Deliciously Healthy

Over the course of this year, I've noticed us shifting to a healthier way of eating. This isn't to say that we ate badly before - in fact, we generally tried to avoid bad food. But in the last few months we've shifted to actively choosing good things, instead of just avoiding the bad. I think this comes down to a few things. One is more awareness. Another is that as I do more exercise, I am hungrier and want to eat better to stay fuller longer. And a big reason is that we are much more financially comfortable now, so buying nuts and unusual grains and flours is something we can afford to do with a bit more regularity now.

One of the things that has made it much easier to shift to healthier eating is the fantastic, delicious, but very health conscious cookbook, Let them eat Vegan! by Dreena Burton. We just love it. Here are some of our winners.

"Fit-tuccine Alfredo". We skipped the chanterelle bread crumb topping, and served it on penne pasta with zucchini, broccoli and capsicum. Based on cashews, this sauce is suuuuper creamy and really delicious.

Raw-nch Dressing! [original exclamation mark] Made with a big handful of fresh parsley, this was fresh and creamy and filling. 

Perfect on a salad with enchiladas and corn on the cob. 

White bean mashed potatoes. This was a bit of hassle to make, and Andy didn't think it was worth it, but it really is much healthier than regular mash. With eggplant parma, sauteed gai lan, and roasted radishes.

Yellow Sweet Potato Chickpea Pie with Basil. This recipe, or some variation of it, is one of our favourites from the book. It's easy to make, and easy to modify, and really delicious. We have only ever made it with orange sweet potatoes, and sometimes use white beans instead of chickpeas, but it is always delicious. Unfortunately, it may have killed my blender last week. 

The star of this pizza is Romesc-oat Sauce, a roasted capsicum-based thick spread with the nutty taste of toasted almonds and toasted oats. 

BBQ Sunflower Tofu, cooked on the BBQ instead of in the oven. Easy peasy, delicious, made with sunflower butter for a different kind of taste. With BBQ eggplant, rocket, and bok choy. 

Jerk Chickpeas, with added eggplant and rocket. 

Lemon-Infused Mediterranean Lentils - made with veggies mixed in, and a little bit saucier. 

There are lots of gems in this cookbook. It makes me want to look more into Dreena's recipes - but Andy thinks I should make more things out of the cookbooks we have before I get more new ones!

Hot for Harissa

Late to the party is a good way to describe me and food trends. Is harissa still even trendy, or has the hot sauce of the moment shifted to piripiri, sriracha, or something else?

We had a lot of chillies in the last two or so months. The ziplock bag in the freezer was full, so I started threading them on to string to dry out.

When the string got full and the chillies kept coming, Andy and I decided we needed to make some chilli sauce. A few of my cookbooks had recipes, but I can't go past Dynise Balcavage's recipes. Urban Vegan has a harissa recipe with aniseed, so I made a batch of that. And I fell in love. So did Andy. The jar is almost empty in the fridge, so I'll have to make a new batch soon.

I have used it to spice up some pasta with tahini sauce, kale, zucchini and tomatoes.

Kari came to the harissa party late with me, and posted this recipe using harissa powder. I made some small changes to suit what we had - and also, because I mostly remembered the recipe and didn't feel like looking it up. Chickpeas and sweet potatoes got smashed together with harissa paste and other veggies, and fresh coriander.

For dinner we ate it hot in wraps, and the leftovers were really great the next day in salad.

Finally, harissa butter made a delicious base for a kale pizza. Spicy, hearty with the kale, and accompanied by a less spicy, garlic&rocket&cherry tomato pizza.

Even though I'm late, the harissa party is still hot and happening, so, better late than never!

Pizza. On the BBQ.

Andy and I love pizza. Since I perfected a crust recipe several years ago (below), Andy has requested pizza aroundabout once a week. We have had some really excellent successes in our time - roasted garlic + nutrtitional yeast "cheesy garlic bread", gourmet-style antipasto pizzas, vegan bacon and pineapple pizzas - but we've recently reached new heights in the pizza stakes.

Enter the BBQ.

I had read, several years ago, an article about cooking pizza on the grill like this. The article talked about putting the dough straight on the grill plate, cooking it briefly, then flipping over to top as the other side of the dough cooked. This could work, but we haven't tried it yet, and I don't know how it would go on a Weber (which cooks hotter than most BBQs).

When Andy's parents parked their caravan in our back yard last May, they bought a pizza stone for their Weber, and we tried it out with pre-purchased crusts. They were good, and friends who have pizza stones say they are really excellent. But our trepidation around pizza stones is that they are rather small, and we like our pizzas rather... large. I suppose we could make many smaller pizzas, but they can only cook one at a time, and also what if the dough is floppy?

Our method is much simpler, and probably means that we still have higher heights to reach. But for now, it's blown our minds enough that we're happy here. Our method involves making the pizza on the pan, like we always have, but cooking it on the Weber, raised up on a trivet (because going straight on the grill would be too direct a heat and would burn the base).

The result is a crispy crunchy base with a still-fluffy crust ring around the edge of the pizza. The whole thing gets a slightly smoky, BBQ flavour. And it only takes 8-10 minutes per pizza, on low heat.

BBQ sauce, fresh pineapple, and vegan bacon bits, with a few mushrooms.

I suppose the most revolutionary aspect of this pizza-making method is that it lets us have pizza in the summer without heating up the house. On a really hot, North Queensland day, you can imagine how important this is. It even encourages us to eat outside, something we normally only do when we have people over.

Pesto, Mushroom and Tomato pizza

Pizza Dough
1 cup of water (usually, + 1 or 2 Tbsp., but play it by feel)
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 Tbsp. sugar
3 c. flour
3 Tbsp. gluten flour
2 and 1/2 tsp. yeast

We make this in the bread maker, just whacking everything in and letting it go, adding a splish splash of water when it looks dry. If you don't have a bread maker, do this in the normal way of making bread. Mix up the water, salt, olive oil, sugar and yeast. Mix the flour and gluten flour together and then mix the dry into the wet with a wooden spoon. When it gets too stiff, mix with your hands, and knead the dough for 10 minutes until it becomes stretchy and smooth. As you knead, add more flour if it is too wet; if it's too dry I like to get my hands wet and knead in more water that way. When it looks like nice dough, put it in an oiled bowl, cover, and let it rise for 60-90 minutes.

At the end of the dough cycle or when the dough has risen in the bowl, punch it down, drop it on the bench, and knead by hand for a minute. Divide it in half (or more, if you want smaller pizzas), form into smooth balls (tuck the rough bits in at the bottom until it's pretty smooth), and let rest on the bench, covered with a tea towel, until you're ready to roll out the pizzas (up to 2 hours, but we usually go 30-60 minutes).

Cleaning out the Kitchen

As I said in a previous post, we have been doing our best, in the past few weeks, to clear as much out of our kitchen as possible. Instead of shopping, we have been emptying out the pantry, fridge&freezer, and garden. We have been buying fresh veggies still, because duh. But we have gotten our cabinets down to practically empty.

This is where we were up to on Wednesday morning.

Freezer: 2 blocks of flavoured tofu, 1 block of plain tofu, bread, 2 ice bottles (for keeping our food cool when we move), pumpkin ice cubes for Nacho, 2 seitan steaks, 3 pumpkin muffins, 1 jar of mango chunks, 1 jar of chickpeas, a handful of blueberries.

Fridge.

Pantry cabinet 1

Pantry cabinet 2

Pantry cabinet 3

Okay, so we still have a lot of food. But we have been focusing our eating-efforts on things we knew we could finish off in the timeframe. So a huge thing of chickpeas, and the 4 jars of jam Andy brought home from a field trip, weren't included in our list (you bet I made a list).

Eating down the pantry, for us, has meant eating pretty well. Here are some of the yummy things we've had so far...

 Remember when we bought 22 packages of sweet chilli flavoured tofu for 20cents each? We weren't even halfway through them when Andy brought home a few more packages of other-flavoured tofu, left over from a field trip which was massively over-catered. We're down to two, finally, thanks to meals like this one. Tofu, fried briefly. Also, brussels sprouts with leek, spinach, and the last of a jar of vegan bacon bits from the US. And basil potato salad in the background. The dressing for this salad used up a tin of coconut milk, a bunch of basil from the garden, and some capers from the fridge.

 

Pasta, from the pantry. Sauce, made from 3 tins of tomatoes, the last of a jar of tomato paste, some sundried tomatoes, the end of a jar of capers, a jar of artichoke hearts, and some green olives. And a heap of basil from the garden.

 Pizza/focaccia. In front, caramelised onion and za'atar focaccia. In the back, hawaiian pizza, which used up a block of seitan from the freezer and a tin of pineapple from the pantry.

Tapioca pudding, which used up all the big tapioca pearls, a tin of coconut milk, some bananas from the freezer, and some of the rainbow sprinkles from the pantry.

Black bean tortilla chip soup (based closely on the recipe from La Dolce Vegan), which used up a jar of frozen black beans, a chilli from the freezer, spinach from the garden, some chips, and a whole bunch of garlic chives from the garden.

Chickpea & seitan green curry. This used up a jar of frozen chickpeas, the last of the seitan blocks in the freezer, some garden spinach, all of the brown rice, a tin of coconut milk, a bit of ginger from the freezer, and the rest of a jar of green curry paste.

A green smoothie, which used the last of the frozen pineapple and bananas, and some spinach from the garden.

So not too much to go yet, but we still won't be eating like paupers, if the past fortnight has been any indication!

Sheese Louise

A few months ago, I tried some Kingland Soy Cheese, which was just horrible. My post about it prompted Susan, in Brisbane, to very kindly offer to send me up some Sheese, which is shelf-stable so post-able. I was getting ready to go overseas, so I asked for a rain check, and eventually Susan and I engaged in some package swappering shortly before Christmas.

The package I received from Susan had way more than just Sheese in it. It also had some vegan gummy sour snakes, some Primal Strips soy jerky, and a Go Max Go Joker bar. All things were massively appreciated - gummy candies have always been my favourite, and were one thing I was very sad to give up upon adopting vegetarianism. Candy bars - hello, who doesn't want a vegan snickers? But I love a good savoury snack, and vegan jerky made Andy and I think seriously about how we can make some in our dehydrator.

But the Sheese was really the star, and for a few weeks was the gift that kept giving. I was pretty happy to see that it is grate-able.

For our first try of it, we put it on pizza, along with some BBQ sauce, grilled onions, and vegan bacon bits (which we souvenired from the US). The Sheese didn't melt, as such, but since it was grated and we didn't layer it on too thick, it didn't matter much. It did add a really nice layer of flavour that our normal cheeseless pizzas don't have.

The smoked cheddar flavour is exceedingly good on crackers.

And it made a tasty, if not melty-gooey, toasted cheese sandwich.

The plain cheddar found homes atop nachos, more pizzas, mixed into our Christmas breakfast hash browns, and in a wrap with some BBQ "Pulled" Jack fruit.

Susan - thanks so much for all of this! Vegan bloggers really are the best :-)

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.

Pizza, rolled

When I was growing up, we ordered pizza fairly regularly from the local pizza place, Rocco's.  When I was a bit older, I usually went for a calzone, rather than pizza.  These were essentially just cheese, cheese and more cheese, encased in dough, with some garlic on top.  With some red sauce on the side for dipping, of course.

When I went to uni, the local pizza place, Sergi's sold what are colloquially known as 'fat bags'.  On the menu, they are called a 'pizza roll' -- basically, a pizza with red sauce and cheese, and pepperoni optional, folded in half and deep fried.  They were good, in a disgusting way, and I only ever ate a few of them.  Instead, I fell in love with the *other* local pizza place, Josie's, version of the pizza roll, which was not deep fried, had a better crust, and could be filled with anything.

Then, I went vegan.  Ordering calzones or pizza rolls from pizzerias became a thing that doesn't happen anymore.  I tried, in the early days of living with Andy, to make some yummy calzones but... they weren't so hot.  At the time, my crusts were grainy, rather than stretchy, and were always too thick.  So Andy was all, 'ew, calzones'.

But I convinced him to let me have another go, now that I've gotten better at pizza dough.  I decided to fill it with ratatouille, a folded version of the ratatouille pizza we invented a few years ago.

So I made my dough, split it into a few balls, and rolled each one really thinly - because the crust puffs as it bakes, so it is always thicker than you expect.  I piled up my ratatouille.

Folded and twisted the seam.

And then baked them.  And I'm happy to report, they were a success!  Aaand, I forgot to take a final photo, but they looked much like the pre-baked version, only browner.

Rolled pizza is back on the menu - yay!

Bogan Pizza, Boutique Pizza

One of the things I love so much about pizza (aside from the delicious, delicious crust) is how versatile it is.

Case in point:

This cheeseburger pizza is probably the biggest bogan of the pizza world (though my frank & beans pizza might give it a run for its bogan money).  TVP soaked in Massel beef stock, soy sauce and vegemite to make it taste hamburger-y; sliced up dill pickles; American-style yellow mustard & tomato sauce instead of a typical pizza sauce; and piles of vegan cheese sauce.  This combination is messy, not terribly healthy, and probably listens to Jimmy Barnes while drinking beer in the driveway after work.  But it's so, so yummy.  It tastes like McDonald's - which is, admittedly, not something I want to re-create on a regular basis, but every now and then a certain amount of junk is required in life, I think.

On the other hand, this antipasto pizza is understated, and if it were a person would shop locally (even though it costs more!), drink organic wine, and host fancy-dress dinner parties every second month.  It was topped with no sauce - just olive oil & garlic; marinated artichoke hearts; sundried tomatoes; just-wilted spinach (from the garden, no less); roasted capsicum strips; and kalamata olives. 

Both, in isolation, would be annoying to hang out with.  The first, a bit boorish, the second far too wanky.  But since pizza crust is so amenable to being dressed up or down, I can hang out with both just often enough.

(Though when I told Andy about this post he just called me a promiscuous pizza eater...)