Vegan MoFo: Soda Bread Rolls

I was going to blog yesterday with the food I ate at my friend Kip's house. But being crap as usual, I forgot my camera and ended up taking some on my camera phone. The pics were so terrible I decided not to blog them.

So instead, head over to Kip's site and see some proper pics!! Amongst other things, she made:

Tapioca balls in coconut milk. Balls! pffthahahaa!
Sweet sticky black & white rice
Lemongrass stuffed tofu

She also made an awesome coconut curry and a couple of salads. All of it was ace.

My dinner today was fairly uneventful, but I did make some spelt soda bread rolls, so here's a pic of one with jam on it! Recipe is underneath the pic.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups wholegrain spelt flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsweetened soymilk
1/2 tsp vinegar
2 tbsp water

Method:
Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the wet together and pour into the dry then mix into a sticky dough.

Split into 4 and blob them onto a baking tray you've sprayed lightly with cooking spray then bake at 180C/350F for 20 minutes.

(I only wanted to make a small amount but for a loaf, I usually double the recipe and bake it for at least 30 mins or until it sounds hollow when you rap the bottom.)

Laterz
xXx

I said BRRRRRR it's cold in here...

.....There must be some Toros in the atmosphere. OH EE OH EE OH ICE ICE ICE.

Ahem, sorry. So how hard did it suck having to go back to work this morning?? Ergh. The flat was freezing and so was the office – all day because it had snowed last night. So I was glad to have some leftover soup from yesterday’s dinner for lunch to warm me up at lunchtime.

See look - poor old Jeff was all frosty today!


In other news – I’m moving out of my flat in 3 weeks’ time. I’m looking for a new place because I’ve just had it with my wanker landlord, plus this place is too small – especially the kitchen! So I’ll be staying with my parents for a month or so while I find a new place. This means my blogging might be affected somewhat but hopefully not too much. I’m looking forward to having a new (hopefully bigger) kitchen to bake in! J So anyway, back to the food.....

This was yesterday's dinner and it was awesome. It was a result of feeling totally uninspired to cook anything and staring into the fridge for ages. Normally soup & bread just don't cut it for dinner time but this was really filling and warming. It had potato, roasted peppers & jerk seasoning but I'm struggling with coming up with a name for it. It's going in the zine though!


With soda bread... YUM!


Saturday's brekkie - Celine's awesome peanut butter & chips granola, that I threw some cashews into as well. Next time, I think I'll roast the nuts for a bit firs as they were a bit raw but it still rocked. I used regular chocolate chips and some of the white chocolate I got for thingymas.

Saturday, I decided to have another go at my chicken style seitan. First thing it went into was some stew & dumplings.

Today I breaded it and baked it and served it with soft polenta with sweetcorn added and VWAV Punk Rock Chickpea Gray - gah that stuff is rad! This meal doesn't look all that healthy but I think it was really as there's hardly any oil in the gravy and I ignored my instinct to fry the seitan and baked it.

In the past I haven’t had a lot of luck with the boiling method, that sounds so easy in Veganomicon! Last time, although it tasted good it still was a bit puffier than I’d liked (the dreaded “brains” appearance) and they stuck to the pan and I only really had one out of 4 that held it’s shape. Plus the stock wasn’t really usable in other recipes as it was full of little bits of seitan that had fallen off during the cooking. So I knew I needed to experiment with the cooking method and this is what I came up with and it worked superbly! Here is what they looked like this time.

Recipe is below as well. I used a half cup measure for each cutlet and it made 4, but they were HUGE ass cutlets so next time, I’m going to try use a 1/3C measure I think.

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup + 2 tbsp (145g) Vital Wheat Gluten
¼ cup (4 tbsp) Nutritional Yeast
2 tsp poultry seasoning (see pic)
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp thyme
1 tsp veggie or faux chicken bullion powder (or use cold stock instead of water)
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper

Wet Ingredients:
1 cup + 2 tbsp (280ml) cold water

2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp olive oil

Method:
Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl and the wet in a jug. Pour the wet into the dry and mix it well with a metal spoon or spatula until it comes together. It will look sloppy and like there’s not enough dry ingredients – don’t worry, it’s meant to look like that. Now get your hand in and knead it just for a minute or so.

Heat up a non-stick frying pan on a medium heat. It’s very important that the pan is non-stick as you’re not going to add any oil to it. Split the dough into 4 or 6 (depending how big you want them) and flatten them into cutlets. Do 2 at a time and flatten them out a bit more with your spatula on the pan. Cook them for a 1-1.5 minutes (keep the heat fairly low/medium) then flip them and cook for another 1-1.5 minutes. Remove from heat and put on a plate, then do the next 2.

This doesn’t cook them so they will be very soft and a wee bit tricky to turn and remove from the pan, but just be patient and you’ll get them out fine. I used 2 spatulas and that seemed to make it easier.

Cut out 4 (or 6) squares of parchment, about the size of the cutlets (don’t worry if they’re a bit small).

Fill a large pan with COLD stock. Take each cutlet and place it on a square of parchment, then gently lower it into in the pan and push it to the bottom. Repeat with all the cutlets and try and place them on alternate sides of the pan.

Turn on the flame and bring it to the boil. Once boiling, turn it down straight away to a low simmer, cover and cook for 30 minutes. Every now and then, push the cutlets down with your spatula (they tend to rise to the top). After 30 minutes, turn off the heat and leave them to cool completely in the stock (or until you need them). Store them in the fridge in an airtight container, immersed in the cooking liquid (which you can use as stock in other recipes).

To use them, I just gently press out as much of the water as I can, between 2 pieces of kitchen towel – especially important if you’re breading them.

This is the chicken seasoning blend I use and instead of faux chicken stock (which I can't find) I use these incredibly disgusting soups. They taste mingin alone but used for stock they are good. I use one sachet in the dry ingredients and 2 mixed with water for the cooking liquid.

Another use for my seitan was fajitas. I put loads of guacamole, soya yoghurt and roasted onions & peppers on with the seitan. MMM MMM MM! They were good.

Extreme close up - MOLEY MOLEY MOLEY!

OK I've made myself want to watch Bring it On so that's what I'm gonna go do!

Zombies do like the other other white meat

Thanks for your well wishes on my last post everyone. Not long after I wrote that, my dad picked me up and I spent 5 days mongin out on his couch. I was an absolute state - I looked like a zombie. I tell ya, if Sam & Dean saw me, they'd wanna hunt me!

I got home on Tuesday evening and about all I could manage to cook for lunch was some mushy peas on potato waffles. Tasty but rubbish. By dinner time I managed to get up the will to cook something better and I made some enchiladas and a nice cherry tomato salsa. I didn't have any beans so I used some tinned potatoes and they were really rad!!


A close up of the salsa.....


Then I made some muffins - these are just my basic banana & PB muffins but with 5 round tbsp of chunky peanut (instead of 3) and I also threw in half a pack of Dr Oetker dark chocolate chips (about 1/3 cup). They are sooooo good!


I experimented with my Soy Quick to make some nut milk cuz I didn't have any soybeans soaked. I poured boiling water over about a cup of skinned almonds and about 1/2 cup of raw cashews (both of which I pulsed up in a food processor) then after an hour, I put them in the soy quick with 3 tbsp of oats and a couple of tbsp of brown rice. The flavour was good! But I ran the machine 3 times and it still didn't crunch it all up and the milk was watery. So I emptied the pulp into the milk and used my stick blender to blend it all up. Then I strained it twice and had a glass with a muffin. I started to strain it through muslin but it was taking wayyy too long.

The texture's not really smooth enough to drink, but it's ok for baking (I used some in the muffins) and I'm keeping the pulp because I'm thinking I might add it to a batch of soap at the weekend - I haven't made soap in aaaaages! (haha look - that's Nigella in the background - love her!!)

Today's dinner was the Bodacious Barley & Bean Soup from the Garden of Vegan. I think I described this as the best soup ever last time - I stand by that, it's SO. FREAKING. GOOD!!!

I also made some more soda bread, to go with the soup. I swapped the white flour for spelt and I think I've cracked it this time, so I've included the recipe. Here it is, fresh out the oven with some margarine on! YUM!

Spelt & Rye Soda Bread

Ingredients:

250ml/1 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk
1 tsp white wine (or apple cider) vinegar
240g/1½ cups rye flour

160g/1 cup spelt flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.

Whisk together the milk and vinegar and set aside. Mix together all the dry ingredients, then pour in the milk mixture and stir until fully combined.

Don't be alarmed that it is a mega wet & sticky dough, it's supposed to be. At this point, throw it into a greased loaf or cake tin and spread out, or do like I did: lop it out onto a lightly greased cookie sheet and shape it as best you can.

What it looks like before shaping....

Then bake it for around 30 minutes until it sounds hollow when you rap the bottom of the loaf.Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool until you can't stand it any longer and have to cut a piece off (in my case about 20 seconds!!).

Here's one of the overall thing - to give you an idea of the messy shape I made it!

Cooking to: REM - Out of Time

Yesterday I went back to work and I still wasn't feeling 100% right. I had to go to the supermarket on the way home and I wanted something quick and I found curly fries in the freezer section. YAY! I love me some curly fries, I haven't had them in AGES! Well it was either those or potato smileys - which I very nearly bought instead! :)

I had them with some baked tofu and some cherry tomatoes macerated in balsamic vinegar. YUM.

Oh and off topic but Liono Lewis - cock off!! OK she has a good voice and she deserved to win the x-factor that year blah blah blah, but I hate all the songs she's released since, they're so annoying. And now she has covered Snow Patrol's Run. Run is one of my favourite songs and a song that almost brought me to tears when I heard it live because it was so beautiful. Well Liono has ruined it by turning it into a whiny whingy wowling piece of pop crap. Along with that and the piece of crap song that won this year's x factor - it makes me wish for the days when Take That & Mr Blobby were vying for the christmas no 1! /rant.

It's all Greek to me

I finally got around to making tofu. Actually this was my second attempt, the first was a big fat failure. This one worked really well.

The texture is strange, it is somewhere between regular and silken tofu. Very soft - and the taste reminds me of what I remember cottage cheese to taste like. It split down the middle when I turned it out of the mould.


I baked some (that I didn't get a photo of) but I overcooked it and it was a bit yuk. When trying to decide what to do with the other half, all that kept popping into my mind was feta! I know there are a few recipes out there for tofu feta but I was too lazy to look one up so I just doused it in a bit of olive oil, white wine vinegar, oregano and salt & pepper and left it over night.

Then I made a greek salad with it. The supermarket has started doing pick and mix tomatoes and I got yellow, orange and red cherry tomatoes - they were so pretty and sooooo tasty....

I added some chunky cucumber, finely chopped red pepper, my tofu feta and shallot and a simple red wine vinagrette. Oh and lots of fresh mint. The rather unphotogenic stuff next to it was some brown rice and lentils, cooked together in veggie stock with some peas added and a bit of red wine vinegar. Ugly but tasty.

This week, my copy of Sarah Kramer's Garden of Vegan arrived. I was flipping through and as soon as I saw the recipe for the Bodacious Barley & Bean Soup (AKA the best soup EVER), I knew it had to be mine. Oh yes, it had to be mine! So I made it and wow! My friend was round at the time and when she tasted it, took the recipe straight away to make it when she got home.

To go with it I made some more soda bread. I'm still working on getting the recipe right though so I can post it.

You gotta roll with it....

I feel like I should put on Oasis, but with PMT rearing it's ugly head, it could just make me mad!

Tonight, I made sushi. I should start by saying that I have NEVER made sushi before but I keep seeing all these pretty pictures plastered all over t'internet so I decided to give it a go.

Be kind.... my rolling sucks, but hey - it was my first time! I had some VCON sweetcorn/edamame salad and some cold peanutty noodles to go with and it was awesome!


I was planning on putting in strips of tofu with miso marinade on it but I didn't have any tofu in my freezer (which is a first). Denied. It was ace nonetheless.

Today's lunch was the easiest and quickest pea soup ever. I've had 3 attempts at this now and today I got it right.

All you do is bring 1/2 cup (125ml) of water to the boil. Crumble in a half a stock cube, add a cup of peas (100g) and cook until the peas are tender (about 5 mins). Pour into a blender with 1/4 cup (4 tbsp) soya yoghurt and blend, then season to taste. No frills - just tasty and super quick.

Last night I made bread, but I really was feeling way too lazy to knead so I made soda bread, which is SOOOO much quicker. I used the recipe on the side of the flour packet and it was a mixture of white and rye flour. It was good but I think the measurements need tweaking, as I found myself adding flour for a while until the dough was right! So I'm going to play with it and then post it.

It was awesome with jam (and my soup today).

Monday's dinner was a quick curry, and I mean quick. I didn't even start chopping the veg until I'd put the rice on to cook for 25 minutes and I still had time to show the guy who's fixing my shower round the flat as well!!

It went like this.. chop onion and butternut squash. Let contractor in to whinge about shitty shower screen. Saute an onion in a few sprays of low fat cooking spray and a pinch of salt over a low-med heat, add 1/2 cup (about 80g) of butternut squash, some green beans and 1.5 tsp of curry powder (any you like - I make my own) and stir and cook for a few minutes. Add some water (about 1/2 cup) and half a tin of tomatoes. Then cover it with foil (or a lid if your pan is lucky enough to have one) and leave it for about 15 minutes until the BN squash is cooked. Then mix in 1/2 cup (80g ish) cooked chickpeas and 1/4 cup (4 tbsp) soya yoghurt, season and sprinkle with fresh coriander if you like it and serve over brown rice. YUM.

I have an okara experiment in the oven as we speak - hopefully more on this next time!

Oh and unrelated but I'm watching the Strictly Come Dancing results from Sunday that I V+'d and fuck me - how awesome was that cha cha that the world champs did!!!

Oh and for the love of all that is good Britain - stop fucking voting for John - he SUCKKKKKKS! He is beyond terrible, it's a joke. Heather and Brian got kicked off which makes me sad cuz I find Brian Fortuna strangely hot!