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.