Vegan MoFo: Pa-tayto, Po-tahto

I was feeling a bit uninspired tonight but I have been fancying patatas bravas for a couple of days, ever since someone reminded me of the tapas place we went to with work a couple of years ago.

I don't really know what goes into it but I knew it was roasted potatoes with a (not too runny) spicy tomato sauce on top. So I whizzed up a tin of tomatoes and added about half of it to a sauted shallot and clove of garlic, some oregano, paprika, salt, pepper and a good old glug of hot chilli sauce.

As I said I was feeling a bit uninspired so I just sauted up the fresh corn I had in the fridge in some olive oil and a pinch of salt & pepper. The bread isn't homemade, I got it on the cheap from Morrisons but it is spelt & rye bread and it is freakin rad!

Cooking to: Strictly Come Dancing (gotta love V+ for recording for me the crap I miss on Saturday nights!!)

Vegan MoFo: 20 MoFo'ing posts!

I got to 20 MoFo posts! huzzah!! What the eff is goig on with blogger and the pictures - I've edited this bitch about 10 times and the pics still look funny! ah well.

I was planning to make canneloni tonight, but instead of being a good girl on my day off and doing housework and going to spinning class, I sat on my arse and watched Californication and Entourage instead. So I needed something that was a bit less of an effort for dinner.

I went for some tvp mince and mashed taters. Easy, quick and pretty good. I also learned that gravy browning has to be mixed with water first and can't just be sprinkled into to hot mince as you get gross brown lumps that you then have to spent 10 minutes picking out with a spatula if you do that! grr.

I had some buttercream left from the viennese whirls so I HAD to make some more biscuits! I used a recipe for shortbread that I found on get sconed, only I had to use 3 cups of flour not two - as it was way too soft to roll out. I think it's because the margarine I use is a lot softer so next time, I'm going to try cutting the margarine by a third and see if that helps.

I also added some lemon zest and lemon extract to the dough and cut them out as butterflies. I added some lemon zest to the buttercream and some ground ginger and sandwiched the biccies together. They are super YUMMO and were perfect with a coffee.

Cooking to: AC/DC - Black Ice (did I mention I got AC/DC tickets for April? HURRAAAHHH)

Vegan MoFo - ooooohhhhh Viennaaaaaa!

My 2 best friends (and my best friend's beautiful pooch, Maddy) came over for dinner tonight and we were too excited about catching up with Supernatural for me to take a picture of dinner. It was just a stir fry with some noodles though anyway.

But I do have a pic of dessert! In my pregan days, the 3 of us could happily scoff our way through a pack of viennese whirls in no time at all. But they are of course, not vegan so when I saw them blogged on The Only Vegan in the Village, I knew I had to try this recipe out. I followed it exactly except that I added a pinch of salt as well.

When I tasted the cookie dough I thought - no way these are sweet enough. But then I remembered they would be filled with supersweet buttercream.

They are AWESOME and my friends loved them too. You have to give them a go!

The filling I used was just some strawberry jam and a basic vanilla buttercream. Mine are not perfect and I was laughing at my rubbish effort of piping them as I did them. But actually they turned out pretty good and didn't look so bad once they were baked!

Vegan MoFo: I said, in these shoes? I don't think so!

I'm back from site and I'm done for the year - YYYYAAAAAYYYYYY! I must say though that when I was away, I had the best Indian meal I've ever had in a place called Zing. It was right opposite our hotel and I WISH I had taken my camera or even my phone to get some pics.

They didn't have the normal veggie options so I went for lemon & ginger rice, aubergine & sweetcorn curry and a chana (sp?) dahl (chickpeas!) with roti bread. It rocked so hard - I was wishing I wasn't so full so I could have eaten it all. So if you're ever in the Hammersmith area of London, get a bus or tube to Ravenscourt Park (one stop from Hammersmith) and go to Zing. It is pricey but soooo worth it.

Back to today though, as always, when I get back from site, I can't face anymore stodge and just want veggies. I was inspired by Jessy from happyveganface's veggie bowls post a wee while back cuz it just looked damn awesome.


My bowl had brown rice and some cucumber, it had VCon corn & edamame salad, spicy black beans and a carrot salad. The spicy black beans were based on Jessy's (as per the aforementioned post) but I didn't have chilli powder or cayenne pepper so I used chipolte paste and I also added some liquid smoke. The carrot salad was just a grated carrot dressed with a bit of raspberry vinegar, agave nectar, salt & pepper, some raisins and a pinch of caraway seeds.

It rocked.

Cooking to: Incubus - Light Grenades

Also, I got home to find my new shoes had arrived - which is what made me start singing Kirsty MacColl and inspired the thread title! (Fucking awesome song.) Here they are, I got them from http://www.asos.com/ - which is great because when you're looking for shoes you can select 'non leather' when you're searching!! Cute or what, I need to go out now to break these babies in!

Vegan MoFo: Thank Crunchie it's Ice Cream

Here is my ice cream post as promised. Brought to you from the tiniest laptop ever that I am using onsite to procrastinate.

I used to LOVE crunchie bars. I know they are dirty cadbury’s milk chocolate but they taste good and so when I found out that it is piss easy to make the honeycomb in the middle AND that the middle is nothing to do with honey and is, in fact, vegan, I knew I had to put this knowledge to good use.

Thus, this ice-cream recipe was born and let me tell ya, it is fucking awesome! It would be gorgeous just as a plain chocolate ice cream but the honeycomb makes it super special.


Chocolate Crunchie Ice cream

Ingredients:
2 cups / 500ml of soya cream (or full fat non-daiy milk)
1 cup / 250ml of vanilla soya milk (or more non dairy milk)
3 tsp arrowroot
4 tbsp / 1/4 cup sugar*
½ cup / 100g semi sweet chocolate chips
1 tsp orange extract
1 recipe of 'honeycomb' (about a cup - I used this recipe** but you can also buy it in bags in Julian Graves - they call it cinder toffee!)

Method:
If you're making your own honeycomb, it's good to do it the night before so it can really chill and firm up and it makes smashing it much easier!

To make the ice cream: Mix the arrowroot with about 4 tbsp of the vanilla soymilk. Add into the rest of it and pour into a saucepan. Add half the cream and the sugar and whisk it all together.

Heat over a low flame, stirring to dissolve the sugar, until it just starts to bubble – at this stage it will thicken slightly.

Turn off the heat and add the chocolate chips and stir until melted and evenly combined. Add the rest of the cream and the orange extract and leave to cool before chilling in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (I left it overnight).

Pour into ice cream maker and let it rip! The ice cream maker takes it up to a soft “mr whippy” like stage and mine took around 20-30 minutes - I didn't want to overfreeze it as that affects the texture.

After this time, remove it and transfer to a freezer safe tub with a secure fitting lid. Stir in the honeycomb and freeze for at least an hour before serving. Once it’s been in the freezer a good few hours it sets SOLID! So bring it out 10 mins or so before you want to eat it.

I kept back a bit of the toffee to sprinkle on the top but you can add it all in.

*The cream is slightly sweetened and the vanilla soymilk is pretty sweet so go easy on the sugar. If you use unsweetened versions you might need more, so taste it before you chill it.

** The link for the honeycomb/hokey pokey is an american one, English version is 100g caster sugar, 4 tbsp golden syrup and 1.5 tsp baking soda!

EDITED TO ADD...... this honeycomb recipe does not freeze well! The first day or so it was ok but today (after a week in the freezer) weirdly enough the honeycomb had melted into sweet little puddles. Luckily the ice cream is still awesome but I might try it with bought cinder toffee next time. Either that or just serve it the same day - don't leave it in the freezer too long.

Vegan MoFo: No Sleep 'til Breakfast!

I didn't sleep all that well last night, probably because I'm going onsite today (last lot of the year - wahoo!) but I soon got over the tiredness with an awesome brekkie.

Yesterday I made bagels! I followed this recipe exactly (although I think I might have forgotten the salt!) It was good but I might google around for a better one.

Last night, I also sliced some tofu up nice and thin and put it in some tempeh bacon marinade (from VWaV) overnight. I had to tweak it a bit because I didn't have everything so I subbed a mixture of apple juice and white vinegar for the cider and I added a tbsp of maple syrup too.

I was planning to have tofu bacon and tofutti cream cheese on my bagel but I was heartbroken to find mouldy tofutti in my fridge this morning! So I had a bit of mayo instead and it still rocked.

For lunch, I used up the leftover butter beans that I cooked yesterday for the Rock au Vin and made a delicious spread (recipe below). When I was making the bagels, instead of making 10, I made 6 and used the leftover dough to make some bread. I just flattened it out onto a baking sheet, spread on a bit of olive oil and sprinkled it with sea salt and thyme leaves. It's good but not really the right texture for bread - a bit too chewy.

But it was pretty damn tasty with the butter bean spread and some cucumber....

Butterbean spread

About 1 cup of cooked butter beans

A good glug (tbsp or so) olive oil

A heaped tsp of dijon mustard

A large pinch of black pepper

Some water

Method

Put everything except the water into a processor and pulse. Add a tbsp or so of water at a time, scrape down and blitz until it is the texture you want.

I didn't add any salt because I cooked the beans in veggie stock so it was salty enough. If you use plain beans then add salt to taste.

I made ice cream too! Will post about that tomorrow from my shitty hotel room.

Vegan MoFo - Rock Au Vin

This was the dish that I was planning for MoFo day 1, but my casserole dish didn't arrive. But I have it now and look - isn't it cute! It's a shame it's not pink but hey, it was 50% off in the sale!


It being saturday and all, I had the time to make something super spanking to bust the cherry on this baby! I remember my mum making Coq Au Vin once for a dinner party and it was pretty good, so I thought I'd awesomeise / veganise it. I decided to use butter beans instead of fake meat or tofu. Chicken style seitan or chick peas would probably work though.


Peeling the onions is a bit of a pain in the arse so if you can find frozen ones, use them.

Ingredients:
About half a cup (a big handful) of baby shallots
A small pack of button mushrooms (150g ish) cleaned off
2 cloves of garlic
1 carrot peeled and cut up
250ml red wine
250ml veggie or faux chicken stock
A good splash of balsamic vinegar (tbsp or so)
A couple of sprigs of thyme
Salt & Pepper
Tbsp of flour
Tbsp of vegan margarine
About a cup or so of cooked butter beans (if you used canned, probably 1 400g can)

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

Put a tbsp or so of olive oil and a small knob of vegan marg into the casserole and turn on the gas to a med-low flame. Once the marg has melted and sizzled a bit add in the onions and cook gently for about 5 minutes.

Add the carrots, mushrooms and garlic (mince the garlic or chop it finely) and cook for a minute or so. Add the wine, stock, balsamic and the thyme and a good pinch of salt & pepper and bring to the boil. Turn off the flame and put into the oven for 1.5 hrs.

When the oven pings, take out the dish and put on a low flame on the hob. Mash together the flour and margarine and add to the pot. Mix well and cook for a few minutes to cook out the flour.

Add the beans and check seasoning. Serve with pasta (rice or mashed potato would rock too!)

I also had some homemade rosemary & sea salt bread to soak up the gravy (the best part of a casserole I think!!) More on the bread tomorrow.

Cooking to: Random 80s playlist

Oh and a bonus pic of lunch - this was sooooo good! I roasted up some sweet potato, green pepper, tomato and mushrooms. When cooked I added some sea salt, pepper and a splash of balsamic vinegar. They went into a wrap with some sliced cucumber (the cold crispiness goes really well with the warm soft veggies) and added some chipolte mayo and it was awesome. The sweet potato was so good!