This blog is a celebration of the wonderful world of vegan cooking. Enjoy!

* The title of this blog refutes the dangerous idea that veganism is a weight-loss diet and that all vegans are skinny. Conversely, being a-not-so-skinny-vegan is also not the same as being overweight or unhealthy. All food intake must be part of a balanced lifestyle.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Weekend's Cooking... an ode to Timothy

So this is not what we had for dinner on Friday night. This is what my brother, very much a non-vegan, ate. And this is all he ate. So when someone asks me why I am vegan I could quite correctly conjecture that it is the universe's way of balancing out my brother's diet.

We had a Dhal Saag that I tried to make in light of the fact that I can't eat at A Night In India every night. I got the consistency right this time but not the flavour. I can't seem to get the spices right. I stupidly used chopped ginger instead of grated ginger and put ground cardamon in which taste a little funny. So hopefully I can get it right eventually and put the recipe on here.

I also tried to make nicer rice by putting in some saffron threads. Next time I should probably put the threads in some boiling water first and then stir it through the rice with some oil.

Geoff and I trawled through some of my recipe books for a quick and simple dessert idea. Geoff suggested Mango Rice Pudding from Linda Stoner's Now Vegan.

My mum gave me the book for my birthday last year. I really like it because it's Australian and so the ingredients are most likely found at your local supermarket.

Mango Rice Pudding
1 cup aborio rice
2 x 425g sliced mangos, drained with juice reserved
(I used a 800g tin because it was cheaper)
1 dessertspoon of cinnamon sugar
1 cup coconut milk
1 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 cup water

Put raw rice, mango juice, cinnamon sugar, coconut milk, maple syrup and water on low heat for about 15 minutes. Make sure you are stirring constantly to avoid sticking and that the mixture comes to the boil (but don't let it boil for more than a few seconds). Take off heat, keep covered but stir every now and again until all liquid is absorbed, the rice is soft and it looks like rice pudding. You can re-heat if you want. I place the mango slices on top or you can mix them in as you re-heat. Suggested to be served with soy ice-cream but I did not.

So this was yummy and easy to prepare. It would have been easy to cook had I taken into account that my stove's low heat was too low and that I should have brought the rice to the boil. So I sat in front of Superbad with Geoff and my brother and Dad for a while stirring and waiting for the rice to absorb. It didn't until I put it back on the heat again and brought it to the boil. So make sure you heat it enough!

The Sunday was baking day. Last week I made Ahmad a Chocolate Cake for his birthday and then he informed me it was Ramadan and couldn't eat it so I cooked another one for him for Monday. And I also cooked a Carrot Cake (Geoff likes carrot cake) and some Mint Choc Cookies.

They tasted okay but I want to perfect the recipes before I share.

P.S. I have no idea why this post was an ode to Timothy. I just know that it was. And why wouldn't it be? Tim's awesome. Just check out his blog!


2 comments:

  1. I came across your blog randomly.

    This project seems akin to your own.

    Like:

    October 10

    I find myself trying ever more radical interpretations of traditional dishes, in an effort to somehow express the void I feel so acutely. Today I tried this recipe:

    Tuna Casserole

    Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish

    Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are. When night falls, do not turn on the light.

    While a void is expressed in this recipe, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish? I am becoming more and more frustrated.



    And what do you think of this one?

    November 26

    Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word "cake." I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but could not stay for dessert. Still, I feel that this may be my most profound achievement yet, and have resolved to enter it in the Betty Crocker Bake-Off.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe a funny parody of Sartre. Absolutely irrelevant to this blog.

    ReplyDelete