Burgers

I've been really into veggie burgers recently. I combine mashed beans (usually black eyed peas) and rice (Sri Lankan red keeri samba rice, which is short grained and fluffy), various random things for flavour (smoked paprika? soy sauce? vegan worcestershire? finely chopped onion?), chia seeds and or ground flax seed, and vital wheat gluten. Then, fry or bake. I really like the crisp crust that you get with a rice based burger.

Smoked dates

On pizza. Yes!

This is the dough from last time, defrosted. (Incidentally, I won't be doing this again. The dough was terrible: hard to handle and didn't have much oven spring. It might have overproofed.) It's topped with homemade tomato sauce, kalamatas, smoked dates, homemade melting mozz.

There will be more smoked dates on pizza in this house.

Vegan lemon meringue pie

Here's how you make a meringue that doesn't set:

I based it on my pavlova recipe, but used water instead of flax goop. In the pavlova recipe, I think the baking step provides the heat necessary to activate the agar, but I didn't plan to bake this meringue, only run it under the grill to brown, so I whipped half the water with the versawhip and sugar, and heated the other half in a pot with the agar (using twice as much agar as in the pavlova recipe). I then poured the agar mixture into the versawhip mixture and kept whipping. I ended up having to add more versawhip because it was taking forever to whip up properly. The agar left a few little lumps in the meringue, I guess because it solidified when it hit the room temperature versawhip mixture.

 I put the meringue on the pie, ran it under the grill, and it browned charmingly and the surface firmed up. Overall, the meringue layer was way too soft. It was runny rather than marshmallowy. Tasted good though. I guess the agar didn't do much work at all. It might have helped to use warm water in the versawhip mixture, and then leave the meringue to cool down and firm before grilling/serving.

Here's how you make a meringue that sets:

Take the pie you made in the first version. Freeze it. And voila!

The pastry wasn't that good frozen. So in future I might make a meringue disk, brown it, freeze it, and then place on the lemon tart to serve. It was the perfect texture.

Zero zero

I have made lots of pizzas, but this is the first time I've used 00 flour. The verdict: totally worth it. Or maybe the pizza gods were smiling for some other reason. Clearly I will need to do more research, where research means pizza making.

I used this recipe. I replaced some of the flour with vital wheat gluten (12 grams?) because the 00 flour was only 9.5% protein. After 1 day rising in the fridge, half of the recipe made 2 pizzas, the rest sat for a couple more days in the fridge and then went in the freezer for next time.

The first pizza was olive, pesto and homemade melting mozzarella. (I ferment the mozz a lot longer than the book calls for, and add a little bit of nutritional yeast. I think the homemade yogurt I used this time was an 80/20 soy/coconut milk blend.) This was fantastic. The crust was great, and the cheese melted really well.

The second pizza was inspired by this one. I made a bechamel with olive oil and soy milk, and added nutritional yeast, miso and a tiny bit of soy sauce. We had kale from our garden, which I tore up and massaged with oil like you would for a raw kale salad. I added a bit of parsley and spring onion, but I don't think they added much. This was really nice. Here it is, pre- and post- baking.

Carrot hot dogs

I have to say I didn't have a lot of confidence that this would work. I had read about a place in LA that makes carrot hot dogs, and I found a few recipes on the web, like this one. I cooked the carrots, then marinated them for a day in a mixture of vinegar, soy sauce, water, sesame oil, garlic, mustard, paprika, pepper, coriander, nutmeg, cardamom and homemade celery salt, and then the next day cooked them on a hot pan.

And the verdict? It was simultaneously like eating a hot dog and a carrot. When I tasted one of the carrots by itself, it definitely was hot dog-esque, but in the context of the strong-flavoured condiments the carrot flavour was hard to miss. Overall, I can believe that some people have perfected this (insofar as one can perfect the carrot as hot dog). I think I didn't quite cook the carrots soft enough, and I bet the marinade could be improved. Anyway, even though they were okay, I think next time I have a hot dog craving, I'll be buying soy dogs from the supermarket.

Carrot sofrito tacos

Here you see tacos filled with carrot sofrito and cashew goat cheese with cilantro and red onion, which we ate with a tomato/tomatillo/chipotle salsa. (I used this recipe for enchiladas with a carrot sofrito.)

The leftover sofrito made for some excellent tomato soup the next day -- quickly brown chopped fennel, and then some tomato paste, then add a tin of chopped tomato, water and the sofrito. Pressure cook for 5 minutes. Puree. Salt, pepper, done.

Pavlova experiment

The first time I made a vegan pavlova, I was winging it, so I decided to do an experiment and refine my recipe. Here's the best version I have come up with so far:

100g flax seed goop
100g sugar
pinch of cream of tartar
2g versawhip 600k
1g xanthan gum (this was an accidental increase from the first time; I think 0.5g works too)
0.6g agar powder

1. Whip up the flax seed goop in a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. Whip it until it is very frothy.

2. Mix the rest of the ingredients into the sugar.
3. With the mixer running, add the sugar mixture a bit at a time. Keep whipping until you have a very stiff foam.

4. Scoop the foam out onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet. Form it into a circle about 8 centimetres tall, with the centre slightly lower than the edges.
5. Bake at 100 C for 1 hour, then turn the oven off and leave the pavlova in there (with the door closed) to cool completely. I would say at least 4 hours. (I typically leave it overnight.) After it's cool, you can store it in an airtight container -- mine have been fine 2 days later, but I haven't tried leaving them longer than that.
6. Decorate with non-dairy whipped cream (e.g. whipped coconut cream) and fruit.

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Some notes:

• For my first (unsuccessful) attempt at a simple flax seed meringue, I made the flax seed goop by simmering it for 20 minutes. There was a lot more than Miyoko's recipe said there would be, so I assumed that I had undercooked it. For my second attempt, I simmered it for 40 minutes. I ended up with 2/3 of a cup (the recipe said about 1/2 cup). Both versions worked fine. The version with the longer cooking time got a bit brown on the bottom of the saucepan, and this flavour carried over slightly into the finished pavlova. It was tasty, but not really authentic, so I would try to avoid it in future.
• Other people (Miyoko, various people on the PPK) have been able to make fluffy meringue using just flax seed goop, sugar and cream of tartar. I have tried twice now, and haven't got it to work. My best attempt was this very weak foam:

• It's possible that if you can make a good meringue with just flax seed, sugar and cream of tartar, then you might be able to make a pavlova by adding xanthan and/or agar. But I think I am officially giving up on that goal -- I like my results with versawhip.
• I tried a version of the pavlova with 100g water instead of the flax seed goop -- so with versawhip as the only whipping agent. The flaxless pavlova had a nice crisp outer shell, but the inside was quite insubstantial. The one with flax had a more marshmallowy inside.

Flax + versawhip:

Versawhip only: