6 month anniversary and PIZZA

Sorry I have been neglecting the blog - camera went MIA for a little while and so although I was cooking a fair bit, I didn't take any photos of it.

But I am back - welcome to 2009. I am going to try and be a little healthier in my cooking for the next little while (trying to shed xmas festivity weight).

But first - today Nat and I celebrated our 6month wedding anniversary!!! The time has just flown by.

I asked Nat what he wanted for dinner to celebrate and he wanted pizza. I had never made pizza before - and I had the recipe from VWaV so I decided to give it a go.

IT WAS FANTASTIC!!!
For all those people like me who think that pizza is too hard its not!! I don't like any of the soy cheeses available in Aussie and so I didn't think it would be so good without cheese - it was so yummy.

It is easy and so SO worth it. We are going to be eating pizza a lot more in this house (at least once a month) - and once we have got a few nice pizza combinations going we are going to have a pizza party!! I need to get another pizza tray first though!!




I used the VWaV pizza dough and sauce recipes and then topped it with the following:
sundried tomatoes
olives
onion rings
pineapple
kittee's seitan, cubed
capsicum
vegan parmesan cheese (I don't think this is necessary for a good pizza - we just had some in our cupboard)
BBQ sauce
mushrooms

The finished product - isn't it awesome!!

I would love to hear your favourite topping combinations for pizza (especially if you don't use fake cheese).
Have a great 2009

Pot-luck fun and food

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately - I have been pretty vague since the end of exams and through sheer vagueness I have had a few too many kitchen disasters since I last posted - the sheer number of brain-farts I have experienced has been astounding... for example - I made hummus and totally forgot the lemon juice!!! What is hummus without lemon juice??? And that is just the beginning of the disasters - but I don't want to dwell on those because today I went to an awesome potluck for the group Vegetarian Tasmania.

I knew that there were some raw foodies going and so I decided to make a raw dessert and then I complimented it with a fresh (and easy) salad because another brain-fart made me think that I had an extra hour of preparation time up my sleeve and so I wasn't able to make the other raw main dish that I was going to make - so I settled with the simplest quickest salad in the world. Looks fresh and appatising and also is able to be thrown together in 10minutes with minimal effort (shouldn't every meal be like that sometimes??

This simple bean salad has frozen green beans and corn that have been lightly steamed and then rinsed. A can of 4bean mix, about a can of chickpeas (I had some that I had cooked and left in the fridge), some celery, cucumber, red capsicum and spring onion or red onion. I just sprinkled the salad with a little salt water but it is also really good with any of your favourite french or italian dressing.

For dessert I made raw bliss balls. They were so good - I really had to stop myself from eating the mixture while making the balls because it was SO good. They were a hit with the poeple at the lunch and the lady who gave the raw food demonstration and her husband were really impressed and wanted the recipe. That is a sucess in my book :)

Lady's Raw Bliss Surprise

5 dates - soaked in water for a few hours or overnight
110g dessicated coconut (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 1/2 tbsp raw cacao powder
enough raw agave syrup to bind the mixture into balls (between 1/4 and 1/2 cup)
almonds (optional)

Drain the dates and blend in a food processor with the oil, coconut and cacao powder. When processed quite finely, add 1/4 cup agave syrup and process for about 30 seconds. Stop and grab a ball of mixture and squeeze gently to see if it sicks together. If it holds together well the mixture is ready. If not, add a little more agave, process and then test the mixture again.

Once the mixture is ready you can either roll the mix into balls or you can use an almond as the centre of the ball and form the mix around the almond. I was able to take these straight to the potluck and they held together well, but the 3 that I kept for Nat in the fridge were much firmer and really nice.

Nat after he bit through his bliss ball.

It makes 20-24 balls - depending on wether you use almonds or not.

Creamy Pumpkin Quinoa

This morning, I had every intention to make one of my favourite quinoa dishes - Susan V's farmer's market quinoa. I would highly recommend this dish to anyone - I have made it numerous times.

As the day progressed, however, I began to feel like pumpkin. I still wanted quinoa but I also wanted pumpkin. This dish just progressed from there. I used Susan's recipe as a guide but made a sauce of roasted pumpkin, red capsicum and soy milk. The result was really good - a lovely creamy quinoa dish. The flavours were quite mild - but it really hit the spot for me. I think it would be really easy to adjust the spices and have a few totally different tasting dishes. I will put a few ideas below the recipe.

Creamy Pumpkin Quinoa
800g pumpkin or butternut pumpkin (squash)
1 red capsicum - halved (dice one half and leave the other half for roasting)
1 onion - diced
2 medium zucchini - chopped
1/2 green capsicum - diced
2-3 cloves garlic - minced
1x400g tin diced tomatoes
1/2 cup soymilk
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tbsp basil or 1/4 cup fresh basil chopped
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar or agave
2 cups cooked quinoa

Directions

Preheat oven to 180degrees Celsius. Slice the pumpkin into wedges and place on a greased baking tray. Place a red capsicum half on the baking tray. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and take the capsicum off the tray and flip the pumpkin before putting it back in the oven for another 20-30 mins or until tender. Place the roasted capsicum in a paper bag or wrap in aliminum foil until it is cool - then remove the skin.
Remove the pumpkin from the oven and allow to cool. Once cool, remove the skin and chop into 2cm cubes.
In a large heavy bottomed saucepan or wok, saute the onion for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, zucchini, green capsicum, the uncooked half of the red capsicum, and half of the pumpkin cubes.
Cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently but keeping the dish covered in between stirring. Add a little water if it is starting to stick.
While the vegetables are cooking, place the other half of the pumpkin cubes, the roasted capsicum, the spices and the soymilk in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.
Add the tomatoes and pumpkin mix to the vegetables and stir to combine. Add the quinoa and stir until mixed through. Serve immediately.

**I didn't serve mine immediately - so when I reheated the dish when Nat came home I added another 1/4cup soy milk to moisten it up again**

Some possible variations:

Possible Additions: green beans, eggplant, chickpeas, tofu cubes

Possible Spice combinations that I will be trying in the future (I will use them to taste- if you want to use them, have an idea about what quantities usually go into dishes):
Curry - cumin, corriander, turmeric.
Moroccan - tomato paste, cinnamon, bayleaves, raisins, turmeric, corriander, cumin.

Tried and True Mexican Chili Beans

Home again. Nat and I drove down a day earlier than expected so that he could catch up with a friend today. Once we arrived home and I had unpacked and put away everything from our trip it was quite late in the day. My parents own a organic wholesaler business and so I always home home with all the staples that I am running low on. This time I returned with Agave, red lentils, brown rice, dried red kidney beans and chickpeas, quinoa, dried dates, nutritional yeast, spelt spaghetti, kamut tubes, flax seeds, raw sugar, a box of soymilk, some chocolate samples that they had been sent (yummy) and probably lots of other things that I can't remember.

So - I was too tired to go to the shops to stock up on vegetables. On the way home we briefly called into a grocer and I picked up some celery and capsicum as being at home had reminded me of another of those recipes I grew up on: mum's mexican chili beans.

Mum and Dad decided to become vegan when my brother and I were very little. This was before the internet, and so mum's recipes were based on her cookbooks. For a little rural community in Tasmania, for mum to be cooking the weird and wonderful stuff she did was just awesome considering all of my friends parents cooked meat and three veg every night for dinner.

So - I consider myself very lucky - its funny now though - "mum's recipes' as my brother and I call them were so weird when we were growing up - we loved them. But now times are a changing and they are not so different to all the other recipes that you can find on the web. Each of those recipes still holds a special place in my heart (and tastebuds).

This recipe is DEAD simple. It takes no time and mostly uses staple kitchen ingredients (in my kitchen anyway).

Note to all parents reading this blog: I grew up on these recipes so they are pretty kid friendly (if the kid likes vegetables) - ie. they are not overly spicy.

This recipe one based on a recipe from a book that one of mum's friends made called Tried and True. I highly doubt you will be able to get a copy (as I can't even get one and I rely on photocopies of scribbled on cooking stained recipes) I feel that I should be able to share it.

Nat had these wrapped up in tortillas. I served mine over rice. I whipped up some vegan sour cream using this recipe I found on Tara's blog. My cream didn't come out as firm as I would have liked - my silken tofu may not have been the right type - I am not too sure. It was still really tasty!


Mexican Chilli Beans

2 cloves of garlic
1 onion - diced
1/2 green capsicum - diced
1 stalk celery - chopped
2 cups (or 1 can) kidney beans
1 can diced tomatoes
1 cup Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP)
1 tsp chilli paste (optional)
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp paprika
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 veggie bouillon cube (optional)

Brown garlic, onions, celery and capsicum in oil or saute in water. Add other ingredients, including a little liquid if necessary. Simmer until vegetables are cooked.

Sweet and Sour Vegetables and home style salad

Sweet and Sour Stirfry

Mum has been following the posts on my blog and was very excited when I said I would like to blog about our dinner last night. She said she had the perfect dish (ie. a new dish that I had not had before). So we set about cooking this dish together. The recipe comes from this awesome cookbook that mum bought from the New Internationalist - Quick and Easy - Vegetarian Recipes from around the World for the Western Kitchen. Unfortunately it is out of publication and I have been unable to get my own copy (very very sad about this). Due to the fact that you (or I) are not going to be able to run out and get a copy of this awesome book I will put our version of the recipe (we have changed a few things).

It was really yummy - I haven't really ventured into many sweet and sour dishes - but I really like this - and it was really easy - I chopped the vegetables as I needed to add them (to reduce the total time needed). We had this on the table really quickly.

Sweet and Sour Vegetables
Serves:4
Time: 20mins

600g chopped vegetables (we used 1 red and 1 green capsicum, 1/4 cauliflower, 2 carrots, 1/2 zucchini, 1 stick celery, 1/4 cup cabbage, 5 mushrooms and 1/2 cup pineapple - other possibiliteis could be baby sweetcorn, bok choi, bean sprouts, snowpeas).
1 onion - sliced into cresent moons
4 cloves garlic - minced
1/2 - 1 red chili - deseeded and chopped finely
450g extra firm tofu - cubed and marinated in a marinade (we were lazy and just used some tamari).

Sauce
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp agave syrup
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp tomato sauce (we used Muir Glen Tomato Ketchup)
2 tbsp pineapple juice
1/2 tsp cornflour

1. Saute onion in oil or broth until it begins to soften. Then add garlic and stir fry for another minute.
2. Add the vegetables that will take the longest to cook (like carrots and capsicum). Stirfry these for 3-4 mins.
3. Add the chili and the rest of the vegetables, stiring until they are cooked.
4. Mix the sauce ingredients together and pour over vegetables. Add tofu and stir to coat everything in sauce. Leave for a few minutes so that the flavours can sink in.
5. Serve over rice or noodles (we served it over thin rice noodles)

**********
There are many different things that are exclusive to my parents home (where I spent the first 18 years of my life). One of these is the Vita Mix. I remember my brother and I convincing our parents to buy a vita mix at an Organic Gardening Festival in Penguin when I was about 10years old. I think we used the line that it would help us to eat lots of fruits.
Since then - every morning we would share a fruit smoothie (with banana, orange, apple, kiwi, avocado, and other fruits when in season - eg. pears, pineapples, berries etc etc).
Also - and this is a little more unusal - mum and dad would make themselve a whizzed salad. This is because dad's teath make it difficult for him to eat really crunchy vegetables. I used to frown upon this green smoothie - but now I really love sharing it with them when I come home - it tastes surprisingly good - it usually includes - beetroot tomato, carrot, different types of salad greenery, celery, parsley, capsicum, cucumber and a little bit of salt water. So as I am home - I thought I would document the making of the whizzed salad. It can't be called a green smoothie as the beetroot makes it pink at the moment.

The salad before it is whizzed.

The salad after it is whizzed up.

Lunch time and Jessy's AWESOME pickled cuc and onions

Today's lunch wrap - Spicy Pumpkin Dip with alfalfa,
capsicum, red onion and baby spinach

I am a grazer - I think I was a horse (or maybe more an elephant) in a previous life because I LOVE grazing. I love having a piece of fruit for breakfast and then having another one a little later... and then having another a little later. Same goes for lunch - I grab something from the fridge and have a little and then have a little something else a little later.

Anyway - instead of talking about grazing I am going to talk about my lunches while I am at home studying. During winter I would make a pot of whatever (usually lentils and whatever vegetables I had on hand) but during summer I don't often feel like hot stuff.

So what do you have for lunch thats healthy - but filling. I have found vegetable wraps are great because then I can graze later ;)

I always make them differently because I have different ingredients and varying levels of spare time. I usually have some form of dip that I use as a base then I pile on some home sprouted alfalfa, capsicum, cucumber, grated carrot, red onion, baby spinach leaves - roll it up and YUM!!

I saw an awesome quick recipe for pickled cucumbers and onions posted by Jessy at happyveganface. I love her recipes and I thought that this looked fantastic so I had to give it a go. Initially I was worried that I wouldn't use it up before Nat and I went to our parents place this weekend... how silly of me - I ate it within a day!!! It was fantastic!!


Because I wasn't thinking of keeping it for a while and because I am trying to not use extra oils/fats I ommitted the oil and sugar and just used rice wine vinegar (cause that is all I had) and salt and pepper. It was FLIPPIN AWESOME!!! I think that if your were not an oil-phobic like me you should definatly rock on to check out the Jessy' s recipe.

So I am sure that I will be posting more summer time lunches over the coming months. When I start working (and can only have one lunch) I am sure my lunches will be more substantial - so I guess these are really just a grazing snack ;)

Having my lovely husband cook me anniversary dinner

This morning I got woken up with Nat proclaiming "Happy 6year anniversary". So it was that 6 years ago Nat and I were sitting on the beach on the east coast when he told me he liked me (I can't tell you how happy I was that day until I ended up with the most severe sunstroke that night and had to go to bed at about 8pm with a fever). I had really liked him from the moment I met him (about 8 months previously) and so we started to date - for the first 5 years of the relationship we didn't live in the same city (and sometimes even the same country). On Friday it will be a year since Nat proposed. It would be lovely to do something for that but we will be travelling to the north of the state to celebrate his nephews first birthday the next day. Oh well.

So what did we do for our anniversary - not much really. It was pretty miserable weather here :( Typical spring weather in Tassie - 4 seasons in one day (and sometimes 1 hour). I am the treasurer of a local animal welfare group and we had a meeting this evening and so I had to prepare the books and go to the meeting. This meant that I didn't have time to cook dinner. Not to fear - when I came home Nat was cooking one of my favourite dishes - Ratatouille. The flavours are subtle - I think I like that sometimes. He served it with tri-colour cous cous.

I love the dish - but I realised that Nat had cooked it just for me because he doesn't really like it that much - so sweet (in more ways then one cause it means that I don't have to fight with him for the leftovers).

So without further ado - here is Nat's ratatoullie

Ratatouille Cous Cous

1 medium onion, sliced or diced (depending how chunky you want it)
2 cloves garlic -crushed
1 large red capsicum - chopped
1 large green capsicum - chopped
2 medium zucchini - chopped
1 medium/large eggplant - chopped
1 x 400g dices tomatoes
1/2 cup vegetable stock
1 1/2 cups chickpeas - cooked (or 1 can)
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tbsp fresh basil - chopped (or 1 tsp dried)
2 tbsp fresh parsley -chopped (optional)

2 cups boiling water
2 cups cous cous
salt to taste

parsley (or other herbs) to garnish

1. Saute onion, garlic, capsicum, zucchini and eggplants in oil or water, cook stirring until vegetables are lightly browned.
2. Add undrained crushed tomatoes, stock and dried herbs - bring to the boil, simmer covered for about 30 mins or until vegetables are tender- stir in chickpeas.
3. Combine water, cous cous and salt in a medium bowl, mix well. Leave cous cous until the liquid is absorbed, fluff with a fork and stir in basil and parsley.
4. Serve ratatouille over cous cous and garnish with fresh herbs.

Moroccan inspired foods - pumpkin dip and tajine

**Thanks to all the well wishers - Nat is feeling much better - he had a day off yesterday and was able to relax. Last night he was barely coughing at all and not so cloggy. YAY!!**

I love the subtle flavours of Moroccan foods. The sweet spices and fruity flavours just make me enjoy the food - even if it is slightly mushy and over cooked (like last nights dinner). Yesterday I ran out of hummus - so overnight I defrosted a container of chickpeas and today I made some spicy pumpkin dip - now - I know that its not moroccan. But it does have a Moroccan spice blend in it - does that count?? So here is my Moroccan inspired day.



Spicy Pumpkin Dip
- This is another of mum's recipes - she found it in a magazine and cut it out years ago - but didn't keep anything that let me know which magazine to credit. I have changed it a little bit to reduce the fat content.

500g butternut pumpkin - cut into cubes
1 clove garlic
400g chickpeas (rinsed and drained if from a can - reserve the cooking liquid if you cooked them)
2 tbsp tahini
1 lemon - juiced
1 1/2 tsp Moroccan Spice Mix*
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/8 - 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (depending how hot you like your dips - I don't use much at all)

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Spray a baking tray with cooking spray - roast for about 40mins until soft
2. Process garlic in food processor (putting it in first means it gets chopped up enough)
3. Add remaining ingredients - season with salt and ground pepper.
4. Add cooking liquid (or water) to reach desired consistency. I found that this sets a lot, so if refrigerating it - make it runnier than you want - otherwise it will be a pate rather than a dip.
5. Devour!!!

*The ingredients in my moroccan spice mix are: salt, garlic (11%), cumin, paprika (10%), sugar, onion, tumeric (6%), pepper, citric food acid, parsley, red pepper, coriander (1%)


Moroccan Bean Stew
I got the flavour inspiration for this dish from the New Internationalist cookbook - Vegetarian Main Dishes From Around the World. I changed many of the veggies to suit what was in my fridge and so got a bit confused as to when I should add each vegetable in. The result was that my eggplant turned out quite mushy. Next time I will add it later. I have adjusted the recipe so that it will not be too overdone. You could really add any veggies that you wanted to - green beans, carrots and zucchini would all work really well.

This recipe was really comforting and damn easy (I still had some black eyed peas/beans in my freezer so I thought it would be a good dish to have.

Serves 4

1 onion - chopped
1 red capsicum - chopped
1 medium sweet potato - chopped
1 medium eggplant - cubed
4 tomatoes - chopped
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
400g black eyed peas (retain the cooking water)
400g spinach - chopped
1/4 cup sultanas (or raisins)

1. Saute the onion in oil or water until it is transparent.
2. Add red capsicum and sweet potato and a little bit of the black-eyed peas cooking water. Cook about 10 minutes.
3. Put in the tomatoes, tomato paste, cinnamon, nutmeg, peas and eggplant and stir well. Season with salt and pepper and then place the spinach on top. Add more reserved liquid and stew until vegetables are tender (but not mushy) - about 20 mins.
4. Serve over rice or cous cous

Chunky Parsnip and Pumpkin Soup

Don't you hate it when you get home... have a fridge full of wonderful veggies but just feel like getting leftovers out of the freezer. Well, I have a horrible (but yet wonderful) habit of getting a little too excited when I go veggie shopping at our local market and ending up with so many fresh veggies that I really need to do something with. Well... at the moment I have broccoli, zucchini, organic parsnips (lots of parsnips), capsicum, pumpkin, celery, corn, cabbage, carrots and leek (yes I warned you that I got excited). What I was worried about using up most was the parsnips. I have not really used parsnips that much apart from in casseroles, vegetable soups and shepherds pie. But I had about 5 parsnips!!! So I did a little searching on the net and found this yummy looking soup by Mihl at Seitan is my Motor. So I had all the vegetables that were needed... but no panch poran. So I just added the spices that make up panch poran to the soup... then I added some chilli paste and then some red curry paste. It was THICK!!



As dinner was a lot later than it should have been - in my rush to get it ready I didn't blend it quite as well as I should have... so it had chuncky bits of parsnip and pumpkin - which actually was really nice.

So here is my version of the soup.

Roasted Parsnip and Pumpkin Soup

600g pumpkin - cubed
3 large parsnips - cubed
1 red capsicum - halved

1 onion diced
1 Tbsp fresh ginger - minced
1 tsp ground corriander
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp chili paste (I use sambel olek)
1 tsp red curry paste
1 1/2 cups red lentils - rinsed
6 cups vegetable stock
salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius.
2. Spray two baking trays with oil and place the vegetables on the trays. Roast in oven for 40mins or until cooked but not mushy.
3. Meanwhile, spray the bottom of a large saucepan with cooking spray, chuck in the spices and stir for a minute. Add onion and ginger and pastes (and a little bit of water) and saute until onion is cooked.
4. Add lentils and stock. Cover and cook for 10-15 mins.
5. Add vegetables and cook a further 10 mins.
6. Blend with an immersion blender or blend in batches in a blender. Add more water if it is too thick - I liked it being thick - I was hungry!
7. Season with salt and pepper.
8. Serve with crusy bread.

VeganMoFo #3 - How do you cook tempeh??

Well we are already into MoFo day 3 here in Aussie!!! I have been flat out with university over the last few days. I handed an assignment in yesterday and have one more to go before my exams (its my last undergrad assignment!!!!) The last two nights I had nats mum come and stay with us which was so lovely. She is one of those people who doesn't make you feel any different when she is staying - its lovely to have her here.

Anyway - I didn't really know what to cook and so I looked in the fridge and realised that somehow I had ended up with 6 capsicums (bell peppers to my US buddies). They were on special and I got a little excited. So from there I remembered a lovely tempeh recipe that I hadn't had for ages. I had a block of tempeh in the freezer and dinner was on.

This is the only tempeh recipe that I have cooked and thought that it is worth keeping. Tempeh is rather expensive here (about $5 for a 300g block - compared to $3.30 for a 500g block of extra firm tofu) so the recipe has to be pretty good for me to feel that I want to make it again.

The photo isn't the greatest as we don't have very good lighting in our place (and it was night) but the recipe is SO good. You can find it here.

I was wondering what other peoples fav. tempeh recipes are - if you have the recipe on your blog feel free to link it - or post the link of the recipe if it is elsewhere on the net.


Happy vegan MoFo'ing - I am LOVING the influx of vegan food posts around the bloggersphere!!!