Parsnip ice cream

I have to admit that I am always more drawn to the weirder ice cream flavours than the classics. And so it came to pass that I made parsnip ice cream, based on this recipe by Barbara Kafka. (I replaced the cream with coconut milk/cream*).

Anyway, this was really good. I loved that I got to taste it: it's really sweet and nutty, in a sort of chestnut/sweet potatoey sort of way. I think that with the right accompaniments, it could be really amazing, but as a flavour on its own I had my fill after a few bites. And now I am regretting that I didn't make something more boring (I mean, 'classic').

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 * I used some mysterious coconut product I had in a container in the fridge. Usually that would be coconut milk, but recently I have been playing around with coconut whipped cream, and have been buying something called coconut cream which is coconut milk with about 30% fat. Most likely it was a mix of coconut milk and cream.

Padron peppers

Homegrown Padron peppers, stuffed with cashew goat cheese (from Artisan Vegan Cheese) and fried:

I only wish the snails hadn't eaten so many of my seedlings -- these were so good that the three pepper plants that survived are not enough for us. Definitely planting more (and defending them from the snails more carefully) next year.

Padron peppers are supposed to be mild, with only the occasional hot one, but so far all of the ones I have harvested have been hot. I think this probably has to do with the climate in Perth. Still, they are delicious, and not unbearably hot.

Burma

This week has been all about Burmese food, ever since I picked up Naomi Duguid's Burma: Rivers of Flavor from the library. We have suffered through quite a heatwave, so we've mostly tried the salads. 

Here you see Mandalay Grated Carrot Salad, and Peas for Many Occasions. This might've been my favourite meal so far. It seemed like every bite of the carrot salad was a little different -- it has all the typical Burmese salad flavourings of lime juice, fresh herbs (coriander, mint), peanuts, fried shallots, 'fish sauce', toasted chickpea flour, and green chile. I used my homemade fish sauce, based on a recipe from Chowhound but with some added stinky tofu. Duguid advises that vegetarians should replace the recipe's dried shrimp powder with extra toasted chickpea flour plus some soy sauce or miso, so I added some soy sauce. The recipe for Peas (in this case chickpeas) is simple and quick if you start with canned beans, and tastes like much more than the sum of its parts (turmeric, shallots, 'fish sauce', herbs, lime juice). Together, they made a really quick and satisfying lunch.

And here, clockwise from left there's Punchy-Crunchy Ginger Salad, Shan Tofu Salad, and Succulent Pomelo Salad. The ginger salad was great. Along with the ginger, napa cabbage and tomatoes, you have all the usual suspects (fish sauce, lime, peanuts etc) plus pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds. I left out the fried garlic and garlic oil because I didn't have any on hand. Still, it was marvelous. And the Shan tofu salad was pretty great too. I had just made the tofu, and it had only been in the fridge for 1 hour rather than the recommended 4, but it was already sliceable. The silky texture of the cold tofu was really nice with the dressing of garlic/soy sauce/lime leaves/rice vinegar. I didn't have any shallot oil on hand, so sprinkled on some fried shallots.

We've also tried the Intensely Green Spinach and Tomato Salad with Peanuts, the Okra-Shallot Stir-Fry, and the Tamarind-Pumpkin Curry. These three didn't wow me as much, but they were all pleasant.

When these recipes work, they really work. I don't know if it's just because I am not familiar with Burmese food, but I find something really mysterious and fascinating about the flavour combinations.

Overall, from a vegan perspective, this is a book worth looking at. There are lots of interesting salads and vegetable curries, some soups and snacks (I'm looking forward to trying the (inherently vegan) rice crepes) as well as quite a few condiments (chutneys, chile sauces etc) and desserts. Most of the recipes require substitutions (there's fish sauce and or shrimp powder in just about all the vegetable recipes, it seems) but I really appreciated the fact that Duguid gives some suggestions for how to make these replacements (p. 31).

Stroopwafels

I found a stovetop waffle-cookie maker at a charity sale recently. I hadn't realized that I wanted one, but for $2 I couldn't resist.

And so, stroopwafels!

For the wafers, I used the yeast stroopwafels recipe on this page, minus the egg. (One third of the recipe made 10 wafers -- each dough ball was about 28 grams. They were a bit bigger than the circumference of a mug -- just the right size for the traditional trick of perching them over a cup of tea or coffee to warm up a bit.)

For the caramel filling, I used Hannah's recipe. (I halved it, which was more than enough for 5 cookies.)

These were really delicious. I liked that they were not as sweet as other ones I've had. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy the cookie maker was to use -- even though I have an annoying electric stovetop, it wasn't too hard to get the temperature right. Maybe ice cream cones are next...

Every Grain of Rice

I love this cookbook by Fuschia Dunlop. Previously I have found Chinese cooking to be a bit intimidating, but these recipes are really simple and come together very quickly. The book also includes an excellent glossary of ingredients, with pictures, to make shopping for some of the more obscure ingredients much easier.

We've had some excellent dinners from this book. The standout recipe so far is a very simple one: you cook greens (e.g. gai lan or choy sum) briefly in salted water with a little oil, so that they are still somewhat crisp. You drain and shake them dry, then put them in your serving bowl. You top them with finely chopped ginger and spring onions. Then you heat up a few tablespoons of oil until they are really hot, and pour the oil over the veggies. Then you add a mixture of half soy sauce and half hot water. Done!

Here you see: (clockwise from top left) Chinese chive (chickpea) omelet; spicy firm tofu with garlic stems; spinach with chilli and fermented tofu; smacked cucumber in garlicky sauce. The second picture shows vegetarian 'gong pao chicken' (though I used tofu rather than mushrooms); the simple greens recipe mentioned above; green beans with black bean and chilli; vegetarian clay bowl 'chicken'. The last picture is ma po dou fu (vegetarian version), but with the tofu crumbled rather than cubed.

As you can see, we had a few fancy meals with lots of dishes, because I really wanted to try everything. But the great thing about these recipes is that you can actually make an interesting and satisfying meal quickly and easily. I threw the ma po dou fu recipe together one night when we were starving. It took less than 10 minutes. It was superb.

The only bad thing I can say about this cookbook is that it has the worst index I have ever seen. Like, I think you would actually have to go out of your way to make an index this bad.

Garden salads

I'm not really sure why I planted 12 lettuce plants. We've gone from eating salad maybe once a week, to having shopping bags full of lettuce in the fridge and resorting to lettuce soup to get rid of the stuff.

We have had some nice salads though. The first is lettuce, rocket (leaves and flowers), baby broad (fava) beans, golden beetroot, and mulberries. The second is lettuce, rocket, roasted golden beetroot, and homemade tofu misozuke. I really love that almost all of these ingredients came from the garden.

Biscuits

I just remembered these biscuits that I made a while ago. What made them so amazing was the addition of chives and homemade cashew cheddar (from Artisan Vegan Cheese).