This gallery contains 1 photos.
Today is the fifth Sunday of the month, which makes the farmers’s market a chancy one – a lot of stallholders come in one Sunday a month, or on the first and third or second and fourth, so the fifth … Continue reading
I was going to write about insanely chocolatey biscuits, but on making them last night, I discovered that it is, actually, possible to make something too chocolatey. My eyes were kind of bugging out. Also, the recipe needs work – it’s true that I didn’t follow it, exactly, but the changes I made should not have resulted in chocolate rocks. I suspect the author meant to put in some bicarb of soda and forgot.
I’ve been out to lunch *twice* in the last two days, and I’m going out to dinner tonight, so it’s time for a couple of café reviews. The first is a review of an old favourite of mine, Miss Marple’s, a tea shop in Sassafras which has been around forever and hasn’t changed its menu in the fifteen years I’ve been visiting. (The second is a brand new, vegetarian café called Little Deer Tracks which just opened up in Coburg two months ago, and which I visited for the first time today and will review tomorrow). Both are wonderful, but in completely different ways.
By request, another recipe adapted from Veganomicon, and the last I’m going to post this year, for reasons of fair use. Mostly what I changed in this recipe was the chilli sauce, which developed quite a different range of chillis based on what I had available. And very tasty it was, too. Also, I couldn’t resist adding grated cheese on top. This is partly because I’m a wimp about chilli, but mostly because I just like cheese. And, as usual, the discursive prose is all mine.
Your Shopping List
Sauce olive oil 1 large onion, chopped 1 large green chilli, seeded and chopped 1 1/2 chipotle chillis in adobo, chopped, and with some of their sauce 1 tbsp red chilli-in-a-tube (or one red chilli, chopped) 1/2 tsp chilli powder 2 tbsp spanish spice mix, or paprika 2 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp oregano 2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes 1 tsp sugar salt Filling 500g waxy potatoes, peeled and diced 1 bunch of kale (about 300g) washed, trimmed and finely chopped olive oil 4-8 cloves garlic 1 tsp cumin 1/4 cup water juice of one lime 1/4 cup toasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds) 14 corn tortillas grated cheese (optional)Posted in cooking with vegetables, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, low fructose, nut-free, vegan, vegetarian
Tagged chipotle chilli, dairy-free, egg-free, kale, lime, low fructose, main courses, nut-free, pepitas, potatoes, recipes, tomatoes, vegan, vegetarian
Now that you’ve all recovered from yesterday’s shocking revelations, I thought I’d write about another much-loved book, which I happened to cook from last night (the mushroom, burghul and nut burgers, if you are interested, and very nice they are, too).
This is one of those books that I’ll forget about for a while, and then pull off the shelf and cook from for three weeks straight. It has that happy combination of nice, easy, recipes like garlicky beans and braised greens on sourdough toast (which turns out to be far more of a comfort food than I had ever imagined possible) or potato skillet pie, and more elaborate ones like beetroot ragout with goats cheese soufflé (which I love for showing me how to make soufflé) or festiva rice pilaf (full of spices, nuts, dried berries and colourful vegetables) which take half the evening to make, but are entirely worth it. Reading it, I realise I’m about to enter one of those ‘cook everything from this book’ phases, because I keep turning to page after page and going, “cooked that, cooked that, haven’t cooked that, why haven’t I cooked that?” in a manner suggestive of future meal planning.
It’s been a little quiet around here, which wasn’t my intention. Several of you have asked me for particular recipes – which I will get to, I promise! – but work has just gone into grant-writing mode again, and I find that spending a day attempting to ascertain from a remarkably detailed, and yet strangely unhelpful, set of instructions whether or not what we are doing counts as human subjects research leaves me with very little brain at the end of the day for writing about food. And I’m feeling a bit on the seedy side this week, which doesn’t help.
The thing with feeling seedy and tired and (to be honest) hormonal, is that I become totally unreliable about grocery shopping. For one thing, I want ALL THE RED MEAT IN THE WORLD. Well, Koallah Farm sent me their weekly specials email today, so that took care of that particular urge. What is more puzzling is the invariable urge to buy all sorts of unhealthy things that I don’t even particularly like. Those fake chocolate mousse desserts, for example. Or Edam cheese (which I don’t dislike, but I don’t like in *those* quantities). Or really bad filled chocolates. Or excessively sweet confectionery which I can make better myself. Or donuts. Which I don’t want by the time I get home, because I have also bought lamingtons, and cheese, and STEAK, and fake chocolate mousse, despite the fact that I remember perfectly well from last time that I don’t like it, but this time it will be different.
(Generally, grocery shopping becomes Andrew’s duty at this time of the month. Though his tendency to call me from the confectionery or frozen dessert sections of the supermarket to make suggestions is not as helpful as he thinks it is…)
Anyway, today I did something I haven’t done in more than a decade.
O my Readers, I bought packet cake mix.
Having been delighted at the flavour (not to mention the name) of the extremely yellow sfoof I tried yesterday, I went in search of a recipe. The one I found was in The Arab Table, by May Bsisu. Looking at the ingredients, it didn’t contain the fennel seeds or the orange flower water that I remember tasting, so I adjusted the recipe accordingly. On cooking, the flavour was about right, but it was a denser, more crumbly cake than the original model, and much more orange than yellow. I suspect the latter is because I used raw caster sugar instead of white, and the former is a result of the high proportion of semolina to flour in the cake. For a fluffier version, you could use 1 1/2 cups of flour and only 1/2 a cup of semolina, but I actually like it as it stands.
Incidentally, I have no idea why I captioned the pictures the way I did. Yet another mystery that will remain unsolved…
Your Shopping List
2 tbsp tahini, approx 1 cup flour 1 cup semolina 1 tbsp (the Aussie kind – 20ml) turmeric 2 tsp fennel seeds, ground 2 tsp baking powder 3/4 cup sugar (castor or raw castor) 3/4 cup milk 90 ml canola oil 1 tsp orange flower water, or more, to taste 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 2 tbsp pine nuts (approx)Posted in cakes, dairy-free, egg-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian
Tagged cakes, dairy-free, egg-free, fennel, orange flower water, pine nuts, recipes, semolina, sfoof!, turmeric, vegan, vegetarian
In the immortal words of 1066 And All That, it’s magnificent, but it’s not the railway station. Which is to say that I did, in fact, succeed in making confectionery this time, and it even tastes good. I just didn’t manage to make marshmallow…
Vegan un-marshmallow. Tasty, and rather pretty, but manifestly not marshmallow.
I don’t know what I’ve made, to be honest. It’s texture is so far from marshmallow that I’m not even sure what I’d need to do to get it there. It isn’t light or elastic, the way a marshmallow should be, despite looking quite promising in the beating stage (it never actually formed peaks, however, though it seemed to come close) It’s soft, a little grainy, almost mushy in texture – barely set. It isn’t all that far from a thick, soft icing. Quite good actually. I know I’ve tasted something with this texture before, but I can’t think what. My brain keeps telling me ‘coconut ice’, but I’m fairly sure that isn’t it. Andrew says they remind him of Wizz Fizz, but I can’t think why – they don’t have the tang or the sourness (I suspect he’s just picking up on the pineapple flavouring in the yellow part).
From this…
… to this. So close, and yet so far…
It’s all very puzzling. I’m not quite sure where to go from here. I don’t know that adding more agar is going to help all that much, though I will try with just a little more. I’m actually thinking now about coming from a different angle entirely, like making my basic agar jellies, and then whipping them as they cool to see if that helps. Though, now I think of it, they aren’t all that elastic either. Pectin is better but pectin needs acidity, and marshmallow isn’t acid.
I’m also tempted to see if I can find a fake egg-white substitute to see if that helps lighten the mixture. Though I was hoping to create a recipe that would translate well between countries – you know, one which doesn’t rely on you being able to find a particular brand of something.
I’ll have to ponder this one a bit more. In the meantime, I have blood orange jellies to make – not to mention kale and potato enchiladas and maybe even sfoof…
And, of course, the MasterChef finals start tonight! I’m very excited – for one thing, I want to know who wins; for another, this means that in just over a week, I’ll have my evenings back!
Just a quiet sort of weekend, which is a nice thing. It looks like spring out there, but it’s still very much winter in reality, and picnicking inclinations tend to be frozen by the reality of 7°C at lunchtime…
Today, I’ve been to the library, made another attempt at vegan marshmallows (outcome to be determined, but definitely better than last time), and visited a Farmers’ Market in Preston. It’s not our usual market, as it only comes to Preston once a month, and I always forget which weekend it’s on, and this week is my off-week, pay-wise (we couldn’t market last weekend, as I had Too Much Singing both mornings), so I kept to a more modest budget than usual, but it definitely has potential. The next Preston Market will be on a pay-week, however, and I’m already looking forward to it!
I’m still working my way through McGee On Food and Cooking. Honestly, this book is a treasure trove. I’ve ordered my copy and I can’t wait for it to arrive.
At the moment, I’m in the vegetables chapter, which is quite extensive. The first part took me back to Year 9 biology, with drawings of cells that looked faintly familiar, but it quickly moved on to the juicy vegetable gossip. Did you know, for example, that onion is a leaf? It makes sense, now I think about it – each layer in the onion is the coiled base of the leaf that extends up above the ground. If you think about spring onions and leeks, it’s easy to see. And perhaps this explains why one friend of mine is allergic to onions, leeks, spring onions, chives and shallots, but not garlic – which is the one member of the onion family where the leaves are not the edible part. Actually, I’m not sure what the edible part is, plant-wise, but I have a suspicion it’s a stem, not a root. And before you give me odd looks, we eat potato stems too, you know. Apparently tubers are just swollen up stem bits. Yum.
This recipe is the unnatural spawn of three different recipes – one in Veganomicon, for a low-fat vegan chocolate cake, one in 366 Delicious Ways To Cook Rice, Beans and Grains (which, incidentally, is an incredibly useful cookbook if you are trying to up your vegetarian proteins) for a chocolate and amaranth cake, and one from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, for gluten-free chocolate cupcakes. And then I added my own variations. Dangerous. It has a nice, not-too-dense, springy texture, and the orange juice, spices amaranth give it an interestingly Caribbean flavour, at least to my way of thinking.
Perhaps it’s my Aussie upbringing, but I think it would be even better with an upside-down pineapple base. I’ve done a variation for that below. I made it in a bundt tin, but it really didn’t rise enough to justify this – I suspect an ordinary 20-22cm ring tin or round tin would do you. Just don’t fill it absolutely to the brim, OK? Don’t be intimidated by the lengthy ingredient list, either. Most of it is an artefact of the fact that you are making your own gluten-free flour, so if you’re pressed for time and have a good commercial alternative, by all means substitute 1 1/2 cups of it for the first 4 ingredients.
Your Shopping List
1/2 cup quinoa flour
1/2 cup rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup corn flour (cornstarch) + 1/4 cup later on
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup popped amaranth
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup cocoa
1 3/4 cups orange juice
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup apple sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup caster sugar
Posted in cakes, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian
Tagged almond meal, amaranth, cakes, chocolate, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, quinoa flour, recipes, vegan, vegetarian
