so I tried to pull out all the stops (within my limited means) to make up for the lack of family and decorations and what have you. This meant me trying to make food I’ve never even eaten before, such as a yule log, and a Christmas pudding.

The whole menu eventually included (or was supposed to include):

Red Currant “cider” stuff
Roast Veg
Chickpea gravy
Nut Roast
Apple Sauce
Yule log (fridge cake rolled up into a log shape)
Rum Ball Christmas Tree
Christmas Pudding

Way more than we could actually eat, but good for getting through all the ingredients still in the cupboard, as we had to move out and head to Turkey on the 28th.

Our vegan Christmas Feast

So, how did it go? Well, as usual, a few successes a few ho-hums, and a disaster or two.

The Ho-Hums
My attempt at a red currant-based hot drink was inspired by the mulled wine I saw all over the net. I don’t really drink, Mr doesn’t at all drink, and no non-alcoholic wine was available. I did, however, have way to many fresh red currants (well, I think they were red currants) and no plan for how to use them. I pictured a nice jug of pretty red drink flavoured with cinnamon and cloves. Sadly, what I got was a creepy-looking, mud brown drink with stringy bits, although it did taste pretty good. In the end we totally forgot about the stuff, as I made it the day before, and left it sitting on the bench in a saucepan. It ended up being skulled cold in the hurry to get out the door before we moved out.

The yule log was also a bit ho-hum, but I think I’ll try it again another year. I made a basic fridge cake by crushing plain biscuits, mixing them with cocoa, dried fruit and nuts, and then mixing it with a heated milk and sugar mixture (instead of sweetened condensed milk). I let is half-set in a thin layer on a baking tray, then rolled it up and rolled it in more coca with desiccated coconut. The texture was good, although it was just a little dry, and I though it looked cute, but I over did it on the cocoa and it tasted a little bitter to me. Mr, being a fan of the dark, dark chocolate, loved it.

Vegan Yule Log

The Successes
I made a nut roast out of every nut I could find (walnuts, a few almonds, and some nearly raw peanuts), mixed in with bread crumbs, herbs, salt, pepper, bulgur, cooked onion and garlic, and a little left over millet. I made my usual short crust pastry recipe to wrap it in, and chucked it in the fridge. On Christmas I baked it for about 45 minutes, which as it turns out was a bit long. I’ve never had a bad nut roast, and this was no exception. It will probably never grace my Christmas table again, because I hate using the oven in summer, but it was really yummy. It ended up in a horse-shoe shape, because I made it too long and it didn’t fit in the oven.

Oddly shaped vegan nut roast

The roast vegetables were  fabulous, but I have to thank Mr for that. He is probably the very best roaster of vegetables in the whole world. I don’t know what he does that I don’t, though I expect it has something to do with patience. They were served up with the bad chickpea gravy, and some apple and red currant sauce (the same as this recipe, but with some red currants thrown in).

Roast veg and apple-red currant sauce

The biggest food success was the rum ball tree. In the end I actually made two trees, because we ate the first one the week before Christmas. The second time I left out the marzipan centres (because I couldn’t find marzipan), and I made extra plain rum balls instead of the white ones, as the vegan white chocolate I had brought with me from the UK had run out. There’s just no replacing rum balls, so far as I’m concerned, and they made the best snack food to accompany our present enjoying in the arvo.

On an un-foodie note, I wanted to share our present giving trick this year, because it worked really well. Mr and I are both not-exactly-stuff-oriented, and to add to that we wanted to spend our cash on trade, and can’t add anything extra to our backpacks. We were going to skip presents, but even my hardened atheist heart just can’t do a December 25th without gift-giving, so I hatched a plan. This year, we each spent some time researching each other’s interests, and gave each other a bunch of free-ebooks, cheap or free movie files, and links for websites. It worked out so well. I found a bunch of obscure survivalist and 80′s electronic music stuff for Mr, and he dug out some new feminist blogs and movies for me. Best present ever.

The Disasters
The chickpea gravy was doomed from the start really, seeing as I had no blender or masher or anything. It got worse, too, as I realise when I went to make it that I was out of onions. Foolhardy me gave it a try anyway, and we had a seriously lumpy, slightly dry, chickpeas in gravy dish instead. It looked kind of grey and thin, and  didn’t really end up featuring much on our plates in the end. Too bad, because I’m usually a big big fan.

The really big disaster was the pudding. I have never made a Christmas pudding before, because my family doesn’t really get into it much. Mr’s family always ha a pudding though, so I had a go this time. I scoured the internet, subbed a great number of ingredients, and boiled the thing for the required four hours a few weeks before Christmas. I was really unsure about leaving it for several weeks, but when I unwrapped it on Christmas morning I was happy to see an intact, mould-free, creation. I gloated too soon though. During the second boiling someone (not naming names here) poured the extra boiling water onto the pudding instead of beside the pudding basin. My pudding got totally soaked, and turned into a light brown, great smelling, oily sludge. No pudding for us. Many sad faces.

All in all, it was a fun Christmas day, with much Skyping of family, new movie watching, and lot and lots of food. I had fun planning the whole meal, which never happens to me usually because there are always so many people contributing food in my big and complicated family, and one, fairly obsessive cook managing the food in Mr’s family. I’m looking forward to playing with rum ball shapes more in the future, but I am never, ever making pudding again. All that boiling and worrying! Not for me, Christmas is stressful enough

The Rest (and some of the Best) of the US

Finally we have landed in a place with reliable internet and a comfy couch, so its time to catch up with some posting.

Before we move on in geographical terms, however (I’m in Paris now, and have stories from Scotland and Denmark still to share), I have a few last USian treats to brag about.

Los Angeles

We went back to LA after our SF/ Portland/Utah/Vegas trip, and had one very good meal at Shojin.

We ordered a Dynamite Roll and a Dragon Roll, with some Spicy Tofu and an Edamame and Avocado Salad to start. Everything was lovely, although the spicy tofu was a little on the bland side. The salad was perfect, I loved the creamy avocado and edamame combination, and it was very pretty with all its different colours of green.

Salad

Spicy Tofu

The Dragon Roll came filled with shitake and avocado, topped with seitan and more avocado. It was a really nice roll, but I found the seitan a little too chewy for a bite-at-a-time meal, and the pieces a little big. The Dynamite Roll, supposedly the restaurant’s signature dish, was mind blowing. Its a “tuna” and avocado filled roll, topped with spicy mayo, and it was my favourite dish by far. The mayo was perfect, and the “tuna” was tasty without being too fishy.

Dragon Roll

Dynamite Roll

Its pretty pricey for the US, with their yummy sushi rolls starting at $10.95 each, so we omitted the dessert and drinks option. We are on a very tight budget and can’t go out trying every classy veg place we see, so this was my special pick of the month, but even then we gotta keep it cheap. It was great food though, and if I lived in LA I would definitely go again and again.

A note on finding the place: its in a Japanese Mall, not on the street (we had an address only, and got a little lost walking around in circles).

The other un-blogged spot I went to in LA was BabyCakes NYC LA. As Kristy blogged the place is a veritable trove of vegan and gluten free goodness, and most of their treats are made with whole flours and sugar replacements, so you can (sort of) pretend they’re good for you, too.

I sat down with an excellent coconut and vanilla cupcake, and bought a few slices of day old cake for the plane trip to Tulsa. The cake and the cupcake were great, my annoyance with cupcakes not withstanding, and the inside of the cafe was cute, in that “I’m just a girl” post-feminist way that really bugs me.

coconut cupcake and my hat

The South

I have already mentioned the one fully decent meal we had while in the Oklahoma/Arkansas/Mississippi/Louisianna/Texas region. Suffice it to say that the rest of them time we eating meals created with only a hotel room microwave and one plastic container, and the bits and pieces we found in supermarkets. Think lots of packet soup and peanut butter sandwiches. I took a photo of this meal, because it was probably the best we had, at about 11pm after seeing speedway in Greenville, MS:

steamed veg, raw corn, tortialla chips and tinned chilli

Washington D.C.

Lasagne, Mac and Cheese, something else and veg

Its a terrible photo, but the food at Everlasting Life in DC gets a mention anyway because they had the best vegan Mac and Cheese I have ever tasted, a good lasagne, and a huge selection of salads and hearty soulfood dishes. We tried to visit a second time, but found they were closed.

It was my birthday the day we left Washington (or the day before – time zones make it pretty unclear which day to celebrate it on) and my temporary housemates, care of AirBnB, surprised me with fabulous cupcakes from Sticky Fingers Bakery. We tried carrot cake, peanut butter fudge, cookies and cake and a red velvet cupcake. They were all tasty and moist and wonderful, however I don’t have any pictures because they disappeared fast.

New York City

There is so much vegan food in New York City that its actually difficult to get to it all. We hardly got to any of it, as we spent a total of 8 nights in the city over two sessions, with the first marred by Hurricane Irene (no eating out for us) and the second by a horrible, nasty head cold that rendered me incapable of eating or moving. Below details what we did get to, and for other reports you’ll have to check out
http://inthemoodfornoodles.blogspot.com/
.

We visited Cowgirl’s Bakingtwice, with fantastic results each time. Both times it was a Friday, on our way to or from the cheap-ass freebie MoMA night (it takes more than four hours to see everything there, and as mentioned above, we are being very cheap). Over our two session we tried a hot dog, a blackened fish taco, a bean burrito, a ground beef burrito, a steak burrito, two Boston creme doughnuts, and a chocolate and vanilla cupcake. Everything was so damn good, there’s almost no way to pick a winner.

Just one of the many burritos we tried

A vegan New York hotdog!

I say almost because really, can there be a vegan treat more satisfying than a lump tasty vegan dough, deep fried, then filled with vanilla creme and topped with chocolate ganache? I think not, so I have to say that the Boston Creme doughnut won my heart. (and its a probably a good thing that said heart doesn’t abide in closer proximity to the doughnut of its choosing, because vegan diet and exercise aside, that doughnut is probably a little bit heart atack inducing, if consumed in the quantities I would like).

The last bite of Boston Creme doughnut, and the cupcake

For my second birthday treat, we had dim sum (that’s yum cha in Oz) at Vegetarian Dim Sum House. In fact, we actually went there three times over all, because it was just that good. Also it happens to be in our tight-arse price range, was open the day after the hurricane and at 10pm on the third occasion everything else was shut.

Everything we tried there was fantastic, but a special mention has to go to the sweet and salty dumplings, which were unlike anything I have ever tasted before. I’m sure I took photos, but of course they are missing (probably on Mr’s camera or phone), so for the time being you’ll have to make do with the photos in this review.

Having googled “vegan new york” the second i booked our tickets, I came across a vegan chocolate shop, and deciding that a vegan chocolate shop was too good to pass up, went there on one of our mental health days (days when Mr and I go our separate ways so we have something to talk to each other about, and don’t drive each other nuts by dragging each other to stuff we don’t care about – he goes to military surplus stores and the like, I seek out chocolate and art galleries, everybody wins).

Cocoa V is the chocolate shop in question – an upmarket chocolate and wine bar of the vegan variety with cheese plates, cakes and confections. I had a horrid head cold, so I ordered the spiced hot chocolate, hoping I would be head coldy enough to withstand the burning Kristy mentioned. Unfortunately, though it tasted really nice, even my head cold of doom couldn’t stop me from burning my throat a little with the very spicy hot chocolate. These people need to be stopped! Or, you know, I could have heeded the advice and just got a normal one.

The tasty but painul hot chocolate, which for some reason won't let me save it right-way-up. Let's just pretend that this presentation is "artistic".

I also tasted a salted caramel vegan chocolate, which totally made my day with its lovely, smooth, caramelly centre and sparkly, purple exterior.

Purple, sparkly, caramel, chocolate goodness.

The last noteworthy place we visited in the USA was Maoz Vegetarian. We had several of their life-giving felafel things, and loved them every time. They have a buffet style area where you can choose vegies, chillies and sauces to add to your felafel, great chips and really refreshing minty lemonade.

Maoz felafels in Times Square

Since we left the US, and even a few times while we were there, people have told us, “it must be hard to be vegan in America”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US was the most accommodating, vegan-friendly country I have ever visited, with options in every supermarket, clearly labeled ingredients, and even corner stores carrying some frozen veg meal or another.

So, thanks America, you treated us right

The best of the rest: Canada

Yup, too much travel and not enough blogging!

We left Canada, and the whole North American continent a little while ago now, but its never too late to post reviews and pictures of vegan food from far away, so on we go!

As well as trying enough butter tarts to make me a little sick, I also sampled two other Canadian favourites- Poutine and Nanaimo Bars.

Poutine

Poutine is a Quebec dish of hot chips (or french fries) smothered in gravy and cheese curds. If you can get past the question of what, exactly, a cheese curd is (I can almost hear you thinking, Katie), it sounds pretty good, right? Let’s face it, anything that is deep fried then covered in gravy and has the prospect of cheese is probably going to be good.

But where to find a vegan version? I was told it would be difficult, as most places don’t even have vego gravy, but it turned out to be as simple as a google search.

We headed to Poutini’s House of Poutineon West Queen Street in Torono in serach of the goods, and we were not disappointed. Poutini’s has many types of poutine available, including some with bacon and maple syrup, but only one vegan version (still, I’m not complaining).

Poutine on the street

We got ours to have in, as it was very cold (okay, maybe 15 degrees) given we’d been living in an eternal summer for the previous 9 months. The poutine was warm and mushy in a good way. The gravy was pretty tasty, though it still has nothing on that dastardly chicken-gravy I remember from post-night-out-munchings in Canberra, I’m sad to say. Poutini’s substitutes Daiya Cheese for the traditional curds.

Poutine is ready for its close up

My first Canadian poutine was tasty, warm and filling, and I can understand how it became the number 1 late-night/cold-night snack food. It will probably be my only poutine, however, as it just wasn’t enough to knock plain old chips with vinegar off my personal hot-chip podium.

Nanaimo Bars

I tasted the other of Canada’s favourite sweets courtesy of very fancy bakery, LPK’s Culinary Groove.

Nanaimo Bars are a slice with a graham cracker crust, a chocolate top and a filling made of frosting. I tried both the plain vanilla and the peanut butter version, and they were both really good. The filling was very fluffy, but so sweet that I couldn’t finish one in one go. Luckily refrigeration is a thing, so I got to eat a little bit of the bars every day we were in Toronto!

As with the poutine these were great, but a little too sweet to become an ongoing part of my at-home baking schedule.

(the photos for the bars appear to be lost, but I’ll add them when I find them).

Toronto Veg Fest and the Great Vegan Butter Tart-A-Palooza

After narrowly missing veg fests  and other vegan events all over North America, I finally managed to collide with one in Toronto. Mr was busy getting beaten up training, but, not wanting to miss the opportunity to eat tonnes of vegan junk food, look at annoyingly ironic t-shirts and listen to live music I ambled down to the Harbour Front Center on my own.

All the usual suspects were there – the cat rescue people, the non-dairy milk people, the raw chocolate people, the buy-this-magic-blender people, the this-super-fruit-of-the-month-will-fix-your-whole-life-and-make-you-successful-and-beautiful people, and of course, the vegan bakers.

The first vegan baker I came across was Bloomer’s Bakery. I expected to see biscuits (that’s cookies on this continent), brownies and cupcakes, and I wasn’t let down.  (As a side note, I’m actually getting pretty sick of the childish cutesiness of cupcakes – bring back the tasty but not cute actual slices of cake I say! But that’s a story for another day.) They had everything I expected but happily they also had something I didn’t (but probably should have) expect – vegan butter tarts.

Butter tarts are a Canadian icon. They are made of melty shortcrust pastry filled with sweet, baked, buttery stuff. Or at least that’s what I think they’re made of, but having never tried one before this week, I can’t be sure. In any case, they were on my list of Canadian foods to prepare during Canada week, and now I don’t have to!

As I walked around I realised that three of the eight bakery stalls had butter tarts on display. It was clear that it was my destiny to try all three and declare a winner. Thus began the Great Vegan Butter Tart-A-Palooza.

Bunner’s Bakery

The tarts from Bunner’s were the darkest of the three. They had a dark short-crust which was crumbly and flavourful, and a very dark, gelatinous filling that made me think of Aussie golden syrup, though much less runny. They had raisins and a less sweet flavour than either of the other tarts. These were good, especially the crust, though they may have been a little over cooked, and overall didn’t leave much of an impression.

A tray of Bunner's Tarts

Apiecalypse

The pastry was tasty, but it was a little saturated and closer to puff than short crust. The filling seemed to be made of sugar, agave, coconut and grease of some delicious sort. They tasted exactly like honey joys, a lot lighter than the other versions. Overall these were nice, but could have used a bit more filling and a better pastry.

Apiecalypse on a mini scale

Bloomer’s Bakery

Being the first bakery I cam across, I bought a butter tart from Bloomer’s just as soon as I could figure out the change (damn this learning new money every time you move countries stuff is tricky) and gobbled it immediately. It was so good.

The pastry was perfect- golden, crumbly, sweet and dry. The filling tasted like heaven would taste, if it were covered in butter. I’m guessing, but it seemed like a mixture of agave, palm sugar (although it may have been brown sugar), vegan-grease, pecans, and sultanas (called raisins over here). This tart may have been the best thing I ever tasted. I can officially say that the award for Best Vegan Butter Tart of the Toronto Veg Fest (as judged by an Aussie vegan who has never before tried a butter tart) goes to Bloomer’s Bakery.

And the winner is.... this one!

Recipes

Although I did make a deal with myself – you can eat all the tarts in Toronto if you don’t also bake them yourself – I might have to reneg and try to make some when I get home to Melbourne. If any of you are inspired to break out the tart cases and give this Canadian favourite a whirl, you can find some recipes at:

• Vegan Dad’s Vegan Butter Tarts
• Diets Desserts and Dogs Vegan Butter Tarts
• Vegan Matters Butter Tarts

The Rest of the Fest

Sadly, with the exception of the vegan junk food, veg fests are sort of seen-one-seen-em-all. The music was nice, a duo doing covers of The Beatles’ songs, and it was a lovely sunny day to sit around eating the vegan junk.

The stalls were pretty lack luster, being just a retail opportunity for the mineral make-up and expensive cooking appliances people, although there was a stall for a vegetarian food bank, which was pretty interesting. The super-food-of-the-month made me laugh – it was kiwi fruit – so there was that.

Forgetting that this was not world vegan day, but Veg(etarian) Fest, I was a little surprised and disappointed by all the Nestle ice-cream stalls and had to be a little careful about what food I sampled.

Mock turkey and powder mash

When Mr turned up, slightly bruised, we had some lunch. I got excited about ticking yet another Canadian vegan food off my list when we saw Tofurky and mashed potato on the menu at the New Earth stall. We ordered some, but were sadly disappointed. The gravy was very sweet, which was strange and unwelcome for me, and the mashed potatoes were the powdered stuff and over-whipped to the point of becoming somewhat glutinous.

Yummy dumplings saved the day

Luckily there was also a stall selling dim sum, so we had some truly excellent dumplings, a good spring roll and some passable drum sticks to save the day.

Portland, Oregon

With our mid-west and southern jaunts impending, and the wasteland of vegan options we imagined would come with them, I tried to make the most of Portland had to offer by way of treats. You can read that as, “I went overboard and ate as much sugar-salt-fat food as I possibly could fit, and sometimes more than I could really fit”.

Here’s how it went:

DC Vegetarian

The second best sandwich in the USA and the world ever (see Red and Black for the very best) came from a food cart called DC vegetarian.I don’t remember much about it, except that the one I ordered was really good and had veganaise, and Mr liked his, too.

A wrap of some kind

Yummy sandwich

Home Grown Smoker

On K’s suggestion we tracked down the Homegrown Smoker food cart on our last day in town. Unfortunately it was closed due to plumbing work, but luckily the staff still had some food left over, which they let us have for free on account of us being from so far away.

We got two huge servings, each weighing about a kilo, made up of mac and cheese, some sort of smoked BBQ mock, some baked beans, slaw, salad and cornbread.

Like K and Toby, we didn’t really take to the molasses corn bread – too sweet. Mr adored the BBQ and liked the beans, I adored the mac and cheese and the slaw. I didn’t really take to the mock BBQ, but I’m not generally a BBQ fan, so its no surprise. We had so much food that it served for two meals and we still didn’t get through it.

If we ever get back to Portland, I definitely intend a second run at this place.

The food

with my hand for size comparison

Back to Eden

Back to Eden is an all-vegan bakery/dessert joint in the North East of Portland. We went twice, and it was great both times. We tried the Chocolate Cream Pie with vegan soft serve the first time, and a lemon cake with cream cheese icing and chai flavoured vegan soft serve the second.

The soft serve was the big standout – so creamy, so flavourful, so soft! The chocolate cream pie was good, but not my cup of tea. The lemon cake totally exceeded expectations, it was tangy and tasty and almost drowning in cream-cheese icing, which in my opinion more cakes should be drowning in.

If we had stayed a little closer to the area (we were way down in the SE area, about an hour away by bus) I would have insisted on a daily visit.

Lemon cake and chai soft serve

Voodoo Doughnuts

I found this doughnut shop via some internet search along the lines of “things you must do in Portland”. It just so happens it serves vegan doughnuts along with the icky dairy-filled ones.

The place is supposedly a local institution (story goes they began by selling doughnuts with legal pharmaceuticals sprinkled on top, but had to resort to selling normal ones when forced to by the authorities), and the line is proof enough of its popularity. I think we waited outside the building for about 25 minutes, and that was the shortest line we’d seen during the trip.

The sign

The shortest line there ever was for the doughnuts

I don’t actually know which kinds we got, I just pointed at some doughnuts on the vegan display until I came across some they hadn’t run out of. One of them was a chocolate one, one tasted like cinnamon, and one of them had a filling. I do remember that they were all totally delicious though! Number one thumbs up for yummy vegan doughnuts.

Clockwise from top: a cinnamon thing, one with sprinkles, a chocolate one, a filled one.

Portobello

Portobello is a fancy-pants Italian restaurant, and I made sure we played our part and ordered all three courses to do it justice.

We had the white truffle and mushroom rillette, small sizes of the eggplant ravioli and the arancini, the chocolate rosemary tart and the trio of ice creams, and an orange blossom drink. Everything was fully wonderful, except the arancini, which was kind of bland.

Mushroom and white truffle rillette

Arancini and vegetables

Eggplant ravioli

Rosemary chocolate tart

Trio of vegan cie creams

The mushroom and truffle thing was a dip with crusty bread, the best I’ve had since going vegan. The orange blossom drink was really, really nice and smelled like spring. I like the rosemary tart, and as K and Toby reviewed, the salted caramel ice cream was heavenly.

A little shout out also has to go to the waiter for the evening,  Jeremy, who was awesome, and who we actually met a few times around town at various anarchist things and who helped us find vegan food a few days before we ended up at Portobello.
Sonny Bowl
We actually found the Sonny Bowl by accident, after wandering past it hoping the DC Vegetarian would be open late on a Saturday night on the way home. By the time we got there they were serving only one option, so we ordered that.
It was a noodle bowl type thing, full of veggies and tempeh (or was it mock?). It tasted healthy and good, but it was a little uninspiring. That said, for last minute, late night vegan food, it was a warm, filling, and reasonably long lasted feed, so we have no complaints
Given its late-night-ness, I didn’t get a photo.

Sweetpea Bakery
Sweetpea is a bakery on Portland’s famed vegan strip mall, and it serves all the obligatory bakery things – brownies, cupcakes, cookies- as well as lunchables of the sandwich variety. We had lunch around the corner at the Red and Black Cafe, so just picked up a few treats to eat later at the Rose Test Garden.

We got a Charlie Brown and GF Brownie. The Brownie was great, but pretty crumbly (I ended up licking bits of it out of the bottom of the bag like the classy lady/anteater I am). The Charlie Brown was a kind of peanut butter slice with chocolate on top. It was very tasty, but the huge serving proved a bit much even for me!

I enjoyed our Sweetpea treats, but I have to say it doesn’t have anything on Back To Eden.

The Bye and Bye
We were pretty excited about the Bye and Bye, it having come highly recommended by every vegan we had met in Portland, so it was with much anticipation that we ordered our chilli dog and crying tiger burger and broccoli.
I really wanted to enjoy our junk food and salvationary vegetable side-order, but I am sad to say we were really disappointed.

Maybe we ordered the wrong thing, maybe we were too hyped from all the hype, or maybe the food just tastes better after you’ve sample a beer or three (Mr drinks never, I drink rarely), but the food just wasn’t very good.
The Crying Tiger Burger seemed like it could better have been called the Whimpering Kitten Burger. It was quite mild on the chilli side, but it was tasty-ish. The Chilli dog was rubbery, the bread was kinda stale, and the chilli wasnt very flavourful. The broccoli was great though. We were a bit sad, and I’m hoping we just caught them on a bad day.

Red and Black Cafe
The Best Vegan Sandwich in Portland/America/The World award goes to Red and Black Cafe! We ate here twice because it was so good it needed a return trip.

The Red and Black is a collectively worker-owned cafe which serves fairtrade coffee and cocoa along with a huge menu of bagels, sandwiches and bowls and some cupcakes. Something I loved about Portland was the number of organisations which are collectively operated- great model for providing service (and yummy food) to the community without the shitty conditions and exploitation that usually goes with the food service industry.

Mr ordered the BBQ burger on both occasions. He loved it, and I liked it, which is a thing in itself, as I don’t generally like BBQ sauce at all (sweet just doesn’t belong on a sandwich). I ordered a BLT with tempeh bacon, daiya and avocado on the first occasion, and a hot cocoa and grilled cheese with tempeh bacon on the second occasion.

Biggest most awesome grilled cheese and a BBQ sanga in background. It gets a huge photo because it was the best sandwich n America and maybe the world, ever.

It was all perfect, wonderful food. The cocoa was home-style, so not too rich, but lovely and warm and sweet. The BLT/Grilled cheese were both enormous, melty and tasted so good. Had we stayed longer, and nearer, we probably would have eaten here even more. Two thumbs up.

All in all

All up, Portland really was a vegan wonderland. Vegan groceries, vegan-friendly co-ops, multiple vegan bakeries, vegan soft-serve, vegan doughnuts, vegan mac and cheese… the list goes on. I had an awesome time eating my way around Portland, and was very well stocked with a little more heft for the metaphorical winter I am now enduring in Utah/Nevada/Arizona/Lousianna/Oklahoma/Arkansas/Mississippi/Texas.

For more Aussie-eye reviews of Portland vegan eats, check out In The Mood For Noodles here.

See you next time for an update of whatever we get up to next.

Go local – Kalamansi

Remember back in Malaysia Week I posted a recipe for Ais Limau (Lime Cordial), saying I had to use the wrong limes?

(sorry wordpress isn’t letting me link at the moment, must be something buggy. It’s here http://roundtheworldvegan.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/devil-curry-and-ais-limau/)

Not anymore! Now we have an abundance of kalamansi lime at our disposal. Awesome.

Kalamansi limes are tiny, green or orange skinned fruit with a light orange centre, that taste limey, but not as tart as the ones we’re used to at home.

They look like this:

Green (and one orange) kalamansi and a small lemon to show size

What can you make with them? Everything!

I have been making Ais Limau, using them to flavour spicy soup (such as assam laksa) squeezing them into sambals and over stir fries, and generally enjoying them in every way I can before we go home and never see one again.

A jug of brown sugar Ais Limau

The best use of kalamansi so far though, would have to be my recent Kalamansi Pie attempt. However, as the pie took several false starts, I don’t have a recipe so much as a story of how not to make pie.

The Making of Pie

I started with the idea that I would make pie exactly as I have many times before: Soak agar in water/juice/sugar, then cook, then set in pie base, then eat.

I set about squeezing all the tiny kalamansi at about 2pm. They are very seedy on the inside, so I squeezed them through our very crap collander.

Dead limes in our crap collander (don't let the photo fool you, its very crap)

Then I added water and sugar, and sprinkled in some agar agar to soak. I left it alone for a good 15 minutes before bringing it to the boil, and cooking for another 10 minutes, allowed it to cool just a little, and poured some of it into the pie shell.

It smelled good, it looked good, but in the words of Miss Clavell, something was not right.

It wouldn’t set. Not in the freezer, not on the bench, not in the fridge. And my pouring seemed to have melted quite a lot of the shortcrust pie shell. Oh no!

So, I poured it back out (shortcrust crumbs included) added more agar, and set about soaking and boiling again.

While this was going on, i notice my pie shell was looking very much worse for wear, so I popped it into the oven to dry off.

I went back to the lime mixture, which still wasn’t thickening, and decided to add more sugar and just keep boiling. In my frustration I forgot about the pie base until I noticed I could smell something caramellish- when I pulled it out the edges were dark brown and the base (where it got wet) was beige. Damn.

Back to the lime mixture, after soaking and boiling for a third, unsuccessful time I had decided to give up and ask the internet – surely soeone would know what I had done wrong?

As usual, the internet knows all. It is thought you need to use more agar when working with citrus – that could be the problem, but as I had already used enough agar flakes to set a small rhino (no, it doesn’t make sense as an analogy, just go with it), that probably wasn’t the problem.

Then I spotted it: apparently some fruits, such as pineapple, mango, kiwifruit and papaya, have an enzyme that breaks the bonds of agar, so no matter how much you put it, it just wont set. Kalamansi weren’t mentioned, but I made the mental leap that it was from the same part of the world as papaya, mango, pineapple, and, well, fuck it, my agar wasn’t setting, and I had to blame it on something.

So, now what? Would I ever save my pie? I turned again to google, and found this recipe at the Gluttonous Vegan (http://www.thegluttonousvegan.com/2009/09/killer-key-lime-pie.html), which uses a corn flour slurry. Of course! I had forgotten about corn flour in my rush to use my special imported agar flakes.

So I slurried the lime, and it thickened nicely, and I poured into my slightly burnt pie case and stuck it in the fridge at around 5pm. That’s right, three hours of pie making later. There was now much too much lime mixture (with the added slurry-bulk) for me to cover it in a layer of coconut cream pudding as I had planned, so I left it to have on the side (as with the rest of the dish, it hadn’t really worked and was lumpy, anyway).

After dinner I pulled it out, wondering if it would be at all edible. To my great surprise it was much better than I could have imagined! The texture was perfect, the extra bulk had quietened down the sour lime so that it was tangy but not over-powering, the crust tasted like heaven with its chewy, caramelised bits, and the coconut lumps weren’t noticeable at all.

Pie!

*sigh of relief* I will be making this again, but next time I’m going straight to the power of corn flour.

Soursop Sorbet

I had never even heard of soursop before coming here. Or, I had, but I thought it was some sort of British slang for a craky old man or similar, like “Mr Crankpanterson is an old soursop”.

Turns out, soursop is a fruit. A tasty, sour, creamy fruit, that looks like this:

Soursop, image borrowed from http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/221/

I first encountered it on a very hot afternoon at a restaurant here called the Tattooed Irishman, but more commonly referred to as “The Village” after the hotel it is attached to.

It was in the form of sorbet, and it was one of the strangest things I have ever tasted; very sour, sweet, and with an odd after taste that reminded me of handcream. Mr doesn’t taste the handcream, and a friend here didn’t think  it had an odd taste until after I suggested it.I’ve even read conjecture that it tastes like onions, but I didn’t get that. So, if you’ve ever tried soursop, please leave a comment on what you think it tastes like.

(Oh, by the way, yes I did just say there was vegan sorbet available in Pohnpei, FSM. Hell yeah!).

I have since been eyeing the big, spiky, green fruit off at the markets, and bought one with the help of a very friendly staff member, who picked a good one for me. Unfortunately I opened it too soon and it was hard as rock, and then I left it for a little while and it went off while I was trying to figure out if it was ripe yet (things ripen so quickly here, that you never buy anything already ripe).

So, a few weeks later, I tried again, this time with more success. When I cut into it it was the right consistency, but it was very, very sour.

So, I added some sugar, mashed, stuck it in the freezer and voila! we have been enjoying soursop sorbet ever since. It is very easy, but I’ll put the recipe in anyway.

Soursop Sorbet

Vegan Soursop Sorbet

• 1 ripe soursop
• 1/2 cup white sugar (or more/less depending on sweetness of fruit)
• 1/2 cup water

1. Chop the soursop, and remove peel and all seeds. Be alert, as it is a sneaky fruit with hidden seeds as well as the obvious ones. I suggest squishing pieces in your fingers, as this make the seeds pop out. Set aside.
2. In a small saucepan add water and sugar and stir over medium heat until dissolved. (it doesn’t need to boil). Set aside to cool.
3. Add soursop and sugar water to a blender (or mixing bowl with stick-blender) and blend until well combined.
4. Freeze in whatever container is handy. Mush with a fork every 2 hours or so.
5. When ready to eat, set the sorbet on the bench for about 5 minutes to soften, then serve. (it may take longer in melbourne and other cold climates).

Go Local – Karat Banana

One of the most amazing things here is the variety in bananas. For a girl from the land of one variety- that I don’t even know the name of, because they’re just “bananas” – its a little baffling, to be honest.

I don’t know how many varieties there are, I’ve been told around 40, but the shops have 3-10 types on a normal day, and there are posters around educating people on the beta carotene levels in 15 varieties, all grown here on Pohnpei.

The king of the beta carotene bananas is the karat (Kar-arch) banana. It is fat, has red skin and is bright orange on the inside. Like this:

Karat Banana

Karat bananas have 2230 micrograms of beta carotene per 100 grams, which is around 100 times more than white flesh bananas. It has been used as infant food here for centuries, but has fallen out of fashion lately, although there is a campaign to bring it back. In a place where there are a lot of starchy foods available, and much more American imported junk food than fresh produce, vitamin-rich bananas are pretty handy. Also, they make your pee fluorescent yellow., which is almost a plus in itself.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of bananas myself. Mr eats a few every day (even at home in Oz), but I only have them when the mood really strikes me. However, as on of the only regularly available fruits on the island, I’m learning to like them a little better.

Here’s how we’ve been using our karat:

Karat Smoothy

• 1 Karat banana
• 1 scoop protein powder (we are using Sun Warrior, Vanilla flavour)
• Some soy milk

1. Blend.
2. Drink. (easy)

Karat looks like egg yolk

Finished karat smoothy

Banana, Caramel and Coconut Ice-cream Tart

• 1 pre-made pie base
• 1 karat banana
• 1 Akadahn banana
• 2 taiwang or another type of banana
• 1 jar coconut jam
• 1 cup coconut cream
• 1 tbsp cornflour

1. Slice the taiwang and akadahn bananas (or any type) and cover pie base.
2. Smoosh the karat banana and add to other bananas.
3. In a small saucepan heat the coconut jam until it becomes a little runny, then remove from heat and pour onto bananas.
4. In a small bowl, mix the cornflour into the half the coconut cream to form a slurry.
5. Clean the saucepan, then heat the other half of the coconut cream in it.
6. When the coconut cream is hot, add the slurry and it will thicken.
7. Remove from heat, pour over caramel.
8. Freeze pie, and thaw slices slightly in fridge as needed.

Karat-Caramel Tart

Karat Banana Spice Bread

• 2 karat bananas
• 2 other bananas (any variety)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp ginger powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1/2 cup wholemeal flour
• 1 1/2 cup white flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/3 to 1 cup milk (depending on smooshiness of your bananas).

1. Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees celsius.
2. In a large bowl, smoosh bananas and add sugar, spices and oil. Mix with a hand blender until smooth.
3. Add flours and baking powder, and combine to form a very thick dough.
4. Slowly add milk until you reach a muffin batter consistency (sorry I can’t be clearer, it really depends on how big and ripe your bananas are. Hmm, that sounded a bit off.)
5. Pour batter into a large loaf pan or normal cake pan.
6. Bake for 45-60 minutes.

Banana Spice Bread