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!