Vegan Wedding Reception!

This is the shiznit. I’m almost looking forward to my wedding now! Here’s our 5-star 3-course meal that we’re having at a veg-friendly restaurant on the river. It will be followed by a gluten-free vegan wedding cake as well, made by the nice cake making folks at the The Forest. These photos aren’t much good, but you can thank/abuse Nokia for putting crap cameras in their phones. You could also thank/abuse us for not remembering to take a decent camera with us to the food test-run, but you’re just not the sort of person who’d do that, right? We’re all friends here, right? Hugs for all! Anyway… The food was all very nice, moderately stodgy, simple, rather darn tasty 5-star fare, with a forktonne of that more-expensive-than-gold mushroomy truffle oil stuff poured over half of it. Yumbo!

Entrées

Roasted Mediterranean Vegetable Stack with Roast Tomato Sauce and Red Onion Marmalade.

Grilled Field Mushrooms, Toasted Olive Bread Asparagus and Truffle Oil.

Mains

Ragout of French Lentils, Spinach, Kipfler Potatoes and Macadamia Gremolata.

Porcini Mushroom Risotto, Stemmed Asparagus and Truffle Oil.

Desserts

Glazed Mango, Sauternes Syrup, Strawberry Sorbet

Poached Yellow Peaches, Fresh Raspberries, White Peach Soup

Wow, tasty AND healthy? Ouch. Yes, veganism is awesome! All the animals get to benefit, including me. Everything except for the second entrée is gluten-free, but the vegan bit is the most important! Closely followed by the tasty bit! And there’s still a fancy gluten-free wedding cake to come. Don’t forget the cake. Who could forget cake? Not me, that’s for sure.

P.S. Happy Leap Day!

Tempeh red curry

This is a tasty variation on a Thai-style dish with Indonesian tempeh. I quit making curries when I went veg, mainly because I had just started dating my partner, who has taken cooking classes in Thailand. He was the curry expert, so I left it to him! Recently I decided to dig out some old recipes and give them a go, and, surprise surprise, Mr Thai Cooking Expert approves! So here’s one of them. I’m also working on revamping an old green curry recipe with tofu, which I’ll post soon, along with some tom kha soup…

Ingredients
1 tablespoon peanut OR sesame oil
2 spring onions, sliced
1-4 tablespoons vegan red curry paste (eg. Maesri brand)
around 200mL coconut cream (half to three-quarters of a cup)
around 200g tempeh, cut into chunks (around 2cm)
1 cup veg stock (or Massel’s chicken-style veg stock)
a few medium potatoes, cut into quarters, or baby potatoes if you can get them
2 carrots, sliced medium-thin
1 zucchini, sliced thick
1 tablespoon (or to taste) palm sugar (OR brown sugar)
1 tablespoon (or to taste) Braggs OR vegan fish sauce
1 tablespoon (or to taste) freshly squeezed lime juice (or lemon juice, but lime is better!)
1 tablespoon (or to taste) shredded fresh basil leaves
a few whole basil leaves and finely sliced birdseye chillis to serve, if desired
cooked rice to serve, if desired

Method
1. Heat oil in wok or large pan. On high heat: add paste, cook until fragrant. Add onion, stir until soft. Add tempeh chunks. Stir until coated in paste and heated/browning on the outside.
2. Add stock and potatoes and carrot to pan. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes, or until potatoes are tender.
3. Add coconut cream, zucchini, palm sugar, and Braggs. (TT: to check for enough sugar and salty flavours). Simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes.
4. Stir through juice and basil (TT: for juice, basil, sugar, salt / flavour balance). Serve over rice and top with extra basil leaves and chilli if desired.

Here’s a crappy photo of some leftover tempeh red curry:

Notes:
* These are rough measurements in this recipe. This sort of cooking should always be done to taste. (TT = some suggested Taste Test points!)
* For Maesri brand paste (I buy the wee cans of paste), a rough guide to “hotness” is: 1 tablespoon = wussy mild, 2 tablespoon = average medium, 3 tablespoon = sorta hot, 4 tablespoons or more = burning hot tasty goodness.
* Don’t buy a watery looking curry paste. It should look like a thick, dry paste, not a sauce. You use the paste to make a sauce. A sauce to make a sauce makes bland food.
* I used zucchini because it was looking kinda wilted and soft. A curry can revive old vegies – don’t waste ‘em if you can curry ‘em! You could also use green beans in this curry instead of zucchini, or throw it a handful of bean sprouts if you got ‘em.
* There are a few OR options because… it’s curry. Use what you got. Curries are supposed to be cheap and cheerful peasant food. Don’t waste time and money getting too fancy!
* Curry tastes better a day or two after it was cooked. Leftovers rock.
* If you haven’t already, check out these grouse vegan curry pastes and stocks: Maesri (always check ingredients on label, not all their stuff is veg-safe!) & Massel.

Indonesian Tofu Rendang

This rendang has been approved by a friend who grew up in Indonesia, and was created by my partner who has travelled there. It’s fantastic.

Ingredients
400mL can coconut cream
400mL can coconut milk
5 garlic cloves, crushed
2 large onions, finely diced
1 teaspoon laos powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 inch piece ginger, grated
4 tablespoons of vegetarian hot red curry paste*
curry leaves (fresh, instead of dry, if possible!)
4 tablespoons tamarind (or lemon juice if tamarind is unavailable)
500g fried tofu
wheat-free light soy sauce, to taste
fresh coriander to taste, chopped
fresh hot chillis, chopped (optional)
rice, to serve

Method
Reduce 1/2 of a can of coconut cream in a wok until it starts to become oily.
Add crushed cloves of garlic and fry them for a few seconds.
Add onions and fry everything until the onions are cooked.
Add laos powder, coriander, cumin, and turmeric. Stir briefly.
Add fresh grated ginger, curry paste, curry leaves.
Stir the lot until it becomes aromatic.
Add tamarind to taste.
Add the rest of the coconut cream and the can of coconut milk.
Add fried tofu.
Add wheat-free light soy sauce to taste.
Reduce until it is very thick. For best results, reduce over low heat for a few hours+.
Serve with rice. Top with fresh coriander and extra chillis (optional… you wuss).

Notes:
I tend to do alot of things to taste, so the quantities can vary a little. Taste test as you go!
You can also add vegetable stock before you reduce the mix, if you want that flavour soaked into the tofu (just remember to be light with the soy sauce if you do).
If you can’t get wheat-free light soy sauce, use Braggs or wheat-free tamari – but very sparingly! These are dark soy sauce rather than light.

*Curry Paste:
Any vegetarian Thai-style curry paste will do. The hotter the better – rendang should be wonderfully burning. Using vegetarian red curry paste is an alternative to spending time pounding lemon grass into paste. Just don’t use one containing prawn/shrimp paste, because (a) it has a different flavour, (b) it’s not vegetarian or vegan, (c) yuck!, and (d) I’m allergic to crustacea.

To make your own curry paste for this recipe, mix together:
5 stalks of lemon grass, chopped finely, then ground to paste.
5 large hot chillis ground to paste (with seeds).

Lazy Risotto a la Rice Cooker

I plan to be posting more frequently for the next while, so stay tuned for plenty of tasty gluten-free goodness… starting with this risotto.

This is by far the easiest way to make a good risotto. Ahh, sweet sweet (salty) laziness.

Serves 3-4.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup of arborio rice
440g (15oz) canned diced tomato
1/3 cup cooking wine
3 cups vegetable stock
3-4 handfuls of spinach/silverbeet, chopped
6-12 black kalamata olives, pitted & sliced
4 (or so) medium-large button mushrooms, sliced
1 small carrot, grated
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon dried mixed Italian herbs
salt & pepper to taste

Method
1. Turn the cooker on with lid open, heat up oil, saute onion and garlic for 1-2 minutes.
2. Add rice, stir until coated with oil.
3. Add the vegetable stock, canned tomato, wine, mushroom, dry herbs. Stir until evenly distributed. Close rice cooker. Set to cook. Stir once during cooking.

4. When the rice cooker clicks from cook to warm (finishes cooking), stir through the olives, grated carrot, spinach, and nutritional yeast. Close the rice cooker and let sit on warm for 5-10 minutes, or until spinach is wilted and nutritional yeast dissolved.
5. Add salt pepper to taste. Eat up. Yummo.

Other/alternative ingredients you could add:
+ At the start of cooking: frozen green peas, asparagus, leek instead of onion; to stir through at the end: sliced zucchini, kale, any other leafy greens you might like, cooked pumpkin chunks, pine nuts (toasted is best!). You could also try adding some quinoa to replace a little of the rice in step 2 if you’d like a bit of extra nutrition. yes, a terrible sacreligious suggestion, I know, but it works and it still tastes great.
+ Massel’s chicken-style vegetable stock is good for this recipe.
+ I use Chinese cooking wine because I rarely have anything else on hand… naughty! But then again, this is a lazy risotto. (It’s probably sweeter than other cooking wines.)
+ Instead of mixed dry herbs, you could use your specific favourites, like oregano. You could also stir through a handful of chopped fresh herbs at the end. I usually like to add some fresh basil, but it’s winter and my garden is a little bare.
+ I use Lotus brand nutritional yeast. I find it tastes the best, and it contains B12… Some nutritional yeasts are stronger/weaker in flavour than others. If you use another brand, taste-test… If you aren’t as obsessed with nutritional yeast as I am (you weirdo) you could reduce it or leave it out… or you could just learn to love it like every sane person should… and remember to sprinkle it on popcorn. Mmm… But if you do leave it out of this recipe, add some extra salt, herbs/spices, or whatnot.

Yeast bread, v1.0

This is the final version of this bread recipe. I will probably work on an improved version later on, but for now I’m done with tweaking and ending up with crazy, wacky loaves! So, here t’is. My gluten-free yeast-risen bread, v1.0.

Ingredients
1.5 cups potato starch flour*
1 cup brown rice flour (or white rice in a pinch)
1 cup chickpea (besan) flour
0.5 cup of tapioca starch
1 teaspoon salt

2 to 2.5 cups of filtered water
1.5 tablespoons blackstrap molasses*
0.33 (1 third) cup sunflower oil
2 teaspoons active dry yeast

A mixed handful of: sesame seeds, poppy seeds, pumpkin seeds*, sunflower seeds*, soy lecithin granules*, LSA meal* (linseed/sunflower/almond meal), nutritional yeast.
* = I use organic.

Method
1. Sift together the potato starch flour, rice flour, chickpea flour, tapioca starch, and salt. Stir with a wire whisk.
2. Combine 2 cups of water, the molasses and sunflower oil in a small bowl, then pour into flours. Add the yeast, and stir together. Add more water to batter as necessary (but remember, too much moisture = bread won’t rise properly!).
3. Stir through a handful of seeds and extras to the bread.
4. Transfer batter to a lightly oiled bread pan. Smooth out the top of the batter. Sprinkle the top of the loaf with seeds if desired, then very lightly spray/coat with oil.
5. Cover bread pan with foil (recyclable! yay!) or plastic wrap, and leave in a warm place to rise for 1 to 1.5 hours, until dough/batter is about doubled in size.
6. Cover the bread pan with foil. Bake in a preheated oven at 180degC (350degF) for 1 hour. Uncover bread and cook for a further 10-15 minutes until browned on top.
7. Cool briefly in bread pan before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

Other Things
+ I might try baking it at a higher temp. I’ve heard gluten-free baking works better at higher temps.
+ I prefer organic ingredients as they are better quality (and less poisonous, no doubt!). Potatoes get a lot of pesticide, so I think organic for potato flour is particularly important. Plus, organic potatoes always taste loads better. I suspect the same can be said of organic potato derivatives! I get my ingredients from a local organic supermarket, or an online organic delivery service, and anything else in bulk from a local Indian supermarket – not all organic, but high quality and cheap! Great variety of rice, too.

Coming Up Next In This Blog…
+ Pizza dough recipe

Other photos!

Gluten-free organic carob & apple teacake. This was EXTREMELY tasty. Organic carob is awesome.

A bubbling Italian tomato & eggplant stew, to go over tasty polenta – the yellow stuff (corn!) in the pot at the back.