AWW Polenta Bake.

I've been meaning to start veganising recipes from the Australian Women's Weekly for a while. Some of their recipes are incidentally vegan or easily veganised by the replacement of dairy milks/butters for other less abusive products and some of their recipes depend on meat or eggs as integral players. So be it a little lazy on my part for choosing this recipe, its just so good looking and I hadn't used polenta for quite some time. The major adjustment made was with cheeses and milk as well as completely halving the recipe as I didn't have a whole litre of milk to spare, and my "lamington" tray is small.

The Australian Women's Weekly presents: Baked polenta with tomato and bocconcini (a la vegan).

INGREDIENTS (with my adjustments and substitutions)
2 cups vegetable stock (I use Massel, and had run out of their really good Chicken stock but would use that if I had it)
2 cups soy milk
pinch of sea salt
1 cup polenta
⅓ cup grated cheezly mozzarella
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
⅓ cup Napoli pasta sauce (we have this around the house sometimes, its a generic mix of tomatoes, tomato paste, and miscellaneous herbs and spices. you could use whatever you see fit, a white sauce or pesto would be nice, or a fresh passata with herbs. as you like!)
6 thin slices of cheezly mozzarella
6 seeded black olives, halved
pinch chopped fresh oregano, optional
flat-leaf parsley leaves, for serving, optional

METHOD
Preheat the oven to 220°C (200°C fan forced). Grease a 20cm x 30cm
lamington pan.

Combine stock, milk and salt in a large saucepan; bring to the boil. Gradually sprinkle the polenta over the stock mixture, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, making sure the polenta has no lumps.
Reduce the heat to low and partially cover the saucepan. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes or until polenta is very thick and a spoon can stand upright in the centre. Remove from heat, stir in the grated cheeze and nutritional yeast.

Spread polenta into prepared pan. Stand for about 5 minutes. Spread tomato sauce over polenta, top with mozzarella slices and place an olive half in the centre of each mozzarella slice. Sprinkle with oregano.
Bake, uncovered, for about 45 minutes or until cheeze is melted.

Let sit for about 5 minutes or until the polenta is firm to touch and easily cut. Cut polenta into squares; sprinkle with parsley, if desired.

Delicious, warming and I have no idea why some people hate polenta. Its such wholesome niceness.

Melinzana Food Babies.

FROM THE URBAN DICTIONARY
food baby: When a person indulges in a large amount of food which makes their stomach stick out from the fullness as if they're pregnant.

I still feel like there is a Melinzana food baby in my belly from last night's gorge. Pip left her camera there during Decolonise '09 and so picking it up meant I had to make tracks to Melinzana, which inevitabley involved bringing a bunch of friends and eating ourselves to a slow happy death.

So, you may not see it on the Menu, but this place has vegan cheese. Amazing melty vegan cheese and if you pay $2 more (medium, $3 large) you can veganise your gourmet woodfired pizza. There is also vegan peperoni and ham, should you want to get into that territory. Their pizza bases are home made and they make gluten free bases in a medium size. The following was ordered:
Patata Vegetarian w/Soy Cheese & Gluten free base - Me.
Spinach w/Soy Cheese - Alex S and Rob.
Melinzana w/Soy Cheese - Harriot and Haidee.
Supreme - Richard
Gorgonzola - Alex D.

Lots of sharing went on except for me, because I was limited to one kind of base that cost $3 extra, so my extra moneys came to $5 more which is a bit spenno in my books, but man oh man.

I only got a good shot of the Patata Vegetarian, but the other pizzas looked unbelievable (expect a much-delayed post from Pip when she gets her camera back!). I really liked the base of this pizza, as a gluten-free snob of sorts, it did the trick and I didn't feel like I was missing out on much. I can believe I ate the whole thing, and I wish I could eat it over and over and over again.

Mad props to Richard for demolishing the large supreme almost 100% by himself give/take a couple of swapping of pieces between parties. Three kinds of meat!!! Holyshit.

Anyway. If you're visiting or are in the area, go to Melinzana. Be fed, be pregnant to a potato pizza, and get a bit silly-hyperactive on cheese dreams.

Melinzana Wood Fired Pizza
289 Enmore Rd
Enmore NSW 2043
Phone (02) 9516 1781

Got Sconed!

BTWYFYI I have been spending almost the past month or two organising a festival and a split cassette release. Times have been hectic, I've also been working on havign enough information in my folio for review as assessment at the end of my course in 2 weeks, and an installation for the end of year show. I do stuff with plants, it's hopefully going to be cool.

A big shout out goes to one of my favourites, Fjorn, who has been overwhelmingly useful and happy to help and working hard on her own work as well as being my co-host in the fest and my bandmate, and helping me with art and stuff. Last night I made dinner for her and her boyfriend, Sean (who's been real busy rattling out a thesis all year) of: lemon asparugus, grilled tomatoes, grilled field mushrooms, and a tofu/almond/mint/pomegranite salad. sitting next to it were some cream cheese&chives scones, stealing the show.

I now present to you, the recipe for the scones WITH PICTURES with love from google image search. heheh.

This is actually the first time I've ever made scones, ever. F'serious, I ate them heaps as a kid but they were something mum always made for us and never showed us how, I guess because they're ridiculously easy. I got the recipe for regular cheese&chives scones and wrote it down and forgot it and then remembered and found it in my Back pocket.

225 g. self raising flour (i used my least preffered GF mix of flours, orgran).

50 g butter (used nuttelex)
1 c cheese (i used tofutti cream cheese)

¼ t sea salt
1 T chives
¼ c milk

rub flour and butter together. lop in the cheese, salt,, milk. put more flour in if necessary. put in chives, etc. its too easy.

220c oven, 10-15 min.

i was scared they'd be too biscuitty btu they came out fine, nice and robust and beautiful with the grilled mushrooms.

also apologies i am actualyl quite shit at writing out recipes.

I Promised this was a Food Blog...

And so I've pirated pornography of my own efforts from Phillipa. I hope she doesn't mind (!!!)

During Alex's most recent trip to visit me down here in old cold Melbourne, we invited Pip and Tim to come and eat at my home.
This invitation was partly an act of mischeif and deceit as we're actually quite terrible at ever picking a place that has things that everyone can eat and enjoy without spending too much money/ending up at Shanghai dumpling (the deceit within the invitation).

The mischeif lies within the following meals we presented to our dear friends,


1. Cocoa Shepherd's Pie. I believe that the revolution is somewhere in the following "recipe".

We used: two carrots, pealed & diced, one onion roughly chopped, two minced cloves of garlic, a healthy handful of sliced cup mushrooms, a tin of diced tomatoes, maybe 500g of potatoes, two cups of TVP, and the following process:
Soak TVP in 1.5 cups (veg) chicken stock (or whatever you've got), tamari, sesame oil, heeeaps of salt & pepper. Sautee Onion, mushrooms, carrots, whatever veg you're keen on in your pie till it makes you happy (the potatoes are for the top, yo.), and through in the (thoroughly drained, no soggy pies please!) TVP.
I use the following combination of herbs & spices: Rosemary, Thyme, Coriander, Cayenne Pepper, le the veggies absorb the flavours and then added the can of diced tomatoes, and let the whole lot brew for a few minutes. I then added 1 cup of instant gravy mix (1 cup produced through the instructions on the packet. not one cup of gravy powder. gross) and 2 teaspoons of apple cidervinegar. And then. Between one and two tables spoons of dark cocoa powder. It looks amazing going in, and smells completely awesome.
All the while we had the potaotes boiled and then mashed with some rice milk, agave syrup and nutritional yeast, s&p, whatever.. I am actually really really shit at making the kind of amazing potato mash that this pie deserves, but i'm working on it.
Slopped the filling into a pie dish (whether or not us use a pastry crust is up to you, i don't because i am lazy, gluten free etc etc but i'm sure puff pastry would work), sprinkled some cinnamon ontop of the 'meat' and dollopped the mash ontop.
Into the oven preheated at 200c for about 20 minutes and oh-boy.

2. Cashew Cheese stuffed Capsicum (with Shredded Broccoli and Gluten Free Risoni!).

Alex's dish is something that he and I endeavour to convert the world to. We first came across the recipe for "Cottage Cheese" in the Easy Vegan Cooking book by Leah Leneman that my father bought for me before I was a vegan (that's some good intuition, dad!). We were intrigued immediately dismissed the scoffing of raw-food type recipes due to the fact that both Alex and I have a great nostalgia for the treat. And I have to make the following disclaimer: THE CASHEW CHEESE RECIPE TASTES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE COTTAGE CHEESE and if you don't do much to alter the flavour, smells like feet and tastes a little bit like haloumi. But, we actualyl fucking love this stuff. because you can transform it into a really nice stuffing for veggies or put it in salads and stuff. Just don't call it cottage cheese, because no Hungarian would talk to you if you fed this to them with that name.

The basics are: grab a handful (or however much you're game for) and let it soak in room-temperature water for about three or four days. It's ready for processing when you get the courage to eat one of the cashews and it tastes like haloumi. Smash the shit out of it using your food processor and add garlic, rosemary, lemon, mustard, nutritional yeast, whatever 'cheesey' or at least complimentary flavours you want. we mixed this in with shredded broccoli and some gluten free risoni (hoorah for Orgran!) and stuffed them into halves of the skinned char-grilled (stove top) capsicums that Alex so very much enjoys to make and show off. Into the oven after the pie for about 10 minutes and drizzled a bit of Balsamic Vinegar like the proto-gourmets we are.

And for drinks, Pip brought along an assortment of Phoenix's Juices. we split each small bottle four-ways throughout the meal, it was really cute, like we were taste testing each juice. Next time anybody does this, I reccomend the juices be served in shot glasses. Whee!
And I provided hot cocoa made with ginger and coffee bean essence, compound chocoalte and coconut cream.

I announced on the delivery of the cocoa that I would very much like to one day make a cocoa so fucking delicious that the Coco-Loco would cry his egyptian tears and immediately reduce his prices to something more happy. I stand by this argument, and challenge that I put to myself. Fuck working Vegans into a panicky sweat over prices. Fuck $8. Chocolate Alchemist. Whatever*.

*I should note that his cocoas are totally delicious and like, if you're a bit cashed up and in the area with a lovely eye-fancier, this place is totally cool to go on a date to but for someone who gets hot choclate cravings A LOT, I really really really can't justify $8 a pop on something i could have surpassed at home.