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.