Easter Eats

Our four-day long weekend was well-timed before our move in a week, allowing us plenty of time to do some deep cleaning, de-cluttering, and begin the packing process. It was also a good opportunity to do our fair share of eating.  We started, naturally, with dessert.

Friday morning, the first thing I did was to put on a batch of hot cross buns. I had extra cross-mixture, so some became star buns. And one was a bit blobby. Because, hey, why not?

These were the very best hot cross buns I have ever made, ever. Ever. They were the perfect texture - soft, and just a little bit doughy, chewy, full of mixed fruit. We used the recipe from Vegan Bake Sale but only used mixed fruit instead of blueberries and whatever else the recipe calls for. We also left off the glaze, because we like our buns un-sticky and not too sweet.

Since we had the oven on, and we had 4 less-than-ideal apples in the crisper drawer, I also threw together an apple crumble. I used the recipe for Trailview Inn Apple Crumble, from the Girls' Night In chapter of Celebrate Vegan. There is an alarming amount of sugar in this recipe, but let me tell you - it is totally worth it. It sort of melts around the apples and mixes with their juice to create a delicious caramel sauce, topped with crispy delicious oat topping.

We ate ours cold, with hot coconut custard. And it was so good.

It wasn't all sweets, though. I had also been prepping for a few days, getting ready to make a big Ethiopian dinner. Using Mel's recipe for Injera, I finally opened by bag of teff flour. I fed my starter for 5 days, made my batter, and then started cooking the injera.

It was all full of promise, so when the first one didn't work, I didn't mind - the first pancake/crepe/flatbread is often a dud.

When they kept not working - sticking badly to the pan - I switched to pikelet-sized injeras, because at least they are easier to scrape from the pan without completely mangling. Let me be clear that I don't blame Mel's recipe - something about my batter, my climate, my cooking technique, my pan... it just didn't work. And the injera was a bit too sour for my liking. So I will try another recipe, if I can be bothered making this ever again.

By the time I was done with the injera, my feelings towards my Ethiopian feast were a bit battered. But, Andy noticed my grumpiness and came to take over. He made some mesir wat while I put together a shiro. This was our first time making shiro, again following Mel's recipe. This was really good, and I will make it again - with just a tad more chickpea flour, and more berbere (not Mel's recipe's fault - we ran out).

We did get a feast, in the end, and were too full to eat any of our desserts. Good thing we started with them!

This was all appropriate fuel for our cleaning spree, during which Nacho slept. And slept and slept. I've seriously never seen this cat so lethargic. Must be the change in weather, and the coming upheaval, that made her feel so lounge-y.

Eating the Big Apple

New York City is kind of it when it comes to vegan eating. Sure, there are lots of great cities for vegan food, but from all the blogs and magazines and other things I read and here, NYC has a vegan version of ANYTHING you could possibly want. For reference, we used Super Vegan's restaurant finder.

We could have eaten in restaurants/street carts/takeaway shops for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between and still not even come close to sampling the variety that New York offers, but we had just come from Scotland and Ireland, where we had no kitchen. So we (mainly Andy) were getting a bit restauranted out. So we did eat out, but we also took advantage of the other thing NYC offers that we are not used to -- good, vegan-friendly grocery stores.  So, how did we do?

This is the fat cat who lived in the apartment we rented. 

Her name is She-Ra and she makes Nacho look puny.

We went to Whole Foods on our very first day in NY, because we saw it and I couldn't resist. And I'm glad I didn't! It is pretty incredible - so many things, like regular grocery stores, but mainly organic, and/or local, and/or hippy-ish versions of regular groceries.  So fun! Like this Road's End Mac & Chreese which we ate with mushrooms on our first evening in NYC, and which I posted about earlier.

In Central Park, we sought out the Good to Go Organics food truck for vegan hot dogs. They serve Smart Dogs brand, with a variety of toppings. We ordered the Two Dog Deal, one with saurkraut & mustard, and one with vegan chilli, for $14 including chips & a drink.  These were okay, but not the best ever.

In the East Village area we went to Viva Herbal Pizzeria. There were so many choices to make - crust, toppings, cheese, size... we opted for the October Special, because there was a 15% (I think?) discount. The Vegan Picante, plus Daiya cheese. Large, please. (Because an Australian large pizza is usually enough to feed Andy, just.) With a whole wheat crust. We should have picked up on the fact that most people ordered one slice only, sometimes two. Not a whole pizza, not even for two people.  Because, here's the thing: a large pizza is massive! And the toppings weren't light - soy meatballs, capsicum, and red onion, all mixed up together into tomato sauce, and topped with so much cheese. Our first experience with Daiya, and our first soy cheese in a long time, this was a bit rich, and a lot of food. But that didn't stop us (mainly Andy) eating the whole pizza! Which was a little disappointing, because it meant no room for the vegan desserts they had on offer, like whoopie pies, tiramisu, and cannoli.  What was I thinking!

In Greenwich Village we queued up at Murray's Bagels - I got multigrain with tofu cream cheese, and Andy, for some reason, ordered one with jam. I had enough cream cheese on my bagel to share, lucky for him.

In the East Village (again) we caught up with a friend from high school at Curly's Vegetarian Lunch.  I forgot to snap photos, but this was what I think of as classic greasy spoon food. There were loads of choices, but I went for a nostalgic cheese burger with curly fries, and a root beer float. Andy had, I think, the Avocado & Jack burger. Both came with Daiya, at our request. Again, too much food. This time I couldn't finish mine, probably because I basically had dessert before and during dinner, in the form of my root beer float. This meal is where it started to sink in that American portion sizes are SO MUCH bigger than my belly has gotten used to in the past 6 years of living in Australia.

In the Upper West Side, we had some delicious Ethiopian food at Awash Restaurant. We went for combo 3, the veggie platter, which was everything veggie they have, served with injera. The photo is shockingly bad, but the food was shockingly good. Ethiopian food is seriously the best, especially when it's served with proper injera.

$24 for both of us, plus extra for some St George, the beer I drank way too much of when I visited Ethiopia in 2005.

Saturday morning saw us head back downtown, really near Washington Square Park, where we met up with VKO for brunch at Sacred Chow. Again, so many choices! I opted for Banana French Toast, described as "A thick slice of our banana pound cake grilled up warm and crisp, with blueberry sauce." Really, though, this was basically a piece of cake. For lunch. It was awesome.

I couldn't finish it all, but Andy came to my aid. Even after finishing all of his Peppersteak Hero (which VKO had as well): "Grilled seitan strips, peppers, onions, w/bean cheese sauce, served on toasted whole wheat baguette. Served w/a side of home fries". As good as the food was, though, it wasn't the best part of the morning - the best part was meeting VKO, whose blog I've read for years and who is such a lovely person.

In the Upper West Side, we went to Trader Joe's, which was kind of the yin to Whole Foods' yang. It was crowded, and small, and it felt like they didn't have much of anything besides junk food and organic dead animals. We were overwhelmed, and quickly grabbed some Tofurkey Italian sausages for dinner, along with some mushrooms and pitta bread. The sausages were a lot like homemade seitan sausages, even with the chewy-stringy seitan texture to them. But for some reason (possibly all the food we'd already eaten), I could only eat half my dinner before I started to feel a bit bleh.

So. That was how we ate in NYC. I'm seriously disappointed in our lack of dessert, ice cream, and so on. But, we did pretty well, I think.  Plus, it gives us plenty of excuses to go back and eat more. Though next time, we will have to stay closer to the downtown area, since all of the awesome-est food was there.

Wat is the new Dhal

Dhal is a staple food in the Tropical Vegan household, as I suspect it is in many vegetarian and vegan homes.  It's a great meal to have when we're low on veggies, or don't feel like putting much effort into cooking, or don't have the imagination to come up with something new and exciting but still don't feel like boring or junky food. 

Our go-to recipe has been Peter Singer's dhal (scroll right down for the recipe), but with actual spices added in addition to the curry powder - usually cumin seeds, mustard seeds, sometimes coriander or fenugreek, depending on what we have on hand.

But dhal has recently moved over for a different lentil-based, heavily spiced stew in our lives.  Mesir wat, which I've posted about once before, has recently taken its place as our new go-to recipe.  This Ethiopian red lentil stew has all of the virtues of dhal, with the added bonus that we haven't eaten it so many times that the flavours are boring.  It is thick and hearty, beautifully flavoured, and easy-pants to throw together.

It's not quite perfect without the sour flavour and spongy texture of injera with it, but these wholemeal chapatis do a reasonable job of filling in.

Although we haven't forsaken dhal from our lives entirely, it has definitely taken a back burner to yummy wat.

One Dish Round Up

For the past few months, I have been testing recipes for Carla's in-the-works cookbook about one-dish meals.  Andy and I tested a bunch of recipes around christmas, and then took a few weeks off from testing, before another big spurt in the last few weeks.  Carla has recently discussed a slight change in direction with her publishers - so I won't be testing any more.  However, I have really loved the recipes we have tested, so I'll post some photos here to give you an idea of the excellence that Carla manages to come up with.

 

 White bean peanut dip tastes like yummy peanut sauce, in dip form.  What else could you want?

Carla's spiced oven wedges have become a popular side dish, like here with sausage rolls.

Baked lemon tofu with green beans reminded me of an excellent flavour combination that I haven't taken advantage of in a while - lemon pepper.  Duh, but yum.  

Cream Sausage & Tomato Pasta was really easy to pull together, and very yummy.

The sauce, bubbling away on the stove after maybe 10 minutes of prepping and cooking.

 

Franks & Beans, which we actually served as "Bangers & Beans" using sausages, was super tomatoey and hearty.  Served with a side of creamy mushrooms, and some toast, this was almost brinner.

One of our favourite recipes is Carla's Crumbed Seitan.  The crumb mixture is a lot more interesting than our usual, so we've had this a few times.

 All fried up, these schnitzels are crispy and tasty.

We had them once with garlic mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy.

Then another time we served them up with mashed sweet potatoes (the ones with purple-red skin and white insides) and Easy Cheesy Gravy from Ultimate Uncheese.

And the leftovers from that were turned into parmas - a jar of enchilada sauce and some leftover cheesy gravy, and popped in the oven for a few minutes.

Two cuisines meet in Ethiopian Sweet Potato Stew, which matches the spices of Ethiopian cooking with the peanut stews of Western Africa, with sweet potatoes and chickpeas.

Seitan, marinated overnight in Thai BBQ marinade and then baked with some veggies and frozen spring rolls, made for a really yummy and really easy weekday dinner.

Red Seitan Curry required more effort than the last meal, but was well worth it on a Sunday evening.  The seitan is cooked in the curry itself, so it is full of flavour with a texture that is quite different to typical seitan.

Corn bread scones were simple to make, full of flavour, soft and delicious.  Declared by Andy to be the best corn bread I've ever made.

We served our scones with Kidney Bean & Sweet Potato Chilli, a thick and herby stew which we topped with jalapeno slices.

We made the chilli with a mix of orange sweet potatoes, and these beauties with an ugly white exterior but a brilliantly violet inside.

The chilli was reincarnated later in the week as Chilli Muffin Loaves, light little muffins with chunks of sweet potato and bean throughout.

Home made tofu is beautiful when marinated and baked, and Carla's Pan Pacific Marinade didn't disappoint.

My advice is to keep your eyes peeled for Carla's cookbooks, because if the recipes I've tried are anything to go by, they will be excellent.

Ethiopian memory lane.

In 2005, I was amazingly lucky enough to travel to Ethiopia. It wasn't a place I had ever considered visiting, but when the offer presented itself, I couldn't get it out of my head. It wasn't just that it was a free trip, paid for through a travel grant from my undergrad university, which was won by my Ethiopian-raised but 20 years American sociology professor.  It was the mystique of the place - I knew almost nothing about it.  I'd never eaten the food, never heard the language, never seen the flag.  I set about learning as much about Ethiopia as I could, through history books, mainly, because the internet didn't have much to offer about the country when I was looking.  Still, I was surprised and awed the whole trip.

From the capital city, Addis Abeba -- which means 'new flower', and is between 2300 and 3000 meters (that's up to 9,800 feet) above sea level, and packed with both shanty towns and flash new developments...

And where thick traffic, spewing black exhaust which coats your face, competes with animals for right-of-way...

 To the country-side, where the noise comes from birds (and mosquitoes!), and the slippery-feeling water of the volcanic Lake Langano washed all our city-stress away...

 And the beauty of the Great Rift Valley took our breath away. 

We were fortunate in our timing, as the little rainy season (as contrasted to the much rainer "big rainy season", later in the year) had just ended, leaving everything lush and green.  Less fortunate about our timing was that Lent had recently ended.  During Lent, the largely Orthodox Christian population of Ethiopia observes fasting rules which means that they eat an almost vegan diet.  Afterwards, they gorge themselves on animal products for a few months, striking their veggie dishes from restaurant menus and home kitchens alike.  But wherever we went, they were able to rustle up some veggies, legumes, and injera, and I fell in love with Ethiopian cuisine.  Different customs left us eating lots -- I grew up learning that you need to clear your plate before the meal is finished, but in Ethiopia a clear plate is a sign of an un-generous host.  Every time I cleared, more food appeared.  As a result, I ate lots and gained weight (the many beers we drank probably didn't help this, either).

This trip was more than five years ago now, but my love of Ethiopian food is forever.  But, a severe lack of Ethiopian restaurants in North Queensland has led me to create my own versions of the delicious meals I ate far too much of in my month in Ethiopia.

This is mesir wat, or Ethiopian Red Lentil Stew, served with Ethiopian spiced vegetables from Fat Free Vegan.  The rice and tortilla are a poor substitute for injera, the slightly-sour, spongy flat bread that normally accompanies Ethiopian meals.  But the mesir wat tastes as good as I remember, thanks to a slightly complex recipe involving a homemade spice mix, and homemade spiced oil.  If you refrigerate this stew, it gets very thick and wonderful, and the flavours develop even further, so I recommend cooking a day early and then re-heating. But if you don't have the forethought, or patience, or whatever else is required for this, it is still very delicious on the day it's made.


Mesir Wat

1 c. red lentils
1/4 c. netir kibbeh (or vegetable oil, but the spiced oil makes a big difference)
1 small onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 T. berbere, separated
1 small tomato, cored and chopped
4 c. water
salt to taste

Rinse and drain the lentils.  Heat netir kibbeh in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Cook the onions until they go golden brown.  Add garlic and stir for about 30 seconds.  Then add lentils, 1 T. berbere, tomato, and water.  Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until stew is thick and lentils are tender, about 45 to 50 minutes.  Add remaining berbere, season with salt, and serve hot.

Netir Kibbeh

3/4 c. ricebran oil (or other un-flavourful oil)
4 cardomom pods, seeds removed from husks
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp nigella seeds

In a mortar&pestle, spice grinder, or Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker, grind together cardmom seeds, fenugreek, and nigella.  They can be coarsely ground for this, just break them up a bit.  In a small saucepan, heat oil gently, stir in the spices, and then remove the oil from heat.  Let the mixture cool to room temperature, and then pour into a glass jar, straining if you don't like chunks, and store in the fridge.

Berbere

2 tsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. fenugreek seeds
1/2 tsp. black peppercorns
6 cardomom pods, seeds removed from husks
4 cloves
5 dried chillis (or more or less, to taste)
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4 c. onion powder
3 T. paprika
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

In a skillet over medium heat, toast coriander, fenugreek, peppercorns, cardamom and cloves for several minutes until they smell fragrant and toasty.  Remove from the pan, let cool, and then add to chillis and grind to a fine powder.  Stir in remaining powdered ingredients, store in an airtight container.  Also delicious on potato wedges, tofu scrambles, etc.

Complementary baking

Some of my favourite foods come from the oven—cookies, cakes, pies, roasted veggies.... But using the oven to bake just one thing isn’t very efficient. Preheating and maintaining the temperature in a fairly big airspace just for one pan of food uses a lot of electricity and isn’t good for the environment or the wallet. Not to mention, it makes the house all kinds of hot—this is a good thing in the winter, but not so much in the hotter months. And even though autumn officially started in Australia on Saturday, it’s still pretty warm here.

None of this is enough to stop us from using the oven. We just try to be a bit smarter when we do heat it up. In our house, the oven is stuffed full whenever it is turned on. This usually takes some major strategery—which pans will we use that can fit together; which dish needs to be on which shelf; how long and at what temperature does each dish need to bake; when should batters be mixed and poured into pans...

Sunday, after eating pancakes and reading the paper, Andy and I had a long, drawn-out baking-fest. He was bored (I was doing the crossword) so I suggested he bake some cookies. He flipped through our newest cookbook acquisition, Joy of Vegan Baking, and decided to make both Lemon Bars and Jam-Filled Oat Bran Muffins. And since we had the oven on anyways, he declared, we should have something baked for dinner; his choice was the potato pizza from the latest issue of Vegan Voice magazine (which I didn’t get photos of). And then he requested that I be in charge of the Lemon Bars.

Andy started on the muffins in the early afternoon. Instead of oat bran, he ground up some rolled oats. He kept the wet ingredients separate, in the fridge, waiting for the oven to be preheated before mixing (since the baking powder activates as soon as it hits moisture).

After he had finished with the muffins, he boiled and mashed some potatoes and mixed up the pizza crust.

When he was done in the kitchen, I put together the shortbread crust of the Lemon Bars, pressed it into a slice pan, and put it in the fridge. Then I blended up the topping in a bowl, using mango flavoured silken tofu (not noticeable over the lemony-ness) and custard powder in place of corn flour.

When it came time for dinner, we put our carefully worked-out strategies into action. Andy mixed his batter while the oven heated, then filled muffin cups with batter and jam. We topped the pizza crust, and baked the shortbread. The muffins came out looking delicious, the pizza was rolled out a little thin and fell apart while we ate, and the Lemon Bars took much longer to set than the recipe called for. But everything was really tasty, and now we’ve got treats to last us all week.

Lemon Bars

Jam-filled Oat Muffin and a Lemon Bar

We had another oven meal last night to use up a few leftovers and old veggies. Last week I made an Ethiopian-spiced tofu and vegetable stew. We blended it up and stirred through some leftover barley. This was poured into a crust. The whole lot was topped off with a mixture of mashed potato, sweet potato, garlic, miso and sunflower butter (for a cheesy flavour). I called it Ethiopian Goatherd’s Pie—because it’s not quite shepherd’s pie.

At the same time, Andy made some gourmet-style stuffed sweet potatoes. He steamed a few big chunks of sweet potato, and the hollowed out the insides. They were stuffed with a bread and corn mix flavoured with cranberry jelly and orange marmalade. This was a very yummy, Thanksgiving-flavoured side dish, and that stuffing is likely to make more appearances in our house.

And finally, because Vaala asked after my last post, I’ll share with you my recipe for pastry crust. It’s a mix of recipes and techniques from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah, Wild Morsels, and my mum. This is enough to make one standard sized crust, or six topless mini-crusts. If you need a top, double the recipe.

¾ c. sifted flour
¼ c. ice cold margarine (leave it in the freezer for 20 minutes)
1/8 tsp. salt
2 T. ice water

--Combine flour and salt in a medium bowl. Cut in margarine with a pastry cutter or your fingers, until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Add ice water and mix well, kneading slightly to incorporate all the flour. Form into a ball (or six small balls, for cupcake-sized pies) and chill for 30 minutes. Roll out between two sheets of cling wrap to desired size. The cling wrap keeps it from drying out the way a floured surface does. When you transfer the crust to your pan, peel off the top piece of cling wrap and flip the crust into your pan, and use the other cling wrap to press it in to place. Fill with something yummy, bake and enjoy.

Fusion Cuisine.

India, meet Ethiopia. Oh, and here's Australia and America, too.

This is a meal that Andy made for me last week. He followed Peter Singer's (Australian) recipe for dhal (Indian), which we like for the inclusion of tomatoes and coconut milk. But, in place of curry powder, we subbed Berbere powder (Ethiopian) which was based on a recipe from the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen (American). I think we had it on some brown rice. And to drink, we had a home brew blend called Dublin. So there's some Europe for you, too.

The only continents we were missing were South America and Antarctica.