The Sun's Out?

Today it got to 14 degrees celcius in the mountains. That's warm (for the mountains, at this time of year)*. Tshirt warm. And provided good lighting for a picture of our kitchen. Also, had me in the centrelink office to reap the rewards of unemployment and to hide from possible sunburn. Alex played in the garden, which is coming along nicely.

I made this kim chi pancake for dinner using tofu, buckwheat, black salt, and some dumpstered chinese cabbage. topped with steamed pak choy, baked beancurd skin chicken and some kingland soy mayonaise.




*Unfortunately, Al reminds me that this probably means that we won't see snow during our time up here and that's very sad, because we thought and hoped that we might. I have my eyes set on Europe for the end of this year so there might be a chance for my first glimpse of snow then.

Tuna Baked

As I mentioned below I bought a package of Vegetarian Tuna from Vina's on Thursday after being tricked by my loving partner (because clearly I have no will of my own and blah blah blah who gives a shit, I bought some fake tuna).
I get excited about mock meat because I LOVE MEAT and mock meat is commonly made from gluten products which, because I HATE THE A.W.B., I don't partake of (this is a lie but being a coeliac is BORING) but will happily munch down on any "meaty" product that I can.

Tuna however, I never ever ever ate as an omnivore because I don't eat things that smell like yucky (see: Vegemite -maybe YOU like it, whatever) unless they look good or I'm given a reason to believe I'll enjoy it.
So it would only be a case of trickery that I would venture into untouched meat territory with this purchase, and with a waste-not-want-not policy of purchasing I set out to use it. I was not going to be making some sort of tuna dip or soup or spread for a sandwich (gluten free bread is too expensive for yucky risk taking) and the Vegan Tuna Bakes had been making the rounds through Melbourne's Vegan blogging and pot lucking scene with great success so I thought I may as well give it a go. (ZB also did one recently with tempeh, so maybe there is a national wave of mock tuna happening)

I'd never eaten a tuna bake before, but I do enjoy a macaroni cheese casserole (which is essentially what this is) whenever it's on offer so I figured the only risk was that I'd have to pick out the bits of tuna if I didn't take to it.

I went by Harriet's basic formula of Pasta + Beschamel + Veggies + Tuna topped with Breadcrumbs (naturally gluten free's crunch loaf is what I have around at the moment) and some grated Cheezly Edam in the oven for half an hour and seasoned servings with the good ol S&P, savoury yeast and some home grown parsley.

The veggies I used were red capsicum, mushrooms and broccolini.

The Beschamel/Cheese sauce I make is based on Karina's "Best Cheesey unCheese Sauce" and I combined it with some of Kingland's soy mayonaise on a whim and popped it into the oven at 180c for half an hour which was enough time for the dishes to be done and for Alex to come home with some cola he snatched from his pizza delivery job up here.

The Result? A warming, nourishing meal that had my trickster of a love making incredibley happy "as good as my mum's" noises which (considering the fact that his mum is all about meat and cheese) is enough to satisfy my checklist for a good meal, despite what I think about a certain fish.

I'm not convinced that I'm going to run out and buy another packet of this stuff unless tricked again but I did enjoy it quite enough to eat two servings and feel happy. If you ever liked tuna but can't eat it anymore, this stuff probably does everything you want it to.

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..

Cook Salad

On days where I need lunch RIGHT NOW and I am depending on not going out to the shops to pick something up, I cook a salad.

My housemate louise, who is also a vegan, went through a stage earlier this year of refusing to call a cooked salad a "salad" or many other "salad" things, she was avoiding using the word in protest of the stereotypical view of veganism and vegan food, can't make friends with salad, etc.
I believe the term she used to replace salads was "throw-together". Alex had a field day with this on louise, calling everything salad, left right and centre.

I wonder if anyone else feels similarly about the word salad and the normal feelings about how omni-folk (muggles) put on vegans/vegetarians from stereotypes of low food choices and stuff? Do people still even think that all we can eat is salad or rice or whatever? I've never been picked on in such a way because of my veganism, but my friend Tim (who is a very proud vegan) has joked at me that because I'm a gluten free vegan, all I can eat is lettuce...

I like cooked salads because they're fresh and warm at the same time, and because I'm generally a bit wary of raw food and undercooked food (this is a childhood pickishness thing, I guess).
This one is steamed pak choy, steamed oyster mushroom, crispy spicy salt and pepper tofu, green chilli, kim chi (home made for our house by my beautiful friend Jackson!!!) with a miso-mayonaise dressing that i spilled on one of my best dresses!

This was the first time I got to take a photo of a meal I've whipped up for a while/been bothered to.

This was the first time I'd cooked oyster mushrooms, I really really love them and their special taste and texture. I put them in pho a couple of days ago and it woked a treat! I really should experiment with enoki mushrooms soon.

What are your favourite kind of mushrooms and how do you like to use them?


ps: of course i know this isn't a salad but when it's lunchtime and i think I'M GOING TO MAKE A SALAD, i generally end up cooking something like this. don't judge me, i just like cooking delicious food, ok.

Phở.

props to my favourite domestic photographer and ex-housemate, caitlin molloy for snapping this pic in melbourne's footscray.
May the seed of your loin be fruitful in the belly of your woman

After lots of tom-foolery and suddenly deciding that we were hungry RIGHT NOW, it was concluded that Alex and I should partake in a meal that we've both only previously had part of a couple of times and had never made before. I had bookmarked this recipe from Cathy's Gastronomy blog before I moved to Sydney (and was living within shouting's distance of Footscary, sigh!) let it completely slip my mind until last night.

Totally forgetting having been told by my other ex-housemate Riva that this was a hard dish to attain authenticity of (and maybe she would find this attempt of Phở to perhaps be an insult), we went ahead. I made a couple of changes based on what we had around us/didn't have/it was too late to go to the asian grocer to attend to/woolworth's had run out of stuff, but damn if I didn't fool myself into wanting to dive into this beautifully subtle broth.

I onlh took a coupla quick outta-focus snaps before the batteries ran out and my tummy started calling child protection services for neglect.

So an editted version of the original recipe looks like this: (for extra laziness I have literally copy+pasted the recipe from it's original source, cutting out and adding what we did and didn't do!)

For broth

• 1 leek (leaves only)
• 1 brown onion
• 1 chunk of fresh ginger
• 5 star anise
• 2 Massel Chicken-style stock cubes.
  
• Water
• Soy sauce (Tamari for no Belly-drama!) to taste
  
• Sugar also to taste.

Heat water (about 10-12 cups, depending on how many your serving) with chicken stock cube in a medium-sized soup pot, leaving enough room for the ginger, onion and leek leaves.

Remove the outer layer of the onion and add it whole to the broth. Leaving the skin of the ginger intact, chop off the nubs and bruise using a mortar and pestle. Add to broth. Separate the leek leaves from the stems and add them to the broth along with five star anise “fruits.” Let the soup boil on high heat for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the onion and ginger have softened.

Once the onion and ginger have softened, discard the leek leaves. Add seasonings of soy sauce and sugar to taste. Continue to cook on medium heat for an additional 15 minutes.

For “meat”

• Vegetable oil
• 1 leek (stem only)
• 1 zucchini, sliced into circles
• 1 green capsicum, chopped into strips
  
• 8 oz. sliced mushrooms (any variety)
• Soy sauce (Tamari!)
• Black pepper
• Dried chilli flakes
  

While the soup is boiling, thinly slice the leek stems and chop the mushrooms and zucchini.

Saute the leeks with vegetable oil in a medium-sized pan until golden. Add the mushrooms and zucchini to the leek and oil mixture. Season to taste with soy sauce, chilli and black pepper.

Get your lover/partner/best friend/housemate/some guy you see to pull a puss face pose and enjoy.

Grab a bowl and fill it with noodles (banh phở - fresh flat rice noodles preferable) and the “meat” mixture. Pour some hot broth on top. To garnish, add fresh or steamed bean sprouts, onions, cilantro, lime juice, herbs (basil, saw tooth herb, etc.), hoisin sauce and chili sauce.

Sweet & Sour Ham

I'm not even going to write much about this one because I only made it as a quick lunch and to see what the flavor of a soy mock product i have in my fridge tastes like.
The thing about being a vegetarian or vegan is that after a while, you can't really remember what meat is like to eat or to have in a meal. When presented with the option of cooking a mock ham, I was curious but really really confused. Even in my staunch meat-eating days, I never touched anything that came from a pig. I just have no idea when it comes to cooking meat, though I often look at meat based recipes and think "that'd probably be delicious, maybe i could replace the meat with eggplant or mushroom or capsicum and it'd be the same" maybe because I cannot eat gluten mock, i just realy on plant subsitutes generally. WHATEVER.
I used a bottled sweet n sour sauce and simmered some fake ham in it and some snake beans. served on a nest of baby choy sum steamed with (australian) garlic for good measure.
almost immediately after topping with slivered almonds, i dropped the bag of them on the kitchen floor and it looked like an explosion.



+++++ POST SCRIPT: yes Pip, it was tastey. i over steamed the baby choy sum though.

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.

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.

White Goji Antidote CUPCAKED

It's been a really long time since I've invented a cupcake recipe on my own. Or since I've even wanted to. I don't make cupcakes that often anyway. The last time I created a cupcake recipe, I invented two at the same time and they travelled to New South Wales with me to feed lovers and stoners. The recipes were for a chocolate-licorice type (that was inspired by my partner as well as being stuck on reading Emma Goldman's autobiography, Living my Life) and a coconut-lime-ginger "butter"cupcake.

As I've been sick too often these days, I've actually been really slack with my eating habits or even being organised and motivated enough to cook something and eat it. The most I've been eating has often been different combination of spreads and salad on a corn thin. Seriously. It's been pretty fucked up and I get frustrated when people tell me to eat and I just-can't-do-it. The antidote to this sort of a rut is to bake something.

Even though I make sweets often and eat them often, I actually kind of feel really spiteful towards them. I can't even explain how that works, but baking or making sweet things when I'm unwell seems to get me in a mode of "I can do this cooking stuff, and then I have to eat it or it goes to waste" which is better than "I can't even think about chewing on food". It gets me to this good better-eating habit place because I THEORETICALLY dislike sweets, therefore I must be making sweets for someone else. right? like, that totally makes sense.
Except for in the house I live in now its just Riva and I and though she does love delicious things, she is a small lady, and its still just two of us.

ANYWAY
WHATEVERI made a white chocolate chip cupcake using Quinoa flour and hid Goji berries in 'em and a white chocolate ganache icing. You can do it too!

Preheat your oven to 180c. Learn the metric system if you don't know it.

Dry hump: 1.5 c quinoa flour
1 t bicarb soda
1 t baking powder
0.5 t sea salt
1 c brown sugar
5 T soy milk powder

Wet love: 1.25 c non dairy milk
(this is a rough estimate. see how much you feel is necessary after one cup)
1 T apple cider vinegar
2 t vanilla extract

And then: 0.75 c mini non dairy white chocolate chips
(i got mine from rishon's)
0.5 c dried goji berries.
-this is completely to taste. i think i probably scrimped a bit on the gogoji as their taste is pretty subtle.

These were done after about 20/25 minutes. I think if I do it again I'll look into using a different combo of flours, they tasted delicious but like, earthy. With a nice whisper of SECRET QUINOA LURKING WITHIN.

For the ganache (which there is too much of now sitting in a tub in the freezer) I did this:
double-boil 1c white chocolate chips with 3 T margarine. mixed with 0.25 c water, 3 c icing sugar, 1 t vanilla extract and the juice of half a lemon. oh and a pinch of sea salt. whip-it. freeze it. whip it. freeze it. whip it onto cupped cakes.

INFORMATION ABOUT GO-GOJI!

Let's Cocoa

Melissa Stringer is an old darling friend of mine who draws for dreams.(click image for adorable comic!)

For a couple of years, I have been obsessed with, though had never done anything about the idea of using chocolate and cocoa in savory dishes. The closest thing I've ever been served is a kind of mole-sauce. Chili and beans and cocoa, y'know, for dipping or as a sauce or side with other Mexican cuisine. Sort of a stock thing to do.

I had read about the luxury designer chefs that would pour chocolate over steak and chicken. Amazing. They probably use red wine in those sauces too. If nothing else I will adore anyones food if it has done well in sneaking booze into it. That's some sexy stuff.

Today I took the day off from my 11 hour school days I have on Thursdays and lay around imagining lunch. I wrote a couple of shopping lists and then I thought about astral-travelling to the store to make purchases.

I have never made a Shepherd's pie so why the fuck wouldn't i totally fuck up my own perception of what that meant.

I soaked some TVP with stock and sesame oil and mushroom sauce and chopped some red capsicum, leek and mushrooms and an onion. oh and lots of garlic. cooked it all and then. whole peeled tomatoes? done. tomato sauce? okay! gluten free gravy? sweet! sage, rosemary, thyme, coriander, a splash of cider vinegar and.

A TABLESPOON OF COCOA! fuck yes.

mashed what left i had of my butternut pumpkin and lopped it into a casserole dish into a preheated 180c oven for 20 minute and let the air-humping begin.

what was revealed was a big sloppy kiss of really earthy steak-like deliciousness. purple-brown and pumpkin yellow. my favourite colours in food. oh and there was cayenne pepper, i just remembered. fuck yes. will make this a recipe and force Riva to photograph it's worth and feed it to my love.