Miscellaneous

These photos, as the title suggests don't really fit anywhere. But here's an explanation anyway.

The first is a veggie burger (admittedly a burger so small it is invisible under its bun lid - not so, the plentiful greens and pickles) served with oven heated spicy fries.

The second is my venture in to cereal candy - a dollar serve oftrix has cured any desired for the stuff ever again (I even had to "dilute" them with rice bubbles).

The third in Freedom French Toast from La Dolce Vegan. The silken tofu didn't do it for me - but it was delicious served with day old challah. Which cancels out the vegan. Oh well.

You're looking at a winner!

Speaking of great Australian traditions, the Royal Melbourne Show has come to town yet again and this time it brought some blue ribbons. Here I am pictured with some of my first and second year 11 place-getters for the zucchini carrot loaf category. Woo-hoo!

Also featured is the cupcake design brief (we do love cake baking in Unit 2). The chosen theme was Sesame St - a step up from The Wiggles theme last year. It may just be coloured icing, sprinkles and mini marshmallows, but the students did a great job of bringing the puppets to life (in cake form).

THE PIE (An Austra-American Tradition)

This post is devoted to pies. First, is the portabello pot pie (recipe from La Dolce Vegan. The crust was so easy to make using a food processor and so silky to handle too. Surplus supplies of portabellos made it a hearty dish. Served with Israeli salad featuring kumatos. Needless to say, there were no leftovers.

The second pie is a vegan coconut cream pie, from the everyday vegan. There is something about coconut cream pie that conjures up a Hawaiian luau - for me anyway.

Side note: I haven't blogged for a while and looking back at this picture I thought "When did I make rhubarb pie?" but that's just the cheery tablecloth peeking through.

Tofu Tacos

These tasty tofu tacos were excellent! Mash firm tofu and marinate in balsamic vinegar and soy sauce, then cook up with carrots, celery, onions, tomatoes, green and red capsicum, corn... the list goes on. I made the hot nachos dip to go along side - however, did not have access to any soy cheese besides tofutti slices (how do they get them so yellow?) so used good ol' dairy cheese. So yum!

Cornbread Chilli

Still from the everyday vegan,
this is the cornbread chilli bake. A batch of vegan chilli packed to the gills with fresh veggies, red kidney beans, tinned tomato and an original piped cornbread design. After this and the tofu tacos I'm a bit Mexicaned out. This is my first real effort at piping and I'm quite pleased with the result. The cornbread was a snap to make using orgran's cornbread and muffin mix (much better than plain polenta).

The Everyday Vegan Scones

After becoming a Dreena Burton fan last year, I had to go back to the beginning and have a look at the everday vegan, Burton's first cookbook. At first I was slightly disappointed (I had been used to the format from 'vive le vegan') but soon got over that.

My first attempt was the blueberry orange cake which wasn't quite what I had in mind. Clearly I had used too big a pan and the cake was terribly flat (without eggs, it can be difficult to get cakes to rise and retain the same tender structure) I also found it far too sweet. The second recipe attempted was scones. I was slighlty surprised by the ingredients and texture. Traditional scones made vegan would take the form of flour, margarine and soy milk, rubbing the margarine into the flour, and adding the milk until it forms a dough.

These were very different to what I would call scones. Maybe it's one of those things that gets lost in translation. Like how in Australia, biscuits denotes something you dip in a cup of tea, while is America, they are like savoury scones, to be dunked in gravy.

Recent Dinners

Here are some recent dinners. The first is a vegean loaf created with the assistance of Jennifer McCann's magic loaf studio. This version contains lentils, brown rice amd a host of other goodies. The loaf is served with baked potatoes and braised red cabbage.

The second is a savoury bread and butter pudding, made from left over staling challah. The bread is sliced and made into sandwiches using grated cheese and sliced tomato. They are then cut into thirds and placed in a baking dish. Mix together eggs and milk seasoned with salt and pepper and pour over the sandwiches (this forms a savoury custard when baked). The Pudding is served with a side of steamed broccoli.

The third is my mother's invention "Eggplant Boats". Eggplants are halved lengthways, cut into chunks and salted. After rinsing, chunks are lightly fried with some other ingredients and topped with cheese and breadcrumbs.

Homemade Spring Rolls

Hand made spring roll, served with soy-hoisin dipping sauce.
This recipe came from Dreena Burton's "Vive le vegan". (My new favourite cookbook).
Spring rolls are filled with rice vermicelli, vinegar soaked shitake mushrooms, grated carrot and a host of other goodies. Also, these were oven baked not fried. Needless to say they were gone quick smart.

Tofu Nuggets

This Jessica Seinfeld recipe makes me wonder who did the photography in her book "Deceptively delicious". Deceptive is right - for the cooker AND the eater.

In the recipe these look like deep fried, golden nuggets, with not trace of what is concealed beneath the breadcrumbs. In these photos the secret vegetable is no secret. Cubes of firm tofu are dipped in a mixture of beaten egg and pureed spinach, then in breadcrumbs. These are sprayed with oil, then fried. While they tasted OK, I don't think these would fool anyone.

2 ways with cheesecake

The first is a baked "raspberry and ricotta tart" from Table magazine. The key ingredient ricotta was not in stock, so a combination of cottage cheese and quark were used instead. This gave the tart more flavour than ricotta alone, which can taste bland. The tart was well recieved at a lunch for 15 people, serving more than the eight advised by the recipe.

The second is a "Quick cherry cheesecake" from FamilyFun kids' cookbook. The base is crumbled chocolate marie biscuits mixed with melted butter and pressed into the baking dish. The second layer is cream cheese, caster sugar and lemon zest beaten with an electric mixer. The last layer involved opening a can of cherry pie filling over the top. Popping it into the fridge for a hour and "hey presto!"

The last degustion post

Deep fried pea and mint fritters with black vinegar caramel and spring onions rounded out the savoury menu. The crispy little fritters were cooked perfectly. A crunchy crumb on the outside, meltingly soft on the inside. I couldn't taste any mint in the fritters, but there were roughly torn mint leaves in the salad. The black vinegar caramel was sweet and made a nice dipping sauce for the fritters.

Before dessert was served, a palate cleanser arrived in a little shot glass. This contained coconut panna cotta at its base, a thin layer of lemongrass jelly followed, topped off with pineapple granita. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to pack anything else in after that, but somehow I managed.

Dessert took the form of a chilled rhubarb and mango crumble with vanilla bean ice cream and meringue sticks. Decorating the mottled square glass plate were dabs of a sweet red syrup and tiny cubes of strawberry. The dessert was delicious. A perfect way to cap off the night.

Part 3 (it was a long night)

Eggplant and Chinese greens with fragrant rice and yellow curry dressing was the highlight of the night. Served as a tower, it began with rice, topped with sweet roasted eggplant, a hidden roasted cherry tomato and garlic clove. Lightly sauteed baby pak choy, baby rocket, red onion and crispy fried shallot complete the tower. On being brought to the table, the wonderfully sweet, yet not to rice yellow curry dressing is poured into the bowl and adds a hint of coconut to the dish. Brilliant!

Roasted beetroot cubes are topped with rhubarb, orange, Spanish onion, Persian fetta and salsa verde. Although I tried all the elements to this dish, I prefered the simple pairing of roasted beetroot with melty fetta.

Degustation Part 2

Course three comprised of a crispy tempura fried zucchini flower stuffed with goat's cheese, which melted slightly during it's flash frying. The filling had a slight hummus flavour, which turned out to be babagnoush. The flower was placed atop some pureed zucchini which had a spicy edge to it. The square white plate was drizzled with pomegranate molasses and grenadine. This was topped with a salad of pickled red onion, baby rocket and lemon.

I thought the grenadine was too sweet for this dish. I also would have prefered no babagnoush in the filling as it was a distraction from the simple mild flavour od the cheese and zucchini.

Course four featured a spicy corn puree, drizzled with a zigzag of what could have been a balsamic reduction. This was topped with roasted red capsicum littered with shredded mint. Sweet potato chips completed the dish. These were not chips in the traditional sense, rather grated and deep fried. The plate was drizzled with chermoula oil to finish. I liked this course the least. I'm not a big fan of mint and it was a difficult job picking out the tiny slivers. The chermoula oil tasted bitter. With the removal of these two elements, it could have been a great dish.

Degustation Part 1

There has been a lot written about degustation menus lately so I decided to go with my sister to try out the vegetarian degustation menu at ezard in Flinders Lane. We went to this restaurant for my birthday a couple of years ago, so we already knew it was a place with great food, ambience and service.

The degustation menu had eight official courses, though two extra dishes were thrown in somehow. The table was set with a dish of olive oil blended with rosemary and parmesan, and a dish with three herb blends. The first was a dried nori blend which had a slight fishy sea-like taste to it. The second was sweet at first but had a spicy aftertaste. That was my favourite. The third was distinctly unmemorable.

The starter to our degustation was a tofu shooter. Served in a shot glass, this contained sake and mirin which was flambeed to remove the alcohol, making it intensely sweet. Then wasabi and ginger were added to cut through the sweetness, followed by the addition of cube of silken tofu. This was served with a delicious nori roll chaser. I must admit I didn't down it all at once as I was savouring the flavour of the shot liquid. Yum.

The first course was served on the same tray as the starter in a little tea cup which held red miso soup, tiny cubes of tofu, spring onion and sesame. While it was good miso soup, it was nothing special. The second course started with an asian inspired gazpacho at the base, followed by avocado tempura, shaved picked fennel (tasting faintly of saurkraut) and a quinelle of cooling cucumber creme fraiche. The flavours in the gazpacho came through beautifully, as did the subtle cucumber flavour in the creme fraiche. The avocado was creamy, not losing any of its natural flavour in the short cooking time. I didn't particularly enjoy the fennel as it has a aniseed flavour that often overwhelms the tastebuds, but it gave a nice contrast to this dish.

Stay tuned for Degustation part 2!

Devilled Eggs

These are my first go at devilled eggs, from Jessica Seinfeld's much debated cookbook "Deceptively Delicious". The book's catch is that within every recipe is a hidden vegetable or fruit puree. These eggs are smuggling half a cup of pureed cauliflower in addition to 6 hard boiled egg yolks, mayonnaise, paprika and salt. Given that it is a cookbooked aimed at a child's palate I found the recipe bland and needed to add several dashes of cayenne to get it going.

As with most recipes where a filling goes into small packages, there was lots of egg mixture left over. This made a tasty lunch spread the next day with toasted bagel and sliced tomato.

Munchies in the Family

This beer-butt chicken is all thanks to Papa Munchie being given the responsibility of making Friday night dinner.

Perching atop a can of VB sits a spatchcock, with a delicate foil hat. The bird is rubbed with a seasoning mix containing primarily salt, pepper, brown sugar and oil. Some herbs are placed in the can which has been partially drained by the chef in question. The bird is then roasted sitting upright.

The result: A supremely moist chicken with no beer flavour whatsoever, and a delectable salty skin crust.

Chef Crutchy

In the pic are some adorable gingerbread bears from a sanitarium recipe using wholemeal flour and currants to decorate. Using some forethought, I had made the dough before we went on a cycling holiday. Unfortunately the holiday didn't turn out as great as the biscuits. After coming off my bike on a steep dirt road I ended up with a fractured sacrum and some nasty scratches and bruises. When we got back to Melbourne I was dying to cook, and rolling out and cutting out premade dough was my ability limit. The bear on the left is me with the now necessary crutches.