And so I’m back – from outta space

You just logged on to find me here with that sad look upon my face 😦

Sorry – I love that classic Gloria Gaynor song and it was all that kept going through my mind when I saw that my last post was in January – January – at least it was this year!

I have been gone because life has been crazy and in truth still is, but I miss chatting about stuff other than work and family and I jumped at the chance when Liz (of “Cooking the Vegan Books” fame) invited me to blog about Ruth Tal’s “Refresh” or “Fresh at Home” cook books.

This was well over a month ago and I immediately leapt into action, cooked a number of recipes from Refresh, ordered the other book as, surprisingly, I didn’t already own it but peaked before I got to write the post. Not a good effort at all.

So here I am – late – but better late than never.

I love the Refresh book, I have found a number of recipes that now I have cooked will enter my repertoire and encourage me to alter the way I approach some of my own “classics”. Savoury Scrambled Tofu is one such recipe, I have only begun to cook scrambled tofu over the past year because I always felt it was tasteless but having been introduced to Black Salt my opinion changed and I enjoyed it as did every member of my family, Vegan or not. The general opinion was that the salt made it very “eggy” which made me stop and think because one reason for moving to a Vegan based diet was that I didn’t like eggs. The recipe in Refresh doesn’t call for Black Salt at all which immediately made me sceptical (having now concluded that it was essential) but my scepticism was totally unfounded because it was (is) delicious.

Before we go further I would like to consider something that has had me thinking in the six weeks since I first cooked this recipe. On the first attempt I, more or less, followed the recipe and since then have made alterations and developments to suit the specific tastes of me and the family, so when does this take it away from being Ruth Tal’s recipe and become mine that was inspired by the original? I ask this not because I am desperate to “own” recipes but I read so much about people “passing off” recipes as their own when they are blatantly copied from a book or a blog and on occasions have even taken the spelling mistakes with them.

First attempt at Ruth Tal’s recipe.

6 weeks and many versions later

The original recipe calls for you to put the flavouring together (Dill, Nutritional Yeast, Turmeric and seasoning) and mix with water to form a paste before you add it to the tofu in the pan, the logic of adding a liquid when I had just spent ages squeezing it out of the Tofu defied me so I kept everything dry before it went in. Maybe tofu is much drier in the States and in which case this may be a perfectly reasonable way to go.  The other change I made immediately was to not include 2tsp of garlic powder as there was already 3 cloves of fresh. The original recipe is widely available on the internet but it is very simple:

Saute 1 onion and 3 cloves of garlic until translucent, crumble 3 1/2 cups of tofu and cook for 2 minutes.

Combine 3 tbsp. nutritional yeast, 2 tsp dill weed, 2 tsp garlic powder, 1 pinch turmeric, 1 1/2 tsp sea salt, 1 tsp black pepper with 1/2 cup water and whisk to remove lumps.

Here I used 4 tbsp yeast, a good 2 tsp dried dill weed, 1/2 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp sea salt, 1/2 tsp black pepper which I combined and added dry.

Cook until all liquid evaporated.

On occasion I have added red pepper or courgette with the onions also chopped olives or peas towards the end of cooking.

Using Dill and Nutritional Yeast is inspired and they will stay no matter what other changes I make  (although I once tried dried Thyme which was nice) but the addition of red peppers and diced Olives this morning earned a “that was the best breakfast ever” from my son and such praise doesn’t come easy. The two photographs above show the changes, it is not a competition but my way is definitely more colourful!

I have cooked a number of other recipes that I want to talk about but I will leave that for another post (earlier than 8 months time, I promise!)

Thanks for reading – it feels good to be back.

Carol

x

“Copy Cat” Dine

For me, without doubt, the hardest part of cooking a meal is deciding what to make. Once I know it  becomes a project and I can go head long into “task”, my comfort zone of researching the recipes, prepping and cooking.

I use a variety of methods to chose what to make, requests from the family, snippets in a blog, even meals made on a TV programme. Tonight I chose a Korean dish, Jap Chae, because a friend Liz (cookingtheveganbooks) had mentioned on Twitter last night that she was going to make this dish tonight and when I looked I had all the ingredients in the pantry.

I have never cooked Korean food before, couldn’t tell you anything about it to be honest, but I don’t like the fact there are cuisines out there that are no go area for me. Last week Liz and I had a fun afternoon on a “Vegan tour of Stoke” that I will blog about separately but I know that she creates dishes from around the globe and was, therefore, able to pick her brain about recipes and ingredients. Whilst in Wing Yip, a Chinese supermarket in Stoke, we came across Sweet Potato Noodles (dang myeon noodles), the major element of Jap Chae and when I bought them I fully expected them to sit languishing in my pantry until they ran out of date or I got sick of seeing them. I think it was this defeatist attitude that motivated me to follow her lead and I’m very glad that I did.

Sweet Potato Noodles

I found two recipes on the Internet and guessed that whatever came up on both was an important element to be kept but I would also need to put my “twist” on it, here is what I did:

Roast 2 Portobello Mushrooms with basil oil and herbes de Provence. (would have used Shitake mushrooms but I didn’t have any plus these needed using up.)

Stir fried, 1 onion, red pepper and carrot (all chopped) until nearly soft, added 1/2 shredded white cabbage. When cooked added, 2 crushed garlic cloves, 3 tablespoons Soy sauce and 1 heaped tablespoon Palm Sugar. Stirred it all and then added 100g (1/2 bag) Spinach, put the lid on the wok so the spinach would wilt.

Meanwhile I had boiled 1/2 bag of noodles for 5 minutes then chopped them in half before adding to the wok, then added marinated sesame tofu left over from last night’s dinner, chopped coriander and 2 tablespoons sesame seeds I had toasted.

Jap Chae in the Wok

Et voila, less Vegan Fusion more Vegan Con-fusion but delicious. These quantities served two.

Jap Chae in the bowl

Thanks Liz 🙂

A Sunday full of family and food

Hi,

We are told that Sunday is a day of rest, and for that to happen I head for the kitchen. Today needed to be restful as I had been awake for hours during the night due to the alarm company feeling the need to ring us at 3.00 in case we wanted to know that we had a power cut, actually they got it wrong because I didn’t care a bit especially as the power came back on during the call and left me unable to get back to sleep.

Due to this unforeseen circumstance breakfast was cancelled, I regressed straight back to teenage-hood and woke at the crack of noon.

My eldest daughter, Katie was coming round for the afternoon with her boyfriend Neil, I had known all week and had had every intention of being ultra organised with the meal planned, if not already cooked, that was not to be …

Lunch was a soup I made the day before from Leeks, Fennel, Roast Pepper & Tomato seasoned with Lemon Thyme. There would have been home made bread but my friend came round so we drank tea! We did, however, have toast and Lentil Pecan Pate following a recipe from the Cafe Flora cookbook that Liz Wyman (of Cooking the Vegan books fame) had recommended.

Lentil & Pecan Pate a la Cafe Flora

The ingredients I needed included Mirin, Umeboshi plum puree and Light Miso, any one who knows me well probably wouldn’t have been as surprised as I was that I happened to have everything already in my pantry. The resulting Pate was delicious and according to Francesca even better for lunch on Monday with the bread that had now been made.

Chatting with Katie about the time we spent in Somerset with Robin and Roger from Manna, we agreed there were many things we had both really enjoyed, one was definitely the Pannacotta and another was that we ate it as soon as it was ready to eat, the rules of patience don’t apply when it comes to this particular pudding. If we could do that last weekend then we could this, couldn’t we:

Dairy free Pannacotta

Pannacotta with Pineapple Sauce

The afternoon was then hijacked by watching Les Miserables, probably one of the longest films ever made, and my fear was that dinner would become a midnight feast, it didn’t but it was a lot later than I would have liked, having said that it was well worth waiting for:

Crispy herbed Potato wedges; Roast Peppers; Steamed Leeks in a Cheesy Sauce, stir fried onion, mushrooms and brussel sprouts with a Massaged Kale Salad using Basil Olive Oil with red carrots, cranberries, and toasted almonds added when the Kale glistened.

Kale salad

An (almost) Midnight Feast

As Sundays go it was wonderful. Planned and organised it wasn’t but I’ll take chilled and relaxed over those any day, especially Sundays!

Carol

x

Luncheon is served …

Hi,

Whilst blog surfing last night gathering details for my blog post this morning I came across a post from Liz Wyman (Cooking the Vegan Books) about using black eyed peas on New Year’s Day to bring luck for the year. This resonated with me as I had come across this theory on New Year’s Day this year and with none in the house I had apologised to the family for ruining everyone’s year before it had started.

The recipes Liz  had used all came from the Cafe Flora cookbook. A book full of recipes from their restaurant in Seattle which, whilst it contains Vegetarian recipes does offer a number of delicious and tasty Vegan recipes that you don’t need brigade de cuisine to reproduce at home. As I often do when Liz whets my appetite with graphic descriptions of dishes and their flavours I found my copy of the book and had a look at how she had made it.

Whilst I was browsing I came across a recipe that really caught my attention, Coconut Tofu with Chilli dipping sauce and before I knew it I had tofu pressing and marinade simmering ready for lunch today

Multi functiional pestle and mortars in service as tofu pressers

I wish I had read the recipe more carefully and noticed that it said to strain the cooled marinade before leaving the tofu in it overnight, I didn’t and then spent an age picking out peppercorns, pieces of nori and various cooked veg. That will teach me to take more notice.

This morning I dipped and fried and was most pleasantly surprised at how the tofu looked and tasted, delicious.

Coconut Tofu for lunch

Whilst the recipe said to serve the dish with Sweet Chilli dipping sauce I happened to have some Indonesian Coconut Peanut sauce that I had made using a recipe by Amber Shea so I served that too and actually preferred it. Having said that I would also go Satay rather than Chilli when it comes to dipping sauces.

Out of interest I looked at Cafe Flora’s website this morning and this dish was the first starter listed, whilst I would have preferred to eat their version in Seattle my attempt in Stafford was not bad at all.

now what’s for dinner …

Carol

xxx

http://www.cookingtheveganbooks.com

http://www.cafeflora.com

http://www.chefambershea.com/2013/01/17/indonesian-coconut-peanut-sauce-for-stir-fries-satays-and-more-tofu-press-giveaway/