Category Archives: anyone can cook vegetarian food

Recipe: Chocolate Rye Zucchini Bread

Posted on February 5, 2015 | 2 comments

I’ve been wanting to make chocolate bread for a while, but the ganglion cyst on my wrist makes kneading dough very painful, so it’s all been on the back burner. But having made Pizza Serafina last week for the Great Bake Off at work (which I really must write about at some point, because it was absolutely bonkers and beyond my wildest imaginings), sore wrists and all, I found myself with leftover fresh yeast – and when I was talking to my aunt about the pizza afterward, she reminded me that my Nonna also used to make a dough that was so wet that one couldn’t really knead it anyway – one just pushed it around a bit in the bowl.

Of course, I don’t have that recipe, and it’s probably madness to make up a recipe for bread, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I didn’t want that yeast to go to waste (apparently, I had no qualms about potentially wasting a lot of flour and cocoa and chocolate in my attempt to salvage the yeast…).

One of my scientists recently gave me a medium-sized marrow, with the comment that I was the only person he knew under the age of 60 who might know what to do with it. If one is going to be the Under-60 Marrow Champion, one must be prepared to take some risks, so I decided that what this chocolate bread really needed was some grated zucchini, to keep it moist.

And maybe some rye flour, to underline the dark, almost bitter, nuttiness of the chocolate and zucchini.

The result? Well, the dough was downright weird, but it did rise, and I have to say, the flavour isn’t half bad. This recipe made two loaves of a nice, slightly sweet, chocolatey bread, studded with chocolate, that kind of begs for a little apricot jam, if you ask me. It’s quite lovely and soft, and perhaps a little on the heavy side, with the rye and chocolate flavours both very much present. It’s the sort of thing you could have when you felt like eating chocolate for breakfast, without feeling too bad about it afterward.

And hey – it used up a significant portion of that marrow!

Your Shopping List

35 g fresh yeast (about 10-12g dried yeast)
500 ml lukewarm water
100 g brown sugar
300 g grated zucchini or marrow (about 2-3 small zucchini)1 tsp salt
400 g bread flour
75 g cocoa powder
325 g rye flour
3 tbsp olive oil
200 g chopped dark chocolate

Cinnamon sugar or a little brown sugar to top, optional but very good!

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Tagged anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, breads scones and quick breads, chocolate, dairy-free, egg-free, foodie challenges, nut-free, rye, vegan, vegetarian, yeast, zucchini

Anyone Can Cook Fabulous Vegetarian Food: Zucchini Zeitgeist and Merry Marrows

Posted on February 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

Ah, February. The season of smoky heat and bushfires (she says, looking dubiously out the window at the pouring rain), of nights too humid for sleep, of days that are long but growing just a little shorter, of children going back to school, of marrows taking over the garden.

I am a terrible gardener, and perhaps this is why I have never managed to succumb to a total zucchini invasion. My zucchini plants grow filmy white on their leaves, and then they shrivel up, and my zucchinis themselves, while delicious, never reach the apocalyptic numbers I dream of, nor the intimidating size one so frequently hears of. I do not find myself building zucchini ziggurats or succumbing to squash samurai, nor am I menaced by marrow marauders or carnivorous courgettes.

Which is a rather sad, really.

So I make up for it by buying way too many zucchini at the markets, so that I, too, can face the challenge of what to do with this abundance. Except that it isn’t a very good challenge, because I have loads of ideas, and nowhere near enough zucchini to do them justice.

I’m sure you do, too.

The February 2015 theme is
Zucchinis and marrows

(Because I can’t possibly be the only person out there who sees a three kilo marrow as a golden opportunity)

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Recipe: Scrambled Tofu with Cajun Spices

Posted on January 24, 2015 | 2 comments

Three quarters of the way through the month and it’s probably time I actually created a recipe for my Anyone Can Cook Vegetarian Food challenge. And in fact, I did create this recipe, several days ago – I’m just having trouble getting around to posting it. I’m running a big event at work next week and am being a bit overwhelmed not so much by the workload as by the slightly terrifying levels of enthusiasm and competitiveness being demonstrated by those around me.

The number of questions I’ve been getting about exactly how things will work and precisely how I will prevent cheating – including the Graphics department expressing an alarming level of concern about people forging voting tokens (and I’m not at *all* worried that it’s the people who design all the images, drawings, posters etc who have forgery on their minds…) is… well, let’s just say that I’m beginning to wonder if my trust in my colleagues is misplaced and I should be appointing scrutineers. And maybe the Electoral Commission, to supervise.

(Still, given that my biggest worry a few weeks ago was that nobody would participate, overwhelming enthusiasm is a fairly nice problem to have. I am beginning to feel a little bit like a kindergarten teacher, however.)

Anyway. This is indeed a lovely, quick recipe to make – and it’s tofu, which is a product I’m normally terrified of, so it’s slightly amazing, even to me, that this recipe has been getting onto my weeknight roster. To me, this tastes like a nice, spicy version of scrambled eggs. (Andrew tells me it tastes nothing like scrambled eggs. He’s wrong, but since he hates eggs, and likes this recipe, I’m not going to complain…) Like scrambled eggs, it’s a good, fast recipe to put together on a hot day.

I like to serve this with corn chips, which saves any extra cooking and is also yummy. But it’s pretty nice on it’s own, or you could stuff it into a burrito for a vegan version of breakfast burritos…

Your shopping list

250 g soft tofu
4 spring onions (scallions)
2 capsicums, one red and one green
1-2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp Cajun spice mix
1 chipotle pepper in adobo, or 1 tsp ground chipotle pepper
½ tsp turmeric
250 g cherry tomatoes
small handful of fresh coriander (optional – leave it out if you hate coriander)
½ cup grated cheese or vegan cheeze (cheddar, mozzarella, or a combination of cheeses)
corn chips or bread to serve

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Posted in anyone can cook vegetarian food, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, low fructose, low glycemic index, main courses, nut-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged 15-minute food, anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, cajun, capsicums, dairy-free, egg-free, foodie challenges, low FODMAP, low GI, nut-free, tofu, tomatoes, vegan, vegetarian

Anybody can cook Fabulous Vegetarian Food: 15-Minute Wonders

Posted on January 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

Am I the only one looking at the weather forecast for the next few days and whimpering? I am not a fan of the summer. True, we get all the most fabulous stone fruit and berries and tomatoes and eggplants and other gorgeous crops – but the price we pay is high. High on the thermometer. And really, where is the fun in having gorgeous, seasonal ingredients in the kitchen if it’s too hot to cook them?

So this month’s challenge is really twofold – to use beautiful, summery ingredients to make a meal, while minimising the amount of time spent with the stove running. Or to be precise…

The January 2015 theme is
15-Minute Wonders

(Because I can’t stand the heat – but I can’t seem to stay out of the kitchen, either…)

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Anyone Can Cook Fabulous Vegetarian Food: Vegan Christmas in July

Posted on June 29, 2014 | Leave a comment

Oh, I am excited about this one. So excited that I am bringing this allegedly monthly challenge back from yet another hiatus when Life got the better of me. I know it’s not quite July yet, but let’s face it – the wintry weather has set in.

We don’t really have holly in Melbourne, but if we did, it would have berries on it. And while it isn’t snowing here, I understand they are having a pretty good ski season up in the Victorian Alps. Meanwhile, we have the wind wuthering around our house, the weather is cold and dark, and when one goes out in it, it rains. Sideways.

This may not sound appealing to you, but I actually love Melbourne winters. Partly, it’s perversity – nobody else seems to love this weather, so I do, wholeheartedly. (In return, Melbourne very kindly gives me good weather for any events I hold outside, even if the weather has been utterly unpromising up until that point. We have a very good relationship, Melbourne and I.)

But mostly, it’s because this is such fantastic baking weather. Continue reading →

Anyone Can Cook Fabulous Vegetarian Food: Magical Mushrooms

Posted on May 2, 2014 | 1 comment

No, not that kind. We are not doing hallucinogenic food on the blog this month. We shall save that for another month.

OK, no we won’t do that, either.

So, it’s Autumn in Melbourne, which means that there are mushrooms at the market – Swiss Brown mushrooms, Portobello mushrooms, little white button mushrooms, and more exotic fare like delicate oyster mushrooms, shitaake mushroms, and gorgeous, autumn-leaf-coloured pine mushrooms (my new favourite).

Delicious. And while mushrooms are not really meat for vegetarians (despite certain advertisements suggesting the contrary), they certainly are a popular ingredient in vegetarian recipes. They may not be meaty, but they have a big, assertive flavour, and can fit into a variety of cuisines.

Just don’t make them slimy. How do people do that, anyway? I mean, seriously, the number of times perfectly good cafés have fed me slimy mushrooms of evil is countless, and yet I have never had this happen to me when I am cooking at home. It’s a mystery. But I digress….

The May 2014 theme is Mushrooms

(Badger badger badger…)

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Tagged anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, foodie challenges, mushrooms, vegetarian

Recipe: Vegan Choc-Cross Buns with Tahini and Apricots

Posted on April 19, 2014 | 7 comments

I take Easter, and particularly Good Friday, very seriously. It’s not just because of the sheer number of professional commitments I have around Easter (and Good Friday is pretty much the peak of these, as I tend to have a late service on Thursday evening, then help lead the Way of the Cross procession through the city all morning on the Friday, before settling in for an afternoon service somewhere – Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday are relaxing by comparison!), or even just about the religious aspect, though this is important to me, too.

In fact, these days I have a personal Good Friday ritual that involves fish and chips and a re-watching of the really good 1971 Jesus Christ Superstar film – because I spend so much of Easter feverishly keeping track of how many more rounds of chant I need to do, or where in the pew sheet I am, or how to make that hymn scan in Italian, or concentrating feverishly on using my voice efficiently so that it actually lasts through four days of epic singing, that there really isn’t much room for personal religious observance. I’m too busy concentrating on doing my job right! And that’s totally fine, but I then need something that will let me stop and contemplate the season, and it turns out that JCSS is great for that. Especially this year, when I’ve spent so much time living in Passion land, between St Matthew, and the readings this week, and listening to the St John Passion sent to me by my pen-friend’s mother.

I just got totally distracted from what I was going to say, which is that for me, Good Friday is also sort of a birthday. I was born on Good Friday in 1976, so I tend to view the entire Easter Weekend as fair game for birthday gatherings, if there is no time on the day itself. And the first thing my mother ate after I was born was a hot cross bun, so I am undoubtedly pre-disposed by the conditions of my birth to take hot cross buns seriously, too!

Anyway, after doing the Hot Cross Bun class at Gewürzhaus, I was consumed with the need to make hot cross buns, repeatedly. And when I saw the recipe for the choc-chip kind (which I actually view as Not Proper Hot Cross Buns, but never mind that), I was immediately seized by the conviction that these needed to be veganised. Of course, I then got totally overwhelmed by singing commitments, but yesterday’s afternoon service, in addition to being long, was also fairly inaudible from the organ loft, and so I found my brain turning to recipe design. As one does. In particular, I could not help thinking that chocolate tahini would make an amazing substitute for all the butter and eggs that one normally finds in hot cross buns. Oh yes, indeed. And since there is at least one vegan in the choir I’m singing with tonight, this is clearly exactly the right time to unleash vegan chocolate hot cross buns on the world!

Happy Easter to you, if you celebrate it. As for me, I’ll be singing…

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Posted in anyone can cook vegetarian food, bread, cakes, dairy-free, egg-free, foodie challenges, nut-free, Recipes, Special occasions, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, apricots, cherries, chocolate, dairy-free, easter, egg-free, flour, foodie challenges, hot cross buns, nut-free, sesame seeds, tahini, vegan, vegetarian, yeast

Recipe: Absurdly Cute Meringue Easter Bunnies

Posted on April 17, 2014 | 4 comments

This is yet another one of those recipes that happens when I decide to make lemon curd, and then have to figure out something to do with all the egg whites. I was just going to do plain meringues, but then for some reason my brain (which is not usually a particularly visual organ) came up with this image of stylised bunnies. I drew the design on a piece of paper to see if it actually looked bunny-like outside my brain, and it did! After that, it was just a matter of figuring out what colour to make the paws and ears, and how to do little bunny-like faces…

Your Shopping List (for 12 bunnies, which is what I would have had if I hadn’t managed to stuff up on separating one of my eggs)

4 egg whites (use the yolks for lemon curd, or maybe a huge batch of mayonnaise)

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1 1/3 cups of caster sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla paste

food colourings and flavours to taste – I used rose, violet and orange essences.

coloured mini choc chips, or silver cachous, or other decorations for faces.

several piping bags, if you don’t already own them – you will probably need one for each colour, unless you are much bigger on washing up than I am

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Posted in anyone can cook vegetarian food, biscuits, confectionery, dairy-free, foodie challenges, gluten-free, low fructose, nut-free, Recipes, vegetarian

Tagged anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, bunnies, dairy-free, easter, eggs, foodie challenges, gluten-free, low fructose, nut-free, sugar, vegetarian

Anyone Can Cook Fabulous Vegetarian Food: Easter Inspirations!

Posted on April 1, 2014 | 2 comments

So apparently the Tofu Challenge turned out to be kind of an April Fool’s joke on my part, since I never did manage to create a tofu recipe (though I did cook with tofu *three whole times*, so at least I achieved that much in my pathway towards vegetarian enlightenment).

But it’s a new month, which means it’s time for a new challenge, and since my singing diary tells me that Easter (and laryngitis) is fast approaching…

The APril 2014 theme is Easter Inspirations

(because God is love, and food is love, and I don’t think I’d better continue on to the logical conclusion of that thought or nobody will ever let me sing in their church again, but meanwhile my brain has moved on and is considering an entirely new series of heresies about transubstantiation and this is what happens when I’m doing too much singing and not enough sleeping.)

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Tagged anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, easter, foodie challenges, vegan, vegetarian

Anyone Can Cook Fabulous Vegetarian Food: Non-Terrifying Tofu!

Posted on March 1, 2014 | 10 comments

OK. This is it. This is where it gets scary. I’ve been playing, I admit, at the shallow end of the vegetarian pool. I buy my farmers’ market veggies, I use legumes with grains to build whole proteins, and I add nuts to anything I think I can get away with, given that neither Andrew or I really like nuts in things. I make veggie-burgers and vegan cakes and smoothies with non-dairy milks, and I even play with raw foods.

But there is one food that I have, thus far, largely avoided. I buy it sometimes, and put it in my fridge, whence it gazes upon my accusingly until I feel so overwhelmed with guilt that I blend it up with a lot of chocolate and call it a truffle tart. Or… nope, that’s basically all I do with it, really. Oh, wait, there’s a dip, too. It’s quite a good dip, actually. But that really is it. And this is silly, because I know perfectly well that one can make tasty food with tofu. I’ve even done so, on occasion. It’s just… there’s something about it that intimidates me utterly. Perhaps it’s the beige, quiveringness of it all. Perhaps it’s the subtly nutty flavour which, I must admit, I do not really like.

All I can say for certain is that I am terrified of tofu, and it’s time to face my fears! With Lent (and thus vegetarianism) rapidly approaching, the time has come to gird my loins and venture into the land of soy products.

The March 2014 theme is

Non-Terrifying Tofu!

(Soy be it.)

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I’m going to need a lot of help on this challenge, I can tell you now. Because while I have successfully followed recipes for tofu, I just am nowhere near comfortable enough with it to generate my own. So if you are a regular eater of tofu, if you know just how to make it awesome, please, come and share your recipes, especially the savoury ones (I’ve pretty much got a handle on the whole ‘blend tofu with fruit or chocolate to make a mousse’ concept). I’d really love to get some good marinated tofu recipes, some curries, some scrambled tofu (the best tofu I have had to date was a vegan version of Migas, spicy scrambled tofu with tortilla bits), some… honestly, I dont know what! If I did, I wouldn’t be basically sitting here going ‘help! I don’t know what to do with tofu!’

But I truly don’t. If you do, I’d love to hear from you this month.

Challenge rules can be found at the main challenge page! Don’t forget to add your post to the linky below once you’ve done all the lovely adding of icons and linking back to this page, so that you can get the blog hop code for your own page.

(I was going to end with another Soy pun, but since the only thing that comes to mind relates to Soylent Green, which is really not a very vegetarian concept, I think I might leave it at that…)

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Posted in anyone can cook vegetarian food, foodie challenges, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, blog hop, foodie challenges, tofu, vegan, vegetarian