Behold the Tofu Roast!

Okay, first blog of 2009, but this was made Oct 2008. Here we have tofu roast from La Dolce Vegan. Two and a half packs of tofu crumbled into a large sieve lined with clean unused chux cloths. The tofu bowl is then filled with delectable homemade stuffing, some remaining crumbled tofu is placed on top and pressed down with some tins. After a good while in the fridge to firm up, it is placed flat side down into a foil lined baking dish and basted with a soy based sauce. Roast until brown, basting during cooking and served with roasted potatoes and a green salad. This was so delicious and far more filling than your average roast.

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.