Babka

I have seen many recipes for a chocolate babka, which is Polish (I think), and looks like a bread. This isn’t that.

Belarussian babka is a potato and meat pie/bake/thing. It consists of a layer of meat (pork and lard) sandwiched between two layers of a potato and flour mixture, and coated in sour cream. I decided to make this instead of its parent recipe, a meat-stuffed potato pancake, because I wanted to go for something a little less oily.

As with the draniki, the recipe called for eggs in the potato layers. I substituted with some egg replacer and soy milk, as well as increasing the amount of flour and liquid in the recipe.

For the “meat” mixture, I crumbled tempeh,  with cooked onion, cabbage and carrots to add some flavour and, you know, vitamins and stuff. I also added sage, nutritional yeast, some vegie salt, and a tiny bit of marmite. It was very tasty in the end.

I layered it, pasted it lightly with vegan sour cream, and baked it. It didn’t rise (I don’t know if its meant to) or colour up as I’d hoped. That Tofutti stuff is tasty, but a little creepy – it stayed white as snow even on the top shelf of the oven. That’s just not right.

Mmm, doesn't that look good?

I served it up with a big green garden salad, and I have to say it was with trepidation that I took the first bite. I needn’t have worried. It was really, really good. Warm, filling, and had a flavour that reminded me a little of my Nan’s vegetable soup.

Mezze two

On Mezze night number two, we had pumpkin kibbeh, tabouli, bean dip, flat bread chips, and fried tempeh kibbeh. Overall, it was delicious, and I have to say I’m pretty proud of my new creation, the fried tempeh kibbeh.

The pumpkin Kibbeh was bought from the Middle East Bakery on Hope st. I just happened upon them in the freezer while I was looking for the ill-fated felafel. They are vegan, and cooked straight from frozen, so they’re quick and hard to stuff up, which is always a winning combination.

I picked the bean dip after a cursory net serach about Lebanese food. I have since discovered that it is not Lebanese, but Egyptian. For that I apoligse. However I did make it, because it is what I had the ingredients for, and I have to say it was very yummy.  I used this recipe from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, and served it with vegetable crudites and flat bread chips.

Bean dip with capsicum, carrot and snow peas from our garden

I made the tabouli from a recipe in Arak and Mezze (available from the Moreland Libraries), however I overestimated the amount of parsley I had left so it was a little heavy on the burghul.

As tasty as all of this was, the main event was the tempeh kibbeh. I made these up because we had some tempeh that needed using, and I wanted to try my hand at veganising the meat kibbeh I always see at Lebanese restaurants.

Pumpkin kibbeh to the right, Tempeh Kibbeh on the left

Vegan Tempeh Kibbeh

• 250 g tempeh, mashed
• 1 cup bread crumbs
• 3 tablespoons of soaked burghul
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• pinch cayenne pepper
• 2 chopped spring onions
• salt, to taste
• oil, for frying

1. With your hands, mash all ingredients together very well, until there are very few tempeh lumps left. If it is too dry, add a little oil. If it is too wet, add some more bread crumbs.
2. Taste the mixture, add salt if necessary.
3. Roll the mixture into balls.
4. Deep fry the balls in batches, in a wok or deep fryer. You could also bake the balls in the oven for a lighter dish.
5. Serve with bread and salad.

 

¡Mole, mole, mole!

¡Hola¡

¡Acabo de descubrir cómo hacer la “¡”!

And now, moving on from my grammatical excitement (¡!), lets talk mole. (just a note, I’m talking about the edible, chocolate-chilli sauce, not this furry little guy).

Mole, in Mexico, refers to a number of different sauces. However, we usually understand it to refer to the particular sauce, made of several varieties of chilli and chocolate. This, I am told by the internets, is more accurately called, Mole Poblano.

After reading a number of Mole recipes online, several questions emerged. Where would I find the ingredients? What would I replace the chicken with? And, most importantly, who would eat the vast amount of sauce the recipe resulted in?

The questions proved easier to answer than I first anticipated. I decided to use tempeh  (which is far too often overlooked in our house) instead of a chicken, and some more research led me to a Mexican grocer in Tullamarine. Last, I remembered a campaign review meeting I was supposed to bring food to, and decided these would be preciesly the large group of people to feed the huge batch of sauce to.

So off I trooped first thing in the morning (well, after clients at 6am, so almost first thing), to Aztec Mexican, where I was met with very friendly and helpful service and a range of chillies, spices, tortillas, corn flours and other Mexican ingredients. For anyone considering heading there, I definitely recommend, though, as per usual, vegans should be aware of labels as some products that you wouldn’t normally check contain lard. Also, it should be noted that it doesn’t look like much from the outside. It looks like a warehouse. Just head to the office, and they’ll let you in to the shop behind.

I got a little over excited, and bought the chillies I needed, as well as some corn tortillas, a tin of poblano chillies, and some mexican chocolate. Yum!

I then spent more time poring over recipes. In the end, I condensed two recipes into one. I will not post a recipe as such, but direct you to the two I followed, here, and here. I am adding the ingredients list I used at the bottom of this post though, as a guide.

So I soaked, and blended and ground and simmered, and then blended everything again with my trusty stick blender. The result was a spicy, deep-flavoured sauce, which was, to be honest, a little odd to our tastes. It was very strong and very hot, though the heat wasn’t unpleasant. The sesame and almonds really came through, as did the smoke flavour from the chipotles.  It was much less smooth than those pictured elsewhere on the net, but I put that down to the fact that i don’t have a real blender.

Mr ate it, but wasn’t a big fan. It seemed to go down well at the meeting-cum-potluck, but I think a fair bit of that may have been hype about the idea of chocolate for dinner.

Don’t let it put you off – it was an interesting dinner, and I think it worked well in the context of a potluck. It wasn’t bad, I’m just not in a rush to make it again.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good photo, having rushed it to the meeting in a large plastic container. Rest assured it looked somewhat better than this:

Sea of Mole

Ingredients List for Vegan Mole Poblano

• 2 dried pasilla chilies (called Chillis Negros at AztecMexican)
• 3 dried mulato chilies
• 3 dried ancho chilies
• 2 dried chipotle chillies
• 1/2 cup lightly packed sultanas
• Water to cover
• 3/4 cup almonds
• Cinnamon stick
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
• I tortilla, broken in small pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon anise seeds
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 diced onions
• 3 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• some pretend beef stock in water (I can’t remember how much)
• 1 disk Mexican chocolate
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder (my addition)
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste (my addition)
• 2 packets of tempeh, fried in olive oil

Disaster strikes, but turns out yum

The aim for last night was to attempt the Traditional Pancake Rolls, or Milssam, and Pumpkin porridge, with Persimmon Tea, Persimmon sherbet, and Barbequed beef. I had made a plan, I had all the ingredients, I had a clean kitchen to start with and I was in my element- this was going to be good.

I started with the Persimmon Sherbet, or Yeonci. Re-reading the recipe, I realised I didn’t have the required freezing horsepower to turn a whole persimmon into ice before dinner, so instead I peeled and belnded it, and stuck it in the freezer in a plastic container.

I then moved to the tea, and realised that I had again mis-read the recipe and had bought fresh rather than dried persimmon… ah well, how different can it be, right? So on with the tea, fresh chopped persimmons and all. At least I got to throw in some of my newly-procured jujubes.

I then moved on to the seasoning the beef-flavoured seitan and some tempeh to make the barbecued beef. No worries here, at least. I cooked the pumpkin for the porridge, again, no issues. For the pancake rolls, I managed to get the vegetables julliened without a hitch.. things are beginning to go well. I made the batter, no worries there, and then preceeded to heat the wok.

I poured in the stated amount of batter, fried the pancake, began to lift it and bam! pancake crumbles. That’s ok, I say to myself, the first one never works out, we’ll try again. So I pour in the next spoonful, fry one side, lift it up… and no joy. It tears, it crumbles, it falls apart. Okay, third time’s the charm right? Wrong. The third one was the worst. It wouldn’t swirl, it got all thick in the middle, and then it just stuck to the bottom of the pan and no amount of coaxing would get it off.

So I left off for a while, stuck the evidence in the compost, and fried up the ‘beef’. I, rather nervously as I just couldn’t imagine it working, added the rice flour to the pumpkin mixture. Inspiration struck, and I wrapped the intended pancake filling in some rice paper rolls, and served the lot with some rice noodles. Mr made the mustard lemon sauce, being drawn to the kitchen by the sounds of and impending tantrum.

We ate the lot with the persimmon tea (which was wonderful), and followed it up with the pureed frozen persimmon and some vanilla soy ice-cream.

In the end all was well. I loved the ‘beef’, and the rice-paper-cum-pancake rolls were great, especially with the lemon mustard sauce. The pumpkin porridge, which I had been suspicious of from the start, was fantastic- much better than either of us imagined. My noodles (I made them up on the night) were a good fit with the other flavours, and Mr loved the persimmon sherbet. Me, not so much, I didn’t like the flavour of the persimmon, but otherwise it was yum.

So, without further ado, I have some photos, and my recipe for fresh-flavoured noodles to go with the tempeh and seitan.

Dinner on the box table

Tempeh, seitan and noodles

Surprisingly yummy pumpkin porridge

Yummy mustard sauce in my favourite tea cup, and rice paper rolls

Persimmon Tea - so good

Sweet Noodles

1 packet glass noodles

4 tbs chopped corriander

1 nashi pear, diced (small)

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbs raw sugar

2 tbs lime juice

3 tbsp sesame seeds

Cook the noodles in some water, as per packet instructions, drain and set aside.

Chop the pear and corriander.

Add the rest of ingredients to a large frying pan, add noodles and stir until completely mixed. Serve warm.