Banana Streusel Muffins

When it's not apple, pear, or mandarin season, I like to keep a stash of muffins in the freezer to bring in to work for a mid-morning snack. Andy eats his with his lunch, but I'm usually starving by about 9.30am. I try to hold out till 10 or 10.30 so I don't get hungry for lunch too early, but regardless, I would be nowhere without my morning muffin.

Last weekend I decided, after some serious deliberation, on Banana Streusel Muffins - combining an adaptation of the streusel recipe from the 'Pecan Streusel Coffee Cake' in Urban Vegan with an adaptation of 'Wolffie's Banana Blueberry Muffins' from La Dolce Vegan.

But then, a hiccup. We didn't have enough flour. Andy offered to pick some up on his way home from Bunning's, the hardware store mega-chain.

But then, another hiccup. We remembered the grocery stores don't open till 11am on Sundays. This was at about 9am, and we had people coming over for lunch at 12. I decided to just go to the shop afterwards, but Andy saw my determination  to bake and called his friend Tom, who was coming for lunch, to borrow some flour.

Thanks again, Tom! (I repaid him in a muffin.)

I'm glad we did borrow the flour, because I wouldn't have felt like walking to the store in the afternoon. And these muffins were a delicious success, so it would have been tragic not to make them. Andy and Tom both thought they had apple in them - I guess because the flavours are all typically paired with apple. But just bananas here!

Banana Streusel Muffins

1/2 c. chopped walnuts
1/2 c. raisins
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. flour
3 Tbsp. grapeseed oil

2 c. flour (I used half white and half wholemeal, so I could call them muffins instead of cupcakes and feel like I eat healthy)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 c. sugar
2/3 c. non-dairy milk
2 lady finger bananas, or 1 large banana (I used bananas from our tree!!)
1 tsp. fresh grated ginger
1/4 c. grapeseed oil
2 Tbsp. molasses

To make the streusel, mix all the ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Then preheat the oven to 190 (375F). Lightly oil a 12 cup muffin tin. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and sugar - make sure there are no lumps left. In a jug with a stick blender, or in a proper blender, combine the milk, banana, ginger, oil and molasses and blend until smooth. Add the banana milk to the flour mixture and stir until combined.

Drop spoonfuls of batter into the muffin cups, filling a bit less than half full. Then put a spoonful of streusel mix. Top with another spoonful of muffin batter.

Bake for 22 minutes, give or take a few, until they are golden and cooked through. Probably put your muffin pan on a baking tray, because when I made these, this happened.

Andy seemed to enjoy scraping the hot toffee off the pan and eating it, and after letting the muffins cool for about 20 minutes they came out pretty easily. My advice is to loosen the edges while they are fresh from the oven, but don't take them out until the streusel hardens up a bit - otherwise you will lose your tops!

Pumpkin Pasta 2.0

Andy and I have long been fans of pumpkin pasta, inspired by the recipe from La Dolce Vegan but one that we have spun so often that it rarely resembles the original.

Here it takes two new forms which were delicious and will be something we do again, when we've got plenty of time to play in the kitchen.

First, pumpkin lasagne.   The pumpkin-y sauce was full of spinach and seitan, all layered between yummy noodles and topped with a low-fat cream sauce.  (Served with a green salad and potato salad.)

The leftover pumpkin mixture went into the freezer for a few weeks, because Andy had a plan for it.... Pumpkin Canneloni!  Basically the same filling and a very similar sauce, but this time in tube form instead of layered.  (Served with a salad, garlic bread and roasted brussels sprouts.)

This was a delicious as the lasagne, but had it not been for the pre-made filling it would have been infinitely more time-consuming.

City Mouse -- Country Mouse

It’s no secret that I am not a city mouse. They are crowded and I feel out of place in cities. I definitely feel at home in small towns, and although I occasionally complain about the lack of fun in Townsville, I do love living here (if anything, it's a little too big).

But, although I don’t feel at home in urban environments, I am in love with the new cookbook, The Urban Vegan: 250 Simple, Sumptuous Recipes from Street Cart Favourites to Haute Cuisine. You may remember that I was a tester while Dynise was developing her cookbook, and I loved all of the recipes that I tried. Now the book is here. I’ve had it for just over a week and we’ve made seven recipes from it (only one of which I had tried during testing).

My first impression of the book—it’s pretty. The cover is colourful and eye-catching, and the layout feels sophisticated. The index is well-done (an important feature in cookbooks, if you ask me). The blurbs before each recipe are entertaining and give you an idea of who Dynise is, which I like. The intro material is also helpful without being verbose or prattling on for too long. We’ve taken Dynise’s advice to heart, particularly the bit encouraging experimentation with recipes. We have a hard time following recipes exactly at the best of times, and since we are in a decidedly un-urban environment we have a hard time finding certain ingredients—so we make do.

Now onto the food...

The first day we got this book, Andy made one of the recipes for dinner. The recipe was for Foil-Roasted Beets with Wasabi Vinaigrette, but we didn’t want to wait the hour that beets would take to roast whole, so we cut them up pre-roasting. This made the cooking process quicker without affecting the flavour at all. The wasabi vinaigrette was a surprisingly perfect companion to the slightly sweet, earthy beetroot. Best of all, this recipe was very easy to make, perfect for the end of a tiring week.

When we went sailing last weekend we wanted to try out one of the lunch recipes, and settled on Sandwich Mousse, with a few substitutions. Borlotti beans stood in for pink beans, but a splash of beetroot juice brightened up the colour. We also used roasted garlic instead of raw, and dill instead of the other herbs, because that’s what grows in our garden. This was a perfect sandwich filler, and it made enough for Sunday lunch plus a few sandwiches throughout the week. Andy liked it so much he’s requested it again for this week’s lunches.

A fantastic side dish from the cookbook is Couscous Mosaic. Full of flavour and simple to make, this recipe made enough to last a few dinners. First, we had it alongside eggplant schnitzels with onion gravy and a veggie salad.

It also went well paired with a dhal burger, Cumin Fried Potatoes from La Dolce Vegan, and another veggie salad.

Chocolate-Chipotle Chilli was a delicious Friday night meal. A lot of ingredients (this isn’t even all of them)...

But with only a few steps for the actual preparation. In place of chipotle, I used a mix of smoked paprika and cinnamon, and some mango-ginger hot sauce stood in for the chilli powder and tamarind. Simmered for a while, and topped with a dollop of guacamole this was declared by Andy to be the best chilli I’ve made. The chocolate gave it a deep, earthy darkness which was lightened up with the sweet corn, the chewy tvp and the black and kidney beans.

For Saturday breakfast, I turned to Better than Buttermilk Pancakes, using the suggested Banana Walnut variation. In batter form I was a little sceptical—the batter had a slightly squicky flavour I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I thought maybe the utter lack of sugar in the pancakes was to blame, but when they were cooked up I had no doubt that they were fantastic. I realised I was picking up on the taste of the uncooked soy bean flour, which I hate but which luckily goes away when cooked. These were perfect pancakes—thick but fluffy. Andy wasn’t impressed with the walnuts in the pancakes—too crunchy—but I thought they were great.

To go with hotdogs and baked beans, Andy whipped up a batch of focaccia, half roasted garlic and half avocado. We made the dough in the bread machine, which is very easy, and were very pleased with the results.

Finally, we like to keep muffins or cupcakes in the freezer to take to uni for morning tea throughout the week. I flipped through and settled on Ninja Ginga Bread, in cupcake form. This time, I used pumpkin puree in place of the apple sauce (which you can’t actually taste at all) and upped the cocoa powder instead of using espresso powder. We ate one warm from the oven, and it was very sophisticated, complex and spicy. I’m looking forward to eating them throughout the week.

All up, I’m so far very impressed with this cookbook. I love that the recipes don't rely too heavily on processed ingredients and mock meats (although they are in there, for the occasional treat). I can’t wait to try out some more.

Nom.

More recent meals. We seem to be eating really well lately, with new recipes that are a hit and old favourites that turn out well, so I am collecting a backlog of photos. So I'll just put them up here without too much word-age from me...

Falafels (made from a just-add-water packet) with avocado. Bulgur salad with lemon juice, raw corn, loads of parsley, cucumber and green capsicum. And sesame-soy green beans and asparagus.

Mexican lasanga (aka "deconstructed enchiladas")--a mexican-ish sweet potato and bean mixture layered between tortillas and baked. Smashed potatoes, which didn't work out perfectly but were still yummy, method stolen from BrisVegan. Roasted garlicky green beans. And avocado-coriander salsa.
Twice baked potatoes. The filling is blended up potato and chickpeas with roasted nori, sauteed onion and spinach. Roasted garlicky green beans with cherry tomatoes. And in the back a salad of leafy lettuce, avocado, and raw corn. You can also see Andy impatiently stabbing away at a cherry tomato as I take my photo.

From La Dolce Vegan, 'Stuffed Cabbage Rolls'. I mostly followed this recipe, but subbed seitan for the mushrooms and sunflower seeds for the walnuts. Also, I doubled the recipe because Andy and I have huge appetites. These were really freaking good. The cumin-orange glazed sweet potatoes we served them with were only okay. Look at the steam!
During a seitan-making extravaganza, Andy wiped his hands on his bum, leaving floury fingerprints all over his boardies that I thought were cute...
For dessert one night I whipped up a half-recipe of Vegetation's mother-in-law's self-saucing choc pudding. This was the perfect amount for the two of us and the saucy chocolately goodness was the perfect end to a meal.
While we keep warm with oven food, Nacho keeps warm by napping next to the fishtank light. This sleep-spot has an added bonus--no need to go anywhere if she gets thirsty.

Food Round-Up

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting many photos of meals lately. I’ve had a few major ups and downs recently, but overall I have some good news coming soon. Anyways, I thought I should update you all on what’s been happening in my kitchen to keep you interested. Also, because Andy left this morning (at 5 am, ew.) for 6 weeks in Papua New Guinea so I thought I should get rid of the cooking-for-two images and get back into single-gal food while he’s gone. I noticed last time he went away that I eat very differently when it’s just me in the house.

First up is a beetroot risotto. Andy was very sceptical that this would be good, but after one bite he was convinced. It also had spinach, zucchini, and a few other things.

Here we have a nice wintry oven meal. Jerk-spiced tofu chunks, orange beetroots, and a mix of roasted veggies. The combination of sweet potatoes, onions and kalamata olives is an amazing one. If you haven’t ever tried baking olives, I highly recommend it (whole, not pitted). They get super sweet, and sort of melt off the seed. It’s very good.

We haven’t been eating much Indian-inspired food this winter, but there has been some. Like this dhal and eggplant bharta.

This is a lazy Sunday lunch we have every now and then to go with tea and the newspaper. Veggie burgers (pre-made and frozen) served on homemade bread with salad, sautéed onions, and slightly wilted Ceylon spinach from the garden.

Another oven meal: baked mushrooms with more olives, a bread roll, cannellini bean cutlet and roasted green beans.

This is a time-consuming meal to make but it is well worth it every now and then—Pierogies. They were filled with some mix of potato, onion, carrot and spices, and served with lightly sautéed green beans.

And I can’t leave you without dessert. These are makeshift strawberry shortcakes. ‘Yella Cake’ from La Dolce Vegan, but cut in half and turned into cupcakes. Strawberries soaked in sugar for a day to get super juicy. And fresh yogurt. The combination was sooo good. Somehow the tang from the yogurt was much more satisfying than custard or cream, and it feels vaguely healthy too.

Those are all the food photos I have for now. And yes, as The Little One has pointed out, I’m not shy about filling up my plate. I'm not really a snacker, I ride about 40 to 50 minutes a day (which really isn’t much) and I'm a major fidgeter, so I eat big meals. And if you think mine are big, you should see his!

Salad, on a vegan blog. How creative.

I'm not writing this post to talk about salad, though this one was particularly good (spinach, lettuce, tomato, avocado, cucumber, and raw corn). No, my interest lies in the glass of brown stuff next to the salad.

That, my friends, is the tastiest salad dressing ever. I kid you not.

I was flipping through the salad dressing section of La Dolce Vegan looking for some inspiration one night, when I saw a recipe for "Sesame Miso Dressing". I thought that sounded pretty darn good. But as I was making it, I remembered that we had some sunflower seed butter in the fridge (marked down from $5 to $1--score! we grabbed two and stuck one straight in the freezer). So instead of using tahini, I made "Sunflower Miso Dressing".

This is really that good. Somehow the simple combination of water, vinegar, maple syrup, miso and sunflower butter morphs a regular salad into a plate of edible heaven.

Maybe it's just a sign of my new obsession with sunflower butter. But it's not just me--Andy made this again two days later, and I had to refrain him from drinking the leftovers straight out of the glass.

A few things.

Between travelling, baking competitions, and uni work I seem to have gotten a bit behind on posting some of the food photos I have taken. Before I forget what they are, I'll leave you with a bit of a mish-mash post today.

Remember a few weeks ago when I had all that cauliflower? Well, I appreciated the many suggestions I got from helpful bloggers and have saved most of them for next time. One of the things I did make with it was this pasta. I simlply sauteed cauliflower and garlic, then stirred in some crushed tomatoes and herbs. It was delicious because of its simplicity.
A few weeks ago we bought an espresso pot on clearance. I don't usually drink much coffee (too much during my last semester of undergrad, now it makes my stomach hurt)--but for the inaugural run I let Andy pressure me into having a little bit.
A drink that I prefer to coffee is smoothies. These were a bit on the thick side and were better with a spoon, but they were good. They were a banana smoothie of some description, probably with peanut butter. On top is LSA and walnuts, for omega-goodness.
And here is a yummy sandwich on soft, fresh baguette bread. It contains a quick cannellini bean spread I made (blended with olive oil and balsamic), black olives, tomato, cucumber and shredded carrot. It was yummy.
The other thing I did with the cauliflower was to make this soup. It was cold, I got home late, and Andy was hard at work so I just boiled together some potatoes and cauliflower and seasoned it with a bit of nutmeg before blending. Then I stirred through a bit of frozen spinach for some greenery.

Another soup we've had is this beetroot, barley and bean soup. The beans are chickpeas. Other veggies in here are carrots and potato but they don't start with B so they haven't been included in my alliterated title. Also floating at the top is some little seitan chunks, based on the recipe for "Chicken Noodle Soup" in La Dolce Vegan. Andy loves them, and I think they're pretty good too.And finally... Friday night we went over to the uni bar for the very last night of the semester. There was a band on, but we managed to get in for free, and the beer was cheap and plentiful. The music was loud and we're not social enough to stay for long on nights like that, so we were home by 9. The quickest meal we could think of was hotdogs from the freezer and sauerkraut from the fridge. This was so good.
Now, I'm all caught up with pictures, I've just submitted a paper for review, the semester is over and hopefully I'll avoid the insane amounts of busy-ness that I experienced a few weeks ago!

Tofu, cauliflower and beetroot

Three things we’ve been eating a lot of lately.

We tried making SusanV’s mini crustless tofu quiches. We used silken tofu that had previously been frozen; cut the recipe in half; used dried mushrooms instead of fresh; and used tomato instead of capsicum. Some combination of these changes led to a complete disaster—even after 40 minutes in the oven, these had not set up at all. I took them out anyways, and let them cool hoping they would firm up, but... no dice. What we had was a tasty but shapeless pile of tofu mush.

We also had roasted beetroot (which doesn't photograph well) and cauliflower baked in a garlic-cream sauce, which redeemed the meal completely.

A more successful attempt at tofu—firm, fresh tofu from the asian grocery store. I marinated it in a mixture of garlic, ginger, hoisin, soy sauce and apple cider vinegar. Then I fried it up in my kick-ass new pan and it got a little crispy and caramelised. After the tofu was cooked, Andy threw together a noodle and veggie stir fry with chilli and the leftover marinade. Yummy dinner—filling, tasty, easy.

Cauliflower was the star of this dinner. Andy found the recipe for “Cheesy Broccoli and Rice Casserole” in The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook. Instead of broccoli, he used cauliflower because it’s ridiculously cheap right now. And he added some frozen spinach. This was a really easy meal that uses exactly one dish in the preparation. It was pretty good, but we both agreed that broccoli would have been better.

Next to the casserole, I made some roasted veggies—parsnips, purple potato, and carrot with black olives and capers (based very closely on La Dolce Vegan’s ‘Roasted parsnips’).

Tasty tofu mush, take two. On the way home from uni yesterday I had a little bike crash when a kid on a bike swerved into me (on accident) as I was passing him on the path. We both ate shit, and I ended up with a scrape on my arm, a sore ankle and knee, some bruises and tight muscles. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t hurt at all.

While I was whinging on the couch, Andy made dinner for me. He decided to make the ‘Indian Frittata’ from Vegan with a Vengeance which features cauliflower, but reckoned it wasn’t going to set anyways so just decided to do it on the stove in scramble form. Then it took on a life of its own—he added potatoes, zucchini, carrot, lots of spices, and used silken tofu because that’s what we had. It was good, but not great.

I managed to suck it up for long enough to throw together a quick side dish—orange and ginger glazed beetroot. I just simmered a few baby beets with orange juice, powdered ginger and salt until the beets were tender and the sauce was thick. It was really good, but next time I’d use fresh ginger.

Now, we still have 1 ½ heads of cauliflower to use before we go to the market on Sunday! What's your favourite way to have cauliflower?

Queen's Birthday weekend

I’m not big on holidays, but this one has to be the silliest. The Queen’s birthday is actually in April, but Australia celebrates it in the form of a three day weekend in June. Don’t ask why, I have no idea. But ridiculous holidays aside, three day weekends are a good opportunity to relax, catch up on stuff, and have fun. In our house, it meant lots of cooking, a few hours at the Palm Creek Folk Festival, some shopping and errands, and lots of cleaning.

I started my weekend on Friday afternoon with a seminar on climate change and heritage in Micronesia, followed by some wine with the presenters (in actuality, much more fun than it sounds). I came home to find Andy making ‘Ethiopian Red Lentil Stew’ from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen. With brown rice, bread, and more wine, this was a yummy way to wind down after the last day of the semester.

Saturday we did some shopping and errands, and I got a new cast iron frying pan from a very fancy appliance store. The shop woman told me she uses it for absolutely everything, it’s restaurant quality, it has a 25 year warranty, etc. I’ve only used it a few times, but so far I’m pretty happy with it.

And Nacho loves when we buy things because she gets a new box to play with.

One morning we started the day with tofu scramble with carrot, tomato and spinach.

And another breakfast was the ever-fabulous ‘Fronch Toast’ from Vegan with a Vengeance, served with raspberry sauce.

For dinner one night we made the ‘Punk-kin Pasta’ from La Dolce Vegan. Instead of tinned pumpkin, we used some we had roasted before. Instead of soy sausage, we used TVP crumbles rehydrated in stock, aniseed, and paprika (which tasted a whole lot like Italian sausage). And we added spinach. This pasta was really very good.

We made a batch of Real Food Daily’s ‘Basic Seitan’. After it cooked, we cut it into meal-sized pieces and stuck it into the freezer. We’ve been so busy for the past few months that our frozen stocks have slowly dwindled, but now we’re back to a good level.

We had coriander-cannellini cutlets with mashed potatoes, and sautéed beet greens with corn.

For dessert one night, I used up two old apples and one lonely sheet of puff pastry to make impromptu turnovers, inspired by Pleasantly Plump Vegan.

And finally, the last day of the weekend was spent cleaning for an upcoming real estate inspection. We worked up our hunger, so Andy put together this massive sandwich.

It has leftover cannellini cutlets, ceylon spinach, tomato, cucumber, dill pickles, coriander, mustard, sour cream, and perhaps some other things. It was messy, but oh so good.

Happy belated birthday, Queen, and thanks for the three-day weekend!!