Brownies

So I've posted the recipe to these delicious goodies on this blog before (see Chocolate Brownies post) but I wanted to talk about it again because a) it's Vegan MoFo and the other thing I cooked last night is being saved up for an extra special post sometime in the future and b) I think these ones look better than the last I made. These were delicious and gooey and oh so yummy.

I have heard a lot of people talk about if they are in the cakey or the fudgey brownie camp. I like this recipe because you can use the same recipe to please people in both camps depending on how long you leave it in the oven. I have also found that the less chocolate chips I use the less gooey it is.

  

BTW Happy Bonfire Night to those in the UK. I did not partake of the activities because I decided to go to a maths lecture instead. However, except for the fact that I lost my phone in the rain somewhere between home and the CMS, it was well worth it. If you know any maths and ever get the opportunity to see Bela Bollobas speak you should definitely go if only to boggle at the things that he finds "trivial" (such as, oh let's say, this trivial little thing).

Ripe From Around Here

Some of the lovely gals from UQ gave me this book as a going away present when I recently left Australia. I was a little excited when I got it because I was very much looking forward to getting northern hemisphere weather and local produce when I arrived in England. I had, however, forgotten all about the benefit of the EU and find it a bit hard to refuse bananas from Portugal simply because they are "imported" when the distance between here and Portugal would be like Brisbane to Melbourne.

Yes, I'm exaggerating.

I also found it quite hilarious that the first recipe I decided to make (simply because it was listed under her fall/autumn recipes) involved shiitake mushrooms and the only ones Geoff could find were £2 for 120g and were imported from China.

For those of you geographically challenged like myself... China is a long long way away.

Anyway, I couldn't very well change my mind since Geoff had already done the groceries and we had an hour before we had to go bowling. Yes, we computational scientists like to bowl after work.

So I made two recipes from the book to make a whole dinner. Only neither were particularly satisfying (although I made up for that with two pints of cider while bowling). They looked great but the delicate taste of the mushrooms in the salad was drowned out by the vinegar and the sweet potato... well, it tasted just fine but it just wasn't very satisfying.

If I made these dishes again they'd either be together as an entree or as sides as part of a much bigger meal. And I'd significantly reduce the amount of vinegar. And since the shiitake don't really add any flavour to the meal that isn't drowned out I think I'd chuck in some heartier mushrooms and a few more of them. So below is my adapted recipe for these dishes.

I want to make a few more recipes from the book before recommending it (or otherwise). However, I do think that since vegans make up such a small part of the population and that getting any book, let alone a vegan cook book, published is a mammoth effort ( more likely a miracle) we vegans should go out and buy as many cook books as we can afford. And what better month to do it in than Vegan MoFo!

Anyway, below are my adaptations of the two recipes I used in the book. Enjoy!

 

Sweet Potato in Jacket

Serves 2

Preheat oven to 200C. Scrub sweet potato and cut out any blemishes (if it's anything like the poor vegetables in my kitchen they'll probably be growing some sort of mould/arm/attitude). Prick the sweet potato evenly all over and place on a baking tray. Cook in the oven for 45 minutes or until soft. Slice down the middle and serve with butter. (Next time I'm going to make my own herb butter and melt it on top).

Warm Spinach and Mushroom Salad

Serves 2

2 tbsp olive oil

1 red onion

2 cloves garlic

200g spinach leaves

100g (a dozen) mushrooms*

1/4 balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup chopped nuts**

salt and pepper

Toast the nuts on an unoiled hot pan. Set nuts aside.

Heat the oil in the same pan and put in garlic, onion and mushrooms. Stir for several minutes until mushrooms and onion are soft. Meanwhile put the spinach in a bowl and stir through the vinegar with salt and pepper to taste. Then add the onion mix and then the nuts. Stir through until the heat from the onion mix begins to wilt the spinach leaves and serve.

* Shiitake, if it pleases you.

** I used walnuts but pine nuts would give it more flavour or slivered almonds or pecans would also work.

"Honey" Soy Sauce with Chili

Today is going to be a stupidly busy day so I'm getting in early with my post for Vegan MoFo. If you've seen the picture, don't fear, I'm not going to give a step by step guide to making stir fry. Stir fry is the delicious lazy person meal and everyone should already know how to cook it. What I do want to talk about is sauce.

When I first became a vegan back when I was 15 I ate stir fry every night for dinner. Worst still it was without tofu and only with soy sauce as a dressing. This was a direct result of the fact that my mother can not cook and I was a teenager so didn't really know much about cooking either. Long story short: I ended up loathing stir fry.

Fast forward to my third year at university and I was living with my then boyfriend and he introduced me to all sorts of cool stuff like tofu and chili and sweat peas and baby corn. And he used to take me to a lot of restaurants in Chinatown where I started getting the idea that stir fry != soy sauce. (Yes, I just made a C joke. Someone kill me.)

Australia, and even the UK, are quite good at providing lots of different sauces for your stir fries. However, considering the very basic ingredients that they are made from, they are a little overpriced.

One of my favourite flavours is honey soy with chili. Of course actual honey is not very vegan of me (although some of you will know my fuzzy honey moral lines) so here's an alternative I use a lot.

"Honey" Soy Sauce with Chili

1/4 cup of soy sauce

1/4 cup of sweet chili sauce*

1 tsp agave nectar**

1 tsp cornflour

Add the first three ingredients together and mix thoroughly. Then add the cornflour making sure you stir all the lumps out. Add to your stir fry!

* You can, of course, make your own sweet chili sauce and I have done this before. However, most people should just have a bottle of it sitting in a cupboard so it's much easier to use that.

** Agave nectar is easy to get and quite cheap here in the UK. This is not the case in Australia although you can get it from health food stores for about $10. I only use it in this recipe because the sweet chili sauce is not that sweet here (and rather spicy!) so you could leave it out if you think the sauce is sweet enough or replace it with honey, rice honey or even golden syrup.

How To Be a Cambridge Vegan IV

 I promised a follow up to my formal dining experiences at my college, Selwyn, here at Cambridge. We've been to a few dinners since then so I've collected a nice sample of opinions about the food. Please feel free to ignore this post if you don't like bitter, angry women and wasting your time.

MCR Dinner

This was my first experience at a formal dinner here at Cambridge and I was a tad shocked. Although a fair chunk of the graduate students here are international students like myself a lot of them are true Cambridge scholars: they came here for undergraduate, left the 'Cambridge Bubble' on holidays only and came back for graduate studies. These are the ones to watch.

Somehow, and I am guessing it's through osmosis or magic, all of the knowledge of drinking games passes on to the new students (we are called, to my horror, "Freshers") and suddenly everyone around you is ridiculously drunk and you are having trouble not punching the American guy across the table from you as he name drops some distant relative from some ivy league school in the US. a) Why the hell would I know about someone not even remotely in my field? b) You are at Cambridge. Yes, the university that was ranked most like Harvard... beating Harvard.

Yes, yes. I'll get to the food when I've vented.

We were without wine that night (we weren't aware you could take wine in with you) and so we had to remain horrified in our sobriety. But the food was okay. They gave me a mushroom stack which was really nice but not exactly filling. There was some sort of soup for starters. Beetroot and something? It was okay. And for dessert I was served fruit salad. Cut up the way they do in pre-school.

So I sound bitter but I was quite happy with my meal. Being vegan means you tend to just be overwhelmed when you are able to eat something let alone have a special meal cooked for you.

Formal Hall

Formal Hall happens twice a week at our college. It's more formal than the MCR Dinner (yes, that's right, more formal than having to wear a suit and tie (or the "women's equaivalent" as they so delicately put it) and your gown to dinner). It is also open to all students and is mostly frequented by undergraduates so we were a little worried about the drinking games.

However, we need not have worried because it turns out that the undergraduates of Cambridge are actually quite well behaved. Yes, there was some "pennying" (people drop pennies into other people's drinks and they have to drink it all at once) and some passing of the dinner mints (this is done mouth to mouth and earns you expulsion from the dinner because the mints are supposed to accompany the port, chaps, and are not for fun) but the presence of the fellows seemed to keep things a little tamer.

We had wine this time and it was truly awful. And the port! I forgot to mention the port! Each meal has a starter then a main course then a dessert then a cheese platter with coffee and port and after dinner mints. And the port tastes like fermented sultanas and methylated spirits. One of these days I'm going to go to a Trinity or King's dinner and see if the port tastes better in the wealthy colleges.

Anyway, my point was... we drank a fair bit too. It made the pennying tolerable and the Latin chanting (there is a lot of Latin chanting going on... which they practise to make sure they get the pronounciation right) hilarious.

The food this time was a bit of a problem. Firstly the waiter told me that the carrot soup was vegan. Then when she went to get my main course she told me that they had not prepared any vegan food because the catering lady had forgotten to tell them. Guess the carrot soup was not vegan after all.

The chefs were pretty good, though, and threw together some spiced beans in a tomato sauce with some polenta. It wasn't fantastic but at least I was fed and they seemed to have done a better job on the protein considerations this time.

Dessert was fruit salad. Cut up the way they do in pre-school.

Matriculation Dinner

Geoff wasn't invited. Matriculating graduate students only.

The wine was free and was plentiful and was actually good! (Up until this point I had assumed England thought that wine should taste like ethanol). And the food! Oh the food!

For starters we had polenta with watercress and some delicious dressing. Then the main course was a tomato stuffed with tofu pieces and nuts and vegetables and served with roasted root vegetables. And potato. There's always bloody potato. And for dessert... fruit! But not the way pre-school does it. It was a lovely pear that had been cooked in something like sugar syrup, white wine, cinnamon and star anise. It was chilled and served whole but sliced so that it made a little star shape on my plate while still sitting up like a pear would. I fell in love with it. But I ate it anyway.

Then we did a bit of musical chairs (there is designated seating except at Formal Halls) and moved to the New SCR for white dessert wines, coffee, cheese platters (of which I did not partake), port and mints. Except everything was actually nice this time!

The dinner was really amazing. The best million course vegan meal I've ever eaten.

So apparently we only get one more of these dinners and that's when we graduate. Except I'll be matriculating again next year and then graduating again three years after that (yes, my hobby is degree collecting) so I am very much looking forward to it.

And now I'll leave you with some images from around our street of this lovely (although a bit chilly and windy tonight!) city. Happy autumn!

Easy Crunchy Nectarine Bake

When I finally did get around to going to the markets on Saturday I was not at all prepared and only ended up with some very large nectarines and some very large field mushrooms. The nectarines, however, were already going bad before I even walked in the door and so last night I had to save what was left of them in this crunchy nectarine bake.

You could, of course, use peaches in this recipe. In fact, you could use it for pretty much any juicy fruit (apples, berries, pears, plums...). I used nectarines because I had them. I also like baking with them because you can leave the skin on and it doesn't ruin the texture.

Easy Crunchy Nectarine Bake

4 large* nectarines (or several smaller ones), deseeded & sliced

1 banana

1 cup quick oats

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/3 cup vegan butter

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Lightly grease or oil an ovenproof dish (like the Pyrex one in the photo below). Mash the banana in the bottom of the dish. Add the nectarine slices and mix through so that the banana is evenly spread throughout.**

In a separate bowl mix all of the dry ingredients together and then add the butter, using your fingertips to make an even crumble. Then sprinkle over the top of the nectarine slices and pat it down lightly with the back of a wooden spoon.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the fruit is nice and juicy and the crumble nice and crunchy.

Serve with vegan ice cream.***

* And I mean large. If they aren't bigger than your fist you'll need more than 4.

** If you don't like banana and are bitterly disappointed with the inclusion of it in this dish then I would suggest just throwing a little sugar and flour over the nectarines and mixing it through. This should caramelise and hold together the nectarine pieces without the banana.

***  I am obsessed by the amazing taste of Swedish Glace and am considering permanent residence in the UK because of it.

Vegan MoFo

It's Day One of Vegan MoFo... and I ate leftovers for lunch and intend to eat leftovers for dinner. So far I'm doing a fantastic job!

If you don't know what VeganMoFo is click on the logo above! And be prepared for 30 days of non-stop blogging about vegan food!

Now I'm going to go find something to cook tonight so I have something to blog about tomorrow.

This is going to be fun!

Vegan Halloween

Yesterday was my first Halloween. We were supposed to go to a party but the party ended up being cancelled. It was also the first day since daylight savings ended and we were not at all prepared for the lack of sun at 4pm. So we got comfy at home, watched some Skins and I made a nice simple Halloween dinner with some inspiration from Morrisons (the original link to their Halloween treats seems to have died overnight).

Spicy Blood & Guts Soup*

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp paprika

1 sweet potato, peeled and diced

1 potato, peeled and diced**

2 leeks, thinly sliced

 500ml tomato juice

1 can of crushed tomatoes

salt & pepper

Heat the oil in a large soup pot on a medium high heat. Add the onion and stir for a couple of minutes until translucent. Add the sweet potato, potato and spices and fry for a few minutes. Then add the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Then simmer for 35 minutes.

To make the soup smooth you'll need to either put it in a food processor or blender or get one of the amazing stick blenders that I got for my birthday and you can blend it right in the pot!

Once it's smooth add salt and pepper to taste and serve with the spooky witch finger bread below!

 

* I had intended this to just be Blood Soup but it didn't quite have the colour (it was the missing beetroot I forgot to get... it needed beetroot for the colour).

** If you have beetroot and want to get the blood colour use a 300g can of chopped beetroot, drained, here instead.

Cheesey Witches' Fingers Bread

300g flour***

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

50 g vegan butter

75g finely grated vegan cheese

1 tbsp flaxseed + 3 tbsp of water (or equivalent)

8 tbsp milk

1/4 capsicum/pepper (yellow or red)

Preheat the oven to 200C and line some trays with baking paper.

Rub the flour (+ baking soda & powder) and butter together with your fingertips until you have something that looks like breadcrumbs. Add the cheese and stir. In a separate bowl beat together the flaxseed mixture and the milk and add it to the dry ingredients to form a dough. Knead the dough a little and then roll it into a ball.

One at a time, pull off pieces of the dough (about the size of a ping pong ball). Roll into a round ball and then roll out into a long finger-length stick. Place on the baking tray and repeat. Once you have rolled them all out pinch two knuckles in each one and then get a sharp knife and make some cuts across each knuckle (take a look at the picture of the cookies below to get the idea).

The final step is to cut the capsicum/pepper up into little triangles for the nails. Then just place them on and stick the fingers in the oven for 15-20 minutes. When they are done, let them cool and serve with the Spicy Blood and Guts Soup!

*** I used wholemeal/wholewheat flour for both the bread and the cookies simply because I ran out of plain flour. I don't think it makes much of a difference except that wholemeal is a bit better for you!

Almond Witches' Fingers Cookies

 3/4 cup vegan butter

1 cup icing/confectioner's sugar

1 tbs flaxseed + 3 tbsp hot water

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 cups flour

2/3 cup almond meal (ground almonds)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 dozen blanched almonds

Beat together the sugar and butter. Then add the liquid ingredients. Finally add the dry ingredients to form a dough. Then follow the same instructions for the bread above only this time put a blanched almond for a fingernail. 

These cookies taste great with coffee!