unapologetic photo dump.

tofu fritatta (favourite!) messy version with added "pork" sausage and home grown oregano. made without a cast-iron frying pan befuddled me in a fight against gravity and made the result turn into rustic almost scramble. for an unmessy recipe with a cast iron griddle go back in time to this post. major changes were adding a bit of umeshu and fresh tomato and yellow capsicum in place of the red.

If you make a mess then it's an unbelievable sandwich filler. the toast is Naturally Gluten Free's Classic bread which is probably the best gluten free brand I've had and luckily I only have to travel to Leura (the township next to Katoomba) to get a loaf for myself. It fared very well in french toast last night. Good sign.


okay i am a bit apologetic that i've almost abandonned my fooding blog, especially because of all the time i spend thinking about food and plants. guh, moving, unemployment and stubbornly staying off centrelink hasn't meant that i havent been making and inventing in the kitchen, i've just been unprepared in my mind to take photos or make alex wait to eat because i need to get the right photo. damnit.

and for those who are curious, i'm still putting too much salt on my portions of food for health reasons, and i'm not getting much better except for that moving to a cold cold cold place for winter has calmed my heart a bit.

this is our new house. yes, the tibetan prayer flags do mean that we are sharing with hippies.
but they're fellow coeliacs and vegans so its tolerable.

In the meantime, I'll try to pick up the recipe'ing habit again. maybe..

Make with Fruit

banana maple buckwheat pancakes with stewed apples and berries and their syrup.
for reference: we generally use this combination of ingredients for pancakes. apples were peeled and sliced thinly and brought to a boil with lots of sugar, a cinnamon stick, some nutmeg and whole cloves. berries thrown in at the end. a thicker syrup was reduced after taking out the fruit and putting in more sugar and boiling til suitable.

this was our contribution to a massive breakfast made by alex, ryan and myself for us and the swedes, for no real reason other than 'happy wednesday late breakfast'.

xo

Banaspberry Pancakes

Gluten freedom is hard to have, hardest when it is forced upon you and you don't really want to accept it (in my case), but also half but also very brave to take on as possibly a sympathetic arm around a shoulder (in Alex's case when we cook together). There's a lot to consider and when you throw veganism into the mix sometimes its sort of like "why bother?".

we shall perservere.

Because that's what you do, y'know. Just go with it. Options keep opening up to people with gluten intolerances, more cafes and restaurants are providing alternatives, some have tkaen the option of not charging extra to provide for those who have dietary requirements and that is pretty awesome. Once upon a time, pancakes that I could eat (gluten free and vegan and not disgusting, thanks) and enjoy eating seemed quite far-fetched and a lot of wasted batter were chucked in attempts to make something that might do for particular cravings, at whatever hour of the day. For some reason, this seemingly simple dish baffled us. Was it because of the gluten free? Was it because of no eggs? we couldn't figure it out.

A very simple recipe from Tony Weston and Yvonne Bishop's "Vegan: Over 90 mouthwatering recipes for all occasions" sent us on the right trail. Their recipe gave us ideas for a very simple fail-proof formula for the vegan pancake, that is easily transferrable to gluten free flours, if you make the adjustments to liquid and flours as you see fit whilst combining.

2.5c SELF RAISING FLOUR + 2c MILK + SALT + LIME JUICE.

The recipe in the book says to cook them with rapeseed oil but as the idea of that seems just way too healthy for me, I tend to go with a dairy free margarine if I have it around in the fridge. Apologies for being a bit 'tradish'. This recipe makes HEAPS but sent us on our way.
The next trick was getting a handle on how hot the pan should be and how much oil/marg should be on the pan before/whilst cooking each pancake. Go with your instinct and like Pip's said: Remember to give the first pancake to the dog. Them's the rules. Which I don't 100% agree with, maybe because I don't have a dog - but I do have the powers of the deduction required to see what alterations need to be made after the first pancake if it isn't a success. and sometimes I'll eat anything, god damn.
The self raising flour is optional but offers a fluffly pancake and the aeration in the batter provided from the baking powder or bicarb or whatever seems to work in favour for the gluten free flours I use. It's easy to go without, for a thinner pancake, but I'm already using margarine to cook them with, so I'm going to stick with my nostalgia, thankyouverymuch.
I'll make a goddamn crepe when I feel like it, but these are banana and raspberry pancakes for lovers who are not concerned with risking diabetes or belly-expansion.

FOR FUCK'S SAKE:

1 cup buckwheat flour
1 cup plain flour
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
1 healthy pinch of salt
1.5 cups rice milk mixed with 2 teaspoonse apple cider vinegar and left to curdle
.5 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 overripe banana
and as many frozen raspberries as we thought seemed to be reasonable

Combine flours, Baking powder and salt.
In a seperate bowl mash your banana (the riper, the easier to do this. my favourite trick is to pre-mash the banana whilst it's still in it's skin by gently squeezing it from either side till the firm fruit becomes (he he he) a floppy phallus and then peeling it into a bowl and finishing it off with a fork.
To the banana, add the vanilla essence, curdled milk+vinegar mix and sugar.
Make a well into the flour mix bowl and combine well. Add more flour or milk as you see fit, if necessary. When you're happy with the consistency, throw in the raspberries and fold.

I feel like I need to stress the importance of coverage with the oil base you're using in the pan for this recipe. I've had way too many "scrambled" pancakes to not be paranoid. When melting the margarine into the pan, make sure you're oiling up the whole pan and not just spots. When you're happy with the coverage and the heat of the pan, its time to get to work.
Ladle out the mixture into the pan (I like to see how far one batch of batter can go and do half-ladles of it and tip the pan from side-to-side to spread out the batter), when bubbles start to surface, this is when i start lifting the pancake, so we know it's time to get going.
The second side of the pancake should take about or even less than 2 thirds of the time it took to get the first side cooked, depending on taste and heat variables.
It's good to be careful not to burn the pancakes but too much urgency can weild a mushy inside pancake, which can be tastey but is not what you should be aiming for.

This should make a moist pancake that you can taste the banana from (some vegan banana pancake recipes ignore the flavour of the banana and use the fruit solely as an egg subsitute which I find disappointing) and are completely deserving of the impending heart attacks that Alex and I are likely to suffer from if we keep up the marg/sugar kick. If we hadn't spread the batter on the pan and left them thicker they would have been quite delightful as pikelets, but we were pancaking.

Taste the Alphabet

RECENT AQUISITIONS: 1. digital camera (chanukah/festivus/christmas gift). 2. gluten free alphabet noodles.
It has since been my goal to make as many different alphabet soups as possible. This morning's alphabet soup goes like this:

2 cloves garlic.
1 onion
1T olive oil
1 "beef" stock cube
2t paprika
4 small bay leaves
2-3 cups boiledwater
2t crushed dried sage
1T margarine
1.5T tomato paste
little bit of dried chilli flakes
pinch of oregano
as much salt & pepper as you like/need/can handle
vegan parmasen to garnish.

+ half a cup of alphabet noodles/however much you like as per your own soup:noodles ratio requirements.

Sautee the onion til transclucent, throw in garlic, stock cube, bay leaves, sage and paprika - combine well and then start pouring in the hot water, stirring as you go. When all water is in the saucepan and combined well with other ingredients, add tomato paste and then once all mixed, add noodles.
Add more or less water/noodles depending on what you think is going on with consistency in the pot and what you like specifically. When noodles are al-dente, lower heat to quite low and add margarine (not necessary, I did this for a creamy style thing) til melted, chilli and oregano. mostly for nostalgic reasons, I added parmesan to again recreate a creamy kind of tomato broth for the noodles.

Season as you will. This was really warming and simple. I don't know why I wanted to make it for breakfast, but at the end of things I guess I am a big bratty kid when it comes to food and I'll make what I want to eat whenever I want to eat it, if it is available to me.

More alphabetical soups are to come, I'm sure. I lit the first candle of chanukah this evening.

Chag Chanukah Sameach.

Make your own fucking frittata.

Alex came down last weekend on a last minute decision to absolutely never miss any Ex Spectator show ever, as long as it doesnt mean too much expense, etc. He has (we have, but I don't count cos I live here) been at every Ex Spec show since their birth, and Alex is one for tradition. So 11 hours in transport from Sydney to Melbourne via the countrylink service, and apparently hitting a sheep and getting scared the train had derailed, there he was in Melbourne again.

KABOOM.

I woke up early to make a breakfast for him and meet him at the station because feminism works that way as I have made that same trip a few times and know very well how much you really need someone to be at the other end of your journey, hopefully with a meal. I may not be very good at preparing meals for myself to take with me to school or work anymore but I certainly did a good job of breakfast boxes for Alex and I to enjoy before I had to shoot off to work. I took a photo with my mind.

The picture looks like this: Tupperware container. rocket salad on the bottom (flaxseed oil + mustard dressing), grilled flat field mushroom with garlic, rosemary & thyme, and a scramfu with capsicum. simple, but sustaining.

A good effort for a 5.45am wake up and stumbling around the kitchen pretending I wasn't making any noise. Breakfasts are the best shit.

And because breakfasts are the best shit, (a girl I once lived with only knew how to cook breakfasts so she ate breakfast for every meal) I made us a tofu frittata -after craving for it when my housemate made one using a recipe from VWAV that niether of us actually own-using a sketchily transcribed into note version i found by googling "tofu frittata please" and THE POWER OF MY IMAGINATION. yaey.

And now, using the power of my memory puddle, I give you, A RECIPE! Also thankyou Alex for photo-taking this picture and leaving your camera in Melbourne. This recipe is really basic so i encourage you to out-do yourselves again and again and again and again because there is a whole fucking world of vegetables out there and this recipe will take most. This is what I had written down before I made it

Approx. 500grams of firm regular fotu

1. red capsicum, chopped real small.

1. small onion, minced

3. T nutritional yes.

1. t paprika

½. t turmeric

as much salt as you can handle, and pepper accordingly.

and then i adlibbed some shit i can't remember but also:

1. T soy sauce

(or bragg's, if you got it)

1. big kale leaf, chopped roughly.

(whatever leafy green is fine, really. this is what i had and it was wilting and desperate to be consumed)

Prehead your oven to about 180c. standard. oil up a shallow pan (if you got a cast iron pan, that would be AMAZING and PPREFFERRABBLE) and let that one sit to the side whilst we prep.

Make to-goo with your blender, transfer the slop into a mixing bowl and mix in your dry seasoning. Saute the onion and capsicum until soft, mix into your tofu mixture, as well as the soy/whatever sauce you wanna use. and the greens. slap it into your cast iron what-have-you and let it fap around in the oven for about 20-30 minutes, depending on the power of your oven, and how brown/firm you prefer your food.

Whilst i had the foodprocessor out I made a walnut pesto and mixed some of it with rocket (i am obsessed with rocket. i love it! oh! oh!) and balsamic vinigar on the side. the frittata was a medium size, and half of it each filled Alex and I up very happily.

post script: i re-googled the frittata recipe i stole so that i could reference them.. it came from a mini-frittata recipe byRoxy @ Eat Vegan thanks roxy. you made us happy.

x x