Vegan MoFo Day 9: Veganising Jamie

Tonight, another installment of Veganising Jamie!  And this is the recipe that made me want to do this as my theme in the first place. Yes, I've been lusting over Jamie's steamy soft buns for months now. Steady!! I'm talking about coconutty, bready goodness here! Dirty birdie.

This was sooooo easy, plus I got to use a new toy - my food processor.  Maybe I should name him Jamie, as that's pretty much why I bought it!!  And if it wasn't for the fact that I needed a little more flour than called for, I think I could've got this done pretty much within the 15 minutes, if not slightly over!

I subbed vegan chicken style pieces (Realeat ones) for the chicken but that was the only non-vegan item in the recipe.  Although check when you're buying hoisin sauce that you get a brand without honey.

SWOON! Sweet sticky chicken & mushrooms, fluffy buns and tangy pickle. This was freakin FREAKIN amazing!  The buns are seriously easy and I would have no qualms serving this up to any of my omni family or friends, even with the vegan chicken pieces.

Chicken Dim Sum with Coconut Buns & Cucumber Pickle

Recipe Link: It's not on his site (WTF Jamie?), I can't find the episode on youtube and I'm not about to post someone else's recipe without permission. But someone has posted the recipe here so I'll just link you to that if you don't wanna buy the book!

Actual Time Taken: 18 minutes from when all my ingredients and equipment were out and ready to go. I actually think this could be done in 15 minutes, but my bun dough was too wet and I had to go search for more flour and wash my hands about 4 times because the dough was so sticky.   

My substitutions:
I subbed Realeat Chicken Style Pieces for the chicken
I couldn't find mixed mushrooms in my crap local sainsbury's (that's becoming an issue!) and so I just used chestnut mushrooms, as that's what I had.
I subbed black sesame seeds for regular ones because I'm too lazy to toast them (and by that I mean wash an extra pan!)

Verdict:
Love LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this dish. I think it will become a regular and I plan to feed it to people next time I have someone to cook for. So ridiculously easy, as long as you don't mind washing up a food processor.  And a lot of the ingredients were already in my fridge or store cupboard, so I didn't really need to go to a decent supermarket. Win win.

A Few notes:
My buns are in pink cases because I didn't have any white ones and the pattern did transfer a bit. Also I ignored when Jamie said to put the chicken steamer under the bun steamer because my chicken wasn't raw meat and I figured it would be fine. They were fine but some of the hoisin mixture leaked onto the top of the buns beneath. No biggy, just an aesthetic thing.  And also foils my plan to eat the leftovers with jam.  OK it doesn't but I'm lazy and cutting the top off is just gonna but me!

Also, hot buns makes me think of THIS, which is never a bad thing!  If you'd forgotten about this too, then you can thank me later for the reminder!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo Day 2: Pogo & Bubbles!

Hey folks. So it's MoFo Day 2 and I was hoping to have some pics for you of awesome vegan foodz from the O2, as I went to see Nickelback there last night (shut it H8rs - they're awesome!!). Unfortunately we chose badly and ended up eating some rather crappy chinese food that I'd rather not remember.  So I dug into my camera and found some pics of a recent trip to london with my vegan ladybros.

 

Starting off with lunch at Pogo Vegan Cafe in Hackney.  I remember last time I went there it being an awful long trek in the rain after an awfully long bus ride to get there! But my friend Kip has skillz and it was much quicker this time.  We all had the punk burger meal, which is their house tofu burger with facon and cheezly.  The carrot salad I wasn't struck on, the other one had avocado in so that made me happy. Oh and wedges!

 

Inside shot - that is one fat wodge of cheezly right?  Yep.  It was superrad.

We decided after lunch to go to Soho and made a stop at Bubbleology so Kip could get bubble tea. As I've always been curious, I decided to get one too.  They don't advertise it but apparently the whole menu is vegan!  I picked coconut flavour and I LOVED it.  In fact I loved it so much I have bought some tapioca pearls in the hope that I can make some cack-handed effort to recreate it!  Watch this space....

We also went to Ms Cupcake in Brixton and I got a cherry coke flavoured cupcake which I shared with my friend the next day.  It was pretty, unfortunately it wasn't that great - a bit dry and just not really my cup of tea.  But I have never before had a bad item from Ms C so I'm willing to bet this was a one-off. I knew I should have gone for that blueberry one! ;0)

Have a great day all.

See yas
xXx

Tell me, Von Dahl-ing, what was it won you over?

"Don't give me that, matey. I know your game. Tell me, "Von Darling", what was it won you over? Was it the pumpernickel or the thought of hanging around with a lot of men in leather shorts?"

"I'll have you court martialed for this, Blackadder."

"What, for obeying the General's orders? That might be how you do things in Munich — or should I say München - but not here, Werner. You're a filthy Hun spy, aren't you? Baldrick - the cocker spaniel, please!!" **

Ahem, sorry. But sometimes I forget how awesome Blackadder was, until I go searching for a random quote with the word ‘darling’ in it so that I can make it into a bad pun for my post title. Le sigh. And that is one of my favourite ever episodes.

Get to the point Sal, I hear you cry! Well, I had Tarka Dahl for dinner yesterday and today and it was bloody spankingly loverly! I always order it in indian restaurants as a side dish but have never made it myself, but it was so easy!

I looked forward to it all day and it didn’t disappoint. I used THIS recipe, but used olive oil instead of butter and halved the recipe. It made a tonne, enough for 3 portions really rather than 2. I had it with brown basmati rice that I cooked in veggie stock then stirred some rocket leaves and a load of herbs (parsley and mint) through. YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM! So effing good.


I made some savoury muffins t'other day. They were cornmeal, spelt flour, courgette, sweetcorn and some spices. Pretty good but nothing to write home about. Once I make them awesome I'll post the recipe.

I thought this was pretty but it looks a bit of a mess in this pic. It was a one-pot wonder though! Tempeh, veggies, cooked spelt and spicy peanut sauce. YUM.

Sunday night's dinner, pizza! This wasn't my best effort I must admit. I bough some cheezly super melting edam style. YUK! I will stick to the mozarella from now on. This pizza was average at best, I didn't eat much of it.

Saturday night I had a couple of friends round for dinner and a couple of apple martinis! I made us a brown rice salad with a tonne of veggies and some homemade tofu thrown in. I roasted up a chilli too and minced that up and threw it in. The batch was pretty mild but this was one spicy mama!! It was yummy. I made some roasted veg and some Eat Drink & Be Vegan Cumin Lime Tofu to go with but forgot to take a pic, doh!

I also made us a choccy cake. A healthy one though, of sorts! hee hee. I used wholegrain spelt flour, replaced most of the oil with apple sauce and half the sugar with splenda. But then I put some chocolate ganache on top. I also put some desiccated coconut in the batter and some flaked coconut on top. Pretty yum. My friend ate most of it over the course of the night / breakfast and then took the leftovers home so I didn't have to worry about eating it all myself and ruining my diet! Score.

For snacks, I made us some dips. To go with I toasted up some pittas....

This was seriously the best hummus I've ever made, so good! I sprinkled some paprika and pine nuts on top to make it pretty.

I also made baba ganoush. I've never made it before so I was winging it, it was pretty good! One aubergine, that I roasted until it was soft. I roasted some garlic along with it and threw that in, with some tahini, lemon juice, a pinch of cumin and salt & pepper. Yum.

This was one tasty bad boy of a dinner last week - tempeh hash! I saw that episode of barefoot contessa where she makes chicken hash again! Last time I saw that I made veggie hash. This time I added in tempeh, pretty sure I stole that idea from Jessy! Served witha side of steamed broccoli.

This was such a random mish mash of stuff I threw together as I hadn't been shopping! haha, it was good though. A grilled portabello, steamed cabbage, mustardy firm polenta, black beans with salt, pepper & hot sauce and steamed broccoli. I dressed the broccoli with a tsp each of sesame oil and soy sauce and added some sesame seeds on top - it was sooooo good. The broccoli and polenta were battling each other fiercely for the title of star of this plate - it was too close to call.

Lastly about my PIF post, it was a bit of a fail, only 2 people responded!! So no randomator needed! So - River & Vivacious Vegan - email me your details (click top right) and some homemade goodies will be winging their way to you at some point in the near future (it may take a while as my supplies are low and I need to do a bit of ordering!!)

Have a great weekend peeps.

Laterz
xXx

**I couldn't find a clip of the episode that line is from but this is another of my favourite scenes. Brilliant! I must buy the DVDs!!

Miscellaneous crap and a recipe. And MoFo!

It's been almost 2 weeks since I blogged, I can't believe it. It's been a weird couple of weeks with a bad cold, an endoscopy and another cold! But enough of that crap, on with the foodz!

This was dinner last week. I forget exactly what was in the sauce but it was tomato based, with some mange tout and baked tofu on spelt penne.


I've been digging through my cookbooks lately and remember how awesome the lentil burgers from Hot Damn & Hell Yeah were, so I made them again. SO GOOD!!! With loads of ketchup, mustard and pickles on a grainy bun.

To go with it - potato salad (with a yoghurt dressing instead of all that mayo) and a carrot salad. YUM.

This was dinner last weekend for me & my friend. I made us a salad with some pan fried tofu, sauteed onions, mushrooms and courgettes, roasted red & yellow peppers, udon noodles and avocado. Yum.

Pudding was this coconut jelly with mango in lime syrup. This was SO GOOD!! Recipe is at the end of the post, I was glad I had leftovers for the next day! :)

I bought some more smoked tofu, except this one had almonds and sesame seeds in. YUM.

I mainly ate it with salad or in sarnies, but it did have some with couscous and pinenuts ....

Also, when I bought the tofu, I picked up some chocoreale - this stuff is basically vegan nutella and it is spanktastically awesome!

I wish I had something classy that I did with it to show you but to be honest it's best like this.......

Straight out the jar on a salty pretezel.

Last week my dad made some awesome carrot & coriander soup when I was staying with him and mum. I even got some to take home with me! YAY. I made some soda bread to go with it, but I forgot to take a pic. Boo Sal!

Um this was a fairly uneventful dinner - risotto with some edamame beans (ran out of peas!), sweetcorn, peppers and the last of that smoked tofu.

So onto the recipe for the pud I talked about before. I should say that on its own, the coconut jelly is almost bland and way too rich! But all together, it all works in perfect harmony. Give it a try – it’s soooo easy! This makes more syrup than you’ll need but it keeps in the fridge for a while and can go on any boring old fruit salad to jazz it up!

Ingredients:
1 (400ml) can of coconut milk
1½ tbsp agar flakes
1 cup (250ml) water
¾ cup unrefined caster sugar
Juice & zest of 1 lime
1 ripe mango

Method:
Mix together the coconut milk and agar flakes in a saucepan and leave aside for 5 minutes. Then put it on the heat and bring to the boil without stirring. Once boiling, turn it down to a simmer and stir occasionally until the flakes have dissolved (about 5 minutes). Once dissolved, pour into 4 ramekins and let cool, then put in the fridge for at least an hour to firm up.

To make the lime syrup, mix together the sugar, lime zest and water in a small saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves. Then turn up the heat and boil it for 2-3 minutes. Take off the heat and add the lime juice and also throw in the empty juiced lime halves. Leave to cool at room temperature, stirring occasionally.

To serve, peel the mango with a veggie peeler and cut the flesh off the stone in long wedges. Pour some syrup over the mango and stir it around. Unmould the jelly by cutting around the edge and using the knife to pop the vacuum created and it should drop out. Spoon the mango around the jelly and some of the syrup over the top.

I can't believe it's almost October already!! Less than 2 weeks till my best friend gets married and only a couple of days until Vegan MoFo!! Last year I loved MoFo and I've been feeling a bit blogged out lately so maybe this will challenge me to think up some new ideas!!

You can go to Kittee's ace blog for info on MoFo (or check out the MoFo room on the PPK)!

I've been lax about keeping up with everyone else's blogs too so I'm off now to start catching myself up!

Laterz

xXx

Put theee lime in theee coconut and call me in the morning!!

So now that all the birthday madness is over I don't have anymore cake baking to do and I can get back on my diet!! I hadn't been to the gym in 2 weeks so body pump on Sunday was a wee bit painful. Especially as she made us do EVIL lunges!

The last birthday in June is my best friend's birthday - we're a week apart and I made her cupcakes. She (unsurprisingly) requested mango & coconut. They were pretty good!!



I forgot to take a pic of dinner but I did us some barbecue baked tofu, garlicky greens and saucy potatoes. I did get a messy shot of the leftover potatoes though before we devoured them. I'm working on getting this recipe perfectly ace, although they're pretty freakin ace already.


Last week I decided to make some of Susan V's ribz. They weren't as good as the first time I made them, they were really chewy so I dunno what I did wrong. They were still tasty though and I used Jack Daniels BBQ sauce on them that the lovely people at JD sent me! (I'll be talking more about those sauces in the near future!) The rice was some cooked brown rice mixed with veggies and a lemon vinaigrette. Jessy asked me in the comments of another post about the lemon vinaigrette - it's pretty easy: juice of a lemon (about 2 tbsp), 1 tbsp oil, 1 tsp dijon mustard, pinch of salt & pepper and whisk!


Yesterday I made some mini meetloafs. I used the recipe from Cozy Inside (love that book!). I halved it like I always do but this time I added in about 1/3 cup of cooked lentils (I had leftovers!) and doubled the spices plus added a few more. It was really good. I also had leftover cheezy sauce from some mac n cheese (that I accidentally deleted the pic of - doh!!) so I had that on some steamed veg. Yum.


I had some sweet potatoes and some coconut milk in the fridge and needed to use them up. I was too lazy to do a full curry with all the grinding spices and crap so I made this one up and it was soooo good. So I'm giving the recipe, even though it was so easy it's a bit sad to put the recipe.

I served it with naan breads. I googled recipes and found one by Anjum Anand - I liked it cuz there was no yeast and also cuz well Anjum is the shiz! Unfortunately, my dough never doubled!! Maybe because I subbed 50% of the white flour for wholewheat? The first one rose really well but the second one was flat like a roti. They were tasty though so I got over it.

Lazy Sweet Potato & Coconut Curry
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cups of sweet potato, diced (about 1 big one - mine were real tiddlers and I used 3!)
1 cup / 250ml veggie stock
2 tsp garam masala
1 plum tomato
1 tsp tomato puree
1/2 cup / 125ml coconut milk
2 tbsp chunky peanut butter
1/2 cup / about 50g frozen peas

To serve:
Finely chopped coriander & mint
Unsweetened dessicated coconut

Method:
Heat the oil in a non-stick pan. Fry the cumin seeds for a minute until fragrant then add the onion. Cook for about 5 minutes, until the onions start to brown then add the garlic and cook for a further minute.

Add the potatoes, stock, garam masala, tomato, the tomato puree and a pinch of salt & pepper and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

Stir in the peanut butter and peas and cook for another 5-10 minutes uncovered. Stir in the coconut milk, check seasoning and then serve scattered with herbs and coconut.


Another meal over the weekend was leftover ribz with mash & mushy peas.

And Saturday's breakfast was pancakes. I was planning to make coconut pancakes with the leftover coconut milk but it was off! boo. So I just used soymilk and sprinkled coconut on the top. I made them wholewheat - I just used my banana pancake recipe but left out the banana and used extra soymilk and some maple syrup. Yummy yum yum yum.

TTFN! I'm off to watch big brother - anyone else into it this year or am I the only saddo in the village??

xXx

Santa Baby.....

... slip Jensen under the tree, for me.... been an awful good girl!

I don't think that's too much to ask for, right?

I'm so excited that it is Christmas Eve tomorrow. I LOOOOVE Christmas and this year it seems to mean baking for me and lots of it. Starting with my little Christmas tree cookies. They are chocolate shortbread with minty green buttercream and sprinkles. I'm not the world's best cookie decorator but I think they're cute all the same. I wish the flash didn't wash out the pretty green of the icing so much though.

There was some dough (and frosting) leftover, so I made a couple of sandwich cookies with the remainders.

And it would be rude to just throw away the leftover frosting....

Last night was my best friend's fiance's birthday and he requested mango & coconut cake, so that is what he got. (I multiplied the recipe x 1.5, last time I doubled it and the cake was freaking huge so I decided to make it smaller this time). No inside shot though, we demolished it at the Chinese restaurant before I could get my camera out.

There was still a bit too much cake mixture though so I got a couple of little cupcakes out of it too.

I had loads of coconut frosting left - huzzah. Luckily my friends love cake and I love to bake so I made a quick chocolate cake with the leftover coconut milk and some shredded coconut added, for our little chrimbo get together tonight.

Last time I mentioned about making soap but I didn't have time for that this weekend. However, my friend's sister asked me to make her some gift sets for her friends so I dug out my dusty oils boxes. I haven't made anything in AGES but this was a lot of fun. I used to do this a lot, hence I have a shit load of fragrance & essential oils....

I made body butter & scrub:

Bath salts.....

And soy wax tarts, that you burn in an oil burner - these things rock hard!

And lip balm....

That's it from me until after Christmas, so I'll just say I hope you have a wonderful Christmas everyone and CHEERS!!!

Cooking to: cheesey chrimbo songs!