Carnivwhore

I saw this lovely post today. I thought it was really sweet.

Despite the fact that the author has made the decision to eat meat she has made an informed choice and hasn't tried to deter her child from another path. I feel much better about carnivwhores like her.

How To Be a Cambridge Vegan II

We found Tesco yesterday which meant we stocked up big on supplies. Which meant I could eat this yummy breakfast!

And the packaging here is so helpful that finding vegan food is very easy!

 We brought our camping saucepan with us and bought a Tefal frying pan for £14 (bargain!) and found a deep, round Pyrex dish in a second hand store for £1.50. We went to this lovely kitchen shop at Market Hill but despite my drooling over some of the lovely items we could only afford a £1.49 wooden spoon (although it's a very nice wooden spoon!). But in all I have the basic items I need to cook which makes me slightly cheerier about the pending, impending, gloomy, doomy cold.

I also found the Cambridge Vegan Society and their website has a good list of vegan friendly restaurants in town which is mighty helpful. So be prepared for some reviews!

There's also something called The Cafe Project here but I'm a little uncertain of it at the moment. I will have to find out more.

How To Be a Cambridge Vegan

Selwyn College

Geoff and I are now officially residents of Cambridge (that's Selwyn College above, we live on the grounds and I'm a member of the college). It's been wonderfully sunny and warm and my bosses, supervisors and lab buddies have all been so wonderful and welcoming that I've hardly noticed we've moved. And since everyone is here at the moment we've been going out to eat a lot.

We ate at the Rainbow Cafe when we first arrived (some readers may remember my not so positive review from April) and my opinion of it remains unchanged although Geoff seemed to like his meal.The following morning we still had no food in the house so went into town (and by that I mean the 5 minute walk across the Cam to the centre of town) and discovered that nothing opens until 10am on Sundays so we walked around a bit and found a lovely little cafe called Indigo Cofee House (Facebook page here) where we had coffee and bagels and did the Times crossword (the easy one, and only once we found it which required asking 2 strangers and a lot of flipping). We have now discovered that the 2.20 pounds refers to the weight of the damn paper and not the price.

I also had lunch at Carluccio's, although could only eat the bruschetta, and we had dinner last night at Browns which was a bit underwhelming but my meal was actually quite nice (despite the lack of protein) it was a nice evening.

We are settled into our new house although are a bit surprised by the lack of a shower. So we've been taking baths, Mr Darcy style, and hopefully we'll get some sort of shower hose fitting soon. This is a photo of the outside of our house of which we only occupy a small part.

Our humble home in the Selwyn Grounds

As I mentioned above we live on the Selwyn grounds so it's very convenient to everything including the lovely gardens.

Selwyn Gardens

And although I was hoping for a gas oven the one we have is electric but it actually works splendidly (we made great pizzas when Zach came over for dinner the other night) so I'm quite happy with it. I cannot wait until my mix master is here and all of my baking tins so I can start cooking again.

This is where the Cambridge Vegan magic will happen.

So for now that's all I have to report. But I would like to give the following, very important advice to anyone ever visiting the static world that is Cambridge:

Oma's Spaghetti Dish (Elise's vegan version)

Geoff's grandma always loves to make him spaghetti and Geoff loves to eat it (especially for breakfast!). She very kindly gave me the recipe so that I could cook it in Cambridge for Geoff. Of course, it had to be veganised but here it is.

Oma's Spaghetti Dish (Elise's Vegan Version)

3 tbsp of olive oil

3 tbsp vegan butter

250g spaghetti

4-6 cloves garlic chopped finely

1 medium onion diced

400g tin of crushed tomatoes

12 whole button mushrooms sliced

3-4 gherkins sliced

1 red capsicum

12 sliced pitted black olives

mixed herbs & bolognese herbs

500ml of tomato juice

vegan Parmesan

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Add salt. Add spaghetti and cook until al dente. Drain and set aside in a casserole dish.

Brown the onions and garlic in the olive oil and butter. Pour in the crushed tomatoes, mushrooms, capsicum, herbs, S&P and simmer for a short time. Add the gherkins and olives & stir. Add this sauce to the spaghetti in the casserole dish and mix. Pour in the tomato juice and bake, lidded, in oven for 1/2 hour. Remove and sprinkle with Parmesan and return to the oven, unlidded, until Parmesan turns golden.
  

Notes:

• I can only ever find 1 litre of tomato juice but this is a good thing. The reason it is in this recipe is that the pasta soaks it up while in the oven (I'm sure there are many Nonnas rolling in their graves at the sound of this). I normally pour in half and then check the oven now and then to see if the mix if too dry. If it is I add more juice.
• If you don't have a casserole dish you can put it in a big soup pot and keep it on the stove for half an hour. It's not quite the same but it still tastes good!
• You must put the gherkins in for two reasons: 1. it forces you to buy gherkins which turn out to be tasty snacks, 2. the sourness of the gherkins make everything else taste buttery. Trust me, you need the gherkins.
• As Oma famously says... you never make this recipe the same twice. These are just the ingredients that make it Oma's mix but you can add extra anything.

Pears with Ginger and Star Anise
from Vegan Cooking (Eating for Health)

6 tbsp caster sugar

1 1/4 cups white dessert wine

thinly pared rind and juice of 1 lemon

7.4cm piece of fresh root ginger, bruised

5 star anise

10 cloves

2 1/2 cups water

6 slightly unripe pears

Put first six ingredients in a saucepan (big enough to hold all the pears in upright position). Don't put the pears in yet but bring liquid to boil. 

Peels the pears but leave the stems. Add the pears to the liquid making sure they are completely immersed. Return to boil, lower heat, cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes until pears are tender. 

Remove the pears with with a slotted spoon and place them in a heatproof dish. Boil the remaining liquid rapidly until it reduces to about half the volume. Pour liquid over the pears and allow to cool. Then chill.

Cut the pears into thick slices and arrange serving with some soy icecream or yoghurt. The recipe also suggests serving with sliced pieces of ginger from ginger in syrup.

I loved this dessert. Geoff was not so impressed. I loved the flavours and how light but delicious it was. I didn't have any dessert wine on hand (well, I did, but it was a rather expensive bottle we had picked up in Tasmania that we were keeping for a special occassion) so used some champagne which gave it a bit of a tang. I also didn't have any of the ginger in syrup and only made this recipe to use up the pears in my fruit bowl and didn't want to have to go out and buy it. I'm sure it would have added to the delicious flavour and wonderful textures but it was tasty without it. I also just used the normal green pears that you get in the supermarket. It would be great for a dinner party as you can prepare it before, leave it in the fridge, and could dish it up on one big plate or on inidividual dishes.

Mini Crustless Quiches

A while ago I was talking about quiche. I finally got around to making some from this great recipe on the FatFree Vegan website. They are light and delicious and great for fingerfood or snacks. I'm going to even try adding a crust (maybe brown rice). I've Australian-ised the recipe below.

Mini Crustless Tofu Quiches

olive oil spray
1 teaspoon crushed garlic
1/2 cup red capsicum
1 cup chopped mushrooms
1 tablespoon minced fresh chives (or spring onions)
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary (or 1/2 tsp. dried, crushed)
black pepper to taste

350g lite firm silken tofu, drained of water
1/4 cup plain soymilk
2 tbsp savoury yeast
1 tbsp cornflour
1 tsp tahini

1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 190C (375 F). Spray 12 regular-sized muffin cups well with non-stick spray.

Lightly spray a non-stick frying pan with olive oil and sauté the garlic, capsicum and mushrooms over medium heat until the mushrooms just begin to exude their juices. Stir in the chives, rosemary, and freshly ground black pepper, and remove from the heat.

Place remaining ingredients into a food processor or blender. Process until completely smooth and silky. Add the tofu mixture to the vegetables and stir to combine. Spoon equally into the 12 muffin cups: it will fill regular muffin cups about halfway (mine didn't so if you want bigger quiches maybe only fill 11).

Put the muffin pan into the oven and immediately reduce the heat to 180C (350 F). Bake until the tops are golden and a knife inserted into the middle of a quiche comes out clean–about 25-35 minutes depending on your oven and muffin cups (silicone will take longer than metal, so if you’re using a metal pan, check it at 20 minutes). Remove from the oven and allow them to cool for about 10 minutes.

Chocolate Cheesecake

My Dad loves cheesecake. He also has a bit of a cholestrol problem. So I served him up some of my chocolate cheesecake and he loved it. He said he could tell it wasn't real cheesecake, and it's true that it doesn't have the same heavy cheesy taste, but it's light and delicate and delicious. And very easy! The only con about this recipe is that it uses two tubs of vegan cream cheese. My favourite to use if Tofutti's Better Than Cream Cheese (which my local Coles stocks and I'm pretty sure you can get it at Woolworths too) but it's quite expensive. I also have a lot of trouble getting reasonably priced vegan chocolate cooking chips. So I normally just buy a dark vegan chocolate cooking block and chop it up. Takes time and is a bit messy! Still, it's worth it if you are having a dinner party and want to serve up something yummy!

Chocolate Cheesecake

from The Joy of Vegan Baking: The Compassionate Cooks' Traditional Treats and Sinful Sweets 

Filling:

6 tsp egg replacer

1/2 cup water

1 cup vegan semisweet chocolate chips

690g vegan cream cheese

3/4 sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Cookie Crust:

1 cup crumbled vegan cookies (I find chocolate ones are yummiest!)

1/2 vegan butter melted

Preheat oven to 180C (350F). Lightly oil a round springform pan. Mix crust ingredients together and press into bottom of the pan. Mix egg replacer and water together in small bowl (best done with electric hand mixer or food processor). Melt chocolate chips in the microwave or double boiler. Beat together cream cheese, sugar and egg replacer mixture in food processor (although I use a blender). Mixture should be smooth and fluffy. Add melted chocolate and vanilla to this and blend again. Pour into prepared crust.

Bake for 50 mins. Be really careful with baking time. The cheesecake centre should barely jiggle when the pan is tapped.

Remove from the oven and let it cool completely in the pan. Then move to a serving plate and cover with cling wrap and put it in the fridge overnight. If you need to serve it straight away you need to chill it for at least 2 hours.