Blue Lentils

Grilled Eggplant and Zucchini with Rocket

2009-01-27T00:32:00.000-08:00

I acquired a grill pan recently and grilling has fast become one of my favourite ways of preparing food. Grilled tofu especially is a treat.

This is a different grilled dish that I've also grown quite fond of. It is a lunch dish of grilled eggplant and zucchini with rocket. The juicy, oily flavour of the grilled vegetables is really complemented nicely by the bitterness of the rocket.

So here's how you do it.

Cut the eggplant in thin slices and the zucchini in long thin strips (slicing vertically along the zucchini). Leave for about 30 minutes in your marinade of choice (I use a marinade of white cooking wine, balsamico vinegar, olive oil, rosemary, thyme and basil).

Heat up your grill pan. Place your vegetables on the grill. Press down on them with a spatula to get the swanky grill lines. It doesn't matter how you place your vegetables, but I like to tilt the zucchini a little bit, so that you get these nice slanted lines.

Grill for a couple of minutes, flip and grill for an extra minute. If you want (though this creates a lot of smoke), you can throw in what is left of your marinade towards the end for a bit of extra flavour.

Serve with some rocket and salad leaves of your choice.

I used about half a zucchini and half an eggplant because I was only making it for myself. Grilling shrinks the slices quite a bit, though, so if you're preparing it for a couple of people, be prepared and use a couple of each.

Almond Shortbread

2009-01-24T00:39:00.000-08:00

Hello!

I haven't posted in a while. My humble apologies. I have missed the world of blogging.

I moved recently and have sadly been without a good oven and, most importantly, without a camera. But all this has changed!

I recently came into possession of a camera and have gradually started to get to know my terrible oven. It is a cautious friendship still, but I have had some success with it now.

Anyway, my first piece of baking to come out presentable was some shortbread I made a couple of days ago. I had never had shortbread before and I was curious to see what the fuss was about.

I used a pretty simple recipe off the BBC website and added some chopped almonds.

They came out looking pretty photogenic and they were pretty tasty. I would like to make them more distinctive, though. I'm not sure if it was the recipe or the temperamental oven, but they weren't quite as amazingly tasty as I expected them to be.

I'll definitely be tinkering with shortbread again.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-05T14:29:00.000-08:00

I apologise for a lack of promised Christmas postings. The whole Christmas to New Year period was an absolute shambles and I forgot to photograph my baking in all the drama...

I stayed with my Aunt for the week between the holidays, to get away from life at home for a bit. My little brother has Asperger's Syndrome - not a mental illness or necessarily negative, but definitely a disability in that it hinders his ability to function in society. This disorder has a strong genetic component, and is visible in both my parents. I sometimes feel like the only adult in the house. Everyone else seems to have ceased emotional development at the age of 12.

Nevermind, I'm back now and I have done more baking.

I love making the Australian classic, Vanilla Slice. Generally it is vanilla flavoured custard sandwhiched between two sheets of puff pastry, and topped with a passionfruit icing. My last attempt, all the way back in 2007, was relatively traditional. This time I decided to flavour the custard with a T2 tea called, appropriately enough, Vanilla Slice. It is a mixture of dried apple pieces, rosehip and vanilla beans. It's very nice, but a bit too sweet for me to drink hot.

I infused the custard with the tea, and added extra vanilla essence and some rosewater (I love the taste). Unfortunately the flavour didn't come through all that strongly - maybe I should make a concentrate next time. Anyone have any ideas?

The icing is made from home grown organic passionfruit. It is very tasty. Only two passionfruits have ripened so far, but the vine is covered with green fruit. I hope they don't ripen all at the same time and leave me buried in passionfruit...

I have to repeat my love of old Women's Weekly cookbooks here. They are really wonderful. The older they are, the easier they are to veganise. This recipe, for example, only needed butter and cream substitutions (dairy-free butter and silken tofu, respectively). Most recipes contain no more than one or two eggs, and many contain none at all.

The custard turned out a really pretty purple, which contrasted nicely with the bright yellow icing. The icing is so yummy, I'd eat it on its own.

Next week I'm returning to meal planning with Middle Eastern food. My informal New Year's resolution is to be less lazy, so I'll also try to do more blogging... wish me luck.

Christmas Baking

2008-12-23T20:18:00.000-08:00

Today I had my first day off from work in ages (really a week, but I complain a lot) and I spent the whole time baking!

I've been planning my Christmas baking for ages; it's what I most look forward to at Christmas. I love all kinds of seasonal baking. I love all the traditional recipes and flavours that appear only once a year. If it weren't for baking and presents, I'd probably give up Christmas altogether. The religious significance is lost on me as I am, after all, an atheist. Getting together with family is obviously an important secular aspect of the holiday, but that is largely centred around food... so once again we come back to Christmas baking.

Food has the ability to bring people together, but it also has the ability to alienate and exclude. That is partly why I am so enthusiastic about veganising traditional Christmas recipes. The archetypal Australian Christmas lunch involves seafood and a smorgasboard of cold meats. Not very vegan friendly. At least this year I'll be able to grow fat on a range of Christmas sweets.

I made a stol, mini Christmas puddings, whisky mince pies, almond biscotti, chocolate fruit and nut clusters and macadamia biscuits. These are all going to be packed up into cute little gift boxes tomorrow.

One small mishap: I nearly dropped the biscotti, sending some onto the floor, and catching the 180 degrees Celcius baking tray with my bare hand... Luckily my hand is only incredibly painful, not actually seriously burnt. (Unfortunately, the worse the burn, the less the pain.) At least I can console myself with tasty foods.

I'll post all the recipes and photos individually in the coming days. After I clean up all the mess I made...

More veggies in my garden

2008-12-08T18:27:00.001-08:00

Last Sunday I went on a nursery crawl with my mum and my aunt. This is generally a bad idea... I love growing my own food, my mum loves the idea of gardening (she doesn't have a lot of time to do it) and my aunt is an avid gardener in the English cottage style. Naturally we came back with quite a haul.

I decided that I would expand my veggie garden into the backyard, by way of a potted veggie patch. A potted one because planting anything in the soil would first require me to dig up a few square metres of tangled roots and hard soil... the remains of our first attempt at vegetable gardening. The whole area has been taken over by various native ground covers, parsley and a vine that covers the back verandah. This in itself is fine, as my mum planted each of these things, and they do make the place look nice and green. Not, however, great for veggie gardening.

So I came home with a variety of seedlings, from green beans to multi-coloured silverbeet. I endeavoured to finagle myself an apple tree but with no success. (My mum reasoned that I'm leaving in a few months, so I shouldn't get anything that is going to take a long time to fruit, or long-term care.)

I had a day off from work today, so I spent the morning planting. I am perhaps not a natural gardener, as I hate dirt and crawly things. But I managed. Unfortunately I ran out of potting mix so some of the poor little plants will have to wait another few days.

This is an heirloom Italian tomato, with three different types of lettuce around it, and some spinach in the background. I really hope the spinach survives. It is starting to wilt a bit already. I was a bit torn about buying it - it's the wrong season for planting, and it was quite root bound in the pot. We'll see.

I added some worm poo (we have a worm farm) to the pots of all these plants, and I've been giving them liquid fertiliser and lots of water. Hopefully that will be enough to give them a good start in life.

This is an eggplant. I've wanted to grow an eggplant for ages. The last one I bought died a few days after I planted it, because I planted it in the middle of the old veggie patch. I think it was strangled by all the other plants.

Finally, some green beans, cucumbers and zucchini. I may have to move these to allow them to climb up a trellis or spread out, but I'll think about that once they've passed the tricky baby stage.

Some of the pots look a little cramped - I'll probably have to repot some of the plants in a few weeks. But they are better off than in the tiny, root bound black pots they came in. Especially in this heat! It's difficult to tell from the photos, but it is boiling hot out there. I wore a hat, but I won't be surprised if I end up with sunburnt legs or arms.

I love summer, though. Everything fruits and the garden is filled with tasty, tasty colour. The passionfruit vine has been heavy with green baby fruit for weeks... looks like another good crop this year. A new tomato plant in the front garden has also produced a handful of bright red tomatoes. Even more excitingly, one of the chinotto plants that I had assumed to be nearly dead is growing a chinotto! There are even a few lemons growing on the lemon tree. (Don't they realise it's the wrong season for that? They already fruited in winter.)

I have a new job

2008-12-01T00:42:00.000-08:00

For the last two years, I've worked casually at an Australian coffee franchise. I had to quit this job recently because, quite frankly, I got too expensive and they stopped giving me shifts. It's a sad reality that these types of businesses would rather hire 15 year olds with no skills than pay a few more dollars for someone who can actually make coffee.

I fear that many Australian businesses are starting to look like this. There seems to be an assumption that nobody in their right mind would want a career in retail. These jobs are only meant for students; they are a stop-gap between education and entering the 'real' workforce. It seems a strange contradiction - Australia has a shortage of blue-collar workers, and thanks to John Howard, fewer people have been able to afford university. I wonder if it's to do with the increasing numbers of American-style franchises and homogenised products.

It's not really an issue for me - I am just looking to earn some fast cash. But there are plenty of school leavers (many of them my now former classmates) who are going into retail or hospitality because they want a full-time career.

John Howard's now defunct Work Choices legislation would have taken this neoliberal restructuring to a whole new level. Work Choices is now dead - but will Prime Minister Rudd give us anything quantitatively different?

Has anyone here read Barbara Ehrenreich's fantastic "Nickel and Dimed"? An Australian journalist by the name of Elisabeth Wynhausen tried a similar thing in Australia, which is chronicled in "Dirt Cheap". I read this book about a year ago, but it seems particularly relevant now. Although it is not as good as Ehrenreich's, it still reveals some hard truths about the Australian job market. There are adults trying to earn a living on the 'flexible' schedule and award wages designed for students. Most businesses aren't interested in experience or stability; they just want cheap seasonal workers to stand at tills.

The workers disporportionally affected by this neoliberal restructing are semi-skilled and unskilled female workers, particularly immigrants. Wynhausen was often one of the few Caucasians in a particular workplace, and there was a conspicuous lack of men. I only hope that Kevin manages to get his act together and produce some decent workplace legislation.

Thankfully my skills (a TAFE Barista qualification and customer service experience) were valued by other employeers. I now have two new jobs. One will be a full-time job, once I've been trained more. This is at a tea house run by an Australian tea company with a cult following. The other is a casual job doing straight retail at an Australian confectionary retailer famed for its liquorice. So I'm going to be pretty busy!

My meal plan for this week mostly consists of 'left overs'. I'll be working 8 days in a row. Hopefully I'll have more time next week to restock my freezer - I'm running low on prepared lunches. I've become rather attached to meal planning. It makes me feel more organised; it's one less variable.

I want to expand the topics covered in this blog. I want to have posts that are wide-ranging, a little bit ranty and a bit incoherent at times. Is that alright with everybody?

I hate Chinese garlic

2008-11-28T00:53:00.000-08:00

I hate Chinese garlic. I really do. It's the horrible papery white stuff that comes cheap from the supermarket. It manages to be simultaneously bland and offensive to the tastebuds at the same time.

I made broccoli with fried garlic slices for dinner tonight, but the garlic ruined it. It barely has any taste, so you have to use a lot of it, but then when you can actually taste it you realise that it tastes foul.

A couple of months ago I found some beautiful Australian-grown organic garlic. It was expensive, but it tasted so much better. And it actually had colour! No shrivelled white outer shell, but a smooth fresh jacket in shades of purple.

I miss that garlic. I haven't been able to find it again, and, in a fit of garlic-desperation, we bought this horrible stuff. Never again!

Toad in the Hole

2008-11-26T10:13:00.000-08:00

While I was still in Australia, Adele were leafing through one of our Dutch cookbooks and stumbled upon this idea for a veg*n adaptation of Toad in the Hole. For those of you who don't know, Toad in the Hole is basically sausages in batter. To be honest, the original dish doesn't sound all that nice to me.

Thankfully, however, this vegetarian version differs from it quite radically. In fact, I think it is quite a good adaptation. Instead of simply trying to sub the sausages, it just uses the basic concept of the dish as a foundation of something new. The end result is a really easy and tasty dish that sort of resembles the love-child of a casserole and a pizza.

The concept is quite simple. You pour a very liquid batter into a baking dish, put suitable vegetables on top and bake this for a period of time. The end result is chewier than a pizza, but more solid than a casserole.

Toad in the Hole

Batter
1 cup of flour
1 cup of soy milk
2 tsp of egg replacer
4 tbsp of water
2 tbsp of vegetable oil
dash of salt
a variety of herbs (recommended: basil, rosemary, thyme)

Filling
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 onion, in eights
about half a bushel of Dutch carrots
1/2 cup of green beans
1/2 cup of corn
2 tomatoes
a variety of herbs

Sift the flour and salt together. Combine egg replacer and water. Make a well in the flour and pour in egg replacer mixture and milk. Whisk together and add herbs. You can also add some seeded mustard if you want to.

Pour the oil into a large baking tray and heat it for 10 minutes in an oven that has been preheated to 200 C.

In a saucepan, cook the carrots and green beans in boiling water, for about 7 minutes or until they're soft. Drain.

In a frying pan, saute the onion and garlic for 2 minutes. Add corn, tomatoes, green beans, carrots and herbs, stir it a couple of times and add salt and pepper to taste.

Take the baking tray out of the preheated oven. Pour in the batter and then put the vegetables on top. It is important that the baking tray (and the oil in it) is very hot.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until the dough has risen somewhat and is firm. Serve hot and enjoy!

Banana bread with caramel sauce and blueberry muffins

2008-11-22T21:55:00.000-08:00

Coppe left yesterday. We spent most of the day in the airport together, as his flight was delayed. That sort of thing cheapens saying goodbye. It makes something that should be sad almost a relief. But I'm going to miss him a lot.

Life is so different when we are together. We make lots of tasty food! Normally when I'm on my own I eat awfully. It's all frozen vegetables and pre-made veggie sausages and toast. This time, though, I'm going to eat well.

We started making a meal plan last week, to get into the habit, and I'm going to continue it. It really makes life so much easier. When I get home from a long day at work, or when my blood sugar is low (I get very testy when I'm hungry), I don't want to look through cookbooks. Now I can just look at my meal plan and cook it.

This will be especially important as I now have a full time job, and a casual job on top of that. I'll be so busy! I now work at a tea house and a chocolate shop. It will be tough work, on my feet all day, so I have to eat well. I don't want to be scrambling to put together a lunch the morning before work, or microwaving rubbish when I get home. Hopefully I'll also be healthier.

I'll definitely not be eating either of these things from now on.

In the last week that Coppe was here, we made tasty food and watched movies. Coppe made banana bread and I made caramel sauce so eat during the documentary The Fog of War. It was seriously tasty, and the film was good too.

Bananas and caramel are such a natural pair. Coppe used the banana bread recipe from the PPK. I used the fantastic caramel sauce recipe from A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise. Yummy.

Later on, we made Blueberry Muffins from the omnivorous cookbook 500 Cupcakes by Fergal Connoly. I've otherwise been a bit dissapointed by this book, as many of the cupcakes I have made from it failed. Overall, the ratio of fat to solids is a bit off. Many have too many eggs, too much butter and too much liquid. Normally I use half the number of egg substitutes needed and fudge the liquid a bit. The muffins work fine, though, and there are some interesting flavour combinations.

These were definitely tasty. I used frozen blueberries, and tossed in some frozen mixed berries as well to make up the weight. I'm embarrassed to say we ate them with caramel sauce as well.

I'm afraid the run of good photos will end in a few posts, as Coppe is no longer taking them. Unfortunately you'll have to go back to my blurry, dark photos.

Summer Fruit in Syrup

2008-11-17T17:54:00.000-08:00

We had a lazy Sunday morning, with pancakes and sleeping in. (I know it's Tuesday now, but blogging is hard!)

There is so much beautiful summer fruit around at the moment that I wanted to use some of it with our pancakes. I based this quick little dish very loosely on a recipe in Vegetarisch Koken.

It's very simple, really. I just cut up a peach, a nectarine, some strawberries and some cherries, then put them in a saucepan with the juice of an orange, scraped orange peel and a very small amount of icing sugar. I then simmered this for a few minutes (it isn't an exact recipe) and added a healthy splash of Triple Sec. This simmered for another few minutes, until the fruit was slightly soft and most of the alcohol evaporated.

I drained the fruit, reserving the liquid, then set it aside. I put the liquid back in the pan and reduced it to a syrup. The fruit and syrup were then reunited and served over pancakes.

This really intensifies and sweetens the fruit, and is a bit swankier than chopped up bits of fruit.

Moroccan Orange-Couscous Salad

2008-11-15T20:22:00.000-08:00

Today, Adele was busy filling out important forms and generally doing weighty things, so I figured I'd make myself useful and make lunch. We had picked out this recipe from a Dutch vegetarian cookbook of mine before when we were mucking around with meal plans.

It's pretty simple, it looks swanky and it's very tasty. This is the recipe. You don't need to prepare the couscous as below. It's just what I did. You can also use the standard method.

Couscous:
125g couscous
splash of oil
dash of salt
1/2 cup of water
1 tbsp of butter

Heat the water, oil and salt to boiling in a saucepan. Take off the heat, stir in the couscous, leave for a couple of minutes. Stir in the butter over a low flame.

Salad:
1/2 capsicum
a small cucumber
an orange
1/4 head of lettuce

Arrange the lettuce leaves artistically on plates. Cut the capsicum and cucumber and mix through the couscous mixture. You can also add some raisins for a bit of extra sweetness or some spring onions for a bit of a kick.

Cut the orange into small pieces. Spread the couscous over the lettuce and put the orange pieces on top.

I think it's really pretty. It's a bit out of season for most of you Northern Hemisphere bloggers, I think, but it's quite appropriate for the season here.

Home grown silverbeet

2008-11-14T17:50:00.001-08:00

There is a little garden on the front veranda of my house. We grow various herbs, such as marjoram and garlic chives, and some fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately nobody except me uses them much - but maybe that will change when the tomato and chinotto start fruiting.

The silverbeet has been doing fantastically. There are only two plants (I think one may actually be spinach), but they produce more silverbeet than I can eat. They just keep growing!

Luckily I like silverbeet. I find that it is easier to cook with than spinach, as it doesn't tend to get overcooked and rubbery. Supermarket varieties can be a bit tough and flavourless, though. I think they are just too old. I picked off some of the bigger leaves from the plants, which gave me enough to make something tasty for my dinner. The advantage of harvesting in this way is also that the plant continues to live so you can harvest it again tomorrow.

I haven't really noticed a smell associated with silverbeet before, but these had a definite aroma. It's difficult to describe, other than to call it 'leafy'. It smelled tasty, fresh and organic.

I decided to make a sort of pasta sauce, using some other vegetables on hand like asparagus and capsicum. I can't eat enough asparagus at the moment. It seems to keep sprouting in the fridge. Good thing that it is tasty. I also added some tomato and basil vegetable sausages.

I served it over Israeli cous-cous, which is actually a pasta. It was yummy.

Smlove Pie

2008-11-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

It was my brother's birthday last week and, because I'm considered the most proficient baker of the family, it is always my duty to make him a birthday cake.

I only make vegan pies and cakes, so I just handed him a pile of cookbooks and told him to pick out the one he likes most.

Naturally, he picked one that involves a lot of work. :)

So, I ended up making V'con's Smlove Pie. This one is a chocolate cake with a peanut butter caramel, maple-candied pecan and chocolate drizzle topping.

I made the biscuit crust, the cake layer and the maple-candied pecans the night before and then the peanut butter caramel and chocolate drizzle right before serving it on the morning itself. This worked out perfectly. The caramel and drizzle were nice and warm, while the maple syrup in the pecans and chocolate in the cake had had some time to really spread their flavour.

My brother loved it and so did my omni friends (who had invited themselves over after I described to them what cake I was going to be making). Actually, so many people went back for seconds that it was all gone way too quickly.

So yeah, I definitely recommend this one. It's a bit of work, but not too complicated and people will remember it, if only for the fact that they'll eat too much and feel sick afterwards. ;)

I apologise for the fuzziness of the photo. I think it still captures the tastiness well. I had to improvise with a camera I borrowed from one of my housemates and my terrible photography skills.

Figgins

2008-10-25T01:24:00.000-07:00

Now, I love pastry. I love working with pastry (even if it makes me angry sometimes), and I love rolling it out, then spending hours doing all the fiddly bits and ending up with a tray full of misshapen pastries.

I also love Discworld. Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite fiction authors. He's witty, intelligent and his books are entertaining on so many levels. So naturally, this recipe for Figgins from Nanny Ogg's Cookbook was a match made in heaven.

I'd never heard of figgins before reading Discworld, but they sounded tasty. They are basically figs and dates wrapped in pastry, so what's not to love?

I used the basic short dough recipe from my massive pastry book, The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg. Last time I made it, it was hellish to work with, but absolutely delicious. This time, I think it suffered from the poor quality margarine that I used, but it rolled out pretty well and tasted good.

The filling is made up of dates, figs and currants (though I used golden sultanas). This is soaked over night in brandy (I used Triple Sec...) and mixed spice (I actually used this ingredient!). It smelt so good. The kitchen was filled with this fruity, spicy, sweet fragrance.

Then I made the pastry. I was initially worried because it was a bit spongy in texture... Thanks to cheap generic margarine that was gooey at room temperature. But, all was well. I stuck it in the freezer for a few hours and it was fine.

My pastry skills are improving! This one actually resembled a square when I rolled it out into a square...

There you can see me cutting it into squares. Supposedly, a teaspoon of mixture was to go on each square, and then it was to be folded into a triangle. I don't know if it was my pasty, or my lack of skills in general, but the triangles did not work. I even used less filling! The pastry just broke. So I folded them into little square parcel things, by folding each corner into the middle and pressing to seal. I think they actually looked prettier this way.

So each of those little blighters got a lick of soymilk (with my neon green brush, as seen above) and brown sugar on top... I tried sprinkling, but if you look at the state of my workbench and assume that my hands were worse, then you can understand why that was difficult. I ended up unceremoniously dunking each of the figgins into the bowl of brown sugar.

Then they went into the oven, which still doesn't close, so I'm amazed it cooks anything at all. Nonetheless, my figgins were toasted (aaargh! *runs away screaming*).

They are ugly little things, but you can't go wrong with pastry and boozey dates, in my mind. :P

I'm embarrassed to say I finished the whole lot in about two days. Shame on me.