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

Easy Pea-zy fried rice

First of all, I want to apologise for the crappy photo - I had a hungry husband and both of us had had a long day and frankly this smelt SO good that it didn't hang around for long on the table getting photographed. I have never made fried rice before, but after having Nat's mum and brother and sister in law over for dinner a few nights ago, Nat and I found ourselves with a lot of leftover rice (I over estimated how hungry people would be!!)

Anyway - I had to go to a staff meeting and end of year party yesterday and Nat was working all day so by the time both of us were home it was late and I didn't have anything prepared. I looked in the fridge and the rice was staring back at me and so I decided to make fried rice.

Fried Rice is SO easy if you have left over rice - and while I don't usually cook with so much oil - it was nice for a treat. Although the ingredient list looks long, this meal was whipped up in under 30 minutes, and I was going slowly - I could have had it on the table in much less time if I had really been bothered. I used a recipe that I was given in grade 7 cooking class - but I modified the amount of oil and the spices and ingredients other than the rice. You can modify the ingredients with what you have on hand. Other veggies could include - cauliflower, corn, broccoli, finely diced cabbage, capsicum, asparagus - just make sure that everything is chopped quite small.

I used little pieces of Kittee's Seitan (which I think is marvelous!!) chopped up - but you could also easily use chickpeas, cashews or re hydrated TVP.

There should have been leftovers for this dish but we were both so hungry (and it was so Delicious) that it only fed the two of us (Nat went back for seconds). So I would say that this dish serves 2 hungry very hungry people, or 2 moderately hungry people with some left-overs for the next day.

Easy Pea-zy Fried Rice

3 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion - diced
3-4 garlic cloves - minced
1 stalk celery - diced
2-3 medium carrots - chopped
2 spring onions - chopped
2 medium sized mushrooms - chopped (I used the normal white button mushies - any mushroom would do though)
1/2 cup seitan/re hydrated TVP*/chickpeas
4 tbsp soy sauce
2-3 cups of cooked rice (I used medium grain brown - use whatever cooked rice you have on hand)
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp sage
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/8 - 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup water

Pour about 2 tbsp of oil into a large (non-stick) frying pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot enough (a piece of onion will cause bubbles in the oil when dropped in), put in the onion, garlic, carrots and celery. Stir for 2-3 minutes
Add 2 tbsp of soy sauce and then the spring onions and mushrooms. Continue to stir until the onions are almost done (they will become opaque).
Scrape all the vegetables to one side of the frying pan and then add the cooked rice to the cleared side. Press down on the rice using the back of your wooden spoon (or stirring implement) and then pour 1 tbsp of oil and 2 tbsp of soy sauce onto the rice. After a minute stir the rice and then pat down again.
Add the spices and mix rice again.
When rice is heated through - mix it in with the vegetables. Add the peas and then cook until peas are heated through. Serve.

The best job in the world and another successful seitan recipe!!!

In between cooking for another dinner party last night and studying, I realised that I didn't have anything for Nat to put on his sandwiches. So I decided to make Kittee's seitan log - as it just looked good and Kittee told me that it was pretty much fool proof - she was right. It took a little bit of time but I found that I could caramalise the onion while also chopping the veggies and cooking the moroccan stew that we had for dinner last - so it all worked out well. My pressure cooker has a steamer basket and so I used that (without bringing it to pressure) to cook the seitan.

The texture is good - it is chewy, but not in a hard way - it is just right. It slices really easily and I find that I can slice it much thinner than I could with the Seitan O'Greatness. The flavours were really good, even though I didn't have the creole seasoning and couldn't be bothered making some up so I just threw in a tiny little bit of basil, some onion powder, garlic powder, lemon grass and freshly ground black pepper.

I give Kittee's seitan the BIG thumbs up!!!

I also whipped up an awesome mayonaise which works out at approximatly only 11 calories a tablespoon - which is pretty good!!! Next time I make it I will work out the exact quantities and then post the recipe - as I think I am on to a winner. Vegan mayo here is expensive and frankly I have yet to find one I like - so to be able to make one quite cheaply is awesome!

Yesterday was market day and it was my first day working on the most awesome stall for the company The All Organic Farm. It was great, I only worked for a couple of hours but the people were awesome and the vibe was really cool - I can't wait to go back next weekend.
What was even cooler was that one of the other girls on the stand had brought in her own homegrown kale. Kale is never for sale here and I have never even seen Kale seeds for sale. I have never tasted Kale and so I just had to buy a bunch of this awesome looking green. Now I don't really know what to do with it... any suggestions?? I was thinking something simple to start off with so that I get to taste the kale.

VCON sauteed seitan with mushrooms and spinach

And so my quest to discover the many faces of seitan continues... Let me just briefly say that personally - I don't go so much for the faux meats - I am much more happy with chickpeas and beans etc. I think Nat misses some of that stuff and so I have been doing a lot of experimenting on/for him. I guess that it will also be useful to show my omni friends that they don't have to go without meat if they don't want to.

So back to seitan...So far I have baked the seitan o' greatness and I steamed some seitan sausages (didn't look that pretty as I used cloth instead of al. foil - so I didn't bother blogging about it).

Today I tried boiled seitan. I used the recipe from VCON as it was titled 'Simple Seitan'. Out of all the seitans I have made this was NOT simple. I had to watch it and stress about it not boiling and also stress about all the failures that I have heard about this type of seitan.

Well, as it was cooking I was worried... really worried. It looked like one of those natural sponges that you find in the sea (all bobbly and holey and stuff). I accidentally let it boil (whoops - my stove is old and a bit temperamental - it was on the lowest setting for the 'simmer' but then it boiled).

Anyhow - I charged on with my plan to make another recipe from VCON, sauteed seitan with spinach and mushrooms. Except at the local grocery store I found some local silverbeet on special and so I decided to use that. Apart from that I didn't make many changes apart from omitting the wine and not adding as much vegetable broth as it called for as I found the seitan to be REALLY salty. I served the dish with mashed potato and sweet potato (just cause we had run out of rice)

When nat came home from guiding he couldn't believe that it was seitan (he had only seen the sausage type). He really liked the texture and said that it was nice and chewy. Mission accomplished.

Vegan Mofo #9 - Talking about my first time... seitan

Well, I set myself one major challenge during Vegan mofo for 2008 and that was to make my first seitan. The only time I have ever eaten seitan was once in a vegetarian chinese restaurant in Melbourne. I was the only vegan (there were also two vegetarians) but the omnis found it highly amuzing that they were ordering steak and sweet and sour chicken and the like.

My first seitan after it was cooked. Sorry its just on our chopping board - it was 8pm and we still hadn't had dinner and were starving (I decided to make the Seitan a little late in the afternoon. Whoops).

So.... I have been reading all these amazing seitan recipes but I was nervous. Despite looking at seitan recipes for a few weeks, it wasn't until about 10mins before I started making the seitan that I had decided whether I was going to steam or bake or wrap in foil or boil... oh goodness me - there is so much variety out there.

I ended up tossing up between the seitan recipe from VWaV and Seitan O'Greatness. After asking nat - we decided that we would attempt a baked seitan and so my seitan challenge began in earnest.

Me kneeding seitan

It was really good - my aliminum foil ripped on the bottom so it was a little tough underneath (Tip: don't ever buy cheap al. foil) I actually couldn't believe how easy it was (I was imagining it to be some kind of horrible difficult multitasking thing that took hours (maybe because the first time I ever saw a recipe it called for ordinary flour and a heck of a lot of kneeding).

And what did we do with the seitan. Well we chopped it up and put it on some baked spuds with some corn, spinach leaves (the only greens I had in the garden) and a cheesy sauce that I make when I make cauliflower cheese (its made from soymilk, nutritional yeast, arrowroot flour, onion powder and salt). I was desperate to try another type of "cheese" but I just thought that too many experiments was asking for trouble.

The best bit about the spuds was that I was able to fit the potatoes with the seitan into our little toaster oven so that we were using a lot less power.

I enjoyed my first time with seitan and hope to make at least one other type before mofo finishes. Does anyone have a good recipe for a chicken style seitan - or their favourite seitan recipe that they would like to share?? I am very open to suggestions!!