Vegan MoFo: My stupid stomach!

I know I've mentioned it before, but I suffer with acid reflux. After my doc's latest messing around with my medication, I had about 3 weeks where I was having pain every night. So as the medication didn't seem to be kicking in, I decided to try just eating really healthily and eating less wheat and cutting out sugary stuff, which seems to set it off. So far this week, I've been good and fingers crossed it stays that way.

So I haven't given up wheat, but I've been eating spelt or gluten free products instead of wheat where I can and am laying off the sugary things and not baking for a week or so (weekend away next weekend so I'll be baking then! :0) )

Today's dinner, I roasted up some brussels, some asparagus and some sugar snap peas to go with some polenta. It was just 1/4 cup polenta, cooked in 1 cup of hot water, 1/2 tsp of vegan stock paste, about a tsp of sun dried tomato paste and 2 sun dried tomatoes chopped nice and fine. It was awesome!


Yesterday I made a stir fry with asparagus, pak choi, baby corn, mushrooms, tempeh, spring onions and cooked rice noodles. The sauce was just tamari, lemon juice, chilli flakes and 5 spice powder. Simple but really tasty.

I didn't bother posting the pic of the soup I made today - I think this blog is souped out for a bit!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Moroccan Inspired goodies

I made more effort tonight!! :-)

I took some tempeh (that I boiled for 10 minutes first) and spread it with a mixture of lemon juice, rasul-hanout spice mix, olive oil, paprika, a teeny pinch of allspice, grated ginger and grated garlic. Then I baked it for 20 minutes @ 200C. It was tasty!! I served it with some bulgar wheat just soaked for 30 minutes in veggie stock and an awesome salad.

My salad consited of canellinni beans, rehydrated sun dried tomatoess, rocket, alfalfa sprouts, cucumber and fresh mint & coriander. The dressing was more lemon juice, tahini, extra virgin olive oil, rasul hanout (a teeny bit), paprika, salt & pepper. Delish!

Laterz
xXx

Mini Me

Look at me posting after only 8 days' break!! hehe. It's a mini post from me today, because honestly, I really haven't cooked all that much this last week. I've been out for dinner a couple of times and instead of having the girls over here we went to Em's and she cooked - wonders will never cease!! :-)

So I'll start with the other day's lunch, roasted cherry tomato soup. This had a trip hit of tomatoes because I also added some tinned (well boxed actually) and some sun-dried toms. Recipe is at the end of the post. It was yummy.


Brunch today - I had some tofu leftover from the brownies that are coming up in a minute! So I made tofu omelettes from vegan brunch. I halved the recipe and the other half of the omelette batter is in the fridge for tomorrow morning. Once I spread out the batter I chucked on some chopped up sun dried tomatoes, spring onions, sweetcorn and a couple of rings of jarred jalapenos. Then flipped it to cook the second side. Then I flipped it back and sprinkled it with black pepper, dried oregano and grated on some cheezly mozz, then stuck it under the grill for a minute to melt. Soooooo delicious.

I said brownies.... I made these on Tuesday night to take to Em's for pudding. The recipe is from Vegan Cookies .... for the chocolate brownies and I added 1/3 cup of walnuts and 2 packets (50g total) of white chocolate buttons broken up. I cooked them for just the very minimum amount of time so they would be super fudgy and delicous and they were - best vegan brownies I've ever made!! SO EFFING GOOD. I must admit, when I first bought this book I was underwhelmed with it, but I've now made a few things and everything has been so tasty that I've really grown to love the book.

Dinner the other night, tacos! I sauteed a couple of spring onions and a clove of garlic and added a cup of sainsbury's frozen veggie mince (they didn't have any Linda McCartney, but this one is pretty much the same!). I added half a box of chopped tomatoes, a green chilli, some mild pepperdew peppers (I didn't have any red or yellow peppers!) and some cumin, coriander, oregano and paprika. I also grated about half a courgette in finely, then left it to reduce down. It was easy, nice and not too spicy. It made enough to fill about 6 taco shells, so I had leftovers. I had some salsa in the fridge so I topped it with that, some shredded lettuce and some soya yoghurt. Oh and some chopped, fresh coriander.

All ready to munch....

Close up of the taco filling...

Ready for assembling...

And here's the recipe for the soup:

Ingredients:
1 cup cherry tomatoes

2 fat cloves of garlic

olive oil

1 small onion

1/3 cup white wine

2 cups veggie stock

1/2 box (about 1/2 - 3/4 cup) chopped tomatoes in juice

4 sun-dried tomatoes*

1 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp dried rosemary

pinch of sugar or splenda

Salt & pepper to taste

Method:
Put the cherry tomatoes and garlic on a baking sheet and drizzle on a little bit of oil then bake at 200C/400F for 20 minutes.

Saute the onion over medium high in a tbsp or so of olive oil, with a good pinch of salt, for 5 minutes until starting to soften but not too coloured.

Once the tomatoes and garlic are done, pop the garlic out of the papery skins and set aside. Don't bother taking the skin off the tomatoes.

Back to the onions! Add the wine the pan and let it bubble off for a couple of minutes. Then add all the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and leave to simmer for 15 minutes.

Then pour into a blend and blend till smooth.

I served mine with a small blob of soya yoghurt on top, just to look poncey but it's not essential.

* I used sun-dried tomtoes packed in oil and just gave them a good shake off of the excess oil and then chopped them roughly. If you use dried ones, just chuck them into the soup when you add the stock and they'll reconstitute as you cook it.

Laterz
xXx

Squidgy chocolate mess = love!

I have an awesomely chocolately recipe for you today - my take on brownies. They weren't exactly what I was going for but they are still fabulous!

These brownies are super squidgy and soft (even if you keep them in the fridge, there's no chopping one off and picking it up - they squidgy!), they're not too sweet but they are chocolately and delicious and with a bit of tang from the berries.

Here they are straight out the oven....

Sal's Squidgy Booze-berry Brownies

Ingredients:
2 flaxeggs (2 tbsp ground flax seeds whisked together with 6 tbsp water)
3 tbsp Cointreau (divided)
1 small punnet of raspberries (170g)
⅓ cup / 50g vegan chocolate chips
Dry Ingredients:
1 cup / 130g plain flour
¾ cup / 150g demerera sugar
½ cup / 50g cocoa powder, sieved
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
Wet Ingredients:
1 cup / 250ml cold water
½ cup / 125ml sunflower (or other light) oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F.

Then, whisk together the flax seeds and the water for the flaxeggs and set aside.

Pour 2 tbsp of the Cointreau over the raspberries, mix gently until the berries are coated and then set aside.

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl (make sure you sieve the cocoa to get rid of the skanky gritty lumps).

Whisk together the flaxeggs, the 3rd tbsp of Contreau and the rest of the wet ingredients, then pour them into the dry ingredients and mix well.

Lightly spray a baking tray with sunflower (or other flavourless oil) and tumble the raspberries/Contreau in.

Pour the batter on top of the raspberries and smooth over. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top and bake for 30 minutes.

The cocktail stick test won’t be very accurate as these will still be soft in the middle but it will come out pretty much clean.

Leave to cool completely in the tin. I keep these in the fridge in the tin and just spatula a bit out when I want one! You can put them into a tupperware but you’ll have to go careful when you take one out as they’re very soft.

Here's one up close & personal

Dinner for the last two days was sun-dried tomato seitan - basically, that's my variation on Julie Hasson’s sausage recipe but made into patties instead. These were sooooo good. I have posted my version at the end of the post, but credit still goes to the original recipe for proportions on gluten / liquid and cooking method.

Yesterday I lightly pan fried them and served them with some steamed mange tout, white bean mash (idea stolen from Nigella), and red pepper sauce. The sauce was an experiment, basically I used the veganyumyum recipe for the creamy tomato sauce that I love, but I used a roasted red pepper, 4 cherry tomatoes and left out the tomato puree. It was GOOD!

Today I pan fried them again and served them with some broccoli, sweet potato fries and some cherry tomatoes roasted in olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then sprinkled with finely chopped basil.

My variation of the seitan (I only make a half batch as it's just me)
Good handful (about 8) sun-dried tomatoes
½ a small onion, chopped into small dice
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Dry Ingredients:
1 cup + 2 tbsp (145g) Vital Wheat Gluten
¼ cup (4 tbsp) Nutritional Yeast
2 tbsp gram (chickpea) flour
1 tsp paprika
½ tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp thyme
½ tsp oregano
½ tsp sage
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
¼ tsp cumin
Pinch (⅛ tsp) chilli flakes (optional)
Wet Ingredients:
1 cup + 2 tbsp (280ml) cold water
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbs ketchup
¼ tsp liquid smoke (optional)
1 tsp vegemite or marmite
½ tsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp olive oil

Method:
Pour boiling water over the sun dried toms and cover the bowl with a plate or clingfilm, and set aside.

Saute the onion in a tsp or so of olive oil for 5-10 minutes until soft and browned. Add the garlic near the end and cook for a minute or so, then set aside.

Then combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Stir together the wet ingredients.

Chop up the sun dried toms and throw them into the wet ingredients, with the onions/garlic. Pour the wet into the dry and stir until it forms a dough. You don't even need to kneed!

Drop 1/4 cup of dough per patty into a piece of plastic wrap, smoosh them out and wrap them up. Then steam them for 25 minutes.

They taste best if you pan-fry them, until just very lightly brown, in a spray of olive oil before serving.

Makes 4 sausages (use a 1/2 cup measure) or 8 patties (1/4 cup measure).

Bonus pic - I managed to get the pics from London off my phone. They're really not that bad quality - it's just a combo of filthy windows (eww) and poor lighting!

View from my window: My giant room!

T.T.F.N!

Do you want to love me sexy?

You will when you bake this cake! I promised a chocolate cake and a chocolate cake I give you. Recipe is at the end of this post.

I made the cakes Tuesday and refrigerated them overnight to help them firm up a bit. Then I frosted it today when I was slacking off instead of studying for my safety exams – bad me! (I did make up for the studying later though!)

I wanted a cake with a softer icing than normal. Also, much as I love buttercream, it can be a bit sickly. Although it’s not the prettiest cake ever, I think it turned out absolutely freaking awesome. You could replace the vanilla extract (in the cake and the icing) with orange for a chocolate orange cake too.

The frosting is really runny when you make it and personally I like to frost it when it’s still pretty soft – I like the messy homemade look! If you don’t though, just refrigerate the frosting an hour or so and it will thicken up enough (not overnight though, it wouldn’t be very easy to spread if you did this). I kept the cake refrigerated once I assembled it. I’m not sure how the frosting would hold up out of the fridge.

A couple of things I learnt from watching the Barefoot Contessa: 1) that cornflour in combination with regular flour lightens the batter; and 2) that a bit of coffee added to chocolate cake intensifies the chocolateyness! I got love for Ina, even though her recipes are full of butter, cream and eggs, she does come up with some good stuff! I’ve printed off a couple of her cake recipes that I’m gonna try and veganise – I’ll post the results of any successes!

This cake is super chocolately and really REALLY messy to decorate; that is the joy of it. But the absolute best thing about this cake? You can feed it to un-suspecting omnis, wait for them to moan with pleasure then smugly inform them it contains tofu and wait for the nauseated look to appear on their face. Score!

My friends loved this cake, one had seconds and one took a piece home for her fiancé, as he gets upset if he doesn’t get cake too! She also told me last night that she wants me to make cupcakes for her wedding reception next year! I’m so thrilled, but a bit terrified too. I’m already doing the wedding make-up and I’m a bridesmaid – I think she wants to give me a nervous breakdown! Haha just kidding, I can’t wait.

Back to tonight’s dinner and I know the main course is not really that important when cake is on the cards but this is what we had; mushroom & sun-dried tomato pilaff and garlicky spring greens! Mmm mmm! Weird that you can hardly see any mushrooms in this pic considering it was chock-full of 'em!


OK onto the important part - the cake.

UK peeps, I weighed the frosting ingredients but not the actual cake so the cake ingredients are in cups - but if you don’t have American cups you just need a measuring jug. The 250ml / ¼ litre mark is one American cup! (But go buy some cup measures seriously, they are a couple of quid in the supermarket and are SO much easier than weighing!)

Sal’s superrad messy chocolate cake
Wet ingredients:
185 ml / ¾ cup non dairy milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
125ml / ½ cup light oil (I used sunflower)
½ a pack of firm silken tofu (I used Mori-Nu) – or you could use 125ml / ½ cup soya yoghurt
1½ tsp good vanilla extract
1 tsp instant coffee powder (I know that’s dry, but trust me!)
Dry Ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
¼ cup / 4 tbsp cornflour
⅓ cup cocoa powder
1½ tsp (level) baking powder
½ tsp (level) baking soda
½ tsp salt
¾ cup golden caster sugar
Frosting:
140g / ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
125ml / ½ cup soya cream (I used alpro)
4 tbsp / ¼ cup vegetable shortening
4 tbsp / ¼ cup vegan margarine
1 tsp good vanilla extract
80g / ½ cup icing/confectioners’ sugar
Optional:
2-4 tbsp jam
Chocolate sprinkles or shavings to decorate

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F.

Combine the non-dairy milk and vinegar and set aside to curdle.

Whizz the tofu in a blender until smooth, then add the rest of the wet ingredients. Mix the coffee into the soymilk mixture, then add to the tofu mixture and blend well. I use a hand immersion blender and a pyrex jug, because I don’t have a stand blender yet.

Then sieve together the dry ingredients into a large bowl (except the sugar). Don’t skip this step, cocoa really needs to be sieved or you get mingin lumps in your cake! Blech. Stir together and add the sugar and mix well.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix well until no large lumps remain, a few small ones are ok – just don’t over-mix or you’ll get tough chewy cake – ick.

Pour into 2 round sandwich tins and bake for around 25 mins or until a cocktail stick comes out clean. Cool for 5-10 minutes then carefully turn out and leave on a cooling rack until completely cold. I put them in the fridge overnight to firm up.

Then make the frosting. Melt together the chocolate and soy cream gently in a double boiler, mixing well until smooth and shiny.

Remove from the heat and leave to cool a bit while you mix the other ingredients.

Measure out the other frosting ingredients into a large bowl and cream them together with a fork until just combined. Pour in the chocolate/cream mixture (don’t add the other ingredients to the chocolate, the residual heat in the bowl will be too high!) and use an electric hand beater to mix it till smooth and creamy (a minute or so), scraping down the sides as necessary.

Put the frosting in the fridge and leave it for about 20-30 minutes before assembling the cake.

To assemble, upturn one cake onto a plate or cake tray so you have a nice flat surface. Spread a generous dollop of jam over the cake if using (it is easier if the jam is at room temp, if it’s cold it will be hard to spread). I like to add the jam because sometimes chocolate cake can be a bit too much without some fruit to break it up a bit. I used blueberry because blueberry & chocolate make sweet sweet love together!


Then spread a good blob of the frosting over the jam and sandwich the second cake on top.


Pour about half to ¾ of the remaining frosting into the middle of the top cake and using a spatula, spread it gently out and ‘encourage’ it to drop over the sides, then use the remainder to build up the top and cover any holes. (Alternatively, leave the frosting in the fridge for an hour or so and spread it on.)

Decorate with sprinkles or shavings and put back in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Inside shot of what was left this morning - it was excellent for breakfast by the way :-) :


Cooking while watching Semi-Pro (hence stupid post title)