Whodathunkit part 2

It seems that vegans around the world feel it necessary to point out that we eat "more than tofu". We found another blog with the same name http://www.morethantofu.com/ :)

The more the merrier we say :)

Whodathunkit?

We went out for dinner on the spur of the moment with some meat-eater friends and as our favourite Greek place has apparently closed down, we ended up at the restaurant next door, The Steakery. Yes you read that correctly. Needless to say we were sceptical but we were in for quite a surprise. We managed to have a full 3-course vegan meal with only one adjustment.

Starter:

Chef's salad (avo, rocket, and various other salady things with a lovely balsamic dressing)

Main course:

Vegetarian pasta (linguine with artichoke hearts, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, peppers and a napoletana sauce - awesome)

Dessert:

Bananas baked in a rum and banana liqueur syrup - yum! Usually served with cream.

I found some awesome sources for checking whether your booze is vegan:

http://www.barnivore.com/ (also listed on the http://www.vegansociety.co.za site)

http://www.vegsoc.org/info/alcohol.html
http://www.vnv.org.au/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=195&Itemid=133
http://www.vegsoc.org/info/alcohol.html
http://www.vegansociety.com/Lifestyle-And-Nutrition/Food/Drink/Alcohol.aspx

So yeah, not that they are likely to ever read this but thank you to The Steakery for considering those that don't eat animal products for whatever reason. Hopefully other restaurants will catch on.

Btw it is my work year-end function on Thursday and I have held in my hands an invoice for, among others, 1x vegan meal :) I shall report back.

Ifisashi

This Zambian recipe was sent to me by LadyRaven. I must say I had my doubts - it seemed a bit insubstantial but having just harvested some spinach from the garden *preen* we gave it a bash anyway. It is absolutely divine! The soup is lovely, rich and full of flavour, and the combination of spinach and peanuts is genius. Thank you, dear Hila, I hope we will have an opportunity to cook it for you soon :)


What you will need:
2 bunches fresh spinach (washed and chopped)
1 cup raw peanuts (ground) (we cheated and used roasted peanuts cos it was all we had - worked fine)
Salt to taste
1 onion (sliced)
2 medium tomatoes (sliced)
Water
(Oh and we added garlic - as to most things :))


What to do:
In a medium-sized saucepan, boil the onion and tomatoes with the ground peanuts, adding salt to taste and water as needed. After a few minutes, add chopped greens. Stirring occasionally, continue cooking until the peanuts are soft and the mixture has become a fairly thick buttery sauce (15-20 minutes). We changed the method a teeny bit by frying up the onion, tomato and garlic and then adding the water, spinach and peanuts.

To serve:
Serve as a thick soup or with mieliepap as a sauce (goes well with seed loaf or any grain I imagine).

Peanuts are high in protein and low GI, spinach contains lots of vit A, folic acid and iron. Very tasty, very healthy, and cheap to make.

P.S. My friend Liz tells me that her people (she's Zulu) often add peanuts to cooked spinach. I will post pics when technology cooperates

Beetroot Leaf Salad

But that is the best bit...

I cannot understand why some people throw beetroot leaves away. They are the best bit imho

 

Ingredients

4-5 cups of roughly chopped lightly boiled beetroot leaves

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 cup diced apple (preferably a firm apple like granny smith)

1 tsp crushed garlic

2-3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1 handful of chopped origanum, mint and parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

 

Method

Gently mix all the ingredients together and allow to stand for a few hours for the leaves to soak up some of the apple cider vinegary loveliness. It should be a bit tart. (Just like Mally. Oh wait that's tarty. Hur hur – ES)

 

Variation

Add walnuts or pine nuts instead of almonds

Beetroot leaf and citrus salad - Add lemon juice instead of apple cider vinegar and orange instead of apple

Mushrooms and peas with cashew nut cream

(Note: There is a picture of this floating around – I will try post it asap. This is seriously tasty – Evyl)

 

Ingredients

• 1 punnet mushrooms
  
• 1 cup frozen peas
  
• 1 cup cashew nuts
  
• 1 tsp crushed garlic
  
• 1 cup soy milk
  
• 2-3 tbsp water
  
• Salt and pepper
  
• Oil for frying
  

 

Method

Fry the mushrooms and garlic. When almost done add the peas and the water, reduce heat and simmer until the peas are cooked. Take off heat. Blend the cashews until they are a fine powder. Add the soy milk a couple of tablespoons at a time, blending between adding until all the soy milk is added. It should be the consistency of cream. Add to the mushrooms and peas and reheat.

 

Serve with pasta or rice.

 

Variations

Add basil instead of peas.

Mengel-mus

Mengel-mus

This is a hummus inspired chickpea dip that we make. Mengelmoes is an Afrikaans word that means mixture (concoction would probably be more accurate).

Ingredients

• 1 can chickpeas, drained
  
• 2 tbsp olive oil
  
• 2 tsp crushed garlic
  
• 2 tsp lemon juice
  
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
  
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
  
• pinch of salt
  

 

Method

Mix all ingredients together and blend until smooth. Serve with biscuits, toast, bread, chips, whatever.

Baklava

As you may have noticed, the blog is yet again hopelessly outdated. In our defence, we've had two birthdays (mine and the little princess') as well as a whole bunch of other things. But last night we had some friends over for dinner and Mally made a Greek meze-type veggie feast (details will follow) and ended it off with a superb vegan baklava. Try it, it's delicious! J

Vegan Baklava

(makes 12 pieces)

Ingredients

Baklava

375g mixed nuts, crushed

1/2 cup maple flavoured syrup/maple syrup

3 sheets phyllo pastry

10 ml cinnamon

1 tbsp lemon juice

Oil for brushing

Syrup

1/2 cup maple flavoured syrup/maple syrup

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

600 ml water

2 slivers orange peel

Method

Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius

Nut Mixture

Mix crushed nuts with 1/2 cup maple syrup, 1 tbsp lemon juice and cinnamon and set aside

Syrup

Mix water, sugar, maple syrup, lemon juice and orange peel

Bring to boil on medium heat

Reduce to half volume

Remove orange peel

Baklava

Brush first sheet of phyllo pastry

Fold in half and in half again

Put 1/3 nut mixture along the middle of pastry and roll tightly

Transfer to roasting tin

Repeat for last sheets

Brush the tops of all sheets with oil

Bake for one hour

Remove from oven

Cut each roll into four pieces and transfer to serving bowl

Pour syrup over all the pieces and allow to stand

Amaranth

As promised, I had a go at cooking amaranth tonight. It comes out looking like tiny quinoa grains when cooked and has a slightly crunchy texture. Apparently overcooking it is not a good idea as it may go "gummy". It is quite easy to work with as it doesn't burn easily and cooks fairly quickly. Amaranth is one of few "grains" that contains complete proteins, i.e. all essential amino acids, and is therefore a useful item for a vegan pantry.

I tried a recipe from this site but, as is my wont, did not exactly follow it to the letter so the veggies were less sauce and more topping:

Amaranth with Spinach Tomato Mushroom Sauce
1 cup amaranth seed
2-12 cups water
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 bunch spinach (or young amaranth leaves if available)
2 ripe tomatoes, skinned and coarsely chopped
1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced
1-1/2 teaspoons basil
1-1/2 teaspoons oregano
1 clove of garlic minced
1 Tablespoon onion, minced
Sea salt and pepper to taste (or use a salt substitute)

Add amaranth to boiling water, bring back to boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 18-20 minutes.

While amaranth is cooking, stem and wash spinach, then simmer until tender. Dip tomatoes into boiling water to loosen skin, then peel and chop. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat and add garlic an onion. Sauté approximately 2 minutes. Add tomato, mushrooms, basil, oregano, salt, pepper and 1 tablespoon of water. Drain and chop spinach and add to tomato mixture. Cook an addition 10 – 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Lightly mash tomato as it is cooking.

Stir the sauce into the amaranth or spoon it on top.

Salad Mally

Mally quite likes salad mains and in times past, used to make a vegetarian version of Salad Nicoise, omitting the tuna and anchovy. Saturday night he made a salad that is better described as Salad Mally, with the usual salad base, some fresh and deliciously sweet red pepper, potato, croutons and cubed firm tofu fried in soy sauce. Yum! Delicious, very pretty, low fat and very nutritious*.

*containing among others protein (tofu), carbohydrates and potassium (potatoes), lycopenes (tomatoes), for beta carotene and flavonoids (red pepper), vitamin C (tomatoes and red pepper), fibre and chlorophyll (greens).

The kitchen is open

The kitchen at Chateau Mallencolly is once again open, although due to tiredness and overwork our food creativity has been a bit lacking J That should change soon though, especially with a sort-of long weekend looming. Also, I will post some pics of what our brand-new kitchen looks like (although it is still a work in progress).

In the meantime, I've found this very informative article and thought I'd share it here. On page two there are some lovely recipes as well. It is quite important to be sensible about making any big dietary changes, and not less so for adopting a vegan diet.
 
Anyway, happy Tuesday J

Kitchen closed

The kitchen @ Chateau Mallencolly is currently closed due to renovations. Hence, no recipes and we have been living on takeaways. However watch this space for agar agar marshmallows and our first attempts at cooking buckwheat and amaranth.

That's it for now J

Coconut ice

One of my favourite things ever, and one of the first things I ever made myself, coconut ice is just delicious. However, it is not normally vegan as it is usually made with condensed milk. Happily, my mom's ancient "Sonskyn Happies" recipe book yielded a cooked recipe which uses milk. Needless to say this was easily replaced with good quality soy milk. I made some for a koekverkoping at a school and took some to work and it was very popular :)

Ingredients (with apologies and thanks to the tannies who compiled Sonskyn Happies for the church or school or something)

4 cups sugar
1 cup soy milk (I used Bokomo So Fresh powdered soy milk)
2 tbsp syrup
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 - 2 cups coconut
pink food colouring (optional)

Method
Mix sugar, milk, syrup and cream of tartar and boil for 10 minutes.
Let cool for about 5 minutes, stir in coconut and stir for a while.
Let the mixture stand for a few minutes (optional)
Pour into a greased baking tray or oven dish.
When it starts setting (about 30 minutes), cut into squares.

Makes 16-20 squares.

Delicious! Don't eat too much if you want to make it to middle age =)

Miso soup and oriental veggies

On Monday night I actually cooked. This is in itself quite a momentous occasion but even better, I decided to try my hand at miso soup which I have never tried.

I used a recipe from 101 Cookbooks which is an awesome food blog with plenty of vegan recipes. I did however adapt it a bit so am posting it here without permission :) and with my changes.

Ingredients

• 3 bundles rice noodles
• 4 tablespoons miso paste (to taste)
• 2 - 3 handfuls firm tofu, chopped into small cubes
• a handful of spinach, well washed and stems trimmed
• 1 leek thinly sliced

Method
Cook the rice noodles in salted water, drain and set aside.
In a medium sauce pan bring 4 cups of water to a boil.
Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and remove from heat.
Pour a bit of the hot water into a small bowl and whisk in the miso paste - so it thins out a bit (this step is to avoid clumping). Unless the miso is really smooth you will have to blend it before adding.
Stir this back into the pot.
Taste, and then add more (the same way) a bit at a time until it is to your liking. Also, some miso pastes are less salty than others, so you may need to add a bit of soy sauce here.
Add the tofu, spinach and sliced leek and heat through.
Add noodles and dish up.

With that I made some tasty veggies:

Ingredients

• Chinese cabbage (about 1/3 of a head)
• 1 carrot, grated
• about half a punnet of portabellini mushrooms, sliced
• sunflower oil
• some garlic
• some good soy sauce like Kikkoman
• sweet chilli sauce

Method
Heat up oil and garlic, add veggies, add soy sauce and sweet chilli and fry till done. Damn tasty.

Braai

We had a bit of a spontaneous braai today - with not a meat substitute in sight.

We braaied:

• brinjal slices (drizzle with olive oil and put on the grill)
• butternut (with a dash of sweet chilli sauce, wrap in foil and put on the grill)
• sweetcorn (the cut ones you get from PnP or Woolies - cook for 5 minutes or so in the microwave, sprinkle some salt, pepper and hot spice on and - you guessed it - put on the grill)

Salads:

• basil potato salad (chooped fresh basil, vegan salad cream like Trim, salt, pepper and a bit of sugar)
• green salad with rocket and normal salady stuff (we were chatting so I forgot to add some things but bean sprouts, sunflower seeds and peppadew all work)

Served with lovely fresh rolls and strawberry juice thanks to our lovely guests. Insanely healthy *and* tasty.

Winter vegetable stew

So last night I actually cooked. Yikes! I can't remember how to do it. But in the end I managed to make a (dead plain but tasty) tasty winter veggie stew (for Spring, yeah whatever, it's still cold) and a mountain of mealie rice.

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 2 carrots
• 2 turnips
• 3 potatoes
• 1/4 Hubbard squash
• 2 cups of peas (preferably frozen but with the Great Pea Shortage of 2009, canned will do)
• some oil
• about 750ml veggie stock (Ina Paarman's veg stock powder is nice)
• salt, pepper and paprika

Method
Chop onion and sautee in oil. Lob in other veggies except for the peas and add the veggie stock bit by bit. Cook until tenderish and then add peas. Cook through until heated through and serve on mealie rice.

A nice, filling, warming and no-nonsense meal with plenty of protein, beta carotene and potassium. And other stuff I'm too lazy to mention :)

Food discovery of the week

Vegan Italian kisses. I kid thee not. Basset's makes vegan Italian kisses in a range of flavours, covered with dark chocolate. We tried hazelnut. EPIC WIN!!! :)

They also make Tofu Treats which is absolutely delicious - best damn tofu ever ;) - as well as fruit sorbets and rice milk ice cream which we will try soon and report back on. All in the name of duty of course ;)

Aside: You will notice a conspicuous absence of photos. That is partially due to my crappy camera, and partially to not getting around to uploading crappy photos. This will be remedied asap.

Vegetable Moussaka

Moussaka is a Greek dish traditionally made with mince. I make it with lentils or whatever combination of vegetables I am in the mood for. My favourite so far is carrot, leek and red kidney beans.

Ingredients
1 large carrot, sliced into 5mm slices
1 large leek, just the white bit, sliced into 10mm slices
1 can or 2 cups precooked red kidney beans
1 large brinjal, sliced across the thin side into 5-10mm slices
1 can whole peeled tomatoes, blended
1 tsp paprika*
2 cloves garlic, crushed
400 ml water or vegetable stock
Olive oil
Salt and black pepper

For white sauce
500 ml soy milk
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon dairy free margarine**

Method
Fry the leeks and carrots on medium heat in olive oil for about a minute.
Add garlic and paprika and fry for another minute.
Add blended tomato.
Add water/stock.
Season to taste.
Reduce heat and simmer for about fifteen minutes.
Add beans and simmer for a further five minutes.
While the sauce is going, cover the bottom of an oven proof dish with sliced brinjal.
Preheat oven to 180 deg C and start with the white sauce.

On low heat, melt margarine in a saucepan.
Add flour and mix into a roux (paste) allow to cook for about a minute.
Take off heat and add a tiny amount of soy milk.
Mix into roux.
Add another tiny amount and mix into roux.
Repeat this until the roux is liquid enough to pour more soy milk at a time.
Repeat, continually adding more soy milk at a time.
When all the soy milk is added, return to heat and cook, stirring continuously until sauce thickens.
Remove from heat.
Pour the vegetables over the brinjals.
Gently pour the white sauce over the vegetables.
Put in oven and allow to bake for about twenty to twenty five minutes until the white sauce starts turning golden.
This works nicely in individual lasagna dishes.

Variations
Replace vegetables/beans with cooked lentils.

*Paprika is not a traditional Greek ingredient. It adds a wonderful taste to the tomato. I often add paprika to dishes normally made with a meat/tomato sauce to reduce the acidic flavour of tomatoes. It also adds a wonderful colour.

**Not all margarine is dairy free. In South Africa if it goes under the name margarine it usually contains milk solids. Medium fat spread or low fat spread usually don't.

Mushroom and Courgette Stew

Ingredients

• 1 punnet button mushrooms, chopped
• 4 courgettes, sliced into 1cm slices
• 1 can whole peeled Tomatos, blended
• 1 tsp Paprika
• 2 cloves Garlic, crushed
• 400 ml Water Or Vegetable Stock
• Olive Oil
• Salt and Black Pepper

Method
Fry the garlic and paprika on medium heat in olive oil for about a minute.
Add mushrooms and courgettes and fry for a few minutes until softening.
Add blended tomato.
Add water/stock.
Season to taste.
Reduce heat and simmer for about twenty minutes.
Before serving add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and mix.
Serve with rice, couscous or quinoa.

Variations
This works nicely as a curry as well. In that case replace paprika with good spice blend and add one tsp of grated ginger. Leaving the tomato and stock out you can use this curry as a base for an unsual twist on bobotie. In that case, you can use this bobotie topping.

Vegan bobotie topping

Mally and I both love bobotie and he has tried a vegan topping once or twice. This is the latest. It is very tasty and definitely does the trick.

Ingredients

• 1 block of tofu (about half the size of the Earth tofu packs, 8x8cm. We don't have a gramme scale)
  
• 3-5ml smooth mustard
  
• 5ml vegan "chicken" stock powder (available at Fresh Earth)
  
• 2.5ml turmeric
  
• 2.5ml salt
  
• 1 slice of bread
  
• 15ml sunflower oil
  
• 125ml soy milk (we used So Fresh soy milk powder. Don't use anything with a pronounced vanilla taste)
  

Method

Blend it all together, adding the soy milk last. Makes a fair bit of topping – should be enough for two oven dishes. Pour on top of the vegan bobotie "mince" of your choice, whether lentils, soy mince or whatever, add some bay leaves and sprinkle some paprika over, and cook like you would normally cook bobotie (I'm guessing this calls for a bobotie recipe at some point).

Pics will follow once I can get them off the camera.

Hello World!

Welcome to our blog J

I'm not very good at intros but seeing as we're both procrastinating, and someone has to get this going, here goes.

Mally and I (Colleen) are both enthusiastic foodies and do not feel that a vegan diet has to be asceticism, and neither should you need a degree in chemistry to make nice vegan food.

We'll be posting recipes (mostly of Malcolm's own design but all tested in our own kitchen), food discoveries, info about nutrition, info about places to buy supplies and about vegan-friendly restaurants, and maybe the odd rant or idea or some such.

Food discovery for this week: Koh Kae nori and wasabi-coated peanuts. 100% vegan and 100% awesome.

Found at the Thai Supermarket, Derrick Avenue, Cyrildene.

More to follow soon J

PS. Big up to Marcia for suggesting the name!