Nasi lemak redux

I haven't been too interested in cooking recently, but when I got Ottolenghi's Plenty for Xmas, I remembered how good his version of nasi lemak was. So here it is again, but with non-traditional chickpeas. The sambal is really tasty: not too hot, and the tamarind and sugar give it a sweet tanginess.

On top, I sprinkled some crispy fried shallots and some vegetarian anchovies (which I brought back from Singapore -- they are seasoned dried mushroom stalks). Unfortunately I left the bag of anchovies on the counter, and while I was out, Mackie ripped open the bag and ate the lot.

Mmm, bacon

Eggplant bacon from Appetite for Reduction:

Magic Shroom Dust from Hot Knives:

Smoked coconut flakes:

Zucchini cornbread

This was goo-ood.

If my usual cornbread recipes have a failing, it's that they can sometimes be a bit dry. But this one solves that problem by including a cup of grated zucchini. This cornbread was luscious!

I combined two recipes: this one from Bryanna, and this one from Herbivoracious. I think I basically followed Bryanna's proportions of wet and dry ingredients, but with white (all purpose) flour. I used Herbivoracious' trick of browning the (vegan) butter, and adding (soy) milk powder, but used much less butter -- more like 3 tablespoons.

Smoking

I got a stovetop smoker for my birthday. Since then we've been eating lots of smoked things. Probably my favourite things so far have been smoked tofu and tempeh. Here's the smoker packed full of veggie protein (marinated pressed tofu, tempeh, and two homemade seitan sausages).

For the tofu, I press it overnight and then marinate it for a day in soy sauce with a bit of maple syrup and sesame oil. Once it has been smoked for 30 minutes, it's ready to be sliced thinly for sandwiches. The tempeh just goes in plain -- once smoked, it's ready to be cooked however you like. I like to slice it thinly and pan fry, adding flavourings (soy sauce plus whatever other things) at the end for a glaze.

Other things I've smoked so far: cherry tomatoes (10 minutes), garlic, potatoes (45 minutes from raw to cooked -- too long; better to parcook them before smoking), young coconut, coconut flakes (20 minutes), lemon. The young coconut was a bit odd -- I ended up pureeing it and making a smoky ice cream which was pretty good. The coconut flakes were great as a bacon-y element in a salad. The smoked lemon I didn't know quite what to do with, so it is sitting in the freezer waiting for inspiration to strike.

Broad beans

As a kid I hated broad beans (fava beans). I was totally surprised when I moved to Massachusetts to find out how excited people got about them in the spring. I was also surprised at the rigmarole involved in preparing them: my parents always served them with the skins on, but it seems that in the USA it's normal to parboil them and remove the outer skin. I have tried them this way but it seemed like a lot of work for not much return.

Anyway, now I am a convert, thanks to my dad giving me some small broad beans from his garden. These pods are very small compared to the ones you find for sale -- they are finger-sized and so tender that you can steam them and eat them whole. They are fantastic. I was surprised especially by the aroma of the pods when I lifted the lid off the steamer -- flowery, almost rose-like.


We ate these with risotto (again, this time it was lemon risotto with tiny cubes of smoked tofu).

White chocolate

Home made vegan white chocolate.

This was my second attempt, and it was better than the first. The first time, I used some gross soy milk powder, and had to add tons of sugar to try to mask the flavour. This time, I used half soy milk powder and half almond meal -- much better flavour, but the texture is not perfect. I think if I had a decent soy milk powder that would solve the problem, but the only one I can find here has a really strong soy taste.

I am basing my experiments on this recipe (without the hours of grinding, though. I just use the stand mixer for 5 minutes or so).

Fake injera

My adventures in fake injera continue... this time I used some old sourdough starter (not active) and added more flour, some carbonated water, some baking soda and baking powder. It worked out pretty well.

(I should point out that a few days later I tried it again, but added too much baking powder or something, because they didn't taste as good. Winging it has its advantages and its disadvantages.)

Pho risotto

This is risotto made with leftover pho broth. It rocked!

I love this risotto recipe -- the trick is that you 'wash' the rice in the stock that you are going to use, so that the stock ends up full of starch. This is actually the source of the creaminess -- it has nothing to do with stirring. This version of risotto cooks basically unattended.

Green mango

Let me introduce my new love: green mango.

Mangoes are absolutely my favourite fruit. They may be my favourite food full stop. But until now, I hadn't investigated green (unripe) mangoes. Wow, they're amazing. When you start peeling the skin off, the mango scent just hits you. The scent and especially the flavour is of course much different from a ripe mango -- they are mouth-puckeringly tart -- but there's a commonality. Interestingly, the texture is much less fibrous than a ripe mango.

One great use for them is shredded in a Thai-style salad, similar to a green papaya salad. There are also Indian pickles and chutneys. But this recipe I tried from 660 Curries was fantastic: Mango, Bell Pepper and Onion in a Pigeon Pea Sauce. (I didn't have any pigeon peas, so I used yellow split peas.) This was tangy and spicy and just wonderful.

Blueberry pie

This was my first blueberry pie. I usually think of pie as something to make with excellent seasonal fruit, but this one was made with frozen blueberries and it was pretty great. The filling was blueberries, lemon zest, sugar and some tiny tapioca pearls.

I used the 'one pie dough to rule them all' recipe from Chez Pim, but with refined coconut oil instead of butter (80% by weight). (I liked the dough technique, where you push the fat into the flour with the heel of your hand to make long flakes. But cold coconut oil tends to be hard and lumpy, so I don't think it worked as well as butter. The recipe has you fold the dough several times, kind of like the laminated dough for croissants, but I found that the coconut oil dough was very fragile, and the carefully-formed layers were falling apart. I wonder whether whipping the oil might work -- Lagusta uses this technique for her croissants.)

I am nitpicking. The crust worked out fine, and the pie was delicious!

What does a vegetarian do with a meat grinder?

I love my stand mixer. Recently in an op shop I spotted an attachment for it: a meat grinder. Although they're not that rare (you do see attachments on eBay -- they can be pricey) I was so surprised to find it that I bought it right away without thinking about what I would use it for.

Quite some internet research later, I read that you can grind chickpeas for falafel with a meat grinder. And so I did. The falafel worked out really well. I convinced myself that this was because of the excellent texture, but it may well have been because the previous few times I've made falafel I have wimped out and baked them in the oven, and this time I (shallow-)fried them. Another vote in favour of the meat grinder was that it was really fun to throw the chickpeas, parsley and garlic into the hopper and have them come out homogeneous. (Okay, that happens when you use the food processor too, but I swear this was more fun.)

Emboldened, I ground some seitan, and some cauliflower, and made a version of larb with cauliflower 'rice' from Stone Soup. This was delicious! We had a green mango salad alongside (sort of along these lines).

Overall, I'm happy to have the meat grinder. It's a bit of a hassle to clean, but not that much worse than a food processor. I like that the stuff you grind comes out a uniform size. I also like that you can grind a large amount. I think the next thing I'm going to try is bigoli.

Chocolate stout cupcakes

These cupcakes set a dangerous precedent.

I am not one of those bakers who enjoys precision. I try to measure things accurately and follow the recipe, but the urge to just eyeball it, and change things on the fly is just too hard to resist.

Anyway, the day I made these cupcakes on the spur of the moment, I surprised even myself in how far I strayed from the recipe. I didn't have tofu or sour cream, or self raising flour. I used less chocolate, and more sugar. And yet they worked out beautifully. The flavour combination of chocolate, prune and stout is just perfect.

Mapo doufu

I hate it when Chinese restaurant menus have a tiny vegetarian section, with say, fried rice as the most exciting option, and then they have a whole tofu section which is decidedly nonvegetarian. The Szechuan dish mapo doufu is one of those that I've always wanted to try, and this week I made a version with crumbled tempeh in place of the meat. It was great.

I used this recipe, following the suggestion of one of the commenters to reduce the oil by omitting the chili oil, and infusing the 1/4 cup of oil with both chili and szechuan pepper. (I think that worked okay, but next time I might use the chili oil. I didn't find my chili infusion hot enough.) I also added a bit more water because the tempeh seemed to soak up a lot of liquid.

Artichoke tea

I bought this because... well, I like artichokes and I like tea. In fact, I think artichokes sometimes taste a bit like tea. But after I bought it, the box sat unopened for weeks because it scared me. Maybe it was the artichokes looming over the tea cup, like triffids.

But I finally got up the nerve to try it, and the verdict is: quite nice. It's a very gentle, vaguely sweet flavour.

Mac and cheese

I don't make mac and cheese very often -- maybe once or twice a year. But when a craving hits, this is the recipe I turn to. It's sort of involved (two separate 'cheese' sauces) and a bit extravagant, but totally worth it. Apparently this recipe won 2nd prize in a (non-vegan) mac and cheese contest!

I make candy for the intellectual stimulation

These are homemade Butterfingers candies, from this recipe (I only had chunky peanut butter in the house, so that's what I used). I hadn't realized that Butterfingers were supposed to be peanut butter flavoured, but there you go.

These were very interesting -- and not in the euphemistic sense, I actually mean the candy-making process here is interesting. You heat the sugar until almost the hard crack stage, and then add the peanut butter. This prevents the sugar from hardening into a toffee consistency -- it ends up sort of flaky and crumbly.

Sourdough bread

All through the summer, I kept my sourdough starter alive by feeding it once a week and using it for sourdough pancakes. These days, with the cooler weather, I am back to baking bread with it.

Since I got a stand mixer, I have been drawn to recipes that require one, but it turns out that my current favourite sourdough recipe is actually based on the famous NYTimes no knead bread. The recipe is by JMonkey of The Fresh Loaf.

Bread nerd notes:
-- I have been using 400g white flour, 169g wholemeal flour, and 3 t vital wheat gluten.
-- It tends to need a little bit of extra water.
-- In our cold house I have been letting it have a slightly longer rise (up to 21 hours).
-- I had some trouble with the crust burning before the bread was done, so I lower the temperature to 375 for the uncovered baking period, and bake it for 30 minutes or a bit longer. (A few times, the crumb has been ever so slightly gummy, so I am careful to avoid underbaking.)
*****************
UPDATE: I solved the gumminess problem. DO NOT add any extra water. When you mix all the ingredients together it takes a bit of effort, and the dough can be a little dryish and shaggy in places, but it works. I bake it covered for 30 minutes and uncovered for 20, and it works out perfectly.

Baked tamal

I love tamales, but they are kind of a hassle to make, so I was delighted to find a recipe for a baked tamal in Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen. You make one big tamal in a pie plate (I used a round casserole dish), and cut and serve it in wedges.

I used coconut oil in place of lard. (The recipe has you test the consistency by floating a small dollop in a glass of water, and mine didn't really float very well no matter how long I beat it. I decided it was good enough when it rose a little way from the bottom of the glass and hung there.)

I filled the tamal with leftover black beans, roasted pumpkin, and some shredded cheddarish soy cheese. We had this with tomatillo salsa (hooray for home grown roasted tomatillos in the freezer). Yum!

Nasi lemak (sort of)

I recently borrowed Yotam Ottolenghi's book Plenty from the library. It is a beautiful and inspiring cookbook. I have never seen such gorgeous photos of salads. Luckily (since I had to return the book) many of the recipes are actually published on the web -- Ottolenghi does a series for the Guardian called The New Vegetarian.

One of our favourites from the book was his take on the Malaysian dish nasi lemak. It's coconut rice (with ginger and kaffir lime leaves), topped with sambal (chili sauce, with tamarind), fried shallots, coriander (cilantro), and lime. We've had it a few times now, but I used roasted okra or roasted eggplant. One day I had leftovers for breakfast and it was a most excellent way to start the day.

Pizza with cashew cheese

There are some fake cheeses that I quite like on pizza (in the US, we liked Follow Your Heart mozzarella and Teese, and here in Australia we've had good results with Cheezly mozzarella). But now that we don't have a vegan friendly store close by, these days I have been experimenting with homemade cheeses for topping pizza.

I had some decent results combining pureed silken tofu and cashews, flavoured with miso and nutritional yeast, and sometimes some lemon juice or vinegar. But one day I had no tofu and just went with straight cashews with a little nutritional yeast and a lot of salt. I used this as the bottom layer on a potato pizza with rosemary, and it was fantastic. (I will probably keep experimenting when it comes to traditional tomato based pizzas, but for a white pizza this is perfect.)

Garlic scapes

I miss the farmers market in Noho a lot. For one thing, although you can get okay tomatoes all year round here, there are NO heirloom tomatoes. None!

I miss the little seasonal markers too, like the few weeks when they sell garlic scapes. But now, it looks like I may have garlic scapes any time I want, so maybe Perth isn't so bad after all. I didn't recognise them at first because they are straight and have had their heads cut off, and they're labelled 'garlic shoots', but they are scapes. Now, they are not seasonal, local scapes -- I didn't look too hard at the label, but they may have come from China -- but they are delicious nonetheless. (I hadn't realized it, but garlic shoots are not just an American farmers market thing, it seems they are actually a common Chinese ingredient.)

My favourite thing to do with them is saute them on a very hot pan with green beans. I like them to get browned and blistered. We had them with a Meyer lemon risotto, and chickenish seitan. (I liked this meal so much that I broke my own unspoken rule and made exactly the same thing the very next week.)

Key lime pie

I've never actually had real key lime pie, so I don't know how authentic this was, but it was good. I used Isa's recipe for Latchkey Lime Pie, with a few substitutions. (In particular, I didn't want it to be too coconutty, so I used 250 ml of Oatly cream and some pureed avocado, topped up with coconut milk.)

Citrus

One thing I really love about Perth is that so many people have citrus trees in their yards. I love walking around our neighbourhood, in this, the 'dead of winter' (read: more like a Massachusetts spring), and seeing enormous lemon trees laden with fruit everywhere.

We aren't so lucky: our house doesn't have a citrus tree, but generous friends and family have shared lemons (regular and Meyer), key limes, oranges, and a mystery citrus fruit. The mystery fruit is orange-skinned, but tart like a lime. I think I would describe it as more floral than regular lime juice. Here's one of the mystery fruits:

My internet research had almost convinced me that they were rangpur limes, but the fruit did not have the green seeds that rangpurs are supposed to have. Maybe they were bitter oranges?

I was a bit overwhelmed and not quite sure what to do with a bounty of mystery fruit, so these guys ended up zested and juiced and stashed in the freezer.

Singapore

We recently (okay, two weeks ago, but you already know that I am a slack blogger) got back from a short holiday in Singapore.

Food highlights included:

1. The day I had dosas for both breakfast and dinner
2. Sweet corn ice cream, bought from a street vendor on Orchard Street (like this)
3. Monkey head mushrooms
4. Kaya toast (crisp thin toast sandwiches of thickly spread cold butter and kaya)

I didn't try the durian pancakes and I sort of regret it.

Kale

A proud day: after defending it from caterpillars, cabbage whiteflies and cabbage aphids, I have my first kale harvest from the backyard. This was lunch today.

The week of dill

For some reason, I bought a bunch of dill at the market last week. I'm not sure why. I like dill, but I don't have any in my herb garden, and the only herb I buy with any regularity is cilantro. So here we were, with dill, and I had to figure out what to do with it.

This week we had: baked potatoes with cashew sour cream and dill; a creamy potato, leek and lentil soup with dill; Cabbage with Rice and Currants (and dill) from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian (this was very good: kind of like the lazy person's dolma); and this New Year Noodle Soup from 101 Cookbooks. This sounds like dill overload, but it wasn't really.

My brother recommended this soup months and months ago, back in the summer when I couldn't even think about soup. It's really wonderful: the soup is spiced quite simply, with cumin, turmeric, black pepper and chile, and yellow split peas give it a nice richness. There's chickpeas and borlotti beans too, and spinach, cilantro and dill, and homemade pasta (I went for fettucini rather than thin noodles). And the toppings really make it special: (tofu) sour cream, caramelized onions, and walnuts.

I love walnuts in soup! They fall to the bottom and surprise you when you find one.

Birthday cake

Technically, it's a birthday blondie with mousse topping.

It's based on the Peanut Butter Mousse Cake from The Voluptuous Vegan, except I used Kittee's recipe (with added peanut butter, and no cashews/chocolate) for the blondie layer.

Since we had a quiet little birthday celebration with just us two, I shrank the recipe down to fit my 5 inch springform pan. (I divided both the blondie recipe and the mousse recipe by 4 -- the blondie recipe made enough for a couple of bonus blondies cooked in a muffin tin.)

This was really nice. The mousse is subtle and airy, and is a nice contrast with the sweet and chewy blondie.

Easter (Spring!) Feast

I have these photos backwards, but this past Sunday, I invited my neighbors and two friends from school (one brought her very sweet 14-year-old son) to Easter "dinner," served at 4pm. As you can see, the greens are in, though it's almost too warm now for lettuces. Carrots and beets are big players, radishes and turnips, too. Peas are in, and tomatoes have started. Cucumbers, too. Is it possible that summer is nearly here?

I need a little makeover for my red potato salad: right now I blanch string beans and cut scallions (maybe shallots are better)... and dress the lot with Australian pink salt flakes and a mustard vinaigrette. I sometimes add hard-boiled eggs. Suggestions?

Coming Out

I have, for the last several months, been eating the "lesser" intelligent animals. Every other week or every three weeks, I purchase organic ground turkey and make a meatloaf.
Here is a chicken from the market - pasture raised - that I bought yesterday. I'm including the "pasture raised" bit, but I'm sure it doesn't make a lick of difference. My lesser consumption is the half lemon, which I saved even though it was squeezed. I had to look online for the cooking temperatures and times. I couldn't (gasp!) call my mother.

Sourdough bagels

I used the sourdough bagel recipe from Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery. They worked out very well -- notable things about this recipe include the fact that the bagels are boiled really briefly (20 seconds) in nothing but water (other recipes I've tried include malt syrup and/or baking soda).

They didn't taste sour -- I guess this is because they spent most of their proofing time in the fridge. And they really got a lot of oven spring. Overall, I like this recipe, but I must say I have a bit of a weakness for the Montreal-ish bagels I make using the Artisan Bread recipe.

Popcorn cookies

These have been on my to-make list for a while. They got on the list because -- how could you not want to try cookies made out of popcorn? They stayed on the list, unmade, because I was sort of dubious that they could be anything but healthy-tasting.

And how were they? Surprisingly good. They go into the oven as very unpromising looking piles of grains held together with a little oil and sugar, and come out as beautifully crisp wafers. I must admit that I increased the sugar slightly, to 2 tablespoons (yes, this is a mini-recipe: it makes only 6 cookies). (Mine took much less time to cook than the recipe suggested -- I think only 7 minutes.)

Hamantaschen

These worked out really well. I veganized this recipe using Tofutti cream cheese, and coconut oil for the butter.

Appetizers!

I never know what to bring when someone asks me to make an appetizer. I don't do fried things well... and I don't do pastry well. So if it's 70-something degrees out, I skip the rustic tart and bring vegetables. From left to right: radishes, fennel, hard-boiled quail eggs, heirloom carrots, broccoli.
Three dips/spreads: clockwise, from left, shredded radishes with lowfat creamed cheese and salt, caramelized onions with equal parts greek yogurt and sour cream, beetroot pesto with toasted walnuts, orange zest, honey, and olive oil.

I made a beet cake for dessert. It was delicious. No picture!!! I'll have to make it again.

Remember when

On this stinking hot day, I'm remembering way back to last week when we had one day that was cool enough to turn the oven on.

 Luckily I had the foresight to start the dough the day before. (Here begin the bread geek details, for future reference.) I used the whole grain pizza dough recipe from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. I think it was 70% whole wheat, and 30% plain white flour. (I used half the suggested sugar, and -- due to misreading the recipe -- omitted the oil. I added a small amount of oil during the shaping prior to refrigeration.) It had about 22 hours in the fridge. The dough was quite sticky before refrigeration, but ended up being surprisingly easy to shape. I used Reinhart's instructions for shaping the pizza, rather than my usual rolling pin technique.

This crust was very tasty. The crumb was good, but not as good as my usual recipe. It reminded me a bit of focaccia in that it was kind of springy -- not in a bad or unpizzalike way, mind you.

(The pizza toppings were: Reinhart's crushed tomato sauce, kalamatas, green capsicum, and Cheezly mozzarella.)

Stuffed okra

This okra was so good that even this not very appetizing photo is making me want some more.

It's Onion Stuffed Okra with Mango Powder from 660 Curries. Stuffing the okra is kind of a pain, but it is so worth it. You make a filling with ground up onion, chile, ginger, garlic and various spices including mango powder, then stuff the okra and cook -- at first browning them in a pan until half cooked, and then adding water and tomato and covering the pan to finish cooking them.

Two accidents worth repeating: (1) use tomato paste instead of fresh tomato, and (2) let the okra and its sauce burn just a little bit. The burnt bits were the best part!

The recipe made twice as much filling as I needed, so I used the rest of it in an eggplant curry the next day (based on Stewed Eggplant with a Coconut-Chile Spice Blend from 660 Curries.) Alongside that we had a split pea and mango dal (again, based on a dal in 660 Curries. Perhaps I should just note when a curry I make is not from that book?).

Pomegranate tofu, lemony zucchini

A nice summery dinner courtesy of the Moosewood Cooking for Health cookbook: pomegranate glazed tofu, and sauteed grated zucchini with lemon and fried breadcrumbs. I liked the tofu technique: brown the tofu, then add the 'marinade' to the pan and simmer until it turns into a glaze.

(Alongside, we had some kind of blah couscous of my own invention. Luckily the tofu and zucchini made up for it.)

Dosa / injera

There is no teff in Australia.

Let that sink in for a minute.

It's so weird that there are ingredients that in the US you can just walk into Whole Foods and buy that just don't exist here. Another one that I miss a lot is hominy. (Okay, at certain import food stores here you can buy $10 cans of hominy, but I want the dried stuff. Plus, I think cooking with a $10 can of hominy would stress me out.) And unfortunately there are quarantine rules against bringing grains into the country. After living in the US, where it seems like you can buy anything you want, it's taking some getting used to.

Anyway, this is how I came to make injera out of dosa batter. First we had dosas with a traditional potato masala filling, and a cabbage and pea curry (both from 660 Curries). But invariably you get tired of making dosas before you've used up all the batter, so the leftover batter sat in the fridge for a couple of days.

Then I had a craving for Ethiopian. I used Kittee's recipes for yemiser w'et (lentils in a spicy red gravy) and gomen (greens), but with black eyed peas instead of lentils, and some mystery Asian greens (some kind of mustard?) and fenugreek for the greens. My first dosa-injera wasn't bubbly enough, so I added a little bit of baking soda, and they were perfect.

Tacos

We had these tacos three times this week. I am not one to repeat recipes, usually, so this is saying something.

In case I forget, this is how you make amazing tacos:

1. Steamed white seitan from Viva Vegan!, baked in the marinade suggested in the recipe for Chipotle, Seitan and Potato Tacos from the same book
2. Homemade corn tortillas
3. Avocado
4. Thinly shredded cabbage with a simple viniagrette
5. Essential Roasted Tomatillo-Chipotle Salsa from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen
(6. Optional: sauteed mushrooms and red capsicum)

The salsa really made this exceptional. It's quite simple (just rehydrated chipotles, roasted garlic and tomatillos) but so smoky, hot and satisfying. I wanted to lick my plate to get every last drop of it when I was done with my tacos.