Leon-inspired chickpea, aubergine and mint stew

It's getting a bit embarrassing, the way you can track my recipe progression. In addition to my ongoing enjoyment of aubergine, this stew carries forward the mint theme from my last recipe and features the chickpeas that allowed me to create a vegan mousse with chickpea brine. What can I say, my kitchen activities are transparent. It may also be obvious that I don't have enough time to create surplus recipes to mask this transparency!

Whilst some of the flavours in this dish are familiar, it definitely deserves recognition in its own right. The recipe is adapted from one in the Leon cookbook, which is published by the creators of the popular UK Leon restaurants. Leon is all about real, healthy, fast food and many of the dishes draw on Mediterranean and African ingredients. This recipe epitomizes the Leon style.

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Sweet chilli tortillas with falafel balls, aubergine, pepper and tahini {London marathon fundraising}

I really loved this meal. The tortillas are great in their own right, but when served with falafel, vegetables and tahini they are really great! Mr Bite had his version with mayonnaise instead of tahini, and he gave his meal a tick of approval too.

I used to be scared of making tortillas, but they really are quite easy. Mine are always misshapen and messy, but I like to pretend that adds character. The ingredient list is half the length of commercial brands, and you can tweak flavourings to suit - like adding sweet chilli sauce in this case.

If you serve the tortillas straight from the plan, they are warm and delicious but still quite fragile. However, they do firm up on standing, and I find that they keep find for a day in the fridge if well sealed or wrapped.

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Sweet and sour tofu with kale

This sweet and sour recipe is not a traditional sweet and sour recipe. The type you can buy from your local Chinese take-away is likely to use rice wine vinegar for the sour component, brown sugar for the sweet component, and cornflour as a thickener. Most recipes online call for tomato sauce (ketchup) too. 

In contrast, this dish uses pineapple for the sour and sweet components and delivers a subtle spice kick thanks to (you guessed it!) sriracha. It also uses a whole bunch of kale. I liked it a lot. 

If you're like me, you will have all the ingredients for this as pantry (or fridge) staples. In an ideal world you would press your tofu ahead of time, but if you walk in the door at 6.30pm this could be on the table 30 minutes later. Served with quinoa or rice, it is a perfect mid-week meal. It is so good, though, that you might want to whip a bowl up on the weekend too.

Sweet and sour tofu with kale

Serves 3 if served with a grain base

Vegan

Author: Bite-sized thoughts

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Ingredients

1/3 cup natural pineapple juice

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tsp sriracha or other chilli sauce, or to taste

350g block firm tofu, pressed and sliced or cut into squares

1 small onion, chopped

1 large carrot, finely sliced

1 small bunch curly kale, roughly torn or chopped

1/3 cup canned pineapple pieces

Oil, for sauteing

Quinoa, rice or noodles, to serve

Method

In a measuring cup or jug, whisk together the pineapple juice, soy sauce and sriracha and set aside until needed.

Heat a non-stick pan over medium-high heat and drizzle with oil. Add the tofu and allow to cook for several minutes on each side, until starting to crisp up and turn golden.

Add the onion and approximately one-third of the sauce mix to the pan. Allow to cook, uncovered, for another 5 to 8 minutes until the onion is soft and the tofu starting to brown. Add the carrot and another one-third of the sauce and cook for a further 5 or so minutes.

Add the kale, pineapple pieces and remaining sauce to the pan and reduce heat to low-medium. Allow to cook for 10 minutes or until the kale has cooked down, stirring occasionally.

Serve with quinoa, rice or noodles.

I'm linking this in to Catherine's Anyone Can Cook Vegetarian Food challenge for March - non-terrifying tofu; and to Ricki's Wellness Weekend.

Do you like sweet and sour dishes? I go through stages with them - sometimes they seem just right, other times not at all what I want!

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The Raw Kitchen Cafe, Fremantle - lunch with Mel

On Sunday, I was fortunate to have lunch with Mel from Veganise This! She and her family are currently travelling Western Australia, and we managed to meet up on one of her days in Perth.

This is the first time I have met a blogger friend in person, and there is something quite bizarre about meeting someone face-to-face after communicating online over months and years. There is also something a little intimidating about going to meet a new person you have only communicated with indirectly! As it turned out, Mel is as lovely in person as she is on her blog, and I really enjoyed the few hours we spent together.

When deciding where to go, I suggested Fremantle on the basis of its vegan-friendly cafes and merging of heritage buildings with a slight hippy vibe. It is a worthwhile place to wander if you aren't from Western Australia. We ended up choosing Fremantle's Raw Kitchen Cafe as our lunch destination, which I have mentioned a few times before but never actually eaten lunch at (my previous visits have been for snacks and/or drinks).

We arrived shortly before 12.30pm, to a queue of customers out the door of the cafe. It is a deservedly popular spot and I spent most of our time in the queue trying to decide what I would order. Every time a waitress carried a plate past, I would change my mind to the dish in question. Several bowls of zucchini noodles caught my eye, piled high with noodles under marinara sauce, as did raw nachos, pizza, and falafel balls.

Tarragon Salad on the left, and Thai Papaya Salad on the right.

In the end, I ordered straight from the glass-fronted cabinet within the store, asking for a mix of the Thai Papaya Salad and Tarragon Salad. Mel ordered the raw pizza, with sides of the same salads, and we both ordered coffees with nut milk that had been made in store.

My conversation with Mel would have been enjoyable in its own right, but set against this salad...it was a really great lunch. I wanted to dive into this salad bowl. I spent the first few minutes trying to work out what the flavours were, and the rest of the meal trying to work out how they made it taste so good.

Best salad of 2013.

As I couldn't fully decipher the ingredients, and the staff were quite busy on the day we were there, I actually sent an email to ask if they would mind letting me know what was in the salads. I received a helpful reply the next day, and so am able to tell you exactly what made these dishes so good.

The Thai Papaya Salad consisted of green papaya noodles, grated carrots, snow peas, cashews, and fresh coriander, mint and basil, with a dressing of olive oil, Braggs liquid aminos (soy sauce alternative), and various herbs and spices.

Even with the name, which really should have allowed me to work it out, I hadn't realised that it was green papaya that formed the 'noodles' of this salad. I was guessing zucchini, but am now keen to try papaya noodles at home - they were incredible!

The Tarragon Salad had grated beetroot, apple and carrot, walnuts, string beans and sultanas, with a dressing of tarragon, olive oil, cashews, garlic and other herbs and spices. I am guessing that the cashews gave this its slight creaminess, which worked well with the earthy beetroot base.

Despite being busy, our meals were served promptly and the coffees were hot and well made. Mel also reported enjoying her raw vegan pizza, but I will leave discussion of that to her should she wish to review it.

Thank you, Mel, for the opportunity to meet up, and thank you to The Raw Kitchen Cafe for a great lunch and for being so helpful in answering my email enquiry!

Other reviews of The Raw Kitchen can be found at Urban Spoon (our service experience was fine, unlike some of the reviews there).

Have you met any bloggers in person? 
Or eaten green papaya in salad form? 

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